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 Classes 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
Washington 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
Constitution--Their Treatment of it after its Adoption not the
same--The Provision authorizing Amendments necessary to save the
Constitution 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 Statesmanship--Different Courses
of Hamilton and Madison on Questions of Constitutional
Power--Unconstitutionality of Hamilton's Measures--His
Consciousness thereof--His Sense of the Obligations of Public
Men--His View of the Constitution 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 Washington and Hamilton in
the Adoption of the latter's Policy--Probable Ground of
Washington's Official Approval of the Bank Bill--Subsequent similar
Position and Conduct of Madison--Instances of a like Transcending
of Constitutional Limits under a supposed Necessity, by Jefferson
and by Jackson--The Hamiltonian Rule of Construction discarded by
Washington 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 Class 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 Class--The Policy best adapted to
succeed with our People is that of a Strict Construction of the
Constitution 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--Latitudinarianism
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 Institutions depends on the Right Convictions of the great
Agricultural Class--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 Constitution, and most of them
as servile imitations of the English system, inexpedient in themselves
and contrary to the genius and spirit of our institutions. 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 Dickinson, 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 circumstances
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
Constitution, 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 Constitution. 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 constitution, and of the formation by that body of
a substantive and effective federal government, composed of legislative,
executive, and judicial departments; approved of the Constitution as
made, with modifications which were principally 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 documents, viz.: Jefferson's "Correspondence," Vol. I.
p. 441; Vol. II. pp. 64, 162, 221, 236, 273, 303; Letter to Washington
expressing his anxiety for the adoption of the Constitution; 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 Constitution; had, as far as we have knowledge of
Washington'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 Constitution 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 classes 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 Washington, 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 passage of the bill for the assumption 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 passage 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 class, 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 class 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 circumstance that, whilst in England it had been the
principal 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
assimilating 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 mass 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 class which in the earlier periods of
our colonial condition constituted 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 class 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 institutions. 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," constituting 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
associates. The circumstance 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 Constitution, 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 classes, 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 classes, 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.
Mr. Bancroft happily and truly describes the peculiar condition of
Southern men in this regard. "An instinctive aversion," says he, "to too
much government was always a trait of Southern character expressed in
the solitary manner of settling in the country, in the absence of
municipal governments, in the indisposition of the scattered inhabitants
to engage in commerce, to collect in towns, or to associate in townships
under corporate powers. As a consequence there was little commercial
industry; and on the soil of Virginia there were no vast accumulations
of commercial wealth. The exchanges were made almost entirely--and it
continued so for more than a century--by factors of foreign merchants.
Thus the influence of wealth, under the modern form of stocks and
accumulations of money, was always inconsiderable; and men were so
widely scattered--like hermits among the heathen--that far the smallest
number were within the reach of the direct influence of the established
Church or of Government."[24]
[24] Bancroft's _Hist. United States_, Vol. II. p. 189.
In this description of the early, which is also measurably and
comparatively true of the present, state of the South, we find a
solution of the circumstance that the failure of Hamilton's policy was
so much more signal there than in other quarters, and that the
principles upon which it was founded have there been since so
perseveringly and unitedly resisted. The political principles of the
landed interest, constituting an immense majority of their people, have
prevailed in the administration of their State governments, save in
regard to the ratification of the Federal Constitution, from the
recognition of our Independence to the present day. There has also been
a remarkable consistency in the political positions of their public men.
In Virginia, which State has done so much to give a tone to national
politics, Patrick Henry has been almost, if not quite, the only
prominent man who abandoned the principles by which he had been governed
during the Confederation, and embraced those of Hamilton at the coming
in of the new government. Always admiring his character and conduct
during the Revolutionary era, and strongly impressed by the vehemence
and consistency with which he had, during the government of the
Confederation, opposed every measure that savored of English origin, I
pressed Mr. Jefferson, as far as was allowable, for the reasons of his
sudden and great change. His explanation was, "that Henry had been
smitten by Hamilton's financial policy."
