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CHAPTER VIII
POPULAR ANTAGONISM TO GOVERNMENT
Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government. (George Washington, 1786.)
There are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal and on which they must and will be governed by those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and confidence. (James Madison, 1788.)
I fear, and there is no opinion more degrading to the dignity of man, that these have truth on their side who say that man is incapable of governing himself. (John Marshall, 1787.)
"Government, even in its best state," said Mr. Thomas Paine during the Revolution, "is but a necessary evil."893 Little as the people in general had read books of any kind, there was one work which most had absorbed either by perusal or by listening to the reading of it; and those who had not, nevertheless, had learned of its contents with applause.
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," which Washington and Franklin truly said did so much for the patriot cause,894 had sown dragon's teeth which the author possibly did not intend to conceal in his brilliant lines. Scores of thousands interpreted the meaning and philosophy of this immortal paper by the light of a few flashing sentences with which it began. Long after the British flag disappeared from American soil, this expatriated Englishman continued to be the voice of the people;895 and it is far within the truth to affirm that Thomas Paine prepared the ground and sowed the seed for the harvest which Thomas Jefferson gathered.
"Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise." And again, "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness."896 So ran the flaming maxims of the great iconoclast; and these found combustible material.
Indeed, there was, even while the patriots were fighting for our independence, a considerable part of the people who considered "all government as dissolved, and themselves in a state of absolute liberty, where they wish always to remain"; and they were strong enough in many places "to prevent any courts being opened, and to render every attempt to administer justice abortive."897 Zealous bearers, these, of the torches of anarchy which Paine's burning words had lighted. Was it not the favored of the earth that government protected? What did the poor and needy get from government except oppression and the privilege of dying for the boon? Was not government a fortress built around property? What need, therefore, had the lowly for its embattled walls?
Here was excellent ammunition for the demagogue. A person of little ability and less character always could inflame a portion of the people when they could be assembled. It was not necessary for him to have property; indeed, that was a distinct disadvantage to the Jack Cades of the period.898 A lie traveled like a snake under the leaves and could not be overtaken;899 bad roads, scattered communities, long distances, and resultant isolation leadened and delayed the feet of truth. Nothing was too ridiculous for belief; nothing too absurd to be credited.
A Baptist preacher in North Carolina was a candidate for the State Convention to pass upon the new National Constitution, which he bitterly opposed. At a meeting of backwoodsmen in a log house used for a church, he told them in a lurid speech that the proposed "Federal City" (now the District of Columbia) would be the armed and fortified fortress of despotism. "'This, my friends,' said the preacher, 'will be walled in or fortified. Here an army of 50,000, or, perhaps 100,000 men, will be finally embodied and will sally forth, and enslave the people who will be gradually disarmed.'" A spectator, who attempted to dispute this statement, narrowly escaped being mobbed by the crowd. Everything possible was done to defeat this ecclesiastical politician; but the people believed what he said and he was elected.900
So bizarre an invention as the following was widely circulated and generally believed as late as 1800: John Adams, it was said, had arranged, by intermarriage, to unite his family with the Royal House of Great Britain, the bridegroom to be King of America. Washington, attired in white clothing as a sign of conciliation, called on Adams and objected; Adams rebuffed him. Washington returned, this time dressed in black, to indicate the solemnity of his protest. Adams was obdurate. Again the Father of his Country visited the stubborn seeker after monarchical relationship, this time arrayed in full regimentals to show his earnestness; Adams was deaf to his pleas. Thereupon the aged warrior drew his sword, avowing that he would never sheathe it until Adams gave up his treasonable purpose; Adams remained adamant and the two parted determined enemies.901
Such are examples of the strange tales fed to the voracious credulity of the multitude. The attacks on personal character, made by setting loose against public men slanders which flew and took root like thistle seed, were often too base and vile for repetition at the present day, even as a matter of history; and so monstrous and palpably untruthful that it is difficult to believe they ever could have been circulated much less credited by the most gossip-loving.
