We had waged war against Britain, with France and Spain as allies; but in making peace we had to strive for our rights against our friends almost as much as against our enemies. There was much generous and disinterested enthusiasm for America among Frenchmen individually; but the French government, with which alone we were to deal in making peace, had acted throughout from purely selfish motives, and in reality did not care an atom for American rights. We owed France no more grat.i.tude for taking our part than she owed us for giving her an opportunity of advancing her own interests, and striking a severe blow at an old-time enemy and rival. As for Spain, she disliked us quite as much as she did England.
The peace negotiations brought all this out very clearly. The great French minister Vergennes, who dictated the policy of his court all through the contest, cared nothing for the revolutionary colonists themselves; but he was bent upon securing them their independence, so as to weaken England, and he was also bent upon keeping them from gaining too much strength, so that they might always remain dependent allies of France. He wished to establish the "balance of power" system in America.
The American commissioners he at first despised for their blunt, truthful straightforwardness, which he, trained in the school of deceit, and a thorough believer in every kind of finesse and double-dealing, mistook for boorishness; later on, he learned to his chagrin that they were able as well as honest, and that their resolution, skill, and far-sightedness made them, where their own deepest interests were concerned, over-matches for the subtle diplomats of Europe.
America, then, was determined to secure not only independence, but also a chance to grow into a great continental nation; she wished her boundaries fixed at the great lakes and the Mississippi; she also asked for the free navigation of the latter to the Gulf, and for a share in the fisheries. Spain did not even wish that we should be made independent; she hoped to be compensated at our expense, for her failure to take Gibraltar; and she desired that we should be kept so weak as to hinder us from being aggressive. Her fear of us, by the way, was perfectly justifiable, for the greatest part of our present territory lies within what were nominally Spanish limits a hundred years ago.
France, as the head of a great coalition, wanted to keep on good terms with both her allies; but, as Gerard, the French minister at Washington, said: if France had to choose between the two, "the decision would not be in favor of the United States." She wished to secure for America independence, but she wished also to keep the new nation so weak that it would "feel the need of sureties, allies, and protectors." France desired to exclude our people from the fisheries, to deprive us of half our territories by making the Alleghanies our western boundaries, and to secure to Spain the undisputed control of the navigation of the Mississippi. It was not to the interest of France and Spain that we should be a great and formidable people, and very naturally they would not help us to become one. There is no need of blaming them for their conduct; but it would have been rank folly to have been guided by their wishes. Our true policy was admirably summed up by Jay in his letters to Livingston, where he says: "Let us be honest and grateful to France, but let us think for ourselves.... Since we have a.s.sumed a place in the political firmament, let us move like a primary and not a secondary planet." Fortunately, England"s own self-interest made her play into our hands; as Fox put it, it was necessary for her to "insist in the strongest manner that, if America is independent, she must be so of the whole world. No secret, tacit, or ostensible connection with France."
Our statesmen won; we got all we asked, as much to the astonishment of France as of England; we proved even more successful in diplomacy than in arms. As Fox had hoped, we became independent not only of England, but of all the world; we were not entangled as a dependent subordinate in the policy of France, nor did we sacrifice our western boundary to Spain. It was a great triumph; greater than any that had been won by our soldiers. Franklin had a comparatively small share in gaining it; the glory of carrying through successfully the most important treaty we ever negotiated belongs to Jay and Adams, and especially to Jay.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL CONSt.i.tUTION.
Before peace was established, Morris had been appointed a commissioner to treat for the exchange of prisoners. Nothing came of his efforts, however, the British and Americans being utterly unable to come to any agreement. Both sides had been greatly exasperated,--the British by the Americans" breach of faith about Burgoyne"s troops, and the Americans by the inhuman brutality with which their captive countrymen had been treated. An amusing feature of the affair was a conversation between Morris and the British general, Dalrymple, wherein the former a.s.sured the latter rather patronizingly that the British "still remained a great people, a very great people," and that "they would undoubtedly still hold their rank in Europe." He would have been surprised, had he known not only that the stubborn Island folk were destined soon to hold a higher rank in Europe than ever before, but that from their loins other nations, broad as continents, were to spring, so that the South Seas should become an English ocean, and that over a fourth of the world"s surface there should be spoken the tongue of Pitt and Washington.
