The republic as a form of government; or, The evolution of democracy in America

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Introduction

PLAN OF THE WORK.

N the summer of 1 867, in allusion to the war of the American sections, then recently over, I observed to a London publisher, the head of one of the great houses, that all candid thinkers must agree now that the Republic ,does not afford a stable footing for constitutional government. Quickly, in response, he proposed that I should write a book for him to prove what I had said to be true, but stipulated that the work should be com- 1 pleted by the end of two years. I told him I would think of it, and mentioned the publisher's proposition to a cultivated and intelligent English gentleman residing in London, one of the literati of that famous capital, to whom I had carried a letter of introduction, and who, when in America, had seen " The Lost Principle," then a new book. But he replied, " The time is too short ; take four years, and the book will fructify when you are in the grave." The subject dropped from my mind, but, after my return to my home in Fauquier county, it came back to me and dwelt with me, and this volume has been the result, after the impediments and delays of official engagements.

Its title might indicate that the book is a treatise upon Republican government, and so it is intended to be, although it is occupied throughout with an examination into the working and principle of the Republic vi Introduction.

of the United States, and general propositions are discussed with reference exclusively to that instance. Distrusting theory, so prolific of error, I determined to apply to my subject, with the utmost strictness, the inductive method of inquiry, as recommended in the "Organum" of Bacon and practised in the sciences, satisfied, by that process, that the Republican system, now uppermost in men's minds, best would be laid open. If Bacon's method be indeed applicable to government, we must bring forward particulars, or individual cases, with a view to establish some general conclusions ; " for induction is a kind of argument which infers respecting a whole class what has been ascertained respecting one or more individuals of that class." x

The example of the United States, presenting so grand a scale of experiment, is so pregnant with instruction, indeed in its lesson is so complete, that we need not proceed further in the investigation to enable us to deduce satisfactory conclusions with respect to the nature of popular government. In parvo, this is the plan of my book — an humble contribution to safe government whilst a Democratic revolution threatens the stability of Europe.

A British author of celebrity and genius objects to Democracy, that it tends to degrade society and government by putting the uninstructed in the lead, achieving, if it be true, a victory over nature : " It makes," says the author, " the ignorant multitude the judges of the largest questions, both political and religious, till we shall have no institution left that is not on a level with the comprehension of a huckster or a drayman. There can be nothing more retrograde — losing all the results of civilization, all the lessons of Providence — letting the windlass run down after men have been turning it painfully for generations." 2 These are but the plausible guesses of

1 Whately. 2 George Elliot.

Introduction, vii

speculation, but presenting an untenable issue to the Republic, and producing all the injurious results consequent upon defeat. It is based on the erroneous belief that an unlettered majority govern in a Republic. The least observant tourist from the Old World who visits the West speedily detects the error, and a partiality for popular government may chance to settle into a conviction in favour of it ; for it is as impolitic in argument as in war to join battle on a field which gives the advantage to your adversary.

For more than a century Democracy, in the United States of America, has been the supreme power in the State, yet has civilization in that great country betrayed no tendency to retrace its steps, nor its vital germs any inclination to sicken or die, but, stimulated by enterprise and the robust genius of the Anglo-American, healthy growth is seen in every direction. Those industrious and inseparable partners, labour and capital, are found accumulating their vast stores and various works on every theatre ; whilst unmolested and protected by all the guards of the law, the aristocrat of wealth — the fortunate and envied nobleman of the Republic — enjoys his palace in Fifth Avenue. Nowhere is acknowledged so soon, and room made for it, the native superiority of intellect and culture, the inclination in the Republic being rather towards the disesteem and neglect of useful mediocrity. But if these dreads should all be justified by the event, it is hardly probable that the majority, composed of various and rude materials, would decline a mode of political life, if the principal purposes of government are secured by it, because it vulgarizes society, or, in nicer points, causes it to retrograde somewhat. If the opposer of popular government desires to bring the system into discredit, and to banish it from the inclinations of men — to shut the wide-extended and flaming gates of Avernus — some argument must be discovered to convince the people, or the thinkers among them, that their own viii Introduction.

