Effects of our Leading Party Conflicts in the Light of Seventy
Years' Experience--Contest as to the Relative Powers of the State
and General Governments--Merits and Faults of the Parties to that
Contest--The Credit of settling the Struggle upon right Grounds due
to Jefferson's Administration--Attempt of the Federalists to give
undue Supremacy to the Judicial Department and Failure of that
Attempt--Hamilton's Funding System--History of its Establishment,
Continuance, and Overthrow--The National Bank Struggle--The
Protective System--Clay's American System--Internal Improvements by
the General Government--Overthrow of these Measures the beneficent
Work of the Democratic Party--No such Contributions to the Public
Welfare made by the Opponents of that Party--The Debt of Gratitude
due from the Country to Madison, to Jackson, and especially to
Jefferson.
It will not be deemed inappropriate to close this review of the rise and
progress of our political parties, and of the principles upon which they
have acted, with a fuller notice of the advantages and disadvantages
which have resulted to the country from their conflicting acts and
pretensions during an experience of more than seventy years. In deciding
the character of parties by their works we will but follow the dictates
of unerring wisdom, by which we are taught to judge the tree by its
fruit.
A great question, and naturally the first that arose in the formation of
our political system, related to the power that should be reserved to,
and the treatment that should be extended towards, the State
governments. Rivalries between them and the Federal head could not be
prevented. To mitigate the evil by dealing justly and wisely with the
State authorities, was all that could be done. Each of the great
parties which have divided the country had, from the beginning, its own,
and they were conflicting opinions, in respect to the spirit in which
this important subject should be dealt with. These, and the acts and
sayings they gave rise to, have been herein freely spoken of, and what
has been said need not be repeated. The facts and circumstances brought
into view, consisting in a considerable degree of the reiterated
declarations of the parties themselves, with a mass of others supplied
by contemporaneous history, fully justify the belief that if Hamilton
and Morris, and the influential men of the party of which the former was
through life the almost absolute leader, could have had their way, the
State governments would have been reduced to conditions in regard to
power and dignity which would not only have destroyed their usefulness,
but from which they must have sunk into insignificance and contempt; to
which state it was the avowed wish of those leaders to depress them.
This desire was frustrated in the Federal Convention, not so much
through favorable feeling towards the State authorities as by a
conviction on the part of a majority--a conviction which could neither
be disguised nor suppressed--that the old Anti-Federal party would be
sufficiently strengthened by a plan of the Constitution, against which a
design clearly hostile to the State governments could be fairly charged,
to enable that party to prevent its ratification. John Quincy Adams, to
his declaration that the "Constitution was extorted from the grinding
necessity of a reluctant nation," might have added, with equal truth,
that the Constitution, in the form it bore on this point, was extorted
from the Convention by a necessity not less effectual. Hamilton's design
to attain the object he had failed to accomplish in the Convention, by
"_administrating_" the Constitution, in the language of Madison, into a
thing very different from what they both knew it was intended to be,
was defeated by the old Republican party.
The lowest point to which the State governments would have been reduced,
if the influence that was exerted to lessen their power had not been
defeated in the way I have described, must of necessity be matter of
speculation only. Hamilton, as we have seen, declared candidly that he
knew of no reason why he did not advocate their total overthrow other
than the manifest strong desire of the people for their retention;
whilst Morris, with equal openness, said that if they could not abolish
them altogether, it was nevertheless desirable to pull the teeth of the
serpents.
There can be but little doubt that a complete triumph of the Federal
policy would have resulted in a decline of the State governments, if
they escaped extinguishment, from the condition which they occupied at
the period of the recognition of our Independence to mere municipal
authorities, without sufficient power to render them extensively
useful--fit theatres only for the exercise and enjoyment of the
patronage of the Federal government.
The Anti-Federalists, like their opponents, could only look with favor
on one side of this great question. I do not complain of their
partiality for the State governments, for it was in them a natural and
inherited feeling, one which had been cherished with equal ardor from a
remote period in our history by men whose places they filled and whom
they most resembled. Their fault was the exclusiveness of their
preference. They could not and did not deny that a general government of
some sort was indispensable, and they should therefore have stood ready
to confer upon it such powers as were necessary to enable it to sustain
itself and to qualify it for the successful performance of the duties to
be assigned to it. This they would not do. They, on the contrary,
allowed their local prejudices and their suspicious, in some instances
well founded but unwisely indulged, to lead them to persistent refusals
to concede to the Federal head means which a sufficient experience had
shown to be absolutely necessary to good government. Public and private
interests suffered from that cause, and they were justly held
responsible for the consequences. Their conduct was as unjustifiable and
as suicidal as was the unmitigated warfare waged by leading Federalists
against the State governments; and no political course adopted by public
men or political parties, of which it could be said that it was
intentionally wrong, has hitherto, to their honor be it spoken, long
escaped rebuke from the American people.
The Anti-Federal party by their pertinacious, nay morbid perseverance in
a wrong course, exposed themselves to the same penalty which was at a
later period inflicted upon their old opponents--as a party they were
overthrown and ruined.
The merit of discouraging and finally extinguishing this unnatural,
unprofitable, and unnecessary struggle between the friends of the
General and State governments, and of vindicating the Federal
Constitution, by placing the peculiar principle it sought to establish
for the government to be constituted under its authority, that of an
_imperium in imperio_, upon a practicable and safe footing, was reserved
for the administration of Thomas Jefferson. For the evils arising from
the pernicious rivalry between agencies, upon the harmonious coöperation
of which the framers of the Constitution relied for the success of that
instrument, the remedy recommended by Mr. Jefferson in his inaugural
address, as expressed in his own inimitable language, was "the support
of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent
administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwark
against anti-republican tendencies: the preservation of the General
Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our
peace at home and safety abroad." These propositions, so simple, so
natural, and so plainly in accord with the spirit of the Constitution,
though, in common with other suggestions from the same source designed
by their author to give repose to an over-agitated community, received
at the time with indifference by incensed partisans, met with a cordial
welcome from the great body of the people. Their fitness and probable
efficacy could not be successfully controverted, and although they did
not escape factious opposition, a majority of the people, tired of the
unavailing agitation which the subject had undergone, and more and more
satisfied of Mr. Jefferson's sincere desire to advance the general
interest, embraced them with constantly increasing earnestness, and
sustained them until they became the successful as well as settled
policy of the Government. Angry passions, having their origin in this
prolific source of partisan strife, which swept over and convulsed the
country during the Government of the Confederation, and for at least
twenty years after the adoption of the new Constitution, have been
subdued. The State governments, increased in number from thirteen to
more than thirty, with no other powers than those reserved to them by
the undisputed provisions of the Constitution, have advanced to a degree
of dignity and usefulness which has enabled them to extend to their
citizens seven eighths of the aid and protection for which they look to
government, either State or national, and has also removed from their
representatives all fear of the encroachments of the Federal Government;
whilst the latter, having proven itself able to sustain itself without
the aid of constructive powers, and to perform with promptitude and
success all the duties assigned to it, is no longer disturbed by
apprehensions of the factious spirit and grasping designs once so
freely charged upon the State authorities.
For this auspicious state of things we are beyond all doubt indebted,
more than to any other cause, to the conservative character of
Democratic principles and the unwavering fidelity of the party that
sustains them.
To understand truly the advantages which the country has derived from
the success of this policy, and the defeat of that to which it was
opposed, we have only to picture to ourselves what the condition of the
State governments must have been if the latter had triumphed, and to
compare it with the actual state of things. Assuming that the desire to
divest them of the authority which they had gradually acquired, as
occasions for its exercise were developed by the necessities of the
public service, at one time so strong with leading Federalists and as we
have seen so openly avowed, had been limited to what was actually
proposed, viz., to give to the General Government the power to appoint
their governors, and through them the most important of their minor
officers, including those of the militia, with an absolute veto upon all
State laws,--what, judging according to the experience we have had,
would now have been the character and condition of those governments?
Without the authority required to make themselves useful, or
respectability sufficient to excite the ambition of individuals to be
honorably employed in their service, and thus to divide their attention
and regard between the Federal and State governments, they would
have sunk gradually into feeble, unimportant, characterless
establishments--mere places for the sinecure appointments of the former.
Contrast institutions like these--and only such could have been possible
under the policy advocated by the leading Federalists--with the galaxy
of independent governments of which we now boast, such as no
confederation, ancient or modern, possessed, vested with authority and
dignity, and filling the States respectively with monuments of their
wisdom, enterprise, usefulness, and philanthropy; and contrast the
Federal Government, resting as it now does on these tried and ample
foundations, with one based on establishments like those to which it was
proposed to degrade the States, and we will have some idea of the
dangers that the people of the United States have escaped, and the
advantages they have secured by the wisdom of their course and the
patriotism of those who advised it. If the Democratic party of
Jefferson's time, and under his lead, had effected nothing else for the
country, they would have done enough in this to deserve the perpetual
respect and gratitude of the whole people.
Yet this was but the beginning of their usefulness, subsequent to the
adoption of the present Constitution.
No sooner had the efforts of the leaders of the Federal party to break
down the power and influence of the State governments been arrested
through the triumph of the Democratic party in the great contest of
1800, which was to a great extent carried on in their defense, than an
attempt was set on foot to rescue a portion of the political power lost
by the former, by raising the judicial power--the dispensers of which
were to a man on their side--above the executive and legislative
departments of the Federal Government. Of this enterprise, its origin,
progress, and present condition, I have taken the notice which I thought
was demanded by its importance. That it was unsuccessful, and that the
balance of power between those departments, so necessary to the security
of liberty and to the preservation of the Government, has not been
destroyed, is altogether due to the persevering opposition of the
Democratic party under the same bold and capable leader.
Where the points in issue between political parties have been of so
grave a character as those in the United States, it is not an easy
matter to decide on their relative importance, or in which the right and
the wrong was most apparent. Whilst some have resolved themselves mainly
into questions of expediency, in respect to which errors may be
committed without incurable injury to our institutions, there have been
others striking at their roots, which would, if differently decided,
have ended in their inevitable destruction. The two to which I have
referred were emphatically of the latter character, and hence the
inestimable value of the successful resistance that was made on the
Democratic side.
Hamilton's funding system, though involving in respect to the assumption
of the State debts a grave constitutional question, was in its principal
features one of expediency. Yet it was an important one, by reason of
the serious consequences that were apprehended from its assumed
tendency, and produced impressions upon the public scarcely less marked
than were made by any public question which had before or has since
arisen in this country. The character of that system, and the injuries
that were anticipated from its establishment, have been spoken of in a
previous part of this essay. Only a slight consideration of the
operations of a similar system elsewhere will be sufficient to show how
greatly the welfare of nations has been affected by their course in
respect to it.
