James Madison Part 7

Perhaps he was influenced by this consideration when he proposed that the payment of the domestic debt should be divided between those who had originally held, and those who had acquired by purchase, the certificates of indebtedness. The public creditors would in that case have been more widely distributed in different sections of the country and among different cla.s.ses. The thought, at any rate, does not seem to have been a new one when he saw and reported the eagerness with which the bank stock was sought for, denounced it as stock-jobbing and gambling, and indignantly reflected that in these men he saw the future governors of the country, and particularly of his own people. No doubt there was a good deal of speculation; and, as at all such times, there were a few who made fortunes, while many, who had at first much money and no stock, next much stock and no money, had at last neither stock nor money. But Mr. Madison's indignation was quite wasted, and his fears quite unfounded. Neither the stock-jobbers, the Bank, nor the bondholders ever usurped the government, whatever may have been Hamilton's hopes or schemes, if he had any other than to serve his country. The money-power of the North built cities and s.h.i.+ps, factories and towns, and stretched out its hands to the great lakes and over the broad prairies, to add to its dominion, to extend its civilization, and to give to labor and industry their due reward. It was the South that devoted itself to the business of politics, and, united by stronger bonds than can ever be forged of gold alone, soon entered into possession of the government, which it retained and used for its own interests, without regard to the interests or the rights of the North, for nearly three quarters of a century. Mr. Madison had no prescience of any such future in the history of the country, nor, indeed, then had anybody else. He may have really believed that the holders of a large public debt and the owners of a great national bank, through which the monetary affairs of the country could be controlled, were aiming to lay hold of the government. If all this were true, imminent peril was impending over republican inst.i.tutions. The inconsistency of which Hamilton accused Madison was therefore not necessarily a crime. It might even be a virtue, and Madison be applauded for his courage in avowing a change of opinion, if he saw in the practical application of Hamilton's principles dangers that had not occurred to him when looking at them only as abstract theories. But the Federalists believed that Madison, governed by these purely selfish motives, sacrificed his convictions of what was best for the country that he might secure for himself a position on what he foresaw was the winning side. It is quite likely that the more p.r.o.nounced enmity he showed towards Hamilton during the second session of Congress was due in some measure to his knowledge of this feeling towards himself among Federalists. He seemed, at any rate, to be animated by something more than the proverbial zeal of the new convert. If it was not always shown in debate, it lurked in his letters. Anything that came from the secretary, or anything that favored the secretary's measures, was sure to be opposed by him. He was not, of course, always in the wrong, and sometimes he was very right. There was a manifest disposition on the part of the Federalists in the House to defer to the secretary in a way to provoke opposition from those who did not share in their estimate of his great ability. There was some resentment, for example, when it was proposed that Congress should submit to the secretary the question of ways and means to carry on the Indian war at the West, after St. Clair's disastrous defeat, and when, a few days later, it was suggested that he should be called upon to report a plan for the reduction of the public debt. Members, chief among them Madison, thought that they were quite capable of discharging the duties belonging to their branch of the government without instructions from a head of department whom many of them looked upon as only an official subordinate of Congress. For the same reason they refused with prompt decision to permit the secretary to appear upon the floor of the House to explain some proposed measure. In the Carrington letter Hamilton said that he had "openly declared" a "determination to treat him [Madison] as a political enemy." He probably took care that Madison should hear of it, for he was not a man who made idle threats. He was sometimes arrogant and overbearing in manner, was always ready for a fight, which he rather preferred to quietude, and had little disposition to spare an enemy. These were not conciliating qualities likely to temper the asperities of political warfare, and they may have provoked even Madison, mild-mannered and almost timid as he was, to unusual heat.

All this, of course, is aside from the question whether the party, to which Mr. Madison had given his allegiance, was right or wrong. On that point there may be an honest difference of opinion. It is apart also from the question whether a man may not honestly change sides in politics, notwithstanding the suspicion that always follows him who runs from one side to the other, when in neither has there been any change in principles or measures. It is quite possible that he may be governed by the most sincere convictions; and if he obeys them and abandons old friends for new ones, or consents to be friendless, it is the strongest proof the statesman or politician can give of a moral courage which ought to gain for him all the more respect. But whether that respect must be denied to Mr. Madison, because he was governed by other and lower motives, is the question. There had been no change of political principles either in the party he had left or the party he had joined; but each was striving with all its might to adapt the old doctrines to the altered condition of affairs under the new Union. The change was wholly in Mr. Madison. That which had been white to him was now black; that which had been black was now as the driven snow. Why was this? Had he come to see that in all those years he had been wrong? Or had he suddenly learned, not that he was wrong, but that he had mistaken a straight and narrow path for the broad road which would lead to the goal he was seeking? These are not pleasant questions. He had served his country well; one does not like to doubt whether it was with a selfish rather than a n.o.ble purpose. But of any public man who changed front as he changed, the question always will be, What moved him? Not to ask it in regard to Madison is to drop out of sight the turning-point of his career; not to consider it is to leave unheeded essential light upon one side of his character. For his own fortunes the choice he made was judicious, if to "gain the whole world" is always the wisest and best thing to do. He gained his world, and was wise and virtuous in his generation according to the vote of a large majority. Whether that decision still holds good it is not so easy to say; probably it does, however; for the popular estimate of men often remains unchanged long after the judgment upon the events which gave them celebrity is completely reversed. But history, in the long run, weighs with even scales; and the verdict on Madison's character usually comes with that pitiful recommendation to mercy from a jury loath to condemn. Admiration for his great services in the Const.i.tutional Convention and after it, when its work was presented to the people for their approval, has never been withheld; upon his official integrity and his high sense of honor in all his personal relations, except when obligation to party may have overshadowed it, there rests no cloud; and his intellectual power is never questioned. One having these recognized qualities, and who for five and twenty years was generally high in office, must needs be held in high estimation, especially in a new country where fame, like everything else, is cheap. Nevertheless, impartial historians, who venture to believe that nature admits of imperfections in a native of Virginia, declare their conviction that Mr. Madison either wanted the strength and courage to resist the influence of those about him, or that the ambition of the politician was strong enough to overcome any consideration of principles that might stand in his way.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 14: "I reverence the Const.i.tution," said Fisher Ames in debate, "and I readily admit that the frequent appeal to that as a standard proceeds from a respectful attachment to it. So far it is a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little importance.

