5th. A bill for general education.
These were not only appropriate but indispensable steps to lay a sure foundation for republican government, State as well as National. Most, if not all of the States, followed her lead, but to Virginia belongs the high merit of having been in this respect the first in the field, and to Jefferson a large share of that merit.
Such were the men who were by common consent placed at the respective heads of the two great parties in that national struggle which resulted in what has ever since been known as "the Civil Revolution of Eighteen Hundred," a name given to it by the victors on the a.s.sumption that, although the weapons were different, the principles which were involved in it and the spirit which achieved the triumph were akin to those which distinguished the Revolution by the sword. The knowledge that Hamilton preferred monarchical inst.i.tutions to every other form, that John Adams, who was at the head of the Government, sympathized very cordially with that sentiment, and the belief that most of the leaders of the Federal party partook largely of the same feeling, and were only prevented from avowing the fact by their perception of its unpopularity, caused a wide-spread and sincere alarm on the side of the Republican party for the safety of republican government in the United States. This apprehension imparted a graver character to the contest than any other considerations could have produced, and called into vigorous action much of the spirit by which the minds of the ma.s.ses had been influenced in the Revolutionary War. It served to weld the members of the old Anti-Federal party and the Republicans--between whom a concert of action had previously arisen--into a thorough union, which became permanent, because it was founded on a principle in which they heartily concurred, and which was of sufficient magnitude to absorb minor differences in their political views.
That Hamilton"s settled opinion and preference were such as I have described is a point which has been, it is hoped, already too well established to admit, at this day, of an honest difference of opinion.
He avowed them on the floor of the Convention in the presence of the a.s.sembled representatives, and this is equally clear, whether the sum of that declaration is tested by the copy of the speech which he himself delivered to Mr. Madison as a permanent record of his opinions, or by the notes for that speech now published by his son. He announced them to his political rival, Mr. Jefferson, in the presence of Mr. John Adams, and reaffirmed them to the former in a conversation obviously sought for the purpose of giving the form he desired to expressions of a less guarded character, and which were, under that impression, immediately reduced to writing by Mr. Jefferson, who, for the truth of his record, "attests the G.o.d that made him." He so thoroughly impressed his political coadjutor and most trusted friend--him to whom it was appointed to p.r.o.nounce his eulogy at his funeral--Gouverneur Morris, with a sense of his devotion to monarchical inst.i.tutions, that within six months after his death, Morris, writing to his friend Ogden, speaks of that devotion as "hobby" which Hamilton "bestrode to the great annoyance of his friends, and not without injury to himself;" also to Robert Walsh, the well-known editor of a leading Federal journal, in answer to inquiries on the subject, that "Hamilton hated republican government because he confounded it with democratical government, and he detested the latter because he believed it must end in despotism, and be in the mean time destructive to morality;" and that "he never failed on every occasion to advocate the excellence of, and his attachment to, monarchical government." It was in perfect keeping with the character of Hamilton that never, throughout his life, though constantly charged with entertaining such opinions, did he deny the imputation; he who denies it now must a.s.sume that Hamilton either did not know his own mind upon the subject, or that he had some motive for misrepresenting it, or that Mr.
Jefferson deliberately falsified his repeated declarations, and that Gouverneur Morris was capable of misrepresenting his friend upon a point of so much importance when that friend had descended to his grave.
To what lengths Hamilton would have gone to subvert the existing government, and to subst.i.tute monarchical inst.i.tutions, or under what circ.u.mstances he would have deemed an attempt to do so justifiable, are questions open to investigation and comment, but to discuss the fact of his constant preference for such inst.i.tutions, and desire to see them established here, would be to trifle with the subject.