Of these, England, from her present condition in regard to her public
debt, compared with that in which it is believed she might have stood if
her course in that respect had been guided by wiser counsels, presents
the most instructive example. Ours derives interest scarcely less
impressive from the evils we have avoided by abandoning, whilst that was
yet in our power, the further imitation of her example after we had
fully begun to imitate it. That the system was established here with
much _éclat_, and under explanations and circumstances indicative of a
determination on the part of the men in power to adhere to it as long as
and whenever a public debt existed, all know. It is also known that the
practice of funding the public debt, for which it furnished the plan,
has long been discontinued. Through what agency and upon what
inducements that discontinuance has been brought about, and who is
entitled to the credit of protecting the country from the evils flowing
from the practice elsewhere, can only be ascertained by an impartial
examination of its further history. To bestow that attention upon the
subject is perhaps not necessary for instruction or example, as a
national bank has not become more completely an "obsolete idea" amongst
us, or more thoroughly condemned in public opinion than a funding
system. Still there are many considerations which render such an
examination an object of curiosity certainly, and one not destitute of
higher interest. If the change which was effected in the policy and
action of the Government in this regard has been as advantageous as with
the light which experience has thrown upon the subject cannot be longer
doubted, it is highly proper that those who brought about the reform
should have the credit of it.
No important transaction upon which patriotism of such an order and
intellects of such caliber as distinguished the public men of that day
were earnestly employed, can be without interest to inquiring minds of
this. It is so long since the whole affair has passed from public
attention as to make it an unfamiliar subject to most of us. I confess
it was so to me, and those who read these sheets will not complain if
the interest I have taken in following it to its termination shall at
least save them from some of the trouble that would otherwise have been
necessary to master its details.
Strongly excited by the first appearance of the project at the head of
Hamilton's programme, as well described by Madison in his interesting
statement to Mr. Trist, the old Republicans in and out of Congress, with
Jefferson as their adviser and at their head, rallied promptly in
earnest and unyielding opposition to its consummation. Overborne by a
large majority in the first Congress, devoted as it was to Hamilton and
his measures, they could not defeat the bill for its establishment, and
were obliged to content themselves in the first instance with efforts to
expose its objectionable features to the people, in the hope of
rendering it too odious to be persisted in. They also resorted, as they
often afterwards did on similar occasions, to the State legislatures for
advice and coöperation. That of Virginia, the President's native State,
as well as the place of his residence, denounced the scheme very soon
after its introduction, in resolutions of much power, touching the
subject upon the points in respect to which it was most exceptionable.
Its opponents in Congress also kept a watchful eye upon the steps taken
by the Secretary towards its execution, and followed every important
movement by calls for information and by pertinent resolutions. These
calls were generally upon the Secretary, occasionally on the President
himself. As early as 1792, the Republicans caused the introduction of,
and gave efficient support to, a resolution that "measures ought to be
taken for the redemption of so much of the public debt as by the act
making provision for the debts of the United States, they have the right
to redeem." In this resolution, which was adopted by the House, a
provision was inserted, against the votes of the old Republicans, to
direct the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare the plan for the
contemplated redemption. Those who were opposed to its preparation by
that officer desired to have it done by a committee, and apprehended
obstacles on his part to an efficient prosecution of the reform they
supported.
The resolution, though not expressly such in its terms, was obviously
designed as a side-blow at the funding system. That the Secretary so
regarded it was sufficiently apparent from the graceful notice, in his
report, of the circumstance that "the House had predetermined the
question in regard to the expediency of the proposed redemption, and
only submitted to his consideration the best mode of carrying it into
effect." He then proceeded to state the different ways in which the
object in view might be accomplished, designated that which he thought
most expedient, pointed out the increased burdens on the people it would
require, and specified the taxes the imposition of which he thought
would be necessary. His report was drawn up with his accustomed skill
and ability, but the measure was no further prosecuted at that time.
The President was subsequently called upon, at the instance of the
Republicans, for copies of the commissions and instructions under which
Hamilton had borrowed some twelve millions of dollars in Europe in
virtue of a provision of the act establishing the funding system, and a
call was at the same time made upon Hamilton for an account of the
manner in which the money had been applied. These calls brought from the
President copies of the commission and instructions, the latter of which
were very precise and in strict conformity, in every respect, to the
law, and from Hamilton an elaborate report, drawn with a degree of care
and power unusual even with him. He appears to have anticipated a storm,
and to have prepared himself for every contingency, as far as his
conduct could be sustained by the facts. Those who derive pleasure from
the intellectual efforts of great minds, however remote the occasion
that called them forth, will not begrudge the time spent in reading his
report.
A series of resolutions introduced into the House by Giles of Virginia,
charged the Secretary with having violated both the law and the
President's instructions, by the manner in which he had executed the
authority confided to him. These resolutions, after a long and animated
debate, were thrown out by strong votes, of the composition of which Mr.
Jefferson undertakes to give an account in his annals. But no
unprejudiced mind can read Madison's unanswerable speech, which will be
found in the first volume of "Benton's Abridgment of the Debates of
Congress," p. 431, without being convinced that the truth of both
charges was established. He proves by the Secretary's own letters that
on the very day of the receipt of the President's instructions he
commenced arrangements, which he, notwithstanding, carried into effect,
for an application of the funds diametrically opposite to that which the
President had directed him to make.
Mr. Randall, in his "Life of Thomas Jefferson,"[39] has accidentally
fallen into a singular mistake in saying that "Mr. Madison voted with
the majority on every division" on that occasion, and on that assumption
proceeds to show "that Jefferson put a less charitable construction on
the motives of the majority," by giving the following entry in his
"Ana": "March the 2d, 1793. See, in the papers of this date, Mr. Giles's
Resolutions. He and one or two others were sanguine enough to believe
that the palpableness of these resolutions rendered it impossible the
House could reject them. Those who knew the composition of the
House,--1. Of bank directors; 2. Holders of bank stock; 3.
Stock-jobbers; 4. Blind devotees; 5. Ignorant persons who did not
comprehend them; 6. Lazy and good-humored persons, who comprehended and
acknowledged them, yet were too lazy to examine or unwilling to
pronounce censure,--the persons who knew these characters foresaw that
the three first descriptions making one third of the House, the three
latter would make one half of the residue; and of course that they would
be rejected by a majority of two to one. But they thought that even this
rejection would do good, by showing the public the desperate and
abandoned dispositions with which their affairs were conducted. The
resolutions were proposed, and nothing spared to present them in the
fullness of demonstration. There were not more than three or four who
voted otherwise than had been expected."
[39] Vol. II. p. 119.
Mr. Madison voted with the minority on every division, and so far was he
from acting otherwise that William Smith, of South Carolina, the devoted
friend of Hamilton, charged him with saying after the vote that "the
opinion of the House on the preceding resolutions would not change the
truth of facts, and that the public would ultimately decide whether the
Secretary's conduct was criminal or not."
The character of this debate and the open disregard of the President's
instructions by the Secretary, which it established, were not likely to
pass unheeded or even lightly regarded through the proud and sensitive
mind of Washington.
Other circumstances may be referred to which show quite clearly that the
latter was not at ease upon the subject of the finances. Among these is
one of a very striking character, not known at the time, and only
recently disclosed through the publication of the "Hamilton Papers" by
order of Congress. I allude to the correspondence between him and
Washington, to which I have before referred for another purpose, and
which will be found in the fourth volume of "Hamilton's Works,"
commencing at page 510. The committee appointed by Congress to examine
the state of the treasury preparatory to Hamilton's resignation, then
expected but postponed for a season, were charged by that body to
"inquire into the authorities, from the President to the Secretary of
the Treasury, respecting the making and disbursing of the loans" which
were the subject of the debate and proceedings above referred to.
Hamilton thought the inquiry beyond the province of the committee, but
wishing to be prepared, if they should decide otherwise, furnished the
President with a statement of the facts, as he understood them to be,
with a view to his approval. Washington indorsed on it a certificate
which was very unsatisfactory to Hamilton, who thereupon addressed to
him a long and earnest letter, in which he complained vehemently, and
with the frankness and boldness natural to him, of not having been
sustained by the President in a delicate and responsible part of his
official duties in respect to the public debt. It does not appear that
Washington made any reply to this extraordinary letter, or that he did
anything further upon the subject which had called it forth.
Whilst the proceedings which led to the debate of which I have spoken
were going on, a bill was introduced on the recommendation of the
Secretary, for a second assumption of State debts, and authorizing a
loan to be opened for that purpose. Notwithstanding strenuous efforts on
the part of the Republican members to prevent its passage, the bill
passed the House, but only by the casting vote of Mr. Speaker Trumbull.
These circumstances were brought to the notice of the President by
Jefferson, before the bill was acted upon by the Senate, and it was
rejected by that body. He speaks in his "Ana" of the prevalent
impression that the bill had been defeated by the interference of the
President, through Lear, with Langdon, who till that time had gone
steadily for the funding system but now opposed its extension.
Jefferson says, "Beckley knows this."
But whatever may have been the state of feeling between these great men,
arising out of the condition of the finances, or the course of the
Secretary in respect to them, we have the best reasons for believing
that there was a growing sentiment in the Federal party adverse to the
expediency of keeping on foot the funding system. It soon began to lose
the brilliant hues in which it had been clothed, at its first
introduction, by the very imposing report of the Secretary. Our foreign
creditors showed an unwillingness to subject their debts to its
operation, and the means taken to find subjects to be embraced by its
provisions could not fail to excite odium against the measure. The
people were not a little predisposed to listen favorably to the charges
that were made against it on the part of the Republicans, by the
circumstances heretofore noticed that it was so close an imitation of
the English system, and adopted upon the heel of the Revolution. The
growing jealousy of the people, and consequent increase of public clamor
against it, caused a wide-spread conviction through the Federal ranks
that the entire success of the Republican party could only be prevented
by its abandonment,--a conviction greatly strengthened and stimulated to
action by the startling fact that, although the President had just been
reëlected by the unanimous vote of the people, the country was convulsed
by partisan rancors, for which there was no other apology than the
measures of his administration, and the Confederacy which he came into
power to cement was in imminent peril of disruption by their violence.
Neither was this the worst nor the most humiliating view of the case.