When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in point of dignity."]

CHAPTER XIII

FRENCH POLITICS

If any proof were wanting of how completely Madison had gone over to the opposition, he gave it in the memorable attack upon the secretary of the treasury in the spring of 1793, within four days of the close of the second session of the Second Congress. It was hoped by that proceeding to overwhelm Hamilton with disgrace, and that the President would feel himself obliged to expel him from the cabinet. When the resolutions with this aim were offered, a member said that delicacy, decency, and every rule of justice had been violated; "a more unhandsome proceeding he had never seen in Congress;" he might have remained a member to this day, and, save for the attempts in our time to expel John Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings, not have changed his opinion.

In the course of the preceding year Hamilton, under various signatures, had met his opponents in the newspapers. But it was a veil, not a visor, behind which he fought; for everybody knew from whom came the vigorous blows that he dealt about him right and left. It was a boast always of Jefferson that he never condescended to newspaper controversy; but it was pretty well understood that he himself did not enter upon that rather unsatisfactory mode of warfare because he preferred the safer method of fighting by proxy. Hamilton never was in doubt as to who was his real antagonist, and he aimed his blows over the heads of his petty a.s.sailants to where he knew they would hit home. They left bad bruises upon his colleague in the cabinet. Among other papers of the time, though not a newspaper article, was an official letter to the President, in which Hamilton defended his principles and his measures. Early in 1792 the President, longing to escape the toils of public life and to spend the rest of his days in tranquillity, had consulted Madison and his two secretaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, upon the propriety of his declining a reelection. He soon changed his mind, influenced, perhaps, as much by the dissensions, so evident in the expostulations of his friends, as by the expostulations themselves. He deprecated this open feud between his secretaries as a public misfortune, and sought, if he could not reconcile them, to silence it. That the Federalists were monarchists, as Jefferson and Madison never ceased a.s.serting, he knew was not true, without the emphatic and indignant declarations of Hamilton, Adams, and other leading men of that party, when they condescended to notice a charge which they deemed so absurd that it was difficult to believe that anybody could make it in earnest. But, while he knew there was no real danger from that quarter, he could not fail to see that the reverence and love in which he was held const.i.tuted a bond of unity, so long as he remained chief magistrate; and he may have felt that, should he retire, there was no other common tie strong enough at that moment to hold together a Union, the possible dissolution of which was, both at the North and at the South, considered with calmness, sometimes with complacency, and, when party pa.s.sion was at a red heat, even as a thing to be prayed for. At any rate, the President consented to take the advice of the counselors whom he had consulted; but in asking that advice he unwittingly aggravated the quarrel among them which caused him so much uneasiness.

Jefferson, in the arguments he set forth both in conversation and by letter to influence Was.h.i.+ngton's decision, dwelt upon the unhappy condition of public affairs. It was a storm which he himself meant to get out of by retiring to Monticello, though he thought it was Was.h.i.+ngton's duty to remain at the helm and keep an eye to windward.

This unhappy condition of affairs, he said, had all come from the course pursued by the secretary of the treasury, and was the natural consequence of the acts of Congress in relation to the public debt, the Bank, excise, currency, and other important measures pa.s.sed in accordance with the secretary's policy. Whether this policy was meant to destroy the Union, subvert the republic, and establish a monarchy upon its ruins, at any rate such must be the inevitable result of those mischievous measures. He urged this view of the subject with such pertinacity that Was.h.i.+ngton, either because he was impressed by so much earnestness, or because he was curious to know how the a.s.sertions could best be answered, sent them to Hamilton, with other objections of a similar character from other persons, and asked for a reply. No names were given, but it is not likely that Hamilton was at any loss in guessing where such strictures upon his administration of affairs came from. "I have not fort.i.tude enough," he said in his answer, "always to hear with calmness calumnies which necessarily include me as a princ.i.p.al object in the measures censured, of the falsehood of which I have the most unqualified consciousness.... I acknowledge that I cannot be entirely patient under charges which impeach the integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel that I merit them in no degree, and expressions of indignation sometimes escape me in spite of every effort to suppress them." There were only two men in the country whom he could have had in mind when he wrote such words as these. In all Was.h.i.+ngton's career there is nowhere a stronger proof of his strong will, self-reliance, and pa.s.sionless impartiality than that he could stand between two such furnaces as Hamilton on one side and Jefferson and Madison on the other, both glowing at the intensest white heat, while he remained usually as calm and as unmoved as if breathing the softest, balmiest, and gentlest airs of a day in June. But all this personal controversy in the public prints, and in the official intercourse of the cabinet, left on both sides an intense exasperation, which could not fail to have a controlling influence in the conduct of political parties. Whether Jefferson was conscious or not--and whatever his feeling was, Madison shared it with him--that in this paper warfare he was signally defeated, the attempt to ruin Hamilton by an attack upon him in Congress followed, if it was not the consequence of, the mortification of defeat.

In February, 1793, Mr. Giles, a representative from Virginia, offered a series of resolutions calling upon the President for certain information relating to the finances. They were a bold attack upon the secretary of the treasury, and, should it prove that they could not be satisfactorily answered, would convict him of mismanagement of the financial affairs of the government, of a disregard of law, of usurpation of power, and even of embezzlement of the public funds. Any reasonable ground for believing such charges to be well-founded would be quite sufficient to bring the secretary to trial by impeachment. There was probably little doubt at the moment as to whence this blow came; for though the hand might seem the hand of Esau, the voice was the voice of Jacob. Behind Giles was Madison; and behind Madison, of course, was Jefferson. Mr. John C.

