My dear Sir,—My promise, however tardily performed, has never been forgotten; and now, complying with your request preferred at the time and since renewed, I give you in writing the statement made by me a month or two ago in conversation at Mr. Gilpin's; which statement you will recollect was casually elicited, as the proper commentary upon the charge mentioned by one of the company as being brought against Mr. Jefferson—the charge, namely, that he had "stolen Mr. Madison from the Federalists." This notion, by the way, involves an utterly erroneous conception of the relation which existed between the minds and characters of the two men. But I must here confine myself to doing what you asked of me.

During the latter years of Mr. Madison's life, (the exact date is recorded in a memorandum not now at hand,) the following incident occurred.

My intimate friend Mr. Davis, Law Professor in the University of Virginia, mentioned to me, as a thing which he thought Mr. Madison ought to be apprised of, that in a forthcoming Life of Colonel Hamilton, by one of his sons, the authenticity of his (Mr. M.'s) report of Colonel H.'s speech in the Federal Convention was to be denied; and furthermore he was to be represented as having "abandoned" Colonel Hamilton. This Davis had learnt from Professor George Tucker, of the same University, then recently returned from a trip to the North.

Of course, on my first visit to Mr. Madison, which occurred soon after, I told him of what Davis had said.

The effect upon his countenance was an expression of painful surprise, succeeded by a very remarkable look his face assumed sometimes, and which was deeply impressive from its concentration and solemnity. A silence of some moments was broken by his saying, in a tone corresponding to that look, "Sorry to hear it." Then a pause, followed by these words, "I abandoned Colonel Hamilton,—or Colonel Hamilton abandoned me,—in a word, we parted,—upon its plainly becoming his purpose and endeavor to adminisTRATION (administer) the government into a thing totally different from that which he and I both knew perfectly well had been understood and intended by the Convention which framed it, and by the people in adopting it."

Upon the two words which I have underscored, especially the second, and most especially its last two syllables, a marked emphasis was laid. The latter (the word administration used as a verb) is the only instance of neologism I ever observed in Mr. Madison. Its effectiveness was most striking; it hit the nail plumb on the head, and drove it home at one blow. The whole history of that business, the entire truth of the matter, was compressed into that one word. As uttered by him there was a pause at "adminis"—and then came out "TRATION." It was followed by the word "administer," thrown in parenthetically, and in an under-tone; as much as to say, "I have been coining a word here, which, as you are aware, is not my habit; but just as I was about to say administer the government, I felt that this term is too general, too commonplace, too tame to convey the idea present to my mind; and this modification of it presented itself as exactly suited to the case."

As regards the speech, Mr. M. seemed painfully troubled at the thought of the fidelity of his report of it being disputed, and at a loss to realize the possibility of such a thing. "Why, as I once related to you, that speech was placed by me in Colonel Hamilton's own hand; and was, after deliberate perusal, returned by him with an explicit recognition of its correctness—all to a very few verbal alterations, which were made; on which occasion he placed in my hands, as the proper accompaniment of his speech in my record, and as presenting in a precise and exact shape his views as to the government which it was desirable to establish, the draft of a Constitution which he had prepared before coming to the Convention."

This substantially, if not exactly, is what Mr. M. said upon that point. He then went on to conjecture in what way Colonel H.'s biographer might have been misled into this error; not a doubt being intimated or evinced by him as to its being honestly an error. Colonel H. spoke several times in the Convention—at greater or less length, as would be seen when his (Mr. M.'s) notes were given to the world. Perhaps, among his papers notes had been found, which, in the absence of means of discriminating between remarks made on different occasions, and between notes for an intended speech and that which the speaker had actually said, might have given rise to the misconception.

To the foregoing incident you wished me to add what I was led to say, in the course of the same conversation, regarding Mr. Jefferson's habitual tone in speaking of Colonel Hamilton. This was always the very reverse of that in which he spoke of those whose characters, personal or political, were objects of his disesteem. It was invariably such as to indicate, and to infuse (certainly this effect was produced upon my mind) a high estimate of Colonel Hamilton as a man, whether considered with reference to personal matters or to political matters. He was never spoken of otherwise than as being a gentleman—a lofty-minded, high-toned man. As regards politics, their convictions, their creeds, were diametrically opposite. Colonel H. had no faith in republican government. In his eyes the British Government was the perfection of human government, the model of all that was practically attainable in politics. His doctrine, openly avowed, was that there are but two ways of governing men, but two ways in which the business of government can be conducted: the one is through fear, the other through self-interest—that is, influencing the conduct of those upon whom the course of political affairs depends, through their desire for personal advantages, for position, for wealth, and so forth. In this country, to operate upon men through their fears was out of the question; and consequently the latter constituted the only practicable means. These political convictions on the part of Colonel H., united as they were with his splendid abilities and his lofty character as a man, both public and private, were regarded by Mr. Jefferson as having constituted the great peril to which republicanism had been exposed in our country. But for the character of Colonel H., for the man, for his honesty and sincerity and single-mindedness,—I mean considered with reference to politics,—there was never the least indication of depreciation or disrespect on the part of Mr. Jefferson; always the direct reverse.