welfare demands the overseership of the nation to be intrusted to other hands than their own — that the safety of the ship of State requires a captain or a commodore to be put in the command rather than that great trust should be confided to the crew and passengers. Not until that opinion is rooted in a nation's creed will conservatism in government and society finally be victorious, for the argument of interest, when cleared of doubt, always prevails. The questions to be put and answered in this highly important inquiry* are : " How has the experiment resulted where a people's government has been satisfactorily tested ? Does it act impartially among the contestants for its favour and regard ? Does it govern with an equal or a steady hand ? Or, is it controlled by associated capital or by a selfish voting combination among the people, working for its own emolument and benefit, yet professing to be a popular agency, whilst the indigent and feeble are pushed to the wall ? In short, is not the Republic a plutocracy instead of a democracy? Do the people govern in the Republic, or, whilst nominally sovereigns, are they not in fact superseded by a subtle power which the system generates ? If so, what is that power, and does it answer for permanent and successful government ? Finally, does the popular form promise stability, or does it tend irresistibly to confusion and anarchy, to be succeeded by the calm of the sword ? — a government of Oliver Cromwell and his military saints, or other kind of army dominion ? " With fluent speech theory does not respond to these interrogations with greater satisfaction than it does to the dark problems of science which, in this splendid era of discovery, experimental research is unfolding each hour to curiosity or interest. Amidst her infinite distances, her cloud-capt mountains, her forests, her prairies, her inland seas and majestic rivers, America, in rustic attire, but informed by her own experience, stands ready to answer all these

Introduction. ix

questions, and the polite and lettered East may learn from the New West the philosophy of the Republic. In his day, in defence of the settled order of England, Edmund Burke, with the hundred arms of Briareus, strove with French Democracy and triumphed — a single Spartan holding Thermopylae — and now from the cells of philosophy great Bacon is invited to come forth and combat American Democracy. Seated under his burning lamp, we have discovered that the body of society is so pressed and joined together, and its elementary particles are so engaged, that a people cannot be self-governed, there being, when we come to understand our subject, to appreciate the problem to be solved, no such thing, either in the present or in history, as a government by the people, and that, because of the inability of the sovereign power to act, a cunning and plausible pretender intrudes into the throne. The acquisition and development of this seasonable but unwelcome truth from the teachings of his "Organum" will prove one of the greatest of the many benefits which Francis of Verulam has conferred on mankind. Inasmuch as popular self-government is not possible, for a far different and more satisfactory reason than that the working poor man cannot, with safety to the State, be intrusted with the ballot, and therefore ought to stand excluded, we get rid of a question full of irritation and mischief by informing the people themselves, the discerning mass of society, what that more satisfactory reason is. States then will be founded on facts and the eternal principles of correct reason, and not on the theories and conjectures of speculation.

According to Boswell, Doctor Johnson thought a book ought not to be too large to be carried in one's pocket, and I have compelled this one to conform to that convenient size.

Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, United States, 1889.

x Introduction.

Note. — " Plutocracy." This appears to be a recent word, introduced into the American dictionary of the English language to indicate the body into which the Republic of the United States has now degenerated. It is not found in Doctor Noah Webster's great lexicon of our language, as finally it left its creator's hands, nor yet is it to be found in the body of the late Yale edition of " Webster Unabridged " (1888), but we discover it, almost in the act of birth or naturalization, in the supplement of new and uncommon words attached to the work. In the inevitable process of evolution, — of the flower from the bud, of the serpent from the egg, — plutocracy has grown out of democracy. In the natural order the object or thing first presents itself, and then men find a name for it. So it has been in this case. With its Greek original and recent citizenship, " plutocracy " is thus defined by the ripe scholars of Yale University : "A form of government in which the supreme power is lodged in the hands of the wealthy classes alone ; government of the rich ; also a controlling or influential class of rich men."

CONTEXTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. Subject stated and induction applied to it . . . i 1 1. The Right of Secession examined ; its Recognition

by the Fathers of the Republic 7

III. Honourable Robert Eden Scott; his Conference with Secretary Seward. Montgomery. President Davis. General Toombs. A Mission to

Richmond 35

IV, Federal Reform 57

V. Annapolis Convention ; Federal Convention recommended and called. A New Constitution . . 96

VI. Ratification 139

VII. Cause of Governor Randolph's Defection from the States Rights Party. Ratification in New York and other States. Deception practised by Madison to procure Ratification 155

Edmund Ruftm. His Tragic Death 167

The Theory of the New Constitution . ... 168

Sectional Equilibrium in Congress. The Northern

Phalanx 183

XI. Broken Covenants 212

XII. The Indigo interest and the Tariff of 1828. The Fisheries of New England. The Tobacco interest. Jefferson's Mission to France .... 228

XIII. The Machine, and Machine Politics. The States

Rights Party organized by Jefferson. Washington's Farewell Address 242

XIV. The Electoral Commission. Civil War averted by it 252

Civil War again imminent. Tammany Society . 286

The Political Adventurer. Induction applied . . 290 The Entail and the Entail Lease. M. de Tocque-

ville. Conclusion 296

Chapter I

" Yon same star, that's westward from the pole, Had made its course to illumine that part of heaven Where now it burns."

