Page:Journal of William Maclay, United States senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791 (IA cu31924030423796).pdf/12

vi can well be raised if he, rather than Thomas Jefferson, was not the true founder of the Democratic party. It is well known that on the organization of the “new Government,” as it was then called, April, 1789, Thomas Jefferson was in France, where he had resided since 1784, and that he did not arrive in New York, then the seat of government, until March, 1790, some eleven months after the Federal machine had been in operation. And it was some time after he took his place as Secretary of State that his influence and ability as a leader of men were felt among the elements composing the Democratic party. It was during these first months of the new Government’s life that questions seriously affecting its character, whether to be monarchical or republican in its forms, were fiercely debated and decided. It was then that the foundations of the great Democracy were laid ; the super-structure erected by Thomas Jefferson being in conformity with the precedents then and there irrevocably established.

Who, then, was the leader of the opposition to this strong monarchical tendency? The records of the First Congress, unfortunately, are fragmentary and meager, so that little has been known of the stirring debates that took place at that time. The journal of William Maclay, however, throws a flood of light on this period, and establishes beyond cavil the claims of Pennsylvania to having produced the father of the Democratic party in the person of William Maclay.

For a hundred years this valuable journal has been jealously guarded from public scrutiny by the descendants of the statesman. Portions of it were privately printed in 1880, and a limited edition distributed among the members and friends of the family. Many passages, however, were suppressed, as being too caustic in their strictures on eminent personages whom we are accustomed to regard with the highest veneration, This, however, in a great measure, destroyed the ceom-