For the first time during our existence as an independent nation, even
including the period of the proverbially weak government of the
Confederation, our free institutions suffered the discredit of an open
rebellion against the authority of the Federal Government springing up
in the Quaker State, one of the oldest and best settled in the
Confederacy and in which was established the seat of that Government,
against the imposition of a tax always and everywhere odious, an
"infernal tax," as Jefferson called it;--an insurrection of so much
importance as to induce Washington to call into the field a force
numerically larger than was ever concentrated at one place during the
War of the Revolution, or ever organized in one body in the course of
two wars through which the country has since passed, and nearly if not
quite double that with which Scott fought his way through a hostile
nation of eight millions, and entered the City of Mexico in triumph. No
feature in the character of Washington has ever been disclosed which
will allow us to believe for a moment that those scenes could have
failed to disturb and agitate deeply his lofty and sensitive spirit. We
have a fact, now for the first time, as far as I know or believe,
revealed in Randall's "Life of Jefferson," which gives us some clue to
the current of Washington's thoughts at that very critical period of his
life. Hamilton, whose resignation was about to take effect, applied to
have the time prolonged until after the impending insurrection had been
suppressed, on the ground that as it was menaced in consequence of a
measure of his Department, it would not be proper for him to leave his
post until the crisis had terminated, and he had also asked for leave to
attend the troops to the scene of the outbreak. Both of these
applications had been readily agreed to by the President. In the midst
of these movements, between the first Proclamation offering pardon to
the rebels upon their return to duty and the second calling the troops
into the field and announcing the intended application of military
force, an express was sent to Mr. Jefferson with an invitation to him
to resume his former place in Washington's cabinet. This fact is
indisputable, for Jefferson's answer declining the invitation is
published by Randall.
What was the nature and what the extent of Washington's design in this
application? The assumption is justified by the lapse of time and by
other circumstances, that as no record of his intentions has come to
light none exists, and it is therefore a question on which we are only
able to speculate; but there is another question, the answer to which,
though not quite certain, may be made so, and which, when ascertained,
would throw much light upon the subject of our speculations.
Was Hamilton advised of the application to Jefferson, and was it made
with his approbation? The thorough examinations and publications which
have been made of the papers of both Washington and Hamilton, without
the disclosure of a single reference to the main fact, authorize the
belief that Hamilton never was a party to the movement in any shape. In
respect to Hamilton's papers, this inference is particularly strong, as,
from the quasi-rivalry which has recently been set on foot by his
descendants between his own fame and that of Washington, it may well be
presumed that if they could have furnished evidence of such an act of
disloyalty to Federalism on the part of Washington as his invitation to
Jefferson, who had, after his retirement, openly charged Congress with
the most flagrant corruption, and traced its origin to the measures of
the Secretary of the Treasury, the information would certainly not have
been withheld from publication. The same considerations lead with still
greater confidence to the conclusion that no movement had been made
towards any other than a temporary change of purpose in regard to his
resignation on the part of Hamilton. Washington's letter giving his
consent to the postponement, is published among the "Hamilton Papers,"
and from all that was said or done upon the subject it is quite clear
that no attempt was made by him to dissuade Hamilton from carrying his
resolution into effect, and that such resolution was final on the part
of the latter from the beginning.
Incidents occurring at an early period of their relations were well
calculated to induce circumspection in such a matter on both sides. The
uncertainty in regard to Washington's ulterior intentions in the step he
had just taken will become more apparent the more the question is
considered. Mr. Randall seems to infer from it a desire on his part to
return to the system of _a balanced government_ with which he commenced
his administration. But to the consummation of such a design the assent
of Hamilton was absolutely indispensable, and that, with the lights
before us, we may safely assume was neither asked nor given. I find it,
besides, difficult to resist the conclusion that Washington's preference
for that sort of government must by that time have been greatly weakened
if not entirely extinguished. He had tried it under circumstances far
more eligible than those then existing or than he could reasonably
anticipate, and had found it disastrous. Jefferson had in the most
positive terms declined an attempt to coalesce with Hamilton, as made
impossible by the radical differences in their political principles. The
same differences continued, and their personal relations had now become
much more embittered. For these and other reasons that could be given,
it is extremely difficult to reconcile with his well-known prudence the
design hypothetically attributed to Washington by Randall.
If there is the force in these suggestions that they appear to me to
possess, we would seem to be driven to the conclusion that Washington
contemplated, in military language, a _change of front_ dependent upon
Jefferson's acceptance; that he meant not only to place Jefferson at the
head of his cabinet, but to give an increased effect to his principles
in the future administration of the Government. I confess that this is a
startling supposition, even to my own mind, and one in respect to which
I feel that I cannot go much beyond surmise. A step of so decided and so
pregnant a character, taken under the pressure of a situation for many
reasons so critical, could not have been thought of by such a man as
Washington without ulterior, well-considered designs. What were they, if
not of the character I have suggested? I can conceive of no other answer
to this question which is not more inconsistent with well-known facts.
Considerations were not wanting to persuade him that his second term,
under an administration thus directed, would be more agreeable as well
as more auspicious for the country than the first had been. I have
before referred to the contrast between Jefferson and Madison on one
side, and Hamilton on the other, presented by the fact that whilst the
former entered upon the discharge of public offices with feelings and
views similar to those with which they accepted private trusts,
considered themselves under equal obligations to respect the rights and
to carry into full and fair effect the intentions of the parties chiefly
concerned, and would have regarded a failure to do either as much a
violation of the principles of probity and honor in one case as in the
other, the latter neither entertained nor professed to act upon such
opinions; he had on the contrary a conviction, which he never changed,
that there were deficiencies in the popular mind which made it
impracticable on the part of men in power to deal safely with the people
by appeals to their good sense and honesty, and that they could only be
successfully governed through their fears or their interests. Hence his
justification of measures addressed to their passions and particular
interests, and hence his indifference to the faithful observance of the
Constitution as a moral or honorable obligation and his utter
recklessness of constitutional restraints in his public career,
notwithstanding the perfect uprightness of his dealings in private life.
Washington's personal character has been never correctly appreciated, if
the former of these systems or ideas was not more congenial with his
taste and with the suggestions of his heart than the latter. In giving
his assent to the bill for the establishment of the bank, he could not
shut his eyes to the fact that he was sanctioning a measure which he had
conclusive reason to believe was never intended to be authorized by the
Constitution, framed by a convention over which he had presided. Reasons
of supposed state necessity we are warranted in believing reconciled his
conscience to the step, but it cannot be doubted, without injustice to
his character, that it was a hard service and altogether repugnant to
his feelings. His inquietude under these restraints upon his natural
inclinations was exhibited on more than one occasion. His letter to the
venerable Edmund Pendleton, (one of the purest of men,) published by
Randall, was one of them. That rumors were rife in respect to the
measures decided upon by Federal cabals if Washington had refused to
sign the Bank Bill we learn from several sources, and no one who knew
Mr. Madison can doubt that he spoke with full knowledge when he said to
Trist as already quoted, that if the President had vetoed the Bill
"_there would have been an effort to nullify it_" (the veto), "_and
they_" (the leading Federalists) "_would have arrayed themselves in a
hostile attitude_." It is, besides, against nature to suppose that
Washington's consciousness of the past condition of things in this
regard and recollection of the scenes referred to by Madison, had not
been painfully revived by the offensive letter he had received from
Hamilton only four months before the period of which we are speaking.
The probable correctness of the inference under consideration ought not
to be tested by the character of the subsequent relations between
Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson declined the President's invitation
to resume his former seat in his cabinet promptly but respectfully and
kindly. Mr. Randall says that he has read a declaration by President
Washington to the effect that he would have offered the place to
Madison, upon Jefferson's declension, if he had not ascertained that he
would not accept it. These successive and marked steps by the most
prominent leaders of the Republican party, taken in connection with the
results of the preceding Congressional elections, and the avowed
principles upon which they had been conducted, show clearly that the
lines had been distinctly and finally drawn between the Republicans who
had hitherto sustained the administration in general and the Federal
party; the opinion at which Jefferson and the Republicans had arrived
being that the differences which had arisen, founded as they chiefly
were on the interpretation of the Constitution and the degree of
sanctity attaching to that instrument, could not be satisfactorily
settled by any divided counsels, or by any the most liberal and friendly
dispositions of the President; that the season for obtaining present
redress and future security upon those points through such means had
passed away, and that their proper course, whilst continuing their
respect for and their confidence in Washington to the end, was to
support the measures of his administration as far as they could
consistently with their avowed principles, and to place the Government
in the hands of men of their own school at the earliest practicable
moment after his voluntary retirement.
The President, having greatly against his inclination consented to stand
by the helm for another term, and having been reëlected by the unanimous
vote of the country, had no other course to pursue than to carry on the
Government under its existing organization, relying for his support upon
the Federal party, with such coöperation as his measures might draw from
its opponents. Hamilton resigned at the end of the quarter, his
resignation was accepted in the way I have described, and as the actual
and acknowledged leader of the Federal party, though out of office, he
kept up his relations with Washington's administration as well as with
that of his successor, Mr. Adams, as has been already set forth. The
administration having been virtually, and, in the English sense,
actually overthrown by being reduced to a minority in the popular branch
of the national legislature, the President, having signally failed in
his disinterested and patriotic attempt to arrest the adverse current by
a reconstruction of his cabinet so as to place at its head the known and
acknowledged leader of the opposition to the principal measures of the
Government, and obliged by his reëlection to remain at his post till the
expiration of his second term or to retire with discredit, turned his
attention to an earnest survey of the policy to which so disastrous a
state of things might be attributed. That it had not originated in any
objections personal to himself was shown by the fact that the same
election which exhibited the evidence of dissatisfaction, on the part of
a majority of the people, with the measures of Government, demonstrated
also by his unanimous reëlection their continued confidence in him.
Those measures to which the deprecated result was attributed were the
bank and the funding system. Jay's treaty had no agency in producing it,
that disturbing question not having then arisen, and its only effect, in
this respect, was during the last year of Washington's administration
to increase the majority against the Government to so great an extent as
to enable the Republicans to carry Kitchel's resolution condemnatory of
the President's own act in refusing to lay before Congress the
instructions and papers connected with the negotiation of the treaty, by
a vote, including absentees whose sentiments were known, of very nearly
two to one.
The bank, to the operations of which Jefferson, whilst in retirement,
openly and unreservedly attributed the corruption of Congress, had
passed beyond reach, but the funding system was yet open to the action
of the Government. It was in respect to this ill-omened and ill-fated
measure that the tocsin had been first sounded of that alarm which now
extensively pervaded the public mind, and it was beyond all doubt that
no other act of the Government had proven a more prolific source of
popular discontent. It was not the existence of the debt of which the
people complained; they gladly accepted that burden, on the contrary, as
the price of their liberties; but it was the system devised by Hamilton
for its management and for the treatment of their fiscal affairs
generally that excited their severe displeasure. They believed that the
politico-fiscal agencies congenial with, and cherished features of,
monarchical institutions had been adopted in servile emulation of the
English system, and as they were acknowledged sources of corruption in
that system, that they had been introduced for similar effect here.
