Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States Part 9

FROM MR. TRIST.

PHILADELPHIA, _May 31, 1857_.

MY DEAR SIR,--My promise, however tardily performed, has never been forgotten; and now, complying with your request preferred at the time and since renewed, I give you in writing the statement made by me a month or two ago in conversation at Mr. Gilpin's; which statement you will recollect was casually elicited, as the proper commentary upon the charge mentioned by one of the company as being brought against Mr. Jefferson--the charge, namely, that he had "stolen Mr. Madison from the Federalists." This notion, by the way, involves an utterly erroneous conception of the relation which existed between the minds and characters of the two men. But I must here confine myself to doing what you asked of me.

During the latter years of Mr. Madison's life, (the exact date is recorded in a memorandum not now at hand,) the following incident occurred.

My intimate friend Mr. Davis, Law Professor in the University of Virginia, mentioned to me, as a thing which he thought Mr. Madison ought to be apprised of, that in a forthcoming Life of Colonel Hamilton, by one of his sons, the authenticity of his (Mr. M.'s) report of Colonel H.'s speech in the Federal Convention was to be denied; and furthermore he was to be represented as having "abandoned" Colonel Hamilton. This Davis had learnt from Professor George Tucker, of the same University, then recently returned from a trip to the North.

Of course, on my first visit to Mr. Madison, which occurred soon after, I told him of what Davis had said.

The effect upon his countenance was an expression of painful surprise, succeeded by a very remarkable look his face a.s.sumed sometimes, and which was deeply impressive from its concentration and solemnity. A silence of some moments was broken by his saying, in a tone corresponding to that look, "Sorry to hear it." Then a pause, followed by these words, "I abandoned Colonel Hamilton,--or Colonel Hamilton abandoned me,--in a word, we _parted_,--upon its plainly becoming his purpose and endeavor to _adminis_TRATION (administer) the government into a thing totally different from that which he and I both knew perfectly well had been understood and intended by the Convention which framed it, and by the people in adopting it."

Upon the two words which I have underscored, especially the second, and most especially its last two syllables, a marked emphasis was laid. The latter (the word _administration_ used as a verb) is the only instance of neologism I ever observed in Mr. Madison. Its effectiveness was most striking; it hit the nail plumb on the head, and drove it home at one blow. The whole history of that business, the entire truth of the matter, was compressed into that one word.

As uttered by him there was a pause at "_adminis_"--and then came out "TRATION." It was followed by the word "administer," thrown in parenthetically, and in an under-tone; as much as to say, "I have been coining a word here, which, as you are aware, is not my habit; but just as I was about to say _administer_ the government, I felt that this term is too general, too commonplace, too tame to convey the idea present to my mind; and this modification of it presented itself as exactly suited to the case."

As regards the speech, Mr. M. seemed painfully troubled at the thought of the fidelity of his report of it being disputed, and at a loss to realize the possibility of such a thing. "Why, as I once related to you, that speech was placed by me in Colonel Hamilton's own hand; and was, after deliberate perusal, returned by him with an explicit recognition of its correctness--all to a very few verbal alterations, which were made; on which occasion he placed in my hands, as the proper accompaniment of his speech in my record, and as presenting in a precise and exact shape his views as to the government which it was desirable to establish, the draft of a Const.i.tution which he had prepared before coming to the Convention."

This substantially, if not exactly, is what Mr. M. said upon that point. He then went on to conjecture in what way Colonel H.'s biographer might have been misled into this error; not a doubt being intimated or evinced by him as to its being honestly an error.

Colonel H. spoke several times in the Convention--at greater or less length, as would be seen when his (Mr. M.'s) notes were given to the world. Perhaps, among his papers notes had been found, which, in the absence of means of discriminating between remarks made on different occasions, and between notes for an intended speech and that which the speaker had actually said, might have given rise to the misconception.

To the foregoing incident you wished me to add what I was led to say, in the course of the same conversation, regarding Mr.

Jefferson's habitual tone in speaking of Colonel Hamilton. This was always the very reverse of that in which he spoke of those whose _characters_, personal or political, were objects of his disesteem.

