Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States

by Martin Van Buren

CHAPTER V.

Slight Notice so far in this Work bestowed upon the Course of the Democratic Party, and Reasons therefor—Four great Crises in our National Affairs, viz.: The Revolution; the Confederation; the Struggle resulting in the Adoption of the Constitution, and Hamilton's Attempt to pave the way for its Overthrow—Equal Merit during the Revolution of those who afterwards formed the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Parties—Condition of the Country under the Confederation—During that Period and in the Struggle for the Constitution the Measures and Conduct of the Federalists Wiser than those of their Opponents—Culmination of the Contest of Principle between the two great Parties during the Administration of John Adams—The Object of this Work to give a general Account of the Origin and Organization of Parties, and not a History of Partisan Conflicts arising afterwards—Party Spirit, its Evils and Benefits—Randall's "Life of Jefferson"—Leadership of Hamilton and Jefferson—Their Character and Influence—Contrasts in their Careers, Principles, and Aims—John Adams's Political Principles—State of Parties in the time of Washington's Administration as described by John Q. Adams—Character of John Adams—His Services in the Revolution—Change in his Political Opinions from his Residence in England—Fidelity of Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and others to their Original Principles—Vigor and Efficiency of the Organization of the Old Republican Party—Firm Establishment of Popular Convictions against Monarchical Institutions—"Sapping and Mining Policy" of Hamilton—Growing Attachment of Republicans to the Constitution, and corresponding Dislike of that Instrument on the part of Federalists—Issue presented by Madison in the Legislature of Virginia—His Report a Synopsis of Republican Doctrines—Triumph and general Success of the Party—Lasting Effects of Hamilton's Teachings—Erroneous Theories of the Origin of Parties—Identity of the Anti-Federal, Republican, and Democratic Parties—Apparent Agreement of all Parties upon Fundamental Questions after the Ratification of the Constitution—Subsequent Controversy arose from the Efforts of the Federalists for a Latitudinarian, and of their Opponents for a Strict Construction of that Instrument.

IT cannot have failed to strike the reader of these pages that a comparatively slight notice has been taken of that party which has for more than half a century, with rare and limited exceptions, administered the Government of our country. This is easily explained. During the first twelve years of the existence of this Government, the period during which the two great parties of the country received that "form and pressure" which they have never lost, the Federalists were in power, and of course principal actors in the management of public affairs. Expositions of their measures and of the circumstances under which they were brought forward, and criticisms upon those measures, naturally acquire greater prominence in a review of the period than the less salient manifestations of the opposition permit. The resistance made by the latter to those measures involved a succession of sacrifices and services which it is now difficult to appreciate at their full value, but which, when correctly estimated, reflect the highest honor upon those engaged in it and deserve the fullest notice.

The four great crises in our national affairs were, first, the Revolution; second, the government of the Confederation between the recognition of our Independence and the adoption of the present Constitution; third, the struggle for and the acquisition of that instrument; and fourth, Hamilton's attempt to make of the Government which had been established under it a delusion, and the Constitution a sham, to pave the way for its overthrow and for the final introduction of institutions more accordant with his opinions;—for, as I have remarked, no intelligent man could have expected that the people of America would long endure a Constitution subject to the treatment to which he had exposed it, and to such as he had still in store for it.

In the crisis of the Revolution, the conduct of all who subsequently composed the two great parties in the country—save the Tories, who were soon absorbed by one of them,—was equally meritorious. The difference between them in point of numbers was largely in favor of those who were afterwards called Anti-Federalists, and, still later, Republicans, and in point of talents and perhaps in social position on the side of the Federalists.

The condition of the country, during the second important juncture, may be not inaptly illustrated by the common figure of a strong man struggling in a morass. Nothing was stable, and nothing which promised substantial relief seemed for a season practicable. Of the prominent measures brought forward by both parties to extricate the country from its embarrassments, those proposed by the Federalists were the wisest, and, as the result proved, well adapted to the exigences of the occasion.

In the contest for the Constitution that party was also throughout more useful than its opponents. In this estimate the course taken by Hamilton is not regarded as the act of his party, except as to that portion of it which consisted in signing the Constitution and in aiding its adoption.

The issues involved in the fourth decisive crisis in our political fortunes were contested during the presidency of John Adams. The whole of that administration was a political campaign, occupied by bitter and uninterrupted struggles for predominance between the conflicting principles of two great parties. The most important, although perhaps not the most exciting, of the questions and measures in dispute had arisen during the administration of President Washington; but his presence and participation in the Government held the parties at bay. Political alienations had then taken place, and wounds had been inflicted which were never healed, and bitter fountains sprang up and struggled for an outlet, but they were in a great degree restrained by that consideration. The leading men among those who soon after organized the first Republican, now called the old Republican, party, made it a point to abstain from violent action, and to content themselves with protests against measures of which they disapproved, but which they could not defeat. Jefferson gave his opinion in the cabinet, and Madison made his unanswerable speech in the Congress against the bank, and the latter, with other Republicans, spoke strongly against particular features of the funding system, but both measures were nevertheless adopted by decisive majorities; and still, as far as practicable, harsh invective and reproaches against those majorities were withheld or delayed. The removal of the salient point of attack, by the withdrawal of Hamilton from the cabinet, served also to stay partisan outbreaks on the part of the Republicans, who were, throughout, not unmindful of the advantages they would give to their opponents by bringing matters to a crisis whilst Washington was at the head of the Government. On the other hand, Hamilton evidently was discouraged by the restrictions imposed upon him by the prudence of Washington. It is apparent that, although by far more confided in, on the score of his great talents, than any other member of the administration, he was yet not allowed the latitude which he thought necessary to success. No one can read his remarkable letter to Washington (to which I have referred in another connection) without perceiving that he was seriously discontented. He thought that there were men about the President who interfered with and opposed his counsels, and he avowed his suspicions to that effect in that letter to Washington, with the expression of a hope that the latter would one day understand those men better. There was, besides, as Jefferson admits, "no act of strong mark during the remainder of his" (Washington's) "administration that excited much complaint."

Discontents were, therefore, in a great degree, held in abeyance waiting the succession for more active resistance and redress. The arrival of that period—the retirement of Washington and the election of Adams—found the field clear for the great contest for which the materials had been gathered and the hearts of the combatants prepared.

Mr. Jefferson endeavored, as far as was proper, to prevent himself from being regarded as a competitor with Mr. Adams, when the latter was elected. He wrote to Mr. Madison, requesting him to withdraw his name if there should be an equality of votes between himself and Mr. Adams, which was not an improbable result, assigning, as a reason, that the latter was greatly his senior in years, and had always stood in advance of him in public life. But notwithstanding the friendly feelings that had existed between them down to that period, their relations soon assumed a very decided character of political opposition. Then commenced that fierce partisan struggle which has never been equaled here and seldom, if ever, in any country, either in respect to the gravity and interest of the principles involved, or to the ability and firmness with which the ground of the respective parties was sustained.