Hamilton, in his "History of the Republic," a.s.serts that the resolutions were still--when he wrote, twenty-five years ago--in the archives of the State Department at Was.h.i.+ngton, in Madison's handwriting; and he further declares that Giles a.s.sured Rufus King that Madison was their author.

Hamilton's reply, so far as any intentional wrong-doing was imputed to him, was conclusive. There had been technical violations of acts of Congress in one instance, but it was only to carry out the acts themselves. Congress had, three years before, pa.s.sed two acts authorizing the negotiation of two loans, one for twelve million dollars for the discharge of the foreign debt, and another for two million dollars to be used at home. It had been convenient, and had conduced to the success of the negotiation, to offer in Holland to contract a loan for fourteen million dollars, without the unnecessary, and to foreigners probably the confusing, statement that the authority for borrowing that amount was derived from two separate acts of Congress. It was only in this borrowing of the money that there was any seeming disregard of the letter of the law. The loans and their purposes were kept entirely distinct in the accounts of the department. Other questions touching the management of these loans were so clearly and frankly explained that nothing but the captiousness of party could refuse to be satisfied. On one point--the charge of an alleged deficit--the opposition was absolutely silenced. The secretary indignantly explained that the sum--as anybody could have known for the asking from any officer in the Treasury Department--which was made to appear as missing was in credits for customs bonds not yet due, and bills of exchange on Europe sold but not yet paid for.

Though there was enough of decency, or of prudence which took the place of decency, to drop the insinuation that the secretary had stolen what had never been in his possession, it was not so with the rest of the accusations. Only four days before Congress was to adjourn, Giles offered another set of resolutions. These a.s.sumed that the defiance of law and unwarranted a.s.sumption of power, which, at first, were only suggested by the inquiries, were now proved to be true by the explanations that had been given. The indictment, therefore, was made to include the verdict and the sentence; the criminal was accused, was to be found guilty, and condemned to capital punishment in one proceeding, without the privilege of trial, or a recognition of the right to be heard. The argument of the resolutions was, that certain acts were a violation of law; that the secretary had committed all those acts; and therefore it was the will of the House that the facts be reported to the President. The presumption obviously was, that the President would immediately dismiss from office a disgraced and faithless public servant. But the prosecution was an utter failure. The largest vote received for any of the resolutions was only fifteen; that on the others was from seven to twelve, in a quorum of from fifty to sixty members.

In the course of the debate Mr. Madison had said that "his colleague [Giles] had rendered a service highly valuable to the legislature, and no less important and acceptable to the public." The House showed by its votes how very far it was from agreeing with him. But Fisher Ames wrote about that time: "Madison is become a desperate party leader, and I am not sure of his stopping at any ordinary point of extremity." If it be really true that he instigated this attack upon Hamilton, and was the author of the resolutions, using Giles as his tool to get them before the House, Ames's reflection was not uncharitable.

It would not be just, however, to leave the impression that the hostility shown in this affair was purely personal. Both Jefferson and Madison had a hearty hatred for Hamilton which would have been greatly gratified could they have made it the plain duty of the President to put him out of the Treasury Department a dishonored and ruined man. But this particular outbreak of their enmity was intensified by their sincere and earnest enthusiasm for France. They were quite willing to bring Hamilton to grief at any time because he was Hamilton; they were more than ordinarily exasperated against him just now because in recent newspaper and other controversies he had altogether got the better of them; but in this particular instance they wanted to punish him because of delay of payments in discharge of the indebtedness of the United States to France. This was the essential delinquency at which the Giles resolutions were pointed. The difficulty was, not that the secretary of the treasury was not careful enough of the public money, but that he was too careful. He insisted upon being quite certain, when paying off a public debt, that he was paying it to the right persons, and that no risk should be incurred of its being demanded a second time. He felt there was no such certainty about payments to France. The king was dethroned; but it was not wise, the secretary thought, to be hasty in recognizing revolutionary governments. It was a republic to-day; it might be a regency to-morrow; a monarchy again the third day. It was more prudent to await a reasonable period for the evidence of permanency on one side or the other. Those old enough to remember the late war of the rebellion know how important the maintenance of this doctrine was in regard to the recognition of the rebel confederacy by England and France.

But to all this Jefferson did not in the least agree; neither did Madison. They were in full, even pa.s.sionate, sympathy with the men who brought Louis XVI. to the guillotine. Money, they knew, was needed, and it was a crime against liberty to delay payment when payment was due to the French government. With Hamilton the question was, not whether the revolutionists ought to be, but whether they were, France. With Jefferson and Madison they were France, because they ought to be.

Hesitation to acknowledge that the Revolution was the nation, they thought, could only come from an "Anglican party," the "enemies of France and of Liberty," who would lead the American people "into the arms and ultimately into the government of Great Britain,"--to use the terms in which Madison spoke, a little later, of the Federalists. Which of these men, in this regard at least, were the thoughtful and prudent statesmen, and which were _doctrinaires_, n.o.body now, probably, questions. The larger proportion of the people, however, were then carried away by the enthusiasm for the French revolutionists. It was so, no doubt, at first without much distinction of party; but it was inevitable, when the government should be called upon to take some decisive stand in relation to European politics, that the country should divide into two hostile camps; or, rather, that the two camps already existing should become more hostile to each other than ever. It is not necessary to a.s.sume that the ma.s.s of the people gave themselves up to any very hard thinking about the matter. For the most part they followed, as the way is with parties, the political leaders to whom they were already accustomed, never doubting that not to do so would be treacherous to the grat.i.tude America owed to France, and to the cause of liberty and democracy, which, in the hands of the Frenchmen, was hurling monarchs from their thrones--at least one monarch from his, and more, it was hoped, would follow. But when the revolution ran into the terrible excesses of a later stage, if any Federalists had wavered in their allegiance to their chiefs they soon returned, persuaded that the wild and b.l.o.o.d.y anarchy of Paris was not the road that led to the establishment of a wise and safe popular government.

