"Two powers act in concurrence to develope and maintain the life of a people; its civil constitution and its political organization, the general influences of society and the authorities of the State; the latter were wanting to the infant American commonwealth, still more than the former. In this society, so disturbed, so slightly connected, the old government had disappeared, and the new had not yet been formed. I have spoken of the insignificance of Congress, the only bond of union between the States, the only central power; a power without rights and without strength; signing treaties, nominating ambassadors, proclaiming that the public good required certain laws, certain taxes, and a certain army; but not having itself the power of making laws, or judges or officers to administer them; without taxes, with which to pay its ambassadors, officers, and judges, or troops to enforce the payment of taxes and cause its laws, judges, and officers to be respected. The political state was still more weak and more wavering than the social state. "The Constitution was formed to remedy this evil, to give to the Union a government. It accomplished two great results. The central government became a real one, and was placed in its proper position. The Constitution freed it from the control of the States, gave it a direct action upon the citizens without the intervention of the local authorities, and supplied it with the instruments necessary to give effect to its will; with taxes, judges, officers, and soldiers. In its own interior organization, the central government was well conceived and well balanced; the duties and relations of the several powers were regulated with great good sense, and a clear understanding of the conditions upon which order and political vitality were to be had; at least for a republican form and the society for which it was intended.

"In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the anarchy from which it sprang, we cannot too much admire the wisdom of its framers and of the generation which selected and sustained them. But the Constitution, though promulgated, was as yet a mere name. It supplied remedies against the evil, but the evil was still there. The great powers, which it had brought into existence, were confronted with the events which had preceeded it and rendered it so necessary, and with the parties which were formed by the events, and were striving to mould society and the Constitution itself according to their own views.

"At the first glance, the names of these parties excite surprise. Federal and democratic; between these two qualities, these two tendencies, there is no real and essential difference. In Holland in the seventeenth century, in Switzerland even in our time, it was the democratic party which aimed at strengthening the federal union, the central government; it was the aristocratic party which placed itself at the head of the local governments, and defended their sovereignty. The Dutch people supported William of Nassau and the Stadtholdership against John de Witt and the leading citizens of the towns. The patricians of Schweitz and Uri are the most obstinate enemies of the federal diet and of its power.

"In the course of their struggle, the American parties often received different designations. The democratic party arrogated to itself the title of republican, and bestowed on the other that of monarchists and monocrats. The federalists called their opponents anti-unionists. They mutually accused each other of tending, the one to monarchy, and the other to separation; of wishing to destroy, the one the republic, and the other the union.

"This was either a bigoted prejudice or a party trick. Both parties were sincerely friendly to a republican form of government and the union of the States. The names, which they gave one another for the sake of mutual disparagement, were still more false than their original denominations were imperfect and improperly opposed to each other.

"Practically, and so far as the immediate affairs of the country were concerned, they differed less, than they either said or thought, in their mutual hatred. But, in reality, there was a permanent and essential difference between them in their principles and their tendencies. The federal party was, at the same time, aristocratic, favorable to the preponderance of the higher classes, as well as to the power of the

central government. The democratic party was, also, the local party; desiring at once the rule of the majority, and the almost entire independence of the state governments. Thus there were points of difference between them respecting both social order and political order; the constitution of society itself, as well as of its government. Thus those paramount and eternal questions, which have agitated, and will continue to agitate, the world, and which are linked to the far higher problem of man's nature and destiny, were all involved in the American parties, and were all concealed under their names."

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In all this there is a great deal of truth, though not without some admixture of error on which we cannot at present afford the requisite space to comment. In the concluding passage Mr. Guizot appreci ates with perfect accuracy the distinctive characters of the two parties. There is but one material point which he omits to noticethe natural harmony between what he calls the "democratic" and the “local” characters of the one party, and between the "aristocratic and "central" characters of the other. True, as he says, both parties were sincerely friendly to a republican form of government and the union of the States; but there are few words which embrace a more vague latitude in their signification than the word republican. A republic, in the common sense which usage has given to the term, may be, in truth, nothing else than an aristocracy, more or less broadly extended. Of this a sufficient illustration is exhibited in the compromise which it afforded of two theories so widely divergent as those of Hamilton and Jefferson. But Mr. Guizot does not point to the truth that the one party was "local" because it was democratic," and the other "central" or "federal" because it was essentially "aristocratic." The latter was in favor of a strong centralization of power, gathered together indeed from the popular mass upon which it was to act, but when so collected a thing apart, to be administered and wielded with a vigorous governing energy, by the small number of the wealthier and more educated classes in whose hands they believed it might most safely and wisely be trusted. Strong government, strong law-and much of both-was what they wanted and what they believed necessary to protect the people from their own ignorance, turbulence, and fickleness. On the other hand the Democratic school were filled with an instinctive jealousy of authority. Whether administered through one set of agents or another, under one system of forms or another, they distrusted its inherent tendency both to aggrandizement and to abuse. Hence the reluctance with which they consented to the bestowal of power upon the Federal Government—hence the tenacity with which they clung to the sovereign rights of the States, for the sake of the diffusion and consequent dilution of the energies of government thus effected.

