Kentucky unless the more conservative members had assurances through Madison's honored name. The following passage from Washington's farewell address will inform us why Washington never joined in any of the initiatory steps towards the Resolutions of '98 "All obstruction to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive to fundamental principles, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force, to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests." Were it not that this passage might be misconstrued into a denial of the right of the states and their people to act upon the general government by public meetings, by speeches, through the press, by elections and legislative remonstrances, we might subscribe to it, unreservedly. It was the golden mean, that should have been found between Adams and Jefferson, and then the reconciliation of the address and the resolutions could easily have been arrived at. Experience, that should be impressive, for its bitterness, has proven to us, that it is not a congenial way to look at the governments of the United States, under the shadows of prejudices, which regard either the federal authority or the states as the special threateners or guardians of liberty. Neither the goats nor the sheep are all in one or the other. Indeed, the whole business of dividing the country into two herds, who cry Wolf! Wolf! at each other, is full of mischief to the country. The same people are in the states, that are in the United States, and the same kind of politicians sit in the halls of Congress, that sit in the State legislatures. The idea that there is any special body of men for liberty per se, and that any particular set of individuals meditate tyranny, is a mere partisan fiction. It was untrue in 1798, and it is less true than ever. Monarchists, Consolidationists, Republicans, and Statesrightsmen are words (not even names) that are bandied about; but they fit 1 Fred Kapp, in his book on America, ascribes this purpose to Hamilton when he wrote this passage for Washington. I nobody, just as well as everybody; because we have known monarchists in America, who believed themselves to be republicans; and consolidationists, who could not say five words without mixing states-rights in them. By far too many of our American politicians are, what they are, from their lips out, and that only for the time being. They are everything by turns, and nothing long. It is true that the old federal, and its successors the Whig and Republican party, have sinned oftener in endowing social forces with political power. But this their tendency to use social administration (corporations embodying great private interests) as public or semi-public organs, for political ends, is one of the peculiarities of the age, that was caused by the efforts to dispense with regular public authorities and functionaries, which were believed to be ways to gain liberty. The school of Jefferson and Jackson drove many persons to corporations, because their war-cry, that "that government is best which governs least," prevented the organization and establishment of public administrative authorities to a degree that would, if corporations had not been improvised, have stopped public improvements and the credit means believed to be needed for them. The federalists were too subservient to corporations and their great monied interests; the democrats too repulsive and too little appreciative of their value, as interpolitical mediums, or half-way houses between social wants, and their ultimate satisfaction by full political organisms. When General Jackson in 1832 had to act upon the doctrine of nullification, he used these words: "No one would make greater personal sacrifices or official exertion to defend them (states-rights) from violation, but equal care must be taken to prevent, on their part, an improper interference with, or resumption of, the rights they have vested in the nation. The line has not been so distinctly drawn as to avoid doubts, in some cases, of the exercise of power. Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution; but there are others, on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt. . . . Our Constitution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws and another power to resist them.” The General also ridicules the proposition that states can exercise authority, over the Government of the United States, not given in the Constitution, in these words: "Congress is composed of the representatives of all the states, and of all the people of all the states; but we (meaning the nullifiers), part of the people of one state, to whom the Constitution has given no power on the subject, from whom it has expressly taken it away,-we, who have solemnly agreed that this Constitution shall be our law,-we, most of whom have sworn to support it, we now abrogate this law, and swear, and force others. to swear, that it shall not be obeyed!" Thus Jackson found the golden mean between Webster and Calhoun. We need not extend these remarks, especially as we shall devote a special chapter to the question of secession. Between 1798 and 1832 were thirty-four years and five presidents; between 1832 and 1862 were thirty years and ten presidents. During all this period the questions, discussed in the Resolutions of '98, have been open sores upon the body politic; they remain so to the hour in which we write. Both very sincere and very insincere great men have written upon them, and still the sophistries of both extremes have, respectively, the upper hand! There must