CHAPTER II
DEMOCRATIC AMERICA
Protected against foreign entanglements and having survived the convulsions that had shattered the old structures of Europe, America was at last free to pursue her development along her own lines. The philosopher of Monticello could sit back, take a more disinterested view of the situation and make a forecast of the future of his country. He could also advise, not only his immediate successors, but the generations to come and take up again the part of "counsellor" which had always suited him better than the part of the executive. He believed too much in the right of successive generations to determine their own form of government, to attempt to dictate in any way the course to follow. But he was none the less convinced that certain principles embodied in the Constitution had a permanent and universal value, and during the years at Monticello he formulated the gospel of American democracy.
As it finally emerged from the several crises that threatened its existence, the American Government was, if not the best possible government, at least the best government then on the surface of the earth. It was at the same time the hope and the model of all the nations of the world.
We exist and are quoted—wrote Jefferson to Richard Rush—as standing proofs that a government, so modelled as to rest continuously on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government. Were we to break to pieces, it would damp the hopes and efforts of the good, and give triumph to those of the bad through the whole enslaved world. As members, therefore, of the universal society of mankind, and standing high in responsible relation with them, it is our sacred duty to suppress passion among ourselves and not to blast the confidence we have inspired of proof that a government of reason is better than a government of force.[522]
Some dangers, however, were threatening to disturb the equilibrium of the country. The most pressing was perhaps the extraordinary and unwholesome development of State and local banks, which suspended payment in great majority in September, 1814. The deluge of paper money and the depreciation of the currency became, for Jefferson, a real obsession and strengthened him in his abhorrence of commercialism. He did not cease to preach the necessity of curbing the fever of speculation that had accumulated ruins upon ruins and the return to more sound regulations of the banks. "Till then," he wrote to John Adams, "we must be content to return, quoad hoc, to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property, for want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indians."[523]
His banking theories, however, had scarcely any influence upon his contemporaries, and even Gallatin was little impressed by them. But the evident danger of inflation turned his mind back to the days when he had fought the Hamiltonian system and gave him once more an opportunity to pass judgment upon his opponent of the old days:
This most heteregeneous system was transplanted into ours from the British system, by a man whose mind was really powerful, but chained by native partialities to everything English; who had formed exaggerated ideas of the superior wisdom of their government, and sincerely believed it for the good of the country to make them their model in everything, without considering that what might be wise and good for a nation essentially commercial and entangled in complicated intercourse with numerous and powerful neighbors, might not be so for one essentially agricultural, and insulated by nature, from the abusive governments of the old world.[524]
From this and many other passages it might be surmised that Jefferson still held to the old antimercantile theories that had crystallized in his mind when he was in Europe. If this were true, the contradiction between his conduct as President and his personal convictions would be so obvious that his sincerity might be questioned. As a matter of fact, on this point as on many others, he had undergone a slow evolution. He was certainly sincere when, shortly after leaving office, he wrote to Governor John Jay in order to make his position clearer: