North, in 1776, were fashioned on this model; they saw only those accidental things that separate classes in England, as, wealth, education, etc., and though they had an earnest desire for liberty, this liberty was a vague, undefined, shadowy sentiment, rather than any precise idea resting on fact as in Virginia. The immediate want and common impulse of independence, however, impelled all parties to act harmoniously for its accomplishment, and though the grand truths presented by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence were far above the then intellectual standard of the North, it did not conflict with the mental habits of the Northern people sufficiently to interfere with the common object. But when that object was accomplished—when the foreign dominion was overthrown and the common independence secured, and a new political system was to be created, then a conflict of ideas was developed that was found to be so grave, that many good and patriotic men for some time feared it could not be compromised. The leading men of the North—the representative men—the men who desired independence from foreign domination, but with, at best, vague notions of liberty, or of a new political system—Hamilton, Adams, Morris, etc.—now came into serious conflict with the democratic ideas of Virginia. They desired a monarchy without a king, or a republic without the rule of the masses. The general notion was, the British model without its defects, or the British system without its corruptions, and so entirely were some wedded to this, that they declared it, with all its corruptions, the best government in the world.