A full account of the incidents of this four years' controversy would carry this work far beyond the limits of my plan and of my time. My object has been to trace the origin and first organization of our political parties. To this full notices of the early measures out of which they sprang were indispensable. Partisan conflicts upon questions that arose after their organization was completed, are to be regarded as effects rather than as causes of their existence. The spirit which controls the action of sects and parties, in church or state, is indeed selfish and perverse, becoming more and more characterized by those qualities the longer they are kept on foot. When a new measure is proposed, or doctrine announced, on either side, the problem presenting itself for deliberation eo instanti to the minds of the opposite faction, is as to the degree of strength and credit which its introduction and success may be expected to bring to its authors, and of consequent damage to their own party,—degrees, of course, dependent upon the extent of its probable advantage to the interests of religion, in one case, or of the country, in the other,—and in such deliberation the claims of religion and country are in great danger of being postponed for the interests of parties, and the new doctrine or measure of meeting with a resistance proportioned to its probable merit. It results as a general rule that it is sufficient to induce one party to oppose any given measure to know that it has been introduced by its adversary. This is an unfavorable and humiliating view of a subject which nevertheless includes great advantages in a free State, but its truth is unhappily too obvious.

The angry contests which followed each other in rapid and uninterrupted succession during the administration of the elder Adams, partook strongly of this character. They sprung out of questions which arose after the two great parties of the country—which have been substantially kept on foot ever since—had been completely organized and had taken the field, the one to accomplish and the other to resist a great national reform which could only be constitutionally determined through the medium of a struggle for the succession. Of these I have only noticed the alien and sedition laws, and have been induced to make that discrimination partly by a conviction of their superior influence in settling the fate of parties, but principally from their relation to the report upon the question of their constitutionality prepared by Madison, under the invigorating stimulus administered by the ever active and zealous mind of Jefferson. Of this great paper I shall speak again.

For an account of those interesting partisan conflicts—which, in comparison with the men and issues of the present day, I may, without, I think, being justly reproached with overpraising the past, call a war of giants—the reader cannot, in my judgment, be referred to a source which is in the main more reliable than Randall's "Life of Jefferson." The descendants of that great and good man have contributed to the preparation of that work, apparently without reserve, a body of information of intense interest with which they have been intrusted, and which has never before been made public. With many of the members of this family it has been my good fortune to become intimately acquainted; it would be difficult to find people anywhere more unobtrusive, notwithstanding their claims upon the respect and consideration of the community, whilst in individual temperament and character they are richly endowed with those amiable, truthful, disinterested, and upright traits for which their progenitor was so greatly distinguished in the estimation of those who knew him well, and who were disposed to do him justice. Mr. Randall has faithfully embodied the valuable materials furnished by them in his work, to the execution of which he has brought, besides talent and industry, a thoroughly democratic spirit. He has entitled himself to credit for permitting Mr. Jefferson and his contemporaries, as well opponents as coadjutors, to speak for themselves in respect to public questions generally. If it should be thought in any quarter that his own commentaries betray too much warmth; and are in some instances of too partisan a character for the right tone of history, it should be remembered that they fall in those respects far short of the writers of the Federal school who have treated of Jefferson; his volumes may with truth be regarded as the first systematic defense of that statesman's entire political career, and it would not be an easy matter for any one, especially for one of Randall's years, after wading through the volumes of political and personal detraction which have been written against him, to read for the first time vindications authentic, simple, and conclusive without being sometimes betrayed into expressions which would not have been indulged at moments of less excitement.

Occasional mistakes in a work of such extent, even with the best intentions, and with what may well be regarded as the most reliable sources of information, are still unavoidable. I have elsewhere corrected a very important one in respect to Mr. Madison's vote on Giles's resolution censuring the conduct of Hamilton. I dissent also from the inferences drawn in a few instances from facts about which there is no mistake,—such as Washington's intentions respecting the rank of the major-generals for the provisional army, and the blame imputed to Jefferson and Madison,—to the latter for not accepting the office of Secretary of State when the former resigned, and to Jefferson for declining Washington's invitation to return to it; but I have not seen any statement in the whole work which I do not believe was intended to be correct, or any construction of ascertained results which does not appear to have been made in good faith.

It is conceded on all sides that Hamilton and Jefferson, during the presidency of John Adams, were the leaders of the two great parties—the substantial amalgamation of the old Anti-Federal and Republican parties leaving but two. Hamilton's position was unprecedented. Although the President and himself were, almost from the commencement of the campaign, upon very bad terms—feeling strong personal dislike towards each other, and holding no really friendly intercourse—he notwithstanding directed the course of the administration, and controlled the entire action of the Government to a greater extent than he had done at any time during the presidency of Washington. These extraordinary results he accomplished by means of the complete ascendancy, to which I have heretofore alluded, which he possessed over the three principal members of Mr. Adams's cabinet,—Pickering, Wolcott and McHenry,—and by the peculiar influence that he was capable of exerting over the Federal members of Congress. I have referred to letters, state papers, briefs, and instructions for the action of those parties establishing the truth of this position. With very limited exceptions the control of Mr. Adams over his own administration was little more than nominal. He served the purpose, and that was his chief burden, of bearing the responsibility of unpopular measures—a fortunate circumstance for the Republicans, as he excelled most men in his capacity for adding to the odium of an obnoxious measure by the manner of executing it.

I doubt whether, in the history of the world, another occasion can be found when any two men were as successful as were Jefferson and Hamilton in impressing such great numbers of intelligent people with their own opinions and views upon the subjects of government and its proper administration.

Acts and avowed opinions speak for themselves, but to determine the motives of parties in the adoption of their measures no safer tests perhaps can be employed than the characters and dispositions of those by whom the parties themselves were founded and, in their early stages, guided. Hamilton's character, qualifications, and views have already occupied a large space in these pages. If they have been spoken of in any other than a faithful and liberal spirit, I have certainly failed to do justice to my own feelings. Of Thomas Jefferson, the founder as well as leader of the old Republican, now Democratic, party, comparatively little has been said. Opposed as they were in their opinions upon almost every public question that arose after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there were yet occasional coincidences of sentiment which served to illustrate the elevated character of their minds, as there were also many features of their respective careers which, while broadly contrasted, furnished the strongest evidence of the sincerity and integrity of both. Not the least striking among the latter may be found in the circumstances and conditions of life in which they respectively started in the "race set before them," as connected with the ideas and opinions at which they arrived, so variant from those commonly impressed upon men by similar accidents.

