Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States Part 7

These observations were, he said, the pleasing result of the investigation into which the subject of his report had led, and were applicable to the Southern as well as to the Middle and Northern States.

He also designated the princ.i.p.al raw materials of which these manufactures were composed, and which were, or were capable of being, raised or produced by ourselves. These were iron, copper, lead, fossil coal, wool, skins, grain, flax and hemp, cotton, wool, silk, &c., &c.

The Secretary contended that the growth and production of all the articles last named were, in common with the manufactures of which they const.i.tuted the raw material, ent.i.tled to the encouragement _and specific aid of the Federal Government_.

He next pointed out the various modes in which that aid might be afforded, varying its application according to circ.u.mstances; viz.:

1st. By _protecting duties_.

2d. By _prohibition_ of rival articles, or duties equivalent to prohibition.

3d. By _prohibition of the exportation_ of the _materials_ of manufactures.

4th. By _pecuniary bounties_.

5th. By _premiums_.

6th. By _exemption_ of _the materials_ of _manufactures from duties_.

7th. By _drawbacks_ of duties on the same materials.

8th. By _encouragement_ of new inventions at home and the _introduction_ of others from abroad.

9th. By _judicious regulations_ for the _inspection_ of manufactured commodities.

10th. By facilitating pecuniary remittances; and,

11th. By facilitating the transportation of commodities _by roads and ca.n.a.ls_.

Of the power of the Federal Government to promote the objects spoken of by the means suggested, with two exceptions, he said there could be no doubt. The exceptions were the encouragement of new inventions and the facilities to transportation by roads and ca.n.a.ls. In respect to the specific execution of these measures he confessed and regretted that there was some doubt. But to the power of giving aid, so far as that could be done by the application of money, he insisted that there was no exception: "Whatever concerns the general interest of learning, of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce are" he said, "within the sphere of the national concerns _as far as regards an application of money_;" and he proposed, first, to raise a fund out of the surplus of additional duties laid and appropriated to replace defalcations proceeding from the abolition or diminution of duty diverted for purposes of protection, which he thought would be more than adequate for the payment of _all bounties_ which should be decreed; and, _secondly_, to const.i.tute a fund for the operations of a board to be established for promoting _arts_, _agriculture_, _manufactures_, and _commerce_. To this Board he proposed to give power to apply the funds so raised to defray the expenses of the emigration of artists and manufacturers in particular branches of extraordinary importance; to induce the prosecution and introduction of useful discoveries, inventions, and improvements by proportionate rewards, judiciously held out and applied; to encourage by premiums, both honorable and lucrative, the exertions of individuals and cla.s.ses in relation to the several objects they were charged with promoting; and to afford such other aids to those objects as might be generally designated by law;--adding to all this that it often happens that the capitals employed are not equal to the purposes of bringing from abroad workmen of a superior kind, and that here, in cases worthy of it, the auxiliary agency of Government would in all probability be useful. There are also valuable workmen in every branch who are prevented from emigrating solely by the want of means.

Occasional aids to such persons, properly administered, might be, he suggested, the source of valuable acquisitions to the country.

The thorough and minute consideration bestowed on its numerous details, the well sustained consistency of the argument with the principles upon which it was founded, the felicity and clearness with which its author's views were expressed, and the evidence it furnished of well directed and comprehensive research, stamp this remarkable doc.u.ment as the ablest state paper that proceeded from his pen during the whole of his political career. But able as it was, it yet, as we shall see when we recur to the action of parties, contributed more than all that he had before done to the prostration of the political standing of its author and to the overthrow of his party. Its bold a.s.sumptions of power and the jubilant spirit in which they were expressed afforded the clearest indications, as well to his opponents as to the country, that he regarded his victory over the Const.i.tution as complete. He spoke of the national legislature, unhesitatingly and as one having authority, as possessing, in virtue of the construction of the Const.i.tution he had established, all the power with very limited exceptions which he insisted in the Convention ought to be given to it.

