Nevertheless there was cause enough for anxiety. The approaching storm in Europe, which was to shake Louisiana into the President's lap, brought with it dangers in regard to which the experience of Washington and John Adams would have been valuable to Mr. Jefferson had he only been willing to profit by it; but, over-confident in the virtue of his theories, he, as his correspondence shows, was firmly convinced that he could balance himself between the two mighty powers which had dealt so rudely with his predecessors, and it was a cardinal principle with the Republican party that our foreign relations were endangered only by the faults of Federalism, and were safe only in Republican hands. "I do not believe," wrote Mr. Jefferson on July 11, 1803, "we shall have as much to swallow from them as our predecessors had." "We think," he wrote on the next day, "that peaceable means may be devised of keeping nations in the path of justice towards us, by making justice their interest, and injuries to react on themselves." This was the very point to be proved, and on the result of this theoretical doctrine was to depend the fate of Mr. Jefferson's Administration and of Mr. Gallatin's financial hopes. Besides this grave danger, which was destined steadily to take more and more serious proportions, there were smaller political difficulties, which in their nature must increase in importance with every embarrassment that the future had in store. The party schism led by Vice-President Burr was now beginning to rage with fury and to do infinite mischief in New York. In Pennsylvania matters were still worse, at least for Mr. Gallatin, whose political interests lay in that State. The very completeness of the Republican triumph in Pennsylvania was fatal to the party. The extremists, led by Duane and his friend Michael Leib, began a schism of their own, the more dangerous because they avoided the mistake of Burr and declared no war on Mr. Jefferson. Indeed, they followed the very opposite policy, and, sheltering themselves under the cover of their pure Republicanism with Mr. Jefferson for their peculiar patron, they declared war upon Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet. On the 10th May, 1803, Joseph H. Nicholson warned Mr. Gallatin of what was to happen: "I have enclosed the President a letter from Captain Jones to me, which you can see if you please. He says that Duane and his coadjutors meditate an attack upon Mr. Madison and yourself for setting your faces against the office-hunters." Mr. Jefferson on this occasion did not treat Duane as he had treated Burr; he attempted to intervene and soothe the susceptibilities of his over-zealous partisans. He consulted Mr. Gallatin on the subject, and sent him the draft of a letter to Duane. Mr. Gallatin, on the 13th August, 1803, returned the draft and attempted to dissuade the President from sending the proposed letter: "Either a schism will take place, in which case the leaders of those men would divide from us, or time and