The Republican party, forced into existence by Hamilton's obnoxious
measures, sprang chiefly from the landed interest. The declaration of
its illustrious founder, in his letter to Mazzei, that the country would
yet preserve its liberties, was mainly based on the fact that "the whole
landed interest was republican," and he could not have placed his
reliance on a surer foundation. Farthest removed, as has been already
said, from the seductive influence of the money power, abounding in
strong common sense and love of country, and always greatly superior in
numbers to the business men of all other classes, it constituted then,
and has ever since constituted, the balance wheel of the Government. All
it asks from administration is the maintenance of order, protection in
the enjoyment of its civil and political rights, and the management of
public affairs in a spirit of equal justice to all men. Whilst the
commercial and manufacturing classes are annually approaching the
National Legislature with appeals for aid and encouragement, and whilst
the Congressional committees charged with their interests are from time
to time convulsing the country with their measures, that which is
nominally the representative and guardian of agriculture not being asked
to do any thing for its support, very properly does nothing; having,
indeed, no power under the Constitution to do any thing for it, the
advantages of which are not common to all classes. What the farmers and
planters desire more than this are "the early and the latter rain," for
which they look to a source purer and more powerful than human
legislation.
Thus sustained, the Republican party of 1790, headed by Thomas
Jefferson, with the 'laboring oar' in the hands of James Madison, warmed
into action by Jefferson's more fervent though not more deeply seated
patriotism, and embracing "a great mass of talent," determined to oppose
every measure of Washington's administration which they believed to be
unauthorized by the Constitution, or anti-republican in its tendencies.
This resolution was carried out with unflinching firmness, but, whatever
has been said to the contrary, was made and designed to be performed in
a manner consistent with the respect they entertained for the character
and feelings of President Washington, and without even a desire to
displace him from the high office with which they had contributed to
invest him. It would have been strange if, in a state of party violence
so excited as that which naturally sprung up, the dominant party should
have refrained from aspersing the motives of their opponents by
attributing to them personal hostility to a chief so justly beloved by
the people as was Washington. Mr. Jefferson, in his letter to me,
referring to similar charges but speaking of a subsequent period, says
"General Washington, after the retirement of his first cabinet and the
composition of his second, entirely Federal, and at the head of which
was Mr. Pickering himself, had no opportunity of hearing both sides of
any question. His measures consequently took more the hue of the party
in whose hands he was. These measures were certainly not approved by the
Republicans; yet they were not imputed to him, but to the counselors
around him; and his prudence so far restrained their impassioned course
and bias that no act of strong mark during the remainder of his
administration excited much dissatisfaction. He lived too short a time
after, and too much withdrawn from information to correct the views into
which he had been deluded, and the continued assiduities of the party
drew him into the vortex of their intemperate career, separated him
still farther from his real friends, and excited him to actions and
expressions of dissatisfaction which grieved them but could not loosen
their affections from him."[25]
[25] See Appendix.
Such charges were freely made and with unsparing bitterness; yet I
cannot but think that unprejudiced minds, if it is not too soon to
expect to find many such upon this subject, would, on a careful review
of facts, acquit the Republican party of them. Madcaps, and those who,
looking to party for their daily bread, hope to commend themselves by
extremes and by violence to those whom they sustain, are to be found in
all parties and should not be allowed to make those to which they attach
themselves responsible for their acts. Nothing has ever been adduced
that may fairly be regarded as the act of the Republican party which
proves the existence of the disposition charged against it in regard to
General Washington; and the single fact that, although its opposition
commenced three years before the expiration of his first term, there was
not the slightest effort made to prevent his reëlection, or the
exhibition of any desire to prevent it, is, of itself, sufficient to
refute the charge of personal unfriendliness toward him. Nor did the
Republicans desire to embarrass his administration beyond what was
inevitable from their opposition to measures which they regarded as
unconstitutional or in the highest degree inexpedient, of which the bank
and funding system were appropriate illustrations.
The Federal party, without extraordinary or difficult attention and
care, might have preserved untarnished a character made respectable by
illustrious names and honorable history, notwithstanding the
overwhelming defeat to which it was subsequently exposed, and its
principles, however erroneous, might have stood a chance of restoration
to power in the course of those changes and overturns of men and things
to which public affairs and political parties have ever been subject.
