He was according to his own
lights a radical and unqualified democrat, and as a democrat he fought
most bitterly what he considered to be the aristocratic or even
monarchic tendency of Hamilton's policy. Much of the denunciation which
he and his followers lavished upon Hamilton was unjust, and much of the
fight which they put up against his measures was contrary to the public
welfare. They absolutely failed to give him credit for the patriotism of
his intentions or for the merit of his achievements, and their
unscrupulous and unfair tactics established a baleful tradition in
American party warfare. But Jefferson was wholly right in believing that
his country was nothing, if not a democracy, and that any tendency to
impair the integrity of the democratic idea could be productive only of
disaster.
Unfortunately Jefferson's conception of democracy was meager, narrow,
and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while
Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences
of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more
serious than the consequences of Hamilton's inadequate conception of
American nationality.
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