[Footnote 55: Washington's Writings, Vol. IX. p. 207.]
These disorganizing fancies were received in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, by a considerable portion of the people; twelve or fifteen thousand men took up arms, in order to reduce them to practice. And the evil appeared so serious, that Madison, the most intimate friend of Jefferson, a man whom the democratic party subsequently ranked among its leaders, regarded American society as almost lost, and hardly ventured to entertain any hope. [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 56: Ibid., Vol. IX. p. 208.]
Two powers act in concurrence to develope and maintain the life of a people; its civil constitution and its political organization, the general influences of society and the authorities of the State; the latter were wanting to the infant American commonwealth, still more than the former. In this society, so disturbed, so slightly connected, the old government had disappeared, and the new had not yet been formed. I have spoken of the insignificance of Congress, the only bond of union between the States, the only central power; a power without rights and without strength; signing treaties, nominating ambassadors, proclaiming that the public good required certain laws, certain taxes, and a certain army; but not having itself the power of making laws, or judges, or officers to administer them; without taxes, with which to pay its ambassadors, officers, and judges, or troops to enforce the payment of taxes and cause its laws, judges, and officers to be respected. The political state was still more weak and more wavering than the social state.
The Constitution was formed to remedy this evil, to give to the Union a government. It accomplished two great results. The central government became a real one, and was placed in its proper position. The Constitution freed it from the control of the States, gave it a direct action upon the citizens without the intervention of the local authorities, and supplied it with the instruments necessary to give effect to its will; with taxes, judges, officers, and soldiers. In its own interior organization, the central government was well conceived and well balanced; the duties and relations of the several powers were regulated with great good sense, and a clear understanding of the conditions upon which order and political vitality were to be had; at least for a republican form, and the society for which it was intended.
In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the anarchy from which it sprang, we cannot too much admire the wisdom of its framers, and of the generation which selected and sustained them. But the Constitution, though adopted and promulgated, was as yet a mere name. It supplied remedies against the evil, but the evil was still there. The great powers, which it had brought into existence, were confronted with the events which had preceded it and rendered it so necessary, and with the parties which were formed by these events, and were striving to mould society, and the Constitution itself, according to their own views.
At the first glance, the names of these parties excite surprise. Federal and democratic; between these two qualities, these two tendencies, there is no real and essential difference. In Holland, in the seventeenth century, in Switzerland even in our time, it was the democratic party which aimed at strengthening the federal union, the central government; it was the aristocratic party which placed itself at the head of the local governments, and defended their sovereignty. The Dutch people supported William of Nassau and the Stadtholdership against John de Witt and the leading citizens of the towns. The patricians of Schweitz and Uri are the most obstinate enemies of the federal diet and of its power.
In the course of their struggle, the American parties often received different designations. The democratic party arrogated to itself the title of republican, and bestowed on the other, that of monarchists and monocrats. The federalists called their opponents anti-unionists. They mutually accused each other of tending, the one to monarchy, and the other to separation; of wishing to destroy, the one the republic, and the other the union.
This was either a bigoted prejudice or a party trick. Both parties were sincerely friendly to a republican form of government and the union of the States. The names, which they gave one another for the sake of mutual disparagement, were still more false than their original denominations were imperfect and improperly opposed to each other.
Practically, and so far as the immediate affairs of the country were concerned, they differed less, than they either said or thought, in their mutual hatred. But, in reality, there was a permanent and essential difference between them in their principles and their tendencies. The federal party was, at the same time, aristocratic, favorable to the preponderance of the higher classes, as well as to the power of the central government. The democratic party was, also, the local party; desiring at once the rule of the majority, and the almost entire independence of the State governments. Thus there were points of difference between them, respecting both social order and political order; the constitution of society itself, as well as of its government. Thus those paramount and eternal questions, which have agitated and will continue to agitate the world, and which are linked to the far higher problem of man's nature and destiny, were all involved in the American parties, and were all concealed under their names.