PRESIDENT WASHINGTON began his administration by addressing Congress
in a speech, which Congress answered; and the precedent established
by him in 1790 was followed by his successor. The custom was regarded
by the opposition as an English habit, tending to familiarize the
public with monarchical ideas, and Jefferson gave early warning that he
should address Congress in a message, which would require no answer. In
after times the difference between oral and written communications as
signs of monarchy or republicanism became less self-evident; but the
habit of writing to Congress was convenient, especially to Presidents
who disliked public speaking, and Jefferson’s practice remained the
rule. The Federalists naturally regarded the change as a reproof, and
never admitted its advantages. The Republicans also missed some of the
conveniences of the old system. John Randolph, eight years afterward,
seemed to regret that the speech had been abandoned:[51]--
“The answer to an Address, although that answer might finally contain
the most exceptionable passages, was in fact the greatest opportunity
which the opposition to the measures of the Administration had of
canvassing and sifting its measures.... This opportunity of discussion
of the answer to an Address, however exceptionable the answer might be
when it had received the last seasoning for the Presidential palate,
did afford the best opportunity to take a review of the measures of
the Administration, to canvass them fully and fairly, without there
being any question raised whether the gentleman was in order or not;
and I believe the time spent in canvassing the answer to a speech was
at least as well spent as a great deal that we have expended since we
discontinued the practice.”
President Jefferson did not assign political reasons for changing
the custom. “I have had a principal regard,” he said,[52] “to the
convenience of the legislature, to the economy of their time, to their
relief from the embarrassment of immediate answers on subjects not yet
fully before them, and to the benefits thence resulting to the public
affairs.” With this preamble, he sent his message.
Jefferson’s first Annual Message deserved study less for what it
contained than for what it omitted. If the scope of reform was to be
measured by the President’s official recommendations, party spirit
was likely to find little excuse for violence. The Message began by
announcing, in contrast with the expectations of Republicans, that
while Europe had returned to peace the United States had begun a war,
and that a hostile cruiser had been captured “after a heavy slaughter
of her men.” The Federalist wits made fun of the moral which the
President added to soften the announcement of such an event: “The
bravery exhibited by our citizens on that element will, I trust, be a
testimony to the world that it is not the want of that virtue which
makes us seek their peace, but a conscientious desire to direct the
energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not
to its destruction.” The idea seemed a favorite one with the President,
for he next congratulated Congress on the results of the new census,
which, he said, “promises a duplication in little more than twenty-two
years. We contemplate this rapid growth and the prospect it holds up to
us, not with a view to the injuries it may enable us to do to others
in some future day, but to the settlement of the extensive country
still remaining vacant within our limits, to the multiplication of men
susceptible of happiness, educated in the love of order, habituated to
self-government, and valuing its blessings above all price.”
Just and benevolent as this sentiment might be, Jefferson rarely
invented a phrase open to more perversion than when he thus announced
his party’s “conscientious desire to direct the energies of our nation
to the multiplication of the human race.” Perhaps his want of a sense
of humor prevented his noticing this slip of the tongue which the
English language had no precise word to describe; perhaps he intended
the phrase rather for a European than for an American audience; in
any case, such an introduction to his proposed reforms, in the eyes
of opponents, injured their dignity and force. As he approached the
reforms themselves, the manner in which he preferred to present them
was characteristic. As in his Inaugural Address, he showed skill in
selecting popular ground.
“There is reasonable ground of confidence,” he said, “that we may
now safely dispense with all the internal taxes, ... and that the
remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for the
support of government, to pay the interest of the public debts, and
to discharge the principals within shorter periods than the laws or
the general expectation had contemplated. War, indeed, and untoward
events may change this prospect of things, and call for expenses which
the imposts could not meet; but sound principles will not justify our
taxing the industry of our fellow-citizens to accumulate treasure for
wars to happen we know not when, and which might not perhaps happen
but for the temptations offered by that treasure.”
Assuming that “the States themselves have principal care of our
persons, our property, and our reputation, constituting the great field
of human concerns,” the Message maintained that the general government
was unnecessarily complicated and expensive, and that its work could be
better performed at a smaller cost.
“Considering the general tendency,” it said, “to multiply offices and
dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden
which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every
occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge, that
it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest
portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, government shall
itself consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard.”
No one could deny that these sentiments were likely to please a
majority of citizens, and that they announced principles of government
which, if not new, were seldom or never put into practice on a great
scale. As usual in such cases, the objections came from the two classes
who stood at the extremes of the political movement. The Federalists
denied that they had ever asked “to accumulate treasures for wars.”