There was no need now of pretexts for quarreling; real causes came fast enough. France declared war against England, and the United States had its part to play in this strife of giants. Its real interest was to keep out of trouble; and, if all were agreed on that point, it does not seem that there should have been much difficulty in saying so. "It behooves the government of this country," wrote Was.h.i.+ngton to Hamilton, "to use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a strict neutrality." It is difficult to conceive of a man being sincerely desirous of helping neither one side nor the other; of injuring neither one side nor the other; of maintaining, so far as help or harm could go, an att.i.tude of absolute impartiality towards both,--it is difficult to conceive of such a man quarreling with the word "neutrality" as applied to his position. But Jefferson, nevertheless, quarreled with it; not frankly and directly as a thing he did not want, but captiously and hypercritically objecting to the word to cover his dislike to the thing itself. "A declaration of neutrality," he said, "was a declaration that there should be no war, to which the Executive was not competent."

It was true that the Executive was not competent to declare that there should be no war; it was not true that the use of the word "neutrality"

could have any such application to the future as to prevent Congress, when it should a.s.semble, from declaring war should it see fit to do so.

But meanwhile, Congress not being in session, and no exigency having arisen that made it desirable in the President's judgment to call an extra session, he, with the a.s.sent of the cabinet,--for Jefferson did not venture upon direct opposition,--issued a proclamation "to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever" that might interfere with "the duty and interest of the United States" to "adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial towards the belligerent powers." The objectionable word was left out in deference to Mr. Jefferson, who, really preferring that there should be no proclamation at all, hoped to take the sting out of it by the omission of a phrase. It was the thing said, not the way of saying it, that the President insisted upon, as it was his duty to preserve the peace till the legislature should declare for war, and his inclination to preserve it altogether.

It can hardly be doubted that Jefferson and his friends saw as plainly as the other party saw how perilous to the interests of the United States a foreign war would probably be. But, while professing a desire to avoid it, they were far more anxious, apparently, to give aid, moral as well as material, to France, with whose revolutionary struggles they sympathized so deeply, than they were to avoid offense to England, whom they hated and would gladly see crippled. Not to be an enemy of England they held was to be an enemy of France; and not of France merely, but of the "rights of man." They could not or would not comprehend any wisdom in moderation, any prudence in delay. It is curious to see how party animosity blinded even the best of them. The objection to the word "neutrality" was a mere quibble; for the proclamation called upon all good citizens to maintain at their peril that state which, in all dictionaries, neutrality is defined to be. Mr. Jefferson, in instructing as secretary of state the American ministers abroad as to the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the government, could find no better term than "a fair neutrality." The fact was, the Republican leaders wished to avoid taking any positive stand, partly because delay might be a help to France, and partly in obedience to the law of party politics, in opposition to the other side. They were not at first quite sure of their ground, and wanted to gain time. Mr. Madison seems to have waited about six weeks before he could venture upon a positive opinion as to the proclamation.

The newspapers helped him to a knowledge of party opinion, and party opinion helped him to make up his own. "Every 'Gazette' I see,"--he wrote in June, about eight weeks after the proclamation was published,--"every 'Gazette' I see (except that of the United States [Federalist]) exhibits a spirit of criticism on the Anglified complexion charged on the Executive politics.... The proclamation was, in truth, a most unfortunate error." A week before, he had been seemingly cautious even in writing to Jefferson. Then he had observed that newspaper criticisms aroused attention, and he had heard expressions of surprise "that the President should have declared the United States to be neutral in the unqualified terms used, when we were so notoriously and unequivocally under eventual engagements to defend the American possessions of France. I have heard it remarked, also, that the impartiality enjoined on the people was as little reconcilable with their moral obligations as the unconditional neutrality proclaimed by the government is with the express articles of the treaty." He adds: "I have been mortified that on these points I could offer no _bona fide_ explanations that might be satisfactory." He was not in doubt long, however. Mr. Jefferson sent him within two or three weeks a series of papers by Hamilton, under the signature of "Pacificus," in defense of the proclamation, and urged him to reply. This Madison undertook to do at once, and in five papers, under the signature of "Helvidius," he took up all the points in dispute.

The question relating to treaty obligations was the more serious. By the treaty of 1778 the United States had guaranteed "to his Most Christian Majesty the present possessions of the Crown of France in America." An attempt on the part of Great Britain to take any of the French West India Islands would involve the United States in the war. How, then, Mr.

Madison's friends might well ask, as in the letter just quoted he said they did, could "the President declare the United States to be neutral in the unqualified terms used, when we were so notoriously and unequivocally under eventual engagements to defend the American possessions of France"? Hamilton's ground was that the treaty, by its terms, was "a defensive alliance," and therefore not binding in this case, inasmuch as the present war against England was offensive; and that, besides, the treaty was in suspension, as France herself was, in a sense, in suspension, having only a provisional government, the permanent and legitimate successor to which was uncertain. But an important point was gained, it was thought, in the decision to receive Genet as the French minister. Hamilton, still acting in accordance with that cautious policy which he thought to be, in such a crisis, the most judicious, questioned whether a minister from the provisional government in Paris should be recognized without reservations. Such an amba.s.sador might be followed presently by another accredited by a new power in the revolutionary progress. This would, at the least, be an awkward dilemma not to be recovered from without the loss of some dignity by the government of the United States. But this point also was yielded in deference to Jefferson, and much to his mortification the concession turned out to be before he was many weeks older.

