The period when this once powerful party was thus counseled and guided was one well calculated to cause its members to embrace the advice given to them with avidity. They had just been expelled, root and branch, from those departments of the government which the Constitution had made accessible to public opinion and subject to the voice of the people; whilst over that to which they were recommended to extend their preference and favor, the people possessed but little if any control. This difference, so acceptable to their most cherished feelings, was besides greatly increased in value by the grossly irrational apprehensions under which they labored in regard to the course of the President elect and to the dispositions of the party by which he had been elevated to power. That he participated largely in the feelings and views of the Jacobins of France, and was prepared for the introduction of their opinions and practices in this country; that religion, the rights of persons and property, and all the interests which are regarded as sacred under well regulated governments, were put in jeopardy by his election, were opinions to which there were but few dissentients in the Federal ranks. I have elsewhere referred to a letter, written during the then recent canvass by Hamilton to Washington, in which he avowed in the most solemn and deliberate manner his conviction that the Republican party desired to make our Government subservient to the policy of that of France, and would, in all probability, rally under her banner if it was unfurled in force on our shores. Similar sentiments were fulminated from pulpit and press; and there are yet, here and there, living witnesses, who will not partake of the surprise this description of the then condition of the public mind is calculated to excite on the part of the present generation because they know it to be true, and yet remember how often and with what solemnity the warning was uttered from sacred desks that Jefferson's election would be the signal for the prostration of our pulpits, the burning of our Bibles, and the substitution of some Goddess of Reason.