Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Chapter III • Political Thinkers • The English Group
Of this great age of American political thought, two important
characteristics emerge: it was overwhelmingly English in its
antecedents; and it was already differentiating its program from
that of contemporary English liberalism. Nearly all the outstanding
men--Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Wilson, Mason, Madison, Gouverneur
Morris--were of the older liberal tradition, and with some notable
exceptions, of the school of Pitt. Contemporary English liberals such
as Priestley, Bentham, and Godwin numbered few adherents among the
leaders of American thought. Economic conditions in America already
were imposing conclusions that pointed in a direction other than that
which English liberalism was traveling. The doctrine of the diminished
state, which was making persistent headway among English liberals,
could make no appeal to men who desired an augmented state; and
liberalism as a policy was in ill repute at a time when men believed
they were suffering from too much liberalism. American political
thought, therefore, followed an independent path, and in spite of its
English origin came to conclusions that differentiated it broadly from
the old-world theory.
I • Alexander Hamilton • The Leviathan State
Of the disciplined forces that put to rout the disorganized party
of agrarianism, the intellectual leader was Alexander Hamilton,
the brilliant Anglo-French West Indian, then just entered upon his
thirties. A man of quite remarkable ability, a lucid thinker, a great
lawyer, a skillful executive, a masterly organizer, a statesman of
broad comprehension and inflexible purpose, he originated and directed
the main policies of the Federalist group, and brought them to
successful issue. For this work he was singularly well equipped, for
in addition to great qualities of mind and persuasive ways he was free
to work unhampered by the narrow localisms and sectional prejudices
that hampered native Americans. He was rather English than American,
with a certain detachment that refused to permit his large plans to be
thwarted by minor, vexatious details, or the perversity of stupid men.
He was like the elder Pitt in the magnificence of his imperial outlook.
Such a man would think in terms of the nation rather than of the
state. He would agree with Paine that the continental belt must be
more securely buckled. The jealousies and rivalries that obstructed
the creation of a centralized Federal government found no sympathy
with him. He was annoyed beyond all patience with the dissensions of
local home rule. In his political philosophy there was no place for
“the political monster of an _imperium in imperio_”; he would destroy
all lesser sovereignties and reduce the several commonwealths to a
parish status. For town-meeting democracies and agrarian legislatures
he had frank contempt. The American villager and farmer he never knew
and never understood; his America was the America of landed gentlemen
and wealthy merchants and prosperous professional men, the classes
that were most bitterly anti-agrarian. And it was in association with
this group of conservative representatives of business and society
that he took his place as directing head in the work of reorganizing
the loose confederation into a strong and cohesive union. When
that work was accomplished his influence was commanding, and for a
dozen years he directed the major policies of the Federalist party.
His strategic position as Secretary of the Treasury enabled him to
stamp his principles so deeply upon the national economy that in all
the intervening years since he quitted his post they have not been
permanently altered. That we still follow the broad principles of
Hamilton in our financial policy is a remarkable testimony to the
perspicacity of his mind and his understanding of the economic forces
that control modern society. And hence, because the Hamiltonian
principles lie at the core of the problem which has proved so difficult
of solution by modern liberalism, the life and work of Hamilton are of
particular significance in our democratic development.
Hamilton was our first great master of modern finance, of that finespun
web of credit which holds together our industrial life; and because
his policies opened opportunities of profit to some and entailed
loss upon others, they have been debated with an acrimony such as few
programs have endured. About the figure of the brilliant federalist
the myth-makers have industriously woven their tales, distorting the
man into either a demigod or a monster. The individual has been merged
in the system which he created, and later interpretation has been shot
through with partisan feeling; political and economic prejudice has
proved too strong for disinterested estimate. Any rational judgment
of Hamilton is dependent upon an interpretation of the historical
background that determined his career, and in particular of the state
of post-Revolutionary economics; and over such vexing questions
partisans have wrangled interminably. Thus Sumner, in his life of
Hamilton, asserts dogmatically that Federalism was no other than the
forces of law and order at war with the turbulent, anarchistic forces
unloosed by the Revolution, and that the putting down of the scheme
of repudiation was the necessary preliminary to the establishment
of a great nation. In the light of such an interpretation, Hamilton
the far-seeing, courageous and honest master of finance, was the
savior of nationality, the one supreme figure rising above an envious
group of lesser men. But, as has been sufficiently pointed out in
preceding chapters, the historical facts are susceptible of quite other
interpretation; and as our knowledge of the economic struggle then
going on becomes more adequate, the falsity of such an explanation
becomes patent. If, on the other hand, we concede that the crux of the
political problem in 1787 was economic--the struggle waging between
farmer and business groups for control of government--then the position
of Hamilton becomes clear; he was the spokesman of the business
economy. He thought in terms of nationality and espoused the economics
of capitalism, because he discovered in them potentialities congenial
to his imperialistic mind.
