Under the influence of these personal hatreds, which raged from the Penobscot to the Potomac, American politics bade fair to become a faction-fight. The President proposed no new legislation; he had come to the end of his economies, and was even beginning to renew expenditures; he had no idea of amending the Constitution or reconstructing the Supreme Court; he thought only of revolutionizing the State governments of New England.24 "The path we have to pursue is so quiet, that we have nothing scarcely to propose to our Legislature,"—so he wrote a few days before Congress was to meet. "If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." The energy of reform was exhausted, the point of departure no longer in sight; the ever-increasing momentum of a governmental system required constant care; and with all this, complications of a new and unexpected kind began, which henceforward caused the chief interest of politics to centre in foreign affairs.
1 Jefferson to Peter Carr, Oct. 25, 1801; Jefferson MSS.
2 Jefferson to M. Dupont, Jan. 18, 1802; Jefferson MSS.
3 Jefferson to Cæsar A. Rodney, April 24, 1802; Jefferson's Writings (Ford), viii. 147.
4 Jefferson to Joel Barlow, May 3, 1802; Works, iv. 437.
5 Life of Benjamin Silliman, i. 90-96.
6 Jefferson to Priestly, March 21, 1801; Works, iv. 373.
7 Jefferson to John Taylor, June 1, 1798; Works, iv. 247.
8 Jefferson to Moses Robinson, March 23, 1801; Works, iv. 379.
9 Jefferson to Gideon Granger, May 3, 1801; Works, iv. 395.
10 Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, Aug. 26, 1801; Works, iv. 406.
11 Jefferson to Pierpont Edwards, July 21, 1801; Jefferson's Writings (Ford), viii. 74.
12 Jefferson to Thomas Paine, March 18, 1801; Works, iv. 370.
13 Randall's Jefferson, ii. 643.
14 Jefferson to Paine, June 5, 1805; Works, iv. 582.
15 Jefferson to W. B. Giles, March 23, 1801; Works, iv. 382.
16 Jefferson to Governor McKean, July 24, 1801; Jefferson's Writings (Ford), viii. 78.
17 Madison to Monroe, June 1, 1801; Madison's Works, ii. 173.
18 Madison to Monroe, April 20, 1803; Madison's Writings, ii. 181.
19 Jefferson to R. R. Livingston, Oct. 10, 1802; Works, iv. 448.
20 Jefferson to Monroe, July 15 and 17, 1802; Works, iv. 444-447.
21 The Recorder, September-October, 1802.
22 Jefferson to Callender, Oct. 6, 1799; Jefferson MSS.
23 Jefferson's Writings (Ford), viii. 160.
24 Jefferson to Dr. Cooper, Nov. 29, 1802; Works, iv. 453.
The Spanish Court
Most picturesque of all figures in modern history, Napoleon Bonaparte, like Milton's Satan on his throne of state, although surrounded by a group of figures little less striking than himself, sat unapproachable on his bad eminence; or, when he moved, the dusky air felt an unusual weight. His conduct was often mysterious, and sometimes so arbitrary as to seem insane; but later years have thrown on it a lurid illumination. Without the mass of correspondence and of fragmentary writings collected under the Second Empire in not less than thirty-two volumes of printed works, the greatness of Napoleon's energies or the quality of his mind would be impossible to comprehend. Ambition that ground its heel into every obstacle; restlessness that often defied commonsense; selfishness that eat like a cancer into his reasoning faculties; energy such as had never before been combined with equal genius and resources; ignorance that would have amused a school-boy; and a moral sense which regarded truth and falsehood as equally useful modes of expression,—an unprovoked war or secret assassination as equally natural forms of activity,—such a combination of qualities as Europe had forgotten since the Middle Ages, and could realize only by reviving the Eccelinos and Alberics of the thirteenth century, had to be faced and overawed by the gentle optimism of President Jefferson and his Secretary of State.
As if one such character were not riddle enough for any single epoch, a figure even more sinister and almost as enigmatical stood at its side. On the famous 18th Brumaire, the 9th November, 1799, when Bonaparte turned pale before the Five Hundred, and retired in terror from the hall at St. Cloud, not so much his brother Lucien, or the facile Sieyès, or Barras, pushed him forward to destroy the republic, but rather Talleyrand, the ex-Bishop of Autun, the Foreign Secretary of the Directory. Talleyrand was most active in directing the coup d'état, and was chiefly responsible for the ruin of France.1 Had he profited by his exile in America, he would have turned to Moreau rather than to Bonaparte; and some millions of men would have gone more quietly to their graves. Certainly he did not foresee the effects of his act; he had not meant to set a mere soldier on the throne of Saint Louis. He betrayed the republic only because he believed the republic to be an absurdity and a nuisance, not because he wanted a military despotism. He wished to stop the reign of violence and scandal, restore the glories of Louis XIV., and maintain France in her place at the head of civilization. To carry out these views was the work of a lifetime. Every successive government was created or accepted by him as an instrument for his purposes;