Mr. Jefferson denounced the recommendations of the report to President Was.h.i.+ngton with great warmth and earnestness. He described it as going far beyond any pretensions to power under the Const.i.tution which had yet been set up, and as a doc.u.ment to which many eyes were turned as one which was to let us know whether we lived under a limited or an unlimited government.[21]

[21] 4 Jefferson's _Correspondence_, p. 457.

But the views of the Secretary of the Treasury in the establishment of the policy of which we have been speaking have as yet been but imperfectly described. They had a breadth and an extent of which superficial observers had no idea. The increased strength the General Government derived from turning towards itself so many and such active men as the holders and purchasers of the public debt, State and National, and the influence which the patronage attached to his financial scheme would give to the existing administration, were both important, and doubtless entered into Hamilton's designs. The views of common minds might well have been limited to such acquisitions. But these results fell far short of Hamilton's antic.i.p.ations. His partiality for the English system, it is natural to presume, arose in some degree from his birth and early training; but study and reflection, I am inclined to think, had quite as much to do with bringing his mind to the conclusions it cherished with so much earnestness. Among the public men of his day there was not one who appears to have devoted a larger share of his time to examinations into and meditation upon public affairs.

There was not one who wrote more or with more ease upon the subjects of government in general and public financial questions in particular.

Almost every thing he said and wrote and did, in these respects, went to show that the elements of power by which the English government had been raised from a crude and in some degree impracticable condition to the seemingly palmy state at which it had arrived when his successive reports were made had been justly reviewed and thoroughly considered by him. The result of this survey was a conviction that for the favorable changes, as he regarded them, which had taken place in the condition of England she was more indebted to the operation of her bank and funding system than to any other cause. These, like his corresponding systems, had been originally formed for the accomplishment of immediate and limited objects. His were avowedly to revive and to uphold our sinking public credit; theirs, to relieve the government established by the Revolution of 1688 from its dependence upon the landed aristocracy for its revenues, and to secure the acquisition of ample means to defray the expenses of the war in which England was at the time involved. From such beginnings these princ.i.p.al measures, aided by kindred and affiliated establishments of which they were the parents, had with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity developed a great political power in the state, soon and ever since distinguished from its a.s.sociates in the government of the country as the MONEY POWER,--a power destined to produce greater changes in the workings of the English system than had been accomplished by the Revolution itself.

The rival powers of the state had down to that period consisted of the crown and the landed aristocracy. The measures out of which the money power was constructed were designed, as has been stated, to render the former, restored to greater favor with the nation by the Revolution, more independent of the latter than it had hitherto been. This new power had not only performed its duty in that regard, acting in the capacity of umpire between the crown and the landed aristocracy, (the latter before so omnipotent,) but had at times found itself able to control the action of both through the influence of public opinion, to which it had given a vitality and force it never before possessed.

Mr. Bancroft, in his able history of the United States, has given a condensed and I have no doubt a very correct account of the rise and of a part of the progress of the money power in England, as they are presented by her historians. His entire remarks upon the subject are full of interest and instruction, and I regret that I am obliged to restrict myself to the following extract:--"Moreover, as the expenses of wars soon exceeded the revenue of England, the government prepared to avail itself of the largest credit which, not the acc.u.mulations of wealth only, but the floating credits of commerce, and the funding system could supply. The price of such aid was political influence. That the government should, as its paramount policy, promote commerce, domestic manufactures, and a favorable balance of trade; that the cla.s.ses benefited by this policy should sustain the government with their credit and their wealth, was the reciprocal relation and compromise on which rested the fate of parties in England. The floating credits of commerce, aided by commercial acc.u.mulations, soon grew powerful enough to balance the landed interest; stock aristocracy competed with feudalism. So imposing was the spectacle of the introduction of the citizens and of commerce as the arbiter of alliances, the umpire of factions, the judge of war and peace, that it roused the attention of speculative men: that at last Bolingbroke, claiming to speak for the landed aristocracy, described his opponents, the Whigs, as the party of the banks, the commercial corporations, and 'in general, the moneyed interest;' and the gentle Addison, espousing the cause of the burghers, declares nothing to be more reasonable than that 'those who have engrossed the riches of the nation should have the management of its public treasure, and the direction of its fleets and armies.' In a word the old English aristocracy was compelled to respect the innovating element embodied in the moneyed interest."[22]

[22] 3 Bancroft's _History of the United States_, p. 8.

