1 86 JAMES MADISON 



tical construction, of setting the new government into 

 operation, Hamilton, with his financial measures, took 

 the lead. But the boldness of Hamilton's policy 

 alarmed many people. There was a widespread fear 

 that the government would develop into some kind 

 of a despotism, and this dread seemed presently to be 

 justified by the alien and sedition laws. Other people 

 were equally afraid of democracy, because in France 

 democracy was overturning society and setting up the 

 guillotine. There was such a sad want of public con- 

 fidence among the American people between 1 790 and 

 1800, that an outbreak of civil war at the end of that 

 period would not have been at all strange. To create 

 the needed confidence, to show the doubters and 

 scoffers on the one hand that the new government was 

 really a government of the people, by the people, and 

 for the people, and on the other hand that such a gov- 

 ernment can be as orderly and conservative as any 

 other, this was the noble work of Jefferson, and it 

 was in his presidency that the sentiment of loyalty to 

 the Union may be said to have taken root in the 

 hearts of the people. One thing more was needed, 

 and that was a large, coherent body of judicial deci- 

 sions establishing the scope and purport of the Con- 

 stitution, so as to give adequate powers to the national 

 government, while still protecting state rights. It was 

 that prince of jurists, John Marshall, who, as chief jus- 

 tice of the United States for one-.third of a century, 

 thus finished the glorious work. 



Of these five great men the names of Madison and 

 Marshall are much less often upon people's lips than 

 the others'. The work in which they excelled was not 

 of a kind that appeals to the popular imagination, and 



