Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
in 1799, “at the request of the young men of Boston,” on the theme of
France and democracy. In this extraordinary composition Paine seems
to have been quite ravished by his own rhetoric, that flashes in many
a feint and parry before it impales its victim. It is a Federalist
philippic, designed to destroy the good name of all who have quitted
the sacred Federalist tribe. Words could hardly go further; disregard
for truth could scarcely be more brazen. Paine’s delight in clever
antitheses overweighs any scruples in regard to just statement. “The
French Republick,” he asserted, “has exhibited all the vices of
civilization, without one of the virtues of barbarism.” One or two bits
from this tremendous oration, that in “the glow of feeling, the swell
of language, and the brilliancy of sentiments” has “very seldom been
surpassed,” and that was “received with rapturous and enthusiastic
applause,” must suffice to illustrate the justice of the Federalist
claim to the custodianship of political good manners. “Politics should
have no passions,” Fisher Ames asserted--which excellent principle
young Robert Treat Paine exemplified thus:
Political Empiricism has never attained, in any age or nation, so
universal an ascendency, as at the present day in the “Illuminated
Republick.” Unfettered by the fear of innovation, and unshackled by
the prejudice of ages, the modern Frenchman is educated in a system
of moral and religious chimeras, which dazzle by their novelty
those volatile intellects, which prescriptive wisdom could never
impress with veneration. Every Frenchman, who has read a little is
a pedant; and the whole race of these horn-book Philosophers is
content with the atheism of Mirabeau ... the absurd philanthropy of
Condorcet, and the visionary politics of Rousseau. These are the
boundaries of their literary ambition, of their political science.
Hence it is, that they pretend to be too enlightened for belief,
too virtuous for government.
The feculence of party is not yet drained of its rankest sediment.
The worshippers of democracy, though their altars are thrown down,
are not yet converted from their devotions. The frozen snake has
still some sparks of animation; and, if placed by compassion near
your hospitable fires, he will revive with exasperated venom, and
sting the hardy fool that fostered him. Deal therefore with these
ferocious demoralizers, as our crafty mariners trade with the
savages of the Indian ocean--with your men at their posts, your
guns loaded, and your slow matches burning. (_Works_, p. 319.)
For all democrats Paine had the hearty contempt of an honest man for
a rogue, but for the intellectuals who expounded the new romantic
philosophy his indignation was measureless. “The legitimate plebeian
democrat,” he asserted, is “an enemy to all government, under which
he holds no office”; but fling him a bone from the public table and
“he becomes the very scavenger of administration.” The “Illuminated
Jacobin,” on the other hand, “never changes his principles.”
His whole science is directed to unhinge society, his whole
ambition to plunder it. He is too ravenous to be content with a
system of order himself; and too selfish to permit its enjoyment
by others. Like a hog in a flower-garden, he sets no value on the
variegated foliage he destroys, and seems only desirous to root out
every twig of vegetation, that can satiate his voracity. (_Ibid._,
p. 321.)
To such fustian was he reduced when his wit left him. That a
gentleman could talk like that, and other gentlemen applaud, is a
sad commentary on the intellectual honesty of partisanship, even
amongst decent Federalists. Fustian was the order of the day, and
Paine was merely baying with his pack. If only he had not professed
such virtues his extravagance might be forgiven; but extravagance
ill becomes a distinguished repository of political wisdom. Once,
indeed, his vivacity got him into a nasty mess. While editor of _The
Federal Orrery_, he accepted in 1795 a political poem entitled _The
Jacobiniad_, the satire of which Paine “new-pointed and new-edged”
before printing. The democrats, at whom it was directed, were vastly
incensed, and a mob gathered before his lodging but was dispersed.
Later the son of one of the victims challenged him to a duel. Paine
declined but armed himself with an unloaded pistol. Accidentally
meeting his challenger in the street, he drew his weapon, but the
young fellow, standing in no awe of a favorite of the muses, struck
the pistol down and proceeded to give Paine a sound drubbing. To such
base treatment may genius come, when wit forgets that a sally of the
tongue may invite a counter sally of the fists. And so we leave him in
the dust of the street, ignobly laid low by the strength of that vulgar
democracy which was to bring down so many things held dear by Boston
Tories. His was, very largely, a wasted life--wasted by sheer indolence
and feeble will. He was a fellow of some parts, and a sentence from one
of his dramatic criticisms may not inaptly apply to him: “The character
is not a sot, but his humor has a mellower tilth for having been
husbanded and manured by ‘the excellent endeavor of drinking.’”