The full establishment here of a similar power, by attaching to the bank and funding systems the political influence they had acquired in England, was, beyond all doubt, the "other and still other stages of improvement" alluded to by Hamilton in his encouraging conversation with Jefferson, in which he expressed a hope, for the first time, that the inadequacy of the Const.i.tution might yet be overcome, and the necessity of returning to the English _form_ be at least postponed. That the leading supporters of his policy at least understood and entered into Hamilton's views will be seen in the following extract from a letter written to him by Fisher Ames, which will be found in the first volume of Randall's "Life of Jefferson," at p. 638: "All the influence of the moneyed men ought to be wrapped up in the Union (Federal Government) and in one Bank," &c.

Of the three great elements of power under the English system--the crown, the landed aristocracy, and the moneyed interest--Hamilton regarded the latter, I have no doubt, as the most salutary even in England. There was little in the pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of the kingly office, and still less in the feudal grandeur of a landed aristocracy, to captivate a mind like his; he advocated the monarchical form for special reasons of a very different character, and these he a.s.signed in the Convention. Indeed, he all but expressed this preference when he said to John Adams,--"Strike out of the English system its corruptions and you make the government an impracticable machine." Corruption in some form being the means by which the money power ordinarily exerts its influence, Hamilton was not slow in foreseeing the advantages to be derived from that power in the United States. It is true that the influence it exerted in England was liberal in its character, and beneficial, at least in its political bearings, to the middle cla.s.ses. We have seen that one object and a princ.i.p.al effect of its establishment was to reduce the overshadowing influence of the landed aristocracy which existed so long and exerted a sway so imperious over the country--an object in the accomplishment of which the members of the "stock aristocracy" were, in all probability, not a little stimulated by recollections of their past exclusions not only from all partic.i.p.ation in the management of public affairs, but also from many social distinctions. The landed aristocracy of England is composed of a race of men superior in manly virtues and consistency of character to similar cla.s.ses in other countries, but notwithstanding these undeniable and commendable traits they are, by force of their condition and by the law of their minds, in a great degree the result of that condition, unwilling to extend to their unprivileged fellow-subjects that equality in public and private rights to which we republicans consider them justly ent.i.tled. In this respect there is no difference between them, be they Whigs or Tories,--their first duty being, in the estimation of both, to "stand by their order." It is equally true that it did not comport with Hamilton's policy to promote the establishment of any power here the influence of which would enure to the increase and security of political power in the people, and that, to answer his purposes, the results of the operations of the money power here must be the reverse of what they were in England. He was too well versed in politics and parties not to know that the action of every political organization in a state takes its direction from the character and condition of its princ.i.p.al rival, and that all have their rivals. If one is not found to exist they will soon make one, for such is the natural operation of political parties in any degree free.