be, then, an inherent difficulty in the institutions of the country and the political temper of its people; and it can be no other than the impossibility to draw those precise lines, on one side of which it is to be declared proper for the general government to transact the public business, and on the other, the states, which agitators are for ever insisting upon. It seems to us wisdom to accept that impossibility; but to resolve, at the same time, that we will meet each question as it arises, as becomes an enlightened and patriotic people; and that we will neither deny nor give powers to the federal government or to the states, from one-sided admiration for either. Then will St. Simon's words at the head of this chapter cease to be a correct description of American politics, because, though we shall then have an endless crisis, we shall also have a continuous adjustment; in other words, we shall have the will and the power to abate it as fast as it rises. CHAPTER X. AMERICAN PARTIES. "All things are jests, are dust, are nought, -Greek Motto. WE may doubt, yea reverse this motto as a general proposition, but it is true of our political parties. They have turned our constitutions into jests, our administrations into the dust, and our reforms ever end in nought. It was and is believed, that American party organizations were not only free-er in themselves, but also more conducive to freedom than parties were elsewhere; and they were looked upon as excellent schools for learning practical politics. The truth is they have brutalized the public mind; and envenomed citizen against citizen; so have they rendered nearly impossible the election and appointment of good men; and are at this time a mere convenience for office-seekers and jobbers. In lieu of being each the alter ego of British parties, which would not be saying much of them, they evolve neither great men nor great measures; which their prototypes certainly do. And they are therefore mere vexatious machines, that as often confound those that handle them, as those for whom they are run ostensibly. Instead of spreading information on public subjects, they pervert and distort the facts; they are not schools in any good sense; they are largely schools for scandal. The reasons for this comparative inferiority are not far to seek. Parties in Great Britain and Ireland are historic in their origin, and they have ever had, and have now, actual concrete public issues to deal with. The invasions, as well as the degrees of submission to the conquerors, and consequently the re-establishment of social order and a, permanently possible, political rule, have there given to the governments and the governed public habits, which, if not virtuous in a high degree, were wisely intelligent. Here the questions were generally fictitious; the tyrants fought, and the deliverers from tyranny were largely creatures of imagination; and the real evils and misrules that should have engaged public attention were either too concealed under a present material progress, as to escape observation, or they were caused by popular conduct, which everybody was afraid to question. Voting placemen into or out of office is a very different occupation from voting ministries, with defined public policies, in and out. It was for that reason a sad mistake to start parties in the United States upon the idea, that they must necessarily be similitudes of the Whig and Tory parties in England, or even to suppose, that those here had or would have similar functions. Our parties' task was for a hundred years to organize government; theirs to make it fair to society. Washington knew, that parties originate and live on personal ambition, and that they could be good only as servants of the commonwealth, never as its masters. He also understood, that the establishment of the Constitution of 1787 was doing for the Union what running a ship into port is, and that it was an escape from wrong embryo parties, that were about to form and prevent union and government. Whether he was conscious of the fact, that his presence was the chief obstacle to partisan organizations, in the good sense in which true kings and men of virtue and genius prevent parties, we cannot tell; he never expressed himself on the point. But his fixed determination not to be the crusher of parties, in the sense of Sylla, or Marius, or Cromwell, or even the Medici, is so apparent in all his conduct, that we must presume him to have had the true model in his mind. We regard, however, his refusal of a re-election in 1796 and the issue of his farewell address as a confession on his part, that what he expected to accomplish by drawing around himself the quinquevirate (if we may coin the word) of Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Knox, and Jay, was not secured, and that parties would be formed that would vex society. He did not repeat what he said in his first message, to wit: "I behold the surest pledges that no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal public eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests. Parties were forming before his very eyes, and dividing on the degree of power suitable for an American Executive; on the maintenance of public and private credit; on money; on war claims; on the treatment of the so-called Loyalists and their landed possessions; on the disposition of the public lands; the organization of the Treasury and its revenues; and last, not least, on our foreign relations, especially whether America should be philo-French or philo-English. And the leaders of |