Things, praiseworthy in themselves, were magnified into stupendous and impending menaces. Revolutionary officers formed "The Society of the Cincinnati" in order to keep in touch with one another, preserve the memories of their battles and their campfires, and to support the principles for which they had fought.902 Yet this patriotic and fraternal order was, shouted the patriots of peace, a plain attempt to establish an hereditary nobility on which a new tyranny was to be builded. Jefferson, in Paris, declared that "the day … will certainly come, when a single fibre of this institution will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our governments [Articles of Confederation] from the best to the worst in the world."903
Ædanus Burke,904 one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, wrote that the Society of the Cincinnati was "deeply planned"; it was "an hereditary peerage"; it was "planted in a fiery hot ambition, and thirst for power"; "its branches will end in Tyranny … the country will be composed only of two ranks of men, the patricians, or nobles, and the rabble."905 In France, Mirabeau was so aroused by Burke's pamphlet that the French orator wrote one of his own. Mirabeau called the Cincinnati "that nobility of barbarians, the price of blood, the off-spring of the sword, the fruit of conquest." "The distinction of Celts and Ostrogoths," exclaimed the extravagant Frenchman, "are what they claim for their inheritance."906
The "Independent Chronicle" of Boston was so excited that it called on "legislators, Governors, and magistrates and their ELECTORS" to suppress the Cincinnati because it "is concerted to establish a complete and perpetual personal discrimination between" its members "and the whole remaining body of the people who will be styled Plebeians."907
John Marshall was a member of this absurdly traduced patriotic fraternity. So were his father and fellow officers of our War for Independence. Washington was its commander. Were the grotesque charges against these men the laurels with which democracy crowned those who had drawn the sword for freedom? Was this the justice of liberty? Was this the intelligence of the masses? Such must have been the queries that sprang up in the minds of men like Marshall. And, indeed, there was sound reason for doubt and misgiving. For the nightmares of men like Burke and Mirabeau were pleasant dreams compared with the horrid visions that the people conjured.
Nor did this popular tendency to credit the most extraordinary tale, believe the most impossible and outrageous scandal, or accept the most impracticable and misshapen theory, end only in wholesome hatred of rank and distinction. Among large numbers there was the feeling that equality should be made real by a general division of property. Three years after peace had been established, Madison said he "strongly suspected" that many of the people contemplated "an abolition of debts public & private, and a new division of property."908 And Jay thought that "a reluctance to taxes, an impatience of government, a rage for property, and little regard to the means of acquiring it, together with a desire for equality in all things, seem to actuate the mass of those who are uneasy in their circumstances."909 The greed and covetousness of the people is also noted by all travelers.910
Very considerable were the obligations "public and private" which Madison wrote his father that he "strongly suspected" a part of the country intended to repudiate. The public debt, foreign and domestic, of the Confederation and the States, at the close of the Revolutionary War, appeared to the people to be a staggering sum.911 The private debt aggregated a large amount.912 The financial situation was chaos. Paper money had played such havoc with specie that, in Virginia in 1786, as we have seen, there was not enough gold and silver to pay current taxes.913 The country had had bitter experience with a fictitious medium of exchange. In Virginia by 1781 the notes issued by Congress "fell to 1000 for 1," records Jefferson, "and then expired, as it had done in other States, without a single groan."914
Later on, foreigners bought five thousand dollars of this Continental scrip for a single dollar of gold or silver.915 In Philadelphia, toward the end of the Revolution, the people paraded the streets wearing this make-believe currency in their hats, with a dog tarred and covered with paper dollars instead of feathers.916 For land sold by Jefferson before paper currency was issued he "did not receive the money till it was not worth Oak leaves."917
