The questions since opened have been in regard to slavery,--in ways which Jefferson never dreamed of,--the comparative power of the North and South, matters of finance, tariffs, and internal improvements, involving the deepest problems of political economy, education, and constitutional law; and as time moves on, new questions will arise to puzzle the profoundest intellects; but the question of the ascendency of the people is settled beyond all human calculations. And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,--as the champion of democracy, rather than as the champion of the abstract rights of man which he and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams had asserted, in opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain in her treatment of the Colonies. And here he went beyond Puritan New England, which sought the ascendency of the wisest and the best, when the aristocracy of intellect and virtue should bear sway instead of the unenlightened masses. Historians talk about the aristocracy of the Southern planters, but this was an offshoot of the aristocracy of feudalism,--the dominion of favored classes over the enslaved, the poor, and the miserable. New England aristocracy was the rule of the wisest and the best, extending to the remotest hamlets, in which the people discussed the elemental principles of Magna Charta and the liberties of Saxon yeomen. This was the aristocracy which had for its defenders such men as the Adamses, the Shermans, and the Langdons,--something new in the history of governments and empires, which was really subverted by the doctrines of Rousseau and the leaders of the French Revolution, whom Jefferson admired and followed.