all human calculations.  And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,—­as the champion of democracy, rather than as the champion of the abstract rights of man which he and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams had asserted, in opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain in her treatment of the Colonies.  And here he went beyond Puritan New England, which sought the ascendency of the wisest and the best, when the aristocracy of intellect and virtue should bear sway instead of the unenlightened masses.  Historians talk about the aristocracy of the Southern planters, but this was an offshoot of the aristocracy of feudalism,—­the dominion of favored classes over the enslaved, the poor, and the miserable.  New England aristocracy was the rule of the wisest and the best, extending to the remotest hamlets, in which the people discussed the elemental principles of Magna Charta and the liberties of Saxon yeomen.  This was the aristocracy which had for its defenders such men as the Adamses, the Shermans, and the Langdons,—­something new in the history of governments and empires, which was really subverted by the doctrines of Rousseau and the leaders of the French Revolution, whom Jefferson admired and followed.

Jefferson, however, practically believed in the aristocracy of mind, and gave his preference to men of learning and refinement, rather than men of wealth and rank.  He was a democrat only in the recognition of the people as the source of future political power, and hence in the belief of the ultimate triumph of the Democratic party, which it was his work to organize and lead.  Foreseeing how dangerous the triumph of a vulgar and ignorant mob would be, he tried to provide for educating the people, on the same principle that we would to-day educate the colored race.  The great hobby of his life was education.  He thus spent the best part of his latter years in founding and directing the University of Virginia, including a plan for popular education as well.  To all schemes of education he lent a willing ear; but it was the last thing which aristocratic Southern planters desired,—­the elevation of the poor whites, or political equality.  Though a planter, Jefferson was more in sympathy with New England ideas, as to the intellectual improvement of the people and its relation to universal suffrage, than with the Southern gentlemen with whom he associated.  Hamilton did not so much care for the education of the people as he did for the ascendency of those who were already educated, especially if wealthy.  Property, in his eyes, had great consideration, as with all the influential magnates of the North.  Jefferson thought more of men than of their surroundings, and thus became popular with ordinary people in a lower stratum of social life.  Hamilton was popular only with the rich, the learned, and the powerful, and stood no chance in the race with Jefferson for popular favor, wherever universal suffrage was established, any more than did John Adams, whose ideas concerning social distinctions, and the ascendency of learning and virtue in matters of government, were decidedly aristocratic.