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 nation1. 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

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

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 and their antagonists, we must expect sometimes to find the diagnosis inexact and the prognosis fanciful.

1

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

1 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.

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 legislature1.

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 2, will render the new tyrant more dangerous than the old one. Or if he be more open to avarice than to

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

2 See The Federalist, No. LIV.

ambition, he will be the tool of foreign sovereigns and the means whereby they will control or enslave America ''

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 2.'

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 3.

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

1 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 fullgrown 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. 2 The Federalist, No. LXII.

The Federalist, Nos. LVI and LIX.

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!), B b

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