THE FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION.
Before peace was established, Morris had been appointed a commissioner
to treat for the exchange of prisoners. Nothing came of his efforts,
however, the British and Americans being utterly unable to come to any
agreement. Both sides had been greatly exasperated,--the British by the
Americans' breach of faith about Burgoyne's troops, and the Americans by
the inhuman brutality with which their captive countrymen had been
treated. An amusing feature of the affair was a conversation between
Morris and the British general, Dalrymple, wherein the former assured
the latter rather patronizingly that the British "still remained a great
people, a very great people," and that "they would undoubtedly still
hold their rank in Europe." He would have been surprised, had he known
not only that the stubborn Island folk were destined soon to hold a
higher rank in Europe than ever before, but that from their loins other
nations, broad as continents, were to spring, so that the South Seas
should become an English ocean, and that over a fourth of the world's
surface there should be spoken the tongue of Pitt and Washington.
No sooner was peace declared, and the immediate and pressing danger
removed, than the confederation relapsed into a loose knot of
communities as quarrelsome as they were contemptible. The states-rights
men for the moment had things all their own way, and speedily reduced us
to the level afterwards reached by the South-American republics. Each
commonwealth set up for itself, and tried to oppress its neighbors; not
one had a creditable history for the next four years; while the career
of Rhode Island in particular can only be properly described as
infamous. We refused to pay our debts, we would not even pay our army;
and mob violence flourished rankly. As a natural result the European
powers began to take advantage of our weakness and division.
All our great men saw the absolute need of establishing a National
Union--not a league or a confederation--if the country was to be saved.
None felt this more strongly than Morris; and no one was more hopeful of
the final result. Jay had written to him as to the need of "raising and
maintaining a national spirit in America;" and he wrote in reply, at
different times:[2] "Much of convulsion will ensue, yet it must
terminate in giving to government that power without which government is
but a name.... This country has never yet been known to Europe, and God
knows whether it ever will be. To England it is less known than to any
other part of Europe, because they constantly view it through a medium
of either prejudice or faction. True it is that the general government
wants energy, and equally true it is that the want will eventually be
supplied. A national spirit is the natural result of national existence;
_and although some of the present generation may feel the result of
colonial oppositions of opinion, that generation will die away, and give
place to a race of Americans_. On this occasion, as on others, Great
Britain is our best friend; and, by seizing the critical moment when we
were about to divide, she has shown us the dreadful consequences of
division.... Indeed, my friend, nothing can do us so much good as to
convince the Eastern and Southern States how necessary it is to give
proper force to the federal government, and nothing will so soon operate
that conviction as foreign efforts to restrain the navigation of the
one and the commerce of the other." The last sentence referred to the
laws aimed at our trade by Great Britain, and by other powers as
well,--symptoms of outside hostility which made us at once begin to draw
together again.
[2] The italics are mine.
Money troubles grew apace, and produced the usual crop of crude theories
and of vicious and dishonest legislation in accordance therewith.
Lawless outbreaks became common, and in Massachusetts culminated in
actual rebellion. The mass of the people were rendered hostile to any
closer union by their ignorance, their jealousy, and the general
particularistic bent of their minds,--this last being merely a vicious
graft on, or rather outgrowth of, the love of freedom inborn in the
race. Their leaders were enthusiasts of pure purpose and unsteady mental
vision; they were followed by the mass of designing politicians, who
feared that their importance would be lost if their sphere of action
should be enlarged. Among these leaders the three most important were,
in New York George Clinton, and in Massachusetts and Virginia two much
greater men--Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. All three had done
excellent service at the beginning of the revolutionary troubles.
Patrick Henry lived to redeem himself, almost in his last hour, by the
noble stand he took in aid of Washington against the democratic
nullification agitation of Jefferson and Madison; but the usefulness of
each of the other two was limited to the early portion of his career.
Like every other true patriot and statesman, Morris did all in his power
to bring into one combination the varied interests favorable to the
formation of a government that should be strong and responsible as well
as free. The public creditors and the soldiers of the army--whose
favorite toasts were: "A hoop to the barrel," and "Cement to the
Union"--were the two classes most sensible of the advantages of such a
government; and to each of these Morris addressed himself when he
proposed to consolidate the public debt, both to private citizens and to
the soldiers, and to make it a charge on the United States, and not on
the several separate states.
In consequence of the activity and ability with which he advocated a
firmer Union, the extreme states-rights men were especially hostile to
him; and certain of their number assailed him with bitter malignity,
both then and afterwards. One accusation was, that he had improper
connections with the public creditors. This was a pure slander,
absolutely without foundation, and not supported by even the pretence of
proof. Another accusation was that he favored the establishment of a
monarchy. This was likewise entirely untrue. Morris was not a
sentimental political theorist; he was an eminently practical--that is,
useful--statesman, who saw with unusual clearness that each people must
have a government suited to its own individual character, and to the
stage of political and social development it had reached. He realized
that a nation must be governed according to the actual needs and
capacities of its citizens, not according to any abstract theory or set
of ideal principles. He would have dismissed with contemptuous laughter
the ideas of those Americans who at the present day believe that
Anglo-Saxon democracy can be applied successfully to a half-savage
negroid people in Hayti, or of those Englishmen who consider seriously
the proposition to renovate Turkey by giving her representative
institutions and a parliamentary government. He understood and stated
that a monarchy "did not consist with the taste and temper of the
people" in America, and he believed in establishing a form of government
that did. Like almost every other statesman of the day, the perverse
obstinacy of the extreme particularist section at times made him
downhearted, and caused him almost to despair of a good government being
established; and like every sensible man he would have preferred almost
any strong, orderly government to the futile anarchy towards which the
ultra states-rights men or separatists tended. Had these last ever
finally obtained the upper hand, either in revolutionary or
post-revolutionary times, either in 1787 or 1861, the fact would have
shown conclusively that Americans were unfitted for republicanism and
self-government. An orderly monarchy would certainly be preferable to a
republic of the epileptic Spanish-American type. The extreme
doctrinaires, who are fiercest in declaiming in favor of freedom are in
reality its worst foes, far more dangerous than any absolute monarchy
ever can be. When liberty becomes license, some form of one-man power is
not far distant.