It was invariably such as to indicate, and to infuse (certainly this effect was produced upon my mind) a high estimate of Colonel Hamilton _as a man_, whether considered with reference to personal matters or to political matters. He was never spoken of otherwise than as being a gentleman--a lofty-minded, high-toned man. As regards politics, their convictions, their creeds, were diametrically opposite. Colonel H. had no faith in republican government. In his eyes the British Government was the perfection of human government, the model of all that was practically attainable in politics. His doctrine, openly avowed, was that there are but two ways of governing men, but two ways in which the business of government can be conducted: the one is through fear, the other through self-interest--that is, influencing the conduct of those upon whom the course of political affairs depends, through their desire for personal advantages, for position, for wealth, and so forth. In this country, to operate upon men through their fears was out of the question; and consequently the latter const.i.tuted the only practicable means. These political convictions on the part of Colonel H., united as they were with his splendid abilities _and_ his lofty character as a man, both _public_ and _private_, were regarded by Mr. Jefferson as having const.i.tuted the great peril to which republicanism had been exposed in our country. But for the _character_ of Colonel H., for the _man_, for his honesty and sincerity and single-mindedness,--I mean considered with reference to politics,--there was never the least indication of depreciation or disrespect on the part of Mr. Jefferson; always the direct reverse.

Never, in a single instance, when Colonel H. was the subject of conversation with me, or in my presence, was it otherwise than perfectly manifest that, in Mr. J.'s habitual feeling toward him, the broadest possible line of demarcation existed between the man, the character, (the _public_ character, I repeat, no less than the _private_,) and the creed by which the action and course of that character were determined; and that whilst the latter was abhorrent to his own cherished faith, and had been for him the cause of the intensest anxiety and gloomiest forebodings ever suffered by him, the former was nevertheless no less truly an object of sincere respect.

Having thus, my dear sir, at length fulfilled my promise,--though not within the limited s.p.a.ce (far from it) which you intimated,--I tender the a.s.surance of my respectful regard and friendly remembrance.

N. P. TRIST.

MARTIN VAN BUREN, _Ex-President of the U. S._

Hamilton took the position of which the virtuous Madison, whilst standing at the brink of his grave, left behind him a description so graphic, promptly and, as was his habit, immovably. The crisis met him in his last intrenchment. He believed honestly, sincerely, and without any designs other than such as related to the public welfare, that nothing short of monarchical inst.i.tutions would prove adequate to the wants of the country, but these he was well satisfied could not be obtained then, and possibly not for a long period. He had approached them in the Convention as nearly, in respect to the point of efficiency, as would afford the slightest chance of success for his plan, and he had been left without a single open supporter in that body. Regarding the Const.i.tution, as framed by the Convention, as the only avenue to escape from anarchy, he finally promoted its pa.s.sage there and its ratification by the States and people, avowedly as a temporary bond of union.

Appointed to a.s.sist in carrying it into effect, and sincerely believing that, with no other powers than those only which he and Madison so well knew it was intended to authorize, it must prove a failure and the government established under it must go to pieces, he decided, unhesitatingly and absolutely, to do under it whatever he in good faith might think would promote the general welfare, without reference to the intentions of its authors. He was a man of too much good sense to do unnecessary violence to public feeling,--as he said to Jefferson "to publish it in Dan or Beersheba,"--but such was his unchangeable design.

On the contrary, he entered into labored and able discussions to show that his princ.i.p.al measures were authorized by the Const.i.tution, but these were in deference to the prejudices and ideas of the people, nothing more.

There is nothing in the writings, speeches, or declarations of General Hamilton inconsistent with the truth of this statement. In papers which have been referred to, and others, he submitted ingenious arguments to show that the Convention might have so intended, and that Congress had a right to hold from the words employed that it did so intend, but he was too circ.u.mspect to insist that the intention of the Convention ought not to prevail when it could be ascertained, or to make the actual intention, as a matter of fact, a point in the argument. Giving due weight to the intention of the body when that was ascertained, he adopted a course of reasoning which every body understood went to defeat it, desiring no other efficacy for the opinion he labored to establish than the vote of the majority. The better knowledge of the country overthrew his specious deductions in a short time, and its traditions will, it is to be hoped, render them forever harmless.

The principle of construction contended for by Hamilton, and for a season to some extent made successful, was not designed for the promotion of a particular measure, for which the powers of Congress under the Const.i.tution were to be unduly extended, on account of its a.s.sumed indispensable importance to the public safety, but intended as a sweeping rule by which those powers, instead of being confined to the const.i.tutional enumeration, were to authorize the pa.s.sage of all laws which Congress might deem conducive to the general welfare and which were not expressly prohibited; a power similar to that contained in the plan he proposed in the Convention. He desired, in short, to make the Const.i.tution a tablet of wax upon which each successive administration would be at liberty to impress its rescripts, to be promulgated as const.i.tutional edicts.