No sooner was peace declared, and the immediate and pressing danger removed, than the confederation relapsed into a loose knot of communities as quarrelsome as they were contemptible. The states-rights men for the moment had things all their own way, and speedily reduced us to the level afterwards reached by the South-American republics. Each commonwealth set up for itself, and tried to oppress its neighbors; not one had a creditable history for the next four years; while the career of Rhode Island in particular can only be properly described as infamous. We refused to pay our debts, we would not even pay our army; and mob violence flourished rankly. As a natural result the European powers began to take advantage of our weakness and division.
All our great men saw the absolute need of establishing a National Union--not a league or a confederation--if the country was to be saved.
None felt this more strongly than Morris; and no one was more hopeful of the final result. Jay had written to him as to the need of "raising and maintaining a national spirit in America;" and he wrote in reply, at different times:[2] "Much of convulsion will ensue, yet it must terminate in giving to government that power without which government is but a name.... This country has never yet been known to Europe, and G.o.d knows whether it ever will be. To England it is less known than to any other part of Europe, because they constantly view it through a medium of either prejudice or faction. True it is that the general government wants energy, and equally true it is that the want will eventually be supplied. A national spirit is the natural result of national existence; _and although some of the present generation may feel the result of colonial oppositions of opinion, that generation will die away, and give place to a race of Americans_. On this occasion, as on others, Great Britain is our best friend; and, by seizing the critical moment when we were about to divide, she has shown us the dreadful consequences of division.... Indeed, my friend, nothing can do us so much good as to convince the Eastern and Southern States how necessary it is to give proper force to the federal government, and nothing will so soon operate that conviction as foreign efforts to restrain the navigation of the one and the commerce of the other." The last sentence referred to the laws aimed at our trade by Great Britain, and by other powers as well,--symptoms of outside hostility which made us at once begin to draw together again.
[2] The italics are mine.
Money troubles grew apace, and produced the usual crop of crude theories and of vicious and dishonest legislation in accordance therewith.
Lawless outbreaks became common, and in Ma.s.sachusetts culminated in actual rebellion. The ma.s.s of the people were rendered hostile to any closer union by their ignorance, their jealousy, and the general particularistic bent of their minds,--this last being merely a vicious graft on, or rather outgrowth of, the love of freedom inborn in the race. Their leaders were enthusiasts of pure purpose and unsteady mental vision; they were followed by the ma.s.s of designing politicians, who feared that their importance would be lost if their sphere of action should be enlarged. Among these leaders the three most important were, in New York George Clinton, and in Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia two much greater men--Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. All three had done excellent service at the beginning of the revolutionary troubles.
Patrick Henry lived to redeem himself, almost in his last hour, by the n.o.ble stand he took in aid of Washington against the democratic nullification agitation of Jefferson and Madison; but the usefulness of each of the other two was limited to the early portion of his career.
Like every other true patriot and statesman, Morris did all in his power to bring into one combination the varied interests favorable to the formation of a government that should be strong and responsible as well as free. The public creditors and the soldiers of the army--whose favorite toasts were: "A hoop to the barrel," and "Cement to the Union"--were the two cla.s.ses most sensible of the advantages of such a government; and to each of these Morris addressed himself when he proposed to consolidate the public debt, both to private citizens and to the soldiers, and to make it a charge on the United States, and not on the several separate states.
