This tendency has still pursued its way down to our own times. The party which organized under Jackson became involved in the slavery question by combinations which it would be most interesting to study; but this will be only a passing phase, a temporary issue in our political life, and only a feature of the history of the concrete Democratic party, not of the great democratic tendency. The doctrines of the Jacksonian democracy have permeated nearly the whole country. They have come to be popularly regarded as postulates or axioms of civil liberty. Those who deny them are the scholars, the historians, the philosophers, the book-men of every grade; and they deny them under their breath, at the penalty of sacrificing all share in public life. It is certain, however, that the issue must come back to its permanent form and that the political strife must be waged between the conservative and the radical theories of politics—between those who lay the greater stress on law and those who lay the greater stress on liberty, between those who see political health chiefly in the social principle and those who see it chiefly in the individual, between constitutionalism and democracy.
This will not come about by any critical reflections of mine or by those of any other political philosopher. It will come about by experience, and by instinct rather than by reflection. For the evils and corruptions of which we daily complain arise from democratic theories of politics, developed and applied without reference to the actual circumstances of the case, and under assumptions which are false. Experience has convinced nearly all of us who are willing to think about the matter that rotation in office is mischievous to the public interest and demoralizing to the men who enter the public service. Experience has long since brought home to us the shame of the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils. Experience has shown us the evils of frequent elections and short terms of office, and it is continually opening the eyes of more and more of us to the evils of electing a large number of administrative officers and making them independent of each other. Experience has shown us the inapplicability of the principle of election to the selection of judges. Experience is showing that the notion of the responsibility of a party is a delusion and that the notion of responsibility to the people is only a jingle of words; and as new constitutions are formed we find that they continually take more guarantees from the people against themselves.
On the contrary the path of reform lies in the direction of stronger constitutional guarantees and greater reverence for law as law. Any conservative party which fulfills its function in this country will have to take its stand on that platform. Its reforms must be historical, not speculative. They must be founded in the genius and history of the country. The democracy here, in the sense of the widest popular participation in public affairs, is inevitable until the land is taken up and the population begins to press upon the means of subsistence, that is to say, for a future far beyond what we need take into consideration. Our whole history shows this, and the part which I have discussed shows conclusively what we may also all see in our own daily observation—that the men, the parties, the theories which oppose themselves to this tendency are swept down like seeds before a flood. It is idle to ask whether is it a good tendency. It is a fact—a fact whose causes arise from the deepest and broadest social and economic circumstances of the country. But there is a foundation for true constitutionalism in the traditions of our race and in our inherited institutions—in our inherited reverence for law, which is all that keeps us from going the way of Mexico and Peru.
The philosophers and book-men have no great rôle offered them in a new country. They will always be a minority, they will always be holding back in the interest of law, order, tradition, history, and they will rarely be entrusted with the conduct of affairs; but, since their lot is cast here, if they withdraw from the functions which fall to them in this society, such as it is, they do it at the sacrifice not only of duty but also of everything which makes a fatherland worth having, to them or to their posterity. The fault which they commit is the complement of that committed by their opponents. For the notion which underlies democracy is that of rights, tenacity in regard to rights, the brutal struggle for room for one’s self, and, still more specifically, for equal rights, the root principle of which is envy. This was abundantly illustrated in Jackson’s day. The opposition of his supporters to bank and tariff had no deeper root than this, and the name they chose for themselves as descriptive of their aims was “The Equal Rights Party.” But the principle of political life lies not in rights but in duties. The struggle for rights is at best war. The subjection to duty reaches the same end, reaches it far better, and reaches it through peace. Still less is there any principle of political health in the idea of equality of rights, much as some people seem to believe the opposite. In political history it has been the melancholy province of France to show us that if you emphasize equality you reduce all to a dead level of slavery, with a succession of revolutions to bring about a change of masters.
If, then, the classes which are by education and position conservative withdraw from public activity, pride themselves on their cleanness from political mire, and satisfy themselves at most with a negative and destructive interference at the polls from time to time, the conception of political duty with them must be as low as with their opponents; and I will add that they will at best turn from one set of masters to another, under a general and steady deterioration in the political tone of the country. If we have to-day a society in which we go our ways in peace, freedom, and security, a society from the height of which we look back upon the life of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with a shudder, we owe it to no class of men who wrote satirical essays on contemporary politics and said to one another: “What is the use?” Elliott and Hampden and Sydney and these revolutionary heroes whose praise we are just now chanting did not win for us all the political good we owe them by any such policy as that. There was no use, as far as any one could see, in their cases. They risked persecution, imprisonment, the axe, and the scaffold, and their puny efforts seemed ridiculous in the face of the task they undertook; but they never stopped to think of that. They saw that it was the right thing to do then to speak or to resist, and they did it and let the end take care of itself.
Now we Americans of to-day have no heroic deeds to perform. We have no fear of the stake or the axe for political causes. We are not called upon to do any grand deeds. Perhaps it would be easier if we were. If we had a Cæsar at Washington I would warrant him his Brutus within a fortnight. But we have need of the same sense of duty which has animated all the heroes of constitutional government and civil liberty, and I am not sure but we need some of their courage also, for it demands at least as much moral courage to beard King Majority as it ever did to beard King Cæsar. Nothing less than the experiment of self-government is at stake in the question whether thousands of citizens are capable of that form of duty which makes a man work on without results and without reward, even, it may be, in the face of misrepresentation and abuse, simply because he sees a certain direction in which his efforts ought to be expended.
Such, however, I conceive to be the calling of the conservative classes of this country, at least for this generation. We have undertaken to govern ourselves, and we are just finding, now that the country is filling up and its cities growing large, that it is a great task, that it takes time and thought, that we need any and all resources of science and experience which we can call to our aid; and we are finding especially that the forms of law and of the Constitution are every year more essential, and the untamed forces of society more dangerous. No supernatural interference will come to our assistance. No man, no committee, no party, no centralized organization of the general government, can rid us of our difficulties and yet leave us self-government. Nor can we invent any machinery of elections or of government which will do the work for us. We have got to face the problems like men, animated by patriotism, acting with business-like energy, standing together for the common weal. Whenever we do that we cannot fail of success in getting what we want; so long as we do not do that, our complaints of political corruption are the idlest and most contemptible expressions which grown men can utter.
THE COMMERCIAL CRISIS OF 1837
[1877–1878]
The decade from 1830 to 1840 is the most important and interesting in the history of the United States. The political, social, and industrial forces which were in action were grand, and their interaction produced such complicated results, that it is difficult to obtain a just and comprehensive view of their relations and influences. In the first place, the United States advanced between the second war with England and 1830 to a position of full and high standing in the family of nations. The security and stability of the government were accepted as established. England and France, on the other hand, just before and after 1830, were involved in social and political troubles of an alarming kind. By contrast, the United States, with a rapidly increasing population, expanding production and trade, a contented people, and a surplus revenue offered great attractions to both laborers and capital. At the same time the pride of the Americans in their country produced self-reliance, energy, and enterprise which laughed at difficulties. New means of transportation by steamboats and canals were opening up the country and assuring to the population the advantages of a new and unbounded continent. Production therefore offered high returns to both labor and capital.