properly discriminated one from another; and until such a discrimination
is made, the lesson cannot be profitably applied to the solution of our
contemporary national problems.

All our histories recognize, of course, the existence from the very
beginning of our national career of two different and, in some respects,
antagonistic groups of political ideas,--the ideas which were
represented by Jefferson, and the ideas which were represented by
Hamilton. It is very generally understood, also, that neither the
Jeffersonian nor the Hamiltonian doctrine was entirely adequate, and
that in order to reach a correct understanding of the really formative
constituent in the complex of American national life, a combination must
be made of both Republicanism and Federalism. But while the necessity of
such a combination is fully realized, I do not believe that it has ever
been mixed in just the proper proportions. We are content to say with
Webster that the prosperity of American institutions depends upon the
unity and inseparability of individual and local liberties and a
national union. We are content to declare that the United States must
remain somehow a free and a united country, because there can be no
complete unity without liberty and no salutary liberty outside of a
Union. But the difficulties with this phrase, its implications and
consequences, we do not sufficiently consider. It is enough that we have
found an optimistic formula wherewith to unite the divergent aspects of
the Republican, and Federalist doctrines.

We must begin, consequently, with critical accounts of the ideas both of
Jefferson and of Hamilton; and we must seek to discover wherein each of
these sets of ideas was right, and wherein each was wrong; in what
proportions they were subsequently combined in order to form "our noble
national theory," and what were the advantages, the limitations, and the