They asked for cannon and muskets in the armories; for timber and
ship-stores in the navy-yards; for fortifications to defend New York,
and for readiness to resist attack. Gallatin’s economies turned on the
question whether the national debt or the risk of foreign aggression
were most dangerous to America. Freedom from debt and the taxation
which debt entailed was his object, not in order to save money, but to
prevent corruption. He was ready to risk every other danger for the
short time required. “Eight years hence,” he afterward wrote,[53] “we
shall, I trust, be able to assume a different tone; but our exertions
at present consume the seeds of our greatness, and retard to an
indefinite time the epoch of our strength.” The epoch of strength once
reached, Gallatin had no objection to tax, and tax freely, for any
good purpose, even including ships-of-the-line. “Although I have been
desirous,” he wrote some four years later,[54] “that the measure might
at least be postponed, I have had no doubt for a long time that the
United States would ultimately have a navy.” Nothing in his political
theories prevented his spending money on defensive armaments or
internal improvements or any other honest object, provided he had the
money to spend.
The Federalists disagreed with Gallatin rather on a question of fact
than of principle. They asserted that the country could not safely
disarm; Gallatin, on the other hand, thought that for a few years
military helplessness might be risked without too much danger. Time
could alone decide which opinion was correct; but in this issue the
Federalists could see no suggestion such as Jefferson made, that
“sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of our
fellow-citizens to accumulate treasures for wars to happen we know
not when.” If this was the true principle of government, and if the
hands of Congress were to be tied so fast that no provision could ever
be made for national defence except in actual presence of war, this
“sound principle” should have been announced, according to Federalist
theories, not as a detail of administration but as a constitutional
amendment.
In this opinion the true Virginia school probably concurred. Economy
for its own sake was not the chief object of that class of men, and
any reform on such narrow ground was not wholly to their taste.
Even they were well aware at the moments when they complained most
of extravagance that the United States, compared with any powerful
European government, had always been a model of economy,--and indeed
the most obvious criticism of the system was that economy had been its
only extravagance. In the year 1800, when expenses were swollen to
their highest point, in consequence of a _quasi_ war with France, the
disbursements reached about $11,500,000, of which the sum of $4,578,000
was on account of public debt. The running expenses of the government,
including the creation of an army and a navy, did not then exceed
$7,000,000, or about $1.30 a head to each inhabitant. The average
annual expenditure for the past ten years had been about $9,000,000,--a
smaller sum than Jefferson ever succeeded in spending. This example of
economy was enough to strike the imagination of any observer; and still
greater parsimony, even though it should reduce the running expenses by
one half, could do no more than strengthen the same impression, or at
most create an idea that republican government was too economical for
its own safety. This was no revolution such as the Virginians wished
to effect. They aimed at restricting power even more than at relieving
taxation.
The Message put economy in the place of principle in dealing with
patronage, while in regard to constitutional powers it ignored the
existence of a problem. In this silence, which for the first time since
1787 fell on the lips of those who had hitherto shown only jealousy
of government; in this alacrity with which Republicans grasped the
powers which had, as they affirmed, made “monocrats” of their old
opponents,--a European would have seen the cynicism of conscious
selfishness. Certain phrases in the Constitution had been shown by
experience to be full of perils, and were so well established by
precedent in their dangerous meaning as to be susceptible only of
excision. The clause which gave Congress sweeping power to make all
laws which a majority might think “necessary and proper” for carrying
the Constitution into effect, was, as settled by precedents, fatal
not only to the theory of State-rights, but to the doctrine of strict
construction on which American liberties were supposed to rest. The
war and treaty making powers, with their undefined and therefore
unlimited consequences, were well understood. These loopholes for the
admission of European sovereignty into the citadel of American liberty
were seen in 1800 as clearly as when the children and grandchildren
of the Southern statesmen broke up the Union because they feared the
consequences of centralization. Yet Jefferson called no man’s attention
to the danger, took no step toward averting it, but stretched out his
hand to seize the powers he had denounced.
Even in regard to the Judiciary, the most dangerous part of the system,
he recommended no legislation but for the apparent purpose of saving
money.
“The judiciary system of the United States,” continued the Message,
“and especially that portion of it recently erected, will of course
present itself to the contemplation of Congress; and that they may be
able to judge of the proportion which the institution bears to the
business it has to perform, I have caused to be procured from the
several States, and now lay before Congress, an exact statement of all
the causes decided since the first establishment of the Courts, and
of those which were depending when additional Courts and Judges were
brought in to their aid.”
