The Age Of Revolution Part 5

THE YOUNGER PITT.

THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM HAD WAITED LONG FOR HIS OPPORTUNITY to form a Government, and when at last it came in March 1782 he had but four months to live. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in Virginia had a decisive effect on British opinion. Dark was the scene which spread around the ambitious Island and its stubborn King. Britain was without a single ally; she stood alone amid a world war in which all had gone amiss. A French squadron was threatening her communications in the Indian Ocean and French money was nouris.h.i.+ng the hopes of the Mahrattas on the Indian subcontinent; the combined Fleets of France and Spain were active in the Channel and had blockaded Gibraltar; Minorca had fallen; Was.h.i.+ngton's army lay poised before New York, and the American Congress had incontinently pledged itself not to make a separate peace. Admiral Rodney indeed regained command of West Indian waters in a great victory off the Saintes, and in September Howe was to relieve Gibraltar from a three-year siege. Elsewhere over the globe England's power and repute were very low. Such was the plight to which the obstinacy of George III had reduced the Empire.

Rockingham died in July, and Lord Shelburne was entrusted with the new administration. He had no intention of following the design which Rockingham and Burke had long cherished of composing a Cabinet, united on the main issues of the day, which would dictate its policy to the King in accordance with its collective decisions. This plan was cast aside. Shelburne sought to form a Government by enlisting politicians of the most diverse views and connection. But the entire structure of British politics was ruptured in its personal loyalties by the years of defeat to which King George III had led them. Now, by enlisting the help of the many, the new Prime Minister incurred the suspicion of all. Of great ability, a brilliant orator, and with the most liberal ideas, he was nevertheless, like Carteret before him, distrusted on all sides. The King found him personally agreeable and gave him full support. But politics were now implacably bitter between three main groups, and none of them was strong enough alone to sustain a Government. Shelburne himself had the support of those who had followed Chatham, including his son, the young William Pitt, who was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. But North still commanded a considerable faction, and, smarting at his sovereign's cold treatment after twelve years of faithful service, coveted a renewal of office. The third group was headed by Charles James Fox, vehement critic of North's regime, brilliant, generous-hearted, and inconsistent. Burke, for his part, lacked family connections; he had no great gift for practical politics, and since the death of his patron, Rockingham, was without influence.

Hostility to Shelburne grew and spread. Nevertheless, by negotiations in which he displayed great skill, the Prime Minister succeeded in bringing the world war to an end on the basis of American independence. The French Government were now close to bankruptcy. They had only aided the American Patriots in the hope of dismembering the British Empire, and, apart from a few romantic enthusiasts like Lafayette, had no wish to help to create a republic in the New World. His own Ministers had long warned Louis XVI that this might shake his absolute monarchy. Spain was directly hostile to American independence. She had entered the war mainly because France had promised to help her to recapture Gibraltar in return for the use of her Fleet against England. But the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies had bred trouble among her own overseas possessions, Gibraltar had not fallen, and she now demanded extensive compensation in North America. Although Congress had promised to let France take the lead in peace negotiations, the American Commissioners in Europe realised their danger, and without French knowledge and in direct violation of the Congressional undertaking they signed secret peace preliminaries with England. Shelburne, like Chatham, dreamt of preserving the Empire by making generous concessions, and he realised that freedom was the only practical policy. In any case Fox had already committed Britain to this step by making a public announcement in the House of Commons.

The most important issue was the future of the Western lands lying between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi. Speculators from Virginia and the Middle Colonies had long been active in these regions, and their influence in Congress was backed by powerful men such as Franklin, Patrick Henry, the Lee family, and Was.h.i.+ngton himself. The Radical New Englanders, led by Samuel and John Adams, had no direct interest in these Western territories, but agreed to press for their complete cession provided the British were made to recognise the rights of the Northern colonies to fish off Newfoundland.

Shelburne was by no means hostile to the American desire for the West. The difficulty was the Canadian frontier. Franklin and others went so far as to demand the whole province of Canada, but Shelburne knew that to yield to this would bring down his Government. After months of negotiation a frontier was agreed upon which ran from the borders of Maine to the St Lawrence, up the river, and through the Great Lakes to their head. Everything south of this line, east of the Mississippi and north of the borders of Florida, became American territory. This was by far the most important result of the treaty. Shelburne had shown great statesmans.h.i.+p, and frontier wars between Britain and America were, with one exception, prevented by his concessions. The only sufferers were the Canadian fur companies, whose activities had till now extended from the province of Quebec to the Ohio; but this was a small price. The granting of fishery rights to New England satisfied the Northern states.

In return the British Government attempted to settle two disputes, namely, over the unpaid debts of the American merchants to England acc.u.mulated before the war and the security of about a hundred thousand American Loyalists. Shelburne fought hard, but the Americans showed little generosity. They knew only too well that the game was already theirs and that the British Government dared not break off negotiations on these comparatively minor points. It was merely provided that "creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful impediment in the recovery of their debts" and that Congress should "earnestly recommend the several states to restore Loyalist property." South Carolina alone showed an understanding spirit about Loyalist property, and between forty and fifty thousand "United Empire Loyalists" had to make new homes in Canada.

France now made her terms with England. An armistice was declared in January 1783, and the final peace treaty was signed at Versailles later in the year. The French kept their possessions in India and the West Indies. They were guaranteed the right to fish off Newfoundland, and they reoccupied the slave-trade settlements of Senegal on the African coast. The important cotton island of Tobago was ceded to them, but apart from this they gained little that was material. Their main object however was achieved. The Thirteen Colonies had been wrested from the United Kingdom, and England's position in the world seemed to have been gravely weakened.

Spain was forced to join in the general settlement. Her American ambitions had melted away, her one gain in this theatre being the two English colonies in East Florida; but this was at the expense of the English retention of Gibraltar, the main Spanish objective. She had conquered Minorca, the English naval station in the Mediterranean during the war, and she kept this at the peace. Holland too was compelled by the defection of her allies to come to terms.