Mr. Adams, who was President, and in whose name the battle was fought, fell but little if any thing short of General Hamilton in his partiality for the English system. To purge the British Const.i.tution of its corruptions, and to give to its popular branch equality of representation, were alone necessary, he thought, to make it "the most perfect Const.i.tution ever devised by the wit of man." The alterations or amendments he suggested, sound and creditable to himself as they were, were no more than qualifications of his general preference for the English model. If Hamilton"s admiration of that model was less qualified than that of Adams, it must at the same time be admitted that the former was freest from the fault of seeking to degrade and discredit republican inst.i.tutions by his writings. Without undertaking to describe the specific design of Mr. Adams"s "Defense of the Const.i.tutions of Government of the United States," or of his "Discourse on Davila,"--a task, for obvious reasons, very difficult,--it may, I think, be safely a.s.sumed that such was their manifest tendency. Hamilton at least thought so at a time when the reciprocal prejudices which afterwards separated them so widely had not yet acquired a strong hold upon the feelings of either. In his interview with Mr. Jefferson on the 13th of August, 1791, before referred to, when the conversation was turned to the writings of Mr. Adams, Hamilton condemned them, and "most particularly Davila, as having a tendency to weaken the present Government;" and, after other remarks in relation to the existing Government and its chances of success, he added,--"Whoever by his writings disturbs the present order of things is really blamable, however pure his intentions might be, and he was sure Mr. Adams"s were pure."
The division by Mr. Adams of governments designated as republics, into democratic republics, aristocratic republics and monarchical, or regal republics,--embracing a minute description of each, in which the Government of the "United Provinces of the Low Countries," whose powers are held by the persons intrusted with them either by hereditary t.i.tle or by the selection of a.s.sociates, after the manlier of close corporations, is called a "democratic Republic," and that of England a "monarchical, or regal Republic,"--was naturally displeasing to the sense and feeling of those who regarded aristocratical or monarchical or regal features as absolutely incompatible with the true idea of republican government. The voluminous and doubtless violent attacks that were made upon his writings were scarcely necessary to satisfy those who had freely undergone the sufferings and sacrifices of a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of republican inst.i.tutions, according to their acceptation of them, that the writings of Mr. Adams were designed, as was charged, to cause the term "Republican Government" to mean "any thing or nothing."
The notices taken of the general subject and of these writings in particular, by John Adams himself, by his son, John Quincy Adams, and by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, go far to show that if not fairly liable to this construction, they were too much open to it to be persisted in. In a note attached by the author, in 1812, to the "Discourse on Davila," as published in his "Life and Works," he says: "The work, however, powerfully operated upon his (J. A."s) popularity.
It was urged as full proof that he was an advocate for monarchy, and laboring to introduce a hereditary President in the United States." His grandson, Charles F. Adams, introducing the "Discourse" in his "Life and Works of John Adams," says: "They furnished to the partisans of the day so much material for immediate political use in the contest then beginning (1790), that the author thought it best to desist, and they were left incomplete."
John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Address,--the occasion and character of which have been heretofore noticed,--describes the state of parties at the accession of General Washington to the Presidency in the following terms: "On the other hand no small number of the Federalists, sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure of the Articles of Confederation to fulfill the promise of the Revolution; provoked at once and discouraged by the violence and rancor of the opposition against their strenuous and toilsome endeavors to raise their country from her state of prostration; chafed and goaded by the misrepresentations of their motives, and the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to them in turn deliberate and settled purposes to dissolve the Union and resort to anarchy for the repair of ruined fortunes,--distrusted ever the efficacy of the Const.i.tution itself, and with a weakened confidence in the virtue of the people were inclined to the opinion that the only practicable subst.i.tute for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by the Convention. There were among them numerous warm admirers of the British Const.i.tution, disposed to confide rather to the inherent strength of the Government than to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence for the preservation of the rights of property and perhaps of persons."
This is language which it is easy to understand, and which covers very fairly the subject of our immediate attention. Few men enjoyed better opportunities to possess himself of correct views in regard to the opinions of his own political party than John Quincy Adams. He was by nature truthful, or if at times blinded by prejudice, never, I firmly believe, induced to swerve by sinister considerations. Accustomed from early life to indulgence in the strong expressions (both in manner and form) common to his race, he was apt to exaggerate under great excitement, but was not capable of designedly falsifying facts. In the case before us the greatest reliance may be placed upon his statements in regard to the opinions and views of a cla.s.s of men of whom he thought well. The Federal party entered upon the first administration under the new Const.i.tution, of which the election had placed it in full possession, with a weakened confidence, Mr. Adams says, in the virtue of the people,--distrustful even of the efficacy of the Const.i.tution itself, and inclined to the opinion that the only practical subst.i.tute for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by the Convention, and a portion of them (how large it was difficult for manifest reasons to determine, but Mr. Adams describes it as "numerous,") warmly admiring the British Const.i.tution, and disposed to confide to the inherent strength of such a government rather than to one founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In what cla.s.s or division it was the intention of Mr. Adams to place his venerable father does not appear, nor is it very clear to which he should be a.s.signed. That he considered his opinions, which had been more impugned in all respects than those of any, save perhaps of Hamilton, as not placing him in either, is not at all probable.