Chapter II • Winds of Political Doctrine
I
Into the complacent little Boston of Fisher Ames and Robert Treat Paine
came the Embargo, the War of 1812, and the industrial revolution to
upset its static order and destroy its snug provincialism. The old
Federalism with its Hartford Convention and plans for New England
secession went the way of mortality, carrying with it to the grave the
old pessimism and the old spleen. The jealous isolationist policy was
quietly forgotten in Boston; the gospel of secession was preached no
more; George Cabot and Timothy Pickering gave way to other leaders; and
provincial Boston joined with Kentucky and Tennessee in extolling a
romantic nationalism. It sent to Washington a new spokesman, who joined
with Henry Clay in a paternalistic program of national expansion, and
took command of the forces combating the rising separatism of the South
Carolina school. By the year 1830 Boston had traveled far from the
times of the Hartford Convention.
The sufficient explanation of so striking a change is to be found,
of course, in the changing economics of Massachusetts. The Embargo
had proved a major disaster to New England shipping; and the Boston
merchants, counting their losses from idle and dismasted ships,
water-logging at the wharves, found just cause for hating the policy of
the administration. But if the shipping business was brought face to
face with tragedy, the manufacturing interests stumbled upon unexpected
prosperity. With British imports cut off, the home market offered a
tempting opportunity to Yankee enterprise. The familiar story of the
swift rise of New England industrialism need not be recounted here. It
is enough to remark that with the growth of domestic manufactures a
new group of economic leaders appeared, and the policy of New England
shifted from pro-mercantilism to pro-industrialism. It was a difficult
choice at first between the antagonistic claims of the Boston merchant
and the Lowell manufacturer; between the carriers of foreign goods who
demanded free trade, and the makers of domestic goods who demanded a
protective tariff. The traditional view of New England was strongly
for free trade. In 1807 a Federalist lawyer asserted it to be “an
unalienable right,” and in 1820 Judge Story asked, “Why should the
laboring classes be taxed for the necessaries of life?”[433] The tariff
bill of 1824 got only one vote from Massachusetts; but in the four
years between the passage of that act and the “Tariff of Abominations”
of 1828, Massachusetts went over definitely to industrialism.
Thenceforth she was to be the leader in the movement looking to
governmental paternalism, substituting the expansive Federalism of
Hamilton for the restrictive Federalism of Fisher Ames, and becoming in
consequence whole-heartedly nationalistic.
Equally significant, though less observed, was the changed attitude of
Massachusetts towards the great republican experiment. Gone was the
older generation, with its face turned to the past and its heart bound
up with the patriarchal ideals of a decadent squirearchy. Gone also
were the disturbant fears of democracy. The menace of Daniel Shays,
that had put the old Federalists in a rage at democracy, was long since
forgotten; and the nervous panic over French Jacobinism, that had
upset New England for a decade, had subsided. In the light of longer
experience with its ways democracy was seen to be far from terrifying.
The hobgoblin of faction that had benightmared the dreams of Fisher
Ames was discovered to be only a bogey to frighten naughty boys.
Massachusetts had kept off the agrarian reef, despite war and economic
unrest, and with her new constitution of 1820 property interests
were as secure as any old Federalist could have wished. Gentlemen of
principle and property were still in control of the state; and if less
emphasis was laid on principle and more on property--if less regard
seemed to be paid to gentlemen of breeding and manners, and more to
assertive self-seeking--business was no less secure than in the good
old days, and its profits were greater. And so, master of its looms and
a growing home market, New England industrialism regarded genially the
great western movement, fostered by a benevolent paternalism, confident
of extending its markets with every mile of westward expansion. To
encourage the development of the West and South by a Federal policy
of internal improvement became, therefore, common business foresight,
provided of course that the Constitution should follow population and
safeguard business interests against local agrarianism and the menace
of particularism.
By the year 1830 both dangers lay black against the political horizon.
The triumph of Jackson had enthroned the agrarian menace at Washington
and produced such a scrambling of frightened interests--such a rattling
among the old bones of Federalism and scurrying among the young limbs
of industrialism--as the country had not seen for many a year. Henry
Clay appealed to his followers in the West, and Webster marshaled his
adherents of the East, and from the coalescing of these incongruous
elements emerged the Whig party to do battle with Old Hickory. It was
a patchwork army at best. In the hour of peril, principles go by the
board. The Whig party was lineal heir of the old Federalism, but it
denied its philosophical patrimony. It substituted expediency for the
old economic realism, and began and ended intellectually bankrupt. Its
bitter and unseemly squabbles over the Bank and tariff, its platitudes
of patriotism and its pose of disinterestedness, the venom of its
personal attack upon Jackson, were the earmarks of a policy of shallow
opportunism that failed to make use of such victories as fell to its
lot, for the simple reason that it could never agree on what to do.
Such cohesive power as held it together--aside from petty antagonism to
Jackson--was the vague assumption that the well-being of the American
people was dependent on governmental patronage; the belief that each
economic group and section must receive its special favor, and that
through tariffs and bonuses and internal improvements the country as a
whole must prosper. Of this principle of special favors--a return to
the seventeenth century from which eighteenth-century liberalism was a
reaction--the American System of Henry Clay was the chief expression,
and it remains the most significant bequest of the Whig party to our
political history.
The Whig party was the first attempt of our rising middle class to