The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever
has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to
preserve the largest possible individual freedom on the one hand, while
showing an equally remarkable capacity for combination on the other. We
have committed plenty of faults, but we have seen and remedied them. Our
very doctrinaires have usually acted much more practically than they
have talked. Jefferson, when in power, adopted most of the Federalist
theories, and became markedly hostile to the nullification movements at
whose birth he had himself officiated. We have often blundered badly in
the beginning, but we have always come out well in the end. The Dutch,
when they warred for freedom from Spanish rule, showed as much
short-sighted selfishness and bickering jealousy as even our own
revolutionary ancestors, and only a part remained faithful to the end:
as a result, but one section won independence, while the Netherlands
were divided, and never grasped the power that should have been theirs.
As for the Spanish-Americans, they split up hopelessly almost before
they were free, and, though they bettered their condition a little, yet
lost nine tenths of what they had gained. Scotland and Ireland, when
independent, were nests of savages. All the follies our forefathers
committed can be paralleled elsewhere, but their successes are unique.
So it was in the few years immediately succeeding the peace by which we
won our independence. The mass of the people wished for no closer union
than was to be found in a lax confederation; but they had the good sense
to learn the lesson taught by the weakness and lawlessness they saw
around them; they reluctantly made up their minds to the need of a
stronger government, and when they had once come to their decision,
neither demagogue nor doctrinaire could swerve them from it.
The national convention to form a Constitution met in May, 1787; and
rarely in the world's history has there been a deliberative body which
contained so many remarkable men, or produced results so lasting and
far-reaching. The Congress whose members signed the Declaration of
Independence had but cleared the ground on which the framers of the
Constitution were to build. Among the delegates in attendance, easily
first stood Washington and Franklin,--two of that great American trio in
which Lincoln is the third. Next came Hamilton from New York, having as
colleagues a couple of mere obstructionists sent by the Clintonians to
handicap him. From Pennsylvania came Robert Morris and Gouverneur
Morris; from Virginia, Madison; from South Carolina, Rutledge and the
Pinckneys; and so on through the other states. Some of the most noted
statesmen were absent, however. Adams and Jefferson were abroad. Jay was
acting as Secretary for Foreign Affairs; in which capacity, by the way,
he had shown most unlooked-for weakness in yielding to Spanish demands
about the Mississippi.
Two years after taking part in the proceedings of the American
Constitutional Convention, Morris witnessed the opening of the States
General of France. He thoroughly appreciated the absolute and curious
contrast offered by these two bodies, each so big with fate for all
mankind. The men who predominated in and shaped the actions of the first
belonged to a type not uncommonly brought forth by a people already
accustomed to freedom at a crisis in the struggle to preserve or extend
its liberties. During the past few centuries this type had appeared many
times among the liberty loving nations who dwelt on the shores of the
Baltic and the North Sea; and our forefathers represented it in its
highest and most perfect shapes. It is a type only to be found among men
already trained to govern themselves as well as others. The American
statesmen were the kinsfolk and fellows of Hampden and Pym, of William
the Silent and John of Barneveldt. Save love of freedom, they had little
in common with the closet philosophers, the enthusiastic visionaries,
and the selfish demagogues who in France helped pull up the flood-gates
of an all-swallowing torrent. They were great men; but it was less the
greatness of mere genius than that springing from the union of strong,
virile qualities with steadfast devotion to a high ideal. In certain
respects they were ahead of all their European compeers; yet they
preserved virtues forgotten or sneered at by the contemporaneous
generation of trans-Atlantic leaders. They wrought for the future as
surely as did the French Jacobins; but their spirit was the spirit of
the Long Parliament. They were resolute to free themselves from the
tyranny of man; but they had not unlearned the reverence felt by their
fathers for their fathers' God. They were sincerely religious. The
advanced friends of freedom abroad scoffed at religion, and would have
laughed outright at a proposition to gain help for their cause by
prayer; but to the founders of our Constitution, when matters were at a
deadlock, and the outcome looked almost hopeless, it seemed a most fit
and proper thing that one of the chief of their number should propose to
invoke to aid them a wisdom greater than the wisdom of human beings.
Even those among their descendants who no longer share their trusting
faith may yet well do regretful homage to a religious spirit so
deep-rooted and so strongly tending to bring out a pure and high
morality. The statesmen who met in 1787 were earnestly patriotic. They
unselfishly desired the welfare of their countrymen. They were cool,
resolute men, of strong convictions, with clear insight into the future.