In consequence of the activity and ability with which he advocated a firmer Union, the extreme states-rights men were especially hostile to him; and certain of their number a.s.sailed him with bitter malignity, both then and afterwards. One accusation was, that he had improper connections with the public creditors. This was a pure slander, absolutely without foundation, and not supported by even the pretence of proof. Another accusation was that he favored the establishment of a monarchy. This was likewise entirely untrue. Morris was not a sentimental political theorist; he was an eminently practical--that is, useful--statesman, who saw with unusual clearness that each people must have a government suited to its own individual character, and to the stage of political and social development it had reached. He realized that a nation must be governed according to the actual needs and capacities of its citizens, not according to any abstract theory or set of ideal principles. He would have dismissed with contemptuous laughter the ideas of those Americans who at the present day believe that Anglo-Saxon democracy can be applied successfully to a half-savage negroid people in Hayti, or of those Englishmen who consider seriously the proposition to renovate Turkey by giving her representative inst.i.tutions and a parliamentary government. He understood and stated that a monarchy "did not consist with the taste and temper of the people" in America, and he believed in establishing a form of government that did. Like almost every other statesman of the day, the perverse obstinacy of the extreme particularist section at times made him downhearted, and caused him almost to despair of a good government being established; and like every sensible man he would have preferred almost any strong, orderly government to the futile anarchy towards which the ultra states-rights men or separatists tended. Had these last ever finally obtained the upper hand, either in revolutionary or post-revolutionary times, either in 1787 or 1861, the fact would have shown conclusively that Americans were unfitted for republicanism and self-government. An orderly monarchy would certainly be preferable to a republic of the epileptic Spanish-American type. The extreme doctrinaires, who are fiercest in declaiming in favor of freedom are in reality its worst foes, far more dangerous than any absolute monarchy ever can be. When liberty becomes license, some form of one-man power is not far distant.
The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest possible individual freedom on the one hand, while showing an equally remarkable capacity for combination on the other. We have committed plenty of faults, but we have seen and remedied them. Our very doctrinaires have usually acted much more practically than they have talked. Jefferson, when in power, adopted most of the Federalist theories, and became markedly hostile to the nullification movements at whose birth he had himself officiated. We have often blundered badly in the beginning, but we have always come out well in the end. The Dutch, when they warred for freedom from Spanish rule, showed as much short-sighted selfishness and bickering jealousy as even our own revolutionary ancestors, and only a part remained faithful to the end: as a result, but one section won independence, while the Netherlands were divided, and never grasped the power that should have been theirs.
As for the Spanish-Americans, they split up hopelessly almost before they were free, and, though they bettered their condition a little, yet lost nine tenths of what they had gained. Scotland and Ireland, when independent, were nests of savages. All the follies our forefathers committed can be paralleled elsewhere, but their successes are unique.
So it was in the few years immediately succeeding the peace by which we won our independence. The ma.s.s of the people wished for no closer union than was to be found in a lax confederation; but they had the good sense to learn the lesson taught by the weakness and lawlessness they saw around them; they reluctantly made up their minds to the need of a stronger government, and when they had once come to their decision, neither demagogue nor doctrinaire could swerve them from it.
The national convention to form a Const.i.tution met in May, 1787; and rarely in the world"s history has there been a deliberative body which contained so many remarkable men, or produced results so lasting and far-reaching. The Congress whose members signed the Declaration of Independence had but cleared the ground on which the framers of the Const.i.tution were to build. Among the delegates in attendance, easily first stood Washington and Franklin,--two of that great American trio in which Lincoln is the third. Next came Hamilton from New York, having as colleagues a couple of mere obstructionists sent by the Clintonians to handicap him. From Pennsylvania came Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris; from Virginia, Madison; from South Carolina, Rutledge and the Pinckneys; and so on through the other states. Some of the most noted statesmen were absent, however. Adams and Jefferson were abroad. Jay was acting as Secretary for Foreign Affairs; in which capacity, by the way, he had shown most unlooked-for weakness in yielding to Spanish demands about the Mississippi.
