The last scenes of the session were of exciting interest.
Freed from the menace of immediate war, the people of plain common sense recognized that the friendship of Great Britain was more dangerous than the enmity of France.

They dreaded the fixed power of an organized aristocracy far more than the ephemeral anarchy of an ill-ordered democracy; they were more averse to class distinctions protected by law than even to military despotism which destroyed all distinctions, and they preferred, as man always has preferred and always will prefer, personal to political equality.

The Alien and Sedition laws had borne their legitimate fruit.

The foreign-born population held the balance of power; a general vote would have shown a large Republican or, it is more correct to say, anti-Federalist majority.

But the popular will could not be thus expressed.