"If any one entertains the idea that because I am a President of three votes only I am in the power of a party," said he, "they shall find that I am no more so than the Constitution forces upon me. If combinations of senators, generals, and heads of departments shall be formed such as I cannot resist, and measures are demanded of me that I cannot adopt, my remedy is plain and certain." Although not driven to resignation, as here hinted, Adams was from this time sentenced to be cut off with one term by Hamilton and the party. Meanwhile, Hamilton gave out what his policy would have been in executing the Alien and Sedition laws. He would have collected a "clever force" of the national militia and marched them toward Virginia. There was an obvious excuse for this action in her resolutions, he said. Then he would have measures taken by the National Government to arrest some alien and so put Virginia to the test of resistance. To the Speaker of the House, he outlined the steps necessary to be taken if the Union was to be preserved. It was the swan song of extreme centralisation. He would make the national judiciary districts much smaller, greatly increasing the number and efficiency of the judges, and also have national justices of the peace in every county. He would give the Central Government power to construct roads and canals, would increase the taxes, build a powerful navy, and make permanent the provisional army. To reduce the dangerous power of the great States and to curb their rivalry with the nation, he would divide them into smaller States. It was entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in. Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its unconscious mainstay, was dead. "The irreparable loss of an estimable man removes a control which was felt and was very salutary," wrote Hamilton to a foreign correspondent. "At home, everything is in the main well; except as to the perverseness and capriciousness of one and the spirit and faction of many. The leading friends of the government are in a sad dilemma." The first reaction against an enlarged and all-powerful America had been reached in the history of parties. The drag on the chariot was now to be felt. The Republicans were in correspondingly high spirits over the prospective downfall of the party which had so far perverted the administration of the National Government from the path which it should have taken. Republican rhymesters exhausted their wit in describing how "Brave Hamilton, our warrior bold, Strove Adams in the chair to hold, By mustering sense, and spleen, and wit, To prove him totally unfit."