Thus ended what some then called the World War. A new state had come into being across the Atlantic, a great future force in the councils of the nations. The first British Empire had fallen. England had been heavily battered, but remained undaunted.

Her emergence from her ordeal was the work of Shelburne. In less than a year he had brought peace to the world and had negotiated the terms on which it stood. That he received small thanks for his services is a remarkable fact. He resigned after eight months, in February 1783. Later he was created Marquis of Lansdowne, and descendants of his under that name have since played a notable part in British politics. Shelburne's Government was followed by a machine-made coalition between North and Fox. It was said that this combination was too much even for the agile consciences of the age. Fox had made his name by savage personal a.s.saults on North's administration. Only five years before he had publicly declared that any alliance with North was too monstrous to be admitted for a moment. Yet this was what was now presented to an astonished public. Shelburne had lived upon his task. The Fox-North Government had nothing on which to rest their feet. Within nine months this Ministry also collapsed. The immediate cause of its fall was a Bill which Fox drafted with the laudable intention of reforming the Government of India. His design was to subject the East India Company, now the rulers of vast territories in Asia, to some degree of control by a political board in London. His critics were quick to point out that extensive patronage would be vested in the hands of this political board and opportunities for corruption immeasurably increased. Only close supporters of the Government could hope to benefit. All party groups, except Fox's personal followers, were therefore hostile to the proposal.

The King now seized his chance of regaining popularity by destroying a monstrous administration. Party and personal issues alike being exhausted by the weight of the disaster, George III saw his opportunity if he could find the man. Only one figure stood in the House of Commons not committed to the past. If he lacked the traditional elements on which Parliamentary strength had been built in former times, he was at least free from a wholly discredited process. In William Pitt, the son of the great Chatham, the King found the man. He had already held the Chancellors.h.i.+p of the Exchequer during the Shelburne administration. His reputation was honourable and clear. By what was certainly the most outstanding domestic action of his long reign, in December 1783, the King asked Pitt to form a Government. The old Parliamentary machine had failed, and as it broke down a new combination took its place whose efforts were vindicated by the events of the next twenty years.

The revolt of the American colonies had shattered the complacency of eighteenth-century England. Men began to study the root causes of the disaster and the word "reform" was in the air. The defects of the political system had plainly contributed to the secession, and the arguments used by the American colonists against the Mother Country lingered in the minds of all Englishmen who questioned the perfection of the Const.i.tution. Demand for some reform of the representation in Parliament began to stir; but the agitation was now mild and respectable. The main aim of the reformers was to increase the number of boroughs which elected Members of Parliament, and thus reduce the possibilities of Government corruption. There was even talk of universal suffrage and other novel theories of democratic representation. But the chief advocates of reform were substantial landowners or country clergymen like Christopher Wyvill, from Yorks.h.i.+re, or mature, well-established politicians like Edmund Burke. They would all have agreed that Parliament did not and need not precisely represent the English people. To them Parliament represented, not individuals, but "interests"-the landed interest, the mercantile interest, even the labouring interest, but with a strong leaning to the land as the solid and indispensable basis of the national life. These well-to-do theorists were distressed at the rapid spread of political corruption. This was due partly to the Whig system of controlling the Government through the patronage of the Crown, and partly to the purchase of seats in Parliament by the new commercial and industrial cla.s.ses. The "Nabobs" of the East India interest, as we have seen, appeared at Westminster, and the incursion of the money power into politics both widened the field of corruption and threatened the political monopoly of the landowning cla.s.ses. Thus the movement in governing circles was neither radical nor comprehensive. It found expression in Burke's Economic Reform Act of 1782, disfranchising certain cla.s.ses of Government officials who had hitherto played some part in managing elections. This was a tepid version of the scheme Burke had meant to introduce. No general reform of the franchise was attempted, and when people talked about the rights of Englishmen they meant the st.u.r.dy cla.s.s of yeomen vaunted as the backbone of the country, whose weight in the counties it was desired to increase. Many of the early reform schemes were academic attempts to preserve the political power and balance of the rural interest. The individualism of eighteenth-century England a.s.sumed no doctrinaire form. The enunciation of first principles has always been obnoxious to the English mind. John Wilkes had made a bold and successful stand for the liberty of the subject before the law, but the whole controversy had turned on the narrow if practical issue of the legality of general warrants. Tom Paine's inflammatory pamphlets had a considerable circulation among certain cla.s.ses, but in Parliament little was heard about the abstract rights of man. In England the revolutionary current ran underground and was caught up in provincial eddies.

Nevertheless the dream of founding a balanced political system on a landed society was becoming more and more unreal. In the last forty years of the eighteenth century exports and imports more than doubled in value and the population increased by over two millions. England was silently undergoing a revolution in industry and agriculture, which was to have more far-reaching effects than the political tumults of the times. Steam-engines provided a new source of power in factories and foundries, which rapidly multiplied. A network of ca.n.a.ls was constructed which carried coal cheaply to new centres of industry. New methods of smelting brought a tenfold increase in the output of iron. New roads, with a hard and durable surface, reached out over the country and bound it more closely together. An ever-expanding and a.s.sertive industrial community was coming into being. The rapid growth of an urban working cla.s.s, the gradual extinction of small freeholders by enclosures and improved farming methods, the sudden development of manufactures, the appearance of a prosperous middle cla.s.s for whom a place must be found in the political structure of the realm, made the demands of reformers seem inadequate. A great upheaval was taking place in society, and the monopoly which the landowners had gained in 1688 could not remain.

There was also a profound change in the emotional and intellectual life of the people. The American Revolution had thrown the English back upon themselves, and a mental stock-taking exposed complacencies and anomalies which could ill stand the public gaze. The religious revival of John Wesley had broken the stony surface of the Age of Reason. The enthusiasm generated by the Methodist movement and its mission to the poor and humble accelerated the general dissolution of the eighteenth-century world. The Dissenters, who had long supported the Whig Party, increased in wealth and importance and renewed their attack on the religious monopoly of the Established Church. Barred from Parliament and from the franchise, fertile in mind, they formed an intelligent, thrustful, and unsatisfied body of men. Such, in brief, were the turmoils and problems which confronted William Pitt when he became Prime Minister of Britain at the age of twenty-four.

