of Hamilton and Madison in respect to their treatment of a Constitution
which they had both taken such unwearied pains to bring into existence.
The course they respectively pursued upon the subjects of finance and
revenue, and the measures they respectively preferred, without regard to
questions of constitutional power, only indicated differences of opinion
upon subjects in which such differences are apt to arise, and did not
necessarily involve the political integrity of either. But we have now
arrived at a point of departure in the relative course of these great
men involving graver considerations, and to which it is to be regretted
that the last reservation cannot be truly applied. There was no warrant
in the Constitution for the establishment of a national bank, or for the
assumption of the State debts, or for the unlimited claim of power by
the Federal Government over the collection and disbursement of national
revenue, and for its patronage of by far the largest proportion of the
pursuits and interests of the country, all of which were effected by
Hamilton or recommended in his Report on Manufactures, and he understood
perfectly well that the Constitution conferred no such powers when he
advocated successfully the first two of those measures, and asserted the
power and recommended its exercise in respect to the latter.
It is not agreeable to be obliged to assume that a gentleman of General
Hamilton's elevated character in private life, upon whose integrity and
fidelity in his personal dealings and in the discharge of every private
trust that was reposed in him no shadow rested, who was indifferent to
the accumulation of wealth, who as a public man was so free from
intrigues for personal advancement, and whose thoughts and acts in that
character were so constantly directed to great questions and great
interests, could yet prove faithless to one of the most sacred public
trusts that can be placed in man--the execution of the fundamental law
of the land. If Hamilton had been asked, as a private man, whether he
believed it was the intention of the framers of the Constitution to
confer upon Congress the power to establish a national bank, and whether
he believed that the people when they ratified it supposed that it
contained such a power, he would, if he answered at all, have answered
"No!" He was incapable of willful deception on the subject. This
discrepancy between his conduct as a statesman in the management of
public affairs and his integrity and truthfulness in private life was
the result of a vicious opinion as to the obligations of a public man,
and in no degree attributable to any inferior sense of personal honor,
nor was it ever otherwise regarded.
His position upon this point is understood to have been founded on the
following opinions: That the people as a body were not capable of
managing their public affairs with safety to their happiness and
welfare; that it was, therefore, a proper exercise of power to give the
management of them into the hands of those who were capable, and to
place the latter in positions, as far as practicable under the
circumstances, beyond popular control; that it was the sacred duty of
those who were so intrusted to exercise their power truly and sincerely
for the best interests of those for whom they acted; that if those
interests could be well administered without transcending the power with
which the public functionary was invested, or without the practice of
deception or corruption, such would be the preferable and proper course;
but if violations of the popular will, deception, or corruptions--not
those of the grosser kind, like direct bribery, but such as belonged to
the class he spoke of to Mr. Adams as constituting the life-giving
principle of the English system--were necessary, in the best judgment of
men in power, to the security or advancement of the public welfare, the
employment of such means was justifiable.
Without stopping to cite authorities, I assume--on the strength of the
opinion of the age in which he lived, of his writings, of his
declarations, which were, beyond almost all other public men, without
reserve, and of his acts--that such were his views, and content myself
with the declaration that the existence of such views is the best, if
not the only, excuse that can be made for his official course.
At the close of the Convention, and just before signing the
Constitution, he declared that the latter might serve as a temporary
bond of union, but could never suffice to secure good government. After
he had succeeded in his first two interpolations, he spoke exultingly of
the success of the Constitution, and hopefully of the future; this was
because he knew that he had prospered in his attempt to give it a
construction not dreamed of at the former period by himself, or others
to his knowledge; and his hopes of the future were founded on his
success also in his plan set forth in his Report on Manufactures,
widening very greatly the breach he had already effected in the
Constitution. In February, 1802, after his latitudinarian scheme had
been arrested and was in danger of being permanently overthrown, he
described the Constitution to Gouverneur Morris as a "frail and
worthless fabric," the "fate" of which he had "anticipated from the very
beginning." He never reproached his friends with an unwillingness to go
as far as the Constitution would justify, but always attributed their
failure to defects in the system, thus admitting that the measures in
which he exulted and from which he hoped so much, had been established
by him, not under, but outside of that instrument.
The first marked effect of Hamilton's determination to pursue the course
I have described was a separation between him and his most efficient
coadjutor upon many points during the government of the Confederation,
and the next was the formation of the old Republican party. The motives
for the separation between those distinguished associates have been made
the subject, as might have been expected, of various and extensive
comment. So far as I know, Hamilton never spoke of Madison, after their
separation, in any other terms than those which were consistent with the
knowledge he possessed of the purity and integrity of his character. Few
men had such perfect control over their feelings as Mr. Madison, and few
exercised more reserve in speaking of the motives of his political
opponents. It has been rare indeed that he has ventured to touch upon
them even when necessary to his vindication from aspersions upon his own
character, a truth obvious to any one familiar with his life and
writings. I however accidentally came into the possession of
information upon this precise question of very great interest, which
will be found in the letter below from Nicholas P. Trist, Esq. In the
course of a conversation between Mr. Trist, myself, and other gentlemen,
at Philadelphia, last spring,[26] upon the subject of which they had
only a general bearing, the former alluded to the circumstances here
given in detail, and subsequently, at my request, reduced them to the
shape in which they now appear.
[26] In the spring of 1857. Eds.
Mr. Trist was a much esteemed and highly trusted friend of Mr.