We differed greatly from England in the condition and political aspect of affairs; we had no monarchical inst.i.tutions, no landed aristocracy to excite the rivalry and opposition of the money power. It was itself, on the contrary, destined, when firmly established, to become whatever of aristocracy could co-exist with our political system. Its natural antagonist would be the democratic spirit of the country,--that spirit which had been the lion in Hamilton's path from the beginning, the dread of which had destroyed his usefulness and blasted the fair prospects that were presented to the youthful patriot,--that spirit which he doubtless sincerely believed adverse to order, and dest.i.tute of due respect for the rights of property. It was to keep down this spirit that he desired the establishment of a money power here which should stand by the Government as its interested ally, and support it against popular disaffection and tumult. He well understood that, if he accomplished that desire, they would soon become the princ.i.p.al antagonistic influences on our political stage. He knew also, what was not less satisfactory to his feelings, that if the antic.i.p.ations, not to say hopes, which he never ceased to entertain, should be realized, of the presentation of a fair opportunity for the introduction of his favorite inst.i.tutions without too great a shock to public feeling; there could be no cla.s.s of men who would be better disposed to second his views than those whose power in the state he had so largely contributed to establish. To be allied to power, permanent, if possible, in its character and splendid in its appendages, is one of the strongest pa.s.sions which wealth inspires. The grandeur of the Crown and of the landed aristocracy affords a fair vent to that in England. Here, where it is deprived of that indulgence, it maintains a constant struggle for the establishment of a moneyed oligarchy, the most selfish and monopolizing of all depositories of political power, and is only prevented from realizing its complete designs by the democratic spirit of the country.

Hamilton succeeded for a season in all his wishes. He established the money power upon precisely the same foundations upon which it had been raised in England. He founded a political school the implied alliance between which and the Government was similar to that which was formed between the money power in England and the Revolutionary Government in 1688. A party adhering inflexibly to the leading principle of that school had survived his own overthrow, is still in existence, and will continue to exist as long as ours remains a free Government, and as long as the characters and dispositions of men remain what they are. To combat _the democratic spirit_ of the country was the object of its original establishment, an object which it has pursued with unflagging diligence, by whatever name it may have been designated.

Having brought the general subject to this point it is due to truth and justice that I should, before I proceed farther, refer to considerations connected with Hamilton's motives which have been already but casually and partially noticed.

In all his steps he was doubtless influenced at bottom by a sincere desire to promote the good of his country, and as little by personal views as ordinarily falls to the lot of man. A riveted conviction that the ma.s.ses were dest.i.tute of a sufficient love of order and respect for private rights, with an entire distrust, consequently, of their capacity for self-government, lay at the foundation of his whole course,--a course which the matured judgment of the country has definitively condemned as to both teacher and doctrine. Subsequent experience of long duration has shown, as I have remarked already, that the dispositions of our people are eminently conservative in respect to public order and the rights of property; exceptions to the general rule have been witnessed here as well as elsewhere, but they have been of very limited duration and seldom the cause of much mischief. There have been few if any countries that have been more fortunate in this regard.

I have also spoken of Hamilton's preference for monarchical inst.i.tutions, upon evidence of which I have not felt myself at liberty to doubt. But it is due to the memory of that distinguished man that we should speak of his disposition in that respect with more precision than might be deemed necessary in other cases. To a.s.sume that he was a friend to monarchy as it existed in England in the times of the Stuarts and their predecessors would be doing him gross injustice. No man in the country, in his day, respected less the absurd dogma of the divine right of kings, or regarded with more contempt the reverence paid by gaping crowds to the pomp and pageantry of royalty and to the carefully guarded relics and reliquaries of the h.o.a.r inst.i.tution of monarchy, than Alexander Hamilton. He was, beyond all doubt, entirely sincere when he said, in the Federal Convention, that he "was as zealous an advocate for liberty as any man whatsoever, and trusted he would be as willing a martyr to it, though he differed as to the form in which it was most eligible;" and had he been a fellow-subject and contemporary of Russell, and Sydney, and Hampden, we may believe that he would have proved himself as prompt as either to make sacrifices equal to theirs in resistance to arbitrary power. Expectations of personal advantages through the favor of royalty did not enter into the formation of his opinions. It was monarchy as modified and re-established by the Revolution of 1688 that was the object of Hamilton's preference. In the same speech from which I have just quoted he gave with manly candor his reasons for believing that the English model presented the fairest chance of any system then extant for the selection of a good executive.