Never, in a single instance, when Colonel H. was the subject of conversation with me, or in my presence, was it otherwise than perfectly manifest that, in Mr. J.'s habitual feeling toward him, the broadest possible line of demarcation existed between the man, the character, (the public character, I repeat, no less than the private,) and the creed by which the action and course of that character were determined; and that whilst the latter was abhorrent to his own cherished faith, and had been for him the cause of the intensest anxiety and gloomiest forebodings ever suffered by him, the former was nevertheless no less truly an object of sincere respect.

Having thus, my dear sir, at length fulfilled my promise,—though not within the limited space (far from it) which you intimated,—I tender the assurance of my respectful regard and friendly remembrance.

Martin Van Buren,
Ex-President of the U. S.

Hamilton took the position of which the virtuous Madison, whilst standing at the brink of his grave, left behind him a description so graphic, promptly and, as was his habit, immovably. The crisis met him in his last intrenchment. He believed honestly, sincerely, and without any designs other than such as related to the public welfare, that nothing short of monarchical institutions would prove adequate to the wants of the country, but these he was well satisfied could not be obtained then, and possibly not for a long period. He had approached them in the Convention as nearly, in respect to the point of efficiency, as would afford the slightest chance of success for his plan, and he had been left without a single open supporter in that body. Regarding the Constitution, as framed by the Convention, as the only avenue to escape from anarchy, he finally promoted its passage there and its ratification by the States and people, avowedly as a temporary bond of union. Appointed to assist in carrying it into effect, and sincerely believing that, with no other powers than those only which he and Madison so well knew it was intended to authorize, it must prove a failure and the government established under it must go to pieces, he decided, unhesitatingly and absolutely, to do under it whatever he in good faith might think would promote the general welfare, without reference to the intentions of its authors. He was a man of too much good sense to do unnecessary violence to public feeling,—as he said to Jefferson "to publish it in Dan or Beersheba,"—but such was his unchangeable design. On the contrary, he entered into labored and able discussions to show that his principal measures were authorized by the Constitution, but these were in deference to the prejudices and ideas of the people, nothing more.

There is nothing in the writings, speeches, or declarations of General Hamilton inconsistent with the truth of this statement. In papers which have been referred to, and others, he submitted ingenious arguments to show that the Convention might have so intended, and that Congress had a right to hold from the words employed that it did so intend, but he was too circumspect to insist that the intention of the Convention ought not to prevail when it could be ascertained, or to make the actual intention, as a matter of fact, a point in the argument. Giving due weight to the intention of the body when that was ascertained, he adopted a course of reasoning which every body understood went to defeat it, desiring no other efficacy for the opinion he labored to establish than the vote of the majority. The better knowledge of the country overthrew his specious deductions in a short time, and its traditions will, it is to be hoped, render them forever harmless.

The principle of construction contended for by Hamilton, and for a season to some extent made successful, was not designed for the promotion of a particular measure, for which the powers of Congress under the Constitution were to be unduly extended, on account of its assumed indispensable importance to the public safety, but intended as a sweeping rule by which those powers, instead of being confined to the constitutional enumeration, were to authorize the passage of all laws which Congress might deem conducive to the general welfare and which were not expressly prohibited; a power similar to that contained in the plan he proposed in the Convention. He desired, in short, to make the Constitution a tablet of wax upon which each successive administration would be at liberty to impress its rescripts, to be promulgated as constitutional edicts.

