Sixty Years of Democratic Rule The doctrine of '98 won in the election of 1800. The Democratic party was put in possession of the government. Instead of nineteen Federalists and thirteen Democrats in the Senate, there were now nineteen Democrats and thirteen Federalists. In the House the new party gained twenty-three members, and had a majority of eighteen. On the thirty-sixth ballot it chose Jefferson as President. Thus the man who made the doctrine of State sovereignty a principle in the creed of a great party was the first to be chosen to the Presidency by the House of Representatives voting as States. He wished the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions added as an amendment to the Constitution, but the addition seemed superfluous. The party that believed in them was in possession of the government, and, by their interpretation of the Constitution, would practically make the resolutions a twelfth amendment. Little did they dream that their lease of power should run sixty years; that during this period there was to be but one Congress-the twenty-sixth-in which they should not have a majority in one House. Of that Congress, their opponents should control both Houses; but John Tyler was then to be President. Little did they dream that, later, he, alone of all the Presidents, was to put the idea of State sovereignty to the test by adhering to Virginia when she seceded, and by becoming a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. Whether State sovereignty is a true idea is one question; whether it prevailed in the eighteenth century is another. The triumph of the doctrine of '98 indicates the dominant political creed of the times. A new party came in with the new century. The truth and value of their doctrines could be tested only by administration. CHAPTER VII THE POLITICAL ESTATE AT THE OPENING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A GOVERNMENT must be judged by the condition. of the people who support it. If they are happy, prosperous, and contented, the mere form of the government is of little account. If their opinions, aspirations, and wants are ignored, a revolution is at hand. Some form of government will emerge from the political cataclysm, but only to be tested, like the old. We are prone to think that the American Revolution-with accent on the American-righted all political wrongs, and put the political estate in trust, much as we have it to-day. Was it not a triumph of the rights of man? Did not Great Britain long deny them? Did we not establish free governments, with laws of our own making and lawmakers of our own choosing? Indeed, were not the days of the fathers better than our own? He who knows least about the matter will doubtless answer "Yes" to all these queries. He who knows most will not regret that his lot is cast at the close of the nineteenth century rather than in the years when the fathers are supposed to have straightened out the rights of man. It is written in the records of New Hampshire how, on the 4th of November, 1775, its Provincial Congress adopted a resolution that delegates should be chosen by the electors, and not by the value of their estates.* This was revolution. Who in America had ever presumed to participate in the choice of delegates or select-men, or county commissioners, without first being qualified to have an opinion because he owned a freehold estate? The landless man was the tramp of colonial times. He was not anchored to the State. Property, not men, voted. Fifty years before the Revolution the New Hampshire Assembly had refused to allow any person to vote who was not a freeholder, owning land of the value of twenty pounds; and any person coming to reside in a town in the province, unless he was a freeholder, or a native of the town, or had served his apprenticeship in it, could not be an elector until he had first obtained the consent of the select-men.† In August of the last year of the seventeenth century, he who would vote in New Hampshire was required thenceforth to own land. of the value of fifty pounds sterling. Three years before,§ in the neighboring province of Massachusetts, he only was permitted to vote who was a church-member in full communion, a householder, twenty-four years of age, with an income yearly of * Provincial Papers, Vol. vii., p. 644. The principal authorities for this chapter are the colonial laws. New Hampshire Laws, 1726, p. 120. Printed by B. Green, Boston. New Hampshire Acts and Laws, Portsmouth, 1771, pp. 3, 4. § Massachusetts Laws, December, 1686. Boston, 1814, p. 42. Representation Regulated by Population at least ten shillings; and this had been essentially the requirement since 1631. Time did not greatly ease the burden, for in 1692 the freeman was required to be worth twenty pounds in land. Three years passed and a rude attempt at apportionment was made. Every town of forty freeholders might elect a member of the General Court, and a town having one hundred and twenty freeholders might send two. Towns having fewer than forty might combine, each paying its share of the expense of maintaining a delegate; or each town might elect and support its own.* At the time of the Revolution a town having two hundred and twenty freeholders could send three delegates; and one with a hundred more, four.† The admission of freemen, at least in New England, was a local matter, resting with the towns. Rhode Island, as early as 1663, adopted the rule. A century wrought a change in the method of registration. The secretary of the colony kept the roll of the inhabitants, and he who owned real estate worth forty pounds, or that rented for forty shillings a year, and who had been proposed as a freeman three months before the election, might vote.§ Exception was made for a freeman's eldest son. He voted, "being the son of his father." But the lot of the freeman was not always a happy one. Connecticut, whose election laws were like those of Rhode Island, required, in 1715, that the freeman possess a certificate, signed * Massachusetts act, confirmed August 22, 1695. + March 1st. § Act, 1762. |