John Adams"s "Defense" and "Discourse" were written at different periods remote from each other, and when he himself occupied very different situations; the former before the formation of the Federal Const.i.tution, when he represented his country as Minister to England, and the latter, which was universally regarded as the most Anti-Republican of the two, after he had been elected Vice-President. That his views were in some degree changed by time and circ.u.mstances is not improbable. Mr.
Jefferson thought that he owed his support for the Vice-Presidency to the Anti-Republican tendencies of the first work, and that his election to that office and the federal sentiment that he found prevalent on his return from England, and down to the commencement of the new government, induced him to write the "Discourse," and to give to it a higher tone in the same direction. The diffusive and (if that expression is not too strong when speaking of writings of so much learning and ability) the incoherent manner in which these works were constructed, particularly the earlier one, makes it unsafe to venture to specify the precise principles they were designed to sustain. His grandson was so sensible of the deficiencies of the "Defense" in these respects that he reconstructed and improved it in his publication, but without, as he says, changing the sense, and I have no doubt that he has carried out the latter idea in good faith.
That few if any American citizens went beyond John Adams in his admiration of the British Const.i.tution is undeniably true. In the third chapter of the "Defense,"--(see Vol. IV. p. 358, of his "Life and Works,") he p.r.o.nounces an eulogium on that Const.i.tution which goes far beyond that reported by Mr. Jefferson, (in his account of the conversation between Adams and Hamilton in April, 1791,) calling it "the most stupendous fabric of human invention," adding, that "not the formation of languages, not the whole art of navigation and ship-building, does more honor to the human understanding than this system of government." But on the very next page he commends the United States for not having followed the English model, so far as to make "their first magistrates or their senators hereditary"--differing substantially in that regard from the opinion reported by Mr. Jefferson, and showing how unsafe if not futile would be the attempt to define exactly the principles which he favored.
It may, notwithstanding, be safely a.s.sumed, _first_, that he was foremost among the warm admirers of the British Const.i.tution spoken of by his son, and _secondly_, that he deemed our Const.i.tution defective in omitting to provide for some depository of political power in the government, variant in principle from its general provisions, one which should be either not at all or only very remotely subject to popular control, and that he stood almost at the head of those whose confidence in the virtue of the people had been greatly weakened by occurrences following the Revolution.
The latter a.s.sumption would seem very fully warranted by the following citations from his "Defense:"[30]
"The proposition, that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties, is not true; they are the worst conceivable; they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will as a political body."
"If it is meant by our author a representative a.s.sembly, they are not still the best keepers of the liberties of the people; at least the majority would invade the liberty of the minority sooner and oftener than an absolute monarchy."
"A great writer has said that a people will never oppress themselves, or invade their own rights. This compliment, if applied to any nation or people in being or memory, is more than has been merited."
"Aristides, Fabricius, and Cincinnatus, are always quoted, as if such characters were always to be found in sufficient numbers to protect liberty; and a cry and show of liberty is set up by the profligate and abandoned, such as would sell their fathers, their country, and their G.o.d for profit, place, and power. Hypocrisy, simulation, and finesse are not more practiced in the courts of princes than in popular elections, nor more encouraged by kings than people."
"The real merit of public men is rarely known and impartially considered. When men arise who to real services add political empiricism, conform to the errors of the people, comply with their prejudices, gain their hearts and excite their enthusiasm, then grat.i.tude is a contagion--it is a whirlwind."
[30] See Randall"s _Life of Jefferson_, Vol. I. p. 587.
The same volume (of Randall"s Work) contains copious extracts from the letters of Fisher Ames and a number of other leading Federalists, derived from Hamilton"s recently published papers and other sources.
They breathe in general the same spirit, hankering after pre-revolutionary inst.i.tutions and systems, though less boldly expressed than was done by Hamilton and Adams, and the same distrust of the sufficiency of the Const.i.tution and above all of the capacities and dispositions of the people, the latter exhibited in a.s.saults upon democracy and the democratic spirit of the country.
