Their mouths have always been full of the praise of liberty; and unquestionably they have really believed it to be the corner-stone of their political and social structure.

None the less, however, is it true that in so far as any antagonism has developed in American life between liberty and equality, the Jeffersonian Democrats have been found on the side of equality.

Representing as they did the democratic principle, it is perfectly natural and desirable that they should fight the battle of equality in a democratic state; and their error has been, not their devotion to equality, but their inability to discern wherein any antagonism existed between liberty and equality, and the extent to which they were sacrificing a desirable liberty to an undesirable equality.
On this, as on so many other points, Hamilton's political philosophy was much more clearly thought out than that of Jefferson.

He has been accused by his opponents of being the enemy of liberty; whereas in point of fact, he wished, like the Englishman he was, to protect and encourage liberty, just as far as such encouragement was compatible with good order, because he realized that genuine liberty would inevitably issue in fruitful social and economic inequalities.

But he also realized that genuine liberty was not merely a matter of a constitutional declaration of rights.