Chapter 16

A survey of the last fifteen years of Calhoun's life discloses nothing upon which the mind can dwell with complacency. On the approach of every Presidential election, we see him making what we can only call a _grab_ at a nomination, by springing upon the country some unexpected issue designed to make the South a unit in his support. From 1830 to 1836, he exhausted all the petty arts of the politician to defeat General Jackson's resolve to bring in Mr. Van Buren as his successor; and when all had failed, he made an abortive attempt to precipitate the question of the annexation of Texas. This, too, being foiled, Mr. Van Buren was elected President. Then Mr. Calhoun, who had for ten years never spoken of Van Buren except with contempt, formed the notable scheme of winning over the President so far as to secure his support for the succession. He advocated all the test measures of Mr. Van Buren's administration, and finished by courting a personal reconciliation with the man whom he had a hundred times styled a fox and a political prostitute. This design coming to naught, through the failure of Mr. Van Buren to reach a second term, he made a wild rush for the prize by again thrusting forward the Texas question. Colonel Benton, who was the predetermined heir of Van Buren, has detailed the manner in which this was done in a very curious chapter of his "Thirty Years." The plot was successful, so far as plunging the country into a needless war was concerned; but it was Polk and Taylor, not Calhoun, who obtained the Presidency through it. Mr. Calhoun's struggles for a nomination in 1844 were truly pitiable, but they were not known to the public, who saw him, at a certain stage of the campaign, affecting to decline a nomination which there was not the slightest danger of his receiving.

We regret that we have not space to show how much the agitation of the slavery question, from 1835 to 1850, was the work of this one man. The labors of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Wendell Phillips might have borne no fruit during their lifetime, if Calhoun had not made it his business to supply them with material. "I mean to _force_ the issue upon the North," he once wrote; and he did force it. On his return to South Carolina after the termination of the Nullification troubles, he said to his friends there, (so avers Colonel Benton, "Thirty Years," Vol. II. p. 786,)

"that the South could never be united against the North on the tariff question; that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep her out; and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the slave question."

Here we have the key to the mysteries of all his subsequent career. The denial of the right of petition, the annexation of Texas, the forcing of slavery into the Territories,--these were among the issues upon which he hoped to unite the South in his favor, while retaining enough strength at the North to secure his election. Failing in all his schemes of personal advancement, he died in 1850, still protesting that slavery is divine, and that it must rule this country or ruin it. This is really the sum and substance of that last speech to the Senate, which he had not strength enough left to deliver.

We have run rapidly over Mr. Calhoun's career as a public man. It remains for us to notice his claims as a teacher of political philosophy, a character in which he influenced his countrymen more powerfully after he was in his grave than he did while living among them.

The work upon which his reputation as a thinker will rest with posterity is his Treatise on the Nature of Government. Written in the last year of his life, when at length all hope of further personal advancement must have died within him, it may be taken as the deliberate record or summary of his political opinions. He did not live to revise it, and the concluding portion he evidently meant to enlarge and illustrate, as was ascertained from notes and memoranda in pencil upon the manuscript. After the death of the author in 1850, the work was published in a substantial and elegant form by the Legislature of South Carolina, who ordered copies to be presented to individuals of note in science and literature, and to public libraries. We are, therefore, to regard this volume, not merely as a legacy of Mr. Calhoun to his countrymen, but as conveying to us the sentiments of South Carolina with regard to her rights and duties as a member of the Union. Events since its publication have shown us that it is more even than this. The assemblage of troublesome communities which we have been accustomed to style "the South," adopted this work as their political gospel. From this source the politicians of the Southern States have drawn all they have chosen to present to the world in justification of their course which bears the semblance of argument; for, in truth, Mr. Calhoun, since Jefferson and Madison passed from the stage, is almost the only thinking being the South has had. His was a very narrow, intense, and untrustworthy mind, but he was an angel of light compared with the men who have been recently conspicuous in the Southern States.

