Yet it all took place in the present century, and in the quiet village of Harvard, Massachusetts, little more than thirty miles from Boston, and now only noted as the abode of a little Shaker community, and the scene of Howells's "Undiscovered Country." The narrator was the late Mrs. Josiah Quincy, and her host was Henry Bromfield, elder brother of the well-known benefactor of the Boston Athenæum. He was simply a "survival" of the old way of living. He spoke of State Street as King Street, and Summer Street as Seven-star Lane, and his dress and manners were like his phrases. Such survivals were still to be found, here and there all over the country, at the precise time when Jefferson became President, and shocked Mr. Merry with his morning slippers, and Mr. Sullivan by opening his doors to all the world. For the rest, Jefferson's way of living in Washington exhibited a profuse and rather slovenly hospitality, which at last left him deeply in debt. He kept open house, had eleven servants (slaves) from his plantation, besides a French cook and steward and an Irish coachman. His long dining-room was crowded every day, according to one witness, who tested its hospitality for sixteen days in succession; it was essentially a bachelor establishment, he being then a widower, and we hear little of ladies among its visitors. There was no etiquette at these great dinners; they sat down at four and talked till midnight. The city of Washington was still a frontier settlement, in that phase of those outposts when they consist of many small cabins and one hotel at which everybody meets. The White House was the hotel; there was no "society" anywhere else, because no other dwelling had a drawing-room large enough to receive it. Pennsylvania Avenue was still an abyss of yellow mud, on which nobody could walk, and where carriages were bemired. Gouverneur Morris, of New York, described Washington as the best city in the world for a future. residence. "We want nothing here," he said, "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of this kind, to make our city perfect." Besides new manners, the new President urged new measures; he would pay off the public debt, which was very well, though the main instrument by which it was to be paid was the Treasury system created by Hamilton. But to aid in doing this he would reduce the army and navy to their lowest point, which was not so well, although he covered this reduction in the case of the army by calling it—in a letter to Nathaniel Macon-"a chaste reformation." He pardoned those convicted under the Alien and Sedition laws, and he procured the removal of those officers appointed by President Adams at the last moment, and called “Midnight Judges," this being accomplished by a repeal of the law creating them. This repeal was an act which seemed to the Federalists unconstitutional, and its passage was their last great defeat. Under Jefferson's leadership the period of fourteen years of residence necessary for naturalization was reduced to five years. He sent Lewis and Clark to penetrate the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and encouraged Astor to found a settlement upon the Pacific coast. The Constitution was so amended as to provide for the Presidential election in its present form. The President's hostility could not touch the Bank of the United States, as established by Hamilton, for it was to exist by its charter till 1811; the excise law was early discontinued; the tariff question had not yet become serious, the tendency being, however, to an increase of duties. Slavery was occasionally discussed by pamphleteers. The officials of the civil service had not grown to be a vast army: instead of fifty thousand, there were then but five thou sand, and of those Jefferson removed but thirty-nine. Yet even this mild degree of personal interference was severely criticised, for party bitterness had not abated. Violent squibs and handbills were still published; peaceful villages were divided against themselves. The late Miss Catharine Sedgwick, whose father was Speaker of the House of Representatives, says that in a New England town, where she lived in childhood, the gentry who resided at one end were mainly Federalists, and the poorer citizens at the other end were Democrats. The travelling agent for the exchange of political knowledge was a certain aged horse, past service, and turned out to graze in the village street. He would be seen peacefully pacing one way in the morning, his sides plastered with Jeffersonian squibs, and he would return at night with these effaced by Federalist manifestoes. Handbills and caricatures have alike disappeared; but one of the best memorials of the Jeffersonian side of the controversy is to be found in a very spicy correspondence carried on in 1807 between John Adams and Mercy Warren, and first published in the centennial volume of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mercy Warren was a woman of rare ability and char acter, the sister of James Otis, the wife of General James Warren, and the author of a history of the American Revolution. John Adams, reading this book after his retirement from office, took offence at certain phrases, and corresponded with her at great length about them, showing in advancing years an undiminished keenness of mind and only an increase of touchy egotism. He makes it, for instance, a subject of sincere indignation when the lady in one case speaks of Franklin and Adams instead of Adams and Franklin. Mrs. Warren, on her side, shows to the greatest advantage, keeps her temper, and gives some keen home-thrusts. She makes it clear, in this correspondence, how strongly and indeed justly a portion of the most intelligent people of Mr. Adams's own State dreaded what she calls his "marked and uniform preference to monarchic usages;" she brings him to the admission that he hates "democratic " government, and likes better such republicanism as that of Holland—a nation which, as he himself says, "has no idea of any republic but an aristocracy"-and that he counts even England a republic, since a republic is merely "a government of more than one." She even quotes against him his own words, uttered in moments of excited impulse, recognizing monarchy as the probable destiny of the United States. But the most striking fact, after all, is that she, a refined and cultivated woman, accustomed to the best New England society of her time, is found dissenting wholly from the Federalist view of Jefferson. "I never knew," she bravely says, in answer to a sneer from Mr. Adams, "that my philosophical friend' Mr. Jefferson was afraid to do his duty in any instance. But this I knowhe has dared to do many things for his country for which posterity will probably bless his memory; and I hope he will yet, by his wisdom, justice, moderation, and energy, long continue the blessings of peace in our country, and strengthen the republican system to which he has uniformly adhered." Such a tribute from a woman like Mercy Warren-a woman then nearly |