Descended from a highly honored stock, it was yet Hamilton's lot to be born poor and to be left solely dependent upon his own exertions for his success in life. After a service of three years as clerk in a counting-house he was sent to this country for the completion of his education, at the expense of relatives on his mother's side. Here he made himself acquainted with the character of our dispute with the mother country, and took sides with the colonists in a manner and under circumstances highly creditable to him, and after five years' military service, in which he acquired great reputation in comparatively subordinate stations, he retired to private life, adopting the legal profession as his only resource for the support of his family.

That a man trained in such a school, and who at the same time possessed capacities to influence the public mind, when his efforts were properly directed, far superior to any of his contemporaries, would, in the condition in which he was placed, and under a government like our own, take his political position on the popular side, was an anticipation naturally entertained by the zealous friends of republican government. But we have seen, on the contrary, that there was not, throughout the wide extent of the Republic, a single man of respectable standing, more deeply (and, let me add, more sincerely) distrustful of the judgment and dispositions of the great body of the people, or more anxious to impose restraints upon the popular will, and, for the accomplishment of that object, to add to the intrinsic influence of associated wealth the facilities for its exercise afforded by the possession of political power. His case must not, however, be confounded with that of the "candied tongues" found in every community which

"Lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
That thrift may follow fawning."

Hamilton's mind was incapable of that condescension, or, as Mr. Jefferson observed to me of him in connection with other matters, "he was far above that." He participated largely as a professional man in the favor and patronage of the commercial and manufacturing classes, but instead of his own political course being influenced by the receipt of such favors, he seldom failed to govern theirs. He was not a man to mortgage his great abilities for personal benefits of any description, and so well was his character in that respect understood that no one would have ventured to tender him any inducement which might in the estimation of the most prejudiced expose his personal independence to the slightest question or suspicion. The fact, therefore, that he pursued a course so different from what might have been naturally expected of him by people generally—a course so much less eligible for the gratification of ambitious views—affords high evidence of the integrity of his motives. It proved that he acted under the influence of opinions which had been honestly formed, and in the correctness of which he confided to the end; opinions which he doubtless hoped would in the sequel prove acceptable to the majority, but to which he felt it his duty to adhere, whatever might be the consequences to himself of his perseverance.

Mr. Jefferson, on the other hand, succeeded at the age of fourteen, in addition to other rights of primogeniture, to an inheritance which, with competent management, was sufficient to satisfy all his wants, and to a social position, when he became a man, which required no pecuniary aids to make his condition in every respect all that was desirable, and one that could scarcely be improved by any change in the government of his country. To an unusual extent devoid of the gift of oratory, personal ambition was less likely to tempt him into the paths of politics. Cherishing always a love of letters, science and the arts, blessed with a genial temper, and in every respect well qualified to adorn and to enjoy the social circle, he seemed destined for a life of elegant ease. But, happily for the cause of human rights throughout the world, and for the welfare especially of his own country, he was impressed by his Maker with an ardent love of liberty, and a zealous devotion to the generous and equalizing principles of republican government, which impelled him into the political field, and placed him from the beginning in unreserved hostility to hereditary political power in any form, to all institutions in the State which secure to particular classes or individuals a preference over others of equal merit, and to all power in government, or in individuals or associations, civil or ecclesiastical, which can be exerted to control the opinions or to coerce the consciences of men.

Moved by such impulses, and having "sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," he entered, at an early age, upon his public career, destined to be long and eventful, and sustained throughout the character given of him on his first appearance in Congress in 1775, by John Adams,—"prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive"—"not even Samuel Adams was more so." From that time until the day of his death he gave his support, never for a moment diminished in zeal or sincerity, and varied only in its efficiency according to the positions he occupied and the influence they afforded for the purpose, to the great principle of "the equality of political rights" which Hamilton well described as "the foundation of pure Republicanism."

At the age of twenty-two—a period in Hamilton's life when his already teeming mind was meditating the establishment of institutions, and the adoption of measures to strengthen the Government, and to enable it to exercise what he deemed a salutary and necessary restraint upon the popular will, institutions and measures in the working of which, from their nature, none but moneyed men could be expected to participate—Jefferson was as actively and constantly employed in the Virginia House of Delegates, in concert with the earliest Revolutionary patriots of that State, in preparing her, as well as the hearts of the people, for the great movement then already the subject of confident anticipation with minds like theirs. There he remained until 1775, when he was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress. Of his agency, whilst a member of that body, in preparing the Declaration of Independence, and in promoting its adoption, it is unnecessary here to speak. As soon as that noble work had been accomplished, he resigned his seat, accepted a reëlection to the State Legislature as the position in which, though less exalted, he could render more useful services to the cause, and the measures to which his exertions were there directed were in harmony with the spirit of the Revolution, and designed, as avowed by himself, "to eradicate every fibre of ancient or future aristocracy, and to lay a foundation for a government truly republican." The results of the joint labors of himself and his patriotic associates were:

1st. An act to prevent the further importation of slaves, a practice which he had denounced in the Declaration of Independence as a "piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers;"

2d. An act to abolish entailments;

3d. An act to abolish primogenitureship—a right which had vested in himself;

4th. An act for religious freedom; and

5th. A bill for general education.

These were not only appropriate but indispensable steps to lay a sure foundation for republican government, State as well as National. Most, if not all of the States, followed her lead, but to Virginia belongs the high merit of having been in this respect the first in the field, and to Jefferson a large share of that merit.

Such were the men who were by common consent placed at the respective heads of the two great parties in that national struggle which resulted in what has ever since been known as "the Civil Revolution of Eighteen Hundred," a name given to it by the victors on the assumption that, although the weapons were different, the principles which were involved in it and the spirit which achieved the triumph were akin to those which distinguished the Revolution by the sword. The knowledge that Hamilton preferred monarchical institutions to every other form, that John Adams, who was at the head of the Government, sympathized very cordially with that sentiment, and the belief that most of the leaders of the Federal party partook largely of the same feeling, and were only prevented from avowing the fact by their perception of its unpopularity, caused a wide-spread and sincere alarm on the side of the Republican party for the safety of republican government in the United States. This apprehension imparted a graver character to the contest than any other considerations could have produced, and called into vigorous action much of the spirit by which the minds of the masses had been influenced in the Revolutionary War. It served to weld the members of the old Anti-Federal party and the Republicans—between whom a concert of action had previously arisen—into a thorough union, which became permanent, because it was founded on a principle in which they heartily concurred, and which was of sufficient magnitude to absorb minor differences in their political views.