Most of the States had uttered this fiat medium, which not only depreciated and fluctuated within the State issuing it, but made trade between citizens of neighboring States almost impossible. Livingston found it a "loss to shop it in New York with [New] Jersey Money at the unconscionable discount which your [New York] brokers and merchants exact; and it is as damnifying to deal with our merchants here [New Jersey] in that currency, since they proportionably advance the price of their commodities."918 Fithian in Virginia records that: "In the evening I borrowed of Ben Carter 15/ – I have plenty of money with me but it is in Bills of Philadelphia Currency and will not pass at all here."919
Virginia had gone through her trial of financial fiction-for-fact, ending in a law fixing the scale of depreciation at forty to one, and in other unique and bizarre devices;920 and finally took a determined stand against paper currency.921 Although Virginia had burned her fingers, so great was the scarcity of money that there was a formidable agitation to try inflation again.922 Throughout the country there once more was a "general rage for paper money."923 Bad as this currency was, it was counterfeited freely.924 Such coin as existed was cut and clipped until Washington feared that "a man must travel with a pair of money scales in his pocket, or run the risk of receiving gold of one fourth less by weight than it counts."925
If there was not money enough, let the Government make more – what was a government for if not for that? And if government could not make good money, what was the good of government? Courts were fine examples of what government meant – they were always against the common people. Away with them! So ran the arguments and appeals of the demagogues and they found an answer in the breasts of the thoughtless, the ignorant, and the uneasy. This answer was broader than the demand for paper money, wider than the protest against particular laws and specific acts of administration. This answer also was, declared General Knox, "that the property of the United States … ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth." Knox was convinced that the discontented were "determined to annihilate all debts, public and private."926
Ideas and purposes such as these swayed the sixteen thousand men who, in 1787, followed Daniel Shays in the popular uprising in Massachusetts against taxes, courts, and government itself.927 "The restlessness produced by the uneasy situation of individuals, connected with lax notions concerning public and private faith, and erroneous928 opinions which confound liberty with an exemption from legal control, produced … unlicensed conventions, which, after voting on their own constitutionality, and assuming the name of the people, arrayed themselves against the legislature," was John Marshall's summary of the forces that brought about the New England rebellion.
The "army" of lawlessness, led by Shays, took the field, says Marshall, "against taxes, and against the administration of justice; and the circulation of a depreciated currency was required, as a relief from the pressure of public and private burdens, which had become, it was alleged, too heavy to be borne. Against lawyers and courts the strongest resentments were manifested; and to such a dangerous extent were these dispositions indulged, that, in many instances, tumultuous assemblages of people arrested the course of law, and restrained the judges from proceeding in the execution of their duty."
"The ordinary recourse to the power of the country was found insufficient protection," records Marshall, "and the appeals made to reason were attended with no beneficial effect. The forbearance of the government was attributed to timidity rather than moderation, and the spirit of insurrection appeared to be organized into a regular system for the suppression of courts."929 Such was Marshall's analysis of the Northern convulsion; and thus was strengthened in him that tendency of thought started at Valley Forge, and quickened in the Virginia House of Delegates.
"It rather appears to me," wrote David Humphries to Washington, in an attempt to explain the root of the trouble, "that there is a licentious spirit prevailing among many of the people; a levelling principle; and a desire of change; with a wish to annihilate all debts, public and private."930 Unjust taxes were given as the cause of the general dislike of government, yet those who composed the mobs erupting from this crater of anarchy, now located in New England, paid few or no taxes.