Hamilton never well understood the distinctive character of our people, but he understood human nature too well to believe that any people could long respect or desire to uphold a Const.i.tution the most stringent provisions of which were thus regarded or treated. Its inevitable fate is ill.u.s.trated in the experience of France, after one of her unscrupulous wits had aided in consigning to general derision that litter of Const.i.tutions which had rapidly followed one after the other, by accompanying his oath with a grimace and a jest upon the number which he had successively and with equal solemnity sworn to support. The example of France was not lost upon a mind so watchful as Hamilton's, and he did not doubt that our Const.i.tution would be overthrown with the same certainty, if not with equal facility, after it had been long enough treated with similar disrespect, and that the door would be thus opened for the ultimate introduction, under the influence of the money power, of the only political inst.i.tutions in which he placed absolute confidence. He declared it to be his opinion, in the Convention, that he regarded ours as the last chance for a republican government, and a.s.signed that opinion as a reason for his attempt to infuse into the new system qualities as stringent as those he proposed and which he knew very well were not generally regarded as belonging to a republican system. No man better understood than he that the inviolate sanct.i.ty of a written Const.i.tution was the life of a republican government, and that its days were numbered from the moment its people and rulers ceased thus to preserve, protect, and defend it. Mr. Jefferson spoke, in his letter, of Hamilton as "_professing_" that it was "the duty of its administrators to conduct the Government on the principles their const.i.tuents had elected." I did not at first, and for a long time afterwards, attach as much significance to the word I have here italicized, as I do now, when I have studied Hamilton's course more carefully. I knew the letter was written in a liberal spirit toward his memory. As I have elsewhere said, during my visit to Mr. Jefferson we talked most of Hamilton, and the general course of Mr. J.'s remarks was substantially similar to those now related, more than thirty years after his decease, and without the slightest knowledge of what I have said upon the same subject, by his relative, Mr. Trist, who was also a member of his family. Mr. Jefferson was evidently disposed to confirm the favorable impressions I had imbibed of the personal side of Hamilton's character, and the words quoted above from his letter were designed to qualify his imputation of monarchical principles to the latter, and I can now appreciate the motive for the expression used, which did not commit him to a concession that the opinion of Hamilton in regard to the duty of administration was that upon which he acted.

With all these considerations before him, Hamilton did more than any, and I had almost said than all, his contemporaries together, to counteract the will of the people and to subvert by undermining the Const.i.tution of their choice. If his sapping and mining policy had been finally successful, if the Republican party, mostly composed of old Anti-Federalists, led by so bold a spirit and such a root-and-branch Republican as Mr. Jefferson, had not arrested the farther progress of his principles and demolished his scheme, this glorious old Const.i.tution of ours, of which we all seem so proud, of which it is so great an honor to have been and of which so many have been ambitious to be, regarded as the faithful expounder, under the wings of which we have risen from small beginnings to be a puissant nation,--attracting the admiration and able to command the respect of the civilized world,--would long since have sunk beneath the waters of time, an object of neglect and scorn.

Our system might then have dissolved in anarchy, or crouched under despotism or under some milder type of arbitrary government,--a monarchy, an aristocracy, or, most ign.o.ble of all, a moneyed oligarchy,--but as a Republic it would have endured no longer. In this aspect, notwithstanding his great and good qualities,--and he had many,--Hamilton's course was an outrage upon liberty and a crime against free government.

How happy would it have been for himself and for every interest if he had not parted from his friend and faithful fellow-laborer through so many and such trying scenes,--if, like Madison, not entirely satisfied with the Const.i.tution, but knowing that many others were in the same predicament, he had applied his great talents to the business of making it as generally acceptable as possible, and in giving to the ma.s.ses an administration of the Government according not only to the form but to the spirit also in which it had been framed. The country would then at length have rested after so many storms, and his great and good friend Was.h.i.+ngton, instead of being steeped to the lips in partisan anxieties, (as his nephew, Judge Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton, described him to me to have been within the year of his death,) would not only have had a glorious and successful administration, but would have lived in his retirement and finally pa.s.sed from earth without having been ever annoyed by the canker of party spirit. His own political career would doubtless have been far more prosperous and more agreeable; no occasion would then have arisen for such reflections as he expressed to his confidential friend describing his only reward, after all his efforts and sacrifices, as "the murmurs of the friends of the Const.i.tution and the curses of its foes," and concluding, sadly enough for one who had so greatly distinguished himself in its service, that "the American world was not made for him!"

