Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that
which feeds them.[371]
It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the
ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one
which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.... The
Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to
whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party,
its members would become despots.[372]
As Jefferson watched Chief Justice John Marshall gathering all
things within the purview of the Federal judiciary, preparing future
strongholds by the skillful use of _obiter dicta_, legislating by
means of judicial interpretation, nullifying the will of the majority,
and with the power of repeal made nugatory by the complexity of the
process, he saw clearly what the outcome would be. Surely that was
no democracy where judge-made laws were enforced by bench warrants,
and where the sovereign power lay beyond the immediate reach of the
popular will. The government that he desired would not rest on the
legal fiction of an abstract justice above statutes and constitutions,
whereof a group of judicial gentlemen were the repositories and
guardians. It would be like Paine’s, “a plain thing, and fitted to the
capacity of many heads”; for “where the law of the majority ceases to
be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes
its place.”
Granted the truth of Jefferson’s premises that power tends to contract
to the hands of a few, and that all government of the few is
vicious, then democracy is the only form of government under which an
approximation to justice can be realized. A class will serve class
interests. Government by an aristocracy is government in the interest
of the aristocracy. For the staple argument of the Federalists, that
gentlemen of principle and property alone may be intrusted with affairs
of state, Jefferson had a quiet contempt. “I have never observed men’s
honesty to increase with their riches,” he remarked. On the contrary,
he regarded the “better sort of people” as a chief hindrance to the
spread of social justice. The past had been evil because the past had
been exploited by gentlemen of principle and property. They had kept
government away from the people, and with their secret councils and
secret diplomacy they had plundered the taxpayers and drenched nations
in blood. Their selfish rivalries everywhere exacted a heavy toll of
society and left behind a trail of poverty and wretchedness. The future
would be better in the degree that mastery passed into common hands.
From the conclusions of his democratic premise he did not shrink. If
it were indeed true that the people were beasts, then the democratic
government of the future would be a bestial government--and even that
might be better than the old arrangement of masters and slaves. But the
American people whom Jefferson trusted were very far from beasts; he
was convinced that they were honest and well-meaning; and if government
were brought close to them, kept responsive to their will, a new and
beneficent chapter in human history would open. The populistic laws
passed by the legislatures of Rhode Island and New Hampshire, about
which such an uproar was raised by fearful creditors, and which were
urged as an argument against popular government, gave him no concern.
He understood the ways of propaganda, and he never accepted judgment of
the American people from the mouths of their enemies. The cure for the
evils of democracy, he believed, was more democracy. The whole are far
less likely to be unjust than the few; and if sovereignty does not rest
in the majority will, where shall it lodge?
Hume, the great apostle of toryism, says “the Commons established
a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious [_i.e._
pleasing], but is belied by all history and experience, _that the
people are the origin of all just power_.” And where else will
this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men,
find the origin of _just_ power, if not in the majority of the
society? Will it be in the minority? Or in the individual of that
minority?[373]
The America of Jefferson’s day was a simple world, with a simple
domestic economy. More than ninety per cent were plain country folk,
farmers and villagers, largely freeholders, managing their local
affairs in the traditional way. There were no great extremes of
poverty and wealth, no closely organized class groups. With its sharp
restrictions on suffrage and the prestige accorded the gentry, it was
still far from a political democracy; but it was hastening towards a
more democratic order. Remote from the cesspools of European diplomacy,
and not yet acquainted with imperialism, it had no need for a leviathan
state. Economic conditions sanctioned a _laissez-faire_ government,
simple and unambitious. In such a world the well-known words of
Jefferson’s first inaugural address, justified themselves to all who
did not seek to use the state for personal advantage.
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from
injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to
regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is
the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the
circle of our felicities.
In one significant direction he would extend the scope of
government--the encouragement of education. An intelligent people is
necessary to a democracy; free schools are a sign of a free society.
Tyranny thrives on ignorance and superstition, and every exploiting
group fears popular education. Free himself in thought and action,
believing in the unshackled commerce of ideas, hating all censorships,
Jefferson accounted the founding of the University of Virginia his
largest contribution to the well-being of his native commonwealth.