John Adams was in every sense a remarkable man. Nature seems to have employed in his construction intellectual materials sufficient to have furnished many minds respectably. It would not be easy to name men, either of his day or of any period, whose characters present a deeper or a stronger soil, one which during his long and somewhat boisterous public life was thoroughly probed by his enemies without disclosing any variation in its depths from the qualities and indications of its surface. Still more deeply was it turned up and exposed to the light by himself with the same result. His writings, which have been more extensive and more various than those of any of his contemporaries, have been given to the world apparently without reserve. These, with his diaries and autobiography, have turned his character inside out and shown us, without disguise of any sort, the kind of man he was: and the representation is invariably that of the same "always honest man" that he was three quarters of a century ago when that high praise was accorded to him by his not too partial friend, Benjamin Franklin, in a communication not designed to be over civil.
Whatever diversities may have arisen in the opinions of men in relation to the merits or demerits of his after conduct, all agree in conceding to him credit for patriotic and useful services in the times which have been happily described as those which tried men"s souls. Mr. Jefferson, but two years before the death of both of them, on referring to that period, and to Mr. Adams"s great services, in my presence, was warmed by the subject, and spoke of him as having been the mainmast of the ship--the orator of the Revolution, &c. It is in all probability no exaggeration of his merits to a.s.sume that there was no man in the United States, (perhaps, but not without doubt, excepting Samuel Adams,) who, before he was sent abroad in their service, did more than himself in a civil capacity to promote the cause of the Revolution. This is a high distinction--one which ent.i.tles his memory to the perpetual reverence of his countrymen. No subsequent errors of opinion, nothing short of personal dishonor and degradation, of which he was incapable, could extinguish a claim to the enduring grat.i.tude and respect of a nation founded on such services.
He left our sh.o.r.es upon his foreign mission a n.o.ble specimen of a republican statesman--his heart and mind filled to overflowing with right principles, and capable of vindicating them whenever and wherever they might stand in need of support or defense. He performed his public duties with fidelity and honor, but in respect to his political opinions he returned an altered man. His "Defense of the Const.i.tutions of Government of the United States of America," written and published in England whilst representing his country there, notwithstanding an imposing t.i.tle, though agreeable to some excited painful emotions in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of most of his Revolutionary a.s.sociates. The dissatisfaction of the latter was not a little increased by the circ.u.mstance that sentiments and opinions, so disparaging to a form of government which had been the unceasing object of their desire, should have been ostentatiously promulgated in a country and in the presence of a government from which the right to establish it had been wrested by arms, and on the part of which the most unfriendly feelings in respect to our advancement were still entertained. It was, nevertheless, true that no circ.u.mstance contributed more toward his selection by the Federal party as their candidate for the office of Vice-President than these very avowals. His own sense of their efficacy in that respect is clearly to be inferred from the fact that he devoted the first moments of his time, whilst occupying that station, to the prosecution of the same general object, with less disguise and increased boldness, through his "Discourses on Davila."
Jefferson and Samuel Adams and others of their stamp, who had embarked in the Revolution with a spirit that could neither be appalled by danger whilst the battle raged, nor seduced by considerations of any description after it had been fought, were not slow in perceiving that Mr. Adams had not only deserted from the cause of free government, but that he regarded his first success under the new system and aspired to the still higher honor in the gift of his countrymen as fruits of his desertion. Whilst his early and best friends felt that the fabric, the erection of which had cost them so much labor and so many sacrifices, had lost one of its strongest pillars by his falling off, they were neither dismayed nor did they despair of its safety. They met his second attempt to bring free governments into disrepute with an energy that drove him, as he himself admits, stubborn and inflexible in his purposes as he always had been, to discontinue, at least in that form, a.s.saults upon a political faith, once the object of their common devotion. This desertion on the part of one in whom they had confided so fully, and upon whose cooperation, in securing to them the full enjoyment of the political rights for the acquisition of which they had endured so many perils, they had largely depended, sank deeply into the hearts and minds of the people. The spirit of discontent was naturally much increased by the discovery that Hamilton, who had done himself so much honor, and who had raised such favorable antic.i.p.ations by the chivalrous spirit and gallantry with which he had embraced and sustained the national cause was, after all, irreconcilably hostile to that system of republican government which they so highly prized, and upon the ultimate enjoyment of which they had so long meditated; that his opposition was not only open and unreserved, but that he a.s.signed as a reason for it their incapacity and unfitness for the support and enjoyment of free inst.i.tutions.