In these views of General Hamilton's course and in the opinions expressed in respect to it, I have designed to confine myself strictly to what I consider the deliberate judgment of the country, p.r.o.nounced in various ways and among others through the ballot-box--its const.i.tutional exponent. The most prominent of his measures have been, as already said, discarded, and those who const.i.tuted the party in whose name they were first introduced have so far yielded to the current of public opinion as to abandon them forever. I have also before alluded to the gratifying circ.u.mstance that the odium attached to those measures never in any degree affected the confidence of the people in the patriotism of Was.h.i.+ngton or in his fidelity to republican inst.i.tutions, or weakened their affection for him while he lived, or their respect for his memory when he was no more. These were not the results of mere personal devotion, but of an intelligent and just discrimination on the part of the people. Hamilton designed to effect a civil revolution by changing the powers of Congress from the restricted character given to them in obedience to the wishes of the people to one in effect unlimited.

Was.h.i.+ngton entertained no such views. His constructions of the Const.i.tution were designed for the cases that called them forth, and had no ulterior views.

The subject of the bank presented the princ.i.p.al and almost the only question upon which President Was.h.i.+ngton gave a construction to that instrument which met the disapprobation and excited the apprehensions of the old Republicans. To the a.s.sumption of the State debts Hamilton, as has been seen, succeeded in obtaining--how much to his mortification and regret his writings show--the cooperation of Mr. Jefferson, and thereby the unanimous support of the cabinet; and his Report on Manufactures, as to most of its obnoxious details, was not acted upon during Was.h.i.+ngton's administration, but in respect to its princ.i.p.al objects remained a dead letter. President Was.h.i.+ngton, notwithstanding the conflicting opinions of his cabinet, gave no reasons for his approval of the Bank Bill. The public were therefore left to draw their own inferences in regard to their character. Diverse opinions upon the point of course arose, and there is much reason to believe (and that belief is strengthened by his subsequent course in respect to another important matter) that he was induced to regard a bank as indispensable, in the then condition of the country, to the success of the new Government--an exigency in public affairs of that peculiar sort which men in power a.s.sume to deal with under the sanction of the great principle, _Salus populi suprema lex._ (See note.) Mr. Madison, who had demonstrated in Congress its unconst.i.tutionality at its creation, who had opposed the banking system through his whole public life, and whose fame was in a very great degree founded on the ability with which he had defined the true principles of const.i.tutional construction, in a way to exclude the idea of any power in Congress to establish such an inst.i.tution, did, notwithstanding, at the close of his public career, in a condition of the country not unlike that in which President Was.h.i.+ngton acted, and viewing the subject from the same official station, arrive at the same conclusion in regard to its imperative necessity, and gave his approval to the erection of a new national bank.

NOTE.--(_Feb. 16th, 1858_.) Whilst reviewing the "era of good-feeling," as it was called, during the administration of Mr.

Monroe, I conceived the idea of adding some account of the rise and progress of our political parties, and entered upon the task immediately, designing it to stand as an episode in my Memoirs. The subject grew upon my hands to such an extent that for the last two years it has, in necessary reading and examinations into facts, &c., occupied most of the time that could be devoted to the general object. The idea of limiting this portion to a mere digression was therefore substantially laid aside, and the dignity of a separate and distinct consideration, to which its dimensions, if nothing else, ent.i.tled it, was a.s.signed to it. Accordingly I continued my examination of the course of parties in the United States down to the present time, including the first months of President Buchanan's administration. Whilst engaged in correcting the ma.n.u.script and arranging it to be copied, and after I had, by many pages, pa.s.sed the place in the text to which this note is appended, the first volume of Mr. Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, recently published, came to my hands, and on reading its last two chapters first, because they have a more immediate bearing on my subject, I find the following very striking confirmation of the correctness of my inference as to the state of General Was.h.i.+ngton's mind, on the occasion spoken of:--

FROM RANDALL'S "LIFE OF JEFFERSON," VOL. 1. p. 631.

"On the subject of President Was.h.i.+ngton's feelings on the Bank Bill we find the following entry in Mr. Trist's memoranda:--

"'MONTPELIER, _Friday, May 25, 1827_.