Two years after taking part in the proceedings of the American Const.i.tutional Convention, Morris witnessed the opening of the States General of France. He thoroughly appreciated the absolute and curious contrast offered by these two bodies, each so big with fate for all mankind. The men who predominated in and shaped the actions of the first belonged to a type not uncommonly brought forth by a people already accustomed to freedom at a crisis in the struggle to preserve or extend its liberties. During the past few centuries this type had appeared many times among the liberty loving nations who dwelt on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic and the North Sea; and our forefathers represented it in its highest and most perfect shapes. It is a type only to be found among men already trained to govern themselves as well as others. The American statesmen were the kinsfolk and fellows of Hampden and Pym, of William the Silent and John of Barneveldt. Save love of freedom, they had little in common with the closet philosophers, the enthusiastic visionaries, and the selfish demagogues who in France helped pull up the flood-gates of an all-swallowing torrent. They were great men; but it was less the greatness of mere genius than that springing from the union of strong, virile qualities with steadfast devotion to a high ideal. In certain respects they were ahead of all their European compeers; yet they preserved virtues forgotten or sneered at by the contemporaneous generation of trans-Atlantic leaders. They wrought for the future as surely as did the French Jacobins; but their spirit was the spirit of the Long Parliament. They were resolute to free themselves from the tyranny of man; but they had not unlearned the reverence felt by their fathers for their fathers" G.o.d. They were sincerely religious. The advanced friends of freedom abroad scoffed at religion, and would have laughed outright at a proposition to gain help for their cause by prayer; but to the founders of our Const.i.tution, when matters were at a deadlock, and the outcome looked almost hopeless, it seemed a most fit and proper thing that one of the chief of their number should propose to invoke to aid them a wisdom greater than the wisdom of human beings.
Even those among their descendants who no longer share their trusting faith may yet well do regretful homage to a religious spirit so deep-rooted and so strongly tending to bring out a pure and high morality. The statesmen who met in 1787 were earnestly patriotic. They unselfishly desired the welfare of their countrymen. They were cool, resolute men, of strong convictions, with clear insight into the future.
They were thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the community for which they were to act. Above all they possessed that inestimable quality, so characteristic of their race, hard-headed common sense.
Their theory of government was a very high one; but they understood perfectly that it had to be accommodated to the shortcomings of the average citizen. Small indeed was their resemblance to the fiery orators and brilliant pamphleteers of the States General. They were emphatically good men; they were no less emphatically practical men. They would have scorned Mirabeau as a scoundrel; they would have despised Sieyes as a vain and impractical theorist.
The deliberations of the convention in their result ill.u.s.trated in a striking manner the truth of the American principle, that--for deliberative, not executive, purposes--the wisdom of many men is worth more than the wisdom of any one man. The Const.i.tution that the members a.s.sembled in convention finally produced was not only the best possible one for America at that time, but it was also, in spite of its short-comings, and taking into account its fitness for our own people and conditions, as well as its accordance with the principles of abstract right, probably the best that any nation has ever had, while it was beyond question a very much better one than any single member could have prepared. The particularist statesmen would have practically denied us any real union or efficient executive power; while there was hardly a Federalist member who would not, in his anxiety to avoid the evils from which we were suffering, have given us a government so centralized and aristocratic that it would have been utterly unsuited to a proud, liberty-loving, and essentially democratic race, and would have infallibly provoked a tremendous reactionary revolt.
It is impossible to read through the debates of the convention without being struck by the innumerable shortcomings of each individual plan proposed by the several members, as divulged in their speeches, when compared with the plan finally adopted. Had the result been in accordance with the views of the strong-government men like Hamilton on the one hand, or of the weak-government men like Franklin on the other, it would have been equally disastrous for the country. The men who afterwards naturally became the chiefs of the Federalist party, and who included in their number the bulk of the great revolutionary leaders, were the ones to whom we mainly owe our present form of government; certainly we owe them more, both on this and on other points, than we do their rivals, the after-time Democrats. Yet there were some articles of faith in the creed of the latter so essential to our national wellbeing, and yet so counter to the prejudices of the Federalists, that it was inevitable they should triumph in the end. Jefferson led the Democrats to victory only when he had learned to acquiesce thoroughly in some of the fundamental principles of Federalism, and the government of himself and his successors was good chiefly in so far as it followed out the theories of the Hamiltonians; while Hamilton and the Federalists fell from power because they could not learn the one great truth taught by Jefferson,--that in America a statesman should trust the people, and should endeavor to secure to each man all possible individual liberty, confident that he will use it aright. The old-school Jeffersonian theorists believed in "a strong people and a weak government." Lincoln was the first who showed how a strong people might have a strong government and yet remain the freest on the earth. He seized--half unwittingly--all that was best and wisest in the traditions of Federalism; he was the true successor of the Federalist leaders; but he grafted on their system a profound belief that the great heart of the nation beat for truth, honor, and liberty.