They were thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the community for
which they were to act. Above all they possessed that inestimable
quality, so characteristic of their race, hard-headed common sense.
Their theory of government was a very high one; but they understood
perfectly that it had to be accommodated to the shortcomings of the
average citizen. Small indeed was their resemblance to the fiery orators
and brilliant pamphleteers of the States General. They were emphatically
good men; they were no less emphatically practical men. They would have
scorned Mirabeau as a scoundrel; they would have despised Sieyes as a
vain and impractical theorist.
The deliberations of the convention in their result illustrated in a
striking manner the truth of the American principle, that--for
deliberative, not executive, purposes--the wisdom of many men is worth
more than the wisdom of any one man. The Constitution that the members
assembled in convention finally produced was not only the best possible
one for America at that time, but it was also, in spite of its
short-comings, and taking into account its fitness for our own people
and conditions, as well as its accordance with the principles of
abstract right, probably the best that any nation has ever had, while it
was beyond question a very much better one than any single member could
have prepared. The particularist statesmen would have practically
denied us any real union or efficient executive power; while there was
hardly a Federalist member who would not, in his anxiety to avoid the
evils from which we were suffering, have given us a government so
centralized and aristocratic that it would have been utterly unsuited to
a proud, liberty-loving, and essentially democratic race, and would have
infallibly provoked a tremendous reactionary revolt.
It is impossible to read through the debates of the convention without
being struck by the innumerable shortcomings of each individual plan
proposed by the several members, as divulged in their speeches, when
compared with the plan finally adopted. Had the result been in
accordance with the views of the strong-government men like Hamilton on
the one hand, or of the weak-government men like Franklin on the other,
it would have been equally disastrous for the country. The men who
afterwards naturally became the chiefs of the Federalist party, and who
included in their number the bulk of the great revolutionary leaders,
were the ones to whom we mainly owe our present form of government;
certainly we owe them more, both on this and on other points, than we do
their rivals, the after-time Democrats. Yet there were some articles of
faith in the creed of the latter so essential to our national
wellbeing, and yet so counter to the prejudices of the Federalists, that
it was inevitable they should triumph in the end. Jefferson led the
Democrats to victory only when he had learned to acquiesce thoroughly in
some of the fundamental principles of Federalism, and the government of
himself and his successors was good chiefly in so far as it followed out
the theories of the Hamiltonians; while Hamilton and the Federalists
fell from power because they could not learn the one great truth taught
by Jefferson,--that in America a statesman should trust the people, and
should endeavor to secure to each man all possible individual liberty,
confident that he will use it aright. The old-school Jeffersonian
theorists believed in "a strong people and a weak government." Lincoln
was the first who showed how a strong people might have a strong
government and yet remain the freest on the earth. He seized--half
unwittingly--all that was best and wisest in the traditions of
Federalism; he was the true successor of the Federalist leaders; but he
grafted on their system a profound belief that the great heart of the
nation beat for truth, honor, and liberty.
This fact, that in 1787 all the thinkers of the day drew out plans that
in some respects went very wide of the mark, must be kept in mind, or
else we shall judge each particular thinker with undue harshness when we
examine his utterances without comparing them with those of his fellows.
But one partial exception can be made. In the Constitutional Convention
Madison, a moderate Federalist, was the man who, of all who were there,
saw things most clearly as they were, and whose theories most closely
corresponded with the principles finally adopted; and although even he
was at first dissatisfied with the result, and both by word and by
action interpreted the Constitution in widely different ways at
different times, still this was Madison's time of glory: he was one of
the statesmen who do extremely useful work, but only at some single
given crisis. While the Constitution was being formed and adopted, he
stood in the very front; but in his later career he sunk his own
individuality, and became a mere pale shadow of Jefferson.
Morris played a very prominent part in the convention. He was a ready
speaker, and among all the able men present there was probably no such
really brilliant thinker. In the debates he spoke more often than any
one else, although Madison was not far behind him; and his speeches
betrayed, but with marked and exaggerated emphasis, both the virtues
and the shortcomings of the Federalist school of thought. They show us,
too, why he never rose to the first rank of statesmen. His keen,
masterful mind, his far-sightedness, and the force and subtlety of his
reasoning were all marred by his incurable cynicism and deep-rooted
distrust of mankind. He throughout appears as _advocatus diaboli_; he
puts the lowest interpretation upon every act, and frankly avows his
disbelief in all generous and unselfish motives. His continual allusions
to the overpowering influence of the baser passions, and to their
mastery of the human race at all times, drew from Madison, although the
two men generally acted together, a protest against his "forever
inculcating the utter political depravity of men, and the necessity for
opposing one vice and interest as the only possible check to another
vice and interest."
Morris championed a strong national government, wherein he was right;
but he also championed a system of class representation, leaning towards
aristocracy, wherein he was wrong. Not Hamilton himself was a firmer
believer in the national idea. His one great object was to secure a
powerful and lasting Union, instead of a loose federal league. It must
be remembered that in the convention the term "federal" was used in
exactly the opposite sense to the one in which it was taken afterwards;
that is, it was used as the antithesis of "national," not as its
synonym. The states-rights men used it to express a system of government
such as that of the old federation of the thirteen colonies; while their
opponents called themselves Nationalists, and only took the title of
Federalists after the Constitution had been formed, and then simply
because the name was popular with the masses. They thus appropriated
their adversaries' party name, bestowing it on the organization most
hostile to their adversaries' party theories. Similarly, the term
"Republican Party," which was originally in our history merely another
name for the Democracy, has in the end been adopted by the chief
opponents of the latter.
