Fears for democracy regarded from the American point of view

Preface

These pages, which have been much curtailed from what were prepared for the press, in the hope, by diminishing their number, of increasing the chance of their being read, rest on a position, not, indeed, very new, that it is from the people government like ours must take its measure; that democratic institutions are meaningless when the people leave the watch ; beginning to flag when a single citizen deserts his duty ; and getting worse and worse as skulking goes on.

Democracy is now, and always has been, a word of fear in the United States ; it is so everywhere. But whatever we have we owe to it. Prince Gortschakoff, in the darkness of Russian despotism, may be an honester man than Mr. Disraeli ; but the Englishman stands in the light ; he accounts, if not to the people, to the country.

4 PREFACE.

On this idea our institutions rest. We trust society. But it is composed of materials bad and good. If our institutions reflect only the bad materials, government is bad and the laws badly administered. They are good, or, as good as they can be made, when they reflect all. If, reflecting all, they are, still, bad, the experiment we make, and which every political philosopher, even the most hopeful, Mr. Jefferson, for example, has regarded as an experiment, fails, so far. Not entirely, but so far.

Every candid man must admit that society, with us so highly capable, does not infuse itself into government. Government is not inspired by all, but, as in other parts of the world, by the few. It means the few, not the many. It has the same vice here as everywhere.

There are at least two stages of the experiment of representative democracy. There is the experiment whether the masses possess will and stuff" enough of character to have themselves represented; and there is, afterwards, the experiment whether a government which does represent them is capable of governing.

PREFACE. O

Under monarchical institutions the central idea is the divinity of the king; whom it is a religion to respect, though he be the meanest of mortals. Under democratic institutions the central idea is the divinity of the people ; but we do not respect them at all.

The word democracy is used by the author, only, in its broad sense, not that of party. We are a democracy, a representative one ; and there can be no party in the United States, whatever it may call itself, that is not democratic. It was meant, at first, in the questions here considered, not to touch points on which there are party differences, but that was found impossible, and given up. Party the w^riter must see (as who does not?) through the mists of his prejudices, and have for his errors, if he fall into them, the excuse that all have.

Philadelphia, December, 1874.

O O ^ T E T^ T S.

Concludina: Observations ...... 271

FEARS FOR DEMOCRACY

REGARDED

FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.

Chapter I

DEMOCRACY AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION. SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The world resounds with paeans to liberty, but not with the praises of democracy, though without democracy liberty is incomplete. Those who have thought and written for the instruction and amusement of mankind have been, commonly, in the interest of the great, and of those children of fortune whose support and patronage could be profitable, but whose inclinations are not with the people. Shakspeare, writing to please, three centuries ago, made the masses contemptible alike for tragedy and comedy ; and, at the end of the last century, a demagogue, who exclaimed, tJie people, the poor

2 8 jpeople, was denounced, not because he was a wretch who cared for nobody, but because he made his exclamation in the sense of a declared and deadly foe of the aristocracy. It was their cue to think the people vile. Shall they be always thought vile ? To say that the voice of the people is the voice of God is blasphemous ; but to say that the voice of all must be more like the voice of God. than any other that is heard on earth, is neither blasphemous nor foolish.

In the Old World, where democracy must come out of the depths of ignorance, with revolution in its wake, the many, with eager hope, and the few, with profound apprehension, look to the day when the title to power will be the gift of the people. In the New World the sentiment towards democracy is anomalous. Where the means of comfort and happiness are within the easy reach of all, democracy cannot be wholly out of favor. But it may sink, of which we have warnings; for, though the day may not return when the people will be wholly without consideration, yet the many may prove no better than the few, and government, always, remain a problem.

It cannot be superfluous, in a country which God has blessed with opportunities such as ours, to calculate some of the chances of this prodigious experiment, of which posterity, not we, are to see the solution.

Democracy is no natural system. It is easier to be a slave than a freeman. Through men's weakness, the inclination is to power; to glitter and show ; to the aristocratic ; to high birth, with wealth for its accessory, and the qualities of the man consigned to the chapter of accidents. This yearning is seen in every country. It is seen, in the United States, in the ridiculous assumption of titles of honour, and the adoration of foreign rank, with a certain uneasiness at having none of our own. At Rome, though the same man might be magistrate, priest, and soldier, classification was endless. Not a small part of mankind live in caste to this day ; people come into the world to conditions in life that are immutable. Women, who are half the world, and by their helplessness an aristocracy, being the part of creation which God has given us to toil and provide for, seldom love equality. The idea of an order of men of hereditary dignity is one which there never has been, and never will be, a time when thoughts will not recur to.