Jefferson, and married his favorite grand-daughter, a lady of superior
intelligence, with whom I was well acquainted. He was also for many
years a neighbor and confidential friend of Mr. Madison, toward the
decline of the life of the latter. My knowledge of him has been derived
from long and familiar intercourse with him as a confidential clerk in
my department whilst I was Secretary of State, as consul of the United
States at Havana, and as private secretary of President Jackson, and I
do not hesitate to say that I never knew a more upright man. No one who
has had opportunities to become well acquainted with his character,
however politically or personally prepossessed in regard to him in other
respects, will, I am very sure, fail to admit his perfect truthfulness,
and the authenticity of any relation he might make upon the strength of
his own knowledge.
FROM MR. TRIST.
PHILADELPHIA, _May 31, 1857_.
MY DEAR SIR,--My promise, however tardily performed, has never been
forgotten; and now, complying with your request preferred at the
time and since renewed, I give you in writing the statement made by
me a month or two ago in conversation at Mr. Gilpin's; which
statement you will recollect was casually elicited, as the proper
commentary upon the charge mentioned by one of the company as being
brought against Mr. Jefferson--the charge, namely, that he had
"stolen Mr. Madison from the Federalists." This notion, by the way,
involves an utterly erroneous conception of the relation which
existed between the minds and characters of the two men. But I must
here confine myself to doing what you asked of me.
During the latter years of Mr. Madison's life, (the exact date is
recorded in a memorandum not now at hand,) the following incident
occurred.
My intimate friend Mr. Davis, Law Professor in the University of
Virginia, mentioned to me, as a thing which he thought Mr. Madison
ought to be apprised of, that in a forthcoming Life of Colonel
Hamilton, by one of his sons, the authenticity of his (Mr. M.'s)
report of Colonel H.'s speech in the Federal Convention was to be
denied; and furthermore he was to be represented as having
"abandoned" Colonel Hamilton. This Davis had learnt from Professor
George Tucker, of the same University, then recently returned from a
trip to the North.
Of course, on my first visit to Mr. Madison, which occurred soon
after, I told him of what Davis had said.
The effect upon his countenance was an expression of painful
surprise, succeeded by a very remarkable look his face assumed
sometimes, and which was deeply impressive from its concentration
and solemnity. A silence of some moments was broken by his saying,
in a tone corresponding to that look, "Sorry to hear it." Then a
pause, followed by these words, "I abandoned Colonel Hamilton,--or
Colonel Hamilton abandoned me,--in a word, we _parted_,--upon its
plainly becoming his purpose and endeavor to _adminis_TRATION
(administer) the government into a thing totally different from
that which he and I both knew perfectly well had been understood and
intended by the Convention which framed it, and by the people in
adopting it."
Upon the two words which I have underscored, especially the second,
and most especially its last two syllables, a marked emphasis was
laid. The latter (the word _administration_ used as a verb) is the
only instance of neologism I ever observed in Mr. Madison. Its
effectiveness was most striking; it hit the nail plumb on the head,
and drove it home at one blow. The whole history of that business,
the entire truth of the matter, was compressed into that one word.
As uttered by him there was a pause at "_adminis_"--and then came
out "TRATION." It was followed by the word "administer," thrown in
parenthetically, and in an under-tone; as much as to say, "I have
been coining a word here, which, as you are aware, is not my habit;
but just as I was about to say _administer_ the government, I felt
that this term is too general, too commonplace, too tame to convey
the idea present to my mind; and this modification of it presented
itself as exactly suited to the case."
As regards the speech, Mr. M. seemed painfully troubled at the
thought of the fidelity of his report of it being disputed, and at a
loss to realize the possibility of such a thing. "Why, as I once
related to you, that speech was placed by me in Colonel Hamilton's
own hand; and was, after deliberate perusal, returned by him with an
explicit recognition of its correctness--all to a very few verbal
alterations, which were made; on which occasion he placed in my
hands, as the proper accompaniment of his speech in my record, and
as presenting in a precise and exact shape his views as to the
government which it was desirable to establish, the draft of a
Constitution which he had prepared before coming to the
Convention."
This substantially, if not exactly, is what Mr. M. said upon that
point. He then went on to conjecture in what way Colonel H.'s
biographer might have been misled into this error; not a doubt being
intimated or evinced by him as to its being honestly an error.
Colonel H. spoke several times in the Convention--at greater or less
length, as would be seen when his (Mr. M.'s) notes were given to the
world. Perhaps, among his papers notes had been found, which, in the
absence of means of discriminating between remarks made on different
occasions, and between notes for an intended speech and that which
the speaker had actually said, might have given rise to the
misconception.
To the foregoing incident you wished me to add what I was led to
say, in the course of the same conversation, regarding Mr.
Jefferson's habitual tone in speaking of Colonel Hamilton. This was
always the very reverse of that in which he spoke of those whose
_characters_, personal or political, were objects of his disesteem.
It was invariably such as to indicate, and to infuse (certainly this
effect was produced upon my mind) a high estimate of Colonel
Hamilton _as a man_, whether considered with reference to personal
matters or to political matters. He was never spoken of otherwise
than as being a gentleman--a lofty-minded, high-toned man. As
regards politics, their convictions, their creeds, were
diametrically opposite. Colonel H. had no faith in republican
government. In his eyes the British Government was the perfection of
human government, the model of all that was practically attainable
in politics. His doctrine, openly avowed, was that there are but two
ways of governing men, but two ways in which the business of
government can be conducted: the one is through fear, the other
through self-interest--that is, influencing the conduct of those
upon whom the course of political affairs depends, through their
desire for personal advantages, for position, for wealth, and so
forth. In this country, to operate upon men through their fears was
out of the question; and consequently the latter constituted the
only practicable means. These political convictions on the part of
Colonel H., united as they were with his splendid abilities _and_
his lofty character as a man, both _public_ and _private_, were
regarded by Mr. Jefferson as having constituted the great peril to
which republicanism had been exposed in our country. But for the
_character_ of Colonel H., for the _man_, for his honesty and
sincerity and single-mindedness,--I mean considered with reference
to politics,--there was never the least indication of depreciation
or disrespect on the part of Mr. Jefferson; always the direct
reverse.
