Part 29

Nevertheless, although the Republic was evidently destined to perish, it is possible that had Iceland been left to herself the rivalry of the two or three great factions which divided it, and were usually in arms against one another, would have ended in the triumph of one of them, and in the establishment of a monarchy, or (less probably) of several independent rival principalities. But a new and more formidable figure now appeared on the scene. The successors of King Harald the Fairhaired had always held that the Icelanders, since their ancestors had come from Norway, ought to own their supremacy[139], and they argued that as monarchical government was divinely appointed, and prevailed everywhere in Continental Europe, no republic had a right to exist. King Hákon Hákonsson (Hákon IV), one of the greatest among the kings of Norway, now found in the distracted state of the island a better opportunity of carrying out the plans which his predecessors Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Saint had been obliged, by the watchfulness of the Alþing, to abandon. By bribes and by threats, by drawing the leading Icelanders to his Court, and sending his own emissaries through the island, he succeeded in gaining over the few chiefs who now practically controlled the Alþing, and at the meeting of midsummer, A.D. 1262 (one year before the battle of Largs, which saved Scotland from the invasion of this very Hákon), the Southern, Western and Northern Quarters accepted the King of Norway as their sovereign, while in 1264 (the year of the summoning of the first representative Parliament of England by Earl Simon de Montfort) the remaining districts which had not yet recognized the Norwegian Crown, now held by Magnus son of Hákon, made a like submission. Thenceforward Iceland has followed the fortunes first of Norway and then of Denmark. In 1814, when Norway was severed from the Danish and transferred to the Swedish Crown, Iceland ought to have gone with Norway. But nobody at the Congress of Vienna knew or cared about the matter[140]: and so Iceland remains attached to Denmark, for which she has little love.

Footnote 139:

This claim of a Crown to the allegiance of emigrants who had passed into new lands reminds one of that made by the British Government, down to 1852 and 1854, as respects the Dutch farmers who had gone forth into the wilderness of South Africa in 1836.

Footnote 140:

The preliminaries to the Treaty of Kiel by which Norway was severed from the Danish Crown to be attached to the Swedish refer to Iceland, the Faeroe Isles, and Greenland as having ‘never belonged to Norway.’

With the free republic the literature which had given it lustre withered up and disappeared. Only one work of high merit, the religious poem called _The Lily_, was produced in the centuries that succeeded down to the Reformation, when the spirit of the people was again stirred, and a succession of eminent writers began which has never failed down to our own day. But in the darkest times, in the ignorance and gloom of the fifteenth century, in the pestilences and famine caused by the terrible volcanic eruptions of the eighteenth, which are said to have destroyed one-fifth of the population, the Icelanders never ceased to cherish and enjoy their ancient Sagas. No farmhouse wanted its tiny store of manuscripts, which were and still are read aloud in the long nights of winter, while the women spin and the men make nets and harness. And it is beyond doubt chiefly owing to the profusion and the literary splendour of these works of a remote antiquity—works produced in an age when England and Germany, Italy and France had nothing better than dull monkish annalists or the reciters of such a tedious ballad epic as the _Song of the Nibelungs_—that the Icelandic language has preserved its ancient strength and purity, and that the Icelandic nation, a handful of people scattered round the edge of a vast and dreary wilderness, has maintained itself, in face of the overwhelming forces of nature, at so high a level of culture, virtue and intelligence.

VI

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AS SEEN IN THE PAST

THE PREDICTIONS OF HAMILTON AND TOCQUEVILLE

He who desires to discover what have been the main tendencies ruling and guiding the development of American institutions, will find it profitable to examine what were the views held and predictions delivered, at different epochs in the growth of the Republic, by acute and well-informed observers. There is a sort of dramatic interest in this method of inquiry, and it is calculated to temper our self-confidence in judging the phenomena of to-day. Besides, it helps us to realize, better than we can do merely by following the course of events, what aspect the political landscape wore from time to time. When we read a narrative, we read into the events our knowledge of all that actually flowed from them. When we read what the contemporary observer expected from them as he saw them happening we reach a truer comprehension of the time.

To collect and set forth a representative anthology of political prophecies made at critical epochs in the history of the United States, would be a laborious undertaking, for one would have to search through a large number of writings, some of them fugitive writings, in order to present adequate materials for determining the theories and beliefs prevalent at any given period. I attempt nothing so ambitious. I desire merely to indicate, by a comparatively simple example, how such a method may be profitably followed, disclaiming any pretensions to dig deep into even the obvious and familiar materials which students of American history possess.

