To his friend Samuel Adams, who had written him at the end of January, he repeated the same judgment in less striking but perhaps even harsher terms: I fear our friends on the other side of the water, laboring in the same cause, have yet a great deal of crime and misery to wade through. My confidence has been placed in the head not in the heart of Bonaparte. I hoped he would calculate truly the difference between the fame of a Washington and a Cromwell. Whatever the views may be, he has at least transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm. Some will use this as a lesson against the practicability of republican government. I read in it a lesson against the danger of standing armies.[394] No more patent demonstration could be desired of the fact that in his judgments of the French Revolution, Jefferson was at all times influenced by the possible effects that European examples might have on the American crisis. The precedent established by Bonaparte was a very dangerous one and might put similar ambitions into the head of an unscrupulous schemer. Whether he really believed or not that there was such an immediate danger for America, and that Hamilton had really such intentions, is an entirely different question. Probably he did not himself know. He only felt that a permanent army would constitute a permanent temptation and consequently a permanent danger, for he had only limited faith in the virtue of individual man, although he continued to believe in the wisdom of the collectivity. Domestic matters and other more immediate preoccupations were no less worthy of attention. He followed very closely every measure proposed in the House on the coming elections, on the voting procedure to be adopted, and anxiously studied the political forecasts. The situation was decidedly on the mend. This appears clearly in the attitude of the Federalists towards him, not only in public but also in private. For Madison he wrote a very elaborate review of the comparative strength of the two parties in all the States of the Union; he saw that the key States were Pennsylvania, Jersey and New York, the other States being equally divided, and he concluded that "Upon the whole the issue was still very doubtful." But officially one had to maintain a confident attitude.[395] When April came, he thought that it would be desirable for the Republicans to come out with a public declaration, stating their program and their ideals. "As soon as it can be depended on," he said, "we must have a Declaration of the principles of the Constitution, in the nature of a Declaration of Rights, in all points in which it has been violated."[396]