Never, in a single instance, when Colonel H. was the subject of
conversation with me, or in my presence, was it otherwise than
perfectly manifest that, in Mr. J.'s habitual feeling toward him,
the broadest possible line of demarcation existed between the man,
the character, (the _public_ character, I repeat, no less than the
_private_,) and the creed by which the action and course of that
character were determined; and that whilst the latter was abhorrent
to his own cherished faith, and had been for him the cause of the
intensest anxiety and gloomiest forebodings ever suffered by him,
the former was nevertheless no less truly an object of sincere
respect.
Having thus, my dear sir, at length fulfilled my promise,--though
not within the limited space (far from it) which you intimated,--I
tender the assurance of my respectful regard and friendly
remembrance.
N. P. TRIST.
MARTIN VAN BUREN,
_Ex-President of the U. S._
Hamilton took the position of which the virtuous Madison, whilst
standing at the brink of his grave, left behind him a description so
graphic, promptly and, as was his habit, immovably. The crisis met him
in his last intrenchment. He believed honestly, sincerely, and without
any designs other than such as related to the public welfare, that
nothing short of monarchical institutions would prove adequate to the
wants of the country, but these he was well satisfied could not be
obtained then, and possibly not for a long period. He had approached
them in the Convention as nearly, in respect to the point of efficiency,
as would afford the slightest chance of success for his plan, and he had
been left without a single open supporter in that body. Regarding the
Constitution, as framed by the Convention, as the only avenue to escape
from anarchy, he finally promoted its passage there and its ratification
by the States and people, avowedly as a temporary bond of union.
Appointed to assist in carrying it into effect, and sincerely believing
that, with no other powers than those only which he and Madison so well
knew it was intended to authorize, it must prove a failure and the
government established under it must go to pieces, he decided,
unhesitatingly and absolutely, to do under it whatever he in good faith
might think would promote the general welfare, without reference to the
intentions of its authors. He was a man of too much good sense to do
unnecessary violence to public feeling,--as he said to Jefferson "to
publish it in Dan or Beersheba,"--but such was his unchangeable design.
On the contrary, he entered into labored and able discussions to show
that his principal measures were authorized by the Constitution, but
these were in deference to the prejudices and ideas of the people,
nothing more.
There is nothing in the writings, speeches, or declarations of General
Hamilton inconsistent with the truth of this statement. In papers which
have been referred to, and others, he submitted ingenious arguments to
show that the Convention might have so intended, and that Congress had a
right to hold from the words employed that it did so intend, but he was
too circumspect to insist that the intention of the Convention ought not
to prevail when it could be ascertained, or to make the actual
intention, as a matter of fact, a point in the argument. Giving due
weight to the intention of the body when that was ascertained, he
adopted a course of reasoning which every body understood went to defeat
it, desiring no other efficacy for the opinion he labored to establish
than the vote of the majority. The better knowledge of the country
overthrew his specious deductions in a short time, and its traditions
will, it is to be hoped, render them forever harmless.
The principle of construction contended for by Hamilton, and for a
season to some extent made successful, was not designed for the
promotion of a particular measure, for which the powers of Congress
under the Constitution were to be unduly extended, on account of its
assumed indispensable importance to the public safety, but intended as a
sweeping rule by which those powers, instead of being confined to the
constitutional enumeration, were to authorize the passage of all laws
which Congress might deem conducive to the general welfare and which
were not expressly prohibited; a power similar to that contained in the
plan he proposed in the Convention. He desired, in short, to make the
Constitution a tablet of wax upon which each successive administration
would be at liberty to impress its rescripts, to be promulgated as
constitutional edicts.
Hamilton never well understood the distinctive character of our people,
but he understood human nature too well to believe that any people could
long respect or desire to uphold a Constitution the most stringent
provisions of which were thus regarded or treated. Its inevitable fate
is illustrated in the experience of France, after one of her
unscrupulous wits had aided in consigning to general derision that
litter of Constitutions which had rapidly followed one after the other,
by accompanying his oath with a grimace and a jest upon the number which
he had successively and with equal solemnity sworn to support. The
example of France was not lost upon a mind so watchful as Hamilton's,
and he did not doubt that our Constitution would be overthrown with the
same certainty, if not with equal facility, after it had been long
enough treated with similar disrespect, and that the door would be thus
opened for the ultimate introduction, under the influence of the money
power, of the only political institutions in which he placed absolute
confidence. He declared it to be his opinion, in the Convention, that he
regarded ours as the last chance for a republican government, and
assigned that opinion as a reason for his attempt to infuse into the new
system qualities as stringent as those he proposed and which he knew
very well were not generally regarded as belonging to a republican
system. No man better understood than he that the inviolate sanctity of
a written Constitution was the life of a republican government, and that
its days were numbered from the moment its people and rulers ceased thus
to preserve, protect, and defend it. Mr. Jefferson spoke, in his letter,
of Hamilton as "_professing_" that it was "the duty of its
administrators to conduct the Government on the principles their
constituents had elected." I did not at first, and for a long time
afterwards, attach as much significance to the word I have here
italicized, as I do now, when I have studied Hamilton's course more
carefully. I knew the letter was written in a liberal spirit toward his
memory. As I have elsewhere said, during my visit to Mr. Jefferson we
talked most of Hamilton, and the general course of Mr. J.'s remarks was
substantially similar to those now related, more than thirty years after
his decease, and without the slightest knowledge of what I have said
upon the same subject, by his relative, Mr. Trist, who was also a member
of his family. Mr. Jefferson was evidently disposed to confirm the
favorable impressions I had imbibed of the personal side of Hamilton's
character, and the words quoted above from his letter were designed to
qualify his imputation of monarchical principles to the latter, and I
can now appreciate the motive for the expression used, which did not
commit him to a concession that the opinion of Hamilton in regard to the
duty of administration was that upon which he acted.