"High taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far remote from truth as light from darkness," asserts Knox. "The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes," testifies this stanch Revolutionary officer. "But," continues Knox, "they see the weakness of the government. They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former."931
This condition brought to a head a distrust of the good sense, justice, and moderation of the people, which had been forming in the minds of many of the best and ablest men of the time.932 "The knaves and fools of this world are forever in alliance," was the conclusion reached in 1786933 by Jay, who thought that the people considered "liberty and licentiousness" as the same thing.934 The patient but bilious Secretary of State felt that "the wise and the good never form the majority of any large society, and it seldom happens that their measures are uniformly adopted, or that they can always prevent being overborne themselves by the strong and almost never-ceasing union of the wicked and the weak."935 The cautious Madison was equally doubtful of the people: "There are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal and on which they must and will be governed by those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and confidence" was Madison's judgment.936
Washington, black with depression, decided and bluntly said "that mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government." Lee had suggested that Washington use his "influence" to quiet the disorders in New England; but, flung back Washington, "Influence is no government. Let us have one by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once… To be more exposed in the eyes of the world, and more contemptible than we already are, is hardly possible."937
"No morn ever dawned more favorably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present… We are fast verging to anarchy,"938 cried the great captain of our war for liberty. The wings of Washington's wrath carried him far. "Good God!" cried he, "Who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted" the things that were going on! "The disorders which have arisen in these States, the present prospect of our affairs … seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. My mind can scarcely realize it as a thing in actual existence… There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to."939
Marshall echoed his old commander's views. The dreams of his youth were fading, his confidence in the people declining. He records for us his altered sentiments: "These violent, I fear bloody, dissensions in a state [Massachusetts] I had thought inferior in wisdom and virtue to no one in the union, added to the strong tendency which the politics of many eminent characters among ourselves have to promote private and public dishonesty, cast a deep shade over the bright prospect which the revolution in America and the establishment of our free governments had opened to the votaries of liberty throughout the globe. I fear, and there is no opinion more degrading to the dignity of man, that these have truth on their side who say that man is incapable of governing himself."940 Thus wrote Marshall in 1787, when he was not yet thirty-two years old.
But Jefferson in Paris was beholding a different picture that strengthened the views which he and Marshall held in common when America, in arms, challenged Great Britain. "The Spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now & then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." So wrote Jefferson after the Massachusetts insurrection had been quelled.941
The author of our Declaration of Independence was tasting the delights of the charming French Capital at this time, but he also was witnessing the shallowness and stupidity of the peculiarly weak royalty and nobility; and although it was this same Royal Government that had aided us with men and money in our struggle to throw off the yoke of England, Jefferson's heart grew wrathful against it and hot for popular rule in France. Yet in the same apostrophe to rebellion, Jefferson declares that the French people were too shallow for self-rule. "This [French] nation," writes Jefferson, "is incapable of any serious effort but under the word of command."942
After having had months to think about it, this enraptured enthusiast of popular upheaval spread his wings and was carried far into crimson skies. "Can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted?" exclaimed Jefferson, of the Massachusetts anarchical outburst, nearly a year after it had ended; and continued thus: —
"God forbid! we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion… What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms!.. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."943
Thus did his contact with a decadent monarchy on the one hand and an enchanting philosophy on the other hand, help to fit him for the leadership of American radicalism. No better training for that mission could have been afforded. French thought was already challenging all forms of existing public control; it was a spirit Gamaliel which found in Jefferson an eager Saul at its feet; and American opinion was prepared for its doctrines. In the United States general dislike and denunciation of the established governments had uncovered the feeling against government itself which lay at the root of opposition to any stronger one.
The existing American system was a very masterpiece of weakness. The so-called Federal Government was like a horse with thirteen bridle reins, each held in the hands of separate drivers who usually pulled the confused and powerless beast in different directions. Congress could make treaties with foreign nations; but each of the States could and often did violate them at will. It could borrow money, but could not levy taxes or impose duties to pay the debt. Congress could get money only by making humble requests, called "requisitions," on the "sovereign" Commonwealths. It had to depend upon the whims of the various States for funds to discharge principal and interest of public obligations; and these springs of revenue, when not entirely dry, yielded so little that the Federal establishment was like to die of financial thirst.944
The requisitions of Congress upon the various States for money to pay the National obligations to foreign creditors were usually treated with neglect and often with contempt by those jealous and pompous "Sovereignties." "Requisitions are a perfect nullity where thirteen sovereign, independent, disunited States are in the habit of discussing and refusing compliance with them at their option. Requisitions are actually little better than a jest and a by-word throughout the land. If you tell the legislatures they have violated the treaty of peace, and invaded the prerogatives of the confederacy, they will laugh in your face."945 Thus raged Washington. "Congress cannot command money" even to redeem Americans held in slavery in Algiers,946 testified the powerless and despondent Secretary of State. Indeed, Congress amounted to so little that the delegates from many States often refused to attend.947
Though debts were great and financial confusion maddening, they furnished no solid excuse for the failure of the States to enable Congress to preserve American honor by the payment of our admitted National debt. Jay reviewed the situation and showed that "the resources of the country … notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, are abundant… Our country is fertile, abounding in useful productions, and those productions in demand and bearing a good price."948 The general opinion appears to have been that the people did not want to support the Government.