The difficulties for the convention to surmount seemed insuperable; on
almost every question that came up, there were clashing interests.
Strong government and weak government, pure democracy or a modified
aristocracy, small states and large states, North and South, slavery and
freedom, agricultural sections as against commercial sections,--on each
of twenty points the delegates split into hostile camps, that could only
be reconciled by concessions from both sides. The Constitution was not
one compromise; it was a bundle of compromises, all needful.
Morris, like every other member of the convention, sometimes took the
right and sometimes the wrong side on the successive issues that arose.
But on the most important one of all he made no error; and he commands
our entire sympathy for his thorough-going nationalism. As was to be
expected, he had no regard whatever for states rights. He wished to deny
to the small states the equal representation in the Senate finally
allowed them; and he was undoubtedly right theoretically. No good
argument can be adduced in support of the present system on that point.
Still, it has thus far worked no harm; the reason being that our states
have merely artificial boundaries, while those of small population have
hitherto been distributed pretty evenly among the different sections, so
that they have been split up like the others on every important issue,
and thus have never been arrayed against the rest of the country.
Though Morris and his side were defeated in their efforts to have the
states represented proportionally in the Senate, yet they carried their
point as to representation in the House. Also on the general question of
making a national government, as distinguished from a league or
federation, the really vital point, their triumph was complete. The
Constitution they drew up and had adopted no more admitted of legal or
peaceable rebellion--whether called secession or nullification--on the
part of the state than on the part of a county or an individual.
Morris expressed his own views with his usual clear-cut, terse vigor
when he asserted that "state attachments and state importance had been
the bane of the country," and that he came, not as a mere delegate from
one section, but "as a representative of America,--a representative in
some degree of the whole human race, for the whole human race would be
affected by the outcome of the convention." And he poured out the flood
of his biting scorn on those gentlemen who came there "to truck and
bargain for their respective states," asking what man there was who
could tell with certainty the state wherein he--and even more wherein
his children--would live in the future; and reminding the small states,
with cavalier indifference, that, "if they did not like the Union, no
matter,--they would have to come in, and that was all there was about
it; for if persuasion did not unite the country, then the sword would."
His correct language and distinct enunciation--to which Madison has
borne witness--allowed his grim truths to carry their full weight; and
he brought them home to his hearers with a rough, almost startling
earnestness and directness. Many of those present must have winced when
he told them that it would matter nothing to America "if all the
charters and constitutions of the states were thrown into the fire, and
all the demagogues into the ocean," and asserted that "any particular
state _ought_ to be injured, for the sake of a majority of the people,
in case its conduct showed that it deserved it." He held that we should
create a national government, to be the one and only supreme power in
the land,--one which, unlike a mere federal league, such as we then
lived under, should have complete and compulsive operation; and he
instanced the examples as well of Greece as of Germany and the United
Netherlands, to prove that local jurisdiction destroyed every tie of
nationality.
It shows the boldness of the experiment in which we were engaged, that
we were forced to take all other nations, whether dead or living, as
warnings, not examples; whereas, since we succeeded, we have served as a
pattern to be copied, either wholly or in part, by every other people
that has followed in our steps. Before our own experience, each similar
attempt, save perhaps on the smallest scale, had been a failure. Where
so many other nations teach by their mistakes, we are among the few who
teach by their successes.
Be it noted also that, the doctrinaires to the contrary notwithstanding,
we proved that a strong central government was perfectly compatible
with absolute democracy. Indeed, the separatist spirit does not lead to
true democratic freedom. Anarchy is the handmaiden of tyranny. Of all
the states, South Carolina has shown herself (at least throughout the
greater part of the present century) to be the most aristocratic, and
the most wedded to the separatist spirit. The German masses were never
so ground down by oppression as when the little German principalities
were most independent of each other and of any central authority.
Morris believed in letting the United States interfere to put down a
rebellion in a state, even though the executive of the state himself
should be at the head of it; and he was supported in his views by
Pinckney, the ablest member of the brilliant and useful but
unfortunately short-lived school of South Carolina Federalists. Pinckney
was a thorough-going Nationalist; he wished to go a good deal further
than the convention actually went in giving the central government
complete control. Thus he proposed that Congress should have power to
negative by a two-thirds vote all state laws inconsistent with the
harmony of the Union. Madison also wished to give Congress a veto over
state legislation. Morris believed that a national law should be allowed
to repeal any state law, and that Congress should legislate in all
cases where the laws of the states conflicted among themselves.
Yet Morris, on the very question of nationalism, himself showed the
narrowest, blindest, and least excusable sectional jealousy on one
point. He felt as an American for all the Union, as it then existed; but
he feared and dreaded the growth of the Union in the West, the very
place where it was inevitable, as well as in the highest degree
desirable, that the greatest growth should take place. He actually
desired the convention to commit the criminal folly of attempting to
provide that the West should always be kept subordinate to the East.