Three hundred years ago Europe was rude, and the well-born spread tables for those of inferior condition, who fed at their expense, and submitted in return to every species of indignity. A system which compelled one of the first of human beings, because he was not privileged, to crawl at the feet of his insulter, because he was, may assort with inveterate prejudices, but it is not civilized.*

People used to buy from princes fragments of authority, and apply them to protect their own acquisitions, which otherwise would have been wasted by the hand of power. In this way arose equality ; republics in Italy and Switzerland ; and cities everywhere. It was the foundation of modern liberty. Men, being judges of their own wants, purchased the right to take care of them. It was the origin of the system, which, in the United States, has gone so far; and now, there seems to be a purpose to counteract, of leaving to every patch of territory as much as possible of its government. It was the dawn of the modern democratic principle, the first concession to society ; not to a class, but to the people. It was the beginning of that freedom which boasts, not, lam a Roman citizen, but, I am a man.

* Shakspeare is believed to have been the victim of some extraordinary ill treatment on the part of a young Earl of Pembroke, and to have submitted. See Hallam's and other writers' ideas about it. Introduction to the Literature of Europe, vol. iii. pp. 31-40.

THE AMERICAN POINT OF YIEW. 13

Section II. The Revolution Of '76 — Prepossessions Against Democracy

When the Revolution began, the educated thought of America was far from democratic, it was English ; but we were free, though dependent, and democracy was a social fact. This was true of some of the colonies more than of others, but everywhere a fact; and when the home government was set aside it became political as well as social. The Revolution was not a social revolution, and the principal change the colonies underwent was the transfer of allegiance ; the crown passed from the king to the people. They were democratic, by dint of circumstances at work long before the Revolutionary leaders were born. Democracy was a growth ; not coming of thought or study, not found by research, or in the meditations of lawgivers, but springing from the earth, like a fountain. It was the instinct of the people, the production of society, as we see society, unaided by statesmanship and learning, sometimes hindered by them, advance itself from century to century. Far from being urged by those who encouraged the people to break with the British crown, it was expressly and strongly disclaimed by them ; but it was inevitable. Had the people, instead of being eager for it, been, like their great men, indisposed to democracy, where were the institutions to which they could turn? where the materials out of which to construct a government not democratic ? where the power that was not in the people? How were they to set up a monarchy ? how preserve and protect it with no aristocratic support ? Democracy was a fate, and the only open question was, how much democracy.

Did, then, our fathers, the men we worship, movers of a revolution, did they repent, would they draw back, were they false to the people ? They hesitated to jump in the dark; they paused before what was terrible; terrible because it was unknown, untried, and against the prejudices and opinions of the world. Awed by the doubts, and respecting the traditions, of mankind, then controlled by prejudices wholly aristocratic, they had no confidence in the people, and gave way to democracy with reluctance. Whoever will take up and examine the works of the most liberal thinkers upon the economy of nations will be satisfied that, before our time, the capacity of society to regulate itself to the extent now attempted in the United States, never was so much as conceived or imagined.

Section III. Ancient And Modern Democracy

Of ancient democracy, which dates long before representation, we have a very imperfect understanding, for want of knowledge of the organization of ancient society. In the events of the old republics, their wars, tumults, and disturbances, we have the instruction of history, but we have only a faint idea of the mutual relations and daily existence of individuals. The prevalence of frightful debauchery and barbarous cruelty, side by side with exalted virtue, like those stupendous architectural remains that leave everything modern to look so puny and insignificant, of people who were, at the same time, destitute of the common conveniences and appliances of daily life, makes it probable that ancient and modern liberty differ i^ore than we can understand, and that from the old to the new there can be neither sound argument nor safe deduction.

Modern democracy has not had its hundred years, but it seems to be making its way like a Providence, regardless what men think of it, or do. In Europe, their only democratic revolution which ran its course, that of France in 1789, was a disappointment ; too much was looked for. That of England in 1640 was a disappointment. In 1848, the people were a miserable failure. Nowhere in Europe have they made their proofs ; nowhere in America have they achieved a triumph to silence their enemies. It is, by a large portion of the intelligence of the world, regarded askance where it is not regarded with terror.

