On the contrary, they appeared to themselves in their amiable credulity to be the friends and guardians of everything admirable in human life; but their good intentions did not prevent them from actively or passively opposing positive intellectual and moral achievement, directed either towards social or individual ends.

The effect of their whole state of mind was negative and fatalistic.

They approved in general of everything approvable; but the things of which they actively approved were the things which everybody in general was doing.

Their point of view implied that society and individuals could be made better without actually planning the improvement or building up an organization for the purpose; and this assertion brings me to the deepest-lying difference between Hamilton and Jefferson.

Jefferson's policy was at bottom the old fatal policy of drift, whose distorted body was concealed by fair-seeming clothes, and whose ugly face was covered by a mask of good intentions.