Fortunately he failed; but the mere attempt casts the gravest discredit
alike on his far-sightedness and on his reputation as a statesman. It is
impossible to understand how one who was usually so cool and
clear-headed an observer could have blundered so flagrantly on a point
hardly less vital than the establishment of the Union itself. Indeed,
had his views been carried through, they would in the end have nullified
all the good bestowed by the Union. In speaking against state jealousy,
he had shown its foolishness by observing that no man could tell in what
state his children would dwell; and the folly of the speaker himself was
made quite as clear by his not perceiving that their most likely
dwelling-place was in the West. This jealousy of the West was even more
discreditable to the Northeast than the jealousy of America had been to
England; and it continued strong, especially in New England, for very
many years. It was a mean and unworthy feeling; and it was greatly to
the credit of the Southerners that they shared it only to a very small
extent. The South in fact originally was in heartiest sympathy with the
West; it was not until the middle of the present century that the
country beyond the Alleghanies became preponderatingly Northern in
sentiment. In the Constitutional Convention itself, Butler, of South
Carolina, pointed out "that the people and strength of America were
evidently tending westwardly and southwestwardly."
Morris wished to discriminate against the West by securing to the
Atlantic States the perpetual control of the Union. He brought this idea
up again and again, insisting that we should reserve to ourselves the
right to put conditions on the Western States when we should admit them.
He dwelt at length on the danger of throwing the preponderance of
influence into the Western scale; stating his dread of the "back
members," who were always the most ignorant, and the opponents of all
good measures. He foretold with fear that some day the people of the
West would outnumber the people of the East, and he wished to put it in
the power of the latter to keep a majority of the votes in their own
hands. Apparently he did not see that, if the West once became as
populous as he predicted, its legislators would forthwith cease to be
"back members." The futility of his fears, and still more of his
remedies, was so evident that the convention paid very little heed to
either.
On one point, however, his anticipations of harm were reasonable, and
indeed afterwards came true in part. He insisted that the West, or
interior, would join the South and force us into a war with some
European power, wherein the benefits would accrue to them and the harm
to the Northeast. The attitude of the South and West already clearly
foreshadowed a struggle with Spain for the Mississippi Valley; and such
a struggle would surely have come, either with the French or Spaniards,
had we failed to secure the territory in question by peaceful purchase.
As it was, the realization of Morris's prophecy was only put off for a
few years; the South and West brought on the War of 1812, wherein the
East was the chief sufferer.
On the question as to whether the Constitution should be made absolutely
democratic or not, Morris took the conservative side. On the suffrage
his views are perfectly defensible: he believed that it should be
limited to freeholders. He rightly considered the question as to how
widely it should be extended to be one of expediency merely. It is
simply idle folly to talk of suffrage as being an "inborn" or "natural"
right. There are enormous communities totally unfit for its exercise;
while true universal suffrage never has been, and never will be,
seriously advocated by any one. There must always be an age limit, and
such a limit must necessarily be purely arbitrary. The wildest democrat
of revolutionary times did not dream of doing away with the restrictions
of race and sex which kept most American citizens from the ballot-box;
and there is certainly much less abstract right in a system which limits
the suffrage to people of a certain color than there is in one which
limits it to people who come up to a given standard of thrift and
intelligence. On the other hand, our experience has not proved that men
of wealth make any better use of their ballots than do, for instance,
mechanics and other handicraftsmen. No plan could be adopted so perfect
as to be free from all drawbacks. On the whole, however, and taking our
country in its length and breadth, manhood suffrage has worked well,
better than would have been the case with any other system; but even
here there are certain localities where its results have been evil, and
must simply be accepted as the blemishes inevitably attendant upon, and
marring, any effort to carry out a scheme that will be widely
applicable.
Morris contended that his plan would work no novel or great hardship, as
the people in several states were already accustomed to freehold
suffrage. He considered the freeholders to be the best guardians of
liberty, and maintained that the restriction of the right to them was
only creating a necessary safeguard "against the dangerous influence of
those people without property or principle, with whom, in the end, our
country, like all other countries, was sure to abound." He did not
believe that the ignorant and dependent could be trusted to vote.
Madison supported him heartily, likewise thinking the freeholders the
safest guardians of our rights; he indulged in some gloomy (and
fortunately hitherto unverified) forebodings as to our future, which
sound strangely coming from one who was afterwards an especial pet of
the Jeffersonian democracy. He said: "In future times a great majority
of the people will be without landed or any other property. They will
then either combine under the influence of their common situation,--in
which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be
safe in their hands,--or, as is more probable, they will become the
tools of opulence and ambition."
Morris also enlarged on this last idea. "Give the votes to people who
have no property, and they will sell them to the rich," said he. When
taunted with his aristocratic tendencies, he answered that he had long
ceased to be the dupe of words, that the mere sound of the name
"aristocracy" had no terrors for him, but that he did fear lest harm
should result to the people from the unacknowledged existence of the
very thing they feared to mention. As he put it, there never was or
would be a civilized society without an aristocracy, and his endeavor
was to keep it as much as possible from doing mischief. He thus
professed to be opposed to the existence of an aristocracy, but
convinced that it would exist anyhow, and that therefore the best thing
to be done was to give it a recognized place, while clipping its wings
so as to prevent its working harm. In pursuance of this theory, he
elaborated a wild plan, the chief feature of which was the provision for
an aristocratic senate, and a popular or democratic house, which were to
hold each other in check, and thereby prevent either party from doing
damage. He believed that the senators should be appointed by the
national executive, who should fill up the vacancies that occurred. To
make the upper house effective as a checking branch, it should be so
constituted to as have a personal interest in checking the other branch;
it should be a senate for life, it should be rich, it should be
aristocratic. He continued:--It would then do wrong? He believed so; he
hoped so. The rich would strive to enslave the rest; they always did.