With all these considerations before him, Hamilton did more than any,
and I had almost said than all, his contemporaries together, to
counteract the will of the people and to subvert by undermining the
Constitution of their choice. If his sapping and mining policy had been
finally successful, if the Republican party, mostly composed of old
Anti-Federalists, led by so bold a spirit and such a root-and-branch
Republican as Mr. Jefferson, had not arrested the farther progress of
his principles and demolished his scheme, this glorious old Constitution
of ours, of which we all seem so proud, of which it is so great an honor
to have been and of which so many have been ambitious to be, regarded as
the faithful expounder, under the wings of which we have risen from
small beginnings to be a puissant nation,--attracting the admiration and
able to command the respect of the civilized world,--would long since
have sunk beneath the waters of time, an object of neglect and scorn.
Our system might then have dissolved in anarchy, or crouched under
despotism or under some milder type of arbitrary government,--a
monarchy, an aristocracy, or, most ignoble of all, a moneyed
oligarchy,--but as a Republic it would have endured no longer. In this
aspect, notwithstanding his great and good qualities,--and he had
many,--Hamilton's course was an outrage upon liberty and a crime against
free government.
How happy would it have been for himself and for every interest if he
had not parted from his friend and faithful fellow-laborer through so
many and such trying scenes,--if, like Madison, not entirely satisfied
with the Constitution, but knowing that many others were in the same
predicament, he had applied his great talents to the business of making
it as generally acceptable as possible, and in giving to the masses an
administration of the Government according not only to the form but to
the spirit also in which it had been framed. The country would then at
length have rested after so many storms, and his great and good friend
Washington, instead of being steeped to the lips in partisan anxieties,
(as his nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, described him to me to have
been within the year of his death,) would not only have had a glorious
and successful administration, but would have lived in his retirement
and finally passed from earth without having been ever annoyed by the
canker of party spirit. His own political career would doubtless have
been far more prosperous and more agreeable; no occasion would then have
arisen for such reflections as he expressed to his confidential friend
describing his only reward, after all his efforts and sacrifices, as
"the murmurs of the friends of the Constitution and the curses of its
foes," and concluding, sadly enough for one who had so greatly
distinguished himself in its service, that "the American world was not
made for him!"
In these views of General Hamilton's course and in the opinions
expressed in respect to it, I have designed to confine myself strictly
to what I consider the deliberate judgment of the country, pronounced in
various ways and among others through the ballot-box--its constitutional
exponent. The most prominent of his measures have been, as already said,
discarded, and those who constituted the party in whose name they were
first introduced have so far yielded to the current of public opinion as
to abandon them forever. I have also before alluded to the gratifying
circumstance that the odium attached to those measures never in any
degree affected the confidence of the people in the patriotism of
Washington or in his fidelity to republican institutions, or weakened
their affection for him while he lived, or their respect for his memory
when he was no more. These were not the results of mere personal
devotion, but of an intelligent and just discrimination on the part of
the people. Hamilton designed to effect a civil revolution by changing
the powers of Congress from the restricted character given to them in
obedience to the wishes of the people to one in effect unlimited.
Washington entertained no such views. His constructions of the
Constitution were designed for the cases that called them forth, and had
no ulterior views.
The subject of the bank presented the principal and almost the only
question upon which President Washington gave a construction to that
instrument which met the disapprobation and excited the apprehensions of
the old Republicans. To the assumption of the State debts Hamilton, as
has been seen, succeeded in obtaining--how much to his mortification and
regret his writings show--the coöperation of Mr. Jefferson, and thereby
the unanimous support of the cabinet; and his Report on Manufactures, as
to most of its obnoxious details, was not acted upon during Washington's
administration, but in respect to its principal objects remained a dead
letter. President Washington, notwithstanding the conflicting opinions
of his cabinet, gave no reasons for his approval of the Bank Bill. The
public were therefore left to draw their own inferences in regard to
their character. Diverse opinions upon the point of course arose, and
there is much reason to believe (and that belief is strengthened by his
subsequent course in respect to another important matter) that he was
induced to regard a bank as indispensable, in the then condition of the
country, to the success of the new Government--an exigency in public
affairs of that peculiar sort which men in power assume to deal with
under the sanction of the great principle, _Salus populi suprema lex._
(See note.) Mr. Madison, who had demonstrated in Congress its
unconstitutionality at its creation, who had opposed the banking system
through his whole public life, and whose fame was in a very great degree
founded on the ability with which he had defined the true principles of
constitutional construction, in a way to exclude the idea of any power
in Congress to establish such an institution, did, notwithstanding, at
the close of his public career, in a condition of the country not unlike
that in which President Washington acted, and viewing the subject from
the same official station, arrive at the same conclusion in regard to
its imperative necessity, and gave his approval to the erection of a new
national bank.
NOTE.--(_Feb. 16th, 1858_.) Whilst reviewing the "era of
good-feeling," as it was called, during the administration of Mr.