But, by what shall it be judged ? By time. Democracy came into the world as other systems came before it ; as feudalism came, and then monarchy, to be judged by their works. There could be no other demonstration. Men did not know till they saw that the feudal system was to rule Europe, redeem society, rescue civilization, and restore order ; that feudalism being worn out, the right of one man to rule all the rest, by the grace of God, would establish itself everywhere, and occupy the field.

CHAPTER 11.

DEMOCRACY IN THE FEDERAL CONVENTION. SECTION I.

THE CONVENTION NOT DEMOCRATIC.

The men who met in convention, in May, 1787, to frame our fundamental laws, saw democracy as Numa saw the empire of the Caesars ; they saw its infancy, they did not see it conquer the world. The day was not come when the French Revolution, the career of their own posterity, and democratic movement everywhere, brought forward the masses, and cast a shadow on birth and station.

During the war, Washington wrote to a friend,* who was raising a regiment, " I earnestly recom- " mend to you to be circumspect in your choice of ^ "officers. Take none but gentlemen." A few years earlier, Mr. Adams, who succeeded Washington, as the second President of the United States, had been placed in his class, at his New England

* Letter to Colonel George Baylor, January 9, 1111: Sparks's Washington, vol. iv. p. 269.

school, " according to the dignity of his birth" and "the rank of his parents,"*

A great experiment was to be made ; a people, new in their ideas, and starting in their career, demanded at the hands of their chiefs, not pure democracy, which, necessarily, was out of the question, but an open government, with institutions that would leave to it ample scope ; and the convention submitted to the consideration of the people what they called their plan, with more fear than hope ; and with little thought that their grain of democracy would multiply to the harvest of to-day. They were not confident, like their constituents ; but Mr. Madison, who knew them well, has thus recorded their deserts :f " I feel it," he says, " a duty to express my profound and solemn

* " The distinction of ranks was observed with such punc- " tilious nicety, that, in the arrangement of members of every '-' class, precedence was assigned to every individual accord- " ing to the dignity of his birth, or to the rank of his parents. " John Adams was thus placed the fourteenth in a class of " twenty -four, a station for which he was probably indebted "rather to the standing of his maternal family than to that "of his father." See Works of John Adams, vol. i. p. 14: Fragment of a biography of John Adams by his son John Quincy Adams.

f Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 118: Mr. Madison's " Intro- "duction to the Debates in the Convention."

" conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity *'of observing and appreciating the views of the " convention, collectively and individually, that " there never was an assembly of men, charged " with a great and arduous trust, who were more " pure in their motives, or more exclusively or " anxiously devoted to the object committed to " them, than were the members of the federal con- "vention of 1787, to the object of devising and " proposing a constitutional system which should " best supply the defects of that which it was to "replace, and best secure the permanent liberty "and happiness of their country."

He might have added that, judged by their debates, either the convention of 1787 was a body of men very superior to the convention of their ancestors, which sat in 1688, or that in it, the people having no influence, conclusions had to be reached by processes singularly cramped. But these American statesmen, though more adventurous than those of a hundred years before, had not ^ stirred the people to democracy, only to independence. Four years before, they were claimed as British subjects, and eleven years before, they boasted they were. The English constitution, made by nobody, a bundle of customs, which gave liberty to those high enough to reach it, was imitated as far as possible ; it was the freest the modern world had seen ; and under it these gentlemen had lived, and enjoyed a large measure of liberty.

In the troubles which preceded the Revolution, and the wars and troubles that followed, the colonial feeling, of which Franklin spoke, in his examination before the British House of Commons, in 1766,* when he said, the people of the colonies " have not only a respect but an affection for Great " Britain, to be an Old England man was of itself " a character of some respect, and gave a kind of " rank among us," was yet in life ; it had been shaken, but not uprooted. It was the feeling of Mr. Jefferson, after hostilities had actually begun, and Washington was in the field at the head of an army, when he saidf he would rather be in

* The celebrated examination he underwent, the 3d of February, 1166, as to the repeal of the Stamp Act. See Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv. p. 169.

f " This would be thought a hard condition to those who "still wish for re-union with their parent country. I am " sincerely one of those, and would rather be in dependence " on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on " earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those, too, " who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us " assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experi- " ence has shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend "my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean." Letter to dependence upon Great Britain, than on any nation on earth, or than on no nation. There was not in the convention one man possessed of what would be, now, called a democratic spirit. While their study was to devise institutions which might reconcile the country to their own ideas, and to more government than the people wanted, they did not run counter to the popular feeling, or trifle with it. The answer of that lawgiver to the question, what laws he had given his country, when he said. As good as they can hear, was profound.