"'_Mr. Madison:_ "General Was.h.i.+ngton signed Jay's Treaty, but he did not at all like it. He also signed the Bank. But he was _very_ near not doing so; and if he had refused, it would, in my opinion, have produced a crisis. I will mention to you a circ.u.mstance which I have never imparted, except in strict confidence. You know, by the Const.i.tution, ten days are allowed for the President's veto to come in. If it does not appear within that time, the bill becomes a law. I was conversing with a distinguished member of the Federal party, who observed that according to his computation the time was running out, or indeed _was run_ out; when just at this moment, Lear[27] came in with the President's sanction. _I am satisfied that had it been his veto, there would have been an effort to nullify it, and they would have arrayed themselves in a hostile att.i.tude._ Between the two parties, General Was.h.i.+ngton had a most difficult course to steer."

"'The foregoing is written immediately after the conversation, which has not lasted half an hour,--Mr. Madison having stepped out, and I taking advantage of this interruption to retire to my room and commit the substance to paper. The very words I have retained, as near as I could. In many instances (where I have run a line over the words[28]) I have done this exactly.'"

This statement by Mr. Madison substantially sustains the view I have taken of General Was.h.i.+ngton's position at that period. The letters of all the leading Federalists of that day, and those that followed it for some years, show that they looked with great unanimity to Hamilton rather than to Was.h.i.+ngton for the tone and direction that was to be given to the movements of the Federal party, and leave scarcely a doubt that they would have sided with Hamilton if a difference had arisen between the two, as is here intimated by Mr. Madison.

How much is it to be regretted that the latter did not leave behind him a history of the events of his life and an account of what he knew of the views of others. No man was better informed upon all political subjects than himself. At the time he referred to, in his observations to Mr. Trist, he probably enjoyed as large a share of Was.h.i.+ngton's confidence as any other man, and was at all times most reluctant to be placed in opposition to him. Afterwards General Was.h.i.+ngton placed in his hands the papers from which to write his Farewell Address. But it was a rule of Mr. Madison's life, as I have noticed before, never to injure the feelings of any man as long as it could possibly be avoided, and he suffered long and much to avoid it. His papers will be examined in vain for imputations of faults to his contemporaries. They are even omitted in cases where they would have been the readiest and apparently the indispensable means of repelling unjust imputations upon himself. He carried this self-denial farther than any other public man. The pain and regret that he exhibited in his conversation with Mr. Trist, in respect to the parting between Hamilton and himself, were obviously genuine, but the necessity was absolute, and the danger that justice might not otherwise he done to his character imminent. He was on the eve of his departure for another world,--his well earned and well established reputation was about to lose his own personal guardians.h.i.+p,--and the subject was brought before him in such a way that he must either confess the forthcoming impeachments by his silence, or repel them by declaring the truth.

Some other citations which I have found occasion to make from Mr.

Randall's work are incorporated in the text.

[27] President Was.h.i.+ngton's Private Secretary.

[28] We have italicized these words.

Other instances have occurred in our Government and elsewhere in which statesmen have transcended the const.i.tutional limits of their power under a necessity sincerely believed to be controlling, trusting to that circ.u.mstance for the indulgence of their const.i.tuents; and in no case which has presented itself here has that indulgence been withheld where the motives for the a.s.sumption of responsibility were pure. Mr.

Jefferson's course in the purchase of Louisiana and General Jackson's conduct at New Orleans were striking cases of that description.

But we have, fortunately, evidence the most authentic and unequivocal that President Was.h.i.+ngton never intended by his approval of the Bank Bill to express an approval of the systematic and general disregard of the intentions of the framers of the Const.i.tution, in respect to the powers of Congress, whenever such disregard should be deemed expedient.

The provisions of the first Apportionment Bill sent to him for his approval were contrary to the Const.i.tution, and Mr. Jefferson gave an opinion to that effect and recommending a veto, whilst the opinion of General Hamilton was in favor of their const.i.tutionality. The division by which the bill pa.s.sed had been exclusively sectional, and the objection of unconst.i.tutionality was raised by the South. The Union was, at that early period, believed to stand upon a precarious footing, and the President was seriously apprehensive that the worst consequences might result, in the then state of the public mind, if he were to throw himself on the side of his own section by a veto.