This fact, that in 1787 all the thinkers of the day drew out plans that in some respects went very wide of the mark, must be kept in mind, or else we shall judge each particular thinker with undue harshness when we examine his utterances without comparing them with those of his fellows.
But one partial exception can be made. In the Const.i.tutional Convention Madison, a moderate Federalist, was the man who, of all who were there, saw things most clearly as they were, and whose theories most closely corresponded with the principles finally adopted; and although even he was at first dissatisfied with the result, and both by word and by action interpreted the Const.i.tution in widely different ways at different times, still this was Madison"s time of glory: he was one of the statesmen who do extremely useful work, but only at some single given crisis. While the Const.i.tution was being formed and adopted, he stood in the very front; but in his later career he sunk his own individuality, and became a mere pale shadow of Jefferson.
Morris played a very prominent part in the convention. He was a ready speaker, and among all the able men present there was probably no such really brilliant thinker. In the debates he spoke more often than any one else, although Madison was not far behind him; and his speeches betrayed, but with marked and exaggerated emphasis, both the virtues and the shortcomings of the Federalist school of thought. They show us, too, why he never rose to the first rank of statesmen. His keen, masterful mind, his far-sightedness, and the force and subtlety of his reasoning were all marred by his incurable cynicism and deep-rooted distrust of mankind. He throughout appears as _advocatus diaboli_; he puts the lowest interpretation upon every act, and frankly avows his disbelief in all generous and unselfish motives. His continual allusions to the overpowering influence of the baser pa.s.sions, and to their mastery of the human race at all times, drew from Madison, although the two men generally acted together, a protest against his "forever inculcating the utter political depravity of men, and the necessity for opposing one vice and interest as the only possible check to another vice and interest."
Morris championed a strong national government, wherein he was right; but he also championed a system of cla.s.s representation, leaning towards aristocracy, wherein he was wrong. Not Hamilton himself was a firmer believer in the national idea. His one great object was to secure a powerful and lasting Union, instead of a loose federal league. It must be remembered that in the convention the term "federal" was used in exactly the opposite sense to the one in which it was taken afterwards; that is, it was used as the ant.i.thesis of "national," not as its synonym. The states-rights men used it to express a system of government such as that of the old federation of the thirteen colonies; while their opponents called themselves Nationalists, and only took the t.i.tle of Federalists after the Const.i.tution had been formed, and then simply because the name was popular with the ma.s.ses. They thus appropriated their adversaries" party name, bestowing it on the organization most hostile to their adversaries" party theories. Similarly, the term "Republican Party," which was originally in our history merely another name for the Democracy, has in the end been adopted by the chief opponents of the latter.
The difficulties for the convention to surmount seemed insuperable; on almost every question that came up, there were clashing interests.
Strong government and weak government, pure democracy or a modified aristocracy, small states and large states, North and South, slavery and freedom, agricultural sections as against commercial sections,--on each of twenty points the delegates split into hostile camps, that could only be reconciled by concessions from both sides. The Const.i.tution was not one compromise; it was a bundle of compromises, all needful.
Morris, like every other member of the convention, sometimes took the right and sometimes the wrong side on the successive issues that arose.
But on the most important one of all he made no error; and he commands our entire sympathy for his thorough-going nationalism. As was to be expected, he had no regard whatever for states rights. He wished to deny to the small states the equal representation in the Senate finally allowed them; and he was undoubtedly right theoretically. No good argument can be adduced in support of the present system on that point.
Still, it has thus far worked no harm; the reason being that our states have merely artificial boundaries, while those of small population have hitherto been distributed pretty evenly among the different sections, so that they have been split up like the others on every important issue, and thus have never been arrayed against the rest of the country.
Though Morris and his side were defeated in their efforts to have the states represented proportionally in the Senate, yet they carried their point as to representation in the House. Also on the general question of making a national government, as distinguished from a league or federation, the really vital point, their triumph was complete. The Const.i.tution they drew up and had adopted no more admitted of legal or peaceable rebellion--whether called secession or nullification--on the part of the state than on the part of a county or an individual.