He contrasted the probable advantages in this regard between a chief magistrate selected, in the first instance, by Parliament and continued by descent, and one elected by the people for a limited period, and frankly argued in favor of the former. His opinion was mainly controlled by that want of confidence in the capacity of the people for self-government which he never hesitated to acknowledge, and which, as I have said, lay at the foundation of his political views. But it was not the king, as such, that he sought after, but a competent chief magistrate; and he advocated monarchical inst.i.tutions only because he thought them the most likely to produce such an one. In a speech delivered by him in the New York Ratification Convention, which bears the stamp of his own revision, he said, "It is an undeniable truth that the body of the people in every country sincerely desire its prosperity, but it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government." He never exhibited a preference for monarchy in the abstract; no one ever heard him express a partiality for or an attachment to this or that royal family save as their acts were more or less meritorious, and I cannot think that such considerations ever swayed his course. He treated the question not as one of personal preference, but as one involving the chances of good government. In deciding this question he may have erred, and few in our country can deny or seriously doubt that he did greatly err; but it was a question that he had a right to entertain, more especially at the formation of the Government, and one in respect to which, his opinion having been honestly formed, error could not fairly be made the subject of reproach.

CHAPTER IV.

Excitement of the Public Mind caused by Hamilton's Measures--Great Men brought thus into the Political Field--The Preponderance of leading Politicians and Commercial Cla.s.ses on the side of Hamilton--Not so with the Landed Interest--Character of Farmers and Planters of the United States--Position of the Landed Interest toward the Anti-Federal Party and toward Hamilton's System--Success in maintaining its Principles greater in the Southern than in the Northern States and the Causes thereof--The Landed Interest the Fountain of the old Republican Party--Course of that Party toward Was.h.i.+ngton and his Administration--Decline of the Federal Party--Hamilton's Course in the Convention the most Brilliant and Creditable of his Political Career--His Candor and Devotion to Principle on that Occasion--His subsequent Loss of the Confidence of the Friends of Republican Government--Coincidences and Contrasts in the Public Lives of Hamilton and Madison--Their several Contributions in the First Congress to the Promotion of the Financial Branch of the Public Service--The Fate and the Fruits of each--The Country chiefly indebted to them for the Const.i.tution--Their Treatment of it after its Adoption not the same--The Provision authorizing Amendments necessary to save the Const.i.tution from Rejection--Memorials from New York and Virginia--Dread of a New Convention on the Part of the Federalists--Madison's Amendments--Consequences of their Adoption--Character of Madison's Statesmans.h.i.+p--Different Courses of Hamilton and Madison on Questions of Const.i.tutional Power--Unconst.i.tutionality of Hamilton's Measures--His Consciousness thereof--His Sense of the Obligations of Public Men--His View of the Const.i.tution as "a Temporary Bond of Union"--Subsequent Change of Opinion, but Final Return in 1802 to his Original View--Separation between him and Madison--"Sapping and Mining Policy" of Hamilton--That Policy counteracted by the Republican Party--Discrimination between Was.h.i.+ngton and Hamilton in the Adoption of the latter's Policy--Probable Ground of Was.h.i.+ngton's Official Approval of the Bank Bill--Subsequent similar Position and Conduct of Madison--Instances of a like Transcending of Const.i.tutional Limits under a supposed Necessity, by Jefferson and by Jackson--The Hamiltonian Rule of Construction discarded by Was.h.i.+ngton in the case of his Veto of the First Apportionment Bill--Portions of the Community liable to be attracted to Hamilton's Policy--The Principles of that Policy inaugurated in England in 1688--Extension of its Influence in this Country to almost every Cla.s.s but the Landed Interest--Points of Agreement and of Difference between Hamilton and Politicians of his School in our Time--Exceptions to the General Rule--Influence of the Money Power in attracting Literary and Professional Men--Great Preponderance in Numbers of Newspapers and Periodicals supporting the Views of the Money Power over those devoted to the Advocacy of Democratic Principles--The same Fact observable in Monarchical Countries--Caucuses and Conventions not necessary to the Harmony of the Federal Party--Sagacity indicated by Hamilton's System--The Secret of its Failure in the Numerical Preponderance, often underrated, of the Agricultural Cla.s.s--The Policy best adapted to succeed with our People is that of a Strict Construction of the Const.i.tution as to the Powers of the General Government--Such the Successful Policy of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson--Struggles of the Money Power Ineffectual till crowned with Exceptional Success in the Overthrow of Van Buren's Administration--Lat.i.tudinarianism of Hamilton's School--John Quincy Adams elected as a Convert to the Principles of the Republican Party--His early Disavowal of those Principles, and the consequent Overthrow of his Administration--Relative Power of the Landed Interest--The Safety of our Inst.i.tutions depends on the Right Convictions of the great Agricultural Cla.s.s--Growth of the Money Power in England--The Political Influence of that Power Beneficent in Europe but Injurious in the United States.

