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. It could be protected only by an energetic and clear-sighted
central government, and it could be fertilized only by the efficient
national organization of American activities. For national organization
demands in relation to individuals a certain amount of selection, and a
certain classification of these individuals according to their abilities
and deserts. It is just this kind or effect of liberty which Jefferson
and his followers have always disliked and discouraged. They have been
loud in their praise of legally constituted rights; but they have shown
an instinctive and an implacable distrust of intellectual and moral
independence, and have always sought to suppress it in favor of
intellectual and moral conformity. They have, that is, stood for the
sacrifice of liberty--in so far as liberty meant positive intellectual
and moral achievement--to a certain kind of equality.