It has been shown, moreover, that both of these great men and those who acted with them were equally honest and equally patriotic; that neither, nor any of them could rise above the level of opinion in their respective sections, for then they would no longer have been representative men or able to influence the people; that the opinions of Hamilton reflected the mental habits of the North which clung to the forms and spirit of the British system founded on artificial distinctions, while Jefferson, reflecting with equal fidelity the mental habits that originate in a different social condition—where a subordinate race is in juxtaposition—advocated a democratic system resting on the fixed and indestructible laws of nature. And in view of all these historical facts and inductive facts the conclusion was deemed irresistible that the presence of the negro element in our midst, the existence of a natural substratum in the social elements which thus secured the liberty of our own race—the legal and political equality of white men—was the happiest event or conjunction of circumstances that has ever happened in the history of mankind. But while the great northern leaders thus consented to the establishment of a democratic system they were driven on by their own tendencies as well as the mental habits of their people to neutralize its forces and to pervert its spirit. At that period suffrage was extremely limited, while the agricultural class in the Northern States—compared with the present—may be said to have been extremely ignorant. The northern or federal party were thus enabled to get possession of the new government and to give it such direction as their opinions and interests doubtless seemed to demand. The President himself—the illustrious Washington—was without decided political convictions. His instincts and his family traditions, it is believed, inclined him in the direction of the northern party, while the local tendencies of opinion—the general mental habits of the Virginians to regard the distinctions of race as the legitimate basis of political order—generally restrained him, and in the mighty conflict of opinion kept him in a neutral position. He formed his cabinet out of wholly incongruous materials, made Jefferson Secretary of State, and Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, and selecting other exponents of the conflicting opinions, sought to neutralize the contending forces by an equal selection of subordinates from the hostile camps.