"The treasury is empty, though the country abounds in resources, and our people are far more unwilling than unable to pay taxes," wrote Jay, early in 1787.949 Madison excused his support of the bill authorizing tobacco to be taken for specie in payment of taxes, upon the ground that it "could not be rejected without … exciting some worse project of a popular cast";950 and "by a fear that some greater evil under the name of relief to the people would be substituted."951 Debt "made it extremely inconvenient to most people to submit to a regular government," was the conclusion Rutledge finally reached.952
But, whatever the cause, the States did not act. Washington thought it a combination of the scheming of demagogues and the ignorance and dishonesty of the people. "I think there is more wickedness than ignorance mixed in our councils… Ignorance and design are difficult to combat… To be so fallen! so lost!.. Virtue, I fear has in a great degree taken its departure from our land and the want of a disposition to do justice is the source of the national embarrassments; for, whatever guise or colorings are given to them, this I apprehend is the origin of the evils we now feel."953 Such was Washington's cry of despair four years after he had wrested American liberty from Great Britain.
Look where one will among the class of men of whom Washington was the highest representative, one finds that they believed the fountain head of the country's desperate conditions to be in the people themselves. Jay put this opinion in a nutshell when he said, "The mass of men are neither wise nor good."954 Not that these leaders despaired that an American People would finally be evolved who should realize the exalted expectations of the patriot leaders of the Revolution; not that out of the flux of popular heedlessness and dishonor, indifference and disorder, idleness and avarice, the nobler qualities of human nature would not, in the end, bring forth a nation and rule it for the happiness and well-being of its people. But they thought that only a strong government could fashion the clay and breathe into its nostrils the breath of life. "Virtue, like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn to a point and exerted by strong circumstances ably managed, or a strong government ably administered," said Jay.955
The shield of all this turmoil and baseness was the State Governments. "Their unreasonable jealousy of that body [Congress] and of one another … will, if there is not a change in the system, be our downfall as a nation," exclaimed Washington only a few months after peace had been established.956 It was the States, he declared, which made the Federal establishment "a half-starved, limping government, that appears to be always moving upon crutches and tottering at every step."957
It was the States which always were thwarting every plan for the general welfare; the States which were forever impairing the National obligations; the States which bound hand and foot the straw man of the central power, clothed it in rags and made it a mere scarecrow of government. And it was State pride, prejudice, and ignorance which gave provincial demagogues their advantage and opportunity. The State Governments were the "people's" Governments; to yield State "sovereignty" was to yield the "people's" power over their own affairs, shouted the man who wished to win local prominence, power, and office.
Those who did not want to pay taxes and who disliked much government of any kind felt that they could make shift with mere State establishments.958 "A thirst for power, and the bantling, I had liked to have said monster for sovereignty, which have taken such fast hold of the States individually, will, when joined by the many whose personal consequence in the control of State politics will in a manner be annihilated, form a strong phalanx against"959 the National Constitution, prophesied the leader of the Revolution.
But it was not alone the powerlessness of the Federal Government to keep the National faith, plighted by solemn treaties with foreign Governments; or to uphold the National honor by paying debts made to win American independence, that wrought that bloodless revolution960 which produced the Constitution. Nor was it the proud and far-seeing plans of a few great minds whose heart's desire was to make the American People a Nation.