Monroe, I conceived the idea of adding some account of the rise and
progress of our political parties, and entered upon the task
immediately, designing it to stand as an episode in my Memoirs. The
subject grew upon my hands to such an extent that for the last two
years it has, in necessary reading and examinations into facts,
&c., occupied most of the time that could be devoted to the general
object. The idea of limiting this portion to a mere digression was
therefore substantially laid aside, and the dignity of a separate
and distinct consideration, to which its dimensions, if nothing
else, entitled it, was assigned to it. Accordingly I continued my
examination of the course of parties in the United States down to
the present time, including the first months of President
Buchanan's administration. Whilst engaged in correcting the
manuscript and arranging it to be copied, and after I had, by many
pages, passed the place in the text to which this note is appended,
the first volume of Mr. Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, recently
published, came to my hands, and on reading its last two chapters
first, because they have a more immediate bearing on my subject, I
find the following very striking confirmation of the correctness of
my inference as to the state of General Washington's mind, on the
occasion spoken of:--
FROM RANDALL'S "LIFE OF JEFFERSON," VOL. 1. p. 631.
"On the subject of President Washington's feelings on the Bank Bill
we find the following entry in Mr. Trist's memoranda:--
"'MONTPELIER, _Friday, May 25, 1827_.
* * * * *
"'_Mr. Madison:_ "General Washington signed Jay's Treaty, but he
did not at all like it. He also signed the Bank. But he was _very_
near not doing so; and if he had refused, it would, in my opinion,
have produced a crisis. I will mention to you a circumstance which
I have never imparted, except in strict confidence. You know, by
the Constitution, ten days are allowed for the President's veto to
come in. If it does not appear within that time, the bill becomes a
law. I was conversing with a distinguished member of the Federal
party, who observed that according to his computation the time was
running out, or indeed _was run_ out; when just at this moment,
Lear[27] came in with the President's sanction. _I am satisfied
that had it been his veto, there would have been an effort to
nullify it, and they would have arrayed themselves in a hostile
attitude._ Between the two parties, General Washington had a most
difficult course to steer."
* * * * *
"'The foregoing is written immediately after the conversation,
which has not lasted half an hour,--Mr. Madison having stepped out,
and I taking advantage of this interruption to retire to my room
and commit the substance to paper. The very words I have retained,
as near as I could. In many instances (where I have run a line over
the words[28]) I have done this exactly.'"
This statement by Mr. Madison substantially sustains the view I
have taken of General Washington's position at that period. The
letters of all the leading Federalists of that day, and those that
followed it for some years, show that they looked with great
unanimity to Hamilton rather than to Washington for the tone and
direction that was to be given to the movements of the Federal
party, and leave scarcely a doubt that they would have sided with
Hamilton if a difference had arisen between the two, as is here
intimated by Mr. Madison.
How much is it to be regretted that the latter did not leave behind
him a history of the events of his life and an account of what he
knew of the views of others. No man was better informed upon all
political subjects than himself. At the time he referred to, in his
observations to Mr. Trist, he probably enjoyed as large a share of
Washington's confidence as any other man, and was at all times most
reluctant to be placed in opposition to him. Afterwards General
Washington placed in his hands the papers from which to write his
Farewell Address. But it was a rule of Mr. Madison's life, as I
have noticed before, never to injure the feelings of any man as
long as it could possibly be avoided, and he suffered long and much
to avoid it. His papers will be examined in vain for imputations of
faults to his contemporaries. They are even omitted in cases where
they would have been the readiest and apparently the indispensable
means of repelling unjust imputations upon himself. He carried this
self-denial farther than any other public man. The pain and regret
that he exhibited in his conversation with Mr. Trist, in respect to
the parting between Hamilton and himself, were obviously genuine,
but the necessity was absolute, and the danger that justice might
not otherwise he done to his character imminent. He was on the eve
of his departure for another world,--his well earned and well
established reputation was about to lose his own personal
guardianship,--and the subject was brought before him in such a way
that he must either confess the forthcoming impeachments by his
silence, or repel them by declaring the truth.
Some other citations which I have found occasion to make from Mr.
Randall's work are incorporated in the text.
[27] President Washington's Private Secretary.
[28] We have italicized these words.
Other instances have occurred in our Government and elsewhere in which
statesmen have transcended the constitutional limits of their power
under a necessity sincerely believed to be controlling, trusting to that
circumstance for the indulgence of their constituents; and in no case
which has presented itself here has that indulgence been withheld where
the motives for the assumption of responsibility were pure. Mr.
Jefferson's course in the purchase of Louisiana and General Jackson's
conduct at New Orleans were striking cases of that description.
But we have, fortunately, evidence the most authentic and unequivocal
that President Washington never intended by his approval of the Bank
Bill to express an approval of the systematic and general disregard of
the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, in respect to the
powers of Congress, whenever such disregard should be deemed expedient.
The provisions of the first Apportionment Bill sent to him for his
approval were contrary to the Constitution, and Mr. Jefferson gave an
opinion to that effect and recommending a veto, whilst the opinion of
General Hamilton was in favor of their constitutionality. The division
by which the bill passed had been exclusively sectional, and the
objection of unconstitutionality was raised by the South. The Union was,
at that early period, believed to stand upon a precarious footing, and
the President was seriously apprehensive that the worst consequences
might result, in the then state of the public mind, if he were to throw
himself on the side of his own section by a veto.
His embarrassment and concern were great, and he was sincerely desirous
to avoid a resort to what was then regarded as an extreme measure. He
agreed that the method prescribed by the bill "was contrary to the
common understanding of that instrument (the Constitution), and to what
was understood at the time by the makers of it," but thought "it would
bear the construction assumed by the bill." This was the precise issue
that was raised upon the passage of the bill to establish the bank,
viz.: whether the actual intention, or that which was only inferential,
was to prevail. That he would have withheld the veto if he had felt
himself at liberty in such a case to follow the letter of the
Constitution, and thereby defeat the intention of those who made it, no
one, who examines the matter, will for a moment doubt. He appears to
have been duly sensible of the magnitude of the question in all its
bearings. On the one hand were the evils to be apprehended from a
decision in favor of the South upon a disturbing question by a Southern
President, in a form not only without precedent here, but very
unpalatable--that of a veto; on the other was the grave objection to his
committing himself in favor of the principle which had prevailed on the
question of the bank in a case that did not furnish any thing like an
equal excuse for departing from the honest and straightforward rule of
interpreting the Constitution, like any other instrument, by the
intention of those who made it. He did not fail to see that to act
again, and under existing circumstances, upon the principle to which he
had given his sanction in the case of the bank, would be to commit
himself to Hamilton's latitudinarian doctrines in respect to the
construction of the Constitution, and he vetoed the bill.[29]
[29] Jefferson's _Correspondence_, Vol. IV. p. 466.