Hamilton's oft-avowed preference for the English model gave much color
to the first part of this conclusion, and the exasperated feelings of
our people toward that government predisposed the public mind against
the whole policy. Nor were these resentments without adequate cause. No
independent nation was ever worse treated by another than was ours by
Great Britain from the recognition of our Independence until after the
war of 1812. So arrogant and outrageous was her conduct at this very
period that Washington, as appears by his published letters to Hamilton
in August 1796, found it difficult to keep the expressions of his
dissatisfaction within the bounds demanded by his official position, and
Hamilton was driven to admit in his reply that "we were subject to
inconveniences too nearly approaching a state of war" to be submitted
to. But these were not the only nor even the principal objections of the
people against the funding system. They were satisfied by reason and
observation that there could never be a proper economy in public
expenditures, or a check to the increase of public debt so long as
Government was not only under no obligation to pay the principal of such
debts but had no right so to do or the right only in respect to a mere
pittance, as was the case with our funded debt. The power to convert the
credit of the nation into revenue by such a policy, of which Hamilton
boasted, was a power in which they thought no government could be safely
indulged. If the argument in favor of that opinion, which need not be
repeated here, was not sufficient to establish its soundness, the
experience of the mother country, which was constantly before their
eyes, afforded conclusive demonstration of it. I have elsewhere stated
the extent to which the debt of England had then already increased, and
the force with which her ablest writer on political economy and finance
had traced that alarming growth, by the lights of experience and reason,
to those features in her funding system.
Hamilton had been throughout and still remained devoted to what we may
call English principles in the management of our finances, and
constantly desirous to extend them to every species of our public debt,
foreign and domestic. General Washington was wedded to no such views.
The subject belonging peculiarly to Hamilton's department, and having
full confidence in him, he acquiesced in the course he recommended, but
he was always open to conviction, and only wished to leave the question
of its continuance to be decided by its results. In the course of a
conversation with Mr. Jefferson, designed to prevail on him to remain in
the cabinet, the latter says that Washington touched upon the merits of
the funding system, to which he knew that Mr. Jefferson was earnestly
opposed, and expressed himself thus: "There is a difference of opinion
about it, some thinking it very bad, and others very good; experience
was the only criterion of right which he knew, and this alone would
decide which opinion was right." The disappointment generally
experienced by the original friends of the system cannot have failed to
reach Washington, and it is impossible that the discredit which the
measure had brought upon his administration could have escaped the
notice of so sagacious and generally dispassionate an observer of the
course of events. Hamilton was to leave him in a month or two, and he
was destined to pass through an ordeal becoming every day more and more
severe. To relieve his Government as far as practicable from odium from
any source, was therefore a suggestion of duty and interest to which he
could not but give heed. The measure of which we are speaking challenged
his attention. The power of the Government over it, without the consent
of its creditors, was, it is true, very limited, but it could relieve
the system to some extent of a portion of its unpopularity by lessening
its character of irredeemability. The annual eight per cent. for
interest and principal (only two per cent. towards the principal, which
was all the Government had a right to pay, but was never obliged to
pay), it could make itself liable to redeem punctually, and could give
to the creditors securities which would put it out of its power to evade
its undertaking.
This was all that could be done, and it was not to be doubted that the
accomplishment of this through the interference of Washington, with a
return to the old mode of raising money, would go far to allay honest
apprehensions, and to remove prejudices against his administration
without disadvantage to the public service certainly, and, I may add,
without the slightest departure from the course which it became him to
pursue. He determined to pursue it. That the resolution in regard to the
policy finally adopted upon this point originated with Washington alone,
without consultation with, or advice from, Hamilton, is rendered certain
to my mind from contemporaneous circumstances, some of which will be
referred to. He, of course, communicated his intention to Hamilton, who
proposed to take charge of all the preliminary steps that could be
adopted during the short period of his remaining in office to prepare
the way for the contemplated change. This was proper in itself and
assented to by the President, who thus, as was his way on most
occasions, enabled Hamilton to give to the whole affair the shape he
thought best. The funding system was emphatically his measure, and if it
was to be discontinued, it was proper that he should be permitted to
make its exit as graceful as was practicable.
The intended movement was preceded by the President's speech to Congress
in November, 1794, from which I extract this passage: "The time which
has elapsed since the commencement of our fiscal measures has developed
our pecuniary resources so as to open a way for a definitive plan for
the redemption of the public debt. It is believed that the result is
such as to encourage Congress to consummate this work without delay.
Nothing can more promote the permanent welfare of the nation, and
nothing would be more grateful to our constituents. Indeed, whatsoever
is unfinished of our system of public credit cannot be benefited by
procrastination; and, as far as may be practicable, we ought to place
that credit on grounds which cannot be disturbed, and to prevent that
progressive accumulation of debt which must ultimately endanger all
governments."
This was substantially the only part of the speech which related to any
other matter than the Pennsylvanian insurrection, and no one familiar
with Hamilton's writings can doubt that the entire paragraph was
prepared by him,--a proceeding common and in this instance particularly
proper. It presented in general terms a gratifying assurance of the
improvement in the revenues of the Government, and the promised
advantages to the national finances. No reference is made to the
character of the measures by which those advantages were to be secured;
these might be provisions for the immediate reduction of the debt, or at
the least for an earlier reduction than that which was authorized by
law.
On the 25th of January, eleven days before he left the department,
Hamilton tendered to the Senate an elaborate "plan for the further
support of public credit on the basis of the actual revenue." It was not
his annual report, nor had it been called for by the Senate, but had
been prepared, he said, as a part of his duties, according to the Act by
which they were prescribed, and in conformity with the suggestions of
the President. It fills twenty-seven pages, small print, in the large
folio edition of the American State Papers, and, being his last, was of
course prepared with great care and, as much of course, with great
ability. Jefferson thought, at times, that Hamilton did not himself
understand his own complicated and elaborate reports on the finances,
but in this I am persuaded he was entirely mistaken. Hamilton evidently
held the thousand threads which traversed these voluminous works with a
firm and instructed hand, and perfectly understood their several and
manifold connections with the body of the documents and the results to
which the whole and every part tended. That he meant that others should
understand them as well as he did is perhaps not so certain.
His plan did not even look to a present reduction of the debt, which
would seem to be the natural consequence of a revenue so prosperous as
that he had described in the speech; that would have been an
impossibility. At the date of his report the debt had increased four
millions from what it was when the funding system was established,
independent of the assumption of those of the States, and at the end of
Mr. Adams's administration, the increase stood at eight millions. I have
not examined the result for each year, but am confident that I hazard
little in affirming that there was not a single year, from the first
period to the last, during which the public debt was not increased. Mr.
Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Madison, written in 1796, expressed the
opinion that, from the commencement of the new government till the time
when he ceased to attend to it, the debt had augmented a million a year.
The preceding statement shows the correctness of his calculation.
Neither did Hamilton propose any measures by which the payment of the
debt might be accelerated, but the reverse. The whole debt then stood as
follows: foreign debt, between thirteen and fourteen millions; domestic
debt funded, including those of the States, between sixty and sixty-one
millions, and domestic debt unsubscribed, between one and two millions.
The foreign debt was payable by installments, ending at the expiration
of fifteen years. His plan was to offer the foreign creditors one half
of one per cent. interest, annually, more than it then drew, if they
would consent to make it a domestic debt, and postpone the redemption of
the principal till 1818, which would defer it between eight and nine
years; or, if they refused that, it might remain redeemable at any time
they proposed, so that the redemption of the principal was not
accelerated by making it less than the fifteen years. A law authorizing
such a change was passed, the offer made and declined. The debt was
suffered to stand as it did, and the last payment was made during the
administration of Mr. Madison. In respect to the funded debt, all that
the report proposed (and that proposition was carried into effect by law
shortly after Hamilton retired) was to add materially to the existing
provisions for the payment of the public debt, and to provide
effectually that the funds set apart for that should be regularly and
inviolably applied, first, to the payment of as much of the funded debt
as the Government had a right to pay annually, which was two per cent.
of the principal besides the interest, and after that to the then
existing public debt generally; that is to say, in regard to the funded
debt, it changed the option of the Government to pay the two per cent.
into a positive obligation, and provided adequate funds for that
purpose. It was calculated that these provisions would redeem the funded
debt bearing an immediate interest in 1818, and the deferred funded debt
in 1824; they did so, and thus the funded debt was extinguished. All
succeeding loans, as well under the administrations of Washington and
Adams as subsequently, were made redeemable at or after a certain
period, save in rare and very limited instances controlled by special
circumstances and not constituting modifications of the general rule of
the Government.
By this step Congress carried into effect an object for which the
Republicans had striven since soon after the establishment of the
funding system, and upon the resolution to accomplish which Hamilton
had interposed a temporary obstruction by his report in December, 1792.
The funded debt was changed into a simple debt payable by regular though
small installments, at stated and certain periods. Its ultimate
redemption was made certain, and the further practice of funding
successfully discountenanced. That was done which Washington desired to
have done; not indeed in the plain, straightforward way in which he
would have done it, for that would have shown that the Government, in
deference to public sentiment, had, to borrow a common phrase, taken the
back track; an exhibition which Hamilton's course was designed to avoid.
What the latter undertook to do he did effectually and in good faith,
but a careful perusal of his last _exposé_ will show how little the
whole proceeding was in harmony with his individual feelings.
The following are extracts from that extraordinary paper:--
"To extinguish a debt which exists and to avoid the contracting more are
always ideas favored by public feeling; but to pay taxes for the one or
the other purpose, which are the only means of preventing the evil, is
always more or less unpopular. These contradictions are in human nature;
and happy indeed would be the country that should ever _want men to turn
them to the account of their own popularity or to some other sinister
account_.
"Hence it is no uncommon spectacle to see the same men clamoring for
occasions of expense when they happen to be in unison with the present
humor of the community, whether well or ill directed, declaiming against
a public debt and for the reduction of it as an abstract thesis, yet
vehement against every plan of taxation which is proposed to discharge
old debts or to avoid new by the defraying of exigencies as they emerge.
These unhandsome acts throw artificial embarrassments in the way of the
administration of a government."
These observations afford evidence of the wounded spirit under which he
was acting, and also of the strong sense he entertained of the influence
which a necessity for taxation is calculated to exert upon the minds of
a legislature anxious for the redemption of a public debt. Do they not
further explain the motive for the array of taxes that would be required
to carry into effect the Resolution of 1792, in favor of making
provision for the redemption of the funded debt, contained in his report
upon that resolution?
When speaking of now resorting to the old practice of anticipating
revenues, that is, by making provision for the payment of both principal
and interest, in the departure from which practice the English Funding
System had its birth, he says:--
"This would be at the same time an antidote against what may be
pronounced the most plausible objections to the system of _funding_
public debts; which are, that, by facilitating the means of supporting
expense they encourage to enterprises which produce it, and by
furnishing in credit a substitute for revenue, likely to be too freely
used to avoid the odium of laying new taxes, they occasion a tendency to
run in debt. Though these objections to funding systems--which, giving
the greatest possible energy to public credit, are a great source of
national security, strength, and prosperity--are very similar to those
which speculative men urge against national and individual opulence,
drawn from its abuses; and though perhaps, upon a careful analysis of
facts, they would be found to have much less support in them than is
imagined, attributing to those systems effects which are to be ascribed,
more truly, to the passions of men and perhaps to the genius of
particular governments; yet, as they are not wholly unfounded, it is
desirable to guard, as far as possible, against the dangers which they
suppose, without renouncing the advantages which these systems
undoubtedly afford."