Morris expressed his own views with his usual clear-cut, terse vigor when he a.s.serted that "state attachments and state importance had been the bane of the country," and that he came, not as a mere delegate from one section, but "as a representative of America,--a representative in some degree of the whole human race, for the whole human race would be affected by the outcome of the convention." And he poured out the flood of his biting scorn on those gentlemen who came there "to truck and bargain for their respective states," asking what man there was who could tell with certainty the state wherein he--and even more wherein his children--would live in the future; and reminding the small states, with cavalier indifference, that, "if they did not like the Union, no matter,--they would have to come in, and that was all there was about it; for if persuasion did not unite the country, then the sword would."
His correct language and distinct enunciation--to which Madison has borne witness--allowed his grim truths to carry their full weight; and he brought them home to his hearers with a rough, almost startling earnestness and directness. Many of those present must have winced when he told them that it would matter nothing to America "if all the charters and const.i.tutions of the states were thrown into the fire, and all the demagogues into the ocean," and a.s.serted that "any particular state _ought_ to be injured, for the sake of a majority of the people, in case its conduct showed that it deserved it." He held that we should create a national government, to be the one and only supreme power in the land,--one which, unlike a mere federal league, such as we then lived under, should have complete and compulsive operation; and he instanced the examples as well of Greece as of Germany and the United Netherlands, to prove that local jurisdiction destroyed every tie of nationality.
It shows the boldness of the experiment in which we were engaged, that we were forced to take all other nations, whether dead or living, as warnings, not examples; whereas, since we succeeded, we have served as a pattern to be copied, either wholly or in part, by every other people that has followed in our steps. Before our own experience, each similar attempt, save perhaps on the smallest scale, had been a failure. Where so many other nations teach by their mistakes, we are among the few who teach by their successes.
Be it noted also that, the doctrinaires to the contrary notwithstanding, we proved that a strong central government was perfectly compatible with absolute democracy. Indeed, the separatist spirit does not lead to true democratic freedom. Anarchy is the handmaiden of tyranny. Of all the states, South Carolina has shown herself (at least throughout the greater part of the present century) to be the most aristocratic, and the most wedded to the separatist spirit. The German ma.s.ses were never so ground down by oppression as when the little German princ.i.p.alities were most independent of each other and of any central authority.
Morris believed in letting the United States interfere to put down a rebellion in a state, even though the executive of the state himself should be at the head of it; and he was supported in his views by Pinckney, the ablest member of the brilliant and useful but unfortunately short-lived school of South Carolina Federalists. Pinckney was a thorough-going Nationalist; he wished to go a good deal further than the convention actually went in giving the central government complete control. Thus he proposed that Congress should have power to negative by a two-thirds vote all state laws inconsistent with the harmony of the Union. Madison also wished to give Congress a veto over state legislation. Morris believed that a national law should be allowed to repeal any state law, and that Congress should legislate in all cases where the laws of the states conflicted among themselves.
Yet Morris, on the very question of nationalism, himself showed the narrowest, blindest, and least excusable sectional jealousy on one point. He felt as an American for all the Union, as it then existed; but he feared and dreaded the growth of the Union in the West, the very place where it was inevitable, as well as in the highest degree desirable, that the greatest growth should take place. He actually desired the convention to commit the criminal folly of attempting to provide that the West should always be kept subordinate to the East.
Fortunately he failed; but the mere attempt casts the gravest discredit alike on his far-sightedness and on his reputation as a statesman. It is impossible to understand how one who was usually so cool and clear-headed an observer could have blundered so flagrantly on a point hardly less vital than the establishment of the Union itself. Indeed, had his views been carried through, they would in the end have nullified all the good bestowed by the Union. In speaking against state jealousy, he had shown its foolishness by observing that no man could tell in what state his children would dwell; and the folly of the speaker himself was made quite as clear by his not perceiving that their most likely dwelling-place was in the West. This jealousy of the West was even more discreditable to the Northeast than the jealousy of America had been to England; and it continued strong, especially in New England, for very many years. It was a mean and unworthy feeling; and it was greatly to the credit of the Southerners that they shared it only to a very small extent. The South in fact originally was in heartiest sympathy with the West; it was not until the middle of the present century that the country beyond the Alleghanies became preponderatingly Northern in sentiment. In the Const.i.tutional Convention itself, Butler, of South Carolina, pointed out "that the people and strength of America were evidently tending westwardly and southwestwardly."
