Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/223

204 people. The other party wishes to lessen the dependence of the Executive and of one branch of the Legislature on the people, some by making them hold for life, some hereditary, and some even for giving the Executive an influence by patronage or corruption over the remaining popular branch, so as to reduce the elective franchise to its minimum."

After nearly four years of Executive authority more complete than had ever before been known in American history, Jefferson could see in himself and in his principles only a negation of Executive influence. What had become of the old radical division of parties,—the live between men who wished the national government to exercise inherent powers of sovereignty and those who held to a strict observance of powers expressly delegated by the people of the States?

Jefferson said with truth that the two old parties were almost wholly melted into one; but in this fusion his own party had shown even more willingness than its opponents to mix its principles in a useful, but not noble, amalgam. His own protests in regard to the Louisiana purchase and the branch bank at New Orleans were recorded. With such evidence on their side, the moderate Federalists who in the election of 1804 gave to Jefferson the nineteen electoral votes of Massachusetts and the seven of New Hampshire, could claim that they had altered no opinion they ever held; that the government had suffered no change in principle from what it had been under President Washington; that not a Federalist measure,