d [ Congress was finally decided
to take this step by the conduct of the powerful State of Virginia, whose
legislature offered to serve as mediator between the Union and South Carolina.
Hitherto the latter State had appeared to be entirely abandoned, even by the
States which had joined in her remonstrances.]
e [ This law was passed on March
2, 1833.]
f [ This bill was brought in by
Mr. Clay, and it passed in four days through both Houses of Congress by an
immense majority.]
But South Carolina did not consent to leave the Union in
the enjoyment of these scanty trophies of success: the same national Convention
which had annulled the tariff bill, met again, and accepted the proffered
concession; but at the same time it declared it unabated perseverance in the
doctrine of Nullification: and to prove what it said, it annulled the law
investing the President with extraordinary powers, although it was very certain
that the clauses of that law would never be carried into effect.
Almost all the controversies of which I have been speaking
have taken place under the Presidency of General Jackson; and it cannot be
denied that in the question of the tariff he has supported the claims of the
Union with vigor and with skill. I am, however, of opinion that the conduct of
the individual who now represents the Federal Government may be reckoned as one
of the dangers which threaten its continuance.
Some persons in Europe have formed an opinion of the
possible influence of General Jackson upon the affairs of his country, which
appears highly extravagant to those who have seen more of the subject. We have
been told that General Jackson has won sundry battles, that he is an energetic
man, prone by nature and by habit to the use of force, covetous of power, and a
despot by taste. All this may perhaps be true; but the inferences which have
been drawn from these truths are exceedingly erroneous. It has been imagined
that General Jackson is bent on establishing a dictatorship in America, on
introducing a military spirit, and on giving a degree of influence to the
central authority which cannot but be dangerous to provincial liberties. But in
America the time for similar undertakings, and the age for men of this kind, is
not yet come: if General Jackson had entertained a hope of exercising his
authority in this manner, he would infallibly have forfeited his political
station, and compromised his life; accordingly he has not been so imprudent as
to make any such attempt.
Far from wishing to extend the federal power, the
President belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the
bare and precise letter of the Constitution, and which never puts a
construction upon that act favorable to the Government of the Union; far from
standing forth as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent
of all the jealousies of the States; and he was placed in the lofty station he
occupies by the passions of the people which are most opposed to the central
Government. It is by perpetually flattering these passions that he maintains
his station and his popularity. General Jackson is the slave of the majority:
he yields to its wishes, its propensities, and its demands; say rather, that he
anticipates and forestalls them.
Whenever the governments of the States come into
collision with that of the Union, the President is generally the first to
question his own rights: he almost always outstrips the legislature; and when
the extent of the federal power is controverted, he takes part, as it were,
against himself; he conceals his official interests, and extinguishes his own
natural inclinations. Not indeed that he is naturally weak or hostile to the
Union; for when the majority decided against the claims of the partisans of
nullification, he put himself at its head, asserted the doctrines which the nation
held distinctly and energetically, and was the first to recommend forcible
measures; but General Jackson appears to me, if I may use the American
expressions, to be a Federalist by taste, and a Republican by calculation.
General Jackson stoops to gain the favor of the majority,
but when he feels that his popularity is secure, he overthrows all obstacles in
the pursuit of the objects which the community approves, or of those which it
does not look upon with a jealous eye. He is supported by a power with which
his predecessors were unacquainted; and he tramples on his personal enemies
whenever they cross his path with a facility which no former President ever
enjoyed; he takes upon himself the responsibility of measures which no one
before him would have ventured to attempt: he even treats the national
representatives with disdain approaching to insult; he puts his veto upon the
laws of Congress, and frequently neglects to reply to that powerful body. He is
a favorite who sometimes treats his master roughly. The power of General
Jackson perpetually increases; but that of the President declines; in his hands
the Federal Government is strong, but it will pass enfeebled into the hands of
his successor.
I am strangely mistaken if the Federal Government of the
United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public
affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally
feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other
hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more
decided attachment to provincial government in the States. The Union is to
subsist, but to subsist as a shadow; it is to be strong in certain cases, and
weak in all others; in time of warfare, it is to be able to concentrate all the
forces of the nation and all the resources of the country in its hands; and in
time of peace its existence is to be scarcely perceptible: as if this alternate
debility and vigor were natural or possible.