A sense of danger to the cause of republicanism in the United States was widely diffused through the public mind. There were indignities to be resented and wrongs to be redressed, besides new securities to be devised for the safety of long-cherished principles. These were considerations quite sufficient to rouse the lion of the Revolution from his lair to defend its choicest fruit from further profanation. Those cla.s.ses, among the surviving patriots of that eventful day, of whom I have spoken as pervaded by a deeper hatred of kingly government than others among their Revolutionary a.s.sociates, sprang to the rescue with alacrity and zeal. The descendants of the devoted spirits who first settled the ancient colony of Virginia were not unmindful of their hereditary obligations to resist the exercise of lawless power. Neither could the appeal fall unheeded on the ears of the representatives of the persecuted Huguenots, who had suffered so cruelly from the exercise of powers now sought to be revived, or of the Netherlanders of the Middle States, or on those sons of the Puritans of the East whose zeal in behalf of liberty had not been tempted to spend itself on trade and manufactures by the seductive influence of Hamilton"s policy, and by the facilities they possessed for those pursuits.
Drawing its power from such sources, and sustained by a great preponderance of the landed interest in every part of the country, the old Republican party attained a degree of vigor and efficiency superior to that of any partisan organization which had before or has since appeared on the political stage. Mr. John Quincy Adams described it truly when he said that it had acquired a head which would have enabled it, if so disposed, "to have overthrown Washington"s administration as it did that of his successor acting upon its principles." Jefferson"s declaration to Mazzei that "we have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have attempted to bind us during the first slumbers that succeed our labors," was borne out by the result.
Although the audacious pa.s.sion for monarchical government, which the leading Federalists had ventured to revive so soon after the Revolution, was the most exciting of the causes which inflamed the hearts and braced the nerves of the Republicans for the conflict,[31] that was not the first issue to be tried. The nature of the government to be subst.i.tuted was a question that would not, in the natural order of things, arise until the fate of the existing Const.i.tution had been settled; but as their blood was up and their hands at work, the Republicans resolved, if possible, to strangle the conspiracy against the new-born liberties of the country in both its branches by the same effort. The severity and success of the blows they directed against the restoration of the power and influence of the Crown, in any form, is strikingly ill.u.s.trated by a comparison of the state in which that question was found and that in which it was left by the civil revolution of 1800. Whilst at the former period the superiority of kingly over republican government was the prevailing and absorbing sentiment among what were called the higher cla.s.ses, as graphically described by Mr. Jefferson, and substantially corroborated by Gouverneur Morris"s letter to Rufus King, the notion that the former would be ever practicable in this country was so thoroughly annihilated by that great struggle as never again to have been whispered in our politics. There is no exaggeration in the affirmation that there has been no day within the last forty years when a proposition for the reestablishment of monarchy in the United States, however seriously made, could have excited any other emotion than ridicule or contempt, or would not have been deemed more appropriately punished by the administration of the straight-jacket than by a trial for treason. But there has been far greater difficulty in completing the work of resistance to Hamilton"s efforts to overthrow the Const.i.tution by subverting it, through the agency of his sapping and mining policy, which was the direct issue in the election of 1800. A const.i.tution had been established, in the construction and ratification of which the Federal party had performed a greater and more effectual part than the party opposed to it. Its general provisions were fully adequate to the support of a republican government. By a successful incorporation of the representative system with the republican form, pure and simple, its framers had happily qualified and adapted the instrument to our extensive territory, and a provision for amendments furnished a remedy against existing defects. Of the latter the omission to secure specifically and adequately the individual natural rights of men against the exercise of arbitrary power was the most important--a defect in respect to which a large majority of the Anti-Federalists were, for reasons frequently referred to, most sensitive. The Const.i.tution was ratified by several of the States, and amongst them by Virginia and New York, with accompanying resolutions, some of them pa.s.sed by the State conventions with perfect unanimity, expressing opinions that it deserved revision and required amendments. Without such resolutions the ratification could not, we are forced to believe, have been effected. We have seen with what reluctance the first Congress, Federal by a large majority, consented to make any const.i.tutional amendments, and that nothing short of Mr. Madison"s wonderful perseverance could, in all probability, have effected their adoption; but they were obtained, proved satisfactory to the Anti-Federalists, and made them fast friends of the new Const.i.tution.