It would have been well for the country if the injurious effects of
Hamilton's policy and principles had been confined to his own times, but
men of such rare genius, distinguished by the same eagerness, industry,
and energy in pursuit of their objects, seldom fail to leave a durable
mark upon the world in which they have bustled, especially when their
day is contemporaneous with the commencement of a new government, and
when they are intrusted with great power, as was emphatically the case
with Hamilton. He and Jefferson, both answering to this description,
have always been regarded by me as the bane and antidote of our
political system. Every speech and every writing of Hamilton exhibited
proof of deep research and laborious study. Men, governments, and
political measures, were his favorite subjects of reflection and
discussion. Of the former, more particularly of the mass, he had (as I
have elsewhere said) formed unfavorable opinions; not that he was less
desirous than others for their welfare--for few men were more
philanthropic in disposition--but because of the early and ineffaceable
impression upon his mind that the majority of men, in their collective
capacity, were radically deficient in respect for order and for the
rights of persons and of property. As he thought their fears or their
private interests and passions the only alternative methods of managing
them and the former inapplicable to our people, so he considered those
measures of government "discreetest, wisest, best," which were most
likely to enlist their personal interests and feelings on its side. Such
measures he deemed indeed indispensable, and his whole scheme for the
administration of the Government was founded upon this theory.
Anti-republican as these views undoubtedly were, they nevertheless
pointed to principles and to a policy well calculated to make deep
impressions upon large portions of the community, in which were, and
will always be, found many liable to be influenced by such
considerations, and ready to follow the political party organized upon
them; many, if not born in the belief, certainly educated in it, that
they have something to fear from the major part of their
fellow-creatures, and seeing few more important objects for the
establishment of governments among men than to keep these in order and
to protect the well-disposed portions of society like themselves from
the vices and follies of the masses. In the performance of such duties
they very naturally conclude that government should look to the more
intelligent and better informed classes for support, and as naturally
that to enable them to render such support they should receive partial
favors and extraordinary advantages from its administration. Men of this
class, their associates and dependents, as was foreseen, embraced with
alacrity and supported with the energy inspired by self-interest the
principle of political reciprocity between government and its supporters
inaugurated in England at the Revolution of 1688, and ingrafted upon our
system by Hamilton in 1790. He found in the old Federal party a soil
well adapted to the cultivation of that policy, and in conjunction with
those who expected to share in the profits exerted all the faculties of
his great mind to extend the field for its operation.
That extension soon became so great under the fostering influence of
Government and the money power as to include among its supporters,
either as principals or sympathizers, almost every business class in the
community, saving always the landed interest, properly so called, the
mechanics not manufacturers, and the working classes. When I speak of
the landed interest, I allude (as I have before explained) to those only
who cultivate the soil themselves directly or by the aid of
_employées_--to the farmers and planters of the country--and do not of
course include speculators in lands, who buy to sell and sell to buy,
and who, of all classes, are most dependent upon the friendship and most
subject to the influence of the money power.
Such a principle of political action, once fairly started in business
communities, is not easily uprooted. It continued to govern the
successors to the Federal party by whatever name they were called.
Indeed, the discrepancy that existed between its name and its principles
when it was first called _Federal_ has obtained in all its mutations.
Its principles have been the same, with a single exception, under every
name, until the perturbation of party names and systems recently
produced by the disturbing subject of slavery. When that influence is
spent, the individuals who now constitute the so-called Republican party
will in the main revert to their original positions. The exception
referred to consists in the exemption on the part of his political
disciples of the present day from the hallucination which Hamilton
carried to his grave in regard to the possibility of the ultimate
re-establishment of monarchical institutions in this country. In all
other respects we have had unvarying exhibitions of his well-known
sentiments upon the subjects of government and its administration; the
same preference for artificial constructions of the Constitution,
devised to defeat instead of to develop the intentions of those who made
it; the same inclination to strengthen the money power and to increase
its political influence--an object that occupied the first place in
Hamilton's wishes; the same disposition to restrict the powers of the
State governments, and to enlarge those of the Federal head; the same
distrust of the capacity of the people to control the management of
public affairs, and the same desire also for governmental interference
in the private pursuits of men and for influencing them by special
advantages to favored individuals and classes. A statement of the
extent to which the business, as distinguished from the agricultural and
other laboring classes, have been banded together in our political
contests by a preference for Hamilton's principles and by the
instrumentality of the money power, would be regarded as incredible if
the facts were not indisputable and notorious. Such has been the case
with those who hold the stock of our banks, and control their
action--agencies which enter into some of the minutest as well as the
most important of the business transactions of these great communities.
A vast majority in number as well as in interest of these are men deeply
imbued with Hamiltonian principles. The same thing may be said of our
insurance companies which have been invested with special privileges of
various grades, and are authorized to insure against perils by land, and
perils by sea, and against perils of almost every description. The same
in respect to our incorporated companies invested with like privileges,
and established for the manufacture of articles made of cotton, of wool,
of flax, of hemp, of silk, of iron, of steel, of lead, of clay, &c., &c.