I have already spoken of the extent to which the public mind was excited by Hamilton's measures. Large portions of the people regarded the most prominent among them as violations of the Const.i.tution, and most of them as servile imitations of the English system, inexpedient in themselves and contrary to the genius and spirit of our inst.i.tutions. Their arraignment and vindication brought into the political field the ablest men of the country at a period when she abounded in great men. The American Revolution accomplished here that which the French Revolution, then at its commencement, and similar crises in all countries and times, have brought about, namely, the production of great men by great events, developing and calling into action upon a large scale intellects the powers of which, but for their application to great transactions, might have remained unknown alike to their possessors and to the world. Among the master minds which were thus roused to political activity were Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Patrick Henry, John and Samuel Adams, John Jay, Chancellor Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, George Clinton, Robert Yates, Chancellor Lansing, John Langdon, Elbridge Gerry, Rufus King, Roger Sherman, John d.i.c.kinson, Speight and Williamson and the Rutledges, Pinckneys, and Middletons of North and South Carolina, Chace and Luther Martin of Maryland, Jackson, Few, and Baldwin, of Georgia, John Mason, Marshall, Pendleton, and Wythe of Virginia, and others; men, some of whom have under various circ.u.mstances added celebrity to the best informed communities in the world and at one of the brightest periods of the human intellect, and who, if they could now be congregated, would eclipse the great men of any country.

Hamilton's measures, of which the funding system was the pioneer, presented their first field, after the adoption of the Federal Const.i.tution, for the display of their opinions and talents. They supported in those grave discussions, with few exceptions, relatively the same principles by which they had been influenced in respect to federal politics during the government of the Confederation, by which also they and men of their stamp had been governed under the colonial system, and to which they would have adhered, in all probability, throughout the intermediate period if they had not been driven into open rebellion by the indiscriminate and intolerable oppression of a bigoted tyrant, and by their own innate hatred of wrong and outrage, without immediate regard to the government that should result from their revolution.

Jefferson was absent from the country during a large portion of the government of the Confederation, and through the entire period of the formation and adoption of the new Const.i.tution. He sympathized throughout with the feelings and concurred in the opinions of the Anti-Federal party, with the exceptions that he was not opposed to conferring on the Federal Government the powers to regulate commerce and to raise its own revenues; was in favor of a convention for the construction of a new const.i.tution, and of the formation by that body of a substantive and effective federal government, composed of legislative, executive, and judicial departments; approved of the Const.i.tution as made, with modifications which were princ.i.p.ally provided for by amendments proposed and adopted, and was sincerely anxious for its ratification. These things have, I know, been controverted and are still disbelieved by many, but will be found fully established by references to the following doc.u.ments, viz.: Jefferson's "Correspondence," Vol. I.

p. 441; Vol. II. pp. 64, 162, 221, 236, 273, 303; Letter to Was.h.i.+ngton expressing his anxiety for the adoption of the Const.i.tution; p. 310, some strong remarks in favor of it; p. 342, to Madison, congratulating him on its adoption, and p. 348, to John Jay, to the same effect.