This treatise on government belongs to the same class of works as Louis Napoleon's Life of Caesar, having for its principal object one that lies below the surface, and the effect of both is damaged by the name on the title-page. The moment we learn that Louis Napoleon wrote that Life of Caesar, the mind is intent upon discovering allusions to recent history, which the author has an interest in misrepresenting. The common conscience of mankind condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many of his unoffending fellow-citizens. No man, whatever the power and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, and assures him that one day the verdict of his fellow-men will be reversed; and even in that case, it is not every man that can possess his soul in patience. Every page of the Life of Caesar was composed with a secret, perhaps half-unconscious reference to that view of Louis Napoleon's conduct which is expressed with such deadly power in Mr. Kinglake's History of the Crimean War, and which is so remarkably confirmed by an American eyewitness, the late Mr. Goodrich, who was Consul at Paris in 1848. Published anonymously, the Life of Caesar might have had some effect. Given to the world by Napoleon III., every one reads it as he would a defence by an ingenious criminal of his own cause. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon it is, that it is very well done, considering the object the author had in view.

So, in reading Mr. Calhoun's disquisition upon government, we are constantly reminded that the author was a man who had only escaped trial and execution for treason by suddenly arresting the treasonable measures which he had caused to be set on foot. Though it contains but one allusion to events in South Carolina in 1833, the work is nothing but a labored, refined justification of those events. It has been even coupled with Edwards on the Will, as the two best examples of subtle reasoning which American literature contains. Admit his premises, and you are borne along, at a steady pace, in a straight path, to the final inferences: that the sovereign State of South Carolina possesses, by the Constitution of the United States, an absolute veto upon every act of Congress, and may secede from the Union whenever she likes; and that these rights of veto and secession do not merely constitute the strength of the Constitution, but _are_ the Constitution,--and do not merely tend to perpetuate the Union, but are the Union's self,--the thing that binds the States together.

Mr. Calhoun begins his treatise by assuming that government is necessary. He then explains why it is necessary. It is necessary because man is more selfish than sympathetic, feeling more intensely what affects himself than what affects others. Hence he will encroach on the rights of others; and to prevent this, government is indispensable.

But government, since it must be administered by selfish men will feel more intensely what affects itself than what affects the people governed. It is, therefore, the tendency of all governments to encroach on the rights of the people; and they certainly will do so, if they can. The same instinct of self-preservation, the same love of accumulation, which tempts individuals to over-reach their neighbors, inclines government to preserve, increase, and consolidate its powers. Therefore, as individual selfishness requires to be held in check by government, so government must be restrained by _something_.

This something is the constitution, written or unwritten. A constitution is to the government what government is to the people: it is the restraint upon its selfishness. Mr. Calhoun assumes here that the relation between government and governed is naturally and inevitably "antagonistic." He does not perceive that government is the expression of man's love of justice, and the means by which the people cause justice to be done.

Government, he continues, must be powerful; must have at command the resources of the country; must be so strong that it can, if it will, disregard the limitations of the constitution. The question is, How to compel a government, holding such powers, having an army, a navy, and a national treasury at command, to obey the requirements of a mere piece of printed paper?

Power, says Mr. Calhoun, can only be resisted by power. Therefore, a proper constitution must leave to the governed the _power_ to resist encroachments. This is done in free countries by universal suffrage and the election of rulers at frequent and fixed periods. This gives to rulers the strongest possible motive to please the people, which can only be done by executing their will.

So far, most readers will follow the author without serious difficulty. But now we come to passages which no one could understand who was not acquainted with the Nullification imbroglio of 1833. A philosophic Frenchman or German, who should read this work with a view to enlightening his mind upon the nature of government, would be much puzzled after passing the thirteenth page; for at that point the hidden loadstone begins to operate upon the needle of Mr. Calhoun's compass, and he is as Louis Napoleon writing the Life of Caesar.

Universal suffrage, he continues, and the frequent election of rulers, are indeed the primary and fundamental principles of a constitutional government; and they are sufficient to give the people an effective control over those whom they have elected. But this is all they can do. They cannot make rulers good, or just, or obedient to the constitution, but only faithful representatives of the majority of the people and executors of the will of that majority. The right of suffrage transfers the supreme authority from the rulers to the body of the community, and the more perfectly it does this, the more perfectly it accomplishes its object. Majority is king. But this king, too, like all others, is selfish, and will abuse his power if he can.

So, we have been arguing in a circle, and have come back to the starting-point. Government keeps within bounds the selfishness of the people; the constitution restrains the selfishness of the government; but, in doing so, it has only created a despot as much to be dreaded as the power it displaced. We are still, therefore, confronted by the original difficulty. How are we to limit the sway of tyrant Majority?

