THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMER 169 



this way, his vast influence secured the ratification 

 of the Constitution in Massachusetts by a very narrow 

 majority. But for this attitude of Samuel Adams, 

 Massachusetts would probably have rejected the Con- 

 stitution, and that would have thrown everything back 

 into chaos. During that momentous year, 1 788, Jeffer- 

 son was in France. What would have been his atti- 

 tude if he had been at home and taken part in the 

 Virginia convention? Unquestionably it would have 

 been like that of Samuel Adams, for he says as much 

 in his letters. He declared that he was much more a 

 Federalist than an Anti-federalist, and the only faults 

 he had to find with the Constitution were that it did 

 not include a bill of rights, and that it did not pro- 

 vide against the indefinite reeligibility of the President, 

 and thus prevent the presidency from lapsing into 

 something like an elective monarchy. The first of 

 those faults was soon corrected by the first ten amend- 

 ments, which made a very effective bill of rights ; 

 the second was corrected by the precedent set by 

 Washington and confirmed by Jefferson himself, in 

 refusing to serve as President after two terms. It is 

 thus evident that Jefferson, on his return to America, 

 was practically a Federalist, as party lines were at 

 that moment drawn. 



But during Washington's administration the Fed- 

 eralists, led by Hamilton, having been given an inch 

 by these state conventions that grudgingly ratified the 

 Constitution, were naturally inclined, in the enthusiasm 

 of their triumph, to claim an ell. The swiftly and 

 radically centralizing measures of Hamilton soon car- 

 ried the Federalists onward to a new position, so that 

 those who agreed with them in 1789 had come to 



