Is that premise really valid to-day for either party? Would even Jefferson believe it to be? There is no telling what he would say if he came back, but it must be remembered that he did not believe in the common people always and under all circumstances. He drew a distinction many times between those living in the simple agricultural America of his time and those in the crowded cities of Europe. In a long and interesting letter to John Adams, he wrote: “Before the establishment of the United States, nothing was known to history but the man of the old world, crowded within limits either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation generates. A government adapted to such men would be one thing; but a very different one, that for the man of these States. Here every one may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact from it such compensation as not only to afford comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.... Such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs, and a degree of[Pg 93] freedom, which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” Again he says that our governments will surely become corrupt when our conditions as to crowded cities shall have approximated those of the Europe of his day. Without here attempting to pass any judgment on the success of Hamilton’s work in its human rather than its financial and governmental aspects, we shall have to admit that it has brought about the very conditions which Jefferson dreaded and under which he feared that his common man would become corrupt and incapable of self-government. The tremendous demand for labor resulted in our importing by the millions those very canaille, in Jefferson’s phrase,—people from the lowest classes of overcrowded Europe,—in whom he had no confidence whatever, whom he considered incapable of self-government. We have ourselves developed overcrowded conditions. There are three times as many people in the metropolitan area of New York to-day as there were in the entire United States in Jefferson’s day. Over fifty per cent of our population now live in cities and are beginning, in the larger ones at least, to develop the vices of a city mentality. In fact the corruption is worse here than in Europe in many respects. London has a larger population than New York, yet it costs $180,000,000 a year to run that city and $525,000,000 to run New York. Even making all allowances for difference in prices, there is no escaping a most unpleasant conclusion from those figures.