If, says Mr. Calhoun, all the people had the same interests, so that a law which oppressed one interest would oppress all interests, then the right of suffrage would itself be sufficient; and the only question would be as to the fitness of different candidates. But this is not the case. Taxation, for example: no system of taxation can be arranged that will not bear oppressively upon some interests or section. Disbursements, also: some portions of the country must receive back, in the form of governmental disbursements, more money than they pay in taxes, and others less; and this may be carried so far, that one region may be utterly impoverished, while others are enriched. King Majority may have his favorites. He may now choose to favor agriculture; now, commerce; now, manufactures; and so arrange the imports as to crush one for the sake of promoting the others. "Crush" is Mr. Calhoun's word. "One portion of the community," he says,

"may be crushed, and another elevated on its ruins, by systematically perverting the power of taxation and disbursement, for the purpose of aggrandizing or building up one portion of the community at the expense of the other."

_May_ be. But has not the most relentless despot an interest in the prosperity of his subjects? And can one interest be crushed without manifest and immediate injury to all the others? Mr. Calhoun says: That this fell power to crush important interests _will_ be used, is exactly as certain as that it _can_ be.

All this would be unintelligible to our foreign philosopher, but American citizens know very well what it means. Through this fine lattice-work fence they discern the shining countenance of the colored person.

But now, what remedy? Mr. Calhoun approaches this part of the subject with the due acknowledgment of its difficulty. The remedy, of course, is Nullification; but he is far from using a word so familiar. There is but one mode, he remarks, by which the majority of the whole people can be prevented from oppressing the minority, or portions of the minority, and that is this:

"By taking the sense of each interest or portion of the community, which may be unequally and injuriously affected by the action of the government, separately, through its own majority, or in some other way by which its voice can be expressed; and to require the consent of each interest, either to put or to keep the government in motion."

And this can only be done by such an "organism" as will "give to each division or interest either a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws or _a veto on their execution_."

This is perfectly intelligible when read by the light of the history of 1833. But no human being unacquainted with that history could gather Mr. Calhoun's meaning. Our studious foreigner would suppose by the word "interest," that the author meant the manufacturing interest, the commercial and agricultural interests, and that each of these should have its little congress concurring in or vetoing the acts of the Congress sitting at Washington. _We_, however, know that Mr. Calhoun meant that South Carolina should have the power to nullify acts of Congress and give law to the Union. He does not tell us how South Carolina's tyrant Majority is to be kept within bounds; but only how that majority is to control the majority of the whole country. He has driven his problem into a corner, and there he leaves it.

Having thus arrived at the conclusion, that a law, to be binding on all "interests," i.e. on all the States of the Union, must be concurred in by all, he proceeds to answer the obvious objection, that "interests" so antagonistic could never be brought to unanimous agreement. He thinks this would present no difficulty, and adduces some instances of unanimity to illustrate his point.

First, trial by jury. Here are twelve men, of different character and calibre, shut up in a room to agree upon a verdict, in a cause upon which able men have argued upon opposite sides. How unlikely that they should be able to agree unanimously! Yet they generally do, and that speedily. Why is this? Because, answers Mr. Calhoun, they go into their room knowing that nothing short of unanimity will answer; and consequently every man is _disposed_ to agree with his fellows, and, if he cannot agree, to compromise. "Not at all." The chief reason why juries generally agree is, that they are not interested in the matter in dispute. The law of justice is so plainly written in the human heart, that the fair thing is usually obvious to disinterested minds, or can be made so. It is interest, it is rivalry, that blinds us to what is right; and Mr. Calhoun's problem is to render "antagonistic" interests unanimous. We cannot, therefore, accept this illustration as a case in point.

Secondly, Poland. Poland is not the country which an American would naturally visit to gain political wisdom. Mr. Calhoun, however, repairs thither, and brings home the fact, that in the turbulent Diet of that unhappy kingdom every member had an absolute veto upon every measure. Nay, more: no king could be elected without the unanimous vote of an assembly of one hundred and fifty thousand persons. Yet Poland lasted two centuries! The history of those two centuries is a sufficient comment upon Mr Calhoun's system, to say nothing of the final catastrophe, which Mr. Calhoun confesses was owing to "the extreme to which the principle was carried." A sound principle cannot be carried to an unsafe extreme; it is impossible for a man to be too right. If it is right for South Carolina to control and nullify the United States, it is right for any one man in South Carolina to control and nullify South Carolina. One of the tests of a system is to ascertain where it will carry us if it _is_ pushed to the uttermost extreme. Mr. Calhoun gave his countrymen this valuable information when he cited the lamentable case of Poland.

