Louisiana and Aaron Burr 229 



they were ferocious in their wordy hostility to Great 

 Britain ; but they were not dangerous foes to any 

 foreign government which did not fear words. Had 

 they possessed the foresight and intelligence to 

 strengthen the Federal Government the Jay treaty 

 would not have been necessary. Only a strong, effi- 

 cient central government, backed by a good fleet 

 and a well organized army, could hope to wring 

 from England what the French party, the forerun- 

 ners of the Jeffersonian Democracy, demanded. But 

 the Jeffersonians were separatists and State rights 

 men. They believed in a government so weak as to 

 be ineffective, and showed a folly literally astound- 

 ing in their unwillingness to provide for the wars 

 which they were ready to provoke. They resolutely 

 refused to provide an army or a navy, or to give 

 the Central Government the power necessary for 

 waging war. They were quite right in their feeling 

 of hostility to England, and one of the fundamental 

 and fatal weaknesses of the Federalists was the 

 Federalist willingness to submit to England's ag- 

 gressions without retaliation ; but the Jeffersonians 

 had no gift for government, and were singularly de- 

 ficient in masterful statesmen of the kind impera- 

 tively needed by any nation which wishes to hold an 

 honorable place among other nations. They showed 

 their governmental inaptitude clearly enough later 

 on when they came into power, for they at once 

 stopped building the fleet which the Federalists had 

 begun, and allowed the military forces of the nation 

 to fall into utter disorganization, with, as a conse- 