When we find him thus dallying with a pet system on the eve of its
abandonment, thus filling a paper designed to prepare the way for that
result with his reasons for deprecating it, who can suppose that its
impending fate was of his own suggestion, or doubt that he looked to its
restoration under more favorable auspices?
The Secretary very naturally endeavors in this paper to place the
provisions now recommended in respect to the Sinking Fund upon the same
footing with those contained in his first Report upon public credit,
conformably to which his funding system was established. Without the
slightest desire to assail or to weaken any of his attempts to rest his
acts on the most favorable ground consistent with truth, it is yet due
to the memories of the patriotic men who by their fearless and
persevering efforts succeeded in discrediting that dangerous system, and
finally in causing it to be discontinued from the operations of our
Government, that the circumstances under which they acted should not be
misrepresented. The difference between the provisions of the Sinking
Fund first and now adopted was great indeed. The grant of the funds to
the first, to say nothing of their insufficiency, lacked the essential
quality of being irrevocable, but was left subject to the action of
Congress. There was therefore no reason to think that more might be
expected from the Sinking Fund here than had been realized in England,
where it had not only been found entirely ineffectual even in time of
peace, but the funds vested in the Commissioners had on more than one
occasion been used as a basis for new loans. But now, when the business
of redemption was entered upon in earnest, that matter was placed upon
a very different footing. The funds were not only more ample, but they
were vested in the Commissioners as an irrevocable trust, and the faith
of the Government was pledged that its execution should not be
interfered with. As widely different were the dispositions of the
Government and the sentiments of its principal supporters. On the former
occasion the proposals submitted to Congress by the head of the Treasury
Department, and most trusted officer of the Government, were to fund the
entire debt of the United States upon the following terms, viz: 1st.
That the whole principal should be forever irredeemable at the option of
the United States; 2d. That they should not even reserve to themselves a
right to pay more than two dollars upon a hundred of the principal,
however full their coffers, and however great their convenience to pay;
and, that no obstacle might be wanting to the redemption of that
pittance, he proposed further to assume and fund in the same way
twenty-five millions of the debts of the States which the Federal
Government was under no obligations to pay and was not asked to assume.
This policy was entered upon in the face of the fact that the debt of
England, under a similar system, had, in eighty years, increased from
some five millions to two hundred and seventy-six millions of pounds
sterling, and was still increasing.
After these propositions had been substantially adopted by Congress and
sustained by the Government, Hamilton, having the entire direction of
its affairs, and knowing the spirit and firmness with which those who
disapproved of his schemes always maintained their views of the public
interest, had no right to complain of, and ought not to have been
surprised at, the opposition he encountered from them, under the weight
of which his Funding System, in respect to the future action of the
Government in the management of its finances, soon became a dead
letter, no further thought of than to get rid of the debts that had been
contracted under it, with the intent to return to the old mode of
anticipating revenue, that of direct loans payable at or after specific
periods, principal as well as interest; the only way by which, as Adam
Smith had demonstrated, a nation could avoid a permanent and ruinous
public debt,--a view of the subject which came too late for England, but
was, happily, in season for us. Though the Government had, by the Act of
March 3d, 1795, passed to carry into effect the improved views of
Washington, placed the management of our finances upon a better footing,
no progress was made in the reduction of the public debt; but the act
doubtless accomplished much in restraining its increase. It was not an
easy thing to keep down the public debt under an administration which,
like that of Mr. Adams, in pursuance of the express advice of Hamilton
to Wolcott, paid upon its loans an annual interest of eight per cent.,
the highest that had then ever been paid except by England to her bank
upon the loan obtained from it on its first establishment.
Upon Jefferson's accession to power he denounced a public debt, in his
message to Congress, as a "moral canker," and invoked the aid of the
legislature for its extinction at the earliest practicable period. The
Committee of Ways and Means, with John Randolph at its head (his
brightest period of public usefulness), entered upon the subject "_con
amore_." They called upon the Secretary of the Treasury for a thorough
exposition of the state of the public debt, and for his opinion in
regard to the best mode of dealing with it. Mr. Gallatin's reply, which
may be found in the publication of American State Papers,--title
"FINANCE," Vol. I.,--gave a full statement of the then condition of the
debt, and pointed out the defects through which the Act of March 3,
1795, had been rendered inadequate to the accomplishment of all the
objects for which it was designed. I will refer to but one of them,
which consisted in its limiting the appropriation for the redemption of
the public debt, beyond that which had been funded, to "surpluses which
shall remain at the end of every calendar year, and which, during the
session of Congress next thereafter, shall not be otherwise specially
appropriated or reserved by law." Our experience of the action of
Congress has been too full to make it necessary to speak of the extreme
improbability of any considerable surpluses being left by that body
acting under no more specific restraint than that which is here
provided, and upon examination of the books of the treasury it was found
that so far from there having been any such surpluses from the
establishment of the present Government in 1789 till the close of the
year 1799, the appropriations charged upon the revenue by Congress had
exceeded, by nearly a million of dollars, the whole amount of such
revenue, whether collected or outstanding.
To remedy results so unfavorable to the accomplishment of the object in
view, the Secretary advised specific appropriations of such sums as,
upon a fair estimate of the wants and resources of the country, ought in
the opinion of Congress to be applied to the payment of the public debt,
and to make such appropriations irrevocable and their application
mandatory on the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund. The committee
adopted the suggestion with alacrity as one which, in addition to
securing the early performance of a sacred duty, could not in their
opinion fail to induce economy on the part of Congress in its
disposition of the public funds. They therefore reported a bill, which
became a law, appropriating annually to the Sinking Fund seven millions
three hundred thousand dollars for the payment of the public debt. This
sum was increased to eight millions in consequence of the purchase of
Louisiana. During the administration of Mr. Madison the annual
appropriation was increased to ten millions, besides an additional
appropriation of nine millions, and one of four millions if the
Secretary of the Treasury should deem it expedient; and all of these
appropriations were made irrevocable and compulsory as respected the
action of the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund.
The consequences of this change in the action of the Government upon the
subject of the public debt and of this liberality of appropriations
under Democratic administrations, were the discharge of thirty-three
millions of the principal of the debt, besides the payment of interest
on the whole, during the Presidency of Mr. Jefferson, and its final
extinguishment under President Jackson, notwithstanding the intervention
of a war with England commenced at a period of the greatest financial
embarrassment.
I have been induced to take so extended a notice of this matter as well
by the circumstance, to which I have before referred, that it presented
a leading subject of party divisions in this country, as because of the
influence which it and its adjuncts the Bank of the United States and
the Protective System have exerted upon our politics. It has been seen
that the Funding System, however, preceded the bank in its
establishment, and it became also an "obsolete idea" many years before
the latter was declared to be such by its most devoted advocate and
reckless supporter, Daniel Webster. That the bank did not share that
fate at a much earlier period was because Henry Clay and John C.
Calhoun, both disciples of the old Republican school,--the former one of
the ablest among the opponents of the revival of the bank in
1811,--tempted by the political allurements of the day in 1815,
advocated the establishment of a new bank, and because that pure man
and patriot, James Madison, under mistaken impressions in respect to the
absolute necessity of such an institution, gave his assent to its
incorporation.
No public question was ever longer or more severely agitated in any
country than that of the existence of a national bank has been in this.
Madison acquired enduring honor by his unanswerable speech against its
constitutionality. It divided the cabinet of President Washington, and
contributed with other causes to give birth to a political party which
kept his administration at bay, overthrew that of his successor, has
sustained itself in power ever since (with brief and easily explained
interruptions), and is now, after the lapse of nearly seventy years, in
full possession of the Federal Government. It gave position in 1811 to
Henry Clay as one of the strong minds of the country, derived from his
speech against rechartering the bank, by far the best speech he ever
made and nearly equal to that of Madison in 1790, and it enabled that
venerable revolutionary patriot, George Clinton, to add new laurels to
his already great fame by his casting vote against the passage of the
bill for its re-incorporation. Whilst in 1815 it marred forever the
political fortunes of Clay and Calhoun, then standing at the head of the
rising Republican statesmen of the country, in 1830 it made memorable
and glorious the civil career of Andrew Jackson through his celebrated
veto--a noble step in that fearful issue between the respective powers
of the Government and the Bank, on the trial of which that institution
justified and confirmed Jefferson's gloomy forebodings at its first
establishment by spreading recklessly and wantonly (as is now well
understood) panic in the public mind and convulsions in the business
affairs of the people, through which incalculable injury was inflicted
upon the country, and by wasting its entire capital of thirty millions
in wild speculation and in corrupt squandering upon parasites and
political backers. It did not however prove too strong for the
Government, as Mr. Jefferson apprehended, but was itself overwhelmed in
utter defeat and disgrace. So thorough has been its annihilation that
its books and papers were a few months since sold by auction, in
Philadelphia, by the ton, as waste paper!
Who can call to mind without amazement the extent to which the
impression was fastened on the public judgment that a national bank was
of vital necessity to the healthful action of the Federal Government,
indispensable to the collection of its revenues, to the management of
its finances, to the transfer of its funds from point to point, and,
above all, to the execution and support of domestic exchanges, without
which the most important business of the country would be unavoidably
suspended, and now see that all this was sheer delusion; or who can
reflect upon the bold and profligate action taken by the bank to force a
compliance with its application, without acknowledging and admiring the
wisdom of the Federal Convention in refusing, as it did almost in terms,
to confer upon Congress the power to establish such an institution, so
inefficient for good and so potent for mischief, or without applauding
the true conservatism and patriotic spirit of the Democratic party
during a forty years' struggle to expel from our system so dangerous an
abuse, or without rejoicing that that great object was finally achieved
and blessing the memory of the brave old man to whom the achievement is
mainly to be credited.
The Protective System was another of the important measures brought
forward at the commencement of the Government, and had its origin in the
prolific mind of Hamilton. Efforts have been made to trace its
commencement to the legislation of the first Congress, but they have
not been successful. The idea of protection, beyond that which is
incidental to a tariff for revenue and could be effected without losing
sight of the revenue point, was not, at that time, broached in Congress
or inferable from the character of the duties imposed. It was in
Hamilton's masterpiece--his elaborate report, nominally upon
manufactures, but embracing in its range every pursuit of human industry
susceptible of encouragement under an unlimited government--that the
subject was first brought to the notice and recommended to the favorable
consideration of Congress.