That Hamilton's settled opinion and preference were such as I have described is a point which has been, it is hoped, already too well established to admit, at this day, of an honest difference of opinion. He avowed them on the floor of the Convention in the presence of the assembled representatives, and this is equally clear, whether the sum of that declaration is tested by the copy of the speech which he himself delivered to Mr. Madison as a permanent record of his opinions, or by the notes for that speech now published by his son. He announced them to his political rival, Mr. Jefferson, in the presence of Mr. John Adams, and reaffirmed them to the former in a conversation obviously sought for the purpose of giving the form he desired to expressions of a less guarded character, and which were, under that impression, immediately reduced to writing by Mr. Jefferson, who, for the truth of his record, "attests the God that made him." He so thoroughly impressed his political coadjutor and most trusted friend—him to whom it was appointed to pronounce his eulogy at his funeral—Gouverneur Morris, with a sense of his devotion to monarchical institutions, that within six months after his death, Morris, writing to his friend Ogden, speaks of that devotion as "hobby" which Hamilton "bestrode to the great annoyance of his friends, and not without injury to himself;" also to Robert Walsh, the well-known editor of a leading Federal journal, in answer to inquiries on the subject, that "Hamilton hated republican government because he confounded it with democratical government, and he detested the latter because he believed it must end in despotism, and be in the mean time destructive to morality;" and that "he never failed on every occasion to advocate the excellence of, and his attachment to, monarchical government." It was in perfect keeping with the character of Hamilton that never, throughout his life, though constantly charged with entertaining such opinions, did he deny the imputation; he who denies it now must assume that Hamilton either did not know his own mind upon the subject, or that he had some motive for misrepresenting it, or that Mr. Jefferson deliberately falsified his repeated declarations, and that Gouverneur Morris was capable of misrepresenting his friend upon a point of so much importance when that friend had descended to his grave.

To what lengths Hamilton would have gone to subvert the existing government, and to substitute monarchical institutions, or under what circumstances he would have deemed an attempt to do so justifiable, are questions open to investigation and comment, but to discuss the fact of his constant preference for such institutions, and desire to see them established here, would be to trifle with the subject.

Mr. Adams, who was President, and in whose name the battle was fought, fell but little if any thing short of General Hamilton in his partiality for the English system. To purge the British Constitution of its corruptions, and to give to its popular branch equality of representation, were alone necessary, he thought, to make it "the most perfect Constitution ever devised by the wit of man." The alterations or amendments he suggested, sound and creditable to himself as they were, were no more than qualifications of his general preference for the English model. If Hamilton's admiration of that model was less qualified than that of Adams, it must at the same time be admitted that the former was freest from the fault of seeking to degrade and discredit republican institutions by his writings. Without undertaking to describe the specific design of Mr. Adams's "Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," or of his "Discourse on Davila,"—a task, for obvious reasons, very difficult,—it may, I think, be safely assumed that such was their manifest tendency. Hamilton at least thought so at a time when the reciprocal prejudices which afterwards separated them so widely had not yet acquired a strong hold upon the feelings of either. In his interview with Mr. Jefferson on the 13th of August, 1791, before referred to, when the conversation was turned to the writings of Mr. Adams, Hamilton condemned them, and "most particularly Davila, as having a tendency to weaken the present Government;" and, after other remarks in relation to the existing Government and its chances of success, he added,—"Whoever by his writings disturbs the present order of things is really blamable, however pure his intentions might be, and he was sure Mr. Adams's were pure."

The division by Mr. Adams of governments designated as republics, into democratic republics, aristocratic republics and monarchical, or regal republics,—embracing a minute description of each, in which the Government of the "United Provinces of the Low Countries," whose powers are held by the persons intrusted with them either by hereditary title or by the selection of associates, after the manlier of close corporations, is called a "democratic Republic," and that of England a "monarchical, or regal Republic,"—was naturally displeasing to the sense and feeling of those who regarded aristocratical or monarchical or regal features as absolutely incompatible with the true idea of republican government. The voluminous and doubtless violent attacks that were made upon his writings were scarcely necessary to satisfy those who had freely undergone the sufferings and sacrifices of a long and bloody war to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of republican institutions, according to their acceptation of them, that the writings of Mr. Adams were designed, as was charged, to cause the term "Republican Government" to mean "any thing or nothing."

The notices taken of the general subject and of these writings in particular, by John Adams himself, by his son, John Quincy Adams, and by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, go far to show that if not fairly liable to this construction, they were too much open to it to be persisted in. In a note attached by the author, in 1812, to the "Discourse on Davila," as published in his "Life and Works," he says: "The work, however, powerfully operated upon his (J. A.'s) popularity. It was urged as full proof that he was an advocate for monarchy, and laboring to introduce a hereditary President in the United States." His grandson, Charles F. Adams, introducing the "Discourse" in his "Life and Works of John Adams," says: "They furnished to the partisans of the day so much material for immediate political use in the contest then beginning (1790), that the author thought it best to desist, and they were left incomplete."

John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Address,—the occasion and character of which have been heretofore noticed,—describes the state of parties at the accession of General Washington to the Presidency in the following terms: "On the other hand no small number of the Federalists, sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure of the Articles of Confederation to fulfill the promise of the Revolution; provoked at once and discouraged by the violence and rancor of the opposition against their strenuous and toilsome endeavors to raise their country from her state of prostration; chafed and goaded by the misrepresentations of their motives, and the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to them in turn deliberate and settled purposes to dissolve the Union and resort to anarchy for the repair of ruined fortunes,—distrusted ever the efficacy of the Constitution itself, and with a weakened confidence in the virtue of the people were inclined to the opinion that the only practicable substitute for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by the Convention. There were among them numerous warm admirers of the British Constitution, disposed to confide rather to the inherent strength of the Government than to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence for the preservation of the rights of property and perhaps of persons."

This is language which it is easy to understand, and which covers very fairly the subject of our immediate attention. Few men enjoyed better opportunities to possess himself of correct views in regard to the opinions of his own political party than John Quincy Adams. He was by nature truthful, or if at times blinded by prejudice, never, I firmly believe, induced to swerve by sinister considerations. Accustomed from early life to indulgence in the strong expressions (both in manner and form) common to his race, he was apt to exaggerate under great excitement, but was not capable of designedly falsifying facts. In the case before us the greatest reliance may be placed upon his statements in regard to the opinions and views of a class of men of whom he thought well. The Federal party entered upon the first administration under the new Constitution, of which the election had placed it in full possession, with a weakened confidence, Mr. Adams says, in the virtue of the people,—distrustful even of the efficacy of the Constitution itself, and inclined to the opinion that the only practical substitute for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by the Convention, and a portion of them (how large it was difficult for manifest reasons to determine, but Mr. Adams describes it as "numerous,") warmly admiring the British Constitution, and disposed to confide to the inherent strength of such a government rather than to one founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In what class or division it was the intention of Mr. Adams to place his venerable father does not appear, nor is it very clear to which he should be assigned. That he considered his opinions, which had been more impugned in all respects than those of any, save perhaps of Hamilton, as not placing him in either, is not at all probable.