[31] See _Life of Morris_, Vol. III. p. 128. "But the thing which in my opinion has done more mischief to the Federal party is the ground given by some of them to believe that they wish to establish a monarchy."--_Letter from Morris to King._
From that moment that instrument ceased to be an object of solicitude with the leaders of the Federal party, hardly retaining favor with any of them. This result is by no means an unusual one in the history of parties whose feelings have become to any great extent embittered. The instances are rare indeed in which any public measure or act is at the same time entirely acceptable to all sides. The "Independent Treasury"
is the only clear case of the kind among us that has fallen under my observation. The letters of the leading Federalists, which have now for the first time seen the light, prove their subsequent indifference, and, in many instances, active hostility to the Const.i.tution. Not a few who imbibed Hamilton"s feelings and shared in his views upon this point had been members of the Convention, and among those to whom I have awarded so large a share of credit for their conduct in making the Const.i.tution what it is. This was justly their due. It is not to be doubted that several of them, as I have before said, partic.i.p.ated largely in Hamilton"s objections, and would have preferred a very different instrument; but they knew that none less favorable to the supposed interests of the State governments, or less liberal in other respects, would stand the slightest chance of ratification, more especially when the circ.u.mstance of disregard to the limits and restrictions of the authority by which they had been convened was taken into consideration.
They saw nothing but injury, vast and complicated, to the country from their failure, and they evinced their patriotism in yielding to this wise foresight at the sacrifice of their individual preferences.
Although many of them, doubtless, did not fully share Hamilton"s absorbing preference for monarchy, they very generally went to the extent pointed out by John Quincy Adams in his Jubilee Address--that was for a government of more energy than was provided for by the Const.i.tution presented by the Convention. This they had a right to desire and to work for through amendments in the way appointed by the Const.i.tution, but in this way they knew they could not obtain what they wanted, and they therefore yielded their ready aid to the measures he proposed by which the Const.i.tution was to be made to mean any thing, substantially, which those who were intrusted with its execution might believe would promote the general welfare. Hamilton"s course in this regard seemed to the uninitiated extremely reckless, as he appeared desirous to select objects in respect to which the excess of authority under the Const.i.tution which he exerted was most obvious, and the subjects themselves were those in respect to which the sensibilities of his opponents were the keenest. In the whole range of measures, which, if const.i.tutional, might appropriately proceed from his department, he could not have found a single one as to which the intention of the framers of the Const.i.tution, adverse to the power he exercised, was better understood than a United States Bank. Mr. Jefferson brought the facts which transpired in the Convention proving such intention to his notice, and to that of the President, and they were not controverted by either.
So in regard to the Sedition Law. One of the ten amendments was especially designed to prohibit such legislation, and there were no subjects to which the Anti-Federalists and Republicans were more alive than to the liberty of speech and of the press. The same thing may be said, in respect to public sensibilities, of the Alien Act. That Act conferred a power on the President, which, though one of the prerogatives of the Crown, no prime minister dare exercise at this day in the sense in which the President was authorized to exercise it.
Yet it is now known that of these last measures the first was pa.s.sed upon Hamilton"s suggestion, and Mr. Charles F. Adams informs us that neither was ever made the subject of executive consultation.
But I can well conceive that these considerations, which might deter other men, were but so many recommendations with Hamilton for the course he pursued. From first to last he thought the Const.i.tution inadequate to the purposes of what he regarded as good government, and that the sooner it was gotten rid of the better for the country. There were moments when he allowed himself to hope that he might make it answer the purpose if he were allowed to go on with it as he began. But these were only momentary impressions that soon gave way to the settled convictions of his mind, his avowals of which were uniformly the same. He declared to Jefferson in 1792, "that the Const.i.tution was a shilly-shally thing of mere milk and water, and was only good as a step to something better,"--a declaration which the latter communicated in self-defense to Washington; and in 1802 he describes it to his friend Morris, as we have seen, as "a frail and worthless fabric," reminding him at the same time of his knowledge that such had been his (Hamilton"s) opinion "from the very beginning." It was, therefore, natural that a man of his intelligence and resolution, looking with entire confidence to its failure, should think it expedient to select the most palpable as well as the most flagrant violations of the Const.i.tution, while it was yet in its infancy and feeblest condition, and thus to prepare the public mind for the degradation he had in store for it, and to insure its speedy overthrow.