I do not foresee anything for the present which may be
able to check this general impulse of public opinion; the causes in which it
originated do not cease to operate with the same effect. The change will
therefore go on, and it may be predicted that, unless some extraordinary event
occurs, the Government of the Union will grow weaker and weaker every day.
I think, however, that the period is still remote at
which the federal power will be entirely extinguished by its inability to
protect itself and to maintain peace in the country. The Union is sanctioned by
the manners and desires of the people; its results are palpable, its benefits
visible. When it is perceived that the weakness of the Federal Government
compromises the existence of the Union, I do not doubt that a reaction will
take place with a view to increase its strength.
The Government of the United States is, of all the
federal governments which have hitherto been established, the one which is most
naturally destined to act. As long as it is only indirectly assailed by the
interpretation of its laws, and as long as its substance is not seriously
altered, a change of opinion, an internal crisis, or a war, may restore all the
vigor which it requires. The point which I have been most anxious to put in a
clear light is simply this: Many people, especially in France, imagine that a
change in opinion is going on in the United States, which is favorable to a
centralization of power in the hands of the President and the Congress. I hold
that a contrary tendency may distinctly be observed. So far is the Federal
Government from acquiring strength, and from threatening the sovereignty of the
States, as it grows older, that I maintain it to be growing weaker and weaker,
and that the sovereignty of the Union alone is in danger. Such are the facts
which the present time discloses. The future conceals the final result of this
tendency, and the events which may check, retard, or accelerate the changes I
have described; but I do not affect to be able to remove the veil which hides them
from our sight.
Of The Republican Institutions Of The United States, And
What Their Chances Of Duration Are
The Union is accidental—The Republican institutions have
more prospect of permanence—A republic for the present the natural state of the
Anglo-Americans—Reason of this—In order to destroy it, all the laws must be
changed at the same time, and a great alteration take place in
manners—Difficulties experienced by the Americans in creating an aristocracy.
The dismemberment of the Union, by the introduction of
war into the heart of those States which are now confederate, with standing
armies, a dictatorship, and a heavy taxation, might, eventually, compromise the
fate of the republican institutions. But we ought not to confound the future
prospects of the republic with those of the Union. The Union is an accident,
which will only last as long as circumstances are favorable to its existence;
but a republican form of government seems to me to be the natural state of the
Americans; which nothing but the continued action of hostile causes, always
acting in the same direction, could change into a monarchy. The Union exists
principally in the law which formed it; one revolution, one change in public
opinion, might destroy it forever; but the republic has a much deeper
foundation to rest upon.
What is understood by a republican government in the
United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself. It is a
regular state of things really founded upon the enlightened will of the people.
It is a conciliatory government under which resolutions are allowed time to
ripen; and in which they are deliberately discussed, and executed with mature
judgment. The republicans in the United States set a high value upon morality,
respect religious belief, and acknowledge the existence of rights. They profess
to think that a people ought to be moral, religious, and temperate, in
proportion as it is free. What is called the republic in the United States, is
the tranquil rule of the majority, which, after having had time to examine
itself, and to give proof of its existence, is the common source of all the
powers of the State. But the power of the majority is not of itself unlimited.
In the moral world humanity, justice, and reason enjoy an undisputed supremacy;
in the political world vested rights are treated with no less deference. The
majority recognizes these two barriers; and if it now and then overstep them,
it is because, like individuals, it has passions, and, like them, it is prone
to do what is wrong, whilst it discerns what is right.
But the demagogues of Europe have made strange
discoveries. A republic is not, according to them, the rule of the majority, as
has hitherto been thought, but the rule of those who are strenuous partisans of
the majority. It is not the people who preponderates in this kind of
government, but those who are best versed in the good qualities of the people.
A happy distinction, which allows men to act in the name of nations without
consulting them, and to claim their gratitude whilst their rights are spurned.
A republican government, moreover, is the only one which claims the right of
doing whatever it chooses, and despising what men have hitherto respected, from
the highest moral obligations to the vulgar rules of common-sense. It had been
supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it
appeared. But it is a discovery of modern days that there are such things as
legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name
of the people.
