The anomaly between the original plan of
the Fathers and the moral feeling of the age was too wide not to be
capitalized by a good politician.
3
Jefferson referred to his election as "the great revolution of 1800,"
but more than anything else it was a revolution in the mind. No great
policy was altered, but a new tradition was established. For it was
Jefferson who first taught the American people to regard the
Constitution as an instrument of democracy, and he stereotyped the
images, the ideas, and even many of the phrases, in which Americans
ever since have described politics to each other. So complete was the
mental victory, that twenty-five years later de Tocqueville, who was
received in Federalist homes, noted that even those who were "galled
by its continuance"--were not uncommonly heard to "laud the delights
of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic
institutions when they are in public." [Footnote: _Democracy in
America_, Vol. I, Ch. X (Third Edition, 1838), p. 216.]
The Constitutional Fathers with all their sagacity had failed to see
that a frankly undemocratic constitution would not long be tolerated.
The bold denial of popular rule was bound to offer an easy point of
attack to a man, like Jefferson, who so far as his constitutional
opinions ran, was not a bit more ready than Hamilton to turn over
government to the "unrefined" will of the people.
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