Hamilton never well understood the distinctive character of our people, but he understood human nature too well to believe that any people could long respect or desire to uphold a Constitution the most stringent provisions of which were thus regarded or treated. Its inevitable fate is illustrated in the experience of France, after one of her unscrupulous wits had aided in consigning to general derision that litter of Constitutions which had rapidly followed one after the other, by accompanying his oath with a grimace and a jest upon the number which he had successively and with equal solemnity sworn to support. The example of France was not lost upon a mind so watchful as Hamilton's, and he did not doubt that our Constitution would be overthrown with the same certainty, if not with equal facility, after it had been long enough treated with similar disrespect, and that the door would be thus opened for the ultimate introduction, under the influence of the money power, of the only political institutions in which he placed absolute confidence. He declared it to be his opinion, in the Convention, that he regarded ours as the last chance for a republican government, and assigned that opinion as a reason for his attempt to infuse into the new system qualities as stringent as those he proposed and which he knew very well were not generally regarded as belonging to a republican system. No man better understood than he that the inviolate sanctity of a written Constitution was the life of a republican government, and that its days were numbered from the moment its people and rulers ceased thus to preserve, protect, and defend it. Mr. Jefferson spoke, in his letter, of Hamilton as "professing" that it was "the duty of its administrators to conduct the Government on the principles their constituents had elected." I did not at first, and for a long time afterwards, attach as much significance to the word I have here italicized, as I do now, when I have studied Hamilton's course more carefully. I knew the letter was written in a liberal spirit toward his memory. As I have elsewhere said, during my visit to Mr. Jefferson we talked most of Hamilton, and the general course of Mr. J.'s remarks was substantially similar to those now related, more than thirty years after his decease, and without the slightest knowledge of what I have said upon the same subject, by his relative, Mr. Trist, who was also a member of his family. Mr. Jefferson was evidently disposed to confirm the favorable impressions I had imbibed of the personal side of Hamilton's character, and the words quoted above from his letter were designed to qualify his imputation of monarchical principles to the latter, and I can now appreciate the motive for the expression used, which did not commit him to a concession that the opinion of Hamilton in regard to the duty of administration was that upon which he acted.

With all these considerations before him, Hamilton did more than any, and I had almost said than all, his contemporaries together, to counteract the will of the people and to subvert by undermining the Constitution of their choice. If his sapping and mining policy had been finally successful, if the Republican party, mostly composed of old Anti-Federalists, led by so bold a spirit and such a root-and-branch Republican as Mr. Jefferson, had not arrested the farther progress of his principles and demolished his scheme, this glorious old Constitution of ours, of which we all seem so proud, of which it is so great an honor to have been and of which so many have been ambitious to be, regarded as the faithful expounder, under the wings of which we have risen from small beginnings to be a puissant nation,—attracting the admiration and able to command the respect of the civilized world,—would long since have sunk beneath the waters of time, an object of neglect and scorn. Our system might then have dissolved in anarchy, or crouched under despotism or under some milder type of arbitrary government,—a monarchy, an aristocracy, or, most ignoble of all, a moneyed oligarchy,—but as a Republic it would have endured no longer. In this aspect, notwithstanding his great and good qualities,—and he had many,—Hamilton's course was an outrage upon liberty and a crime against free government.

How happy would it have been for himself and for every interest if he had not parted from his friend and faithful fellow-laborer through so many and such trying scenes,—if, like Madison, not entirely satisfied with the Constitution, but knowing that many others were in the same predicament, he had applied his great talents to the business of making it as generally acceptable as possible, and in giving to the masses an administration of the Government according not only to the form but to the spirit also in which it had been framed. The country would then at length have rested after so many storms, and his great and good friend Washington, instead of being steeped to the lips in partisan anxieties, (as his nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, described him to me to have been within the year of his death,) would not only have had a glorious and successful administration, but would have lived in his retirement and finally passed from earth without having been ever annoyed by the canker of party spirit. His own political career would doubtless have been far more prosperous and more agreeable; no occasion would then have arisen for such reflections as he expressed to his confidential friend describing his only reward, after all his efforts and sacrifices, as "the murmurs of the friends of the Constitution and the curses of its foes," and concluding, sadly enough for one who had so greatly distinguished himself in its service, that "the American world was not made for him!"

In these views of General Hamilton's course and in the opinions expressed in respect to it, I have designed to confine myself strictly to what I consider the deliberate judgment of the country, pronounced in various ways and among others through the ballot-box—its constitutional exponent. The most prominent of his measures have been, as already said, discarded, and those who constituted the party in whose name they were first introduced have so far yielded to the current of public opinion as to abandon them forever. I have also before alluded to the gratifying circumstance that the odium attached to those measures never in any degree affected the confidence of the people in the patriotism of Washington or in his fidelity to republican institutions, or weakened their affection for him while he lived, or their respect for his memory when he was no more. These were not the results of mere personal devotion, but of an intelligent and just discrimination on the part of the people. Hamilton designed to effect a civil revolution by changing the powers of Congress from the restricted character given to them in obedience to the wishes of the people to one in effect unlimited. Washington entertained no such views. His constructions of the Constitution were designed for the cases that called them forth, and had no ulterior views.

