we are all Federalists;" if differences of opinion were not differences of principle; if he seriously wished all Americans to "restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things,"—he could afford to make few removals for party reasons. On the other hand, if, as he privately declared and as was commonly believed, the actual office-holders were monarchists at heart, and could not be trusted to carry the new Republican principles into practice, the public welfare required great changes. For the first time in national experience, the use of patronage needed some definite regulation.
The most skilful politician must have failed in the attempt to explain that a revolution had been made which ought to satisfy every one, by methods which no one had an excuse for opposing. Jefferson was embarrassed, not so much by the patronage, as by the apparent inconsistency between his professions and his acts concerning it. At first he hoped to make few removals, and these only for misconduct or other sufficient cause. "Of the thousands of officers in the United States," he wrote to Dr. Rush,[1] "a very few individuals only, probably not twenty, will be removed; and these only for doing what they ought not to have done." As these removals began, the outcry of the Federalists grew loud, until the President thought himself obliged to defend his course. The occasion was furnished by the State of Connecticut,
- ↑ Jefferson to Dr. Rush, March 24, 1801; Works, iv. 382.