"I anxiously wish," Madison wrote to Jefferson, "that the reception of Genet may testify what I believe to be the real affections of the people." He was amply gratified. From Charleston, where he landed, to Philadelphia, Genet was received with the warmest enthusiasm by all who sympathized with France, and by that larger number among Americans who are always ready to hurrah for anything or anybody that has caught the popular fancy. Madison watched his progress with great interest, and apparently with some misgivings. Writing again a few days later to Jefferson, he says that "the fiscal party in Alexandria was an overmatch for those who wished to testify the American sentiment." Indeed, he thinks it certain, he says in the same letter, "that Genet will be misled if he takes either the fas.h.i.+onable cant of the cities or the cold caution of the government for the sense of the public,"--falling himself, before he reaches the end of the sentence, into the cant of a.s.suming neutrality in the government to be only a "mask" behind which to hide its "secret Anglomany." But he was quite mistaken in supposing that Genet was likely to be misled, or led at all, by anybody. He was almost capable, as General Knox said, of declaring the United States a department of France, and of levying troops here to reduce the Americans to obedience. The man's conduct, if it had not been so outrageous, would have been ludicrous in its a.s.sumption of power, its disregard of the laws of the country, and its defiance of the government. Within three months of his arrival Jefferson himself was constrained to acknowledge that he had developed "a character and conduct so unexpected and so extraordinary as to place us in the most distressing dilemma, between our regard for his nation, which is constant and sincere, and a regard for our laws, the authority of which must be maintained; for the peace of our country, which the executive magistrate is charged to preserve; for its honor, offended in the person of that magistrate; and for its character, grossly traduced in the conversations and letters of this gentleman." Though this was in an official letter, it gave, no doubt, Jefferson's real opinion; for no man had more reason than he for resenting the conduct of the irrepressible Frenchman. Jefferson has been accused of too much familiarity with the French minister in private, and of tardiness in the discharge of his own duty as secretary where it was likely to clash with the other's schemes. Genet himself complained that he was thrown over by Jefferson after receiving from him every encouragement. This is, of course, true, but not in the least discreditable to Jefferson. When Genet arrived in Philadelphia, he was, although he had already committed some illegal acts in Charleston, profuse in his promises of good behavior. The secretary of state had welcomed him as the representative of France and the Revolution, and naturally he meant to make the most he could out of him, for the sake of the Republican party, as well as for the sake of the sacred cause of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." But he soon saw that he was dealing with one who was a cross between a mountebank and a madman, as we learn from a letter of Madison to Jefferson, written within two months of Jefferson's first interview with Genet. "Your account of Genet," says the letter, "is dreadful. He must be brought right if possible. His folly will otherwise do mischief which no wisdom can repair."

The mischief dreaded was that the administration party would take advantage of the insolent and outrageous conduct of the French minister to show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain popularity and strength for itself. Madison soon writes to Jefferson to acquaint him with the reaction taking place in Virginia, "in the surprise and disgust of those who are attached to the French cause, and who viewed this minister as the instrument for cementing, instead of alienating, the two republics."

He a.s.serts that "the Anglican party is busy, as you may suppose, in making the worst of everything, and in turning the public feelings against France and thence in favor of England." In a sense this must have been true. The "fiscals," the "Anglomanys," the "Anglican party,"

the "monarchists,"--which were Mr. Madison's pet names for his old friends,--were good enough politicians to take great satisfaction in keeping well stirred and in lively use the muddy waters into which their opponents had floundered. They were not, probably, careful always to remember that France was neither the better nor worse, neither the wiser nor the less wise, because one of the mad fanatics, bred of the Revolution, had found his way, unfortunately, to the United States as a minister plenipotentiary. But, on the other hand, it was not true that there was any "Anglican party," in the sense in which Madison used the term,--a party led by men who were "the enemies of France and of liberty, at work to lead the well-meaning from their honorable connection with those [the French people] into the arms and ultimately into the government of Great Britain." Was.h.i.+ngton said that he did not believe there were ten men in the United States, whose opinions deserved any respect, who would change the form of government to a monarchy. But if there were only ten men in the country whose opinions, in the estimate of Jefferson and Madison, were not worth much, Was.h.i.+ngton was among them. The affection and reverence, with which he was regarded by the people, they would have been glad to appeal to on behalf of their own party; but it is easy to read between the lines in Jefferson's "Ana," and in his and Madison's correspondence, that they looked upon the President as the dupe of his secretary of the treasury. Not that they were ever wanting in terms of respect and even of veneration for the President, but the tone was often one of pitiful regret almost akin to contempt.

"I am extremely afraid," Madison wrote to Jefferson, "that the President may not be sufficiently aware of the snares that may be laid for his good intentions by men whose politics at bottom are very different from his own." Again he says, a few days later: "I regret extremely the position into which the President has been thrown. The unpopular cause of Anglomany is openly laying claim to him. His enemies, masking themselves under the popular cause of France, are playing off the most tremendous batteries on him.... It is mortifying to the real friends of the President that his fame and his influence should have anything to apprehend from the success of liberty in another country, since he owes his preeminence to the success of it in his own. If France triumphs, the ill-fated proclamation will be a millstone, which would sink any other character and will force a struggle even on his." Yet it is certain that Was.h.i.+ngton was not in the least doubt as to his own political principles; that he was never in danger of being inveigled into the betrayal of those principles, whatever they might be; and that he was quite capable of due care for his own reputation.

If Madison did not know that these tears over Was.h.i.+ngton, if sincere, were quite uncalled for, Jefferson was not in the least deceived. He records in his "Ana" that the President, referring to certain articles that had recently appeared in Freneau's "Gazette," said that "he considered those papers as attacking him [Was.h.i.+ngton] directly; for he must be a fool indeed to swallow the little sugar-plums here and there thrown out to him; that in condemning the administration of the government they condemned him, for if they thought there were measures pursued contrary to his sentiments, they must conceive him too careless to attend to them, or too stupid to understand them." Again, some months later, the President, alluding to another article in Freneau's paper,--that "rascal Freneau," as he called him,--said "that he despised all their attacks on him personally, but there never had been an act of the government--not meaning in the executive line only, but in any line--which that paper had not abused. He was evidently sore and warm,"

continues the candid secretary, "and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk in my office. But I will not do it."