John Adams's "Defense" and "Discourse" were written at different periods remote from each other, and when he himself occupied very different situations; the former before the formation of the Federal Constitution, when he represented his country as Minister to England, and the latter, which was universally regarded as the most Anti-Republican of the two, after he had been elected Vice-President. That his views were in some degree changed by time and circumstances is not improbable. Mr. Jefferson thought that he owed his support for the Vice-Presidency to the Anti-Republican tendencies of the first work, and that his election to that office and the federal sentiment that he found prevalent on his return from England, and down to the commencement of the new government, induced him to write the "Discourse," and to give to it a higher tone in the same direction. The diffusive and (if that expression is not too strong when speaking of writings of so much learning and ability) the incoherent manner in which these works were constructed, particularly the earlier one, makes it unsafe to venture to specify the precise principles they were designed to sustain. His grandson was so sensible of the deficiencies of the "Defense" in these respects that he reconstructed and improved it in his publication, but without, as he says, changing the sense, and I have no doubt that he has carried out the latter idea in good faith.

That few if any American citizens went beyond John Adams in his admiration of the British Constitution is undeniably true. In the third chapter of the "Defense,"—(see Vol. IV. p. 358, of his "Life and Works,") he pronounces an eulogium on that Constitution which goes far beyond that reported by Mr. Jefferson, (in his account of the conversation between Adams and Hamilton in April, 1791,) calling it "the most stupendous fabric of human invention," adding, that "not the formation of languages, not the whole art of navigation and ship-building, does more honor to the human understanding than this system of government." But on the very next page he commends the United States for not having followed the English model, so far as to make "their first magistrates or their senators hereditary"—differing substantially in that regard from the opinion reported by Mr. Jefferson, and showing how unsafe if not futile would be the attempt to define exactly the principles which he favored.

It may, notwithstanding, be safely assumed, first, that he was foremost among the warm admirers of the British Constitution spoken of by his son, and secondly, that he deemed our Constitution defective in omitting to provide for some depository of political power in the government, variant in principle from its general provisions, one which should be either not at all or only very remotely subject to popular control, and that he stood almost at the head of those whose confidence in the virtue of the people had been greatly weakened by occurrences following the Revolution.

The latter assumption would seem very fully warranted by the following citations from his "Defense:"[30]

"The proposition, that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties, is not true; they are the worst conceivable; they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will as a political body."

"If it is meant by our author a representative assembly, they are not still the best keepers of the liberties of the people; at least the majority would invade the liberty of the minority sooner and oftener than an absolute monarchy."

"A great writer has said that a people will never oppress themselves, or invade their own rights. This compliment, if applied to any nation or people in being or memory, is more than has been merited."

"Aristides, Fabricius, and Cincinnatus, are always quoted, as if such characters were always to be found in sufficient numbers to protect liberty; and a cry and show of liberty is set up by the profligate and abandoned, such as would sell their fathers, their country, and their God for profit, place, and power. Hypocrisy, simulation, and finesse are not more practiced in the courts of princes than in popular elections, nor more encouraged by kings than people."

"The real merit of public men is rarely known and impartially considered. When men arise who to real services add political empiricism, conform to the errors of the people, comply with their prejudices, gain their hearts and excite their enthusiasm, then gratitude is a contagion—it is a whirlwind."

The same volume (of Randall's Work) contains copious extracts from the letters of Fisher Ames and a number of other leading Federalists, derived from Hamilton's recently published papers and other sources. They breathe in general the same spirit, hankering after pre-revolutionary institutions and systems, though less boldly expressed than was done by Hamilton and Adams, and the same distrust of the sufficiency of the Constitution and above all of the capacities and dispositions of the people, the latter exhibited in assaults upon democracy and the democratic spirit of the country.

John Adams was in every sense a remarkable man. Nature seems to have employed in his construction intellectual materials sufficient to have furnished many minds respectably. It would not be easy to name men, either of his day or of any period, whose characters present a deeper or a stronger soil, one which during his long and somewhat boisterous public life was thoroughly probed by his enemies without disclosing any variation in its depths from the qualities and indications of its surface. Still more deeply was it turned up and exposed to the light by himself with the same result. His writings, which have been more extensive and more various than those of any of his contemporaries, have been given to the world apparently without reserve. These, with his diaries and autobiography, have turned his character inside out and shown us, without disguise of any sort, the kind of man he was: and the representation is invariably that of the same "always honest man" that he was three quarters of a century ago when that high praise was accorded to him by his not too partial friend, Benjamin Franklin, in a communication not designed to be over civil.

Whatever diversities may have arisen in the opinions of men in relation to the merits or demerits of his after conduct, all agree in conceding to him credit for patriotic and useful services in the times which have been happily described as those which tried men's souls. Mr. Jefferson, but two years before the death of both of them, on referring to that period, and to Mr. Adams's great services, in my presence, was warmed by the subject, and spoke of him as having been the mainmast of the ship—the orator of the Revolution, &c. It is in all probability no exaggeration of his merits to assume that there was no man in the United States, (perhaps, but not without doubt, excepting Samuel Adams,) who, before he was sent abroad in their service, did more than himself in a civil capacity to promote the cause of the Revolution. This is a high distinction—one which entitles his memory to the perpetual reverence of his countrymen. No subsequent errors of opinion, nothing short of personal dishonor and degradation, of which he was incapable, could extinguish a claim to the enduring gratitude and respect of a nation founded on such services.

He left our shores upon his foreign mission a noble specimen of a republican statesman—his heart and mind filled to overflowing with right principles, and capable of vindicating them whenever and wherever they might stand in need of support or defense. He performed his public duties with fidelity and honor, but in respect to his political opinions he returned an altered man. His "Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," written and published in England whilst representing his country there, notwithstanding an imposing title, though agreeable to some excited painful emotions in the breasts of most of his Revolutionary associates. The dissatisfaction of the latter was not a little increased by the circumstance that sentiments and opinions, so disparaging to a form of government which had been the unceasing object of their desire, should have been ostentatiously promulgated in a country and in the presence of a government from which the right to establish it had been wrested by arms, and on the part of which the most unfriendly feelings in respect to our advancement were still entertained. It was, nevertheless, true that no circumstance contributed more toward his selection by the Federal party as their candidate for the office of Vice-President than these very avowals. His own sense of their efficacy in that respect is clearly to be inferred from the fact that he devoted the first moments of his time, whilst occupying that station, to the prosecution of the same general object, with less disguise and increased boldness, through his "Discourses on Davila."