The subject of the bank presented the principal and almost the only question upon which President Washington gave a construction to that instrument which met the disapprobation and excited the apprehensions of the old Republicans. To the assumption of the State debts Hamilton, as has been seen, succeeded in obtaining—how much to his mortification and regret his writings show—the coöperation of Mr. Jefferson, and thereby the unanimous support of the cabinet; and his Report on Manufactures, as to most of its obnoxious details, was not acted upon during Washington's administration, but in respect to its principal objects remained a dead letter. President Washington, notwithstanding the conflicting opinions of his cabinet, gave no reasons for his approval of the Bank Bill. The public were therefore left to draw their own inferences in regard to their character. Diverse opinions upon the point of course arose, and there is much reason to believe (and that belief is strengthened by his subsequent course in respect to another important matter) that he was induced to regard a bank as indispensable, in the then condition of the country, to the success of the new Government—an exigency in public affairs of that peculiar sort which men in power assume to deal with under the sanction of the great principle, Salus populi suprema lex. (See note.) Mr. Madison, who had demonstrated in Congress its unconstitutionality at its creation, who had opposed the banking system through his whole public life, and whose fame was in a very great degree founded on the ability with which he had defined the true principles of constitutional construction, in a way to exclude the idea of any power in Congress to establish such an institution, did, notwithstanding, at the close of his public career, in a condition of the country not unlike that in which President Washington acted, and viewing the subject from the same official station, arrive at the same conclusion in regard to its imperative necessity, and gave his approval to the erection of a new national bank.

Note.—(Feb. 16th, 1858.) Whilst reviewing the "era of good-feeling," as it was called, during the administration of Mr. Monroe, I conceived the idea of adding some account of the rise and progress of our political parties, and entered upon the task immediately, designing it to stand as an episode in my Memoirs. The subject grew upon my hands to such an extent that for the last two years it has, in necessary reading and examinations into facts, &c., occupied most of the time that could be devoted to the general object. The idea of limiting this portion to a mere digression was therefore substantially laid aside, and the dignity of a separate and distinct consideration, to which its dimensions, if nothing else, entitled it, was assigned to it. Accordingly I continued my examination of the course of parties in the United States down to the present time, including the first months of President Buchanan's administration. Whilst engaged in correcting the manuscript and arranging it to be copied, and after I had, by many pages, passed the place in the text to which this note is appended, the first volume of Mr. Randall's Life of Jefferson, recently published, came to my hands, and on reading its last two chapters first, because they have a more immediate bearing on my subject, I find the following very striking confirmation of the correctness of my inference as to the state of General Washington's mind, on the occasion spoken of:—

FROM RANDALL'S "LIFE OF JEFFERSON," VOL. 1. p. 631.

"On the subject of President Washington's feelings on the Bank Bill we find the following entry in Mr. Trist's memoranda:—

"'Montpelier, Friday, May 25, 1827.

---

"'Mr. Madison: "General Washington signed Jay's Treaty, but he did not at all like it. He also signed the Bank. But he was very near not doing so; and if he had refused, it would, in my opinion, have produced a crisis. I will mention to you a circumstance which I have never imparted, except in strict confidence. You know, by the Constitution, ten days are allowed for the President's veto to come in. If it does not appear within that time, the bill becomes a law. I was conversing with a distinguished member of the Federal party, who observed that according to his computation the time was running out, or indeed was run out; when just at this moment, Lear[27] came in with the President's sanction. I am satisfied that had it been his veto, there would have been an effort to nullify it, and they would have arrayed themselves in a hostile attitude. Between the two parties, General Washington had a most difficult course to steer."

---

"'The foregoing is written immediately after the conversation, which has not lasted half an hour,—Mr. Madison having stepped out, and I taking advantage of this interruption to retire to my room and commit the substance to paper. The very words I have retained, as near as I could. In many instances (where I have run a line over the words[28]) I have done this exactly.'"

This statement by Mr. Madison substantially sustains the view I have taken of General Washington's position at that period. The letters of all the leading Federalists of that day, and those that followed it for some years, show that they looked with great unanimity to Hamilton rather than to Washington for the tone and direction that was to be given to the movements of the Federal party, and leave scarcely a doubt that they would have sided with Hamilton if a difference had arisen between the two, as is here intimated by Mr. Madison.

How much is it to be regretted that the latter did not leave behind him a history of the events of his life and an account of what he knew of the views of others. No man was better informed upon all political subjects than himself. At the time he referred to, in his observations to Mr. Trist, he probably enjoyed as large a share of Washington's confidence as any other man, and was at all times most reluctant to be placed in opposition to him. Afterwards General Washington placed in his hands the papers from which to write his Farewell Address. But it was a rule of Mr. Madison's life, as I have noticed before, never to injure the feelings of any man as long as it could possibly be avoided, and he suffered long and much to avoid it. His papers will be examined in vain for imputations of faults to his contemporaries. They are even omitted in cases where they would have been the readiest and apparently the indispensable means of repelling unjust imputations upon himself. He carried this self-denial farther than any other public man. The pain and regret that he exhibited in his conversation with Mr. Trist, in respect to the parting between Hamilton and himself, were obviously genuine, but the necessity was absolute, and the danger that justice might not otherwise he done to his character imminent. He was on the eve of his departure for another world,—his well earned and well established reputation was about to lose his own personal guardianship,—and the subject was brought before him in such a way that he must either confess the forthcoming impeachments by his silence, or repel them by declaring the truth.

