possessed passions less under control, a will more stubborn, and
prejudices that often neutralized his reason. His father had inherited
most of the personal property of the family, and with this he had plunged
into the vortex of monied speculation that succeeded the adoption of the
new constitution, and verifying the truth of the sacred saying, that
"where treasure is, there will the heart be also," he had entered warmly
and blindly into all the factious and irreconcilable principles of party,
if such a word can properly be applied to rules of conduct that Bary with
the interests of the day, and had adopted the current errors with which
faction unavoidably poisons the mind.

America was then much too young in her independence, and too insignificant
in all eyes but her own, to reason and act for herself, except on points
that pressed too obviously on her immediate concerns to be overlooked; but
the great social principles,--or it might be better to say, the great
social interests,--that then distracted Europe, produced quite as much
sensation in that distant country, as at all comported with a state of
things that had so little practical connexion with the result, The
Effingham family had started Federalists, in the true meaning of the term;
for their education, native sense and principles, had a leaning to order,
good government, and the dignity of the country; but as factions became
fiercer, and names got to be confounded and contradictory, the landed
branch settled down into what they thought were American, and the
commercial branch into what might properly be termed English Federalists.
We do not mean that the father of John intended to be untrue to his native
land; but by following up the dogmas of party he had reasoned himself into
a set of maxims which, if they meant anything, meant everything but that
which had been solemnly adopted as the governing principles of his own
country, and many of which were diametrically opposed to both its
interests and its honour.