His principle was thus stated in a letter: “If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.... It would have been to me a circumstance of great relief, had I found a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I should gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure; but that done, disdain to follow it. I shall return with joy to that state of things when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?” The ascendency of Jefferson and of the Republican party produced a great change in the government and in national feeling, but it was a change the most important part of which was intangible, and is therefore hard to describe. It was such a change as takes place in the career of an individual, when he shakes off some controlling force, and sets up in life for himself. The common people felt an independence, a pride, an élan, which sent a thrill of vigor through every department of industry and adventure. The simplicity of the forms which President Jefferson adopted were a symbol to the national imagination of the change which had taken place. He gave up the royal custom of levees; he stopped the celebration of the President’s birthday; he substituted a written message for the speech to Congress delivered in person at the Capitol, and the reply by Congress, delivered in person at the White House. The President’s residence ceased to be called the Palace. He cut down the army and navy. He introduced economy in all the departments of the government, and paid off thirty-three millions of the national debt. He procured the abolition of internal taxes and the repeal of the bankruptcy law—two measures which greatly decreased his own patronage, and which called forth John Randolph’s encomium long afterward: “I have never seen but one administration which seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patronage, and was willing to go farther than Congress or even the people themselves ... desired; and that was the first administration of Thomas Jefferson.”