Jefferson and Samuel Adams and others of their stamp, who had embarked in the Revolution with a spirit that could neither be appalled by danger whilst the battle raged, nor seduced by considerations of any description after it had been fought, were not slow in perceiving that Mr. Adams had not only deserted from the cause of free government, but that he regarded his first success under the new system and aspired to the still higher honor in the gift of his countrymen as fruits of his desertion. Whilst his early and best friends felt that the fabric, the erection of which had cost them so much labor and so many sacrifices, had lost one of its strongest pillars by his falling off, they were neither dismayed nor did they despair of its safety. They met his second attempt to bring free governments into disrepute with an energy that drove him, as he himself admits, stubborn and inflexible in his purposes as he always had been, to discontinue, at least in that form, assaults upon a political faith, once the object of their common devotion. This desertion on the part of one in whom they had confided so fully, and upon whose coöperation, in securing to them the full enjoyment of the political rights for the acquisition of which they had endured so many perils, they had largely depended, sank deeply into the hearts and minds of the people. The spirit of discontent was naturally much increased by the discovery that Hamilton, who had done himself so much honor, and who had raised such favorable anticipations by the chivalrous spirit and gallantry with which he had embraced and sustained the national cause was, after all, irreconcilably hostile to that system of republican government which they so highly prized, and upon the ultimate enjoyment of which they had so long meditated; that his opposition was not only open and unreserved, but that he assigned as a reason for it their incapacity and unfitness for the support and enjoyment of free institutions.

A sense of danger to the cause of republicanism in the United States was widely diffused through the public mind. There were indignities to be resented and wrongs to be redressed, besides new securities to be devised for the safety of long-cherished principles. These were considerations quite sufficient to rouse the lion of the Revolution from his lair to defend its choicest fruit from further profanation. Those classes, among the surviving patriots of that eventful day, of whom I have spoken as pervaded by a deeper hatred of kingly government than others among their Revolutionary associates, sprang to the rescue with alacrity and zeal. The descendants of the devoted spirits who first settled the ancient colony of Virginia were not unmindful of their hereditary obligations to resist the exercise of lawless power. Neither could the appeal fall unheeded on the ears of the representatives of the persecuted Huguenots, who had suffered so cruelly from the exercise of powers now sought to be revived, or of the Netherlanders of the Middle States, or on those sons of the Puritans of the East whose zeal in behalf of liberty had not been tempted to spend itself on trade and manufactures by the seductive influence of Hamilton's policy, and by the facilities they possessed for those pursuits.

Drawing its power from such sources, and sustained by a great preponderance of the landed interest in every part of the country, the old Republican party attained a degree of vigor and efficiency superior to that of any partisan organization which had before or has since appeared on the political stage. Mr. John Quincy Adams described it truly when he said that it had acquired a head which would have enabled it, if so disposed, "to have overthrown Washington's administration as it did that of his successor acting upon its principles." Jefferson's declaration to Mazzei that "we have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have attempted to bind us during the first slumbers that succeed our labors," was borne out by the result.

Although the audacious passion for monarchical government, which the leading Federalists had ventured to revive so soon after the Revolution, was the most exciting of the causes which inflamed the hearts and braced the nerves of the Republicans for the conflict,[31] that was not the first issue to be tried. The nature of the government to be substituted was a question that would not, in the natural order of things, arise until the fate of the existing Constitution had been settled; but as their blood was up and their hands at work, the Republicans resolved, if possible, to strangle the conspiracy against the new-born liberties of the country in both its branches by the same effort. The severity and success of the blows they directed against the restoration of the power and influence of the Crown, in any form, is strikingly illustrated by a comparison of the state in which that question was found and that in which it was left by the civil revolution of 1800. Whilst at the former period the superiority of kingly over republican government was the prevailing and absorbing sentiment among what were called the higher classes, as graphically described by Mr. Jefferson, and substantially corroborated by Gouverneur Morris's letter to Rufus King, the notion that the former would be ever practicable in this country was so thoroughly annihilated by that great struggle as never again to have been whispered in our politics. There is no exaggeration in the affirmation that there has been no day within the last forty years when a proposition for the reëstablishment of monarchy in the United States, however seriously made, could have excited any other emotion than ridicule or contempt, or would not have been deemed more appropriately punished by the administration of the straight-jacket than by a trial for treason. But there has been far greater difficulty in completing the work of resistance to Hamilton's efforts to overthrow the Constitution by subverting it, through the agency of his sapping and mining policy, which was the direct issue in the election of 1800. A constitution had been established, in the construction and ratification of which the Federal party had performed a greater and more effectual part than the party opposed to it. Its general provisions were fully adequate to the support of a republican government. By a successful incorporation of the representative system with the republican form, pure and simple, its framers had happily qualified and adapted the instrument to our extensive territory, and a provision for amendments furnished a remedy against existing defects. Of the latter the omission to secure specifically and adequately the individual natural rights of men against the exercise of arbitrary power was the most important—a defect in respect to which a large majority of the Anti-Federalists were, for reasons frequently referred to, most sensitive. The Constitution was ratified by several of the States, and amongst them by Virginia and New York, with accompanying resolutions, some of them passed by the State conventions with perfect unanimity, expressing opinions that it deserved revision and required amendments. Without such resolutions the ratification could not, we are forced to believe, have been effected. We have seen with what reluctance the first Congress, Federal by a large majority, consented to make any constitutional amendments, and that nothing short of Mr. Madison's wonderful perseverance could, in all probability, have effected their adoption; but they were obtained, proved satisfactory to the Anti-Federalists, and made them fast friends of the new Constitution.

From that moment that instrument ceased to be an object of solicitude with the leaders of the Federal party, hardly retaining favor with any of them. This result is by no means an unusual one in the history of parties whose feelings have become to any great extent embittered. The instances are rare indeed in which any public measure or act is at the same time entirely acceptable to all sides. The "Independent Treasury" is the only clear case of the kind among us that has fallen under my observation. The letters of the leading Federalists, which have now for the first time seen the light, prove their subsequent indifference, and, in many instances, active hostility to the Constitution. Not a few who imbibed Hamilton's feelings and shared in his views upon this point had been members of the Convention, and among those to whom I have awarded so large a share of credit for their conduct in making the Constitution what it is. This was justly their due. It is not to be doubted that several of them, as I have before said, participated largely in Hamilton's objections, and would have preferred a very different instrument; but they knew that none less favorable to the supposed interests of the State governments, or less liberal in other respects, would stand the slightest chance of ratification, more especially when the circumstance of disregard to the limits and restrictions of the authority by which they had been convened was taken into consideration. They saw nothing but injury, vast and complicated, to the country from their failure, and they evinced their patriotism in yielding to this wise foresight at the sacrifice of their individual preferences. Although many of them, doubtless, did not fully share Hamilton's absorbing preference for monarchy, they very generally went to the extent pointed out by John Quincy Adams in his Jubilee Address—that was for a government of more energy than was provided for by the Constitution presented by the Convention. This they had a right to desire and to work for through amendments in the way appointed by the Constitution, but in this way they knew they could not obtain what they wanted, and they therefore yielded their ready aid to the measures he proposed by which the Constitution was to be made to mean any thing, substantially, which those who were intrusted with its execution might believe would promote the general welfare. Hamilton's course in this regard seemed to the uninitiated extremely reckless, as he appeared desirous to select objects in respect to which the excess of authority under the Constitution which he exerted was most obvious, and the subjects themselves were those in respect to which the sensibilities of his opponents were the keenest. In the whole range of measures, which, if constitutional, might appropriately proceed from his department, he could not have found a single one as to which the intention of the framers of the Constitution, adverse to the power he exercised, was better understood than a United States Bank. Mr. Jefferson brought the facts which transpired in the Convention proving such intention to his notice, and to that of the President, and they were not controverted by either.

