[43] See vol. i, chaps. vi and vii, of this work.
[44] Marshall to Pinckney, March 4, 1801, MS. furnished by Dr. W. S. Thayer of Baltimore.
[45] Cabot to Wolcott, Aug. 3, 1801, Lodge: Life and Letters of George Cabot, 322.
George Cabot was the ablest, most moderate and far-seeing of the New England Federalists. He feared and detested what he called "excessive democracy" as much as did Ames, or Pickering, or Dwight, but, unlike his brother partisans, did not run to the opposite extreme himself and never failed to assert the indispensability of the democratic element in government. Cabot was utterly without personal ambition and was very indolent; otherwise he surely would have occupied a place in history equal to that of men like Madison, Gallatin, Hamilton, and Marshall.
[46] Hale to King, Dec. 19, 1801, King, iv, 39.
[47] Sedgwick to King, Dec. 14, 1801, ib. 34-35.
[48] Dwight's oration as quoted in Adams: U.S. i, 225.
[49] J. Q. Adams to King, Oct. 8,1802, Writings of John Quincy Adams: Ford, iii, 8-9. Within six years Adams abandoned a party which offered such feeble hope to aspiring ambition. (See infra, chap, ix.)
[50] J. Russell's Gazette-Commercial and Political, January 28, 1799.
[51] History of the Last Session of Congress Which Commenced 7th Dec. 1801 (taken from the National Intelligencer). Yet at that time in America manhood suffrage did not exist excepting in three States, a large part of the people could not read or write, imprisonment for debt was universal, convicted persons were sentenced to be whipped in public and subjected to other cruel and disgraceful punishments. Hardly a protest against slavery was made, and human rights as we now know them were in embryo, so far as the practice of them was concerned.