Some other citations which I have found occasion to make from Mr. Randall's work are incorporated in the text.

Other instances have occurred in our Government and elsewhere in which statesmen have transcended the constitutional limits of their power under a necessity sincerely believed to be controlling, trusting to that circumstance for the indulgence of their constituents; and in no case which has presented itself here has that indulgence been withheld where the motives for the assumption of responsibility were pure. Mr. Jefferson's course in the purchase of Louisiana and General Jackson's conduct at New Orleans were striking cases of that description.

But we have, fortunately, evidence the most authentic and unequivocal that President Washington never intended by his approval of the Bank Bill to express an approval of the systematic and general disregard of the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, in respect to the powers of Congress, whenever such disregard should be deemed expedient. The provisions of the first Apportionment Bill sent to him for his approval were contrary to the Constitution, and Mr. Jefferson gave an opinion to that effect and recommending a veto, whilst the opinion of General Hamilton was in favor of their constitutionality. The division by which the bill passed had been exclusively sectional, and the objection of unconstitutionality was raised by the South. The Union was, at that early period, believed to stand upon a precarious footing, and the President was seriously apprehensive that the worst consequences might result, in the then state of the public mind, if he were to throw himself on the side of his own section by a veto.

His embarrassment and concern were great, and he was sincerely desirous to avoid a resort to what was then regarded as an extreme measure. He agreed that the method prescribed by the bill "was contrary to the common understanding of that instrument (the Constitution), and to what was understood at the time by the makers of it," but thought "it would bear the construction assumed by the bill." This was the precise issue that was raised upon the passage of the bill to establish the bank, viz.: whether the actual intention, or that which was only inferential, was to prevail. That he would have withheld the veto if he had felt himself at liberty in such a case to follow the letter of the Constitution, and thereby defeat the intention of those who made it, no one, who examines the matter, will for a moment doubt. He appears to have been duly sensible of the magnitude of the question in all its bearings. On the one hand were the evils to be apprehended from a decision in favor of the South upon a disturbing question by a Southern President, in a form not only without precedent here, but very unpalatable—that of a veto; on the other was the grave objection to his committing himself in favor of the principle which had prevailed on the question of the bank in a case that did not furnish any thing like an equal excuse for departing from the honest and straightforward rule of interpreting the Constitution, like any other instrument, by the intention of those who made it. He did not fail to see that to act again, and under existing circumstances, upon the principle to which he had given his sanction in the case of the bank, would be to commit himself to Hamilton's latitudinarian doctrines in respect to the construction of the Constitution, and he vetoed the bill.[29]

It would have been well for the country if the injurious effects of Hamilton's policy and principles had been confined to his own times, but men of such rare genius, distinguished by the same eagerness, industry, and energy in pursuit of their objects, seldom fail to leave a durable mark upon the world in which they have bustled, especially when their day is contemporaneous with the commencement of a new government, and when they are intrusted with great power, as was emphatically the case with Hamilton. He and Jefferson, both answering to this description, have always been regarded by me as the bane and antidote of our political system. Every speech and every writing of Hamilton exhibited proof of deep research and laborious study. Men, governments, and political measures, were his favorite subjects of reflection and discussion. Of the former, more particularly of the mass, he had (as I have elsewhere said) formed unfavorable opinions; not that he was less desirous than others for their welfare—for few men were more philanthropic in disposition—but because of the early and ineffaceable impression upon his mind that the majority of men, in their collective capacity, were radically deficient in respect for order and for the rights of persons and of property. As he thought their fears or their private interests and passions the only alternative methods of managing them and the former inapplicable to our people, so he considered those measures of government "discreetest, wisest, best," which were most likely to enlist their personal interests and feelings on its side. Such measures he deemed indeed indispensable, and his whole scheme for the administration of the Government was founded upon this theory.