The ideas which the Americans have adopted respecting the
republican form of government, render it easy for them to live under it, and
insure its duration. If, in their country, this form be often practically bad,
at least it is theoretically good; and, in the end, the people always acts in
conformity to it.
It was impossible at the foundation of the States, and it
would still be difficult, to establish a central administration in America. The
inhabitants are dispersed over too great a space, and separated by too many
natural obstacles, for one man to undertake to direct the details of their
existence. America is therefore pre-eminently the country of provincial and
municipal government. To this cause, which was plainly felt by all the
Europeans of the New World, the Anglo-Americans added several others peculiar
to themselves.
At the time of the settlement of the North American
colonies, municipal liberty had already penetrated into the laws as well as the
manners of the English; and the emigrants adopted it, not only as a necessary
thing, but as a benefit which they knew how to appreciate. We have already seen
the manner in which the colonies were founded: every province, and almost every
district, was peopled separately by men who were strangers to each other, or
who associated with very different purposes. The English settlers in the United
States, therefore, early perceived that they were divided into a great number
of small and distinct communities which belonged to no common centre; and that
it was needful for each of these little communities to take care of its own
affairs, since there did not appear to be any central authority which was
naturally bound and easily enabled to provide for them. Thus, the nature of the
country, the manner in which the British colonies were founded, the habits of
the first emigrants, in short everything, united to promote, in an
extraordinary degree, municipal and provincial liberties.
In the United States, therefore, the mass of the
institutions of the country is essentially republican; and in order permanently
to destroy the laws which form the basis of the republic, it would be necessary
to abolish all the laws at once. At the present day it would be even more
difficult for a party to succeed in founding a monarchy in the United States
than for a set of men to proclaim that France should henceforward be a
republic. Royalty would not find a system of legislation prepared for it
beforehand; and a monarchy would then exist, really surrounded by republican
institutions. The monarchical principle would likewise have great difficulty in
penetrating into the manners of the Americans.
In the United States, the sovereignty of the people is
not an isolated doctrine bearing no relation to the prevailing manners and
ideas of the people: it may, on the contrary, be regarded as the last link of a
chain of opinions which binds the whole Anglo-American world. That Providence
has given to every human being the degree of reason necessary to direct himself
in the affairs which interest him exclusively—such is the grand maxim upon
which civil and political society rests in the United States. The father of a
family applies it to his children; the master to his servants; the township to
its officers; the province to its townships; the State to its provinces; the
Union to the States; and when extended to the nation, it becomes the doctrine
of the sovereignty of the people.
Thus, in the United States, the fundamental principle of
the republic is the same which governs the greater part of human actions;
republican notions insinuate themselves into all the ideas, opinions, and
habits of the Americans, whilst they are formerly recognized by the
legislation: and before this legislation can be altered the whole community
must undergo very serious changes. In the United States, even the religion of
most of the citizens is republican, since it submits the truths of the other
world to private judgment: as in politics the care of its temporal interests is
abandoned to the good sense of the people. Thus every man is allowed freely to
take that road which he thinks will lead him to heaven; just as the law permits
every citizen to have the right of choosing his government.
It is evident that nothing but a long series of events,
all having the same tendency, can substitute for this combination of laws,
opinions, and manners, a mass of opposite opinions, manners, and laws.
If republican principles are to perish in America, they
can only yield after a laborious social process, often interrupted, and as
often resumed; they will have many apparent revivals, and will not become
totally extinct until an entirely new people shall have succeeded to that which
now exists. Now, it must be admitted that there is no symptom or presage of the
approach of such a revolution. There is nothing more striking to a person newly
arrived in the United States, than the kind of tumultuous agitation in which he
finds political society. The laws are incessantly changing, and at first sight
it seems impossible that a people so variable in its desires should avoid
adopting, within a short space of time, a completely new form of government.
Such apprehensions are, however, premature; the instability which affects
political institutions is of two kinds, which ought not to be confounded: the
first, which modifies secondary laws, is not incompatible with a very settled
state of society; the other shakes the very foundations of the Constitution,
and attacks the fundamental principles of legislation; this species of
instability is always followed by troubles and revolutions, and the nation
which suffers under it is in a state of violent transition.
