The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4). Beveridge Albert Jeremiah

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СКАЧАТЬ was appointed on the committee to bring in bills for proceeding against absent debtors;135 on another to amend the penal code;136 and he was made chairman of the special committee to examine the James River Company,137 of which he was a stockholder. Such are examples of his routine activities in the Legislature of 1789.

      The Legislature instructed the Virginia Senators in Congress "to use their utmost endeavors to procure the admission of the citizens of the United States to hear the debates of their House, whenever they are sitting in their legislative capacity."138

      An address glowing with love, confidence, and veneration was sent to Washington.139 Then Jefferson came to Richmond; and the Legislature appointed a committee to greet him with polite but coldly formal congratulations.140 No one then foresaw that a few short years would turn the reverence and affection for Washington into disrespect and hostility, and the indifference toward Jefferson into fiery enthusiasm.

      The first skirmish in the engagement between the friends and foes of a stronger National Government soon came on. On November 30, 1789, the House ratified the first twelve amendments to the Constitution,141 which the new Congress had submitted to the States; but three days later it was proposed that the Legislature urge Congress to reconsider the amendments recommended by Virginia which Congress had not adopted.142 An attempt to make this resolution stronger was defeated by the deciding vote of the Speaker, Marshall voting against it.143

      The Anti-Nationalist State Senate refused to concur in the House's ratification of the amendments proposed by Congress;144 and Marshall was one of the committee to hold a conference with the Senate committee on the subject.

      After Congress had passed the laws necessary to set the National Government in motion, Madison had reluctantly offered his summary of the volume of amendments to the Constitution recommended by the States "in order," as he said, "to quiet that anxiety which prevails in the public mind."145 The debate is illuminating. The amendments, as agreed to, fell far short of the radical and extensive alterations which the States had asked and were understood to be palliatives to popular discontent.146

      Randolph in Richmond wrote that the amendments were "much approved by the strong federalists … being considered as an anodyne to the discontented. Some others … expect to hear, … that a real amelioration of the Constitution was not so much intended, as a soporific draught to the restless. I believe, indeed," declared Randolph, "that nothing – nay, not even the abolishment of direct taxation – would satisfy those who are most clamorous."147

      The amendments were used by many, who changed from advocates to opponents of broad National powers, as a pretext for reversed views and conduct; but such as were actually adopted were not a sufficient justification for their action.148

      The great question, however, with which the First Congress had to deal, was the vexed and vital problem of finance. It was the heart of the whole constitutional movement.149 Without a solution of it the National Government was, at best, a doubtful experiment. The public debt was a chaos of variegated obligations, including the foreign and domestic debts contracted by the Confederation, the debts of the various States, the heavy accumulation of interest on all.150 Public and private credit, which had risen when the Constitution finally became an accomplished fact, was now declining with capital's frail timidity of the uncertain.

      In his "First Report on the Public Credit," Hamilton showed the way out of this maddening jungle. Pay the foreign debt, said Hamilton, assume as a National obligation the debts of the States and fund them, together with those of the Confederation. All had been contracted for a common purpose in a common cause; all were "the price of liberty." Let the owners of certificates, both State and Continental, be paid in full with arrears of interest, without discrimination between original holders and those who had purchased from them. And let this be done by exchanging for the old certificates those of the new National Government bearing interest and transferable. These latter then would pass as specie;151 the country would be supplied with a great volume of sound money, so badly needed,152 and the debt be in the process of extinguishment.153

      Hamilton's entire financial system was assailed with fury both in Congress and among the people. The funding plan, said its opponents, was a stock-jobbing scheme, the bank a speculator's contrivance, the National Assumption of State debts a dishonest trick. The whole was a plot designed to array the moneyed interests in support of the National Government.154 Assumption of State debts was a device to increase the National power and influence and to lessen still more the strength and importance of the States.155 The speculators, who had bought the depreciated certificates of the needy, would be enriched from the substance of the whole people.

      Without avail had Hamilton answered every objection in advance; the careful explanations in Congress of his financial measures went for naught; the materials for popular agitation against the National Government were too precious to be neglected by its foes.156 "The first regular and systematic opposition to the principles on which the affairs of the union were administered," writes Marshall, "originated in the measures which were founded on it [the "First Report on the Public Credit"]."157

      The Assumption of State debts was the strategic point of attack, especially for the Virginia politicians; and upon Assumption, therefore, they wisely concentrated their forces. Nor were they without plausible ground of opposition; for Virginia, having given as much to the common cause as any State and more than most of her sisters, and having suffered greatly, had by the sale of her public lands paid off more of her debt than had any of the rest of them.

      It seemed, therefore, unjust to Virginians to put their State on a parity with those Commonwealths who had been less prompt. On the other hand, the certificates of debt, State and Continental, had accumulated in the North and East;158 and these sections were determined that the debt should be assumed by the Nation.159 So the debate in Congress was heated and prolonged, the decision doubtful. On various amendments, sometimes one side and sometimes the other prevailed, often by a single vote.160

      At the same time the question of the permanent location of the National Capital arose.161 On these two subjects Congress was deadlocked. Both were disposed of finally by the famous deal between Jefferson and Hamilton, by which the latter agreed to get enough votes to establish the Capital on the Potomac and the former enough votes to pass the Assumption Bill.

      Washington had made Jefferson his Secretary of State purely on merit. For similar reasons of efficiency Hamilton had been appointed Secretary of the Treasury, after Robert Morris, Washington's first choice, had declined that office.

      At Jefferson's dinner table, the two Secretaries СКАЧАТЬ