We were an unhoused people in 1787, but if there had been an attempt to put on us institutions less than democratic, they would have been rejected. New ideas move slow, and those, of all others, with whom they move slowest, are the men, like those of the federal convention, who, having grown up under the old ideas, have to put new ones in action, and answer for the consequences. The members of the federal convention indulged not in the high and hopeful vein. In adjusting representation to population, it was suggested that the number of representatives in Congress might become excessive, on the proposed

Mr. Randolph, August 23, 1175: Jefferson's Works, vol. i. p. 201.

unalterable basis of one representative, in the lower house, to every forty thousand of population.* The answer was, " It is not to be supposed " that the government will last so long as to pro- "duce this effect. Can it be supposed that this "vast country, including the western territory, " will, one hundred and fifty years hence, remain " one nation ? . . . If the government should " continue so long, alterations may be made in the ''constitution in the manner proposed in a sub- '" sequent article."

SECTION II.

THEIR VIEWS OF A JUDICIARY.

We go on to show in their proceedings, by the record of them,f how the members of the con-

* Madison Papers, vol. iii. pp. 1262, 1263.

f Journal of the Federal Convention, committed by them at their adjournment to the keeping of Washington, as the President of the body, with directions to retain it " subject "to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Consti- "tution," placed by him in the Department of State, and, under act of Congress of 21th March, 1818, published in 1819. Proceedings and debates in the Federal Convention, which Mr. Madison, from day to day, wrote out, and which comprise both a journal and report of debates, published after his death by Congress, with other papers of his, in the year 1840, and known as the Madison Papers.

vention of 1787, assembled to make a government for us, men born in a remote corner of the British realm, but educated by a revolution ; citizens of a world nearly a hundred years behind ours in political knowledge, but infinitely superior to any statesmen whom, to-day, we could bring together, treated that question of democracy, to them a source of nothing but uneasiness, and to which every succeeding year adds interest and importance.

The old Confederacy may be said to have had neither Executive nor Judiciary.* The convention resolved that the new establishment should be endowed with, what was almost unknown in those days, and still is rare, three departments or divisions of government, each independent of the others, legislative, executive, and judicial. To the judiciary they did not hesitate to give, in accordance with their decidedly conservative views, a life tenure, under executive appointment; the judges to be, except in cases of conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors, irremovable from office, and their salaries incapable of reduction. From this frame of a judicial establishment the convention do not seem to have varied for a moment. The judiciary of their republic was to be high

* Excepting for admiralty cases.

above the reach of influence, and wholly and absolutely independent of power ; more independent than that of the monarchy from which they had parted. It has, in effect, higher duties to perform.

SECTION III.

THEIR VIEWS OF A LEGISLATITRE — HESITATION TO SUBMIT THE CHOICE OP MEMBERS TO THE PEOPLE.

We pass to legislative power. The members of the federal convention were not elected by the people ; they were delegated by the legislatures of their States. On the 31st of May, in committee of the whole, the resolution, " that the members of '■'■ the first hranch of the national legislature ought to " he elected hy the people of the several States, being "taken up,"* Mr. Sherman f "opposed the elec- " tion by the people, insisting that, it ought to be "by the state legislatures. The people, he said, " immediately, should have as little to do as may " be about the government. They want informa- " tion, and are constantly liable to be misled. Mr.

* Madison Papers, vol. i. pp. t53-T5t.

f Roger Sherman, delegate from Connecticut, member of the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. After the organization of the federal government, he sat in the House of Representatives, and afterwards in the Senate.

" Gerry.* The evils we experience flow from the " excess of democracy. The people do not want " virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. " In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by "experience, that they are daily misled into the " most baneful measures and opinions by the false " reports circulated by designing men, and which "no one on the spot can refute. One principal " evil arises from the want of due provision for " those employed in the administration of govern- " ment. It would seem to be a maxim of democ- " racy to starve the public servants. He mentioned " the popular clamor in Massachusetts for the re- " duction of salaries, and the attack made on that "of the Governor, though secured by the spirit " of the constitution itself He had, he said, been " too republican heretofore ; he was still, however, " republican ; but had been taught by experience

* Elbridge Geny, delegate from Massachusetts, a member of the Congress of the Revolution, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. After the organization of the federal government, member of the House of Representatives; minister to France ; elected, by the Democratic party, Vice- President of the United States on the ticket with Mr. Madison, in 1813, and, by the Democratic party of Massachusetts, Governor of that State, in 1810. He refused to sign the Constitution.

