Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/176

140 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." He may have had Hamilton in mind in writing this sentence, and, in truth, his inaugural was the briefest and strongest summary he could pen of his argument against Hamilton when both were in Washington s cabinet. "Some honest men," said he, "fear that a republican government cannot be strong that this government is not strong enough. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." Among the first acts of President Jefferson was his pardoning every man who was in durance under the sedition law, which he said he considered to be "a nullity as absolute and palpable as if congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image." To the chief victims of the alien law, such as Kosciuszko and Volney, he addressed friendly, consoling letters. Dr. Priestley, menaced with expulsion under the alien law, he invited to the White House. He wrote a noble letter to the venerable Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, who had been avoided and insulted during the recent contest. He gave Thomas Paine, outlawed in