Experience shows that these two kinds of legislative
instability have no necessary connection; for they have been found united or
separate, according to times and circumstances. The first is common in the
United States, but not the second: the Americans often change their laws, but
the foundation of the Constitution is respected.
In our days the republican principle rules in America, as
the monarchical principle did in France under Louis XIV. The French of that
period were not only friends of the monarchy, but they thought it impossible to
put anything in its place; they received it as we receive the rays of the sun
and the return of the seasons. Amongst them the royal power had neither
advocates nor opponents. In like manner does the republican government exist in
America, without contention or opposition; without proofs and arguments, by a
tacit agreement, a sort of consensus universalis. It is, however, my opinion
that by changing their administrative forms as often as they do, the
inhabitants of the United States compromise the future stability of their
government.
It may be apprehended that men, perpetually thwarted in
their designs by the mutability of the legislation, will learn to look upon
republican institutions as an inconvenient form of society; the evil resulting
from the instability of the secondary enactments might then raise a doubt as to
the nature of the fundamental principles of the Constitution, and indirectly
bring about a revolution; but this epoch is still very remote.
It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the
Americans lose their republican institutions they will speedily arrive at a
despotic government, without a long interval of limited monarchy. Montesquieu
remarked, that nothing is more absolute than the authority of a prince who
immediately succeeds a republic, since the powers which had fearlessly been
intrusted to an elected magistrate are then transferred to a hereditary
sovereign. This is true in general, but it is more peculiarly applicable to a
democratic republic. In the United States, the magistrates are not elected by a
particular class of citizens, but by the majority of the nation; they are the
immediate representatives of the passions of the multitude; and as they are
wholly dependent upon its pleasure, they excite neither hatred nor fear: hence,
as I have already shown, very little care has been taken to limit their
influence, and they are left in possession of a vast deal of arbitrary power.
This state of things has engendered habits which would outlive itself; the
American magistrate would retain his power, but he would cease to be
responsible for the exercise of it; and it is impossible to say what bounds
could then be set to tyranny.
Some of our European politicians expect to see an
aristocracy arise in America, and they already predict the exact period at
which it will be able to assume the reins of government. I have previously
observed, and I repeat my assertion, that the present tendency of American
society appears to me to become more and more democratic. Nevertheless, I do
not assert that the Americans will not, at some future time, restrict the
circle of political rights in their country, or confiscate those rights to the
advantage of a single individual; but I cannot imagine that they will ever
bestow the exclusive exercise of them upon a privileged class of citizens, or,
in other words, that they will ever found an aristocracy.
An aristocratic body is composed of a certain number of
citizens who, without being very far removed from the mass of the people, are,
nevertheless, permanently stationed above it: a body which it is easy to touch
and difficult to strike; with which the people are in daily contact, but with
which they can never combine. Nothing can be imagined more contrary to nature
and to the secret propensities of the human heart than a subjection of this
kind; and men who are left to follow their own bent will always prefer the
arbitrary power of a king to the regular administration of an aristocracy.
Aristocratic institutions cannot subsist without laying down the inequality of
men as a fundamental principle, as a part and parcel of the legislation,
affecting the condition of the human family as much as it affects that of
society; but these are things so repugnant to natural equity that they can only
be extorted from men by constraint.
I do not think a single people can be quoted, since human
society began to exist, which has, by its own free will and by its own
exertions, created an aristocracy within its own bosom. All the aristocracies
of the Middle Ages were founded by military conquest; the conqueror was the
noble, the vanquished became the serf. Inequality was then imposed by force;
and after it had been introduced into the manners of the country it maintained
its own authority, and was sanctioned by the legislation. Communities have
existed which were aristocratic from their earliest origin, owing to
circumstances anterior to that event, and which became more democratic in each
succeeding age. Such was the destiny of the Romans, and of the barbarians after
them. But a people, having taken its rise in civilization and democracy, which
should gradually establish an inequality of conditions, until it arrived at
inviolable privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world;
and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.