Even error of opinion not unfrequently regains a lost ascendancy by
means of the perseverance and consistency with which it is adhered to,
and when the organization by which it has been upheld is maintained with
the fidelity and dignity that belong to a good cause. In all these
respects there was, on the part of the members of the Federal party, a
complete failure. They suffered its lead to fall into less respectable
hands, and its support to be lent to seceders (one after another) from
the Republican ranks between whom and themselves there was no identity
of political feeling, and still less of principle. The motives for this
course were usually censurable, and the results generally disastrous
from the beginning, and always so in the sequel. Hamilton, as has been
seen, twice threw himself in the path of his party to save it from such
degradation, for his intelligence and integrity appreciated the
impossibility of preserving the respect of the people at large for
principles, whose special advocates showed by their acts that they did
not themselves respect them. His counsels were unheeded, and the banner
of a once highly honored party continued to be trailed in the dust until
its name was disowned by its adherents with shame and disgust.
Those who agree with me in believing that General Hamilton was sincere
in the opinion he expressed that the republican system could not be made
adequate to the purpose of good government here, and that the welfare of
the country would be best promoted by approaching as near to the English
model as public sentiment would tolerate, are well justified in holding
him undeserving of censure for his introduction of the anti-republican
plan which he submitted to the Federal Convention. The right of the
people to "alter or abolish" existing systems, and "to institute new
government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness," was the corner-stone of the Revolution, in
defense of which he had freely ventured his life. The Convention was not
only an appropriate but the appointed place for the assertion and
exercise of that right. So far from being a fit subject for censure, the
submission to that body by a man in Hamilton's position, with the claims
he had established upon the confidence and support of the people by his
superior abilities and his Revolutionary services, of propositions which
every body knew, and which he himself felt, were strongly adverse to the
prevailing current of public sentiment, and the intrepidity and
extraordinary talent with which he sustained them, without a single open
supporter in the Convention, solely because he believed them to be right
and their adoption necessary to the public good, exhibited a patriotic
and self-sacrificing spirit alike honorable to himself and to his
principles. His course in the Convention, for which he has been
extensively reviled, was in my judgment the most brilliant and
creditable portion of his political career. It presented an example of
candor and devotion to principle which there was not a single one among
his friends willing to follow, although there were, doubtless, a few who
felt substantially as he did and sympathized with all he said, and
although they all admired his gallant hearing while lamenting his
indiscretion. It was, unhappily for himself, the culminating point in
his political life, from which every subsequent step gradually lowered
him, until he justly forfeited the confidence and countenance of every
sincere friend to republican government.
Alas! how deeply is it to be lamented that this great statesman, as able
as an impracticable man can be, when he knew that he was about to
attempt a ladder upon the first round of which his boldest friend dared
not even to place his foot, had not rather followed, in some respects at
least, the example of his coadjutor and friend, James Madison. The
coincidences in the occurrence of opportunities to make themselves
useful to their country, and the contrasts in the ways in which these
were improved and the consequences that followed, to be found in the
public lives of these illustrious men, are both striking and
instructive. In regard to one subject a partial reference to them has
already been made. They were co-workers in a series of efforts to obtain
from the Congress of the Confederation authority for the Federal head to
levy and collect impost duties to enable it to perform the offices
devolved upon the General Government by the Articles of Confederation,
instead of trusting to the unsafe and unstable requisitions upon the
States. No sooner had the first Congress of the new Government,
established for that and other purposes, formed a quorum, than Mr.
Madison, as we have already seen, before the executive branch had been
organized, or even the President elect been informed of his election,
introduced bills for the imposition and collection of duties on imported
goods, which he pushed forward _de die in diem_ until they became laws,
and the duties were in the process of being collected, and the public
coffers in the way of being replenished. This good work he followed up
in due time by the introduction into Congress of resolutions (and the
most able support of them on its floor) in favor of a commercial policy
recommended by the Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson, to improve our
trade and thus increase our revenue. These were the contributions of Mr.
Madison, simple, practical, and direct like their author, for promoting
the financial branch of the public service under the new Government,
which was committed by President Washington to the special
superintendence of Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury.
The Secretary's contributions to the same objects consisted of two very
elaborate and very able reports, the first upon public credit,
recommending the establishment of a funding system, and the second in
favor of a national bank, embracing plans for each and, in the former, a
scheme to raise funds for the payment of the interest of a debt to be
funded. The _éclat_ which he acquired by these imposing state papers was
so great, and many minds are still so much dazzled by the traditional
splendor of their effects upon the credit and resources of the country
as to render it not a little embarrassing to discuss, in a plain,
matter-of-fact way, the questions of their real influence or
non-influence upon our finances.