To all who profess faith in the democratic ideal Jefferson is a
perennial inspiration. A free soul, he loved freedom enough to deny it
to none; an idealist, he believed that the welfare of the whole, and
not the prosperity of any group, is the single end of government. He
was our first great leader to erect a political philosophy native to
the economics and experience of America, as he was the first to break
consciously with the past. His life was dedicated to the service of
freedom, and later generations may well recall his words, “I have sworn
upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man.” Europe made Jefferson wholly American. From
his studies in France he came to see that where men enjoy free access
to the sources of subsistence, government is likely to be simple and
honest, and society free and content; but where a policy of preëmption
has run its course, the function of government is seduced from its
social purpose to perpetuate the inequalities which spring from the
progressive monopolization of natural resources, with augmenting
corruption and injustice. To preserve government in America from such
degradation, to keep the natural resources open to all, were the prime
desire and object of his life. That such an effort was foredoomed to
failure, in presence of imperious forces that shape society beyond the
capacity of political means to change or prevent, cannot detract from
the nobility of his ideal, or the inspiration of his life. Among the
greater thinkers of the constitutional period Jefferson remains by far
the most vital and suggestive, the one to whom later generations may
return most hopefully.
Footnotes
[344] For the date of his arrival, see _Massachusetts Historical
Society Proceedings_, Vol. XLIII, p. 246.
[345] _Rights of Man_, Part II, pp. 407, 408.
[346] For an excellent discussion of this, see C. M. Walsh, _The
Political Science of John Adams_, pp. 203-226.
[347] _The Rights of Man_, Part I, p. 278.
[348] “Letter to Lord Onslow,” in _Works_, Vol. III, p. 36.
[349] _Rights of Man_, Part II, p. 428.
[350] _Ibid._, pp. 410-411.
[351] Conway, _Life of Paine_, Vol. II, p. 4.
[352] Author of _An Apology for the Bible_ (a reply to Paine’s _Age
of Reason_), which was distributed among Harvard undergraduates. See
above, page 324.
[353] For the program of Babeuf, see R. W. Postgate, _Revolution from
1789 to 1906_, pp. 24, 54-60.
[354] _Works_, Vol. III, p. 329.
[355] This and the preceding sentence were expunged from all early
editions by the censor.
[356] _Ibid._, p. 337.
[357] _Ibid._, p. 338.
[358] _Ibid._, p. 340.
[359] _Ibid._, p. 329.
[360] _Address and Declaration of the Friends of Universal Peace and
Liberty_, quoted in Conway, _Life of Paine_, Vol. I, p. 316.
[361] _Rights of Man_, Part II, p. 413.
[362] _Works_, Vol. I, p. 155.
[363] Francis W. Hirst, _Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson_, p. 266.
[364] _A Summary View of the Rights of British America_, Williamsburg.
[365] Dodd, _Statesmen of the Old South_, p. 23.
[366] _Writings_, Vol. III, pp. 268-269.
[367] _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 8.
[368] “Autobiography”, in _Writings_, Vol. I, p. 57.
[369] _Writings_, Vol. VII, p. 451.
[370] _Ibid._, Vol. VI, p. 335.
[371] _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 189.
[372] _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 160.
[373] _Ibid._, Vol. VII, p. 356.
Chapter III • The War of Belles Lettres
To turn from the field of political theory to the realm of polite
literature is not to quit the partisan battle-ground. The long struggle
between Federalist and Democrat was too bitter and absorbing, too
sharp in its alignment, not to conscript gentlemen of culture equally
with politicians. Every available quill was called to the colors, and
a civil war of _belles lettres_ broke out, that exceeded in animosity
any other known to our literary history. Attack and counter-attack were
slashing and acrimonious. Gentlemen forgot their manners and indulged
fiercely in tall language. Satire ran about the streets seeking new
victims to impale; slander lay in wait for every passer-by. The
crudest lies found willing listeners and sober ministers turned from
writing sermons to enshrine pothouse tales in heroic couplets. In this
virulent battle the Federalists, on the whole, had the better of it,
for they were greater masters of invective and flayed their victims
less clumsily; but the Democrats made up in ardor what they lacked in
skill, and the blows that fell on carefully tied wigs must have hurt
cruelly. As poetry those old satires may seem to us feeble enough,
but as historical documents they are eloquent. The passion of a world
in revolution, the hopes and fears of our forefathers as they watched
the great fires consuming the world in which they had grown up, still
survive in those stinging lines, as a reminder to later generations of
the rough and inhospitable way that democratic America has traveled in
its onward course.
I • The Federalist Group
1. The Hartford Wits
What Federalism was capable of in the way of polite letters is
sufficiently revealed in the work of a coterie of poetasters who
are known in our literary histories as the Hartford Wits. The title
of the group suggests their literary antecedents. They were the
representatives of a literary mode that had slowly percolated through
the crust of Puritan provincialism and imparted a certain sprightliness
to a dour temper. They were the literary old-guard of the expiring
eighteenth century, suspicious of all innovation, contemptuous of every
idealistic program. They stood stoutly by the customary and familiar.
The nineteenth century was knocking at their door, but they would
not open to it. And as they saw that new century coming in the guise