Hamlet, Act i. Scene i.

" Many of the changes, by a great misnomer, called Parliamentary reforms, had they taken place, not France but England would have had the honour of leading up the death dance of democratic revolution."' — Edmund Burke.

• ; Few people take the trouble of trying to.find out w T hat democracy really is. Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils ; which must stand or fall on its own merits, as others have done before it. For there is no trick in perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics."— fames Russell .7, " Democracv.''

MERICA is a country in which one of the greatest political experiments, in the history of the world, is now performing, and presents the most profound and momentous study to the statesman and philosopher. In view of this declaration from so excellent a thinker and writer as Washington Irving, it may be a useful work, after the lapse of a century, to examine, from the familiar standpoint of a citizen, the Republic of the United States by the full light of its recorded action. On account of her grand experiment with the Republic, if it has proved successful, America, naturally, would be a guiding star to other nations in the search after democratic liberty ; but if the trial, when understood, has been disastrous, her example ought to serve as a beacon, a signal light on a headland, to warn the political mariner not to visit that dangerous shore. If on that remote continental theatre, with a constitution sprung from the very brain of Jupiter, democratic government cannot endure the crucial test of experiment, but if, even now, it is manifest to the discerning eye that the unstable and trembling structure is but a stage in the progress of a great people to anarchy, and its consummation military despotism, every prudent mind will conclude the ill-success to be referable to incurable infirmities in government of the popular type, and not to accidental, or remediable, causes. Moreover it will be a wise lesson to teach, that power, in that stronghold of democracy, has manifested its eternal characteristic, and has established a cruel despotism of section and class, though it still flatters the individual with the titles of liberty.

To the eye of the astronomer, the moon, as it swims in the firmament, is a body of exceeding brightness, but when he applies his telescope, the beautiful orb loses its splendour, and reveals itself as a region of volcanic fires, and ruin seems of ancient pile ; so America, as seen from without or within. Republics consist of maxims and principles of liberty and justice by which, as by a chart of navigation, their governments are supposed to be conducted. As salt loses its savour, venerable charters lose authority. Governments then become failures, and not the less failures because veiled by the ceremonies and names of an obsolete liberty. Forms survive the realities which they invested, spirits of despotism inhabit bodies of liberty, and a hull is all that is left of a vanished republic. The banner of a republic flutters prom the tower, but an enemy has silently captured the fortress. Hitherto speculation with its illusions has been the field on which democratic government has been considered. The American fathers judged it by that uncertain, fitful, and transient light. But we have better oracles. If we do not discover the truth, the blame will rest with our own indolence or credulity ; for government is but a province of nature, and is embraced in the extensive jurisdiction of the inductive philosophy. Its forces are visible and measured agents ; its results are public facts. But whilst science adds this great kingdom to her growing empire, justice demands that, humbly and reverentially, she acknowledge a further debt to the immortal Bacon, whose philosophy, revealing the unknown, and making the obscure manifest, accompanies the ages until, in every district and corner of Nature's kingdom, it establishes " the reign of man," unfolding to creation the wonderful destiny it has prepared for him. Continually science, under wise pilots, is sending forth ships to explore unvisited seas. Now a hemisphere is discovered, now a continent, or some isle, deephidden from human curiosity ; but the spoils of all are gathered up and laid at the feet of this throned, island Empress-Queen, that her power may be augmented, and the sphere of her beneficence and glory enlarged. The Republic of the United States was regarded, by the men who founded it, as an experiment in politics in which the colonies had been embarked by the intrigues of the Court of France, seeking, in the bitterness of national animosity and rivalry, to dismember the British Empire. 1 When the existing

1 " Hardly a month after the last Acts had been passed, the French Ambassador at London addressed himself to Franklin in a style that discovered to this acute politician the wish of the French Court to inflame the quarrel between Britain and America. Nor was this the only, or most notable, attempt of the French constitution of the Republic was submitted to State conventions for rejection, or acceptance, it was urged, as an argument in favour of acceptance, by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of its skilled architects, that " This system, if adopted, will lay a foundation for erecting temples of liberty in every part of the earth." The statesman spoke advisedly, for, from the period of the installation of that government, it has been a propaganda of republican principles. Within the sphere of its activity and influence, this has been effected by open patronage of popular government, yet more even has been done by the silent influence of example, confined only by the expansive circle of ideas. The prophetic utterance, at this time, the more challenges attention, as one of those fair temples has arisen, like an exhalation, and has planted itself in Western Europe, where but yesterday a splendid monarchy stood, exciting uneasiness in every statesman of the Old World. It looks as though the democracy of the West, in a crusade of ideas and principles, has precipitated itself on Europe, shaking and undermining monarchical government, deep-rooted in habit and old tradition.