From Poland the author descends to the Six Nations, the federal council of which was composed of forty-two members, each of whom had an absolute veto upon every measure. Nevertheless, this confederacy, he says, became the most powerful and the most united of all the Indian nations. He omits to add, that it was the facility with which this council could be wielded by the French and English in turn, that hastened the grinding of the Six Nations to pieces between those two millstones.

Rome is Mr. Calhoun's next illustration. The _Tribunus Plebis_, he observes, had a veto upon the passage of all laws and upon the execution of all laws, and thus prevented the oppression of the plebeians by the patricians. To show the inapplicability of this example to the principle in question, to show by what steps this tribunal, long useful and efficient, gradually absorbed the power of the government, and became itself, first oppressive, and then an instrument in the overthrow of the constitution, would be to write a history of Rome. Niebuhr is accessible to the public, and Niebuhr knew more of the _Tribunus Plebis_ than Mr. Calhoun. We cannot find in Niebuhr anything to justify the author's aim to constitute patrician Carolina the _Tribunus Plebis_ of the United States.

Lastly, England. England, too, has that safeguard of liberty, "an organism by which the voice of each order or class is taken through its appropriate organ, and which requires the concurring voice of all to constitute that of the whole community." These orders are King, Lords, and Commons. They must all concur in every law, each having a veto upon the action of the two others. The government of the United States is also so arranged that the President and the two Houses of Congress must concur in every enactment; but then they all represent the _same_ order or interest, the people of the United States. The English government, says Mr. Calhoun, is so exquisitely constituted, that the greater the revenues of the government, the more stable it is; because those revenues, being chiefly expended upon the lords and gentlemen, render them exceedingly averse to any radical change. Mr. Calhoun does not mention that the majority of the people of England are not represented in the government at all. Perhaps, however, the following passage, in a previous part of the work, was designed to meet their case:--

"It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike;--a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous, and deserving; and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded, and vicious to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it."

Mr. Calhoun does not tell us who is to _bestow_ this precious boon. He afterwards remarks, that the progress of a people "rising" to the point of civilization which entitles them to freedom, is "necessarily slow." How very slow, then, it must be, when the means of civilization are forbidden to them by law!

With his remarks upon England, Mr. Calhoun terminates his discussion of the theory of government. Let us grant all that he claims for it, and see to what it conducts us. Observe that his grand position is, that a "numerical majority," like all other sovereign powers, will certainly tyrannize if it can. His remedy for this is, that a local majority, the majority of each State, shall have a veto upon the acts of the majority of the whole country. But he omits to tell us how that local majority is to be kept within bounds. According to his reasoning, South Carolina should have a veto upon acts of Congress. Very well; then each county of South Carolina should have a veto upon the acts of the State Legislature; each town should have a veto upon the behests of the county; and each voter upon the decisions of the town. Mr. Calhoun's argument, therefore, amounts to this: that one voter in South Carolina should have the constitutional right to nullify an act of Congress, and no law should be binding which has not received the assent of every citizen.

Having completed the theoretical part of his subject, the author proceeds to the practical. In his first essay he describes the "organism" that is requisite for the preservation of liberty; and in his second, he endeavors to show that the United States _is_ precisely such an organism, since the Constitution, rightly interpreted, _does_ confer upon South Carolina the right to veto the decrees of the numerical majority. Mr. Calhoun's understanding appears to much better advantage in this second discourse, which contains the substance of all his numerous speeches on nullification. It is marvellous how this morbid and intense mind had brooded over a single subject, and how it had subjugated all history and all law to its single purpose. But we cannot follow Mr. Calhoun through the tortuous mazes of his second essay; nor, if we could, should we be able to draw readers after us. We can only say this: Let it be granted that there _are_ two ways in which the Constitution can be fairly interpreted;--one, the Websterian method; the other, that of Mr. Calhoun. On one of these interpretations the Constitution will work, and on the other it will not. We prefer the interpretation that is practicable, and leave the other party to the enjoyment of their argument. Nations cannot be governed upon principles so recondite and refined, that not one citizen in a hundred will so much as follow a mere statement of them. The fundamental law must be as plain as the ten commandments,--as plain as the four celebrated propositions in which Mr. Webster put the substance of his speeches in reply to Mr. Calhoun's ingenious defence of his conduct in 1833.