Had they possessed the foresight and intelligence to strengthen the Federal Government the Jay treaty would not have been necessary.
Futility of the State's-Rights Men in Foreign Affairs.
Only a strong, efficient central government, backed by a good fleet and a well organized army, could hope to wring from England what the French party, the forerunners of the Jeffersonian Democracy, demanded.

But the Jeffersonians were separatists and State's-rights men.

They believed in a government so weak as to be ineffective, and showed a folly literally astounding in their unwillingness to provide for the wars which they were ready to provoke.

They resolutely refused to provide an army or a navy, or to give the Central Government the power necessary for waging war.

They were quite right in their feeling of hostility to England, and one of the fundamental and fatal weaknesses of the Federalists was the Federalist willingness to submit to England's aggressions without retaliation; but the Jeffersonians had no gift for government, and were singularly deficient in masterful statesmen of the kind imperatively needed by any nation which wishes to hold an honorable place among other nations.