For this purpose, then, I will take two famous books—the one written at the very birth of the Union by those who watched its cradle, and recording incidentally, and therefore all the more faithfully, the impressions and anticipations of the friends and enemies of the infant Constitution; the other a careful study of its provisions and practical working by a singularly fair and penetrating European philosopher. I choose these books not only because both are specially representative and of rare literary merit, but because they are easily accessible to European as well as American readers, who may, by referring to their pages, supply the omissions which want of space will compel me to make, and may thereby obtain a more full and graphic transcript of contemporary opinion. One of these books is _The Federalist_[141]—a series of letters recommending the proposed Constitution for adoption to the people of New York, written in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury, James Madison, afterwards President from 1809 to 1817, and John Jay, afterwards Chief Justice from 1789 to 1795. They were all signed _Publius_. The other, which falls not quite halfway between 1788 and our own time, is the _Democracy in America_ of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Footnote 141:

There are several good editions of _The Federalist_. The latest and one of the best known to me is that edited by Mr. Paul Leicester Ford (New York, 1898).

I. THE UNITED STATES AT THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION.

I begin by briefly summarizing the record which _The Federalist_ preserves for us of the beliefs of the opponents and advocates of the Draft Constitution of 1787 regarding the forces then at work in American politics and the probable future of the nation.

To understand those beliefs, however, we must bear in mind what the people of the United States then were, and for that purpose I will recall the reader’s attention to some of the more salient aspects of the Republic at the epoch when its national life began.

In 1783 the last British soldier quitted New York, the last stronghold that was held for King George. In 1787 the present Constitution of the United States was framed by the Convention at Philadelphia, and in 1788 accepted by the requisite number of States (nine). In 1789 George Washington entered on his Presidency, the first Congress met and the machine began to work. It was a memorable year for Europe as well as for America—a year which, even after the lapse of more than a century, we are scarcely yet ripe for judging, so many sorrows as well as blessings, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλlὰ μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά, were destined to come upon mankind from those elections of the States-General which were proceeding in France while Washington was being installed at Philadelphia.

All of the thirteen United States lay along the Atlantic coast. Their area was 827,844 square miles, their population 3,929,214, little more than half the population of New York State in 1900. Settlers had already begun to cut the woods and build villages beyond the Alleghanies; but when Kentucky was received as a State into the Union in 1792, she had a population of only 80,000. The population was wholly of English (or Anglo-Scottish) stock, save that a few Dutch were left in New York, a few persons of Swedish blood in Delaware, and some isolated German settlements in Pennsylvania. But in spite of this homogeneity the cohesion of the States was weak. Communication was slow, difficult and costly. The jealousies and suspicions which had almost proved fatal to Washington’s efforts during the War of Independence were still rife. There was some real conflict, and a far greater imagined conflict, of interests between the trading and the purely agricultural States, even more than between the slave States and those in which slavery had practically died out. Many competent observers doubted whether the new Federal Union, accepted only because the Confederation had proved a failure and the attitude of foreign powers was threatening, could maintain itself in the face of the strong sentiment of local independence animating the several colonies, each of which, after throwing off the yoke of Britain, was little inclined to brook any control but that of its own legislature. The new Constitution was an experiment, or rather a bundle of experiments, whose working there were few data for predicting. It was a compromise, and its own authors feared for it the common fate of compromises—to satisfy neither party and to leave open rents which time would widen. In particular, it seemed most doubtful whether the two branches of the Legislature, drawn from so wide an area and elected on different plans, would work harmoniously, and whether general obedience would be yielded to an executive President who must necessarily belong to and seem to represent one particular State and section of the country. Parties did not yet exist, for there was as yet hardly a nation; but within a decade they grew to maturity and ferocity. One of them claimed to defend local self-government, the rights of the people, democratic equality; the other, the principle of national unity and the authority of the Federal power. One sympathized with France, the other was accused of leaning to an English alliance. They were, or soon came to be, divided not merely on burning questions of foreign policy and home policy, but also—and this was an issue which mixed itself up with everything else—as to the extent of the powers to be allowed to the central Government and its relations to the States—questions which the curt though apparently clear language of the Constitution had by no means exhausted.

Slavery was not yet a burning question—indeed it existed to some slight extent in the Middle as well as in the Southern States, but the opposition of North and South was already visible. The Puritanism of New England, its industries and its maritime commerce, gave it different sentiments as well as different interests from those which dominated the inhabitants of the South, a population wholly agricultural, among whom the influence of Jefferson was strong, and theories of extreme democracy had made progress.

