[Footnote:
_Cf._ his plan for the Constitution of Virginia, his ideas for a
senate of property holders, and his views on the judicial veto. Beard,
_Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy_, pp. 450 _et
seq._] The Federalist leaders had been men of definite convictions
who stated them bluntly. There was little real discrepancy between
their public and their private views. But Jefferson's mind was a mass
of ambiguities, not solely because of its defects, as Hamilton and his
biographers have thought, but because he believed in a union and he
believed in spontaneous democracies, and in the political science of
his age there was no satisfactory way to reconcile the two. Jefferson
was confused in thought and action because he had a vision of a new
and tremendous idea that no one had thought out in all its bearings.
But though popular sovereignty was not clearly understood by anybody,
it seemed to imply so great an enhancement of human life, that no
constitution could stand which frankly denied it. The frank denials
were therefore expunged from consciousness, and the document, which is
on its face an honest example of limited constitutional democracy, was
talked and thought about as an instrument for direct popular rule.
Jefferson actually reached the point of believing that the Federalists
had perverted the Constitution, of which in his fancy they were no
longer the authors.
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