The elections which carried Pitt into power were the most carefully planned of the century. There has been a legend that a great wave of popular reaction against the personal government of George III brought him into office. In fact it was George himself who turned to Pitt, and the whole electoral machinery built up by the King's agents, headed by the backstairs figure of John Robinson, the Secretary of the Treasury, was put at the disposal of the young politician. In December 1783 Robinson and Pitt met to discuss their plan at a house in Leicester Square belonging to one of Pitt's close a.s.sociates, Henry Dundas. Robinson drew up a detailed report on the const.i.tuencies, and convinced Pitt that a majority in the Commons could be obtained. Three days later Fox and North were dismissed by the King, and the ensuing elections created a majority which William Pitt preserved into the next century. The plan had been justified, and the nation at large accepted the result as the true verdict of the country.

This majority rested on a number of elements-Pitt's personal following; the "Party of the Crown," put at his disposal by George III; the independent country gentlemen; the East India interest, alienated by Fox's attempt to curb their political power; and the Scottish Members, marshalled by Dundas. Here was a rank and file which represented a broad basis of popular favour. Pitt had no intention of being a second Lord North. The Tories supported him because he appeared to be rescuing the King from an unscrupulous Government. The Whigs remembered that he had refused office under North, and that he had advocated a reform of the Parliamentary system. The "old gang," with whom he had no connections, had failed, disgraced the nation, and wrecked its finances. With all the renown of his father's name behind him, this grave, precocious young man, eloquent, incorruptible, and hard-working, stood upon the uplands of power.

Even at this age he had few close acquaintances. But two men were to play a decisive part in his life, Henry Dundas and William Wilberforce. Dundas, a good-humoured, easy-going materialist, embodied the spirit of eighteenth-century politics, with its buying up of seats, its full-blooded enjoyment of office, its secret influences, and its polished scepticism. He was an indispensable ally, for he commanded both the electoral power of Scotland and the political allegiance of the East India Company, and it was he who kept the new majority together. For Pitt, although personally incorruptible, leant heavily upon the eighteenth-century machinery of government for support.

William Wilberforce, on the other hand, was the friend of Pitt's Cambridge days, and the only person who enjoyed his confidence. Deeply religious and sustained by a high idealism, Wilberforce became the keeper of the young Minister's conscience. He belonged to the new generation which questioned the cheerful complacency of the eighteenth century. The group who gathered round him were known not unkindly as "the Saints." They formed a compact body in the House of Commons, and their prime political aim was the abolition of the slave trade. They drew towards them the religious fervour of the new Evangelical, or "Low Church," movement. Between these contrary characters stood Chatham's son.

The greatest orators of the age, Fox and Burke, were Pitt's opponents. They dwelt eloquently on the broad themes of reform. Yet it was Pitt, aided by Dundas, who in a quiet, businesslike way reconstructed the practical policies of the nation. The variety of his following however limited the scope of his work. A mult.i.tude of interests stifled his early hopes. He failed to legislate against the slave trade. Wilberforce and his "Saints" were consistently thwarted by the Bristol and Liverpool merchants, who were political supporters of the Ministry and whom Pitt refused to alienate. Such was the meagreness of Pitt's efforts that many doubted his sincerity as a reformer: abolition of the slave trade had to wait until Fox again came into office. But Wilberforce never permitted a syllable of doubt to be spoken unchallenged against his friend, and trusted to the end in Pitt's Parliamentary judgment.

Pitt was to need great patience in the coming years. His supporters were stubborn, jealous, and at times rebellious. They frustrated his attempts to reform the Irish Government, now imperative since the loss of the American colonies. It was only after a hard fight that Pitt and Dundas persuaded the House of Commons to pa.s.s an India Bill establis.h.i.+ng a Board of Control not unlike that which Fox had proposed, though less effective. The system endured until after the Indian Mutiny sixty years later. Since Dundas immediately acquired the management of this Board, the patronage thus placed in his hands greatly enhanced his own political position. In April 1785 the King and the borough Members extinguished another of Pitt's hopes, a measure of Parliamentary Reform.

Thus from the outset Pitt was overcome by the dead hand of eighteenth-century politics. He failed to abolish the slave trade. He failed to make a settlement in Ireland. He failed to make Parliament more representative of the nation, and the one achievement in these early months was his India Act, which increased rather than limited the opportunities for political corruption. He saw quite clearly the need and justification for reform, but preferred always to compromise with the forces of resistance.

It was in the most practical and most urgent problem, the ordering and reconstruction of the finances of the nation, that Pitt achieved his best work, and created that Treasury tradition of wise, incorruptible management which still prevails. His Ministry coincided with a revolution in economic and commercial thought. In 1776 Adam Smith had published The Wealth of Nations, The Wealth of Nations, which quickly became famous throughout educated circles. Pitt was deeply influenced by his book. The first British Empire was discredited and had almost vanished from the map. Another was gradually growing in Canada, in India, and in the Antipodes, where Cook had just charted the scarce-known Southern Continent. But the conception of a close economic Imperial unit, with the colonies eternally subject in matters of trade to the Mother Country and fettered by comprehensive restrictions upon their commercial intercourse with other nations, had proved disastrous. The times were ripe for an exposition of the principles of Free Trade. In steady, caustic prose Adam Smith destroyed the case for Mercantilism. Pitt was convinced. He was the first English statesman to believe in Free Trade, and for a while his Tory followers accepted it. The antiquated and involved system of customs barriers was now for the first time systematically revised. There were sixty-eight different kinds of customs duties, and some articles were subject to many separate and c.u.mulative imposts. A pound of nutmegs paid, or ought to have paid, nine different duties. In 1784 and 1785 Pitt was able to bring a degree of order into this chaos, and the first visible effect of his wide-ranging revision of tariffs was a considerable drop in smuggling. which quickly became famous throughout educated circles. Pitt was deeply influenced by his book. The first British Empire was discredited and had almost vanished from the map. Another was gradually growing in Canada, in India, and in the Antipodes, where Cook had just charted the scarce-known Southern Continent. But the conception of a close economic Imperial unit, with the colonies eternally subject in matters of trade to the Mother Country and fettered by comprehensive restrictions upon their commercial intercourse with other nations, had proved disastrous. The times were ripe for an exposition of the principles of Free Trade. In steady, caustic prose Adam Smith destroyed the case for Mercantilism. Pitt was convinced. He was the first English statesman to believe in Free Trade, and for a while his Tory followers accepted it. The antiquated and involved system of customs barriers was now for the first time systematically revised. There were sixty-eight different kinds of customs duties, and some articles were subject to many separate and c.u.mulative imposts. A pound of nutmegs paid, or ought to have paid, nine different duties. In 1784 and 1785 Pitt was able to bring a degree of order into this chaos, and the first visible effect of his wide-ranging revision of tariffs was a considerable drop in smuggling.

