"That he has a great and most vigorous intellect is beyond all
question; but most of its emanations have been the _ad captandum_ to
seize the current, and sail with it. He saw the democratic proclivity
of the people, he concentrated it by the use of his pen, and he has
aided its expansion, until it threatens ruin to the Government. He
knows it, and he still perseveres. Under the plea of inviting
population, he advocated the extension of the franchise to aliens, and
was really the parent from whose brain was born the naturalization
laws, making citizens of every nationality, and giving them all the
powers of the Government, extending suffrage to every pauper in the
land, increasing to the utmost the material for the demagogue, and thus
depriving the intelligence of the country of the power to control it.
The specious argument that if a man is compelled to serve in the
militia and defend the country, he should be entitled to vote, was his.
Its sophistry is as palpable to Jefferson as to every thinking mind.
Government is the most abstruse of the sciences, and should, for the
security of all, be controlled by the intelligence of the country.
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