I do not mean to imply by the preceding statement that either Jefferson
or his followers were the conscious enemies of moral and intellectual
achievement. 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. Hamilton's policy was one of energetic and
intelligent assertion of the national good. He knew that the only method
whereby the good could prevail either in individual or social life was
by persistently willing that it should prevail and by the adoption of
intelligent means to that end. His vision of the national good was
limited; but he was absolutely right about the way in which it was to be
achieved.

Hamilton was not afraid to exhibit in his own life moral and
intellectual independence. He was not afraid to incur unpopularity for
pursuing what he believed to be a wise public policy, and the general
disapprobation under which he suffered during the last years of his
life, while it was chiefly due, as we have seen, to his distrust of the