Further reform consolidated the revenue. It is to Pitt that we owe the modern machinery of the "Budget." By gathering around him able officials he reorganized the collection and disburs.e.m.e.nt of the revenue. The Audit Office was established, and numerous sinecures at the Treasury were abolished. The state of the national finances was lamentable. At the end of 1783 over forty million pounds which had been voted by Parliament for war purposes had not been accounted for. Government credit was low, the Ministry was distrusted. The National Debt stood at two hundred and fifty million pounds, more than two and a half times as great as in the days of Walpole. Pitt resolved to acquire a surplus in the revenue and apply it to the reduction of this swollen burden.

In 1786 he brought in a Bill for this purpose. Each year a million pounds would be set aside to buy stock, and the interest would be used to reduce the National Debt. Here was the famous oft-criticised Sinking Fund. The scheme depended on having an annual Budget surplus of revenue over expenditure, and Pitt was often forced in later years, when there was no such surplus, to feed the Sinking Fund with money borrowed at a high rate of interest. His reasons for so costly a procedure were psychological. The soundness of the national finances was judged by the amount in the Sinking Fund, which gave an impression of stability to the moneyed cla.s.ses of the City. Trade revived, prosperity increased, and what then seemed the handsome sum of ten millions was paid off in ten years.

In this same year, 1786, the Customs and Excise were amalgamated, and a reconst.i.tuted Board of Trade established in its modern form. But perhaps the most striking achievement of Pitt's management was the negotiation of the Eden treaty with France-the first Free Trade treaty according to the new economic principles. William Eden, one of Pitt's able young officials, was sent to Paris to get French tariffs against English cotton goods lowered in return for a reduction of English duties on French wines and silks. These did not of course compete with any English product, but the export of Lancas.h.i.+re cotton goods damaged the textile manufacturers in North-Eastern France and increased the discontent among the French industrial cla.s.ses affected by this enlightened measure.

The hope of further reconstruction and improvement was shattered by war and revolution upon the European scene. For Pitt it was a personal tragedy. His genius lay essentially in business management; his greatest memorials are his financial statements. He was most at home in the world of figures. His mind had set and developed at an unduly early age, without, as Coleridge said, "the ungainliness or the promise of a growing intellect." He found human contacts difficult, and his accession to power cut him off from other men. From 1784 until 1800 he moved exclusively between the narrow world of political London and his house at Putney. He knew nothing of the lives of his countrymen outside the limited area of the Metropolis. Even amid the fellows.h.i.+p of the House of Commons and the political clubs he stood aloof.

Fully aware of the economic changes in eighteenth-century England, Pitt was less sensitive to signs of political disturbance abroad. He believed firmly in non-intervention, and the break-up of the Old Regime in France left him unimpressed. He watched with quiet malice the quarrel on this issue of his leading Parliamentary opponents, Fox and Burke. His interests lay elsewhere. If the French chose to revolt against their rulers it was their own affair. It might be flattering that they should want a const.i.tutional monarchy like the British, but it was no concern of his. The First Minister was deaf to the zealous campaign of the Whig Opposition in favour of the French revolutionaries, and ignored the warnings of Burke and others who believed that the principles of monarchy, and indeed of civilised society, were endangered by the roar of events across the Channel.

It is remarkable to witness the peaceful triteness of English politics, operating almost as if in a vacuum, during the years 1789 to 1793, when the terrible and world-shaking upheavals in Paris and in the provinces of France convulsed men's minds. The Budget speech; the dismissal of Lord Chancellor Thurlow for intriguing against Pitt, an event which pointed towards the convention of mutual loyalty and singleness of view between all the members of the Cabinet; motions against the slave trade-such was the news from London. Pitt was determined to stand clear of the impending European conflict. He was convinced that if the French revolutionaries were left alone to put their house in order as they chose England could avoid being dragged into war. He steadily avoided any manifestation which could be interpreted as provocative or as demonstrative of sympathy. He watched unmoved the pa.s.sion of the Opposition for an armed crusade against unenlightened despotism. They were possessed with the fear that the Austrian and Prussian monarchs would intervene to quell the revolution. Led by Fox, they saw in war a hope of breaking Pitt's monopoly of political power. But Burke was closer to the general feeling of the country when he remarked that "the effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do as they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations." The sympathies of the Court were not unmoved by the plight of the French monarchy, and if intervention became inevitable the Court was naturally in favour of supporting Louis XVI. Pitt maintained an even course of neutrality, and with characteristic obstinacy held to it for over three tumultuous years.

*CHAPTER SEVENTEEN*

THE AMERICAN CONSt.i.tUTION.

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE WAS OVER AND THE THIRTEEN COLONIES were free to make their own lives. The struggle had told heavily upon their primitive political organisation. The Articles of Confederation to which they had subscribed in 1777 set up a weak central Government enjoying only such authority as the Americans might have allowed to the British Crown. Their Congress had neither the power nor the opportunity in so vast a land of creating an ordered society out of the wreckage of revolution and war.