The proper security against them was to form them into a separate
interest. The two forces would then control each other. By thus
combining and setting apart the aristocratic interest, the popular
interest would also be combined against it. There would be mutual check
and mutual security. If, on the contrary, the rich and poor were allowed
to mingle, then, if the country were commercial, an oligarchy would be
established; and if it were not, an unlimited democracy would ensue. It
was best to look truth in the face. The loaves and fishes would be
needed to bribe demagogues; while as for the people, if left to
themselves, they would never act from reason alone. The rich would take
advantage of their passions, and the result would be either a violent
aristocracy, or a more violent despotism.--The speech containing these
extraordinary sentiments, which do no particular credit to either
Morris's head or heart, is given in substance by Madison in the
"Debates." Madison's report is undoubtedly correct, for, after writing
it, he showed it to the speaker himself, who made but one or two verbal
alterations.
Morris applied an old theory in a new way when he proposed to make
"taxation proportional to representation" throughout the Union. He
considered the preservation of property as being the distinguishing
object of civilization, as liberty was sufficiently guaranteed even by
savagery; and therefore he held that the representation in the senate
should be according to property as well as numbers. But when this
proposition was defeated, he declined to support one making property
qualifications for congressmen, remarking that such were proper for the
electors rather than the elected.
His views as to the power and functions of the national executive were
in the main sound, and he succeeded in having most of them embodied in
the Constitution. He wished to have the President hold office during
good behavior; and, though this was negatived, he succeeded in having
him made reeligible to the position. He was instrumental in giving him a
qualified veto over legislation, and in providing for his impeachment
for misconduct; and also in having him made commander-in-chief of the
forces of the republic, and in allowing him the appointment of
governmental officers. The especial service he rendered, however, was
his successful opposition to the plan whereby the President was to be
elected by the legislature. This proposition he combated with all his
strength, showing that it would take away greatly from the dignity of
the executive, and would render his election a matter of cabal and
faction, "like the election of the pope by a conclave of cardinals." He
contended that the President should be chosen by the people at large, by
the citizens of the United States, acting through electors whom they had
picked out. He showed the probability that in such a case the people
would unite upon a man of continental reputation, as the influence of
designing demagogues and tricksters is generally powerful in proportion
as the limits within which they work are narrow; and the importance of
the stake would make all men inform themselves thoroughly as to the
characters and capacities of those who were contending for it; and he
flatly denied the statements, that were made in evident good faith, to
the effect that in a general election each State would cast its vote for
its own favorite citizen. He inclined to regard the President in the
light of a tribune chosen by the people to watch over the legislature;
and giving him the appointing power, he believed, would force him to
make good use of it, owing to his sense of responsibility to the people
at large, who would be directly affected by its exercise, and who could
and would hold him accountable for its abuse.
On the judiciary his views were also sound. He upheld the power of the
judges, and maintained that they should have absolute decision as to the
constitutionality of any law. By this means he hoped to provide against
the encroachments of the popular branch of the government, the one from
which danger was to be feared, as "virtuous citizens will often act as
legislators in a way of which they would, as private individuals,
afterwards be ashamed." He wisely disapproved of low salaries for the
judges, showing that the amounts must be fixed from time to time in
accordance with the manner and style of living in the country; and that
good work on the bench, where it was especially needful, like good work
everywhere else, could only be insured by a high rate of recompense. On
the other hand, he approved of introducing into the national
Constitution the foolish New York state inventions of a Council of
Revision and an Executive Council.
His ideas of the duties and powers of Congress were likewise very proper
on the whole. Most citizens of the present day will agree with him that
"the excess rather than the deficiency of laws is what we have to
dread." He opposed the hurtful provision which requires that each
congressman should be a resident of his own district, urging that
congressmen represented the people at large, as well as their own small
localities; and he also objected to making officers of the army and navy
ineligible. He laid much stress on the propriety of passing navigation
acts to encourage American bottoms and seamen, as a navy was essential
to our security, and the shipping business was always one that stood in
peculiar need of public patronage. Also, like Hamilton and most other
Federalists, he favored a policy of encouraging domestic manufactures.
Incidentally he approved of Congress having the power to lay an embargo,
although he has elsewhere recorded his views as to the general futility
of such kinds of "commercial warfare." He believed in having a uniform
bankruptcy law; approved of abolishing all religious tests as
qualifications for office, and was utterly opposed to the "rotation in
office" theory.
One curious incident in the convention was the sudden outcropping, even
thus early, of a "Native American" movement against all foreigners,
which was headed by Butler, of South Carolina, who himself was of Irish
parentage. He strenuously insisted that no foreigners whomsoever should
be admitted to our councils,--a rather odd proposition, considering that
it would have excluded quite a number of the eminent men he was then
addressing. Pennsylvania in particular--whose array of native talent has
always been far from imposing--had a number of foreigners among her
delegates, and loudly opposed the proposition, as did New York. These
States wished that there should be no discrimination whatever between
native and foreign born citizens; but finally a compromise was agreed
to, by which the latter were excluded only from the Presidency, but were
admitted to all other rights after a seven years' residence,--a period
that was certainly none too long.