These frank and indignant avowals of feeling and opinion were not, if we may believe Jefferson, unusual with Was.h.i.+ngton, even in cabinet meetings; and it seems hardly likely that Madison, who was on the most friendly and intimate terms with the President, could have been so ignorant of how he felt and thought as to suppose him the mere dupe of designing men. The truth is, probably, that Madison did not, any more than Jefferson, believe this. It was only a bit of party tactics to a.s.sume, lest the President should have too much influence over the minds of the people, that, in the hands of the wicked "Anglicists," he was as clay in the hands of the potter. The two friends, whether in writing or by speech they lamented and excused the unhappy position, as they were pleased to call it, of the President, must have appeared to each other like the Roman augurs in Gerome's picture.

CHAPTER XIV

HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS

Genet was at last got rid of, but the evil that he did lived after him.

His presence had provoked an outbreak, to some degree, of the phenomena of the French Revolution, which, however significant they might be in the upheaval of an old monarchical despotism, were an unwholesome growth among a simple people, where one man was as good as another before the law; where, from the first settlement of the country, all had largely possessed the advantages of a popular government; and where any other than a republican government for the future was wellnigh impossible. For men to address each other as "citizen," as if the word had the new significance in America that it had just gained in France; to swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were lately discovered rights which had been denied the common people for centuries by kings and n.o.bles, who had always lived in the next street in inconceivable luxury wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor; to form Jacobin clubs pledged to the suppression of the tyranny of aristocrats in a country where, as Samuel Dexter said of New England, there was hardly a man rich enough to own a carriage, and few so poor as not to own a horse; for men thus to ape those revolutionary ways, which meant so much in Paris, may have seemed at the moment, to sober-minded people, more fantastic than harmful. It was harmful, however, insomuch as it subst.i.tuted sentiment for common sense, and made enthusiasm, not reason, the guide of conduct. A character was given to political conflict which obtained for years to come. There was, it is true, a certain manliness about it in remarkable contrast with that maudlin sentimentality of our time which is rather inclined to ask pardon of the rebels of the late civil war for having put them to the trouble of getting up a rebellion. It was a conflict, nevertheless, more of party pa.s.sion than of principle, wherein it is impossible to see that either party was absolutely right, or either absolutely wrong. The Francomania phase of it disappeared for a time in John Adams's administration; but it revived again, and gave intensity and virulence to the political struggles, in the first decade of this century. Then it was that men went about their daily affairs with c.o.c.kades on their hats as distinctive party badges. In their social as well as in their business relations they were governed by party affinities. Neighbors differing in politics would hardly speak to each other, and each was always ready to accept the other's political crookedness as the measure of his possible depravity in everything else. They would hardly walk on the same side of the street; or sail in the same packet; or ride in the same stage-coach; or buy their groceries at the same shop; or listen to the preaching of the gospel from the same pulpit; indeed, if the preacher was known to have p.r.o.nounced political opinions, he was held, by those who did not agree with him, as one from whose shoulders the clerical gown should be torn.

Grat.i.tude to France had not yet even become traditional, and it was intensified by the deepest sympathy for a people struggling for what, by their aid, Americans had so recently gained. Added to this was the old hatred to England, which England as carefully nursed as if it were her settled policy, by exciting Indian hostilities on the borders, by outrages on the high seas, and by an interference with American commerce, exercised with as little consideration of the rights of an independent nation as if the States were still colonies in revolt. Never did a party find, ready made and close at hand, so many elements of popularity; and these being appealed to as Genet appealed to them, it was easy to set the country in a blaze. When the administration was determined that he should be recalled, and the Republican leaders were anxious to get rid of him, as they could not restrain him, Jefferson opposed, in a meeting of the cabinet, the proposition to ask for his recall, lest such popular indignation should be aroused as would enable the French minister to defy the government itself. The seed sowed by such a man, on such a soil, bore fruit a thousand fold for almost a generation. It is not to be wondered at that the Federalists could not long hold their own against a party that did not ask the people to think, but bade them only to remember--much, indeed, that ought to be remembered--and to feel. That is always so much easier to do than the other, and it is always so much easier to appeal effectually to sentiment than to reflection, that the wonder rather is that the Federalists could hold their own so long as they did. All things were against them but one. Was.h.i.+ngton, though altogether above any partisan bias, as he believed to be the imperative duty of the chief magistrate of the nation, conducted his administration by the principles which distinguished the Federalists. He was neither, as he intimated to Jefferson, so careless as not to know what was done, nor such a fool as not to understand why it was done; and so greatly was he revered for his exalted character, so universal was the confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he remained President, the party that surrounded him was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, to bring that power into pacific and rational relations with the United States. The government aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all foreign politics; to maintain that perfect neutrality which should violate no treaties, offend no national friends.h.i.+ps, provoke no jealousies, and leave England and France to fight their own battles, content that the United States should be an impartial spectator. Thirty years afterward, when the Federal party had ceased to exist under that t.i.tle, this was announced as the true American policy, and was thenceforth known as "The Monroe Doctrine," though the merit, even of re-discovery, did not belong to President Monroe.

In nine cases out of ten, perhaps in ninety-nine out of a hundred, the wisest statesmans.h.i.+p is the knowledge when and how to compromise.

Certainly that was all John Jay, whom the President sent to England to make a treaty, could do. The treaty was a bad one; that is, it was not such an one as any President and Senate would have dared to consent to for the last sixty years; it was not so good an one as that which Monroe and Pinkney negotiated ten years later, and which President Jefferson, lest it should help England and hurt France, then quietly locked up in his desk without permitting the Senate even to know of its existence; nor was it so bad as the treaty of peace made with England in 1814. But it was undoubtedly the best that could be done at the time. The question was between it and nothing; and the best its warmest defenders could say was that it was better than nothing. No treaty meant war; and war at that moment with England meant ruin. At least so the Federalists thought, and, so far as human foresight could go, they were probably right.

