1. All government is professedly for the good of the people; but in point of fact, nearly every government that has ever been instituted has been in the interest of an individual, a family, or a class. American statesmen, in forming our government, admitted the superior rights of no man or class of men. It was carefully organized to exclude all claims or pretenses of that kind, with a single exception, at first, which afterward disappeared in the tempest of a civil war. The executive, the various members of the government, and the law makers depend on the people for their elevation. At first they possessed only the dignity, privileges, and rights of the people at large, and, their term of office expired, they return to the same level, honored, indeed, if they have been faithful servants; if not, carrying to their dishonored graves the reproaches and contempt of their fellow-citizens, but retaining, in neither case, a vestige of the power and exaltation over others that clothed them when in office, the contrary of which so often makes an unworthy man respectable in a different form of government. 2. That the masses of the people would be able to exercise a true sovereignty without abusing it was always doubted until the trial was made in this country. A very respectable class of statesmen in the early days of the Republic, sympathized in[560] this doubt, and it even crept into the Constitution in the form of electors who were to choose the President; intimating a distrust of the wisdom and sound discretion of the voters in the choice of the Chief Magistrate. The liberty allowed to the Legislatures of the States to determine the manner in which electors should be chosen, while it recognized State authority on one side, on the other implied a hesitation to trust so important a matter directly to the people; and for a long time they were only indirectly consulted as to the choice of a President.
3. It was not, however, caused by a desire to keep power from them, but rather to avoid the unhappy effect of popular heat and rashness, so often observed in popular governments before attempted. This distrustful party first took control of the government, retained it during three presidential terms, and for many years afterwards formed an influential minority whose criticisms were of importance in establishing a traditional policy for the government. This party—the Federalists, headed by Washington and Hamilton—sought to found a strong and stable government that should be able to fully protect the country from foreign interference and domestic discord. Their control over the administration was somewhat abruptly closed by acts considered arbitrary, interfering with full freedom of speech and of the press—the “Sedition Laws” as they were calle............