The same of companies with like privileges for the construction of
railroads, of bridges, of canals, where they can be made profitable, and
other constructions to which the invention and industry of man can be
successfully applied. Individuals frequently go into these powerful
associations with opposite political feelings, but are ultimately almost
invariably induced to change them altogether, or to modify them so much
as to satisfy their partners that their democratic principles are not
sufficiently stringent to be troublesome. The possession of special and,
in some of these cases, of exclusive privileges, is certain sooner or
later to produce distrust of the less favored body of the people, and
distrust grows apace to the proportions of prejudice and dislike. There
are of course striking exceptions to this rule, as to every other.
There are always men connected with these associations whose democratic
principles are so deeply implanted in their very natures as to place
them above the influence of circumstances; but they are few and far
between. These changes are not the fruit of infirm purposes or
characters, but are produced by influences which seem no farther
traceable than is here imperfectly done, and are yet sufficiently
effective to convert to Hamiltonian principles more than three fourths
of the Democrats who become members of the associations of which I have
spoken.
Such aggregations of wealth and influence, connected as they usually are
or soon become with social distinctions, naturally come to be regarded
as the fountains of patronage by those who are in search of it. The
press, men of letters, artists, and professional men of every
denomination, and those engaged in subordinate pursuits who live upon
the luxurious indulgences of the rich, are all brought within the scope
of this influence. It is perhaps in this way only that we can account
for the remarkable disparity in number between the newspapers and other
periodicals advocating Democratic principles and those which support the
views of the money power and its adherents--a disparity the
extraordinary extent of which will strike any one who visits a common
reading-room, in which, amid the well-furnished shelves and full files
of the publications of the latter class, it is rare that we find many of
the former, often not more than a single newspaper, sometimes not one.
Yet those which we do not find there represent the political principles
of a large majority of the people. The same fact attracts the attention
of the observer in passing through countries abroad which are under
monarchical institutions.
These are among the political accretions of the money power in this
country, made in a comparatively short period--these, the foreseen
operations of Hamilton's policy and principles and the _strata_ on which
he designed at some time, when the prejudices of the day should have
passed away, or in some crisis in the affairs of the country which might
make the work easier or more agreeable to the people, to found political
institutions of the same general character at least with those the
realization of which had been the day-dream of his life.
To return to the point from which I started in this long and doubtless
prolix review--a political party founded on such principles and looking
to such sources for its support does not often stand in need of caucuses
and conventions to preserve harmony in its ranks. Constructed
principally of a network of special interests,--almost all of them
looking to Government for encouragement of some sort,--the feelings and
opinions of its members spontaneously point in the same direction, and
when those interests are thought in danger, or new inducements are held
out for their advancement, notice of the apprehended assault or promised
encouragement is circulated through their ranks with a facility always
supplied by the sharpened wit of cupidity. Their conflicts in council,
when such occur, are for the same reasons less likely to be obstinate
and more easily reconciled. Sensible of these facts, the policy of their
leaders has been from the beginning to discountenance and explode all
usages or plans designed to secure party unity, so essential to their
opponents and substantially unnecessary to themselves.
Hamilton's system considered with reference to the effect it was
calculated to exert upon most of the classes at whom it aimed, did great
credit to his sagacity. The wonder has always been that a party which
has had at its command so large a portion of the appliances generally
most effective in partisan warfare should meet with such infrequent
success in the elections. Strangers who visit us are especially struck
with this to them unaccountable circumstance, and superficial observers
at home are often scarcely less impressed by it; and yet the secret of
its failure lies on the surface. Although Hamilton's policy was
successful with many, it failed signally, as has been stated, with the
most numerous and consequently the most powerful class of our
citizens--those engaged in agriculture; a class with which the
intercourse of strangers is the most limited, and the strength of which,
from the seclusion and unobtrusiveness of its common life, is very apt
to be underrated by other ranks even of our own people. It not only
failed to attract their sympathies in his favor, but excited their
dissatisfaction by its extension of governmental favors to others in
which they could not participate consistently with their inherited and
cherished principles, and which were not necessary to their pursuits;
thus increasing that antagonism to some extent between those who live by
the sweat of their brow and those who live by their wits. These adverse
results of his policy continued after its execution devolved upon his
disciples. Farmers and planters--the main-stay of the Democratic
party--seldom allow themselves, as I have before said, to be drawn
before Congress or into the audience chambers of Presidents and
Cabinets, suppliants for special favors to the interest in which they
are engaged. The indifference exhibited by the agriculturists of
America, at the period of the Stamp Act, to the overflowing offers of
bounties, is still shown by their uncorrupted successors. The promised
aid to their business held out by Hamilton in his famous Report on
Manufactures, both direct and consequential, therefore excited no
feeling in their breasts save strong suspicions of his motives.
Our political history abounds with instances in which similar attempts
to obtain the support of the many by appeals to the self-interest of the
few have shared the same fate. They seldom fail to prove offensive to
the taste and humiliating to the pride of our people. The wisest way to
the confidence and support of the latter is to confine the action of the
administration of the Federal Government to the duties specifically
enjoined upon it by the Constitution, and to the able and honest
discharge of them. Statesmen who act upon this rule are much more likely
to close their official careers with credit to themselves and advantage
to the country than by resort to experiments, however splendid or
plausible. Occasions may indeed be presented on which temporary
derangements in the affairs of the State and of individuals are produced
of sufficient magnitude to baffle all calculations and to disappoint the
best intentions and the wisest measures, but these must of necessity be
of rare occurrence.
The administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson were thus
conducted, and they had their reward. The success of Mr. Madison's was,
it is true, greatly retarded by obstructions placed in its way by the
money power, with a view to drive him to a dishonorable peace by
crippling his resources; but he and his associates in the Government
triumphed, notwithstanding, for that power had not then acquired the
strength which it subsequently attained, and the field for the display
of that which it possessed was not a safe one, while the passions of the
people were excited by a state of open war and were liable to be turned
with augmented fury against such as virtually aided the public enemy. It
was in its palmiest state in 1832, when it demanded a re-charter of the
Bank of the United States, and when, this being refused, it commenced
the struggle for the expulsion of President Jackson from the chair of
State. Although it lacked time to mature its measures sufficiently for
the accomplishment of that particular object, it continued its assaults
upon the Executive, materially weakened its influence in the National
Legislature, and after a ruthless war of eight years succeeded in
overthrowing the administration of his successor and in obtaining
possession of the Government.
But the methods of the great men and successful Presidents whom I have
named were too simple, and the tenor of their way too noiseless and even
for the adventurous genius of Hamilton's school. To devise elaborate
schemes for the management of that branch of the Government intrusted to
his control, and of such as fell within the scope of his influence, was
more to his liking. The construction and execution of these made
necessary the use of powers not granted by the Constitution, and led to
a perversion of its provisions, of which we have seen the consequences.
John Quincy Adams was the first President, after the civil revolution of
1800, who entered upon the duties of his office with views of the
Constitution as latitudinarian as were those of Hamilton, and the only
one of that stamp who possessed sufficient force of character to make
his will the rule of action for his cabinet, and who lived long enough
to make it to some extent effectual. Although elected as a convert to
the principles of the then Republican party, he was no sooner seated in
the Presidential chair than he disavowed those principles in their most
important features--those of Constitutional construction--and marked out
a course in that regard which he intended to pursue. He thereby united
that party against his reëlection to an extent sufficient to defeat it
by an overwhelming majority.
Of the party which thus a second time vindicated the Constitution, by
far the most effective ingredient was the landed interest. But though
the most powerful, it was yet far from being its only valuable element,
for, to use Mr. Jefferson's words on the former occasion, there was
besides "a great mass of talent on the Republican side."
If there be any whom experience has not yet satisfied of the power of
the landed interest, and of its capacity to cope successfully with the
money power of the country, enormous as has been the growth of the
latter, let them consider the facts disclosed by the census. By that of
1850, our population, as affecting the point under consideration, is
shown to have consisted at that time of _farmers_, two millions three
hundred and sixty thousand; of planters, twenty-seven thousand; of
laborers engaged in agriculture, thirty-seven thousand; of persons
engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and mining, one
million six hundred thousand; in law, medicine, and divinity,
ninety-four thousand. Let them compare these with previous enumerations,
and they will see how invariable and large is the disproportion in
numbers between the agricultural and other classes. That disproportion
must of course have been greater during our colonial existence and at
the Revolutionary period, when our commerce was trifling, and we were
almost if not entirely destitute of manufactures. We are hence able to
form an idea of the extent to which the defense of the principles which
the colonists cherished, and for the maintenance of which the Revolution
was made, rested on the broad shoulders of the landed interest from the
beginning to the end of that great contest.
Without the hearty and constant coöperation of that interest the
impassable barrier that has been erected against the politically
demoralizing and anti-republican tendency of the Hamiltonian policy
could never have been maintained. I have alluded to the reasons for my
belief that it is placed by its position and by the law of its nature
beyond the reach of that policy, and my firm conviction that it will
secure to our people the blessings of republican government as long as
it remains the predominant interest in the country. It can only be when
the agriculturists abandon the implements and the field of their labor
and become, with those who now assist them, shopkeepers, manufacturers,
carriers, and traders, that the Republic will be brought in danger of
the influences of the money power. But this can never happen. Every
inclination of the landed interest, however slight, in that direction
has been to it a prolific source of loss, regret, and repentance.
Between 1835 and 1840, when the country was stimulated to madness by the
Bank of the United States and its allies, the interests of agriculture
were so much neglected as to lead to large importations of breadstuffs
from Europe, whilst the land was covered with luxury, soon succeeded by
bankruptcy and want. But the sober second-thought of the people, in a
remarkably brief period, not only brought that great branch of the
industry of the country back to the point from which it had been
seduced, but drove from power those who had risen to it upon the
strength of a temporary popular delusion.
If any doubt the existence and agency of a political influence such as I
have described under the name of the money power, or think the
description exaggerated, let me ask them to ponder upon its achievements
in the country from which it has been transplanted to our shores. It is
but little more than a century and a half since it was first
interpolated upon the English system, and we have seen the results it
has in that period produced upon its rivals: every vestige of the feudal
system that survived the Revolution of 1688 extinguished; the landed
aristocracy, once lords paramount, depressed to an average power in the
State; the Crown, still respected, and its possessor at this moment
justly beloved by all, yet substantially reduced to a pageant, protected
indeed by the prejudices of John Bull in favor of ancestral forms and
state ceremonies, but of almost no account as an element of power when
weighed against the well-ascertained opinion of the people of England.
Who does not know that it holds in its hands, more often than any other
power, questions of peace or war, not only in England but over Europe!
How often have previous consultations with a respectable family of Jews
decided the question of a declaration of war! Indeed it would have been
well for humanity if so salutary a check upon the brutal passions of men
and monarchs had been always equally potent--if some conservative and
life-sparing Rothschilds had been able to restrain the Henries, the
Louises, the Fredericks, and the Napoleons of the past.
The money power, designed from the beginning to exert a liberal
influence in England as the antagonist of arbitrary power, has done much
good there by the prominence and influence to which it has elevated
public opinion, and this to some extent is true of other European
countries. Here it was from its start, as I have said, designed to
control the public will by undermining and corrupting its free and
virtuous impulse and determination, and its political effects have been
continually injurious.