According to the rendition of the Revolutionary Period by HBO's "John Adams" Part 4, we see the first sparks of the battle over the nature of government in a court yard in France between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson with the Ben Franklin watching with a grin.

Jefferson speaks dismally of the pending Constitution as a serious compromise of the principles he had penned into the Declaration of Independence as well as of the spirit that had driven the Continental Congress in those days some years earlier. Despite Adams' optimism to the contrary, Jefferson responds with a melancholic "possibly" but fears it will only be a breech of the founding ideals over time.

Adams remarks disapprovingly that Jefferson's pet topic is not the arrangement of political power but rather the creation of a space where no power exists at all.

Jefferson tells Adams he has "disconcerting a lack of faith" in his fellow man...and in himself.

Adams responds Jefferson has a "dangerous excess of faith" in his fellow man.

And so it begins and still endures.

:)