But never was a treaty more unpopular than this, when its provisions came to be understood. The government, in delaying to make it public, seemed to fear for its reception, and by that hesitation helped to raise the very doubts it was afraid of. But when it was published the whole South was aroused as one man on finding that the payment for fugitive slaves, who during the war of the Revolution had sought refuge with the British army, was not provided for. Other concessions made to England were, in other parts of the country, deemed not less humiliating and injurious to the national honor than this refusal to pay for runaway negroes. Also, there was a one-sided stipulation relating to commerce in the West Indies, so injurious to American interests that the President and Senate, rather than ratify it, determined to reject the whole treaty and take the consequences. There was hardly a town of any note that did not hold its indignation meeting. Jay was burned in effigy, or the attempt was made so to express the public disapprobation, in more than one of the larger towns. Hamilton, when at a public meeting in New York he tried to explain and defend the treaty, was stoned and compelled to retire. If the more violent opponents of the administration were to be believed, its members, from the President down, and all the leading men of the party supporting it, were bought by "British gold," or were ready without being bought, but from pure original depravity, to betray their own country and help to destroy France. The name of the ingenious inventor of the argument of "British gold," then used for the first time, has unfortunately been lost; but it has stood the test of a hundred years' usage, and is as startling and conclusive to-day as it was a century ago.

There soon came, however, the sober second thought which took into consideration the circ.u.mstances under which the treaty was made, the possible and even probable consequences of its rejection, as well as the objections to the treaty itself. After the first excitement had pa.s.sed away, many thought it worth while to read for themselves what hitherto they had only reviled at the suggestion of others, or from sympathy with the popular clamor. The commercial community, the New York Chamber of Commerce leading the way, came to the conclusion that their rights and interests were reasonably protected; that to be recognized as a neutral between two such belligerent powers as England and France was a great point gained; that partial indemnity was better than total loss; and that the chance of a fairly profitable trade in the future was preferable to the ruin of all foreign commerce. It was universally agreed that peace was better than war; but there was this difference between the two parties: while one maintained that war was not a necessary consequence of the rejection of the treaty, the other declared it must be inevitable, where there were so many points of collision which could only be escaped by mutual agreement. This was especially true on the frontier, where Indian hostilities were sure to follow, and lead to general war, if the military posts, which should have been given up at the close of the Revolution, should remain longer in the hands of the English.

But, after all, the real question with the Republicans was the influence which a treaty with England might have upon the relations of France and the United States. They detested England for her own sake; they detested her still more for the sake of France. If there had been no question of France in the way they would, perhaps, have been willing, like the Federalists, to consider the relations of England and the United States on their merits,--to remember that the commerce between them was greater than that which the United States had with any other country, the loss of which might be a disastrous check to her prosperity; that the peoples of the two countries were, after all, of one blood, and that theirs was a common heritage in the inst.i.tutions, laws, language, and character that distinguished the race; that the quarrel between them was--though it might be the more bitter on that account--a family quarrel, and ought for that reason to be the more speedily settled. But, if England would not remember these things,--as she never has to this day,--if, on the contrary, she chose to be overbearing, contemptuous, insolent, quite regardless of American rights,--as she always has been when she could be so safely,--then it behooved the United States, inasmuch as she was a young and as yet a feeble nation, to conciliate this powerful enemy whenever she could do so consistently with her self-respect, to avoid giving unnecessary offense or provoking fresh injuries, and, in the mean while, to nurture and husband her strength, to keep an accurate account of all the wrongs that in her weakness she should be compelled to submit to, and to bide her time. These were the principles of the Federalists.

Their aim was, not the good of England, but the good of the United States. They were an American party; to them foreign relations were of importance mainly for the influence these might have upon the prosperity, happiness, and power of their own country. They did not forget the grat.i.tude due to France for the aid she had given to the struggling colonies, though that aid was given not so much for love of America as for hatred of England. The pacific and friendly relations already established with France they held in due estimation; and their sympathies went out to her people in full measure in their struggle for a popular government, so long as that struggle was kept within the bounds of reason and humanity. But sympathy with and grat.i.tude to France did not blind them to the wisdom and expediency of pacific and friendly relations with England, provided such could be established without the sacrifice of their own prosperity, independence, and national pride. It was only to add to that prosperity, to gain new security for that independence, and to build up a nation of which they and their children, to the latest generation, might well be proud, that they ought to be on good terms with that powerful state with whom they were co-heirs in all the ideas and inst.i.tutions const.i.tuting the civilization that made her great. They hoped to build up, west of the Atlantic Ocean, "an Inglishe Nation" in its broadest sense, of which Walter Raleigh had hoped that he might live to see the beginning, and which the latest historical writers in England are just now recognizing as the most important part of the modern empire of the English race.