I have already described, more fully, perhaps, than might on first
impression be thought necessary, the length and breadth of that famous
document, the boldness and extravagance of its ultra-latitudinarian
pretensions to power in the Federal Government, including unlimited
authority to raise money by taxes and an equally unlimited power to
spend it in any way which Congress might think would be conducive to the
general welfare. The vehement denunciation of its character by Mr.
Jefferson and his friends, with continually increasing indications of
popular discontent, prevented Hamilton from attempting any measures
worthy of notice to carry into effect his recommendations--and no
assumptions, beyond the revenue standard, were acted upon by the
administrations of either Washington or Adams.
The enforcement of Hamilton's recommendations was reserved for the close
of the War of 1812, a period of which I have already spoken as one which
brought on the political stage a new class of Presidential aspirants,
members of a succeeding generation and unknown to revolutionary fame.
Among the most prominent of these stood Crawford, Clay, Calhoun, Adams,
Webster, and Lowndes,--the latter, perhaps, the most likely to have
succeeded, if his useful life had not been brought to a premature close.
In the same year, 1815, was revived the idea of a national bank, and no
fitter associate could have been devised for it than the Protective
System. They had a common origin, even in their political aspects, were
designed for a common effect, and were moreover alike adapted to the
immediate policy of two of the Presidential aspirants of the Republican
stamp, Clay and Calhoun,--that of conciliating the good-will of those
who still clung to the wreck of the Federal party, which having been
shattered and disabled by its course in the war, was at the moment
drifting upon the political seas. Henry Clay, with better qualifications
for success than his not less ambitious rival, seized the prize in view,
and after long competition from the latter, and against perpetual,
though sometimes concealed opposition from Webster, attached the mass of
the Federal party to his fortunes, and held them there to the close of
his remarkable life. Shouldering a large share of responsibility for the
reintroduction of a national bank, he added to his programme the
Protective System, stopping in the first instance at a protective
tariff, but willing, as was clearly seen, to embrace Hamilton's entire
scheme, and superadding to these a system of internal improvements by
the Federal Government, in respect to which he went, on the point of
constitutional power, beyond his great prototype. These were the
elements out of which he constructed his famous "American System." A
convert to theories and measures hostile to the earliest and most
cherished principles of the old Republican party, he of course soon lost
his position in its ranks, and was in due season installed as the leader
of that with which all its wars have been waged. Possessing certain
qualities eminently adapted to attract the popular admiration, and which
could not have failed to elevate him to the Presidency if he had
remained in the Democratic party and had adhered to its principles, he
infused into the torpid body of the Federal party elements of strength,
of which it had always stood in need; besides bringing to it a leader of
fascinating manners and brilliant talents, he gave a new and more
captivating form to the platform of principles and policy in support of
which its original members and their descendants had been trained,
excepting only the Funding System, which had not only been tabooed by
the good sense of our people, but as to which England was yet uttering
warnings to other nations of too fearful import to allow its revival
here to be for a moment contemplated even by a politician so bold and
too often reckless as Clay. Thus reinvigorated and backed by the
money-power of the country, during a quarter of a century, and with
never quailing spirit, he conducted that party, under various names but
striving always under the banner of the same "American System," through
a succession of political campaigns which left their injurious traces
upon the country.
The fruits of this warfare against the Democratic party and its
principles are familiar to politicians and observers of our times. The
Bank of the United States, after filling the country with distress and
ruin, itself perished; the proposed system of internal improvements by
the Federal Government was happily broken down by his opponents before
it involved the country in inextricable embarrassments, and the
Protective System, after being finally overthrown in England, from which
country we had copied it, was abandoned here also, and consigned by the
judgment of the people to the same oblivion with its kindred delusions.
The promotion of internal improvements by the General Government was an
assumption of power by Congress, against which, from its first inception
till its substantial overthrow, the Democratic party interposed a
steady, persevering, and inflexible resistance. The general character of
the abuse, its origin, progress, and extirpation through Democratic
agencies, are fully presented in another part of this work.[40] Here the
probable effect upon the national treasury of arresting the practice
will alone be noticed.
[40] Referring to the Memoirs of the writer. See Introduction. Eds.
In his annual message to Congress, December, 1834, President Jackson
says:--
"When the bill authorizing a subscription on the part of the United
States for stock in the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Companies
passed the two Houses, there had been reported, by the committees of
internal improvements, bills containing appropriations for such objects,
exclusive of those for the Cumberland Road and for harbors and
light-houses, to the amount of about one hundred and six millions of
dollars. In this amount was included authority to the Secretary of the
Treasury to subscribe to the stock of different companies to a great
extent, and the residue was principally for the direct construction of
roads by this Government. In addition to those projects, which had been
presented to the two Houses, under the sanction and recommendation of
their respective committees on internal improvements, there were then
still pending before the committees, and in memorials to Congress,
presented but not referred, different projects for works of a similar
character, the expense of which cannot be estimated with certainty but
must have exceeded one hundred millions of dollars."
The same message contained also the following suggestions:--
"From attempts to appropriate the national funds to objects which are
confessedly of a local character, we cannot I trust have any thing
further to apprehend. My views in regard to the expediency of making
appropriations for works which are claimed to be of a national
character, and prosecuted under State authority, assuming that Congress
have the right to do so, were stated in my annual message to Congress in
1830, and also in that containing my objections to the Maysville Road
Bill.
"So thoroughly convinced am I that no such appropriations ought to be
made by Congress, until a suitable constitutional provision is made upon
the subject, and so essential do I regard the point to the highest
interests of our country, that I could not consider myself as
discharging my duty to my constituents in giving the executive sanction
to any bill containing such an appropriation. If the people of the
United States desire that the public treasury shall be resorted to for
the means to prosecute such works, they will concur in an amendment of
the Constitution prescribing a rule by which the national character of
the works is to be tested, and by which the greatest practicable
equality of benefits may be secured to each member of the Confederacy.
The effects of such a regulation would be most salutary in preventing
unprofitable expenditures, in securing our legislation from the
pernicious consequences of a scramble for the favors of Government, and
in repressing the spirit of discontent which must inevitably arise from
an unequal distribution of treasures which belong alike to all."
These declarations of President Jackson that he would approve no bill
containing appropriations even for objects of a national character,
until an amendment of the Constitution was adopted placing such
expenditures upon an equal footing towards all the States, were
reiterated in his Maysville veto. My election to the Presidency, and the
knowledge that I cordially approved, and was determined to sustain, the
ground taken in those two state papers upon the subject of internal
improvements, with the large Democratic vote in Congress, always opposed
upon principle to such grants, effectually closed the doors of the
national treasury against them for seven years.
All similar applications, save for harbor and river appropriations, were
thus driven, as was anticipated, to the State legislatures. The money
expended for such improvements, when authorized by the States, were
chargeable upon the treasuries of the States, to be collected by direct
taxation. When made by incorporated companies under authority derived
from the States they were at the expense of their stockholders. All must
be sensible of the salutary check which these circumstances are
calculated to exert by increasing the circumspection and prudence with
which such expenses are incurred; and yet what immense amounts of money
have been irrecoverably sunk upon such works, and what widespread
embarrassments have they at times created in the financial affairs of
the country, through the headlong enterprise and adventurous spirit of
our people!
We have only to imagine a transfer of the seat of these operations to
the halls of Congress to estimate the sums that would have been drawn
out of the National Treasury and carried to the States to be, for the
most part, expended upon local objects,--the scenes of log-rolling and
intrigue to which such scrambles would have given rise, and the utter
unscrupulousness of the applications that would thus have been produced.
What millions upon millions of the public funds would have been worse
than uselessly expended during the twenty-seven years that have elapsed
since the Democratic party, through their venerable and fearless
President, took the first effectual step to break up the practice! The
one hundred millions for which bills had been reported, and the other
hundred millions of applications pending before Congress when the
Maysville veto was interposed, according to the President's message,
furnish ample data upon which to found our calculations. No sum would
seem to be too large at which to place the probable amount of our
national debt if the plans of their political opponents had in this
regard been crowned with complete success. In view of such an event who
will be bold enough, with the subsequent experience of the country
before him, to place even a conjectural estimate upon that amount or
upon the extent to which valuable improvements, through individual
enterprise or under State authority, would have been postponed or
arrested forever by a further prosecution of the policy into which such
persevering efforts were made to lead the Federal Government. For
preservation from such prodigality and debt, and from the corruptions
that would have followed in their train, we are plainly and undeniably
indebted to the successful enforcement of the principles of the
Democratic party.
[A space was here reserved in the original Manuscript for an
intended notice of the advantages derived to the country from the
establishment of the Independent Treasury; a measure proposed by
Mr. Van Buren in the first year of his Presidency and in his first
communication to Congress, and supported by the Democratic party.
In consequence, however, of the interruptions to which this work
was subjected (and which are referred to in the Introduction), the
contemplated addition to it was never supplied.--EDITORS.]
The measures of which I have spoken as the cherished policy of the old
Federal party and its successors taken as a whole were justly described
by Jefferson, in his much-abused letter to Mazzei, as "a contrivance
invented for the purpose of corruption and for assimilating us in all
respects to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British
Constitution." A persuasion of their practical usefulness in some
respects entered more or less into the motives of the leaders on the
occasions both of their creation and of their attempted resuscitation;
but that they were by both regarded principally as elements of political
strength, and adopted as means by which to build up and sustain an
overshadowing money power in the country, through which the Democratic
spirit of the people might be kept in check, is at least equally
certain. Doubtless both of those political leaders honestly believed
such a check to be necessary to the public good. With Hamilton this
faith had from the beginning constituted an integral part of his
political system. Clay had been, in his youth, too much a man of the
people to avow such a belief, but that he became a convert to it in
after-life I have no doubt. But the Democratic spirit of the country did
not stand in need of any such restraint as that which they designed to
place upon its course.
I have thus adverted to some of the advantages the country has derived
from the action of the Democratic party, to which must be added the
benefits conferred on the States by an extension of kindred principles
to the administration of the local governments. If its opponents are
asked for a statement of their contributions to the public welfare when
in power and by their efforts to defeat the measures of the Democratic
party, or to name a great measure of which they were the authors and
which has stood the test of experience, or one in the establishment of
which they have been prevented by factious or partisan opposition, but
which would now be received with favor by the people, or a principle
advocated by them for the administration of the Government, in which
they have been defeated but which would now be so received, or an
unsound one set up by their opponents which they have successfully
resisted,--what must be the replies to questions so simple yet so
comprehensive and important! Can it, on the other hand, be now denied
that notwithstanding the conceded capacities of their leaders, and their
possession of superior facilities for the acquisition and favorable
exercise of political power, their time and their resources have been
mainly employed in efforts to establish principles and build up systems
which have been to all appearance irrevocably condemned by the people,
and in unavailing efforts to defeat measures and principles which, after
a full experience, have proved acceptable to them, and through the
influence and operation of which the country has been gradually raised
to great power and unexampled prosperity.