These severe measures were rendered doubly odious by the manner in which the Sedition Law was executed, and by the steps adopted to suppress outbreaks of popular discontent, but which only swelled comparative rivulets into resistless torrents and rendered the Republican cause invaluable service by giving occasion to Madison"s great Report on the Const.i.tutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The judgment of the country has ever been that a more able state paper never issued from the pen of any man. It covered the entire controversy between the two parties, traced its origin to the different views they entertained of the construction and obligatory character of the Const.i.tution, and placed the republican creed in those respects upon grounds absolutely impregnable. Hamilton was a laborious writer, but only so because his writings were so voluminous; to write was with him a labor of love, and there was no man of his day who devoted more time to political disquisitions. There was scarcely any other great public question that occupied the public mind during that period on which a publication, offensive or defensive, is not to be found in his Works. Yet if he ever attempted a reply to that Report, which attracted general attention and became the flag under which the Republicans fought, I have never seen or heard of it. I may safely a.s.sume that he never did make such attempt.
The issue was fairly presented by Mr. Madison, through the Virginia Legislature, as depending upon the answers to the following questions:--
1. What are the true principles that should be applied to the construction of the Const.i.tution?
2. Are those who are elected by the people bound to execute it according to the intention of its framers and the understanding of those who ratified it?
3. Is it in that sense sacredly obligatory upon all who are subject to its authority?
The charge presented against the Federal party and its representatives was that they had trampled upon the sanct.i.ty of the Const.i.tution by the application to its construction of principles known to be unsound, by setting at defiance the intentions of those who made it and for whom it was made, and by prost.i.tuting it, and claiming the right to prost.i.tute it, to the promotion of their particular views of the public interests, regardless of such intentions, however well understood.
This Report stands as a perpetual record of that issue. The Republicans regarded its decision as involving the existence of republican government, inasmuch as no such government could be sustained for a moment longer than the Const.i.tution was looked to as a sacred and inviolable line of duty for both rulers and ruled. They triumphed in the great contest, and they expelled from power the men who refused to recognize that principle in the administration of the government, and for that reason they placed in their stead those who would recognize it.
Madison"s Report presented a faithful synopsis of the principles of the old Republicans upon fundamental questions,--those which relate to the powers of government and to the responsibilities under which they should be exercised,--the only questions which gave rise to permanent political parties. Whilst divisions in regard to particular measures disappear with the falling off of interest in the subjects of them, those which I have described as growing out of such primordial tenets are kept alive as long as the government itself endures. So it has been in all countries where there has been any appreciable degree of freedom of opinion. England is almost, if not altogether, the only country whose inst.i.tutions are sufficiently a.n.a.logous to ours to admit of useful comparisons. From the time when her sovereigns traced their authority from G.o.d, and acknowledged responsibility to Him alone for the manner of its exercise, to the Revolution of 1688, by which absolutism was forever abolished and government declared to be a trust for the abuse of which the sovereign is responsible to the people, and always since, her party divisions, regarded as national, have had relation to the powers of government and to the degrees of responsibility under which they should be exercised. Whether these parties were called Cavaliers and Roundheads, Presbyterians and Jacobites, Whig and Tory, or Conservatives and Liberals, such have always been the essential dividing points. Like ourselves they have had a succession of exciting public questions not of this character which have for a time divided the community, and were earnestly contested, but which pa.s.sed away without making material inroads upon ancient party divisions, and the latter resumed their sway when the temporary interruption ceased in much the same general array they would have presented if it had not occurred.
I have said that Madison"s report was the flag under which the Republicans conquered. It defines the const.i.tutional creed by which they were influenced in the administration of the government for twenty-four years successively, and under which the Democratic party, their successors, have since held the reins of the Federal Government, with infrequent exceptions--the latter never extending to two Presidential terms, and always the result of special circ.u.mstances having little bearing upon general politics.
But the political seed sown by Hamilton has not in other respects proved as perishable as have his teachings in favor of monarchical inst.i.tutions. The former has never been eradicated--it seems not susceptible of eradication. I have given the reasons why this has been so with a description of the fruit it has continued to produce. These results have fostered kindred doctrines in respect to const.i.tutions, their sanct.i.ty, their uses, and their abuses. I have also said that these doctrines have been ever cherished and enforced when circ.u.mstances were auspicious, and have const.i.tuted the chief element of our party divisions. Hence it has been that those divisions have been so uniform in their general outlines. The opposite dispositions which lead men to take different sides upon such questions have worked to the same ends from the close of the Revolution, and have been developed on all occasions of a nature to call them into action. The execution of the present Federal Const.i.tution presented an opportunity to give them a definite and more permanent form and cla.s.sification which they have maintained ever since. Individuals have changed from side to side under the influence of what they have regarded as stronger inducements, and when they have been disappointed, have generally returned to their first bias. Questions of public policy, disconnected from considerations of const.i.tutional power, have arisen, been discussed, decided or abandoned and forgotten, whilst the political parties of the country have remained as they were.