Morris wished to discriminate against the West by securing to the Atlantic States the perpetual control of the Union. He brought this idea up again and again, insisting that we should reserve to ourselves the right to put conditions on the Western States when we should admit them.
He dwelt at length on the danger of throwing the preponderance of influence into the Western scale; stating his dread of the "back members," who were always the most ignorant, and the opponents of all good measures. He foretold with fear that some day the people of the West would outnumber the people of the East, and he wished to put it in the power of the latter to keep a majority of the votes in their own hands. Apparently he did not see that, if the West once became as populous as he predicted, its legislators would forthwith cease to be "back members." The futility of his fears, and still more of his remedies, was so evident that the convention paid very little heed to either.
On one point, however, his antic.i.p.ations of harm were reasonable, and indeed afterwards came true in part. He insisted that the West, or interior, would join the South and force us into a war with some European power, wherein the benefits would accrue to them and the harm to the Northeast. The att.i.tude of the South and West already clearly foreshadowed a struggle with Spain for the Mississippi Valley; and such a struggle would surely have come, either with the French or Spaniards, had we failed to secure the territory in question by peaceful purchase.
As it was, the realization of Morris"s prophecy was only put off for a few years; the South and West brought on the War of 1812, wherein the East was the chief sufferer.
On the question as to whether the Const.i.tution should be made absolutely democratic or not, Morris took the conservative side. On the suffrage his views are perfectly defensible: he believed that it should be limited to freeholders. He rightly considered the question as to how widely it should be extended to be one of expediency merely. It is simply idle folly to talk of suffrage as being an "inborn" or "natural"
right. There are enormous communities totally unfit for its exercise; while true universal suffrage never has been, and never will be, seriously advocated by any one. There must always be an age limit, and such a limit must necessarily be purely arbitrary. The wildest democrat of revolutionary times did not dream of doing away with the restrictions of race and s.e.x which kept most American citizens from the ballot-box; and there is certainly much less abstract right in a system which limits the suffrage to people of a certain color than there is in one which limits it to people who come up to a given standard of thrift and intelligence. On the other hand, our experience has not proved that men of wealth make any better use of their ballots than do, for instance, mechanics and other handicraftsmen. No plan could be adopted so perfect as to be free from all drawbacks. On the whole, however, and taking our country in its length and breadth, manhood suffrage has worked well, better than would have been the case with any other system; but even here there are certain localities where its results have been evil, and must simply be accepted as the blemishes inevitably attendant upon, and marring, any effort to carry out a scheme that will be widely applicable.
Morris contended that his plan would work no novel or great hardship, as the people in several states were already accustomed to freehold suffrage. He considered the freeholders to be the best guardians of liberty, and maintained that the restriction of the right to them was only creating a necessary safeguard "against the dangerous influence of those people without property or principle, with whom, in the end, our country, like all other countries, was sure to abound." He did not believe that the ignorant and dependent could be trusted to vote.
Madison supported him heartily, likewise thinking the freeholders the safest guardians of our rights; he indulged in some gloomy (and fortunately hitherto unverified) forebodings as to our future, which sound strangely coming from one who was afterwards an especial pet of the Jeffersonian democracy. He said: "In future times a great majority of the people will be without landed or any other property. They will then either combine under the influence of their common situation,--in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be safe in their hands,--or, as is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition."