There was great diversity of opinion and feeling on all political questions in the America of those days, and the utmost freedom in expressing it. Over against the extreme democrats stood an illustrious group whose leader was currently believed to be a monarchist at heart, and who never concealed his contempt for the ignorance and folly of the crowd. Among these men, and to a less extent among the Jeffersonians also, there existed no small culture and literary power, and though the masses were all orthodox Christians and, except in Maryland, orthodox Protestants, there was no lack of scepticism in the highest circles. One may speak of highest circles, for social equality, though rapidly advancing and gladly welcomed, was as yet rather a doctrine than a fact: and the respect for every kind of authority was great. There were neither large fortunes nor abject poverty: but the labouring class, then far less organized than it is now, deferred to the middle class, and the middle class to its intellectual chiefs. The clergy were powerful in New England: the great colonial families enjoyed high consideration in New York, in Pennsylvania, and above all in Virginia, whose landowners seemed to reproduce the later semi-feudal society of England. Although all the States were republics of a hue already democratic, every State constitution required a property qualification for the holding of office or a seat in the Legislature, and, in most States, a similar condition was imposed even on the exercise of the suffrage. Literary men (other than journalists) were rare, the universities few and old-fashioned in their methods, science scarcely pursued, philosophy absorbed in theology and theology dryly dogmatic. But public life was adorned by many striking figures. Five men at least of that generation, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson and Marshall, belong to the history of the world; and a second rank which included John Adams, Madison, Jay, Patrick Henry, Gouverneur Morris, Roger Sherman, James Wilson, Albert Gallatin, and several other gifted figures less familiar to Europe, must be mentioned with respect.

Everybody professed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore held a republican form of government to be the only proper, or at any rate the only possible form for the central authority as well as for the States. But of the actual working of republican governments there was very little experience, and of the working of democracies, in our present sense of the word, there was really none at all beyond that of the several States since 1776, when they broke loose from the British Crown. Englishmen are more likely than other Europeans to forget that in 1788 there was in the Old World only one free and no democratic nation[142]. In Europe there now remain but two strong monarchies, those of Russia and Prussia, while the Western hemisphere, scarcely excepting Dutch and British Guiana and Canada, is entirely (at least in name) republican. But the world of 1788 was a world full of monarchs—despotic monarchs—a world which had to go back for its notions of popular government to the commonwealths of classical antiquity. Hence the speculations of those times about the dangers, and merits, and tendencies characteristic of free governments, were and must needs be vague and fantastic, because the materials for a sound induction were wanting. Wise men, when forced to speculate, recurred to the general principles of human nature. Ordinary men went off into the air and talked at large, painting a sovereign people as reckless, violent, capricious on the one hand, or virtuous and pacific on the other, according to their own predilections, whether selfish or emotional, for authority or for liberty. Though no one has yet written the natural history of the masses as rulers, the hundred years since 1788 have given us materials for such a natural history surpassing those which Hamilton possessed almost as much as the materials at the disposal of Darwin exceeded those of Buffon. Hence in examining the views of the _Federalist_ writers[143] and their antagonists, we must expect sometimes to find the diagnosis inexact and the prognosis fanciful.

Footnote 142:

The Swiss Confederation was hardly yet a nation, and few of the cantons were governed democratically.

Footnote 143:

Of these writers Hamilton must be deemed the leading spirit, not merely because he wrote by far the larger number of letters, but because his mind was more penetrating and commanding than either Madison’s or Jay’s. Madison rendered admirable service in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, but afterwards yielded to the influence of Jefferson, a character with less balance but more force and more intellectual fertility.

II. PREDICTIONS OF THE OPPONENTS AND ADVOCATES OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Those who opposed the Draft Constitution of 1787, a party both numerous and influential in nearly every State, were the men specially democratic and also specially conservative. They disliked all strengthening of government, and especially the erection of a central authority. They were satisfied with the system of sovereign and practically independent States. Hence they predicted the following as the consequences to be expected from the creation of an effective Federal executive and legislature[144].

1. The destruction of the States as commonwealths. The central government, it was said, would gradually encroach upon their powers; would use the federal army to overcome their resistance; would supplant them in the respect of their citizens; would at last swallow them up. The phrase ‘consolidation of the Union,’ which had been used by the Convention of 1787 to recommend its draft, was laid hold of as a term of reproach. ‘Consolidation,’ the absorption of the States by or into one centralized government, became the popular cry, and carried away the unthinking.