So in regard to the Sedition Law. One of the ten amendments was especially designed to prohibit such legislation, and there were no subjects to which the Anti-Federalists and Republicans were more alive than to the liberty of speech and of the press. The same thing may be said, in respect to public sensibilities, of the Alien Act. That Act conferred a power on the President, which, though one of the prerogatives of the Crown, no prime minister dare exercise at this day in the sense in which the President was authorized to exercise it.

Yet it is now known that of these last measures the first was passed upon Hamilton's suggestion, and Mr. Charles F. Adams informs us that neither was ever made the subject of executive consultation.

But I can well conceive that these considerations, which might deter other men, were but so many recommendations with Hamilton for the course he pursued. From first to last he thought the Constitution inadequate to the purposes of what he regarded as good government, and that the sooner it was gotten rid of the better for the country. There were moments when he allowed himself to hope that he might make it answer the purpose if he were allowed to go on with it as he began. But these were only momentary impressions that soon gave way to the settled convictions of his mind, his avowals of which were uniformly the same. He declared to Jefferson in 1792, "that the Constitution was a shilly-shally thing of mere milk and water, and was only good as a step to something better,"—a declaration which the latter communicated in self-defense to Washington; and in 1802 he describes it to his friend Morris, as we have seen, as "a frail and worthless fabric," reminding him at the same time of his knowledge that such had been his (Hamilton's) opinion "from the very beginning." It was, therefore, natural that a man of his intelligence and resolution, looking with entire confidence to its failure, should think it expedient to select the most palpable as well as the most flagrant violations of the Constitution, while it was yet in its infancy and feeblest condition, and thus to prepare the public mind for the degradation he had in store for it, and to insure its speedy overthrow.

These severe measures were rendered doubly odious by the manner in which the Sedition Law was executed, and by the steps adopted to suppress outbreaks of popular discontent, but which only swelled comparative rivulets into resistless torrents and rendered the Republican cause invaluable service by giving occasion to Madison's great Report on the Constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The judgment of the country has ever been that a more able state paper never issued from the pen of any man. It covered the entire controversy between the two parties, traced its origin to the different views they entertained of the construction and obligatory character of the Constitution, and placed the republican creed in those respects upon grounds absolutely impregnable. Hamilton was a laborious writer, but only so because his writings were so voluminous; to write was with him a labor of love, and there was no man of his day who devoted more time to political disquisitions. There was scarcely any other great public question that occupied the public mind during that period on which a publication, offensive or defensive, is not to be found in his Works. Yet if he ever attempted a reply to that Report, which attracted general attention and became the flag under which the Republicans fought, I have never seen or heard of it. I may safely assume that he never did make such attempt.

The issue was fairly presented by Mr. Madison, through the Virginia Legislature, as depending upon the answers to the following questions:—

1. What are the true principles that should be applied to the construction of the Constitution?

2. Are those who are elected by the people bound to execute it according to the intention of its framers and the understanding of those who ratified it?

3. Is it in that sense sacredly obligatory upon all who are subject to its authority?

The charge presented against the Federal party and its representatives was that they had trampled upon the sanctity of the Constitution by the application to its construction of principles known to be unsound, by setting at defiance the intentions of those who made it and for whom it was made, and by prostituting it, and claiming the right to prostitute it, to the promotion of their particular views of the public interests, regardless of such intentions, however well understood.

This Report stands as a perpetual record of that issue. The Republicans regarded its decision as involving the existence of republican government, inasmuch as no such government could be sustained for a moment longer than the Constitution was looked to as a sacred and inviolable line of duty for both rulers and ruled. They triumphed in the great contest, and they expelled from power the men who refused to recognize that principle in the administration of the government, and for that reason they placed in their stead those who would recognize it.

Madison's Report presented a faithful synopsis of the principles of the old Republicans upon fundamental questions,—those which relate to the powers of government and to the responsibilities under which they should be exercised,—the only questions which gave rise to permanent political parties. Whilst divisions in regard to particular measures disappear with the falling off of interest in the subjects of them, those which I have described as growing out of such primordial tenets are kept alive as long as the government itself endures. So it has been in all countries where there has been any appreciable degree of freedom of opinion. England is almost, if not altogether, the only country whose institutions are sufficiently analogous to ours to admit of useful comparisons. From the time when her sovereigns traced their authority from God, and acknowledged responsibility to Him alone for the manner of its exercise, to the Revolution of 1688, by which absolutism was forever abolished and government declared to be a trust for the abuse of which the sovereign is responsible to the people, and always since, her party divisions, regarded as national, have had relation to the powers of government and to the degrees of responsibility under which they should be exercised. Whether these parties were called Cavaliers and Roundheads, Presbyterians and Jacobites, Whig and Tory, or Conservatives and Liberals, such have always been the essential dividing points. Like ourselves they have had a succession of exciting public questions not of this character which have for a time divided the community, and were earnestly contested, but which passed away without making material inroads upon ancient party divisions, and the latter resumed their sway when the temporary interruption ceased in much the same general array they would have presented if it had not occurred.

I have said that Madison's report was the flag under which the Republicans conquered. It defines the constitutional creed by which they were influenced in the administration of the government for twenty-four years successively, and under which the Democratic party, their successors, have since held the reins of the Federal Government, with infrequent exceptions—the latter never extending to two Presidential terms, and always the result of special circumstances having little bearing upon general politics.

But the political seed sown by Hamilton has not in other respects proved as perishable as have his teachings in favor of monarchical institutions. The former has never been eradicated—it seems not susceptible of eradication. I have given the reasons why this has been so with a description of the fruit it has continued to produce. These results have fostered kindred doctrines in respect to constitutions, their sanctity, their uses, and their abuses. I have also said that these doctrines have been ever cherished and enforced when circumstances were auspicious, and have constituted the chief element of our party divisions. Hence it has been that those divisions have been so uniform in their general outlines. The opposite dispositions which lead men to take different sides upon such questions have worked to the same ends from the close of the Revolution, and have been developed on all occasions of a nature to call them into action. The execution of the present Federal Constitution presented an opportunity to give them a definite and more permanent form and classification which they have maintained ever since. Individuals have changed from side to side under the influence of what they have regarded as stronger inducements, and when they have been disappointed, have generally returned to their first bias. Questions of public policy, disconnected from considerations of constitutional power, have arisen, been discussed, decided or abandoned and forgotten, whilst the political parties of the country have remained as they were.