That he should have shown no anxiety to limit the vague powers of
Legislature and Executive was less surprising, because these powers
were henceforward to remain in the hands of his own party; but the
Judiciary was in the hands of Federalists, whose constitutional
theories were centralization itself. The essence of Virginia
republicanism lay in a single maxim: THE GOVERNMENT SHALL NOT BE
THE FINAL JUDGE OF ITS OWN POWERS. The liberties of America, as
the Republican party believed, rested in this nutshell; for if
the Government, either in its legislative, executive, or judicial
departments, or in any combination of them, could define its own
powers in the last resort, then its will, and not the letter of the
Constitution, was law. To this axiom of republicanism the Federalist
Judiciary opposed what amounted to a flat negative. Chief-Justice
Marshall and his colleagues meant to interpret the Constitution as
seemed to them right, and they admitted no appeal from their decision.
The question how to deal with the Judiciary was, therefore, the only
revolutionary issue before the people to be met or abandoned; and if
abandoned then, it must be forever. No party could claim the right to
ignore its principles at will, or imagine that theories once dropped
could be resumed with equal chance of success. If the revolution of
1800 was to endure, it must control the Supreme Court. The object
might be reached by constitutional amendment, by impeachment, or by
increasing the number of judges. Every necessary power could be gained
by inserting into the United States Constitution the words of the
Constitution of Massachusetts, borrowed from English constitutional
practice, that judges might be removed by the President on address by
both Houses of the Legislature. Federalists were certain to denounce
both object and means as revolutionary and dangerous to public
repose; but such an objection could carry little weight with men who
believed themselves to have gained power for no other purpose than to
alter, as Jefferson claimed, the principles of government. Serious
statesmen could hardly expect to make a revolution that should not be
revolutionary.
Had Jefferson overlooked the danger, costly as the oversight was,
it might cause no surprise; but he perceived it clearly, and in
private denounced it with as much keenness as though he already knew
what was to be judged “necessary and proper” for the purposes of a
government which, as Virginians foresaw, would in the end interpret its
own powers. “They have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold,”
cried he in the same breath with which he talked to Congress only of
economy.[55] “There the remains of federalism are to be preserved
and fed from the Treasury; and from that battery all the works of
republicanism are to be beaten down and destroyed.” Some twenty years
afterward Jefferson awoke to see his prophecy come true, and he then
threw responsibility on the Constitution.
“The nation declared its will,” he said,[56] “by dismissing
functionaries of one principle and electing those of another in the
two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.
Over the judiciary department the Constitution had deprived them of
their control. That, therefore, has continued the reprobated system;
and although new matter has occasionally been incorporated into the
old, yet the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself the
new; and after twenty years’ confirmation of the federated system by
the voice of the nation, declared through the medium of elections,
we find the Judiciary, on every occasion, still driving us into
consolidation.”
Such was the fact; and when Jefferson spoke of “the leaven of the old
mass,” he meant Chief-Justice Marshall, who had won a slow, certain
victory over State-rights, and had thrust powers on the national
government which, if Jefferson were right, must end in corrupting and
destroying it. Whose was the fault? Was it true that the Constitution
deprived the people of their control over the Judiciary? Even if it
were so, did not Jefferson for years control with autocratic power
the strength necessary for altering the Constitution? When at last,
four years before his death, the impending certainty of defeat forced
itself on Jefferson’s mind, he made what amounted to a confession
of his oversight, and withdrew the apology which threw blame on
the Constitution: “Before the canker is become inveterate,--before
its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond
control,--remedy should be applied. Let the future appointments of
judges be for four or six years, and renewable by the President and
Senate.”[57] If this could be done, as his words implied, in 1822
under the Presidency of James Monroe, when J. Q. Adams, Calhoun, Clay,
and Andrew Jackson were each in his own way laboring to consolidate a
nation still hot with the enthusiasm of foreign war, why was it not
attempted in 1801, when a word from Jefferson would have decided the
action of his party?