Finance, commerce, and business assembled the historic Philadelphia Convention; although it must be said that statesmanship guided its turbulent councils. The senseless and selfish nagging at trade in which the States indulged, after peace was declared, produced a brood of civil abuses as noisome as the military dangers which State control of troops had brought forth during the Revolution. Madison truly said that "most of our political evils may be traced up to our commercial ones."961 The States passed tariff laws against one another as well as against foreign nations; and, indeed, as far as commerce was concerned, each State treated the others as foreign nations.962 There were retaliations, discriminations, and every manner of trade restrictions and impediments which local ingenuity and selfishness could devise.
The idea of each State was to keep money from going outside its borders into other States and to build up its own business and prosperity at the expense of its neighbors.963 States having no seaports were in a particularly hard case. Madison picturesquely describes their unhappy plight: "New Jersey placed between Phila & N. York, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends; And N. Carolina, between Virga & S. Carolina to a patient bleeding at both Arms."964 Merchants and commercial bodies were at their wits' end to carry on business and petitioned for a general power over commerce.965
The commercial view, as stated by Madison, was that "the National Government should be armed with positive and compleat authority in all cases which require uniformity; such as the regulation of trade, including the right of taxing both exports & imports, the fixing the terms and forms of naturalization, &c., &c."
Madison then lays down this extreme Nationalist principle as the central article of his political faith: "Over and above this positive power, a negative in all cases whatsoever on the legislative acts of the States, as heretofore exercised by the Kingly prerogative, appears to me to be absolutely necessary, and to be the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions. Without this defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be evaded & defeated. The States will continue to invade the National jurisdiction, to violate treaties and the law of nations & to harass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest."966
Too much emphasis cannot be put upon the fact that the mercantile and financial interests were the weightiest of all the influences for the Constitution; the debtors and agricultural interests the strongest groups against it. It deserves repetition, for a proper understanding of the craft and force practiced by both sides in the battle over ratification, that those who owed debts were generally against the Constitution and practically all to whom debts were due were for the new Government. "I have little prospect of bringing Banks [a debtor] to terms as the Law of this State now stands," wrote a Virginia agent of a creditor, "but I hope when the New Federal constitution is adopted that the Laws will be put upon a better footing… Three fourths of the people that oppose it [the Constitution] are those that are deeply in debt & do not wish to pay."967
"Can nothing be done in our Assembly for poor Paine? Must the merits of Common Sense continue to glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country? His writings certainly have had a powerful effect upon the public mind. Ought they not, then, to meet an adequate return?" (Washington to Madison, June 12, 1784; Writings: Ford, x, 393; and see Tyler, i, 458-62.) In the Virginia Legislature Marshall introduced a bill for Paine's relief. (Supra, chap, VI.)
Virginia strengthened her tariff laws against importations by land. "If any such importer or owner shall unload any such wagon or other carriage containing any of the above goods, wares, or merchandise brought into this state by land without first having entered the same as directed above, every such wagon or other carriage, together with the horses thereto belonging and all such goods wares and merchandise as shall be brought therein, shall be forfeited and recovered by information in the court of the county; two-thirds to the informer and one-third toward lessening the levy of the county where such conviction shall be made." (Ib.)
Even Pennsylvania, already the principal workshop of the country, while enacting an avowedly protective tariff on "Manufactures of Europe and Other foreign parts," included "cider, malted barley or grain, fish, salted or dried, cheese, butter, beef, pork, barley, peas, mustard, manufactured tobacco" which came, mostly, from sister States. The preamble declares that the duties are imposed to protect "the artisans and mechanics of this state" without whose products "the war could not have been carried on."
In addition to agricultural articles named above, the law includes "playing cards, hair powder, wrought gold or silver utensils, polished or cut stones, musical instruments, walking canes, testaments, psalters, spelling books or primers, romances, novels and plays, and horn or tortoise shell combs," none of which could be called absolutely indispensable to the conduct of the war. The preamble gives the usual arguments for protective tariffs. It is the first protective tariff law, in the present-day sense, ever passed. (Pa. Statutes at Large (1785), 99.)