This was the new school-these were the men of the new era, the men of the future. The day of their ascendency was yet to come. The present was to be ruled by the men of the present. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that the latter exercised, not only a pre

vailing influence in the organization of the system of government which was adopted, but also a decisive control upon its first application to practice that they were able to stamp it deeply with the character of their own principle, and to give it a powerful start at the outset of its career in the direction of their own bias.

And such was the case. The genius of Hamilton ruled the ascendant at that period. Jefferson had to retire before it. Washington did not understand the high democratic philosophy of Jefferson, and Hamilton found in his mind-trained as it had been by a military life to ideas of subordination and strong central governing energy-a congenial sympathy with his own political theory. Mr. Guizot thus very justly presents this point of Washington's character and course:

"In the struggle of the parties, all that had reference to the mere organization of civil society occupied his attention very little. This involves abstruse and recondite questions, which are clearly revealed only to the meditations of the philosopher, after he has surveyed human society in all periods and under all their forms. Washington was little accustomed to contemplation or acquainted with science. In 1787, before going to Philadelphia, he had undertaken, for the purpose of getting clear views, to study the constitution of the principal confederations, ancient and modern; and the abstract of this labor, found among his papers, shown, that he had made a collection of facts in support of the plain dictates of his good sense, rather than penetrated into the essential nature of these complicated associations.

'Moreover, Washington's natural inclination was rather to a democratic social state, than to any other. Of a mind just rather than expansive, of a temper wise and calm; full of dignity, but free from all selfish and arrogant pretensions; coveting rather respect than power; the impartiality of democratic principles, and the simplicity of democratic manners, far from offending or annoying him, suited his tastes and satisfied his judgment. He did not trouble himself with inquiring, like the partisans of the aristocratic system, whether more elaborate combinations, a division into ranks, privileges, and artificial barriers, were necessary to the preservation of society. He lived tranquilly in the midst of an equal and sovereign people, finding its authority to be lawful and submitting to it without effort.

"But when the question was one of political and not social order, when the discussion turned upon the organization of the government, he was strongly federal, opposed to local and popular pretensions, and the declared advocate of the unity and force of the central power.

'He placed himself under this standard, and did so in order to insure its triumph. But still his elevation was not the victory of a party, and awakened in no one either exultation or regret. In the eyes, not only of the public, but of his enemies, he was not included in any party, and was above them all; the only man in the United States,' said Jefferson, 'who possessed the confidence of all; * * * * * there was no other one, who was considered as anything more than a party leader.'" The following are his sketches of the respective heads of the antagonist parties, which soon began to develope themselves:

"Hamilton deserves to be ranked among those men, who have best understood the vital principles and essential conditions of government; not merely of a nominal government, but of a government worthy of its mission and of its name. In the Constitution of the United States, there is not an element of order, strength, and durability, to the introduction and adoption of which he did not powerfully contribute. Perhaps he believed the monarchical form preferable to the republican. Perhaps he sometimes had doubts of the success of the experiment attempted in his own country. Perhaps, also, carried away by his vivid imagination and the logical vehemence' of his mind, he was sometimes exclusive in his views, and went too far in his infer

ences. But, of a character as lofty as his mind, he faithfully served the republic, and labored to found and not to weaken it. His superiority consisted in knowing, that, naturally and by a law inherent in the nature of things, power is above, at the head of society; that government should be constituted according to this law; and that every contrary system or effort brings, sooner or later, trouble and weakness into the society itself. His error consisted in adhering too closely, and with a somewhat arrogant obstinacy, to the precedents of the English constitution, in attributing sometimes in these precedents the same authority to good and to evil, to principles and to the abuse of them, and in not attaching due importance to, and reposing sufficient confidence in, the variety of political forms and the flexibility of human society. There are occasions, in which political genius consists, in not fearing what is new, while what is eternal is respected.