It brings to mind a prophecy of M. de Tocqueville,

Court to animate the spirit of resistance of the Americans, and promote a total breach with the British nation. Both prior and subsequent to the present period, various emissaries employed by the Court of France travelled in disguise through the American colonies, examining in what points the British Dominion'was most vulnerable, and seizing every opportunity to fan the flame of discontent, and insinuate that revolt would be facilitated by foreign assistance. The most distinguished of these was a German baron named Dekalb, a brave and enterprising officer, who had long served in the French army. The employment of Dekalb and other agents in America is an undisputed fact. He, with other French officers in the American service, maintained a close correspondence in cipher with the French Court." — Frosfs " History of the United States."

Botta states that the zeal of the patriots of Boston was stimulated by French gold— what Dean Swift calls "the yellow boys."

contained in his well-remembered work on the social and political institutions of America, written and published more than forty years ago, that democracy, at no distant date, would assert and establish its dominion everywhere within the Christian pale. He appeared to believe that it was a ground-swell of human action and thought, and that the invisible force which impelled the tides had set it in motion. The intelligence and craft of the statesman, then, would be exercised in renovating and remoulding the ancient states of Europe, and adjusting them to this new power. That philosopher, or pseudo-philosopher, said : is The organisation and establishment of democracy in Christendom is the great problem of the time. To the evils which are common to all democratic peoples the Americans have applied remedies which none but themselves ever thought of before ; and though they were the first to make the experiment, they have succeeded in it. Those who hope the monarchy of Henry IV. or Louis XIV., appear to be affected with mental blindness, and when I consider the condition of several European nations — a condition to which all others tend — I am led to believe they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty or the tyranny of the Caesars."

With this alarming prediction sounding in our ears, it will not be considered irrelevant to the times in which we live, or to the events that press hard upon us for solution, and before Europe takes another step in that direction, to invite the reader to examine for himself, not looking through the glasses of M. de Tocqueville, and ascertain how the experiment of self-government has prospered in the New World, where a safe unenvied asylum has been offered to popular government, with every condition most favourable to a successful trial of it — an extensive, fertile, vacant country, suited to every occupation of prosperous industry ; an intelligent, civilized people of the foremost breed, trained to such institutions ; wise and able men to plan and execute for it, and the crowning advantage of isolation from injurious contact with older civilizations charged with opposite ideas. From the forests of Maine and the prairies of Wisconsin, to that remote land, amid Antarctic snows, which lies beyond the Straits of Magellan, Ultima Thule, democracy has held its court and high carnival. There it has wantoned at will, and has displayed all its good qualities, and every vice of its undisciplined and froward nature, — its ferocity, its despotism, its cruelty, its grossness, its avarice, its venality, and inevitable tendency to misrule and anarchy. Wisest statesmen have constructed dykes and walls to confine it, but, when its passions are stirred, it has shown itself not more amenable to authority than ocean when scourged by the tempest. This century, in the annals of the human race, will be distinguished and remembered as the century of democratic experiment, when every European State contained a republican party in the ranks of its population.

But in that century of triumphant democratic life some truths have been obtained which it will be profitable for Europe to know whilst it is engaged with the problem which France, so suddenly, but England, more gradually, has forced on it for solution. But, before we proceed to examine the conclusions to be deduced from the constitutional experiment in the West, there is a preliminary inquiry which merits and will receive attention, — the inherent right of every political community, represented by its majority, to establish, or abolish, government at pleasure. That important principle, in the politics of every free state, was obtained from the revolution which disjoined the North American colonies from the parent state. How has it fared in the century of American experience in free government ? Has it been honoured and confirmed as still the sub-base of all republican government, a form of Gove nunc at. 7

or has it been insulted, repudiated, and overthrown ? In this connection no question of so great moment could engage attention. It vitally concerns the voting mass, for from it has been derived all their right to govern society.