In previous as well as in subsequent parts of this work will be found
notices of the rise, progress, and effects of Hamilton's funding system,
which, if they do not show that the measure, judged by its results,
partook more of the character of a castle in the air than of a wise and
practicable financial scheme, do not, I think, fall far short of it. But
both it and the bank are now only "obsolete ideas"--to remain so
probably while our Government endures. References, under such
circumstances, can only be usefully made to them to show the principles
and objects of men and parties.
Whilst Hamilton's measures have been, it is hoped and believed, forever
abandoned--the funding system by his own political friends, and a
national bank in consequence of its explicit and emphatic condemnation
by the whole country--those put into immediate and successful operation
by Madison not only performed at the time the useful office designed for
them by the Constitution, and gradually provided for the wants of the
existing Government, but have supplied it with a revenue abundantly
sufficient to pay the public debt and to defray all expenses and
disbursements required by the public service in war and in peace, with
rare and limited additions, for nearly three quarters of a century, and
will, in all likelihood, continue so to do to the end.
But the most interesting aspect of these coincidences and contrasts to
which I refer is to be found in the illustrations they furnish of the
use and abuse of the Constitution by those distinguished men and by
their followers respectively. Co-workers again in persevering efforts to
obtain from Congress or the States a call for a general convention to
revise the Articles of Confederation, it would be difficult to decide
which contributed most to effect that object, and it is not too much to
say that it would not have been then accomplished if the efforts of
either had been withheld. They were neither of them satisfied with the
Constitution framed by the Convention; Madison not entirely, Hamilton
scarcely at all. The former sympathized, as I have already said, with
Hamilton's distrust of the State governments, made unsuccessful efforts
to impose stringent restrictions upon their power, and would have been
better pleased with the Constitution if it had inclined more decidedly
in that direction.
They both signed the instrument notwithstanding; Hamilton under a sort
of protest against its sufficiency (or rather its want of it), and
Madison with apparent and, I doubt not, real cordiality. In the numbers
of the "Federalist," (of which they were the principal authors,) they
offered a joint and honorable testimonial to the Constitution, which
became in the sequel an enduring monument to their own associated
memories. Each rendered "yeoman's service" in the conventions,
respectively, of New York and Virginia, to decide upon its ratification;
in neither of which was the ratification probable at the beginning, and
in both there is the best reason to believe that, without their powerful
aid, it must have ultimately failed. In such an event the failure of the
Constitution would have been next to certain.
Although Gouverneur Morris's assertion that Hamilton had comparatively
nothing to do with the construction of the Federal Constitution is true,
yet as Madison had a greater agency in that work than any other
individual, and as the obtaining the call of the Convention and the
ratification of the Constitution, in which Madison and Hamilton acted
the chief parts, were also the portions of the whole transaction most
exposed to the action of the States and of the public mind, and
therefore the most difficult of accomplishment, it may with truth be
affirmed that there were not any fifty or a hundred other men taken
together to whom the country was as much indebted for the Federal
Constitution as to those two gentlemen. But in their subsequent
treatment of that sacred instrument, which each had done so much to
bring to maturity, they, unfortunately for the country, differed very
widely. The Constitution was ratified and adopted in the first instance
by more than the requisite number of States, and finally by the whole
thirteen. General Washington was elected President. He appointed
Alexander Hamilton to be Secretary of the Treasury, and James Madison
was elected a member of the first Congress. The latter, although
overruled in the Convention upon points which he deemed important,
acquiesced in the decisions of the majority, accepted the Constitution
in good faith with a determination to do all in his power, not only to
secure its ratification, but to give to the people and the States the
full benefit of its provisions as those were understood by them, and to
do this with the same fidelity and honor with which he would perform any
private arrangement to which he had made himself a party. Satisfied from
numerous exhibitions of public sentiment elsewhere as well as in the
State conventions, and perhaps more particularly in that of his own
State, not only that there was far greater opposition in the minds of
the people at large to the Constitution as it came from the hands of
the Convention than he at first supposed, but that it was, in point of
fact, defective in some particulars important in themselves and well
calculated to excite the solicitude of the masses, he determined to
leave no means within his reach unimproved to make it, by suitable and
seasonable amendments, what a brief experience convinced him that it
ought to be. It might perhaps be inferred, from some general expressions
used by him in the first Congress, that he felt as if something had been
said or done on his part rendering his attention to this matter a
special duty, although nothing of that nature is apparent; but, be that
as it may, there were other considerations imperative upon a mind so
circumspect and so just to prevent his losing sight of the subject.