The career of Hamilton followed logically from the determining facts
of temperament and experience. He came to New York an alien, without
position or influence, ambitious to make a name and stir in the
world; and in the America of his day there could be little doubt
what doors opened widest to preferment. He made friends easily, and
with his aristocratic tastes he preferred the rich and distinguished
to plebeians. Endowed with charming manners and brilliant parts, he
fascinated all whom he met; before he was of age he was intimate with
all the Whig leaders, civil and military, on Washington’s staff and
elsewhere, lending his brains to the solution of knotty problems,
prodding stupider minds with illuminating suggestions, proving himself
the clearest thinker in whatever group he found himself. It was by
sheer force of intellect that he gained distinction. Singularly
precocious, he matured early; before his twenty-fifth year he seems
to have developed every main principle of his political and economic
philosophy, and thereafter he never hesitated or swerved from his path.
He was tireless in propaganda, urging on the proposed Constitutional
convention, discussing with Robert Morris his favorite project of
a national bank, outlining various systems of funding, advocating
tariffs as an aid to domestic manufacture, and sketching the plan of a
political and economic system under which native commercialism could go
forward. His reputation as an acute and trustworthy financial adviser
was well established with influential men north and south, when the new
government was set up, and Washington turned to him naturally for the
Treasury post, to guide financial policies during the difficult days
immediately ahead. But so able a man could not be restricted within
a single portfolio, and during the larger part of Washington’s two
administrations Hamilton’s was the directing mind and chief influence.
He regarded himself as Prime Minister and rode roughshod over his
colleagues. Major policies such as that of no entangling alliances must
receive his careful scrutiny and approval before they were announced;
and in consequence more credit belongs to Hamilton for the success of
those first administrations than is commonly recognized.
But when we turn from the administrator and statesman to the
creative thinker, there is another story to tell. The quickness of
his perceptions, the largeness of his plans and efficacy of his
methods--his clear brilliancy of understanding and execution--are
enormously impressive; but they cannot conceal certain intellectual
shortcomings. There was a lack of subtlety in the swift working of his
mind, of shades and _nuances_ in the background of his thought, that
implied a lack of depth and richness in his intellectual accumulation.
Something hard, almost brutal lurks in his thought--a note of
intellectual arrogance, of cynical contempt. He was utterly devoid of
sentiment, and without a shred of idealism, unless a certain grandiose
quality in his conceptions be accounted idealism. His absorbing
interest in the rising system of credit and finance, his cool unconcern
for the social consequences of his policies, reveal his weakness. In
spite of his brilliancy Hamilton was circumscribed by the limitations
of the practical man.
In consequence of such limitations Hamilton was not a political
philosopher in the large meaning of the term. In knowledge of history
he does not compare with John Adams; and as an open-minded student of
politics he is immensely inferior to Jefferson. Outside the domain of
the law, his knowledge does not always keep pace with his argument. He
reasons adroitly from given premises, but he rarely pauses to examine
the validity of those premises. The fundamentals of political theory he
seems never to have questioned, and he lays down a major principle with
the easy finality of a dogmatist. Compare his views on any important
political principle with those of the greater thinkers of his time, and
they are likely to prove factional if not reactionary. The two tests
of eighteenth-century liberalism were the doctrine of individualism,
and the doctrine of the minimized state; and Hamilton rejected both:
the former in its larger social bearing, and the latter wholly. He
was not even abreast of seventeenth-century liberalism, for that was
strongly republican, and Hamilton detested republicanism only a little
less than democracy. Harrington and Locke were no masters of his;
much less were Bentham or Priestley or Godwin. He called the French
revolutionary writers “fanatics in political science”; to what extent
he read them does not appear. The thinkers to whom he owed most seem to
have been Hume, from whom he may have derived his cynical psychology,
and Hobbes whose absolute state was so congenial to his temperament.
But political theory he subordinated to economic theory. He was much
interested in economics. With the Physiocratic school and its agrarian
and sociological bias he could have no sympathy, but with the rising
English school that resulted from the development of the industrial
revolution, he found himself in hearty accord. Capitalism with its
credit system, its banks and debt-funding and money manipulation, was
wholly congenial to his masterful temperament. He read Adam Smith with
eagerness and _The Wealth of Nations_ was a source book for many of his
state papers. To create in America an English system of finance, and an
English system of industrialism, seemed to him the surest means to the