Anti-republican as these views undoubtedly were, they nevertheless pointed to principles and to a policy well calculated to make deep impressions upon large portions of the community, in which were, and will always be, found many liable to be influenced by such considerations, and ready to follow the political party organized upon them; many, if not born in the belief, certainly educated in it, that they have something to fear from the major part of their fellow-creatures, and seeing few more important objects for the establishment of governments among men than to keep these in order and to protect the well-disposed portions of society like themselves from the vices and follies of the masses. In the performance of such duties they very naturally conclude that government should look to the more intelligent and better informed classes for support, and as naturally that to enable them to render such support they should receive partial favors and extraordinary advantages from its administration. Men of this class, their associates and dependents, as was foreseen, embraced with alacrity and supported with the energy inspired by self-interest the principle of political reciprocity between government and its supporters inaugurated in England at the Revolution of 1688, and ingrafted upon our system by Hamilton in 1790. He found in the old Federal party a soil well adapted to the cultivation of that policy, and in conjunction with those who expected to share in the profits exerted all the faculties of his great mind to extend the field for its operation.

That extension soon became so great under the fostering influence of Government and the money power as to include among its supporters, either as principals or sympathizers, almost every business class in the community, saving always the landed interest, properly so called, the mechanics not manufacturers, and the working classes. When I speak of the landed interest, I allude (as I have before explained) to those only who cultivate the soil themselves directly or by the aid of employées—to the farmers and planters of the country—and do not of course include speculators in lands, who buy to sell and sell to buy, and who, of all classes, are most dependent upon the friendship and most subject to the influence of the money power.

Such a principle of political action, once fairly started in business communities, is not easily uprooted. It continued to govern the successors to the Federal party by whatever name they were called. Indeed, the discrepancy that existed between its name and its principles when it was first called Federal has obtained in all its mutations. Its principles have been the same, with a single exception, under every name, until the perturbation of party names and systems recently produced by the disturbing subject of slavery. When that influence is spent, the individuals who now constitute the so-called Republican party will in the main revert to their original positions. The exception referred to consists in the exemption on the part of his political disciples of the present day from the hallucination which Hamilton carried to his grave in regard to the possibility of the ultimate re-establishment of monarchical institutions in this country. In all other respects we have had unvarying exhibitions of his well-known sentiments upon the subjects of government and its administration; the same preference for artificial constructions of the Constitution, devised to defeat instead of to develop the intentions of those who made it; the same inclination to strengthen the money power and to increase its political influence—an object that occupied the first place in Hamilton's wishes; the same disposition to restrict the powers of the State governments, and to enlarge those of the Federal head; the same distrust of the capacity of the people to control the management of public affairs, and the same desire also for governmental interference in the private pursuits of men and for influencing them by special advantages to favored individuals and classes. A statement of the extent to which the business, as distinguished from the agricultural and other laboring classes, have been banded together in our political contests by a preference for Hamilton's principles and by the instrumentality of the money power, would be regarded as incredible if the facts were not indisputable and notorious. Such has been the case with those who hold the stock of our banks, and control their action—agencies which enter into some of the minutest as well as the most important of the business transactions of these great communities. A vast majority in number as well as in interest of these are men deeply imbued with Hamiltonian principles. The same thing may be said of our insurance companies which have been invested with special privileges of various grades, and are authorized to insure against perils by land, and perils by sea, and against perils of almost every description. The same in respect to our incorporated companies invested with like privileges, and established for the manufacture of articles made of cotton, of wool, of flax, of hemp, of silk, of iron, of steel, of lead, of clay, &c., &c. The same of companies with like privileges for the construction of railroads, of bridges, of canals, where they can be made profitable, and other constructions to which the invention and industry of man can be successfully applied. Individuals frequently go into these powerful associations with opposite political feelings, but are ultimately almost invariably induced to change them altogether, or to modify them so much as to satisfy their partners that their democratic principles are not sufficiently stringent to be troublesome. The possession of special and, in some of these cases, of exclusive privileges, is certain sooner or later to produce distrust of the less favored body of the people, and distrust grows apace to the proportions of prejudice and dislike. There are of course striking exceptions to this rule, as to every other. There are always men connected with these associations whose democratic principles are so deeply implanted in their very natures as to place them above the influence of circumstances; but they are few and far between. These changes are not the fruit of infirm purposes or characters, but are produced by influences which seem no farther traceable than is here imperfectly done, and are yet sufficiently effective to convert to Hamiltonian principles more than three fourths of the Democrats who become members of the associations of which I have spoken.

Such aggregations of wealth and influence, connected as they usually are or soon become with social distinctions, naturally come to be regarded as the fountains of patronage by those who are in search of it. The press, men of letters, artists, and professional men of every denomination, and those engaged in subordinate pursuits who live upon the luxurious indulgences of the rich, are all brought within the scope of this influence. It is perhaps in this way only that we can account for the remarkable disparity in number between the newspapers and other periodicals advocating Democratic principles and those which support the views of the money power and its adherents—a disparity the extraordinary extent of which will strike any one who visits a common reading-room, in which, amid the well-furnished shelves and full files of the publications of the latter class, it is rare that we find many of the former, often not more than a single newspaper, sometimes not one. Yet those which we do not find there represent the political principles of a large majority of the people. The same fact attracts the attention of the observer in passing through countries abroad which are under monarchical institutions.