Mr. John Quincy Adams asserts that the Constitution "was extorted from
the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation." Although this may be
deemed an exaggerated description no one can make himself familiar with
the history of that period without becoming sensible of the truth of two
positions, viz.: that vast numbers who were greatly dissatisfied with
the Constitution were induced to withhold their active opposition by the
embarrassed condition of the country, and that even this consideration
would not have sufficed to overcome the decided Anti-Federal majority
against it but for the provision authorizing amendments, and the
confident anticipation that such as were proper and necessary would be
speedily made. The consciousness of these truths, and a conviction that
a successful operation of, and general acquiescence in, the provisions
of the new Constitution were not to be expected unless proper steps were
immediately taken to appease the opposition still in force among the
Anti-Federalists, secured the early and unremitting attention of Mr.
Madison to that point.
This view of the expectations of the country upon the subject of
amendment and of the condition of the public mind in respect to it was
strongly confirmed by memorials presented to the first Congress, at its
first session, by the States of New York and Virginia, containing
averments framed in the strongest terms, that whilst they dreaded the
operation of the Constitution in its then imperfect state, they had,
notwithstanding, yielded their assent to its ratification from motives
of affection for their sister States, and from an invincible reluctance
to separate from them, and with a full confidence that its imperfections
would be speedily removed; that the existence of great and vital defects
in the Constitution was the prevailing conviction of those States; that
the dissatisfaction and uneasiness upon the subject amongst their people
would never cease to distract the country until the causes of them were
satisfactorily removed; that the matter would ill admit of postponement,
and concluding with applications to Congress that they should, without
delay, call a new convention with full powers to revise and amend the
Constitution. Although these memorials referred to the opinions
expressed by their respective State conventions that that instrument
ought to undergo further revision, which, in one of them, was a
unanimous expression, Congress nevertheless took no steps toward a
compliance with the request they contained. But the whole subject was
brought before it by Mr. Madison as soon as he had perfected his revenue
measures, and he caused amendments to be carried through that body, I
had almost said by his own unaided efforts, which were satisfactory to
the people--certainly to that portion of them by whom the Constitution
had been opposed.
A tolerably full and obviously fair account of the debates and
proceedings in the House of Representatives upon this subject--those in
the Senate, I fear, are lost--may be found in the first and second
volumes of Lloyd's "Register of the Proceedings and Debates of the
First House of Representatives of the United States," which I am sorry
to find has not been transferred to Colonel Benton's "Abridgment." The
subject, speaking of the ten amendments as one measure, was only second
in intrinsic importance, on account of the influence its success exerted
on the solidity and perpetuity of the new system, to the Constitution
itself, and the debates in point of ability and earnestness,
particularly on the part of Mr. Madison, not inferior to any of the
discussions by which that interesting period when the foundations of the
present government were laid was so greatly distinguished; one cannot
read them without acknowledging the difficulty of recalling another
instance in which a measure of equal gravity was so successfully carried
through a public body against the obvious and decided preferences of a
large majority of its members, or without admiring the extent to which
that success was achieved by the exertions of one man.
Now that the dangers which environed these proceedings have passed away,
they afford amusement to the curious in such matters by the picture they
furnish of the twists and turns to which men in high positions and of
generally fair views will sometimes resort to stave off distasteful
propositions, with the hope of ultimately defeating what they do not
feel it to be safe directly to oppose. The Virginia and New York
applications were presented by Mr. Bland, of the former, and Mr.
Lawrence, of the latter State, both friends of Hamilton; and although
both were solicitous that the applications should be respectfully
received, neither of them ever took a step to make them successful, nor
were they in favor of the amendments proposed by Mr. Madison. That
gentleman gave notice of his intention to bring the subject before the
House several weeks before the day he named for that purpose. When that
day arrived he moved that the House should resolve itself into a
committee of the whole to receive the amendments he proposed to offer.