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The democratic party, not the turbulent and coarse democracy of antiquity or of the middle ages, but the great modern democracy, never had a more faithful or more distinguished representative than Jefferson. A warm friend of humanity, liberty, and science; trusting in their goodness as well as their rights; deeply touched by the injustice with which the mass of mankind have been treated, and the sufferings they endure, and incessantly engaged, with an admirable disinterestedness, in remedying them or preventing their recurrence; accepting power as a dangerous necessity, almost as one evil opposed to another, and exerting himself not merely to restrain, but to lower it; distrusting all display, all personal splendor, as a tendency to usurpation; of a temper open, kind, indulgent, though ready to take up prejudices against, and feel irritated with, the enemies of his party; of a mind bold, active, ingenious, inquiring, with more penetration than forecaste, but with too much good sense to push things to the extreme, and capable of employing, against a pressing danger or evil, a prudence and firmness, which would perhaps have prevented it, had they been adopted earlier or more generally."

The following remarks upon the political character of Washington are very just, and worthy of quotation-though involving what we regard as an erroneous view of the true theory of American democracy. That theory is not that the nation should be strongly governed from its central representative institutions, and, therefore, that it requires, as its necessary condition, an extraordinary degree of "genuine devotedness and moral superiority" on the part of its leaders. It is that it should be governed very little-in the sense in which Mr. Guizot uses the term, that it should not be governed at all. We should despair of democracy ever being able to take "a place among the durable and glorious forms of human society," if Washingtons were always necessary to it. And here we perceive the usual sophistry of conservatism which always assumes as an indispensable condition to democracy a degree of universal public virtue, and of superhuman moral elevation on the part of its leaders, which, in fact, it is quixotic to look for :

"Washington did well to withdraw from public business. He had entered upon it at one of those moments, at once difficult and favorable, when nations, surrounded by perils, summon all their virtue and all their wisdom to surmount them. He was admirably suited to this position. He held the sentiments and opinions of his age without slavishness or fanaticism. The past, its institutions, its interests, its manners, inspired him with neither hatred nor regret. His thoughts and his ambition did not impatiently reach forward into the future. The society, in the midst of which he lived, suited his tastes and his judgment. He had confidence in its principles and its destiny; but a confidence enlightened and qualified by an accurate

instinctive perception of the eternal principles of social order. He served it with heartiness and independence, with that combination of faith and fear which is wisdom in the affairs of the world, as well as before God. On this account, especially, he was qualified to govern it; for democracy requires two things for its tranquillity and its success; it must feel itself to be trusted and yet restrained, and must believe alike in the genuine devotedness and the moral superiority of its leaders. On these conditions alone can it govern itself while in a process of developement, and hope to take a place among the durable and glorious forms of human society. It is the honor of the American people to have, at this period, understood and accepted these conditions. It is the glory of Washington to have been their interpreter and instrument.

"He did the two greatest things which, in politics, man can have the privilege of attempting. He maintained, by peace, that independence of his country, which he had acquired by war. He founded a free government, in the name of the principles of order, and by re-establishing their sway.

“When he retired from public life, both tasks were accomplished, and he could enjoy the result. For, in such high enterprises, the labor which they have cost matters but little. The sweat of any toil is dried at once on the brow where God places such laurels.

He retired voluntarily, and a conqueror. To the very last, his policy had prevailed. If he had wished, he could still have kept the direction of it. His successor was one of his most attached friends, one whom he had himself designated. "Still the epoch was a critical one. He had governed successfully for eight years, a long period in a democratic state, and that in its infancy. For some time, a policy apposed to his own had been gaining ground. American society seemed disposed to make a trial of new paths, more in conformity, perhaps, with its bias. Perhaps the hour had come for Washington to quit the arena. His successor was there overcome. Mr. Adams was succeeded by Mr. Jefferson, the leader of the opposition. Since that time, the democratic party has governed the United States. "Is this a good or an evil? Could it be otherwise? Had the government continued in the hands of the federal party, would it have done better? Was this possible? What have been the consequences, to the United States, of the triumph of the democratic party? Have they been carried out to the end, or have they only begun! What changes have the society and constitution of America undergone? what have they yet to undergo, under their influence?

"These are great questions; difficult, if I mistake not, for natives to solve, and certainly impossible for a foreigner."

"Have they been carried out to the end, or have they only begun ?" They have not yet even begun. At the very outset the beneficial action of the democratic principle in the developement of the national character and condition, was to a very great extent neutralized in advance by the fatal poison of the paper-money currency which Hamilton succeeded in infusing into our system; and all that we have effected by our struggles and sufferings of so many years, is only partially to recover the ground occupied by us half a century ago. Washington did not understand the tendency of this policy, and we have ample assurance from his writings that he would have been on our side of the great controversy had he now been living. We do not undertake to answer Mr. Guizot's questions as to the future; but having once attained this point, and reformed the Federal Government back to the true principles of the Constitution, we fearlessly trust them to the demonstration of time.