Jackson himself was not a free-trader, and had committed himself to a "proper" tariff on protection lines; but during the campaign he was made to appear less of a tariff man than Adams. He had also voted for certain national roads and other internal improvements, but he had not committed himself sweepingly to that policy. He doubted the constitutionality of a national bank. As to the public lands, he favored a liberal policy, with the object of developing the western country by attracting settlers rather than raising money to be spent by the government. On the general question of the powers of the government he stood for a stricter construction of the Constitution and greater respect for the rights of the States than Adams believed in. So, notwithstanding Jackson's tariff views, the mass of the people held him a better representative of Jeffersonian Democracy than his rival. But a party is an organization, and not merely a list of principles. It is, as some one has said, a crowd, and not merely a creed. Jackson's managers so organized his supporters that they became a party in that sense much more clearly than in the sense of holding the same views. Committees were formed all over the country somewhat on the order of the committees of correspondence of Revolutionary times. Newspapers were set up to attack the administration and hold the Jackson men together. Everywhere Jackson was represented as the candidate of the plain people against the politicians. In all such work Major Lewis was active and shrewd, and before the end of the campaign, from another quarter of the union, Jackson won a recruit who was already a past master in all the lore of party politics. Martin Van Buren was a pupil in the political school of Aaron Burr, and was recognized as the cleverest politician of a State in which the sort of politics that is concerned with securing elections rather than fighting for principles had grown into a science and an art. New York was then thought a doubtful State, and the support of Van Buren was of the utmost value.