France had made almost every timid man in
Christendom a tory. Serious and respectable people, above forty, and
enjoying a comfortable income, felt that there was only one thing left
for a decent person to do,--to assist in preserving the _authority_ of
government. John Adams, by the constitution of his mind, was as much a
tory as John Randolph; for he too possessed imagination and talent
disproportioned to his understanding. To be a democrat it is necessary
to have a little pure intellect; since your democrat is merely a
person who can, occasionally, see things and men as they are. New
England will always be democratic enough as long as her boys learn
mental arithmetic; and Ireland will always be the haunt of tories as
long as her children are brought up upon songs, legends, and
ceremonies. To make a democratic people, it is only necessary to
accustom them to use their minds.
Nothing throws such light upon the state of things in the United
States in 1800, as the once famous collision between these two natural
tories, John Adams and John Randolph, which gave instantaneous
celebrity to the new member, and made him an idol of the Republican
party.
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