Opposition to going into such committee came from almost all sides of
the House, some urging one species of objections and some another, but
generally indicative of decided unfriendliness to the views of the
mover. Perceiving that his motion was neither satisfactory nor likely to
succeed, Mr. Madison withdrew it, and submitted a proposition for the
appointment of a select committee to report such amendments to the
Constitution as they should think proper. Having done this, he, in a
very able speech, went over the whole subject, stated at length the
necessity that existed for some amendments, and the high expediency of
proposing others, and furnished a statement of those he had intended to
offer to the committee of the whole; these he trusted would now be
referred to the select committee, and thus the matter would proceed
there without interruption to the other business of the House.
The proposition for a select committee was not more fortunate or
acceptable than its predecessor. It was opposed from the same quarters,
and several who had evinced no favor toward the motion to go into
committee of the whole now said that, if the subject was to be taken up
at all, that would have been, but for its withdrawal, the preferable
mode. Mr. Madison declared himself, as he said, "unfortunate in not
satisfying gentlemen with respect to the mode of introducing the
business; he had thought, from the dignity and peculiarity of the
subject, that it ought to be referred to a committee of the whole; he
had accordingly made that motion first, but finding himself not likely
to succeed in that way, he had changed his ground. Fearing again to be
discomfited on his motion for a select committee, he would change his
mode, and move the propositions he had stated before directly to the
House, and it might then do what it thought proper with them. He
accordingly moved the propositions by way of Resolutions to be adopted
by the House."
This course was also objected to on several grounds; but the majority
saw that if the game of staving off the subject was not broken up by Mr.
Madison's third proposition, it had at least been so far exposed as to
require time to put it in some new form, and with that view Mr.
Lawrence, who, as already said, was not in favor of amendments, moved
that the subject be referred to a committee of the whole,--the
proposition first submitted by Mr. Madison,--which was done. This
occurred on the 8th of June. On the 21st of July thereafter Mr. Madison
"begged the House to indulge him in the further consideration of the
subject of amendments to the Constitution, and as there appeared, in
some degree, a moment of leisure, he would move to go into a committee
of the whole upon the subject, conformably to the order of the 8th of
last month."
This proposition was met by a motion from Mr. Fisher Ames, of
Massachusetts, to rescind the vote of the 8th of June, and to refer the
business to a select committee. This motion gave rise to speeches
professing not to be opposed to the consideration of amendments at a
proper time and under proper circumstances, but showing a decided
distrust of and distaste for the whole proceeding. The motion prevailed
by a vote of 34 to 15, and a select committee was appointed, of which
Mr. Vining, an opponent, was made chairman. The report of this committee
contained substantially the amendments proposed by Mr. Madison, with
some alterations and additions. These, after revision by the House, were
finally passed by a vote of two thirds in both Houses, submitted to the
States and ratified by them, as they now appear as the first ten of the
twelve amendments that have been made to the Federal Constitution since
its first adoption.
Some of Mr. Madison's colleagues occasionally expressed a desire for the
success of his propositions, and similar avowals were sometimes made by
two or three members from other States; but of substantial, persevering,
and effective assistance, he may, with truth, be said to have had none,
and two thirds of the House were at heart decidedly opposed to the
amendments that were made. With all his talents, industry, and
perseverance, Mr. Madison would not have been able to carry them if his
exertions had not been seconded by an influence still more efficacious.
The legislature of Virginia alluded to the defects of the Constitution
as "involving all the great and inalienable rights of freemen," declared
that its objections were not founded on speculative theory, but deduced
from principles which had been established by the melancholy examples of
other nations in different ages, and said, "they will never be removed
until the cause shall cease to exist." It announced the "cause of
amendment as a common cause," and its trust that commendable zeal would
be shown by others also for obtaining those "provisions which experience
had taught them were necessary to secure from danger the inalienable
rights of human nature." It expressed its impatience of delay and its
doubt as to the disposition of Congress; complained of the slowness of
its forms, but congratulated itself on the possession of another remedy,
which it was determined to pursue, under the Constitution itself--that
of a convention of The States.
The New York application, signed, as Speaker, by John Lansing, Jr., who
had left the Federal Convention in consequence of his dissatisfaction
with its proceedings and never returned to it, though not going as much
into details, employed language equally bold and uncompromising in
demanding from Congress another convention, which might propose such
amendments "as it might find best calculated to promote our common
interests, and secure to ourselves and our latest posterity the great
and inalienable rights of mankind." This memorial asserted not only that
the New York Convention had ratified "in the fullest confidence of
obtaining a revision of the Constitution by a general convention, as
appeared on the face of its ratification," but that that body (of which
Hamilton was a member) were unanimous in the opinion that such a
revision was necessary to recommend that instrument to the approbation
and support of a numerous body of its constituents.