2. The creation of a despot in the person of the President. His legal authority would be so large as not only to tempt him, but to enable him, to extend it further, at the expense of the liberties both of States and of people. ‘Monarchy,’ it was argued, ‘thrown off after such efforts, will in substance return with this copy of King George III, whose command of the federal army, power over appointments, and opportunities for intriguing with foreign powers on the one hand and corrupting the legislature on the other[145], will render the new tyrant more dangerous than the old one. Or if he be more open to avarice than to ambition, he will be the tool of foreign sovereigns and the means whereby they will control or enslave America[146].’

Footnote 144:

I take no account of those objections to the Constitution which may be deemed to have been removed by the first eleven amendments.

Footnote 145:

See _The Federalist_, No. LIV.

Footnote 146:

_The Federalist_, No. LXVI, p. 667. ‘Calculating upon the aversion of the people to monarchy, the writers against the Constitution have endeavoured to enlist all their jealousies and apprehensions in opposition to the intended President of the United States, not merely as the embryo but as the full-grown progeny of that detested parent. They have to establish the pretended affinity, not scrupled to draw resources even from the regions of fiction. The authority of a magistrate in few instances greater, in some instances less, than those of a Governor of New York, have been magnified into more than royal prerogatives. He has been decorated with attributes superior in dignity and splendour to those of a King of Great Britain. He has been shown to us with the diadem sparkling on his brow and the imperial purple flowing in his train. He has been seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses, giving audience to the envoys of foreign potentates in all the supercilious pomp of majesty. The images of Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness have scarcely been wanting to crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janizaries, and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio.’

These were the days when Johnson and Gibbon ruled English style.

3. The Senate will become an oligarchy. Sitting for six years, and not directly elected by the people, it ‘must gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and finally transform it into a tyrannical aristocracy[147].’

Footnote 147:

_The Federalist_, No. LXII.

4. The House of Representatives will also, like every other legislature, aim at supremacy. Elected only once in two years, it will forget its duty to the people. It will consist of ‘the wealthy and well-born,’ and will try to secure the election of such persons only as its members[148].

Footnote 148:

_The Federalist_, Nos. LVI and LIX.

5. The larger States will use the greater weight in the government which the Federal constitution gives them to overbear the smaller States.

6. The existence of a strong central government is not only likely, by multiplying the occasions of diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers, to give openings for intrigues by them dangerous to American independence, but likely also to provoke foreign wars, in which the republic will perish if defeated, or if victorious maintain herself only by vast expenditure, with the additional evil of having created in an army a standing menace to freedom.

That some of these anticipations were inconsistent with others of them was no reason why even the same persons should not resort to both in argument. Any one who wishes to add to the number, for I have quoted but a few, being those which turn upon the main outlines of the Philadelphia draft, may do so by referring to the record, known as Elliott’s Debates, of the discussions in the several State Conventions which deliberated on the new Constitution. It is an eminently instructive record.

I pass from the opponents of the Constitution to its advocates. Hamilton and its friends sought in it a remedy against what they deemed the characteristic dangers of popular government. It is by dwelling on these dangers that they recommend it. We can perceive, however, that, while lauding its remedial power, they are aware how deep-seated such dangers are, and how likely to recur even after the adoption of the Constitution. The language which Hamilton held in private proves that he desired a more centralized government, which would have approached nearer to that British Constitution which he regarded as being, with all its defects (and partly owing to its corruptions!), the best model for free nations[149]. He feared anarchy, and thought that only a strong national government could avert it. And in a remarkable letter written in February, 1802, under the influence of disappointment with the course events were then taking, he describes, in his somewhat sweeping way, the Constitution he was ‘still labouring to prop’ as a ‘frail and worthless fabric.’

Footnote 149:

Though he, like other observers of that time, had not realized, and might not have relished, the supremacy, now become omnipotence, which the House of Commons had already won.

We may therefore legitimately treat his list of evils to be provided against by the new Federal Government as indicating the permanently mischievous tendencies which he foresaw. Some of them, he is obliged to admit, cannot be wholly averted by any constitutional devices, but only by the watchful intelligence and educated virtue of the people.

The evils chiefly feared are the following:—

1. The spirit and power of faction, which is so clearly the natural and necessary offspring of tendencies always present in mankind, that wherever liberty exists it must be looked for[150].

Footnote 150:

_The Federalist_, No. X (written by Madison), and in other letters.