With the authentic record before us of the issue, the contest, the result, and the efforts on the part of the defeated party to recover the ground it had lost, the supposition seems preposterous that our party divisions had their origin in the circumstances that occurred on the appointment of General Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of our Revolutionary army, as is alleged by a son of General Hamilton, in his history of the life of his father. Of the same character, though not quite so unreasonable, are the attempts which have been made by several to find their origin in the Federal Convention. That body did indeed present an occasion for the application of different opinions to the original formation of the Federal Constitution, but those opinions grew out of conflicting tenets which had divided the country into parties long before, and they were not then determined either way, but compromised upon grounds of expediency by a result which was not in point of fact satisfactory to any side, but acquiesced in by a majority obtained from the ranks of both. The proposition of President John Quincy Adams in his Inaugural Address, tracing their rise to the opposing sides taken by the people of the United States, as between England and France, and their final discontinuance to the disastrous career and termination of the French Revolution, would seem to be not less wide of the mark. The continuance of the two great parties of the country in the same state, in respect to the principles they espoused and the characters and dispositions of those who composed them, for more than half a century and for a quarter of a century before his address was delivered, is not to be denied. If it was even supposed possible that an intelligent and high spirited people like our own, with traditions and a history so eventful, and with domestic interests so important, could have been arrayed in hostile political opinions and party divisions by the influence of purely foreign questions, the continuance of those divisions in the same form and spirit for so many years after all pretense of the operation of such an influence had ceased would of itself be sufficient to refute the theory. But the objections to it are too numerous, too conclusive in their character, and too obvious to make it necessary to press them farther. The French Revolution had sufficiently developed itself to weaken, if not extinguish, the solicitude of the Republicans for its success, (who, with their leader, Thomas Jefferson, regarded its excesses with abhorrence,) before they expelled John Adams from the Presidency for the aid and sanction which he gave to Hamilton's violations of the Constitution, and his son, John Quincy Adams, was twenty-eight years afterwards driven from power for the same cause and by the same party, a party which he supposed had ceased to exist for some thirty years previous. It was by his latitudinarian avowals in respect to the constitutional powers of Congress,—when he began to talk of erecting "light-houses of the skies," and of the folly of paralyzing representatives by the will of their constituents,—that his political destiny was sealed.

That existing political divisions among the people of the United States induced the formation of preferences and prejudices in respect to England and France, was, doubtless, true, but to suppose that these constituted the foundation of their own divisions is to mistake for the cause one of its least important effects.

The Anti-Federal, Republican, and Democratic parties have been from the beginning composed of men entertaining the same general views in regard to the most desirable form of government, and to the spirit in which, and the objects for which, it should be administered. The morbid feelings of large portions of the old Anti-Federalists produced by their distrust of delegated power, founded on their knowledge of the extent to which it had been everywhere abused, led to a difference between them and the Republicans on the question of clothing the Federal Government with power to collect its own revenues, to regulate commerce, &c., and induced them to oppose the ratification of the new Constitution on that account, and on account of its deficiencies in regard to proper securities for personal rights. Their party was thereby broken down, but Jefferson and Samuel Adams, and men like them, succeeded in satisfying them of their error in respect to the outlines of the Constitution, and Madison procured the adoption of amendments that obviated their other objections and, as I have before said, a cordial and enduring union was formed between them and the Republicans, under the latter name. Since that period the party has undergone no change, either in its organization, its principles, or the general political dispositions of the individuals of which it has been composed. Its name has been changed from Republican to Democratic, in consequence of the increasing popular development of its course and principles, and in some degree by the circumstance that its old opponent had assumed the name of Federal Republican and by a natural desire to keep the line of demarcation between them as broad and as well defined as possible.

The formation and ratification of the Federal Constitution, mainly through Federal agency, the union of the Anti-Federalists and Republicans and the cordial acceptance of the Constitution, after its amendment, by both, presented, at the commencement of Washington's administration, the fairest opportunity for a real "era of good feeling" that the country has ever known. All controversy upon fundamental questions having been removed, the doors seemed to be thrown open for an amalgamation of parties like that of which so much was said, and with so little result, during the administration of Mr. Monroe. Without any open question affecting permanently every interest, and all the people and all alike, as is the case with such as relate to and embrace the sources of power and the foundations of the government, if the Constitution had been upheld in good faith on both sides partisan contests must of necessity have been limited to local or temporary and evanescent measures and to popular excitements and opposing organizations as shifting and short-lived as the subjects which gave rise to them. But Hamilton took especial care that such halcyon days should not even dawn on the country. He had a riveted conviction—a conviction he took no pains to conceal—that the Constitution must prove a signal failure, unless it could be made to bear measures little dreamed of by those who made and had adopted it; and in his view of the welfare of the country that question could not be too soon decided. The name and influence of Washington was an element of strength toward the accomplishment of his project in that regard, upon which he had expressed a strong reliance in the letter now published by his son, without date but written between the formation and ratification of the Constitution, and he was, of course, desirous to bring all such questions to an early decision, as Washington's long continuance in office was far from probable. He, therefore, promptly seized his opportunity, and at the earliest suitable moment after the organization of the new Government, proposed the incorporation of a national bank. I have already said, and given my reasons for the assertion, that in the whole range of the affairs of the government committed to his charge, he could not have taken a single step which would have afforded such unmistakable evidence of his determination not to be controlled in his administration of the government under the new Constitution by the intentions of those who framed, or of those who ratified it; not one more likely to revive former distrusts, and to infuse new jealousies among the Anti-Federalists in respect to his hostility to republican principles, or better calculated to give new strength to their energies when the proper time arrived for the blast of the trumpet that called every man to his tent. His old friend, Madison, was one of the first to take up the gauntlet thus boldly thrown before the sincere friends of the Constitution. This was done by his masterly and unanswerable speech in Congress against the constitutionality of the bank. No one can make himself acquainted with Mr. Madison's course, and with the state of his feeling towards President Washington at that period, and fail to appreciate the regret and pain he suffered from the performance of that act of duty, not on his own account but from his extreme reluctance to be placed in the attitude of opposition to one for whom he cherished feelings of such unbounded respect and affection, and whose confidence he fully enjoyed. But for the strong and audacious movements of Hamilton, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Madison would have coöperated very cordially in the support of President Washington's administration throughout. In respect to mere questions of expediency, he would have done all in his power to give them the most desirable form and direction, and, if disappointed, would, doubtless, have been silent as to the result.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] See Randall's Life of Jefferson, Vol. I. p. 587.

[31] See Life of Morris, Vol. III. p. 128. "But the thing which in my opinion has done more mischief to the Federal party is the ground given by some of them to believe that they wish to establish a monarchy."—Letter from Morris to King.

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