Whether Jefferson was right or wrong in the position which he took, he maintained it with superb self-confidence and aplomb. For the moment, the Federalists had everything their own way. They carried the election. Hamilton’s oft-anticipated “crisis” seemed to have arrived at last. But Jefferson coolly waited till the storm should blow over. “Our countrymen,” he wrote to a friend, “are essentially Republicans. They retain unadulterated the principles of ’76, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.” And so it proved. The ascendency of the Federalists was soon destroyed, and destroyed forever, by the political crimes and follies which they committed; and especially by the alien and sedition laws. The reader need hardly be reminded that the alien law gave the President authority to banish from the country “all such aliens as _he_ should judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,”—a despotic power which no king of England ever possessed. The sedition act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to speak or write anything “false, scandalous, and malicious,” with intent to excite against either House of Congress or against the President, “the hatred of the good people of the United States.” It can readily be seen what gross oppression was possible under this elastic law, interpreted by judges who, to a man, were members of the Federal party. Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, ventured to read aloud at a political meeting a letter which he had received expressing astonishment that the President’s recent address to the House of Representatives had not been answered by “an order to send him to a mad-house.” For this Mr. Lyon was fined $1,000, and imprisoned in a veritable dungeon. These unconstitutional and un-American laws were vigorously opposed by Jefferson and Madison. In October, 1798, Jefferson wrote: “For my own part I consider those laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life.”