A much more serious struggle took place over the matter of slavery,
quite as important then as ever, for at that time the negroes were a
fifth of our population, instead of, as now, an eighth. The question, as
it came before the convention, had several sides to it; the especial
difficulty arising over the representation of the Slave States in
Congress, and the importation of additional slaves from Africa. No one
proposed to abolish slavery off-hand; but an influential though small
number of delegates, headed by Morris, recognized it as a terrible evil,
and were very loath either to allow the South additional representation
for the slaves, or to permit the foreign trade in them to go on. When
the Southern members banded together on the issue, and made it evident
that it was the one which they regarded as almost the most important of
all, Morris attacked them in a telling speech, stating with his usual
boldness facts that most Northerners only dared hint at, and summing up
with the remark that, if he was driven to the dilemma of doing injustice
to the Southern States or to human nature, he would have to do it to the
former; certainly he would not encourage the slave trade by allowing
representation for negroes. Afterwards he characterized the proportional
representation of the blacks even more strongly, as being "a bribe for
the importation of slaves."
In advocating the proposal, first made by Hamilton, that the
representation should in all cases be proportioned to the number of free
inhabitants, Morris showed the utter lack of logic in the Virginian
proposition, which was that the Slave States should have additional
representation to the extent of three fifths of their negroes. If
negroes were to be considered as inhabitants, then they ought to be
added in their entire number; if they were to be considered as property,
then they ought to be counted only if all other wealth was likewise
included. The position of the Southerners was ridiculous: he tore their
arguments to shreds; but he was powerless to alter the fact that they
were doggedly determined to carry their point, while most of the
Northern members cared comparatively little about it.
In another speech he painted in the blackest colors the unspeakable
misery and wrong wrought by slavery, and showed the blight it brought
upon the land. "It was the curse of Heaven on the states where it
prevailed." He contrasted the prosperity and happiness of the Northern
States with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of
those where slaves were numerous. "Every step you take through the great
region of slavery presents a desert widening with the increasing number
of these wretched beings." He indignantly protested against the Northern
States being bound to march their militia for the defense of the
Southern States against the very slaves of whose existence the northern
men complained. "He would sooner submit himself to a tax for paying for
all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a
Constitution."
Some of the high-minded Virginian statesmen were quite as vigorous as he
was in their denunciation of the system. One of them, George Mason,
portrayed the effect of slavery upon the people at large with bitter
emphasis, and denounced the slave traffic as "infernal," and slavery as
a national sin that would be punished by a national calamity,--stating
therein the exact and terrible truth. In shameful contrast, many of the
Northerners championed the institution; in particular, Oliver Ellsworth,
of Connecticut, whose name should be branded with infamy because of the
words he then uttered. He actually advocated the free importation of
negroes into the South Atlantic States, because the slaves "died so fast
in the sickly rice swamps" that it was necessary ever to bring fresh
ones to labor and perish in the places of their predecessors; and, with
a brutal cynicism, peculiarly revolting from its mercantile baseness, he
brushed aside the question of morality as irrelevant, asking his hearers
to pay heed only to the fact that "what enriches the part enriches the
whole."
The Virginians were opposed to the slave trade: but South Carolina and
Georgia made it a condition of their coming into the Union. It was
accordingly agreed that it should be allowed for a limited time,--twelve
years; and this was afterwards extended to twenty by a bargain made by
Maryland and the three South Atlantic States with the New England
States, the latter getting in return the help of the former to alter
certain provisions respecting commerce. One of the main industries of
the New England of that day was the manufacture of rum; and its citizens
cared more for their distilleries than for all the slaves held in
bondage throughout Christendom. The rum was made from molasses which
they imported from the West Indies, and they carried there in return the
fish taken by their great fishing fleets; they also carried the slaves
into the Southern ports. Their commerce was what they especially relied
on; and to gain support for it they were perfectly willing to make terms
with even such a black Mammon of unrighteousness as the Southern
slaveholding system. Throughout the contest, Morris and a few other
stout anti-slavery men are the only ones who appear to advantage; the
Virginians, who were honorably anxious to minimize the evils of slavery,
come next; then the other Southerners who allowed pressing self-interest
to overcome their scruples; and, last of all, the New Englanders whom a
comparatively trivial self-interest made the willing allies of the
extreme slaveholders. These last were the only Northerners who yielded
anything to the Southern slaveholders that was not absolutely necessary;
and yet they were the forefathers of the most determined and effective
foes that slavery ever had.
As already said, the Southerners stood firm on the slave question: it
was the one which perhaps more than any other offered the most serious
obstacle to a settlement. Madison pointed out "that the real difference
lay, not between the small States and the large, but between the
Northern and the Southern States. The institution of slavery and its
consequences formed the real line of discrimination." To talk of this
kind Morris at first answered hotly enough:--"he saw that the Southern
gentlemen would not be satisfied unless they saw the way open to their
gaining a majority in the public councils.... If [the distinction they
set up between the North and South] was real, instead of attempting to
blend incompatible things, let them at once take a friendly leave of
each other." He afterwards went back from this position, and agreed to
the compromise by which the slaves were to add, by three fifths of their
number, to the representation of their masters, and the slave trade was
to be allowed for a certain number of years, and prohibited forever
after. He showed his usual straightforward willingness to call things by
their right names in desiring to see "slavery" named outright in the
Constitution, instead of being characterized with cowardly
circumlocution, as was actually done.