His embarra.s.sment and concern were great, and he was sincerely desirous to avoid a resort to what was then regarded as an extreme measure. He agreed that the method prescribed by the bill "was contrary to the common understanding of that instrument (the Const.i.tution), and to what was understood at the time by the makers of it," but thought "it would bear the construction a.s.sumed by the bill." This was the precise issue that was raised upon the pa.s.sage of the bill to establish the bank, viz.: whether the actual intention, or that which was only inferential, was to prevail. That he would have withheld the veto if he had felt himself at liberty in such a case to follow the letter of the Const.i.tution, and thereby defeat the intention of those who made it, no one, who examines the matter, will for a moment doubt. He appears to have been duly sensible of the magnitude of the question in all its bearings. On the one hand were the evils to be apprehended from a decision in favor of the South upon a disturbing question by a Southern President, in a form not only without precedent here, but very unpalatable--that of a veto; on the other was the grave objection to his committing himself in favor of the principle which had prevailed on the question of the bank in a case that did not furnish any thing like an equal excuse for departing from the honest and straightforward rule of interpreting the Const.i.tution, like any other instrument, by the intention of those who made it. He did not fail to see that to act again, and under existing circ.u.mstances, upon the principle to which he had given his sanction in the case of the bank, would be to commit himself to Hamilton's lat.i.tudinarian doctrines in respect to the construction of the Const.i.tution, and he vetoed the bill.[29]

[29] Jefferson's _Correspondence_, Vol. IV. p. 466.

It would have been well for the country if the injurious effects of Hamilton's policy and principles had been confined to his own times, but men of such rare genius, distinguished by the same eagerness, industry, and energy in pursuit of their objects, seldom fail to leave a durable mark upon the world in which they have bustled, especially when their day is contemporaneous with the commencement of a new government, and when they are intrusted with great power, as was emphatically the case with Hamilton. He and Jefferson, both answering to this description, have always been regarded by me as the bane and antidote of our political system. Every speech and every writing of Hamilton exhibited proof of deep research and laborious study. Men, governments, and political measures, were his favorite subjects of reflection and discussion. Of the former, more particularly of the ma.s.s, he had (as I have elsewhere said) formed unfavorable opinions; not that he was less desirous than others for their welfare--for few men were more philanthropic in disposition--but because of the early and ineffaceable impression upon his mind that the majority of men, in their collective capacity, were radically deficient in respect for order and for the rights of persons and of property. As he thought their fears or their private interests and pa.s.sions the only alternative methods of managing them and the former inapplicable to our people, so he considered those measures of government "discreetest, wisest, best," which were most likely to enlist their personal interests and feelings on its side. Such measures he deemed indeed indispensable, and his whole scheme for the administration of the Government was founded upon this theory.

Anti-republican as these views undoubtedly were, they nevertheless pointed to principles and to a policy well calculated to make deep impressions upon large portions of the community, in which were, and will always be, found many liable to be influenced by such considerations, and ready to follow the political party organized upon them; many, if not born in the belief, certainly educated in it, that they have something to fear from the major part of their fellow-creatures, and seeing few more important objects for the establishment of governments among men than to keep these in order and to protect the well-disposed portions of society like themselves from the vices and follies of the ma.s.ses. In the performance of such duties they very naturally conclude that government should look to the more intelligent and better informed cla.s.ses for support, and as naturally that to enable them to render such support they should receive partial favors and extraordinary advantages from its administration. Men of this cla.s.s, their a.s.sociates and dependents, as was foreseen, embraced with alacrity and supported with the energy inspired by self-interest the principle of political reciprocity between government and its supporters inaugurated in England at the Revolution of 1688, and ingrafted upon our system by Hamilton in 1790. He found in the old Federal party a soil well adapted to the cultivation of that policy, and in conjunction with those who expected to share in the profits exerted all the faculties of his great mind to extend the field for its operation.

That extension soon became so great under the fostering influence of Government and the money power as to include among its supporters, either as princ.i.p.als or sympathizers, almost every business cla.s.s in the community, saving always the landed interest, properly so called, the mechanics not manufacturers, and the working cla.s.ses. When I speak of the landed interest, I allude (as I have before explained) to those only who cultivate the soil themselves directly or by the aid of _employees_--to the farmers and planters of the country--and do not of course include speculators in lands, who buy to sell and sell to buy, and who, of all cla.s.ses, are most dependent upon the friends.h.i.+p and most subject to the influence of the money power.

Such a principle of political action, once fairly started in business communities, is not easily uprooted. It continued to govern the successors to the Federal party by whatever name they were called.

Indeed, the discrepancy that existed between its name and its principles when it was first called _Federal_ has obtained in all its mutations.