Of Madison's character and general course I have already spoken. His position at the period now under consideration differed from that of all his contemporaries in the public service. He had supported all the commercial and financial measures advocated by the Federal party during the government of the Confederation, and had been as active, and I think as efficient, as Hamilton in his efforts to promote the call of the Federal Convention; had opposed, with ability and firmness, the Anti-Federal plan of a Const.i.tution; had, as far as we have knowledge of Was.h.i.+ngton's opinions, acted in concert with him in the Convention, and was first selected by him at a later period to prepare his Farewell Address; had combined his labors with those of Hamilton and Jay to promote the ratification of the Const.i.tution by the well-known papers of the "Federalist," and, upon the whole, had done more than any other man to secure that great object. Yet there had been no time, as before observed, when he could with propriety have been regarded as a member of the Federal party, in the sense in which Hamilton, Adams, and Jay were so regarded, or when he did not possess the confidence of the Anti-Federal party, in respect to all public questions other than those to which I have referred, and, what is still more remarkable, there was not, during the whole of this period, a single occasion on which his perfect probity and disinterestedness were not very generally felt and acknowledged.

Among the leading politicians of the epoch of which I speak, the preponderance in numbers, in wealth, in social position, and possibly in talent, was on the side of Hamilton; and when to these were added the commercial and numerous other cla.s.ses interested in and dependent upon the money power then just rising into importance, an estimate may be formed of his ability to give tone and direction to the state and to society, and to cover with odium those who disapproved of his measures by charging them with personal hostility to Was.h.i.+ngton, who so well deserved the confidence and good will of all, and who enjoyed them to an extent that led John Adams, at a much later day, to stigmatize the deference paid to him as "impious homage." Hamilton wielded this great power with tremendous effect, for, although his judgment in the management of men was always deemed defective, he exerted, in the promotion of his particular objects, talents and industry which could not fail to produce great results. His activity and capacity for labor were not equaled by any of his contemporaries save Madison; his powers of persuasion and the effects of his eloquence were strikingly exemplified by his success in making Mr. Jefferson believe, on his first arrival at the seat of government from France, that the safety of the Union depended upon the pa.s.sage of the bill for the a.s.sumption of the State debts, which had been at the moment rejected in the House of Representatives by a majority of one or two, and in inducing him to "hold the candle," as Jefferson afterwards described it, to a bargain by which Messrs. White and Lee, Southern members, were prevailed upon to vote for its reconsideration and pa.s.sage on condition that Hamilton would get the requisite number of Northern members to vote for the establishment of the seat of the Federal Government on slave territory.

Jefferson gives an interesting account of the earnestness of Hamilton's appeal to him on the subject, and of his own mortification and regret at having been made a party to so exceptionable a transaction in support of a measure he soon found the strongest reasons to condemn.[23]

[23] Jefferson's _Correspondence_, Vol. 4. p. 449.

The attention of every American community which possessed facilities for foreign commerce or manufactures, or for any of the various pursuits enumerated in his great report, and especially when they possessed also superior skill and enterprise, was at once directed to Hamilton's scheme of government for encouragement, and they certainly were not always indisposed to accept the seductive offers held out to them. But fortunately for the country and for the cause of good government there was a cla.s.s, happily formidable in numbers and in great and sterling qualities, whom no wiles could win from their devotion to early principles and whom government favors could not corrupt. That cla.s.s was, singularly enough, the landed interest. I say singularly, not because their fidelity to principle was at variance with their history, but with reference to the circ.u.mstance that, whilst in England it had been the princ.i.p.al object in building up the money power to restrict the influence of the landed interest, that power was here destined to be itself kept in check by an interest of the same name, however different in character.