In finally yielding and assenting to a compromise, he was perfectly
right. The crazy talk about the iniquity of consenting to any
recognition of slavery whatever in the Constitution is quite beside the
mark; and it is equally irrelevant to assert that the so-called
"compromises" were not properly compromises at all, because there were
no mutual concessions, and the Southern States had "no shadow of right"
to what they demanded and only in part gave up. It was all-important
that there should be a Union, but it had to result from the voluntary
action of all the states; and each state had a perfect "right" to demand
just whatever it chose. The really wise and high-minded statesmen
demanded for themselves nothing save justice; but they had to accomplish
their purpose by yielding somewhat to the prejudices of their more
foolish and less disinterested colleagues. It was better to limit the
duration of the slave trade to twenty years than to allow it to be
continued indefinitely, as would have been the case had the South
Atlantic States remained by themselves. The three fifths representation
of the slaves was an evil anomaly, but it was no worse than allowing the
small states equal representation in the Senate; indeed, balancing the
two concessions against each other, it must be admitted that Virginia
and North Carolina surrendered to New Hampshire and Rhode Island more
than they got in return.
No man who supported slavery can ever have a clear and flawless title to
our regard; and those who opposed it merit, in so far, the highest
honor; but the opposition to it sometimes took forms that can be
considered only as the vagaries of lunacy. The only hope of abolishing
it lay, first in the establishment and then in the preservation of the
Union; and if we had at the outset dissolved into a knot of struggling
anarchies, it would have entailed an amount of evil both on our race and
on all North America, compared to which the endurance of slavery for a
century or two would have been as nothing. If we had even split up into
only two republics, a Northern and a Southern, the West would probably
have gone with the latter, and to this day slavery would have existed
throughout the Mississippi valley; much of what is now our territory
would have been held by European powers, scornfully heedless of our
divided might, while in not a few states the form of government would
have been a military dictatorship; and indeed our whole history would
have been as contemptible as was that of Germany for some centuries
prior to the rise of the house of Hohenzollern.
The fierceness of the opposition to the adoption of the Constitution,
and the narrowness of the majority by which Virginia and New York
decided in its favor, while North Carolina and Rhode Island did not come
in at all until absolutely forced, showed that the refusal to compromise
on any one of the points at issue would have jeopardized everything. Had
the slavery interest been in the least dissatisfied, or had the plan of
government been a shade less democratic, or had the smaller States not
been propitiated, the Constitution would have been rejected off-hand;
and the country would have had before it decades, perhaps centuries, of
misrule, violence, and disorder.
Madison paid a very just compliment to some of Morris's best points when
he wrote, anent his services in the convention: "To the brilliancy of
his genius he added, what is too rare, a candid surrender of his
opinions when the light of discussion satisfied him that they had been
too hastily formed, and a readiness to aid in making the best of
measures in which he had been overruled." Although so many of his own
theories had been rejected, he was one of the warmest advocates of the
Constitution; and it was he who finally drew up the document and put the
finish to its style and arrangement, so that, as it now stands, it comes
from his pen.
Hamilton, who more than any other man bore the brunt of the fight for
its adoption, asked Morris to help him in writing the "Federalist," but
the latter was for some reason unable to do so; and Hamilton was
assisted only by Madison, and to a very slight extent by Jay.
Pennsylvania, the State from which Morris had been sent as a delegate,
early declared in favor of the new experiment; although, as Morris wrote
Washington, there had been cause to "dread the cold and sour temper of
the back counties, and still more the wicked industry of those who have
long habituated themselves to live on the public, and cannot bear the
idea of being removed from the power and profit of state government,
which has been and still is the means of supporting themselves, their
families, and dependents, and (which perhaps is equally grateful) of
depressing and humbling their political adversaries." In his own native
state of New York the influences he thus describes were still more
powerful, and it needed all Hamilton's wonderful genius to force a
ratification of the Constitution in spite of the stupid selfishness of
the Clintonian faction; as it was, he was only barely successful,
although backed by all the best and ablest leaders in the
community,--Jay, Livingstone, Schuyler, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Isaac
Roosevelt, James Duane, and a host of others.
About this time Morris came back to New York to live, having purchased
the family estate at Morrisania from his elder brother, Staats Long
Morris, the British general. He had for some time been engaged in
various successful commercial ventures with his friend Robert Morris,
including an East India voyage on a large scale, shipments of tobacco to
France, and a share in iron works on the Delaware River, and had become
quite a rich man. As soon as the war was ended, he had done what he
could do to have the loyalists pardoned and reinstated in their
fortunes; thereby risking his popularity not a little, as the general
feeling against the Tories was bitter and malevolent in the highest
degree, in curious contrast to the good-will that so rapidly sprang up
between the Unionists and ex-Confederates after the Civil War.
He also kept an eye on foreign politics, and one of his letters to Jay
curiously foreshadows the good-will generally felt by Americans of the
present day towards Russia, running: "If her ladyship (the Czarina)
would drive the Turk out of Europe, and demolish the Algerines and other
piratical gentry, she will have done us much good for her own sake; ...
but it is hardly possible the other powers will permit Russia to possess
so wide a door into the Mediterranean. I may be deceived, but I think
England herself would oppose it. As an American, it is my hearty wish
that she may effect her schemes."
Shortly after this it became necessary for him to sail for Europe on
business.