Morris also enlarged on this last idea. "Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich," said he. When taunted with his aristocratic tendencies, he answered that he had long ceased to be the dupe of words, that the mere sound of the name "aristocracy" had no terrors for him, but that he did fear lest harm should result to the people from the unacknowledged existence of the very thing they feared to mention. As he put it, there never was or would be a civilized society without an aristocracy, and his endeavor was to keep it as much as possible from doing mischief. He thus professed to be opposed to the existence of an aristocracy, but convinced that it would exist anyhow, and that therefore the best thing to be done was to give it a recognized place, while clipping its wings so as to prevent its working harm. In pursuance of this theory, he elaborated a wild plan, the chief feature of which was the provision for an aristocratic senate, and a popular or democratic house, which were to hold each other in check, and thereby prevent either party from doing damage. He believed that the senators should be appointed by the national executive, who should fill up the vacancies that occurred. To make the upper house effective as a checking branch, it should be so const.i.tuted to as have a personal interest in checking the other branch; it should be a senate for life, it should be rich, it should be aristocratic. He continued:--It would then do wrong? He believed so; he hoped so. The rich would strive to enslave the rest; they always did.
The proper security against them was to form them into a separate interest. The two forces would then control each other. By thus combining and setting apart the aristocratic interest, the popular interest would also be combined against it. There would be mutual check and mutual security. If, on the contrary, the rich and poor were allowed to mingle, then, if the country were commercial, an oligarchy would be established; and if it were not, an unlimited democracy would ensue. It was best to look truth in the face. The loaves and fishes would be needed to bribe demagogues; while as for the people, if left to themselves, they would never act from reason alone. The rich would take advantage of their pa.s.sions, and the result would be either a violent aristocracy, or a more violent despotism.--The speech containing these extraordinary sentiments, which do no particular credit to either Morris"s head or heart, is given in substance by Madison in the "Debates." Madison"s report is undoubtedly correct, for, after writing it, he showed it to the speaker himself, who made but one or two verbal alterations.
Morris applied an old theory in a new way when he proposed to make "taxation proportional to representation" throughout the Union. He considered the preservation of property as being the distinguishing object of civilization, as liberty was sufficiently guaranteed even by savagery; and therefore he held that the representation in the senate should be according to property as well as numbers. But when this proposition was defeated, he declined to support one making property qualifications for congressmen, remarking that such were proper for the electors rather than the elected.
His views as to the power and functions of the national executive were in the main sound, and he succeeded in having most of them embodied in the Const.i.tution. He wished to have the President hold office during good behavior; and, though this was negatived, he succeeded in having him made reeligible to the position. He was instrumental in giving him a qualified veto over legislation, and in providing for his impeachment for misconduct; and also in having him made commander-in-chief of the forces of the republic, and in allowing him the appointment of governmental officers. The especial service he rendered, however, was his successful opposition to the plan whereby the President was to be elected by the legislature. This proposition he combated with all his strength, showing that it would take away greatly from the dignity of the executive, and would render his election a matter of cabal and faction, "like the election of the pope by a conclave of cardinals." He contended that the President should be chosen by the people at large, by the citizens of the United States, acting through electors whom they had picked out. He showed the probability that in such a case the people would unite upon a man of continental reputation, as the influence of designing demagogues and tricksters is generally powerful in proportion as the limits within which they work are narrow; and the importance of the stake would make all men inform themselves thoroughly as to the characters and capacities of those who were contending for it; and he flatly denied the statements, that were made in evident good faith, to the effect that in a general election each State would cast its vote for its own favorite citizen. He inclined to regard the President in the light of a tribune chosen by the people to watch over the legislature; and giving him the appointing power, he believed, would force him to make good use of it, owing to his sense of responsibility to the people at large, who would be directly affected by its exercise, and who could and would hold him accountable for its abuse.
On the judiciary his views were also sound. He upheld the power of the judges, and maintained that they should have absolute decision as to the const.i.tutionality of any law. By this means he hoped to provide against the encroachments of the popular branch of the government, the one from which danger was to be feared, as "virtuous citizens will often act as legislators in a way of which they would, as private individuals, afterwards be ashamed." He wisely disapproved of low salaries for the judges, showing that the amounts must be fixed from time to time in accordance with the manner and style of living in the country; and that good work on the bench, where it was especially needful, like good work everywhere else, could only be insured by a high rate of recompense. On the other hand, he approved of introducing into the national Const.i.tution the foolish New York state inventions of a Council of Revision and an Executive Council.