These are among the political accretions of the money power in this country, made in a comparatively short period—these, the foreseen operations of Hamilton's policy and principles and the strata on which he designed at some time, when the prejudices of the day should have passed away, or in some crisis in the affairs of the country which might make the work easier or more agreeable to the people, to found political institutions of the same general character at least with those the realization of which had been the day-dream of his life.

To return to the point from which I started in this long and doubtless prolix review—a political party founded on such principles and looking to such sources for its support does not often stand in need of caucuses and conventions to preserve harmony in its ranks. Constructed principally of a network of special interests,—almost all of them looking to Government for encouragement of some sort,—the feelings and opinions of its members spontaneously point in the same direction, and when those interests are thought in danger, or new inducements are held out for their advancement, notice of the apprehended assault or promised encouragement is circulated through their ranks with a facility always supplied by the sharpened wit of cupidity. Their conflicts in council, when such occur, are for the same reasons less likely to be obstinate and more easily reconciled. Sensible of these facts, the policy of their leaders has been from the beginning to discountenance and explode all usages or plans designed to secure party unity, so essential to their opponents and substantially unnecessary to themselves.

Hamilton's system considered with reference to the effect it was calculated to exert upon most of the classes at whom it aimed, did great credit to his sagacity. The wonder has always been that a party which has had at its command so large a portion of the appliances generally most effective in partisan warfare should meet with such infrequent success in the elections. Strangers who visit us are especially struck with this to them unaccountable circumstance, and superficial observers at home are often scarcely less impressed by it; and yet the secret of its failure lies on the surface. Although Hamilton's policy was successful with many, it failed signally, as has been stated, with the most numerous and consequently the most powerful class of our citizens—those engaged in agriculture; a class with which the intercourse of strangers is the most limited, and the strength of which, from the seclusion and unobtrusiveness of its common life, is very apt to be underrated by other ranks even of our own people. It not only failed to attract their sympathies in his favor, but excited their dissatisfaction by its extension of governmental favors to others in which they could not participate consistently with their inherited and cherished principles, and which were not necessary to their pursuits; thus increasing that antagonism to some extent between those who live by the sweat of their brow and those who live by their wits. These adverse results of his policy continued after its execution devolved upon his disciples. Farmers and planters—the main-stay of the Democratic party—seldom allow themselves, as I have before said, to be drawn before Congress or into the audience chambers of Presidents and Cabinets, suppliants for special favors to the interest in which they are engaged. The indifference exhibited by the agriculturists of America, at the period of the Stamp Act, to the overflowing offers of bounties, is still shown by their uncorrupted successors. The promised aid to their business held out by Hamilton in his famous Report on Manufactures, both direct and consequential, therefore excited no feeling in their breasts save strong suspicions of his motives.

Our political history abounds with instances in which similar attempts to obtain the support of the many by appeals to the self-interest of the few have shared the same fate. They seldom fail to prove offensive to the taste and humiliating to the pride of our people. The wisest way to the confidence and support of the latter is to confine the action of the administration of the Federal Government to the duties specifically enjoined upon it by the Constitution, and to the able and honest discharge of them. Statesmen who act upon this rule are much more likely to close their official careers with credit to themselves and advantage to the country than by resort to experiments, however splendid or plausible. Occasions may indeed be presented on which temporary derangements in the affairs of the State and of individuals are produced of sufficient magnitude to baffle all calculations and to disappoint the best intentions and the wisest measures, but these must of necessity be of rare occurrence.

The administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson were thus conducted, and they had their reward. The success of Mr. Madison's was, it is true, greatly retarded by obstructions placed in its way by the money power, with a view to drive him to a dishonorable peace by crippling his resources; but he and his associates in the Government triumphed, notwithstanding, for that power had not then acquired the strength which it subsequently attained, and the field for the display of that which it possessed was not a safe one, while the passions of the people were excited by a state of open war and were liable to be turned with augmented fury against such as virtually aided the public enemy. It was in its palmiest state in 1832, when it demanded a re-charter of the Bank of the United States, and when, this being refused, it commenced the struggle for the expulsion of President Jackson from the chair of State. Although it lacked time to mature its measures sufficiently for the accomplishment of that particular object, it continued its assaults upon the Executive, materially weakened its influence in the National Legislature, and after a ruthless war of eight years succeeded in overthrowing the administration of his successor and in obtaining possession of the Government.