The strongest element behind the American effort had been the small farmers from the inland frontier districts. It was they who had supplied the men for the Army and who had in most of the states refas.h.i.+oned the several const.i.tutions on democratic lines. They now dominated the legislatures, and jealously guarded the privileges of their own states. With the close of hostilities it seemed that the Union embodied in an unwieldy Congress might snap or wither under the strain of post-war problems. American society was rent by strong conflicting interests. The farmers were heavily in debt to the city cla.s.ses. The issue of too much paper money by Congress had bred inflation. By 1780 one gold dollar was worth forty paper ones. Every state was burdened with enormous debts, and the taxes imposed to meet the interest fell heavily upon the land. Small impoverished farmers were everywhere being sold up. War profiteers had emerged. A gulf was widening in American society between debtor and creditor, between farmer and merchant-financier. Agitation and unrest marched with a deepening economic crisis. There were widespread movements for postponing the collection of debts. In Ma.s.sachusetts farmers and disbanded soldiers, fearing foreclosure on their mortgages, rose in rebellion. In the autumn of 1786 Captain Daniel Shays, with a mob of armed farmers, attempted to storm the county courts. There was sharp fear that such incidents would multiply. Was.h.i.+ngton, himself as strong an upholder of property as Cromwell, wrote, "There are combustibles in every state which a spark might set fire to. I feel infinitely more than I can express for the disorders which have arisen."

It was not only internal conditions that clamoured for action. Some awkward points in the peace treaty were still unresolved. Debts to the British merchants, compensation for Loyalists, British evacuation of trading posts and forts on the Canadian boundary, all pressed for settlement. The British Government was legislating against American s.h.i.+pping. Spain was re-embedded in Florida and hostile to American expansion in the South-West. America was entangled in an official alliance with France, where the stir of great changes to come was already felt. Far-seeing men perceived the imminence of another world conflict. Distracted by internal disorder, without national unity or organisation, the American states seemed an easy prey to foreign ambitions.

Demand for revision of the Articles of Confederation grew among the people of the towns. Shays' Rebellion was the spur to action, and in May 1787 a convention of delegates from twelve of the states met at Philadelphia to consider the matter. The partisans of a strong national Government were in a large majority. Of the possible leaders of the farmers, or agrarian democrats as they were now called, Patrick Henry of Virginia refused to attend, and the greatest figure of them all, Thomas Jefferson, was absent as envoy in Paris. One of the leading personalities of the a.s.sembly was Alexander Hamilton, who represented the powerful commercial interests of New York City. This handsome, brilliant man, the illegitimate son of a West Indian merchant, had risen rapidly on Was.h.i.+ngton's staff during the war. He had entered New York society and married well. He was determined that the ruling cla.s.s, into which he had made his way by his own abilities, should continue to rule, and he now became the recognised leader of those who demanded a capable central Government and limitation of states' powers. A sense of the overhanging crisis in Europe and of the perils of democracy guided these men in their labours, and the debates in the Convention were on a high level. Most of the delegates were in favour of a Federal Government, but methods and details were bitterly contested. Many divisions cut across the discussions. The small states were anxious to preserve their equality in the great community of the Thirteen, and vehemently opposed any scheme for representation in a Federal Government on a simple basis of numbers.

All the delegates came from long-established centres on the Atlantic seaboard, but they realised with uneasiness that their power and influence would soon be threatened by the growing populace of the West. Here, beyond the Ohio and the Alleghenies, lay vast territories which Congress had ordained should be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the original states as soon as any of them contained sixty thousand free inhabitants. Their population was already expanding, and it was only a question of time before they claimed their rights. Then what would happen to the famous Thirteen States? It was they who had expelled the British, and they felt with some justification that they knew more about politics and the true interests of the Union than the denizens of these remote, half-settled regions. As Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania put it-he owed his unusual Christian name to his mother, who had been a Miss Gouverneur-"The busy haunts of men, not the remote wilderness, is the proper school of political talents. If the Western people get the power in their hands they will ruin the Atlantic interests." Both principles were right. The Atlantic communities had the wealth and the experience, but the new lands were fully ent.i.tled to join the Union, and to the lasting credit of the Philadelphia delegates no step was taken to prevent them doing so. But one day the clash would come. The power and the future lay with the West, and it was with misgiving and anxiety that the Convention addressed itself to framing the Const.i.tution of the United States.

This was a concise doc.u.ment defining the powers of the new central Government. It established a single executive: a President, appointed indirectly by electors chosen as the state legislatures might decide, and serving for four years, with the right of veto over the acts of Congress, but subject to impeachment; head of the Army and administration, responsible only to the people, completely independent of the legislative power. The Lower House, or the House of Representatives as it was now called, was to be elected for two years, upon a population basis. But this concession to the democratic principle was tempered by the erection of a Senate, elected for six years by the state legislatures. The Senate was to restrain any demagogy of the Lower House, to defend the interests of property against the weight of a Lower House chosen upon the numerical principle, and by its share in the appointing and treaty-making powers of the President to control this powerful functionary. At the summit of the const.i.tutional edifice stood a Supreme Court, composed of judges nominated for life by the President, subject to the ratification of the Senate. It a.s.sumed the task of judicial review-namely, a coercive supervision of the Acts not only of Congress, but also of the state legislatures, to ensure their conformity with the Const.i.tution.

Such was the federal machinery devised at Philadelphia in September 1787. A national authority had been created, supreme within its sphere. But this sphere was strictly defined and soon further limited; all powers not delegated under the Const.i.tution to the Federal Government were to rest with the states. There was to be no central "tyranny" of the kind that King George's Ministers at Westminster had tried to exercise. The new nation that had with difficulty struggled into being was henceforth fortified with something unheard of in the existing world-a written Const.i.tution. At first sight this authoritative doc.u.ment presents a sharp contrast with the store of traditions and precedents that make up the unwritten Const.i.tution of Britain. Yet behind it lay no revolutionary theory. It was based not upon the challenging writings of the French philosophers which were soon to set Europe ablaze, but an Old English doctrine, freshly formulated to meet an urgent American need. The Const.i.tution was a reaffirmation of faith in the principles painfully evolved over the centuries by the English-speaking peoples. It enshrined long-standing English ideas of justice and liberty, henceforth to be regarded on the other side of the Atlantic as basically American.