If this were all, some explanation of the President’s silence might be
offered; for in 1801-1802 his majority in the Senate was small, and
only a political leader as bold as Andrew Jackson would have dared
to risk his popularity on such a venture. The judges held office
for life; the Constitution required for amendment two thirds of the
Senate and three fourths of the States; any violent shock might have
thrown Connecticut and Massachusetts into open secession; but these
objections to a revolution in constitutional law did not apply to
partisan Federalist legislation. Why did not Jefferson officially
invite Congress to confirm the action of Virginia and Kentucky by
declaring the Alien and Sedition Laws to be unconstitutional and null
as legislative precedents? In the absence of such a declaratory act,
the Republican party left on the statute book the precedent established
by those laws, which had expired only by limitation. Had the Alien and
Sedition Laws been alone in dispute, the negligence might have seemed
accidental; but the statute-book contained another Federalist law,
aimed against State-rights, which had roused alarm on that account. The
Judiciary Act of 1789, the triumph of Federalist centralization, had
conferred on the Supreme Court jurisdiction over the final judgment of
State courts in cases where the powers of the general government had
been “drawn in question” and the decision was unfavorable to them. This
concession of power to the Supreme Court,--a concession often alleged
to be more dangerous to the States than the “necessary and proper”
clause itself,--was believed to be dictated by a wish to make the State
judiciaries inferior courts of the central government, because the
powers of the general government might be “drawn in question” in many
ways and on many occasions, and thus the authority of the State courts
made contemptible. Chief-Justice Marshall achieved one of his greatest
triumphs by causing Judge Story, a republican raised to the bench in
1811 for the purpose of contesting his authority, to pronounce in 1816
the opinion of the court in the case of Martin _vs._ Hunter’s Lessee,
by which the Virginia Court of Appeals was overruled upon the question
of constitutionality raised by the State court in regard to Section
25 of the Judiciary Act. Such a result would hardly have happened
had the Republicans in 1801 revised the laws which they considered
unconstitutional; but with what propriety could Virginia in 1816 assert
the unconstitutionality of a law which she had for fifteen years
possessed the power to repeal, without making an attempt or expressing
a wish to exercise it?
Whatever was the true cause of the inaction, it was certainly
intentional. President Jefferson wished to overthrow the Federalists
and annihilate the last opposition before attempting radical reforms.
Confident that State-rights were safe in his hands, he saw no occasion
to alarm the people with legislation directed against past rather than
future dangers. His party acquiesced, but not without misgivings.
John Taylor of Caroline, most consistent of the State-rights school,
thought that reforms should have been made. John Randolph, eight years
afterward, expressed his opinion with characteristic frankness:--
“You know very well,” he said,[58] addressing Speaker Varnum, “that
there were many of us, and I was one, who thought that at the
commencement of Mr. Jefferson’s administration it would be proper for
us to pass a sort of declaratory Act on the subject of the Sedition
Law; ... but on this subject, as well as the reduction of the army
below its then standard, as on some others, I had the honor, or
dishonor as some might esteem it, to be in the minority. I had thought
that we ought to have returned the fines of all those who suffered
under the law; ... but you know that it was said that we came in
as reformers; that we should not do too much; that we should go on
little by little; that we should fire minute-guns, I think was the
expression,--which produced no other effect, that I ever found, than
the keeping up a spirit of irritation.”
Speaker Macon, Joseph Nicholson, and William B. Giles were probably
among those who held the same opinion, and were overruled by the
Northern democrats. They never quite forgave Madison, to whose
semi-Federalist influence they ascribed all Jefferson’s sins.
Distrust of Madison was natural, for neither Virginian nor New
Englander understood how Madison framed the Constitution and wrote the
“Federalist” with the same hand which drafted the Virginia Resolutions
of 1798; but Jefferson himself would have been last to admit the
correctness of such an explanation. He could point to the sentence of
his Inaugural Address which pledged him to “the preservation of the
general government in its whole constitutional vigor.” If in redeeming
the pledge he preserved vigor that his friends deemed unconstitutional,
his own habits of mind, not Madison’s semi-Federalist tendencies,
explained the error.
Another reason partly accounted for the President’s silence. In
theory the Executive received its instructions from the Legislature.
Upon no point had the Republican party, when in opposition, laid
more stress than on the necessity of reducing Executive influence.
President Washington’s personal authority, even more than the supposed
monarchical tendencies of his successor, inspired anger, if not terror,
in the minds of his opponents. Jefferson wished to avoid this error,
and to restore the true constitutional theory to its place in practice.
His recommendations were studiously restrained, and the Federalists
were so far silenced that they could only say with Chief-Justice
Marshall, “By weakening the office of President, he will increase his
personal power.” The concluding sentences of the Message expressed in a
few words the two leading ideas which Jefferson wished most to impress
on the people,--his abnegation of power and his wish for harmony:--
“Nothing shall be wanting on my part to inform, as far as in my
power, the legislative judgment, nor to carry that judgment into
faithful execution. The prudence and temperance of your discussions
will promote, within your own walls, that conciliation which so much
befriends rational conclusion, and by its example will encourage among
our constituents that progress of opinion which is tending to unite
them in object and will. That all should be satisfied with any one
order of things is not to be expected, but I indulge the pleasing
persuasion that the great body of our citizens will cordially concur
in honest and disinterested efforts, which have for their object to
preserve the General and State governments in their constitutional
form and equilibrium; to maintain peace abroad, and order and
obedience to the laws at home; to establish principles and practices
of administration favorable to the security of liberty and property,
and to reduce expenses to what is necessary for the useful purposes of
government.”