The course of events to which I have referred has had the effect of
breaking up as a national organization the party so long opposed to the
Democratic party, leaving the latter the only political association
co-extensive in its power and influence with the Union,--and the sole
survivor of all its national competitors. Of the eleven Presidents
elected since its accession to power in the Federal Government,
including the one in whose election it achieved its first national
triumph, nine were avowed supporters of the cause it sustained, and
eight its exclusive candidates. During the sixty years which will, at
the end of the present Presidential term, have passed away since the
occurrence of that great event, the chief magistracy of this country has
been in the hands of professed supporters of its principles, with the
exception only of four years and one month.
Born of the spirit which impelled our early colonists to forsake the
abodes of civilization to establish among savages and in the wilderness
the sacred right of opinion, which encouraged and sustained them in all
their wanderings and sufferings and perils, and which finally conducted
the survivors through a long and bloody war to liberty and independence,
and representing the feelings and opinions of a majority of the people,
it has labored zealously and, in the main, successfully, to give effect
to those by which that momentous struggle was produced, to realize its
promises, to maintain the sanctity of the Constitution, and to uphold
"that equality of political rights" which Hamilton, though he could not
find it in his judgment to favor, yet truly described as "the foundation
of pure Republicanism."
For the signal success of its beneficent and glorious mission the
country is indebted to the virtue and intelligence of the men of whom
this great party has from time to time been composed,--much to the
ability, industry, and devoted patriotism of James Madison; largely to
the iron will, fearlessness, and uprightness of Andrew Jackson; and more
conspicuously still to the genius, the honest and firm heart, and
spirit-stirring pen of its founder, Thomas Jefferson, who stands, in my
estimation, as a faithful republican, pure patriot, and wise and
accomplished statesman, unequaled in the history of man. His opinions
deliberately formed on important public questions, do not appear to have
undergone material change or modification, except perhaps in the case of
the issue raised in respect to the necessity of an amendment of the
Constitution to justify the admission of Louisiana into the Union.
Certain it is that he never entertained one which he could justly be
accused of having concealed or recanted to propitiate power or to
promote his own popularity, or which he was not on all suitable
occasions prompt to avow and to defend. The presence of this noble
spirit, and a readiness to encounter any sacrifice necessary to its free
indulgence, were manifest in every crisis of his eventful life; nor were
his last moments on earth without an impressive exhibition of its
continued ascendency, even when reason and sense were passing away.
APPENDIX.
FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON,
TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.
MONTICELLO, June 29, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering's elaborate Philippic
against Mr. Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the
acknowledgment until I could read it and make some observations on it.
I could not have believed that, for so many years, and to such a period
of advanced age, he could have nourished passions so vehement and
viperous. It appears, that for thirty years past, he has been
industriously collecting materials for vituperating the characters he
had marked for his hatred; some of whom, certainly, if enmities towards
him had ever existed, had forgotten them all, or buried them in the
grave with themselves. As to myself, there never had been any thing
personal between us, nothing but the general opposition of party
sentiment; and our personal intercourse had been that of urbanity, as
himself says. But it seems he has been all this time brooding over an
enmity which I had never felt, and yet that with respect to myself as
well as others, he has been writing far and near, and in every
direction, to get hold of original letters, where he could, copies,
where he could not, certificates and journals, catching at every
gossiping story he could hear of in any quarter, supplying by suspicions
what he could find nowhere else, and then arguing on this motley
farrago, as if established on gospel evidence. And while expressing his
wonder that "at the age of eighty-eight, the strong passions of Mr.
Adams should not have cooled;" that on the contrary "they had acquired
the mastery of his soul" (p. 100); that "where these were enlisted, no
reliance could be placed on his statements" (p. 104); "the facility and
little truth with which he could represent facts and occurrences,
concerning persons who were the objects of his hatred" (p. 3); that "he
is capable of making the grossest misrepresentations, and, from detached
facts, and often from bare suspicions, of drawing unwarrantable
inferences, if suited to his purpose at the instant" (p. 174); while
making such charges, I say, on Mr. Adams, instead of his "_ecce homo_"
(p. 100), how justly might we say to him, "_mutato nomine, de te fabula
narratur_." For the assiduity and industry he has employed in his
benevolent researches after matter of crimination against us, I refer to
his pages 13, 14, 34, 36, 46, 71, 79, 90, bis. 92, 93, bis. 101, ter.
104, 116, 118, 141, 143, 146, 150, 151, 153, 168, 171, 172. That Mr.
Adams' strictures on him, written and printed, should have excited some
notice on his part, was not perhaps to be wondered at. But the
sufficiency of his motive for the large attack on me may be more
questionable. He says (p. 4), "of Mr. Jefferson I should have said
nothing, but for his letter to Mr. Adams, of October 12th, 1823." Now
the object of that letter was to soothe the feelings of a friend,
wounded by a publication which I thought an "outrage on private
confidence." Not a word or allusion in it respected Mr. Pickering, nor
was it suspected that it would draw forth his pen in justification of
this infidelity, which he has, however, undertaken in the course of his
pamphlet, but more particularly in its conclusion.
He arraigns me on two grounds, my actions and my motives. The very
actions, however, which he arraigns, have been such as the great
majority of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr.
Pickering, and of those who thought with him, I had no right to expect.
My motives he chuses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition, and a passion
for popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no
office of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions
and motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters,
journals, and gossiping tales, to justify myself and weary them. Nor
shall I do this on the present occasion, but leave still to them these
antiquated party diatribes, now newly revamped and paraded as if they
had not been already a thousand times repeated, refuted, and adjudged
against him, by the nation itself. If no action is to be deemed virtuous
for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a
virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour himself. But he
has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to
him who can alone see into them.
But whilst I leave to its fate the libel of Mr. Pickering, with the
thousands of others like it, to which I have given no other answer than
a steady course of similar action, there are two facts or fancies of his
which I must set to rights. The one respects Mr. Adams, the other
myself. He observes that my letter of October 12th, 1823, acknowledges
the receipt of one from Mr. Adams, of September 18th, which, having been
written a few days after Cunningham's publication, he says was no doubt
written to apologize to me for the pointed reproaches he had uttered
against me in his confidential letters to Cunningham. And thus having
"no doubt" of his conjecture, he considers it as proven, goes on to
suppose the contents of the letter (19, 22), makes it place Mr. Adams at
my feet suing for pardon, and continues to rant upon it, as an undoubted
fact. Now, I do most solemnly declare, that so far from being a letter
of apology, as Mr. Pickering so undoubtingly assumes, there was not a
word nor allusion in it respecting Cunningham's publication.
The other allegation, respecting myself, is equally false. In page 34,
he quotes Doctor Stuart as having, twenty years ago, informed him that
General Washington, "when he became a private citizen," called me to
account for expressions in a letter to Mazzei, requiring, in a tone of
unusual severity, an explanation of that letter. He adds of himself, "in
what manner the latter humbled himself and appeased the just resentment
of Washington, will never be known, as some time after his death the
correspondence was not to be found, and a diary for an important period
of his Presidency was also missing." The diary being of transactions
during his Presidency, the letter to Mazzei not known here until some
time _after he became a private citizen_, and the pretended
correspondence of course after that, I know not why this lost diary and
supposed correspondence are brought together here, unless for
insinuations worthy of the letter itself. The correspondence could not
be found, indeed, because it had never existed. I do affirm that there
never passed a word, written or verbal, directly or indirectly, between
General Washington and myself on the subject of that letter. He would
never have degraded himself so far as to take to himself the imputation
in that letter on the "Samsons in combat." The whole story is a
fabrication, and I defy the framers of it, and all mankind, to produce a
scrip of a pen between General Washington and myself on the subject, or
any other evidence more worthy of credit than the suspicions,
suppositions and presumptions of the two persons here quoting and quoted
for it. With Doctor Stuart I had not much acquaintance. I supposed him
to be an honest man, knew him to be a very weak one, and, like Mr.
Pickering, very prone to antipathies, boiling with party passions, and
under the dominion of these readily welcoming fancies for facts. But
come the story from whomsoever it might, it is an unqualified falsehood.
This letter to Mazzei has been a precious theme of crimination for
Federal malice. It was a long letter of business, in which was inserted
a single paragraph only of political information as to the state of our
country. In this information there was not one word which would not then
have been, or would not now be approved by every Republican in the
United States, looking back to those times; as you will see by a
faithful copy now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on the
subject of the United States, or of its government. This paragraph,
extracted and translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the
persons in power there were laboring under very general disfavor, and
their friends were eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. To
them, therefore, I have always imputed the interpolation of an entire
paragraph additional to mine, which makes me charge my own country with
ingratitude and injustice to France. There was not a word in my letter
respecting France, or any of the proceedings or relations between this
country and that. Yet this interpolated paragraph has been the burthen
of Federal calumny, has been constantly quoted by them, made the subject
of unceasing and virulent abuse, and is still quoted, as you see, by
Mr. Pickering, page 33, as if it were genuine, and really written by me.
And even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the
ermine from its sanctity, to exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this
forgery. In the very last note of his book, he says, "a letter from Mr.
Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian, was published in Florence, and
republished in the 'Moniteur,' with very severe strictures on the
conduct of the United States." And instead of the letter itself, he
copies what he says are the remarks of the editor, which are an
exaggerated commentary on the fabricated paragraph itself, and silently
leaves to his reader to make the ready inference that these were the
sentiments of the letter. Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A
negative cannot be positively proved. But, in defect of impossible proof
of what was not in the original letter, I have its press-copy still in
my possession. It has been shown to several, and is open to any one who
wishes to see it. I have presumed only, that the interpolation was done
in Paris. But I never saw the letter in either its Italian or French
dress, and it may have been done here, with the commentary handed down
to posterity by the Judge. The genuine paragraph, retranslated through
Italian and French into English, as it appeared here in a Federal paper,
besides the mutilated hue which these translations and retranslations of
it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which
entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of
misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of
an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party, which had sprung up
since he had left us, states their object to be "to draw over us the
substance, as they had already done the _forms_ of the British
Government." Now the forms here meant, were the levees, birthdays, the
pompous cavalcade to the state house on the meeting of Congress, the
formal speech from the throne, the procession of Congress in a body to
reëcho the speech in an answer, &c., &c. But the translator here, by
substituting _form_ in the singular number, for _forms_ in the plural,
made it mean the frame or organization of our government, or its _form_
of legislative, executive, and judiciary authorities coördinate and
independent; to which _form_ it was to be inferred that I was an enemy.
