During the latter portion of Jefferson's eight years of administration, the party was saved from being driven into more Union-making actions, because domestic matters were overshadowed by the hostile aspect of foreign affairs. Measures looking to the improvement of internal communication, development of interstate commerce, interior exploration and discovery, and the spread of intelligence had to be postponed from session to session to consider retaliation on the European foes to American commerce. Such aggressive acts as the attack of the _Leopard_ on the _Chesapeake_ could brook no delay. But it was inevitable that when the engrossing foreign questions should cease, the demand for paternalistic measures would be renewed with a zeal doubled by delay and by the new spirit of nationality. The important fact to be noted at this time is that the movement of the people across the continent went on steadily, whatever might be the aspect of affairs on the Atlantic coast. The foreign relations of the United States were rapidly coming to a point which would terminate the predominance of European influence on American political parties. The struggle of the French people for liberty, which had appealed so powerfully to Jefferson and his followers, was now lost in the ambitions of Napoleon. "I had hoped," said Jefferson at a later time, "that he would have seen the difference between the example of a Cromwell and a Washington." Ten years before, Jefferson would willingly have seen his countrymen fighting side by side with the French patriots against monarchical England; but to be allied with Napoleon meant to further the ends of Napoleon. With the single exception of the Louisiana transaction, Jefferson's diplomatic administration is a story of European intrigue and imposition upon an impotent and helpless neutral. American commercial rights were lost sight of in the world-struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. The decrees of one belligerent were followed by checkmating orders in council of the other, and _vice versa_, with no regard for neutral rights, and no object save starving each other into submission.