The event did not justify the fears which were entertained before the election. Jefferson did not surrender any of the power of the executive. He aggrandized it as neither of his predecessors would have dared to do. He did not surrender the central power in favor of states’ rights; and his foreign policy, governed by sympathy to France and hatred to England, was only too sharp and spirited. It seldom happens to an opposition party, coming into power, to have the same question proposed to it as to its predecessor, and to put its own policy to trial. This happened to Jefferson. Jay’s Treaty was hesitatingly signed by Washington, and it gave the country ten years of peace and neutrality. Pinckney and Monroe’s Treaty was rejected by Jefferson, and in six years the country was engaged in a fruitless war. Madison’s administration revived many of the social usages which Jefferson had ostentatiously set aside, in consistency with the general spirit of preference, on the ground of republican simplicity, for what is common over what is elegant and refined. The natural tendency of the party in power to think that what is is right, and that while they are comfortable other people ought to be so, was apparent here. It went on so far during Madison’s first term, that the leaders thought it necessary to break the monotony and to secure again, in some way, the readiness and activity of political life which had prevailed under Jefferson. They forced Madison into the war with England--a war which brought disturbance into the finances and spread distress amongst the people, which won some glory at sea only by vindicating the old Federalist policy in regard to a navy, but which was marked by disaster on land until the battle of New Orleans. At the return of peace in Europe, England was left free to deal with the United States, and a peace was hastily made in which the question of impressment, the only question at issue, was left just where it had been at the beginning.