In this sense they always quoted it, and in this sense Mr. Pickering
still quotes it, pages 34, 35, 38, and countenances the inference. Now
General Washington perfectly understood what I meant by these forms, as
they were frequent subjects of conversation between us. When, on my
return from Europe, I joined the government in March, 1790, at New York,
I was much astonished, indeed, at the mimicry I found established of
royal forms and ceremonies, and more alarmed at the unexpected
phenomenon, by the monarchical sentiments I heard expressed and openly
maintained in every company, and among others by the high members of the
government, executive and judiciary, (General Washington alone
excepted,) and by a great part of the legislature, save only some
members who had been of the old Congress, and a very few of recent
introduction. I took occasion, at various times, of expressing to
General Washington my disappointment at these symptoms of a change of
principle, and that I thought them encouraged by the forms and
ceremonies which I found prevailing, not at all in character with the
simplicity of Republican government, and looking as if wishfully to
those of European courts. His general explanations to me were that when
he arrived at New York, to enter on the executive administration of the
new government, he observed to those who were to assist him, that,
placed as he was in an office entirely new to him, unacquainted with the
forms and ceremonies of other governments, still less apprized of those
which might be properly established here, and himself perfectly
indifferent to all forms, he wished them to consider and prescribe what
they should be; and the task was assigned particularly to General Knox,
a man of parade, and to Colonel Humphreys, who had resided some time at
a foreign court. They, he said, were the authors of the present
regulations, and that others were proposed so highly strained that he
absolutely rejected them. Attentive to the difference of opinion
prevailing on this subject, when the term of his second election arrived
he called the heads of departments together, observed to them the
situation in which he had been at the commencement of the government,
the advice he had taken and the course he had observed in compliance
with it; that a proper occasion had now arrived of revising that course,
of correcting in it any particulars not approved in experience, and he
desired us to consult together, agree on any changes we should think for
the better, and that he should willingly conform to what we should
advise. We met at my office. Hamilton and myself agreed at once that
there was too much ceremony for the character of our government, and
particularly, that the parade of the installation at New York ought not
to be copied on the present occasion; that the President should desire
the Chief Justice to attend him at his chambers, that he should
administer the oath of office to him in the presence of the higher
officers of the government, and that the certificate of the fact should
be delivered to the Secretary of State to be recorded. Randolph and Knox
differed from us, the latter vehemently; they thought it not advisable
to change any of the established forms, and we authorized Randolph to
report our opinions to the President. As these opinions were divided,
and no positive advice given as to any change, no change was made. Thus
the _forms_ which I had censured in my letter to Mazzei were perfectly
understood by General Washington, and were those which he himself but
barely tolerated. He had furnished me a proper occasion for proposing
their reformation, and, my opinion not prevailing, he knew I could not
have meant any part of the censure for him.
Mr. Pickering quotes, too (page 34), the expression in the letter of
"the men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but
who had had their heads shorn by the harlot England;" or, as expressed
in their re-translation, "the men who were Solomons in council, and
Samsons in combat, but whose hair had been cut off by the whore
England." Now this expression also was perfectly understood by General
Washington. He knew that I meant it for the Cincinnati generally, and
that, from what had passed between us at the commencement of that
institution, I could not mean to include him. When the first meeting was
called for its establishment, I was a member of the Congress then
sitting at Annapolis. General Washington wrote to me, asking my opinion
on that proposition, and the course, if any, which I thought Congress
would observe respecting it. I wrote him frankly my own disapprobation
of it; that I found the members of Congress generally in the same
sentiment; that I thought they would take no express notice of it, but
that in all appointments of trust, honor, or profit, they would silently
pass by all candidates of that order, and give an uniform preference to
others. On his way to the first meeting in Philadelphia, which I think
was in the spring of 1784, he called on me at Annapolis. It was a little
after candle-light, and he sat with me till after midnight, conversing,
almost exclusively, on that subject. While he was feelingly indulgent to
the motives which might induce the officers to promote it, he concurred
with me entirely in condemning it; and when I expressed an idea that if
the hereditary quality were suppressed, the institution might perhaps be
indulged during the lives of the officers now living, and who had
actually served, "no," he said, "not a fibre of it ought to be left, to
be an eye-sore to the public, a ground of dissatisfaction, and a line of
separation between them and their country;" and he left me with a
determination to use all his influence for its entire suppression. On
his return from the meeting he called on me again, and related to me the
course the thing had taken. He said that from the beginning, he had used
every endeavor to prevail on the officers to renounce the project
altogether, urging the many considerations which would render it odious
to their fellow citizens, and disreputable and injurious to themselves;
that he had at length prevailed on most of the old officers to reject
it, although with great and warm opposition from others, and especially
the younger ones, among whom he named Colonel W. S. Smith as
particularly intemperate. But that, in this state of things, when he
thought the question safe, and the meeting drawing to a close, Major
L'Enfant arrived from France, with a bundle of eagles, for which he had
been sent there, with letters from the French officers who had served in
America, praying for admission into the order, and a solemn act of their
king permitting them to wear its ensign. This, he said, changed the face
of matters at once, produced an entire revulsion of sentiment, and
turned the torrent so strongly in an opposite direction that it could be
no longer withstood; all he could then obtain was a suppression of the
hereditary quality. He added that it was the French applications, and
respect for the approbation of the king, which saved the establishment
in its modified and temporary form. Disapproving thus of the institution
as much as I did, and conscious that I knew him to do so, he could never
suppose I meant to include him among the Samsons in the field, whose
object was to draw over us the _form_, as they made the letter say, of
the British Government, and especially its aristocratic member, an
hereditary house of lords. Add to this, that the letter saying that "two
out of the three branches of legislature were against us" was an obvious
exception of him; it being well known that the majorities in the two
branches, of Senate and Representatives, were the very instruments which
carried, in opposition to the old and real Republicans, the measures
which were the subjects of condemnation in this letter. General
Washington then, understanding perfectly what and whom I meant to
designate, in both phrases, and that they could not have any application
or view to himself, could find, in neither, any cause of offence to
himself; and therefore neither needed, nor ever asked any explanation of
them from me. Had it even been otherwise, they must know very little of
General Washington, who should believe to be within the laws of his
character what Doctor Stuart is said to have imputed to him. Be this,
however, as it may, the story is infamously false in every article of
it. My last parting with General Washington was at the inauguration of
Mr. Adams, in March, 1797, and was warmly affectionate; and I never had
any reason to believe any change on his part, as there certainly was
none on mine. But one session of Congress intervened between that and
his death, the year following, in my passage to and from which as it
happened to be not convenient to call on him, I never had another
opportunity; and as to the cessation of correspondence observed during
that short interval, no particular circumstance occurred for epistolary
communication, and both of us were too much oppressed with
letter-writing, to trouble, either the other, with a letter about
nothing.
The truth is that the Federalists, pretending to be the exclusive
friends of General Washington, have ever done what they could to sink
his character, by hanging theirs on it, and by representing as the enemy
of Republicans him who, of all men, is best entitled to the appellation
of the father of that republic which they were endeavoring to subvert,
and the Republicans to maintain. They cannot deny, because the elections
proclaimed the truth, that the great body of the nation approved the
republican measures. General Washington was himself sincerely a friend
to the republican principles of our constitution. His faith, perhaps, in
its duration, might not have been as confident as mine; but he
repeatedly declared to me that he was determined it should have a fair
chance for success; and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in
its support, against any attempt which might be made to change it from
its republican form. He made these declarations the oftener because he
knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other views, and he wished to quiet
my jealousies on this subject. For Hamilton frankly avowed that he
considered the British Constitution, with all the corruptions of its
administration, as the most perfect model of government which had ever
been devised by the wit of man; professing however, at the same time,
that the spirit of this country was so fundamentally republican, that it
would be visionary to think of introducing monarchy here, and that,
therefore, it was the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the
principles their constituents had elected.
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 were they not imputed to him, but to the counsellors
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. They would not suffer this temporary
aberration to weigh against the immeasurable merits of his life; and
although they tumbled his seducers from their places, they preserved his
memory embalmed in their hearts, with undiminished love and devotion;
and there it forever will remain embalmed, in entire oblivion of every
temporary thing which might cloud the glories of his splendid life. It
is vain, then, for Mr. Pickering and his friends to endeavor to falsify
his character, by representing him as an enemy to Republicans and
republican principles, and as exclusively the friend of those who were
so; and had he lived longer, he would have returned to his ancient and
unbiased opinions, would have replaced his confidence in those whom the
people approved and supported, and would have seen that they were only
restoring and acting on the principles of his own first administration.
I find, my dear Sir, that I have written you a very long letter, or
rather a history. The civility of having sent me a copy of Mr.
Pickering's diatribe, would scarcely justify its address to you. I do
not publish these things, because my rule of life has been never to
harass the public with feedings and provings of personal slanders; and
least of all would I descend into the arena of slander with such a
champion as Mr. Pickering. I have ever trusted to the justice and
consideration of my fellow citizens, and have no reason to repent it, or
to change my course. At this time of life too, tranquillity is the
_summum bonum_. But although I decline all newspaper controversy, yet,
when falsehoods have been advanced, within the knowledge of no one so
much as myself, I have sometimes deposited a contradiction in the hands
of a friend, which, if worth preservation, may, when I am no more, nor
these whom it might offend, throw light on history, and recall that into
the path of truth. And, if of no other value, the present communication
may amuse you with anecdotes not known to every one.
I had meant to have added some views on the amalgamation of parties, to
which your favor of the 8th has some allusion; an amalgamation of name,
but not of principle. Tories are tories still, by whatever name they may
be called. But my letter is already too unmercifully long, and I close
it here with assurances of my great esteem and respectful consideration.
TH. JEFFERSON.
[_Enclosed in the above._]
EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM TH. JEFFERSON, TO PHILIP MAZZEI,
April 24, 1796.
"The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you left us.
In place of that noble love of liberty and republican Government which
carried us triumphantly through the war, an Anglican, Monarchical and
Aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over
us the substance as they have already done the forms of the British
government. The main 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. Against us 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 capitals, speculators, and holders in
the banks and public funds,--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. It would give you a fever were
I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies; men
who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but who have
had their heads shorn by the harlot England. In short, we are likely to
preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and
perils. But we shall preserve them; and our mass of weight and wealth on
the good side is so great as to leave no danger that force will ever be
attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the Liliputian
cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep
which succeeded our labors."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Footnotes in the original text were marked at the page level, beginning
at Footnote #1 each time footnotes appeared on a page. Footnote numbers
for the whole text have been replaced with sequential footnote numbers,
from 1 to 40.
Spellings of reelect-, coordinat-, and cooperat- in this
transcription have been normalized for consistency to reëlect-,
coördinat-, and coöperat-.
Page 426: A closing qutotation, absent in the original publication, has
been supplied at the end of the following: "the facility and
little truth with which he could represent facts and occurrences,
concerning persons who were the objects of his hatred".