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

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СКАЧАТЬ the bargain. Thereupon, Jefferson, with all the zeal of his ardent temperament, threw himself into the contest to pass Hamilton's financial measure; and not only secured the necessary votes to make Assumption a law, but wrote letters broadcast in support of it.

      "Congress has been long embarrassed," he advised Monroe, "by two of the most irritating questions that ever can be raised, … the funding the public debt and … the fixing on a more central residence… Unless they can be reconciled by some plan of compromise, there will be no funding bill agreed to, our credit … will burst and vanish and the states separate to take care every one of itself." Jefferson outlines the bargain for fixing the Capital and assuming the debts, and concludes: "If this plan of compromise does not take place, I fear one infinitely worse."162 To John Harvie he writes: "With respect to Virginia the measure is … divested of … injustice."163

      Jefferson delivered three Southern votes to pass the bill for Assumption of the State debts, and Hamilton got enough Northern votes to locate the National Capital permanently where it now stands.164 Thus this vital part of Hamilton's comprehensive financial plan was squeezed through Congress by only two votes.165 But Virginia was not appeased and remained the center of the opposition.166

      Business at once improved. "The sudden increase of monied capital," writes Marshall, "invigorated commerce, and gave a new stimulus to agriculture."167 But the "immense wealth which individuals acquired" by the instantaneous rise in the value of the certificates of debt caused popular jealousy and discontent. The debt was looked upon, not as the funding of obligations incurred in our War for Independence, but as a scheme newly hatched to strengthen the National Government by "the creation of a monied interest … subservient to its will."168

      The Virginia Legislature, of which Marshall was now the foremost Nationalist member, convened soon after Assumption had become a National law. A smashing resolution, drawn by Henry,169 was proposed, asserting that Assumption "is repugnant to the constitution of the United States, as it goes to the exercise of a power not expressly granted to the general government."170 Marshall was active among and, indeed, led those who resisted to the uttermost the attack upon this thoroughly National measure of the National Government.

      Knowing that they were outnumbered in the Legislature and that the people were against Assumption, Marshall and his fellow Nationalists in the House of Delegates employed the expedient of compromise. They proposed to amend Henry's resolution by stating that Assumption would place on Virginia a "heavy debt … which never can be extinguished" so long as the debt of any other State remained unpaid; that it was "inconsistent with justice"; that it would "alienate the affections of good citizens of this Commonwealth from the government of the United States … and finally tend to produce measures extremely unfavorable to the interests of the Union."171

      Savage enough for any one, it would seem, was this amendment of the Nationalists in the Virginia Legislature; but its fangs were not sufficiently poisonous to suit the opposition. It lacked, particularly, the supreme virtue of asserting the law's unconstitutionality. So the Virginia Anti-Nationalists rejected it by a majority of 41 votes out of a total of 135.

      Marshall and his determined band of Nationalists labored hard to retrieve this crushing defeat. On Henry's original resolution, they slightly increased their strength, but were again beaten by a majority of 23 out of 127 voting.172

      Finally, the triumphant opposition reported a protest and remonstrance to Congress. This brilliant Anti-Nationalist State paper – the Magna Charta of States' Rights – sounded the first formal call to arms for the doctrine that all powers not expressly given in the Constitution were reserved to the States. It also impeached the Assumption Act as an effort "to erect and concentrate and perpetuate a large monied interest in opposition to the landed interests," which would prostrate "agriculture at the feet of commerce" or result in a "change in the present form of Federal Government, fatal to the existence of American liberty."173

      But the unconstitutionality of Assumption was the main objection. The memorial declared that "during the whole discussion of the federal constitution by the convention of Virginia, your memorialists were taught to believe 'that every power not expressly granted was retained' … and upon this positive condition" the Constitution had been adopted. But where could anything be found in the Constitution "authorizing Congress to express terms or to assume the debts of the states?" Nowhere! Therefore, Congress had no such power.

      "As the guardians, then, of the rights and interests of their constituents; as sentinels placed by them over the ministers of the Federal Government, to shield it from their encroachments," the Anti-Nationalists in the Virginia Legislature sounded the alarm.174 It was of this jealous temper of the States that Ames so accurately wrote a year later: "The [National] government is too far off to gain the affections of the people… Instead of feeling as a Nation, a State is our country. We look with indifference, often with hatred, fear, and aversion, to the other states."175

      Marshall and his fellow Nationalists strove earnestly to extract from the memorial as much venom as possible, but were able to get only three or four lines left out;176 and the report was adopted practically as originally drafted.177 Thus Marshall was in the first skirmish, after the National Government had been established, of that constitutional engagement in which, ultimately, Nationalism was to be challenged on the field of battle. Sumter and Appomattox were just below the horizon.

      The remainder of Hamilton's financial plan was speedily placed upon the statute books of the Republic, though not without determined resistance which, more and more, took on a grim and ugly aspect both in Congress and throughout the country.

      When Henry's resolution, on which the Virginia remonstrance was based, reached Hamilton, he instantly saw its logical result. It was, he thought, the major premise of the syllogism of National disintegration. "This," exclaimed Hamilton, of the Virginia resolution, "is the first symptom of a spirit which must either be killed or it will kill the Constitution of the United States."178

      The Anti-Nationalist memorial of the Legislature of Virginia accurately expressed the sentiment of the State. John Taylor of Caroline two years later, in pamphlets of marked ability, attacked the Administration's entire financial system and its management. While he exhaustively analyzed its economic features, yet he traced all its supposed evils to the Nationalist idea. The purpose and result of Hamilton's whole plan and of the manner of its execution was, declared Taylor, to "Swallow up … the once sovereign … states… Hence all assumptions and … the enormous loans." Thus "the state governments will become only speculative commonwealths to be read for amusement, like Harrington's Oceana or Moore's Utopia."179

      The fight apparently over, Marshall declined to become a candidate for the Legislature in the following year. The Administration's financial plan was now enacted into law and the vital part of the National machinery thus set up and in motion. The country was responding with a degree of prosperity hitherto unknown, and, for the time, all seemed secure.180 So Marshall did not again consent to serve in the House of Delegates until 1795. But the years between these periods of his public life brought СКАЧАТЬ