Now it is probable that these aliens were not as dangerous as they seemed; they were ready to become citizens when the suffrage should be enlarged; their discontent was magnified; they were mostly excitable but harmless people, unreasonably feared.  Jefferson looked upon them as future citizens, trusted them with his unbounded faith in democratic institutions, and thought that the treatment of them in the Alien Laws was unjust, impolitic, and unkind.

The Sedition Laws were even more offensive, since under them citizens could be fined and imprisoned if they wrote what were called “libels” on men in power; and violent language against men in power was deemed a libel.  But all parties used violent language in that fermenting period.  It was an era of the bitterest party strife.  Everybody was misrepresented who even aimed at office.  The newspapers were full of slanders of the most eminent men, and neither Adams, nor Jefferson, nor Hamilton, escaped unjust criminations and the malice of envenomed tongues.  All this embittered the Federalists, then in the height of their power.  In both houses of Congress the Federalists were in a majority.  The Executive, the judges, and educated men generally, were Federalists.  Men in power are apt to abuse it.

It is easy now to see that the Alien and Sedition Laws must have been exceedingly unpopular; but the government was not then wise enough to see the logical issue.  Jefferson and his party saw it, and made the most of it.  In their appeals to the people they inflamed their prejudices and excited their fears.  They made a most successful handle of what they called the violation of the Constitution and the rights of man; and the current turned.  From the day that the obnoxious and probably unnecessary laws were passed, the Federal party was doomed.  It lost its hold on the people.  The dissensions and rivalries of the Federal leaders added to their discomfiture.  What they lost they never could regain.  Only war would have put them on their feet again; and Adams, with true patriotism, while ready for necessary combat, was opposed to a foreign war for purposes of domestic policy.

Yet the ambitious statesman did not wish to be dethroned.  He loved office dearly, and hence he did not yield gracefully to the triumph of the ascendent party, which grew stronger every day.  And when their victory was assured and his term of office was about to expire, he sat up till twelve o’clock the last night of his term, signing appointments that ought to have been left to his successors.  Among these appointments was that of John Marshall, his Secretary of State, to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,—­one that reflected great credit upon his discernment, in spite of its impropriety, for Marshall’s name is one of the greatest in the annals of our judiciary.  On the following morning, before the sun had risen, the ex-president was on his way to Braintree, not waiting even for the inauguration ceremonies that installed Jefferson in the chair which he had left so unwillingly, and giving vent to the bitterest feelings, alike unmanly and unreasonable.