These documents, and especially that of Virginia, pointed very
emphatically to the source of that discontent with the Constitution
which so extensively prevailed in the old Anti-Federal ranks. Even they
felt that the Constitution was much better than they had expected, and
the most considerate among them, those who were most capable of
suspending their suspicions as to the designs of their opponents long
enough to give the instrument a dispassionate consideration, were soon
satisfied--and Samuel Adams, who stood at the head of the Anti-Federal
party, admitted--that its general structure was free from any
insuperable objection. The life-tenure given to the Federal Judges was,
as it indeed might well be, regarded as inconsistent with republican
principles; but it was to be remembered that those officers were
expected to be, as they ought always to be, non-combatants in partisan
politics by reason of their appointment to act as arbiters of the fates
and fortunes of their countrymen. Upon the great point to which the
attention of such men was first directed, that of the ability of the
State governments to maintain their sovereignty and independence under
the new system, there was no real ground for apprehension. But the
Constitution was principally confined to what were more strictly public
concerns, the powers and duties of the Federal and State Governments in
regard to National and State affairs, with only a slight sprinkling of
provisions looking particularly to the protection of the citizen against
the exercise of arbitrary power; and it was accompanied by no Bill of
Rights, such as those to which the people had been accustomed in respect
to their State governments. In the latter cases they might more readily
have been reconciled to the absence of such provisions, as those
governments were carried on under their immediate observation, and they
formed a part of them in much larger portions than they could expect to
do of the Federal Government. The latter they were too much in the habit
of regarding, at that early period, as a foreign government only
remotely responsible to them. We have already spoken of the settled
character of their distrust of power for which there was only a remote,
if any, responsibility, and of their having been trained by experience
to expect only abuses from the exercise of such authority, whether in
State or Church,--an experience embracing the sorrowful and
well-remembered accounts of outrage and persecution against their
ancestors, and the cruel oppression of the then existing generation by
the distant government of the mother country. We have seen how great had
been their aversion and that of their ancestors to the establishment of
a general government, and with what difficulties their consent to the
call of the then recent Convention had been obtained, and what care had
been taken to restrict its power. It was not therefore surprising that a
large majority of them should have manifested such intense
dissatisfaction when a Constitution was presented for their approval
containing so few, so very few safeguards for the protection of "the
great and inalienable rights of freemen," as Virginia described
them--of the "great and inalienable rights of mankind," as the New York
Legislature styled them--points to which the masses, especially of the
Anti-Federalists, were so keenly alive.
These considerations and circumstances produced a sudden and extensive
spirit of discontent which, as those States avowed, never would be
appeased until its causes were removed, and with which Mr. Madison was
well satisfied the new Government would not be able to contend unless
some mode was devised to appease it. Although never a member of it, he
had, in his long and persevering efforts to obtain the Constitution,
"tasted the quality," so to speak, of the old Anti-Federal party, and
understood the stuff of which it was composed. He knew very well that
the call of Virginia upon her co-States to make the demand for
amendments "a common cause" would not be _brutum fulmen_, but that the
agitation for a new convention in such hands, and commenced under such
favorable circumstances, with so many materials of discontent already
made to their hands, would not cease until its object was gained, and
what would follow no man could tell. He was not so much of a Bourbon as
Hamilton; he had not pursued his thorny path through those trying scenes
without learning something of the character and temper of the people, or
without having his mind disabused of much that it had once entertained.
No man in the country was more opposed to the call of a new convention,
or more unwilling to make any amendments that would materially impair
the original structure of the Constitution. The former he omitted to
avow out of respect to the declared wishes of his State but the latter
he repeatedly announced because it was only in harmony with his past
course. But he knew that matters could not remain as they stood, and he
thought a series of amendments could be made, some of which he deemed
highly proper and all expedient, through which a large portion of the
Anti-Federalists might be conciliated without prejudice to the system
which had been adopted. This course, to be useful, must, he was
satisfied, be pursued at the very commencement of the new government. He
devoted himself, body and mind, to that object, and we have seen some of
the difficulties with which he had to contend. Although Hamilton was not
personally in Congress, he was well represented, and Madison found
there, besides, many other Bourbons, in the sense in which I use that
term. He prepared a plan according to the views I have described; and
few exhibitions of that kind can have been more interesting than to see
him stand between the Federal majority in the House and the few old
Anti-Federalists who were there, and avail himself of the votes of each
in turn to defeat the obnoxious efforts of the other; first to arrest by
Federal aid every attempt on the part of the few Anti-Federalists to mar
his project by seeking amendments which he was not himself prepared to
adopt, and then to frustrate by Anti-Federal votes the efforts of a
majority of the Federalists (though less than a majority of the House)
to defeat his entire scheme.
