Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/784

754 emigration, it would seem far more strange if the social conditions had not been somewhat disturbed.

142. All the tendencies of political institutions in the United States had certainly been towards democracy; but it cannot be said that the leading men were hearty or unanimous in their agreement with this tendency. Not a few of them were pronounced republicans even before 1775, but the mass of them had no great objections to a monarchical form of government until the war-spirit had converted them. The Declaration of Independence had been directed rather against the king than against a king. Even after popular sovereignty had pronounced against a king, class spirit was for some time a fair substitute for aristocracy. The obstacles to communication, which compelled the mass of the people to live a very isolated existence, gave abnormal prominence and influence to those who, by ability or wealth, could overcome these obstacles; and common feeling made these a class, with many symptoms of strong class feelings. As often happens, democracy at least thought of a Cæsar when it apprehended class control. The discontented officers of the revolutionary armies offered to make Washington king, though he put the offer by without even considering it. The suggestion of a return to monarchy in some form, as a possible road out of the confusion of the Confederation, occurs in the correspondence of some of the leading men. And while the convention of 1787 was holding its secret sessions a rumour went out that it had decided to offer a crown to an English prince.

143. The State constitutions were democratic, except for property or other restrictions on the right of suffrage, or provisions carefully designed to keep the control of at least one house of the State legislature “in the hands of

property.” The Federal constitution was so drawn that it would have lent itself kindly either to class control or to democracy. The electoral system of choosing the president and vice-president was altogether anti-democratic, though democracy has conquered it: not an elector, since 1796, has disobeyed the purely moral claim of his party to control his choice (§§ 119, 120). Since the senate was to be chosen by the State legislatures, “property,” if it could retain its influence in those bodies, could control at least one house of Congress. The question whether the constitution was to have a democratic or an anti-democratic interpretation was to be settled in the next twelve years.

144. The States were a strong factor in the final settlement, from the fact that the constitution had left to them the control of the elective franchise: they were to make its conditions what each of them saw fit. Religious tests for the right of suffrage had been quite common in the colonies; property tests were almost universal. The former disappeared shortly after the revolution; the latter survived in some of the States far into the constitutional

period. But the desire to attract immigration was always a strong impelling force to induce States, especially frontier States, to make the acquisition of full citizenship and political rights as easy and rapid as possible. This force was not so strong at first as it was after the great stream of immigration began about 1848 (§ 236), but it was enough to tend constantly to the development of democracy; and it could not but react on the national development. In later times, when State laws allow the immigrant to vote even before the period assigned by Federal laws allows him to become a naturalized citizen, there have been demands for the modification of the ultra State democracy; but no such, danger was apprehended in the first decade.

145. The Antifederalists had been a political party, but a party with but one principle. The absolute failure of that principle deprived the party of all cohesion; and the Federalists controlled the first two Congresses almost entirely. Their pronounced ability was shown in their organizing measures, which still govern the American system very largely. The departments of state, of the treasury, of war,

of justice, and of the post-office were rapidly and successfully organized; Acts were passed for the regulation of seamen, commerce, tonnage duties, lighthouses, intercourse with the Indians, Territories, and the militia; a national capital was selected; a national bank was chartered; the national debt was funded, and the State debts were assumed as part of it. The first four years of the new system showed that the States had now to deal with a very different power from the impotent Congress of the Confederation. The new power was even able to exert a pressure upon the two States which had not yet ratified the constitution, though, in accordance with the universal American prejudice, the pressure was made as gentle as possible. As a first step, the higher duties imposed on imports from foreign countries were expressly directed to apply to imports from North Carolina and Rhode Island. North Carolina having called a second convention, her case was left to the course of nature; and the second convention ratified the constitution (November 21, 1789). The Rhode Island legislature wrote to ask that their State might not be considered altogether foreigners, made their duties agree with those of the new Government, and reserved the proceeds for “continental” purposes. Still no further steps were taken. A bill was therefore introduced, directing the president to suspend commercial intercourse with Rhode Island, and to demand from her her share of the continental debt. This was passed by the senate, and waited but two steps further to become law. Unofficial newspaper proposals to divide up the little State between her two nearest neighbours were stopped by her ratification

(May 29, 1790). All the “old thirteen” were thus united under the constitution; and yet, so strong is the American prejudice for the autonomy of the States that these last two were allowed to enter in the full conviction that they did so in the exercise of sovereign freedom of choice. Their entrance, however, was no more involuntary than that of others. If there had been real freedom of choice, nine States would never have ratified: the votes of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York were only secured by the pressure of powerful minorities in their own States, backed by the almost unanimous votes of the others.

146. Protection was begun in the first Tariff Act, whose object, said its preamble, was the protection of domestic manufactures. The duties, however, ranged only from 7½ to 10 per cent., averaging about 8 per cent. The system, too, had rather a political than an economic basis. Until 1789 the States had controlled the imposition of duties. The separate State feeling was a factor so strong that secession was a possibility which every statesman had to take into account. Hamilton's object, in introducing the system, seems to have been to create a class of manufacturers, running through all the States, but dependent for prosperity on the new Federal Government and its tariff. This would be a force which would make strongly for national government, and against any attempt at secession, or against the tendency to revert in practice to the old system of control by State legislatures, even though it based the national idea on a conscious tendency towards the development of classes. The same feeling seems to have been at the bottom of his establishment of a national bank, his assumption of State debts, and most of the general scheme which his influence forced upon the Federal party.

147. In forming his cabinet, Washington had paid attention to the opposing elements which had united for the temporary purpose of ratifying the constitution. The national element was represented by Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, and Knox (p. 789), secretary of war; the particularist element (using the term to indicate support of