Mr. Jefferson in his celebrated letter to Mazzei, in 1796, gives a description, which could not be improved, of the then political condition of the country and of its political parties: "Against us," he says, "are the executive, the judiciary, two out of three branches of the Legislature, all the officers of the Government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants and Americans trading on British capital, speculators and holders in the banks and public funds,--a contrivance invented for the purpose of corruption, and for a.s.similating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. The whole body of our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles; the _whole landed interest is republican_, and so is a great ma.s.s of talent." The term "landed interest" in its general signification, and in the sense in which it was used by Mr. Jefferson, referred to those who worked as well as owned the land,--the farmers of the North and the planters of the South,--all who made Agriculture their pursuit; a cla.s.s which in the earlier periods of our colonial condition const.i.tuted almost our entire population, and have at every period in our history vastly exceeded in numbers those engaged in all other pursuits. There is no point of resemblance between them and the landed aristocracy of England, save in that they both represent the landed interest of their respective countries and that they were led in each to oppose the money power. Their difference in other respects is sufficiently manifest.

A more estimable cla.s.s of men than the farmers and planters of the United States is not to be found in the world. From the landing of the Pilgrims to the present day they have exerted an effective and salutary influence, not only upon the condition of the country, in respect to its material improvement, but upon the character and strength of our political inst.i.tutions. It was to their sagacity and firmness that the colonies were chiefly indebted for their success in turning away and defeating the fury of the savages, and in baffling the persevering efforts of the mother country to enslave the provinces. For the most part the descendants of ancestors who had been, to an almost unprecedented extent, exposed to the faithlessness and persecutions of power, they seldom failed to be on their guard against its approaches, however artfully disguised. Every attempt to purchase their acquiescence in measures that they regarded as encroachments upon their liberties or subversive of their rights, through governmental favors, proved abortive.

Grenville, when pressed, as prime minister, by the London merchants with the dangers that threatened the collection of their American debts from the effects of the stamp-tax, was prodigal in his offers of governmental favors to secure the submission of the colonists to the odious measure.

"If one bounty," said he, "will not do, I will add two; if two will not do, I will add three." But these offers, as well as all the efforts which had been and were subsequently made by the Crown to quiet the Colonies through bounties and commercial privileges, were unavailing.

The "landed interest," const.i.tuting a great majority of the colonists, was too wise to be duped, and too honest to be corrupted, by special favors of any description. Placed by the nature of their pursuits, in a great measure, beyond the reach of court and official blandishments, and less dependent on the special privileges of the Crown than those who looked to them for their support, they uniformly regarded these offers with distrust rather than desire. They had, from these and other considerations, been led to embrace the principles upon which the Revolution was founded with more earnestness, and to cherish them with a more uncalculating devotion, than many of their Revolutionary a.s.sociates. The circ.u.mstance that a larger share of the defense of those principles had devolved upon them, by reason of the excess of their numbers, naturally commended more warmly to their hearts doctrines for the establishment of which they had suffered so much inquietude and encountered so many perils.

These considerations were alike applicable to, and equally influential upon, the landed interest of the North and of the South. With attachments undiminished and unchangeable to republican principles, pure and simple, subject to such limitations only as were required by convenience in their execution and necessary to deliberation in council, principles the fruition of which had been the day-dream of their ancestors through successive generations, and their own guiding-star in the gloomiest period of the Revolution, the representatives of this great interest, North and South, by large majorities, sustained the Anti-Federal party until that party was overthrown through its great error in respect to the Const.i.tution, and were still ready to take their stand in any organization that should have for its object opposition to the heresies developed by Hamilton in his platform for the government of the administration.

The principles upon which the landed interest acted from the start, have, it must be admitted, been more successfully sustained in the Southern than in the Northern States; not because they were originally embraced with more sincerity, but from very different causes. The commercial, manufacturing, and trading cla.s.ses, to whom Hamilton's policy was more particularly addressed, and upon whom it, beyond all doubt, exerted a powerful influence, were, at the beginning, far more numerous in the Northern than in the Southern States, and this disparity in their respective conditions has been constantly increasing. It was through the growing power of these cla.s.ses, and of others similarly, though perhaps not equally, exposed to its influence that the Hamiltonian policy occasionally triumphed in the Northern States, and their politics thus became more unstable than those of the South.