That the only alternative was between a new convention and the adoption
of amendments substantially like his, was the great fact which he
labored to impress upon the minds of the Federal members. He introduced
it in his public speeches with never-failing delicacy, but with
sufficient clearness to be understood, and doubtless enforced it at
private interviews as far as it was his habit to do such things. That
important truth was the fulcrum on which he rested his lever, and he
engineered his plan through the House and afterwards, as chairman of the
Committee of Conference, through both Houses (the majorities in each
alike unfriendly to it) with triumphant and under the circumstances most
extraordinary success.
The dread of another Federal Convention has never failed, when the
circumstances were sufficient to justify apprehension of its call, to
deter the Federalists from the adoption of projects obnoxious to the
democratic spirit of the country, however anxiously desired by
themselves. Pending the election of President in the House, between
Jefferson and Burr, the Republicans replied to the threat of putting the
Government in the hands of an officer by act of Congress, by an open,
united, and firm declaration that the day such an act passed, the Middle
States would arm, and that they would "call a convention to reorganize
and amend the Constitution;" upon the effect of which Mr. Jefferson
remarks, "the very word convention gives them the horrors, as, in the
present democratical spirit of America, they fear they should lose some
of the favorite morsels of the Constitution."
Mr. Madison's ten amendments consisted of provisions in favor of the
free exercise of religion, of speech, and of the press; of assembling
peaceably to petition the Government for a redress of grievances; of the
right to keep and bear arms; against quartering soldiers in any house
without the consent of the owner, except under certain qualifications;
against unreasonable searches and general warrants; against being held
to answer for crimes unless on presentment by a grand jury, with certain
exceptions; against being twice put in jeopardy for the same offense;
against being compelled to be a witness against one's self, or being
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law;
against taking private property for public use without just
compensation; in favor of a trial by an impartial jury of the district
in certain cases at common law and in all criminal prosecutions, of the
party charged being informed of the nature of the accusation, of being
confronted with the witnesses against him, of having compulsory process
for obtaining witnesses and the assistance of counsel in his defense;
against excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel punishments; against
the enumeration of certain rights being construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people; and, finally, that powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.
These provisions embraced the points upon which the public mind was most
susceptible, and upon which the old Anti-Federal party in particular had
been, with obvious reason, most excited.
That Mr. Madison's success in this great measure saved the Constitution
from the ordeal of another Federal Convention is a conclusion as certain
as any that rests upon a contingency which has not actually occurred,
and that it converted the residue of the Anti-Federal party which had
not supported the Constitution, whose members, as well as their
political predecessors in every stage of our history, constituted a
majority of the people, from opponents of that instrument into its
warmest friends, and that they and their successors have from that time
to the present period, either as Republicans or Democrats, occupied the
position of its _bonâ fide_ defenders in the sense in which it was
designed to be understood by those who constructed and by those who
ratified it, against every attempt to undermine or subvert it, are
undeniable facts.
It was by adding this great service to those he had rendered in
obtaining the Convention, and in framing the Constitution in that body,
that he deservedly won the noble title of "Father of the Constitution."
He was neither as great a man nor as thorough a Republican, certainly
not as thorough a Democrat, as Mr. Jefferson; he had less genius than
Hamilton; yet it is doing him no more than justice to say that, as a
civilian, he succeeded in making himself more practically useful to his
country than any other man she has produced. No one would have been more
ready than Mr. Jefferson to award to Mr. Madison this high distinction.
He either told me at Monticello, or I heard it from him at second-hand,
(I am uncertain which was the case,) that whilst he was in France, some
one whom he named asked him to say whom he thought the greatest man in
America, and that he replied, if the gentleman would ask him to name the
greatest man in the world he would comply with the request, which
addition being made, he answered "James Madison!"