If then the question is put: Shall Americans own ships? I do not see how any one can avoid the simple answer: Yes, if they want them. Universally, if an American wants anything, he ought to have it if he can get it, and if he hurts no one else by getting it. To enter on the question whether he is going to make it or buy it, and whether he is going to buy it of A or of B, is an impertinence. We boast a great deal of having a free country; our orators shout themselves hoarse about liberty and freedom. Stop one of them, however, and ask him if he means free trade and free ships, and he will demur. No; not that; that will not do. He is in favor of freedom for himself and his friends in those respects in which they want liberty against other people, but he is not in favor of freedom for other people against restraints which are advantageous to him and his political allies. He is in favor of freedom for those who are being oppressed—by somebody else; not for those who are being oppressed by himself. I heard it asserted not long ago that we have no monopolies in this country, because it is a free country. It is not a free country, because there are more artificial monopolies in it than in any other country in the world. The popular notion that it is free rises from the fact that there are fewer natural monopolies in it than in any other great civilized country. It is necessary, however, to go to Turkey or Russia to find instances of legislative and administrative abuses to equal the existing laws and regulations of the United States about ships, the carrying trade, and foreign commerce. These laws have been brought to public attention again and again, but apparently with little effect in awakening popular attention, while the newspapers carry all over the country details about abuses in Ireland, Russia, and South Africa. We should stop bragging about a free country and about the enlightened power of the people in a democratic republic to correct abuses, while laws remain which treat the buying, importing, owning, and sailing of ships as pernicious actions, or, at least, as doubtful and suspicious ones. I have no conception of a free man or a free country which can be satisfied if a citizen of that country may not own a ship, if he wants one, getting it in any legitimate manner in which he might acquire other property; or may not sail one, if he finds that a profitable industry suited to his taste and ability; or may not exchange the products of his labor with that person, whoever he may be, who offers the most advantageous terms.
POLITICS IN AMERICA, 1776–1876[48]
When the Continental Congress met in 1774, few persons in the colonies perceived that the ties to the mother country were about to be severed, and few, if any, were republicans in theory, or contemplated a “revolution” in the political system. The desire for independence was developed during 1775, and the question as to the form of government to be adopted came up by consequence. It presented no real difficulty. The political organization of some of the colonies was such already that there were no signs of dependence except the arms and flag, the form of writs, and a responsibility to the Lords of Trade which sat very lightly upon them. Necessary changes being made in these respects, those colonies stood as complete republics. The others conformed to this model.
In bringing about these changes great interest was developed in political speculations, an interest which found its first direction from Paine’s “Common Sense,” and was sustained by diligent reading of Burgh’s “Political Disquisitions,” and Macaulay’s “History of England.” The same speculations continued to be favorite subjects of discussion for twenty-five years afterwards. The journals of the time were largely made up of long essays by writers with fanciful noms de plume, who discussed no simple matters of detail, but the fundamental principles of politics and government. The method of treatment was not historical, unless we must except crude and erroneous generalizations on classical history, and it seemed to be believed that the colonial history of this country was especially unfit to furnish guidance for the subsequent period; but the disquisitions in question pursued an a priori method, starting from the broadest and most abstract assumptions. The same method has marked American political philosophy, so far as there has been any such thing, ever since. It is very much easier than the method which requires a laborious study of history.
The natural effect of the war, but still more of the doctrines in regard to liberty taught by Paine, and of the deplorable policy of local terrorism pursued by the Committees of Safety against Tories and Refugees, was to produce and bring into prominence a class of active, shallow men, who felt their new powers and privileges but not the responsibility which ought to go with these. The old colonial bureaucracy, which had enjoyed all the social preëminence that colonial life permitted, was gone. Office was open to many who, before the war, had little chance of attaining it. They sought it eagerly, expecting to enjoy the social advantages they had formerly envied. In the northern states a class of eager office-seekers arose who gained a great influence, saw their arena in the states especially, and jealously opposed the power of the Confederation. This class made hatred to England almost a religion, and testified to their political virtues by persecuting Tories and Refugees. They found popular grievances also ready to their hand as a means of advancement. The mass of the people had been impoverished by the war. The attempts at commercial war had reacted upon the nation with great severity. The paper issues of the Congress and the states had wrought their work to derange values, violate contracts, inflate credit, and destroy confidence. On the return of peace the industries which had been sustained only by war ceased to be profitable; the reduction of prices spread general ruin and left thousands indebted and impoverished. The consequence was discontent and disorder. All this was heightened by the contrast with another class which had been enriched by privateering, contracts, and “financiering.” The soldier who returned in rags, bringing only a few bits of scrip worth fifteen or twenty cents on the dollar, found his family in want, and some of his neighbors, who had borne few of the sacrifices of the war, enriched by it and now enjoying its fruits. It seemed to this whole class that they had not yet got liberty, or that they did not know what it was. They did not look for it to a closer union.
This party, for it soon became a party, found an alliance in a quarter where it would hardly have been expected, in the slave-owning planters of the South—an alliance which has been of immense importance in our political history. The planters, at the outbreak of the war, had been heavily indebted to English capitalists and merchants. They now feared that they would be compelled to pay their debts, and they saw in the treaty-making power of the general government the source from which this compulsion would come. They therefore opposed any union which would strengthen and give vigor to that power. To this party were added those who had adopted, on theoretical and philosophical grounds, the enthusiasm for liberty which was then prevalent in both hemispheres. It should be added to the characteristics of this party that it looked with indifference upon foreign commerce, cared little for foreign opinion, would have been glad to be isolated from the Old World, and had very crude opinions as to the status and relations of European nations.
This party naturally went on to confound liberty with equality, and political virtue with tenacity of rights. It furthermore confounded power with privilege, and thought that it must allow no civil power or authority to exist if it meant really to exterminate aristocratic privilege. It was not so clear in its conception of political duties, and certainly failed to see that the best citizen is not the one who is most tenacious of his political rights, but the one who is most faithful to his political duties; that envy and jealousy are not political virtues; and that equality can be attained only by cutting off every social advance and setting up as the standard, not what is highest, but what is a low average.
An opposing party gradually formed itself of men of wider information and superior training. These men understood the institutions of Great Britain and their contrast to those of any other country in Europe. They understood just what the war had done for the Colonies. They did not consider that it had altered the internal institutions inherited from the mother country, or set the Colonies adrift upon a sea of political speculation to try to find a political utopia. Some of them joined for a time in the prevalent opinion that the Americans were better and purer than the rest of mankind, but experience soon taught them their error. Tradition and experience still had weight with them; and in making innovations they sought development rather than destruction and reconstruction. They were conservative by property, education, and character.
To this party it was evident that the colonies had lost much by falling out of the place in the family of nations which they had filled as part of the British Empire, and they believed that a similar place must now be won on an independent footing. They understood the necessity of well-regulated foreign relations, of foreign commerce, and of public credit. Their general effort was, therefore, to secure order and peace in the internal relations of the country by establishing liberty indeed, but liberty under law; and to secure respectability and respect abroad by fidelity to treaties and pecuniary engagements, by a reputation for commercial integrity, and by a development of the arts of peace. The first requisite to all this was a more perfect union.