Jefferson's democracy in the abstract was a kind of political millennium, in which the people collectively exhibited traits quite different from their individual components. The people, to Jefferson's mind, were unselfish, by nature good, and needing no restraining bonds. They were their own censors. His democracy in the concrete took the shape of a great uprising of the people in 1800, temporarily led astray from the true principles of self-government by the undue influence of Alexander Hamilton acting through the moneyed interests, but returning joyously and regenerate to the path of constitutional rectitude. The election of 1800 he pronounced as real a revolution in the principles of government as was that of 1776 in its form; the material difference being that one was effected by the sword and the other by the rational and peaceable method of suffrage. Jefferson had no more conception of a modern political party than had Washington,--the latter because he saw in them only factions; the former because his party embraced the entire people. For several years, it is true, Jefferson had been directing the pens of his lieutenants in the various States, circulating sound Republican literature, patronising Republican newspapers, and tabulating Federalist defeats as skilfully as a modern political manager. He encouraged the people to mass-meetings or county conventions of delegates. This was probably the beginning of the county political machinery. He lamented that the South had no towns, such as New England had, which would make smaller units for popular gatherings. The Federalists scorned this political machinery as too trivial and feared it as too popular. It would have a tendency to make the people less amenable to the control of their leaders. They preferred to continue the Revolutionary custom of committees of correspondence to manage party affairs. All this herculean effort was felt by Jefferson to be necessary to win popular attention and support from the centralisation of Hamilton, which, to his myopic vision, was monarchism. Years after, he testified that nothing on earth was more certain than that if he, placed by his office of Vice-President at the head of the anti-monarchists, had given way and had withdrawn from his post, the people would have given up in despair and the cause of liberty have been lost. By his efforts, and the aid of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Constitution and the Union had been saved when "at its last gasp."