Of course, a written const.i.tution carries with it the danger of a cramping rigidity. What body of men, however far-sighted, can lay down precepts in advance for settling the problems of future generations? The delegates at Philadelphia were well aware of this. They made provision for amendment, and the doc.u.ment drawn up by them was adaptable enough in practice to permit changes in the Const.i.tution. But it had to be proved in argument and debate and generally accepted throughout the land that any changes proposed would follow the guiding ideas of the Founding Fathers. A prime object of the Const.i.tution was to be conservative; it was to guard the principles and machinery of State from capricious and ill-considered alteration. In its fundamental doctrine the American people acquired an inst.i.tution which was to command the same respect and loyalty as in England are given to Parliament and Crown.

It now remained to place the scheme before the people. The delegates foresaw that the democratic, isolationist state legislatures would probably reject it, and they accordingly advised that local conventions should be elected to vote upon the new project of government. Hamilton and Robert Morris, whose strong and well-organised group had become known as the Federalist Party, hoped that all men with a stake in the country, who had probably not wanted to sit on the revolutionary bodies formed during the war for the administration of the different states, would see the value and reason in the new Const.i.tution and limit the influence of the more extreme elements.

To the leaders of agrarian democracy, the backwoodsmen, the small farmers, the project seemed a betrayal of the Revolution. They had thrown off the English executive. They had gained their local freedom. They were now asked to create another instrument no less powerful and coercive. They had been told they were fighting for the Rights of Man and the equality of the individual. They saw in the Const.i.tution an engine for the defence of property against equality. They felt in their daily life the heavy hand of powerful interests behind the contracts and debts which oppressed them. But they were without leaders. Even so in Virginia, New York, and elsewhere there was a fierce and close contest upon the pa.s.sing of the Const.i.tution. Jefferson in his diplomatic exile in Paris brooded with misgiving on the new regime. But the party of Hamilton and Morris, with its brilliant propaganda, in a series of public letters called The Federalist, The Federalist, carried the day. carried the day.

The Federalist letters are among the cla.s.sics of American literature. Their practical wisdom stands pre-eminent amid the stream of controversial writing at the time. Their authors were concerned, not with abstract arguments about political theory, but with the real dangers threatening America, the evident weakness of the existing Confederation, and the debatable advantages of the various provisions in the new Const.i.tution. Hamilton, Jay, and Madison were the princ.i.p.al contributors. The first two were New Yorkers, Madison a Virginian; none came from New England, which was losing its former predominance in the life of the nation. They differed widely in personality and outlook, but they all agreed upon one point, the importance of creating a collective faith in the Const.i.tution as the embodiment of the American ideal. Only thus could the many discordant voices of the Thirteen States be harmonised. How well they succeeded and how enduring has been their success is testified by the century and three-quarters that have elapsed since they wrote. The faith generated by letters are among the cla.s.sics of American literature. Their practical wisdom stands pre-eminent amid the stream of controversial writing at the time. Their authors were concerned, not with abstract arguments about political theory, but with the real dangers threatening America, the evident weakness of the existing Confederation, and the debatable advantages of the various provisions in the new Const.i.tution. Hamilton, Jay, and Madison were the princ.i.p.al contributors. The first two were New Yorkers, Madison a Virginian; none came from New England, which was losing its former predominance in the life of the nation. They differed widely in personality and outlook, but they all agreed upon one point, the importance of creating a collective faith in the Const.i.tution as the embodiment of the American ideal. Only thus could the many discordant voices of the Thirteen States be harmonised. How well they succeeded and how enduring has been their success is testified by the century and three-quarters that have elapsed since they wrote. The faith generated by The Federalist The Federalist has held and sustained the allegiance of the American people down to our own day. has held and sustained the allegiance of the American people down to our own day.

Liberty, The Federalist The Federalist argued, might degenerate into licence. Order, security, and efficient government must be established before disaster overtook America. In an article in this great political series one of the Federalists stated the eternal problem with breadth and power. argued, might degenerate into licence. Order, security, and efficient government must be established before disaster overtook America. In an article in this great political series one of the Federalists stated the eternal problem with breadth and power.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is . . . an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circ.u.mstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions . . . [has] divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. . . . But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests of society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilised nations, and divide them into different cla.s.ses actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the princ.i.p.al task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the Government.

It was in vain that their opponents counter-attacked in print. "Because we have sometimes abused democracy I am not among those who think a democratic branch a nuisance," wrote Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. "Every man of reflection must see that the change now proposed is a transference of power from the many to the few." In the midst of faction fights and the collisions of Federalist and Radical mobs the Const.i.tution was within a year ratified by eleven of the states. Rhode Island and North Carolina stood aside for a little longer. Distrust of social revolution had bitten deep into the New World, and the gulf between the two elements that composed its society remained unbridged. The men who believed in the Rights of Man were forced to bide their time. Those, like Hamilton, who feared the mob in politics, and realised the urgent need for settlement, order, and protection for the propertied interests of the seaboard states, had triumphed.

In March 1789 the new Federal bodies were convened. Opponents of the Const.i.tution exulted in the difficulties of gathering a quorum in the Upper and Lower House. There seemed little vigour and enthusiasm in the new regime. But by the end of the month sufficient people had arrived in New York, where the Government was to meet. The first step was to elect a President, and General Was.h.i.+ngton, the commander of the Revolution, was the obvious choice. Disinterested and courageous, far-sighted and patient, aloof yet direct in manner, inflexible once his mind was made up, Was.h.i.+ngton possessed the gifts of character for which the situation called. He was reluctant to accept office. Nothing would have pleased him more than to remain in equable but active retirement at Mount Vernon, improving the husbandry of his estate. But, as always, he answered the summons of duty. Gouverneur Morris was right when he emphatically wrote to him, "The exercise of authority depends on personal character. Your cool, steady temper is indispensably necessary indispensably necessary to give firm and manly tone to the new Government." to give firm and manly tone to the new Government."