The House of Representatives was not in session when the Jay treaty was ratified by the President and Senate, but Mr. Madison's letters show that he could see in it nothing but evil. In February, 1796, the ratification by both governments was announced to both houses of Congress, and measures were at once taken by the Republicans in the lower house to render the treaty, if possible, null and void. A resolution, warmly supported by Mr. Madison, was offered, calling upon the President for copies of the instructions under which Mr. Jay acted, with the correspondence and any other papers, proper to be made public, relating to the negotiation. The resolution was subjected to a debate of three weeks, but was finally pa.s.sed. The request was refused by the President, on the ground that the treaty-making power was, by the Const.i.tution, confided to the President and Senate. It was on this point mainly that the debate had turned; and the President, in support of his opinion as well as that of the Federalists generally, referred to his recollection of the plain intention of the Const.i.tutional Convention, and to the fact that a proposition, "that no treaty should be binding on the United States which was not ratified by law," was "explicitly rejected." Mr. Madison said a day or two after, that, while he did not doubt "the case to be as stated, he had no recollection of it." Of the message itself, he said that it was "as unexpected as its tone and tenor are improper and indelicate." But Hamilton, he thought, wrote it, and the President was, as usual, lamented over for having been taken in. A resolution, however, was finally pa.s.sed in favor of the treaty, though by a majority of three only. The debate upon it was earnest and long, Mr. Madison leading the opposition. His disappointment was bitter. "The progress of this business throughout," he wrote to Jefferson, "has been to me the most worrying and vexatious that I ever encountered; and the more so, as the causes lay in the unsteadiness, the follies, the perverseness, and the defections among our friends, more than in the strength, or dexterity, or malice of our opponents."

Though the Jay treaty was not--as was said on a previous page--such an one as the United States would have acceded to in latter times, the result proved it to be a wise and timely measure. Notwithstanding the disturbed condition of affairs in Europe, its influence upon the United States, and the increasing violence of faction here, the increase for the next ten or twelve years of the commerce, and the consequent growth and prosperity, of the country were greater than the most sanguine supporters of the treaty had dared to hope for. Their immediate expectations that it might be possible to establish better relations with England, without disturbing essentially those existing with France, were, however, signally disappointed. Their opponents were wiser; for they not only measured accurately the indignation of the French by their own, but they took good care that it should not languish for want of encouragement. The French Directory might have been reconciled to the situation had it been plain to them that there was neither an "Anglicized" party nor a French party in the United States, but that the people were united in the determination to maintain, for their own protection, whatever their personal sympathies might be, an absolute neutrality between the belligerent powers. But as they were a.s.sured that their friends in America meant also to be their effectual allies, so they believed that those who professed neutrality used it only as a mask for friends.h.i.+p to England.

James Monroe had been received in Paris as American minister, literally as well as morally, with open arms, in that memorable scene when, in the presence and amid the cheers of the National Convention, the president, Merlin de Douai, imprinted upon his cheeks, in the name of France, the kiss of fraternity. Till he was recalled in the latter days of Was.h.i.+ngton's administration, Monroe was the representative not so much of the government to which he owed allegiance as of the faction to which he belonged at home. He was not, it is true, unmindful of the hundreds of outrages perpetrated by French naval vessels and privateers upon American merchantmen; that their crews were thrown into French prisons, and that the detention of their cargoes had brought ruin upon many American citizens; nor did he neglect to demand redress. But he seemed absolutely incapable of understanding that if there were anything to choose between the insults and wrongs which America was compelled to submit to from England and France, it was only in the greater ability of England to inflict them. English s.h.i.+ps swept the ocean, and pretexts were never wanting for overhauling American vessels, stripping them of some of their men, or confiscating both s.h.i.+ps and cargoes. France had as many pretexts, and quite as good a will to enforce them; but she had fewer s.h.i.+ps, and for that reason, and that only, did rather less damage.

But however earnest Monroe was in insisting upon the rights of neutrals, in urging upon the French ministry the strict observance of treaty obligations, and in complaining of the constant injuries done in their despite, there was another thing about which he was far more earnest.

He was as anxious to aid the French to baffle, if possible, Jay's negotiations in London as if he were uncovering a plot against his own government. When the ratification of the treaty was made known in Paris, the indignation of the Directory was hardly kept within bounds. The minister of foreign affairs notified Monroe that the Directory considered the stipulations of the treaty of 1778 as altered and suspended in their most essential parts by this treaty with England.

Under any circ.u.mstances the French would, no doubt, have resented the establishment of friendly relations between the United States and the old enemy of France, with whom she at that moment was engaged in a war arousing more than the bitter inherited enmity of the two peoples. But the course Monroe had seen fit to pursue had done much to a.s.sure the French that the strong party in the United States, which he represented, would never permit the virgin republic to be delivered, as it was a.s.sumed the treaty did deliver her, bound and gagged, into the hands of the power which Jefferson loved to call "the harlot England." The first enthusiasm of the Revolution was fast growing into cant in both countries, and the language of devotion to liberty, equality, and fraternity was beginning to lose all meaning. But it was easy to be deceived by the a.s.surances, more significant in actions than in words, of an official representative, that the American people, save an Anglicized and decreasing minority, were the friends, and meant to be the allies, of France. Of course the French were all the more exasperated because they had permitted themselves to be deluded. Monroe was first rebuked by his own government for neglecting to do all that might have been done to reconcile the Directory to a treaty between the United States and Great Britain; and soon after, his conduct continuing unsatisfactory, he was recalled.

It is, of course, possible that the French Directory were not misled; that nothing would have reconciled them to the British treaty; and that their subsequent course would have been the same had they believed the American people were desirous to be on good terms with England solely for their own tranquillity and interest, and not at all because any large portion of them were at enmity with France. This, however, would not be a valid excuse for Monroe's course as a representative of his government. The only defense for him is, that he was deceived by his friends at home; they must share, therefore, the responsibility for his conduct, inasmuch as they encouraged a man not over strong in mind or character, and more likely to be governed by impulse than by good judgment, to abuse the confidence placed in him by the administration.

From any share in this responsibility, however, Madison must be relieved. He was in very constant correspondence with Monroe, and kept him carefully advised as to the progress of the treaty. No man desired its defeat more earnestly than he, and he believed that a majority of the people were opposed to it. But he evidently doubted its rejection from the first, and his discussion of possibilities in his letters to Monroe was always frank and discriminating. In the end he accounted for the vote in its favor in the House of Representatives by the activity and influence of its friends, which its opponents wanted the ability or the time to overcome. It is probable that his colleagues of his own party in the House did not agree with him that public opinion was against the treaty, as it was by votes from their side that its acceptance was carried.