With the authentic record before us of the issue, the contest, the result, and the efforts on the part of the defeated party to recover the ground it had lost, the supposition seems preposterous that our party divisions had their origin in the circ.u.mstances that occurred on the appointment of General Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of our Revolutionary army, as is alleged by a son of General Hamilton, in his history of the life of his father. Of the same character, though not quite so unreasonable, are the attempts which have been made by several to find their origin in the Federal Convention. That body did indeed present an occasion for the application of different opinions to the original formation of the Federal Const.i.tution, but those opinions grew out of conflicting tenets which had divided the country into parties long before, and they were not then determined either way, but compromised upon grounds of expediency by a result which was not in point of fact satisfactory to any side, but acquiesced in by a majority obtained from the ranks of both. The proposition of President John Quincy Adams in his Inaugural Address, tracing their rise to the opposing sides taken by the people of the United States, as between England and France, and their final discontinuance to the disastrous career and termination of the French Revolution, would seem to be not less wide of the mark. The continuance of the two great parties of the country in the same state, in respect to the principles they espoused and the characters and dispositions of those who composed them, for more than half a century and for a quarter of a century before his address was delivered, is not to be denied. If it was even supposed possible that an intelligent and high spirited people like our own, with traditions and a history so eventful, and with domestic interests so important, could have been arrayed in hostile political opinions and party divisions by the influence of purely foreign questions, the continuance of those divisions in the same form and spirit for so many years after all pretense of the operation of such an influence had ceased would of itself be sufficient to refute the theory. But the objections to it are too numerous, too conclusive in their character, and too obvious to make it necessary to press them farther. The French Revolution had sufficiently developed itself to weaken, if not extinguish, the solicitude of the Republicans for its success, (who, with their leader, Thomas Jefferson, regarded its excesses with abhorrence,) before they expelled John Adams from the Presidency for the aid and sanction which he gave to Hamilton"s violations of the Const.i.tution, and his son, John Quincy Adams, was twenty-eight years afterwards driven from power for the same cause and by the same party, a party which he supposed had ceased to exist for some thirty years previous. It was by his lat.i.tudinarian avowals in respect to the const.i.tutional powers of Congress,--when he began to talk of erecting "light-houses of the skies," and of the folly of paralyzing representatives by the will of their const.i.tuents,--that his political destiny was sealed.
That existing political divisions among the people of the United States induced the formation of preferences and prejudices in respect to England and France, was, doubtless, true, but to suppose that these const.i.tuted the foundation of their own divisions is to mistake for the cause one of its least important effects.
The Anti-Federal, Republican, and Democratic parties have been from the beginning composed of men entertaining the same general views in regard to the most desirable form of government, and to the spirit in which, and the objects for which, it should be administered. The morbid feelings of large portions of the old Anti-Federalists produced by their distrust of delegated power, founded on their knowledge of the extent to which it had been everywhere abused, led to a difference between them and the Republicans on the question of clothing the Federal Government with power to collect its own revenues, to regulate commerce, &c., and induced them to oppose the ratification of the new Const.i.tution on that account, and on account of its deficiencies in regard to proper securities for personal rights. Their party was thereby broken down, but Jefferson and Samuel Adams, and men like them, succeeded in satisfying them of their error in respect to the outlines of the Const.i.tution, and Madison procured the adoption of amendments that obviated their other objections and, as I have before said, a cordial and enduring union was formed between them and the Republicans, under the latter name. Since that period the party has undergone no change, either in its organization, its principles, or the general political dispositions of the individuals of which it has been composed. Its name has been changed from Republican to Democratic, in consequence of the increasing popular development of its course and principles, and in some degree by the circ.u.mstance that its old opponent had a.s.sumed the name of Federal Republican and by a natural desire to keep the line of demarcation between them as broad and as well defined as possible.