There was much confusion and discussion on t.i.tles and precedence, which aroused the mocking laughter of critics. But the prestige of Was.h.i.+ngton lent dignity to the new, untried office. On April 30, 1789, in the recently opened Federal Hall in New York, he was solemnly inaugurated as the first President of the United States. A week later the French States-General met at Versailles. Another great revolution was about to burst upon a bewildered world. The flimsy, untested fabric of American unity and order had been erected only just in time.

Many details had yet to be worked out. The first step was the pa.s.sing of a Bill of Rights. The lack of such fundamental a.s.sertions in the Const.i.tution had been a chief complaint of its critics. They were now incorporated in ten Amendments. Next the Judiciary Act of 1789 made the Supreme Court the most formidable part of the Federal machinery. "With elaborate detail," wrote the historians Charles and Mary Beard, the law provided for a Supreme Court composed of a Chief Justice and five a.s.sociates, and a Federal District Court for each state, with its own Attorney, Marshal, and appropriate number of deputies. Such were the agencies of power created to make the will of the national Government a living force in every community from New Hamps.h.i.+re to Georgia, from the seaboard to the frontier. . . . After contriving an ingenious system of appeal for carrying cases up to the Supreme Court, the framers of the Judiciary Act devised a process by which the measures of the local Governments could be nullified whenever they came into conflict with the Federal Const.i.tution. . . . In a word, something like the old British Imperial control over provincial legislatures was re-established, under judicial bodies chosen indirectly and for life, within the borders of the United States.1 As yet there were no administrative departments. These were quickly set up: Treasury, State, and War. The success of the new Federal Government depended largely upon the men chosen to fill these key offices: Alexander Hamilton, the great Federalist from New York; Thomas Jefferson, the Virginian democrat, now returned from Paris; and, to a lesser extent, General Knox of Ma.s.sachusetts.

From 1789 to his resignation six years later Hamilton used his brilliant abilities to nourish the Const.i.tution and bind the economic interests of the great merchants of America to the new system. A governing cla.s.s must be created, and Hamilton proposed to demonstrate that Federal government meant a strong national economy. At his inspiration a series of great measures followed. In January 1790 his First Report on Public Credit First Report on Public Credit was laid before the House of Representatives. State debts were to be a.s.sumed by Congress; public credit must depend on the a.s.sumption of past obligations. The war debts of the states were to be taken over by the Federal Government in order to woo the large cla.s.s of creditors to the national interest. The whole debt was to be funded; all the old bonds and certificates which had been rotted by speculation were to be called in and new securities issued. A sinking fund was to be created and a national bank set up. was laid before the House of Representatives. State debts were to be a.s.sumed by Congress; public credit must depend on the a.s.sumption of past obligations. The war debts of the states were to be taken over by the Federal Government in order to woo the large cla.s.s of creditors to the national interest. The whole debt was to be funded; all the old bonds and certificates which had been rotted by speculation were to be called in and new securities issued. A sinking fund was to be created and a national bank set up.

The moneyed interest was overjoyed by this programme, but there was bitter opposition from those who realised that the new Government was using its taxing powers to pay interest to the speculative holders of state debts now a.s.sumed by Congress. The clash between capitalist and agrarian again glared forth. The New England merchants had invested most of their war-time profits in paper bonds, which now gained enormously in value. Ma.s.sachusetts, which had the largest state debt, profited most. The ma.s.s of public debt was concentrated in the hands of small groups in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The nation was taxed to pay them at par for what they had purchased at a tremendous discount. In Virginia there was a fierce revolt against Hamilton's scheme. The planters distrusted the whole idea of public finance. They foresaw the worst elements of Whig plutocracy dominating the new Government. "They discern," wrote Patrick Henry, a striking resemblance between this system and that which was introduced into England at the Revolution [of 1688], a system which has perpetuated upon that nation an enormous debt, and has, moreover, insinuated into the hands of the executive an unbounded influence, which, pervading every branch of the Government, bears down all opposition, and daily threatens the destruction of everything that appertains to English liberty. The same causes produce the same effects. In an agricultural country like this, therefore, to erect and concentrate and perpetuate a large moneyed interest is a measure which . . . must in the course of human events produce one or other of two evils, the prostration of agriculture at the feet of commerce, or a change in the present form of Federal Government, fatal to the existence of American liberty. . . . Your memorialists can find no clause in the Const.i.tution authorising Congress to a.s.sume the debts of the states.

This cleavage is of durable importance in American history. The beginnings of the great political parties can be discerned, and they soon found their first leaders. Hamilton was quickly recognised as head of the financial and mercantile interest centring in the North, and his opponent was none other than Jefferson, Secretary of State. The two men had worked together during the first months of the new Government. Hamilton indeed had only secured enough votes for the pa.s.sage of his proposals on state debts by winning Jefferson's support. This he did by agreeing that the new capital city which would house Congress and Government should be sited on the Potomac River, across the border from Virginia. In the meantime Philadelphia was to succeed New York as the temporary capital. But a wave of speculation which followed the financial measures of Hamilton now aroused the Secretary's opposition. The two leaders misunderstood each other fundamentally. Was.h.i.+ngton, impressed by the need to stabilise the new Const.i.tution, exerted his weighty influence to prevent an open rupture. But by 1791 Jefferson and his Virginian planters were seeking alliance with the malcontents of Hamilton's party in New York and the North.

Before the break came Hamilton presented his Report on Manufactures, Report on Manufactures, which was to be the basis of future American Protectionist theory. Protective duties and bounties were to be introduced to encourage home industries. A vision of a prosperous and industrial society in the New World, such as was rapidly growing up in England, was held before the eyes of the Americans. which was to be the basis of future American Protectionist theory. Protective duties and bounties were to be introduced to encourage home industries. A vision of a prosperous and industrial society in the New World, such as was rapidly growing up in England, was held before the eyes of the Americans.