But the methods of the great men and successful Presidents whom I have named were too simple, and the tenor of their way too noiseless and even for the adventurous genius of Hamilton's school. To devise elaborate schemes for the management of that branch of the Government intrusted to his control, and of such as fell within the scope of his influence, was more to his liking. The construction and execution of these made necessary the use of powers not granted by the Constitution, and led to a perversion of its provisions, of which we have seen the consequences.

John Quincy Adams was the first President, after the civil revolution of 1800, who entered upon the duties of his office with views of the Constitution as latitudinarian as were those of Hamilton, and the only one of that stamp who possessed sufficient force of character to make his will the rule of action for his cabinet, and who lived long enough to make it to some extent effectual. Although elected as a convert to the principles of the then Republican party, he was no sooner seated in the Presidential chair than he disavowed those principles in their most important features—those of Constitutional construction—and marked out a course in that regard which he intended to pursue. He thereby united that party against his reëlection to an extent sufficient to defeat it by an overwhelming majority.

Of the party which thus a second time vindicated the Constitution, by far the most effective ingredient was the landed interest. But though the most powerful, it was yet far from being its only valuable element, for, to use Mr. Jefferson's words on the former occasion, there was besides "a great mass of talent on the Republican side."

If there be any whom experience has not yet satisfied of the power of the landed interest, and of its capacity to cope successfully with the money power of the country, enormous as has been the growth of the latter, let them consider the facts disclosed by the census. By that of 1850, our population, as affecting the point under consideration, is shown to have consisted at that time of farmers, two millions three hundred and sixty thousand; of planters, twenty-seven thousand; of laborers engaged in agriculture, thirty-seven thousand; of persons engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and mining, one million six hundred thousand; in law, medicine, and divinity, ninety-four thousand. Let them compare these with previous enumerations, and they will see how invariable and large is the disproportion in numbers between the agricultural and other classes. That disproportion must of course have been greater during our colonial existence and at the Revolutionary period, when our commerce was trifling, and we were almost if not entirely destitute of manufactures. We are hence able to form an idea of the extent to which the defense of the principles which the colonists cherished, and for the maintenance of which the Revolution was made, rested on the broad shoulders of the landed interest from the beginning to the end of that great contest.

Without the hearty and constant coöperation of that interest the impassable barrier that has been erected against the politically demoralizing and anti-republican tendency of the Hamiltonian policy could never have been maintained. I have alluded to the reasons for my belief that it is placed by its position and by the law of its nature beyond the reach of that policy, and my firm conviction that it will secure to our people the blessings of republican government as long as it remains the predominant interest in the country. It can only be when the agriculturists abandon the implements and the field of their labor and become, with those who now assist them, shopkeepers, manufacturers, carriers, and traders, that the Republic will be brought in danger of the influences of the money power. But this can never happen. Every inclination of the landed interest, however slight, in that direction has been to it a prolific source of loss, regret, and repentance. Between 1835 and 1840, when the country was stimulated to madness by the Bank of the United States and its allies, the interests of agriculture were so much neglected as to lead to large importations of breadstuffs from Europe, whilst the land was covered with luxury, soon succeeded by bankruptcy and want. But the sober second-thought of the people, in a remarkably brief period, not only brought that great branch of the industry of the country back to the point from which it had been seduced, but drove from power those who had risen to it upon the strength of a temporary popular delusion.

If any doubt the existence and agency of a political influence such as I have described under the name of the money power, or think the description exaggerated, let me ask them to ponder upon its achievements in the country from which it has been transplanted to our shores. It is but little more than a century and a half since it was first interpolated upon the English system, and we have seen the results it has in that period produced upon its rivals: every vestige of the feudal system that survived the Revolution of 1688 extinguished; the landed aristocracy, once lords paramount, depressed to an average power in the State; the Crown, still respected, and its possessor at this moment justly beloved by all, yet substantially reduced to a pageant, protected indeed by the prejudices of John Bull in favor of ancestral forms and state ceremonies, but of almost no account as an element of power when weighed against the well-ascertained opinion of the people of England. Who does not know that it holds in its hands, more often than any other power, questions of peace or war, not only in England but over Europe! How often have previous consultations with a respectable family of Jews decided the question of a declaration of war! Indeed it would have been well for humanity if so salutary a check upon the brutal passions of men and monarchs had been always equally potent—if some conservative and life-sparing Rothschilds had been able to restrain the Henries, the Louises, the Fredericks, and the Napoleons of the past.

The money power, designed from the beginning to exert a liberal influence in England as the antagonist of arbitrary power, has done much good there by the prominence and influence to which it has elevated public opinion, and this to some extent is true of other European countries. Here it was from its start, as I have said, designed to control the public will by undermining and corrupting its free and virtuous impulse and determination, and its political effects have been continually injurious.