Note 3 — Chapter V · “HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH THICK AND THIN.”

“Being fresh from the French Revolution, while in its first and pure stage, and consequently whetted up in my own republican principles, I found a state of things, in the general society of the place (New York), which I could not have supposed possible. Being a stranger there, I was feasted from table to table, at large set dinners, the parties generally from twenty to thirty. The Revolution I had left, and that we had just gone through in the recent change of our own Government, being the common topics of conversation, I was astonished to find the general prevalence of monarchical sentiments, insomuch that in maintaining those of republicanism, I had always the whole company on my hands, never scarcely finding among them a single co-advocate in that argument, unless some old member of Congress happened to be present. The furthest that any one would go, in support of the Republican features of our new Government, would be to say, ‘The present Constitution is well as a beginning, and may be allowed a fair trial; but it is, in fact, only a stepping-stone to something better.’ Among their writers, Denny, the Editor of the Portfolio, who was a kind of oracle with them, and styled the Addison of America, openly avowed his preference of monarchy over all other forms of government, prided himself on the avowal, and maintained it by argument freely and without reserve, in his publications.”—T. J. to Wm. Short, Jan. 8, 1825: Jefferson’s “Writings,” vii. 390.