The outward unity of the Federal administration was preserved for a few months by the re-election of Was.h.i.+ngton as President. But the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton was not confined to economics. A profoundly antagonistic view of politics separated them. They held radically opposed views of human nature. Hamilton, the superbly successful financier, believed that men were guided by their pa.s.sions and their interests, and that their motives, unless rigidly controlled, were evil. "The people!" he is supposed to have said. "The people is a great beast." Majority rule and government by the counting of heads were abhorrent to him. There must be a strong central Government and a powerful governing circle, and he saw in Federal inst.i.tutions, backed by a ruling business cla.s.s, the hope and future of America. The developing society of England was the ideal for the New World, and such he hoped to create across the Atlantic by his efforts at the Treasury Department. He represents and symbolises one aspect of American development, the successful, self-reliant business world, with its distrust of the collective common man, of what Hamilton himself in another mood called "the majesty of the mult.i.tude." But in this gospel of material success there was little trace of that political idealism which characterises and uplifts the American people. "A very great man," President Woodrow Wilson was to call him, adding with evident bias, "but not a great American."

Thomas Jefferson was the product of wholly different conditions and the prophet of a rival political idea. He came from the Virginian frontier, the home of dour individualism and faith in common humanity, the nucleus of resistance to the centralising hierarchy of British rule. Jefferson had been the princ.i.p.al author of the Declaration of Independence and leader of the agrarian democrats in the American Revolution. He was well read; he nourished many scientific interests, and he was a gifted amateur architect. His graceful cla.s.sical house, Monticello, was built according to his own designs. He was in touch with fas.h.i.+onable Left-Wing circles of political philosophy in England and Europe, and, like the French school of economists who went by the name of Physiocrats, he believed in a yeoman-farmer society. He feared an industrial proletariat as much as he disliked the principle of aristocracy. Industrial and capitalist development appalled him. He despised and distrusted the whole machinery of banks, tariffs, credit manipulation, and all the agencies of capitalism which the New Yorker Hamilton was skilfully introducing into the United States. He perceived the dangers to individual liberty that might spring from the centralising powers of a Federal Government. With reluctance he came home from Paris to serve the new system. The pa.s.sage of time and the stress of the Napoleonic wars were to modify his dislike of industrialism, but he believed in his heart that democratic government was only possible among free yeomen. It was not given to him to foresee that the United States would eventually become the greatest industrial democracy in the world.

"The political economists of Europe have established it as a principle," Jefferson declared, that every state should endeavour to manufacture for itself; and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America. . . . But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? . . . Corruption of morals in the ma.s.s of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. . . . While we have land to labour, then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench or twirling a distaff. . . . For the general operations of manufacture let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there than bring them to the provisions and materials and with them their manners and principles. For the general operations of manufacture let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there than bring them to the provisions and materials and with them their manners and principles.2 . . . The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and const.i.tution. . . . The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and const.i.tution.

Jefferson held to the Virginian conception of society, simple and una.s.sailed by the complexity, the perils, and the challenge of industrialism. In France he saw, or thought he saw, the realisation of his political ideas-the destruction of a worn-out aristocracy and a revolutionary a.s.sertion of the rights of soil-tilling man. Hamilton, on the other hand, looked to the England of the Younger Pitt as the embodiment of his hopes for America. The outbreak of war between England and France was to bring to a head the fundamental rivalry and conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson and to signalise the birth of the great American parties, Federalist and Republican. Both were to split and founder and change their names, but from them the Republican and Democratic parties of to-day can trace their lineage.

*CHAPTER EIGHTEEN*

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE CONVULSION WHICH SHOOK FRANCE IN 1789 WAS TOTALLY different from the revolutions that the world had seen before. England in the seventeenth century had witnessed a violent s.h.i.+ft in power between the Crown and the People; but the basic inst.i.tutions of State had been left untouched, or at any rate had soon been restored. Nor as yet had there been in England any broadening of popular sovereignty in the direction of universal suffrage. The liberties of the ordinary Englishman were well understood and had often been a.s.serted. He could not lay claim to equality. The lack was not felt to be a very serious grievance, since the cla.s.ses mingled together and transition from one cla.s.s to another was, if not easy, at least possible, and quite often achieved. America in her Revolution had proclaimed the wider rights of mankind. Across the Atlantic shone a n.o.ble example of freedom which in the end was to exercise a formidable influence upon the world. But in the late eighteenth century America's commanding future was scarcely foreseen, even by her own statesmen. In Europe the impulse towards liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty had to come from elsewhere. It came from France. The English Revolution had been entirely a domestic affair. So in the main had the American. But the French Revolution was to spread out from Paris across the whole Continent. It gave rise to a generation of warfare, and its echoes reverberated long into the nineteenth century and afterwards. Every great popular and national movement, until the Bolsheviks gave a fresh turn to events in 1917, was to invoke the principles set forth at Versailles in 1789.

France in the reign of Louis XVI was by no means the most oppressively governed of countries, though this is often alleged. She was rich and many of her people prospered. Why then did revolution break out? Volumes have been written on this subject, but one fact is clear. French political machinery in no way expressed the people's will. It did not match the times and could not move with them. It had been given its form and shape by Louis XIV. Under his majestic hands the machine had worked, almost to the end. His successors inherited all his panoply of power but none of his capacity. They could neither work the machine nor would they alter it. At the same time the growing middle cla.s.ses in France were reaching out for the power that was withheld from them. They felt they should have a say in how they were governed. An intellectual ferment filled the land which was denied a political outlet. An explosion was inevitable and had long been expected by all inquiring minds. As a British official reported from Paris, the French people had been "infused by a spirit of discussion of public matters which did not exist before." At some moment the widespread frustrations of Frenchmen were bound to seek active expression. They merely needed an igniting spark. This was supplied by the royal Government's incorrigible system of faulty finance.

The Government of France had long been bankrupt. Louis XIV had exhausted the