"the danger of the levelling spirit. Mr. Mason* " argued strongly for an election of the larger " branch by the people. It was to be the grand " depository of the democratic principle of the " government. It was, so to speak, to be our

* George Mason, delegate from Yirglnia, friend and neighbour of Washington, and an ardent supporter of the Revolution ; regarded as one of the ablest men of his day. His statue stands, one of a group, in front of the Capitol at Richmond. Mr. Madison (Rives's Life of Madison, vol. i. p. 162, note) wrote of his services in the convention, to his grandson, who was preparing materials for his ancestor's biography : " He sustained throughout the proceedings of " the body the high character of a powerful reasouer, a pro- " found statesman, and a devoted republican." Mr. Hamilton described him (Hamilton's Works, vol. vi. p. 557) as "professing popular doctrines." He refused to sign the constitution, deeming the powers it conferred excessive ; and, for the same reason, opposed, with Patrick Henry and others, its adoption by his State in the Convention of Virginia, of which he was a member. Mr. Jefferson said of him (Jefferson's Works, vol. i. pp. 40, 41), " I had many occasional " and strenuous coadjutors in debate" (this was in the Legislature of Yirginia), " and one, most steadfast, able " and zealous, who was himself a host. This was George " Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those "who acted on the theatre of the Revolution, of expansive " mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in " the law of our former Constitution, and earnest for the "republican change on democratic principles."

" House of Commons. It ought to know and sym- " pathize with every part of the community ; and " ought therefore to be taken not only from differ- " ent parts of the whole republic, but also from " different districts of the larger members of it ; " which had in several instances, particularly in " Virginia, different interests and views, arising " from difference of produce, of habits, &c., &c. He " admitted that we had been too democratic, but " was afraid we should incautiously run into the "opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the " rights of every class of the people. He had often " wondered at the indifference of the superior " classes of society to this dictate of humanity and " policy ; considering, that, however affluent their "circumstances or elevated their situations might " be, the course of a few years not only might, " but certainly would, distribute their posterity " throughout the lowest class of society. Every "selfish motive, therefore, every family attach- " ment, ought to recommend such a system of " policy as would provide no less carefully for the " rights and happiness of the lowest, than of the " highest order of citizens. Mr. Wilson* con- * James Wilson, delegate from Pennsylvania, member of the Confederate Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States by appointment of Washington.

"tended strenuously for drawing the most numer- " ous branch of the Legislature immediately from "the people. He was for raising the federal " pyramid to a considerable altitude, and for that "reason wished to give it as broad a basis as possi- " ble. No government could long subsist without "' the confidence of the people. . . . Mr. Madison "considered the popular election of one branch " of the National Legislature as essential to every " plan of free government. He observed, that in " some of the States one branch of the Legislature " was composed of men already removed from the " people by an intervening body of electors. That "if the first branch of the General Legislature " should be elected by the State Legislatures, the " second branch elected by the first, the Executive " by the second together with the first, and other "appointments again made for the subordinate "purposes by the Executive, the people would be "lost sight of altogether; and the necessary sym- " pathy between them and their rulers and officers " too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy "of refining the popular appointments by succes- "sive filtrations, but thought it might be pushed "too far. . . . Mr. Gerry did not like the elec- "tion by the people. The maxims taken from "the British constitution were often fallacious

"when applied to our situation, which was ex- "tremely different. Experience, he said, had " shown that the State Legislatures, drawn imme- " diately from the people, did not always possess "their confidence. He had no objection, however, " to an election by the people, if it were so qualified " that men of honor and character might not be " unwilling to be joined in the appointments. He "seemed to think the people might nominate a " certain number, out of which the State Legisla- "ture should be bound to choose. Mr. Butler* " thought an election by the people an impracti- " cable mode." No other gentleman addressed the convention. " On the question for an election of "the first branch of the National Legislature, by "the people, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsyl- " vania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Aye — 6; " New Jersey, South Carolina, No — 2; Connecticut, " Delaware, divided."