Reflection On The Causes Of The Commercial Prosperity Of
The Of The United States
The Americans destined by Nature to be a great maritime
people—Extent of their coasts—Depth of their ports—Size of their rivers—The
commercial superiority of the Anglo-Americans less attributable, however, to
physical circumstances than to moral and intellectual causes—Reason of this
opinion—Future destiny of the Anglo-Americans as a commercial nation—The
dissolution of the Union would not check the maritime vigor of the
States—Reason of this—Anglo-Americans will naturally supply the wants of the
inhabitants of South America—They will become, like the English, the factors of
a great portion of the world.
The coast of the United States, from the Bay of Fundy to the
Sabine River in the Gulf of Mexico, is more than two thousand miles in extent.
These shores form an unbroken line, and they are all subject to the same
government. No nation in the world possesses vaster, deeper, or more secure
ports for shipping than the Americans.
The inhabitants of the United States constitute a great
civilized people, which fortune has placed in the midst of an uncultivated
country at a distance of three thousand miles from the central point of
civilization. America consequently stands in daily need of European trade. The
Americans will, no doubt, ultimately succeed in producing or manufacturing at
home most of the articles which they require; but the two continents can never
be independent of each other, so numerous are the natural ties which exist
between their wants, their ideas, their habits, and their manners.
The Union produces peculiar commodities which are now
become necessary to us, but which cannot be cultivated, or can only be raised
at an enormous expense, upon the soil of Europe. The Americans only consume a
small portion of this produce, and they are willing to sell us the rest. Europe
is therefore the market of America, as America is the market of Europe; and
maritime commerce is no less necessary to enable the inhabitants of the United
States to transport their raw materials to the ports of Europe, than it is to
enable us to supply them with our manufactured produce. The United States were
therefore necessarily reduced to the alternative of increasing the business of
other maritime nations to a great extent, if they had themselves declined to
enter into commerce, as the Spaniards of Mexico have hitherto done; or, in the
second place, of becoming one of the first trading powers of the globe.
The Anglo-Americans have always displayed a very decided
taste for the sea. The Declaration of Independence broke the commercial
restrictions which united them to England, and gave a fresh and powerful
stimulus to their maritime genius. Ever since that time, the shipping of the
Union has increased in almost the same rapid proportion as the number of its
inhabitants. The Americans themselves now transport to their own shores
nine-tenths of the European produce which they consume. *g And they also bring
three-quarters of the exports of the New World to the European consumer. *h The
ships of the United States fill the docks of Havre and of Liverpool; whilst the
number of English and French vessels which are to be seen at New York is
comparatively small. *i
g [ The total value of goods imported
during the year which ended on September 30, 1832, was $101,129,266. The value
of the cargoes of foreign vessels did not amount to $10,731,039, or about
one-tenth of the entire sum.]
h [ The value of goods exported
during the same year amounted to $87,176,943; the value of goods exported by
foreign vessels amounted to $21,036,183, or about one quarter of the whole sum.
(Williams's "Register," 1833, p. 398.)]
i [ The tonnage of the vessels
which entered all the ports of the Union in the years 1829, 1830, and 1831,
amounted to 3,307,719 tons, of which 544,571 tons were foreign vessels; they
stood, therefore, to the American vessels in a ratio of about 16 to 100.
("National Calendar," 1833, p. 304.) The tonnage of the English
vessels which entered the ports of London, Liverpool, and Hull, in the years
1820, 1826, and 1831, amounted to 443,800 tons. The foreign vessels which
entered the same ports during the same years amounted to 159,431 tons. The
ratio between them was, therefore, about 36 to 100. ("Companion to the
Almanac," 1834, p. 169.) In the year 1832 the ratio between the foreign
and British ships which entered the ports of Great Britain was 29 to 100.
[These statements relate to a condition of affairs which has ceased to exist;
the Civil War and the heavy taxation of the United States entirely altered the
trade and navigation of the country.]]
Thus, not only does the American merchant face the
competition of his own countrymen, but he even supports that of foreign nations
in their own ports with success. This is readily explained by the fact that the
vessels of the United States can cross the seas at a cheaper rate than any
other vessels in the world. As long as the mercantile shipping of the United
States preserves this superiority, it will not only retain what it has
acquired, but it will constantly increase in prosperity.
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