THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMER 175 



and all manner of vague horror, so in 1800 the Feder- 

 alists believed that the election of Mr. Jefferson meant 

 the dissolution of the Union and the importation into 

 America of all the monstrous notions of French 

 Jacobinism. And just as after the election of 1876 

 some good people were so afraid of what Mr. Tilden 

 might do that they were ready to sanction the shabby 

 trick that kept him out of the place to which he had 

 been chosen, so after the election of 1800 there were 

 worthy people whose ideas of right and wrong became 

 so confused that, rather than see the great and pure 

 statesman, Thomas Jefferson, in the White House, they 

 were ready to surrender the government to the tender 

 mercies of such a scoundrel as Aaron Burr. It is 

 wonderful how men lose their heads at such times. 

 One would suppose that they were electing, not a con- 

 stitutional magistrate, but, shall we say, a Russian 

 Czar? No, for not even a czar can go far in working 

 changes in government at his own sweet will. They 

 seem rather to argue as if a President were like the 

 king in a fairy tale, with unlimited capacity for evil. 

 New England clergymen entertained a grotesque con- 

 ception of Jefferson as a French atheist, and I have 

 heard my grandmother tell how old ladies in Connecti- 

 cut, at the news of his election, hid their family Bibles 

 because it was supposed that his very first official act, 

 perhaps even before announcing his cabinet, would be 

 to issue a ukase ordering all copies of the sacred 

 volume throughout the country to be seized and 

 burned. 



When people get into such a state of mind the 

 only thing that can cure them is an object lesson. 

 Mr. Cleveland's administration, human and fallible, 