Chapter II

HE Civil War of 1861, which incarnadined the Union, was the first explosion of the political volcano charged with combustibles by Washington and his co-workers. Before that time the Federal mountain had emitted smoke and flame, but then, from its fuelled entrails, the eruption burst forth. As, amid scenes of desolation and sorrow, the war was ended, mankind beheld half the states of the Union return, with shattered ranks, to a connection which they hated, under the compulsion of great armies, and loaded with the disabilities and burdens resulting from a conquest. They saw those subjugated states despoiled of every vestige of political right, and reduced to the lowest state of dependence, by a government which, in great part, was their own recent and voluntary creation. Truly a war of conquest was an instructive spectacle in the politics of a series of connected and self-governing states ! Europe, an interested, and not unintelligent, observer of democratic development in the West, knew then, or might have known, that the rulers of the great Republic had destroyed the foundation on which its designers and builders had erected it, and had placed it on an entirely new bottom. From that time the Republic of the United States, regarded as a model for imitation, ceased, by its own act, to be a government of consent, as in two famous charters, and in the constitution which created it, it had been, with exultation, proclaimed to be, and, under the control of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party, became a government of force, according to the American classification, as much as the sternest military monarchy in king-governed Asia.

Political liberty, once the heritage of the humblest citizen, and of the smallest commonwealth, became henceforth, in that expanding circle of freedom, a permitted privilege. But such was not the language of 1776, when the new code of political rights was conceived and published amid the thunders of a revolution. Here are the words of a charter, venerable for its age and respectable for its authority, and the first in the order of time : " The right of a majority of the community to reform, alter, or abolish government is indisputable, indefeasible, and inalienable. ,, 1 This glorious truth, as it was asserted to be by the men who promulgated it, which was to have increased the dignity and secured the rights of human nature, then became a fiction of law, a thing of no substance or profit. Sophists have sought to nullify the import of that maxim of politics by confining its application to the Federal community, and thus would relegate the states, the parties to the Union, to the obscure and unhonoured condition of counties, having no independent life-principle. 2 But what says John Adams of Massachusetts, who laid the first stone of independence, as to the springs of sovereignty in the American confederated system of government ? Are they found

1 Swift, with his accustomed energy of expression, had announced, in 1724, the substance of that familiar principle. " Government," he said, " without the consent of the governed, is the very definition of tyranny" (Swift's " Letters of a Dublin Tradesman") — a truth which vibrates in every heart.

2 Such was Mr. Lincoln's constitutional theory, according to his speeches as reported in the newspapers.

a forin of Government. g

among the State or the Federal powers ? He says : m Thirtee mine tits thus founded on the natural

authority of the people alone, without tlie pretense of miracle or mystery, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind." When American history is summoned from its seclusion and interrogated before the judgment-seat, such, too, is not her testimony. She sustains to the full the evidence of Mr. Adams. The proper meaning, moreover, of that language is known by the party who used it, and the occasion on which it was employed.

This thing was not done in a corner. The colony of Virginia, an empire in the gristle, self-sustained and heroic even in her error, had seceded from the British association of states, the model on which the American association was formed, as Madison distinctly tells us, whilst every other state remained a colony, bound in allegiance to the throne of King George III. This British province, which had been the beneficiary of every largesse and indulgence of the Crown speaking by a revolutionary junto which had seized the reins of government, declared itself to be a sovereign state from the colonial capital at Williamsburg out to her far-stretch mg and savage borders, formed an independent republic, and prefixed to its written constitution a Bi.l of Rights, from which the quoted language is extracted, which justified that revolution in government on the ground of a natural and inalienable right existing in the colony of Virginia, and all other political bodies, so to act. This right of political revolution, the indispensable condition of the sovereign right of self-government by the people, is then an organic principle of American freedom, as understood and maintained by Virginia in 1776, — the first to announce and the first to act upon that new political philosophy. It was in Virginia, then, that secession, as a political right, was first asserted. Countenanced, strengthened, and inspired by that example, the Conio The Republic as

tinental Congress accepted and ratified that primary principle of state rights, and published it to the nations, as the foundation on which their new nationality was reared — the right of secession.

The record lies open before me. It will last until the rocks disintegrate, and the hills become valleys, and stand as a testimony against the employment of the Federal sword of coercion. The Declaration of Independence was promulgated July 4, 1776, confirming, enforcing, and enlarging the truths previously announced and acted upon by Virginia. That celebrated charter of popular rights declares : " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ; that, when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute a new government, laying its foundation in such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."