Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ They are nothing but agents, in a case which requires no agent; and no prudent man would, or ought, to employ an agent to take care of his money, his property, or his liberty, when he is equally capable to take care of them himself.

      "But, if the plan of the constitution had not failed – if we were now deriving from electors all the advantages expected from their institution – I, for one, said Mr. B., would still be in favor of getting rid of them. I should esteem the incorruptibility of the people, their disinterested desire to get the best man for President, to be more than a counterpoise to all the advantages which might be derived from the superior intelligence of a more enlightened, but smaller, and therefore, more corruptible body. I should be opposed to the intervention of electors, because the double process of electing a man to elect a man, would paralyze the spirit of the people, and destroy the life of the election itself. Doubtless this machinery was introduced into our constitution for the purpose of softening the action of the democratic element; but it also softens the interest of the people in the result of the election itself. It places them at too great a distance from their first servant. It interposes a body of men between the people and the object of their choice, and gives a false direction to the gratitude of the President elected. He feels himself indebted to the electors who collected the votes of the people, and not to the people, who gave their votes to the electors. It enables a few men to govern many, and, in time, it will transfer the whole power of the election into the hands of a few, leaving to the people the humble occupation of confirming what has been done by superior authority.

      "Mr Benton referred to historical examples to prove the correctness of his opinion.

      "He mentioned the constitution of the French Republic, of the year III. of French liberty. The people to choose electors; these to choose the Councils of Five Hundred, and of Ancients; and these, by a further process of filtration, to choose the Five Directors. The effect was, that the people had no concern in the election of their Chief Magistrates, and felt no interest in their fate. They saw them enter and expel each other from the political theatre, with the same indifference with which they would see the entrance and the exit of so many players on the stage. It was the same thing in all the subaltern Republics of which the French armies were delivered, while overturning the thrones of Europe. The constitutions of the Ligurian, Cisalpine, and Parthenopian Republics, were all duplicates of the mother institution, at Paris; and all shared the same fate. The French consular constitution of the year VIII. (the last year of French liberty) preserved all the vices of the electoral system; and from this fact, alone, that profound observer, Neckar, from the bosom of his retreat, in the midst of the Alps, predicted and proclaimed the death of Liberty in France. He wrote a book to prove that 'Liberty would be ruined by providing any kind of substitute for popular elections:' and the result verified his prediction in four years."

      CHAPTER XVI.

      INTERNAL TRADE WITH NEW MEXICO

      The name of Mexico, the synonyme of gold and silver mines, possessed always an invincible charm for the people of the western States. Guarded from intrusion by Spanish jealousy and despotic power, and imprisonment for life, or labor in the mines, the inexorable penalty for every attempt to penetrate the forbidden country, still the dazzled imaginations and daring spirits of the Great West adventured upon the enterprise; and failure and misfortune, chains and labor, were not sufficient to intimidate others. The journal of (the then lieutenant, afterwards) General Pike inflamed this spirit, and induced new adventurers to hazard the enterprise, only to meet the fate of their predecessors. It was not until the Independence of Mexico, in the year 1821, that the frontiers of this vast and hitherto sealed up country, were thrown open to foreign ingress, and trade and intercourse allowed to take their course. The State of Missouri, from her geographical position, and the adventurous spirit of her inhabitants, was among the first to engage in it; and the "Western Internal Provinces" – the vast region comprehending New Mexico, El Paso del Norte, New Biscay, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, and all the wide slope spreading down towards the Gulf of California, the ancient "Sea of Cortez" – was the remote theatre of their courageous enterprise – the further off and the less known, so much the more attractive to their daring spirits. It was the work of individual enterprise, without the protection or countenance of the government – without even its knowledge – and exposed to constant danger of life and property from the untamed and predatory savages, Arabs of the New World, which roamed over the intermediate country of a thousand miles, and considered the merchant and his goods their lawful prey. In three years it had grown up to be a new and regular branch of interior commerce, profitable to those engaged in it, valuable to the country from the articles it carried out, and for the silver, the furs, and the mules which it brought back; and well entitled to the protection and care of the government. That protection was sought, and in the form which the character of the trade required – a right of way through the countries of the tribes between Missouri and New Mexico, a road marked out and security in travelling it, stipulations for good behavior from the Indians, and a consular establishment in the provinces to be traded with. The consuls could be appointed by the order of the government; but the road, the treaty stipulations, and the substantial protection against savages, required the aid of the federal legislative power, and for that purpose a Bill was brought into the Senate by me in the session of 1824-25; and being a novel and strange subject, and asking for extraordinary legislation, it became necessary to lay a foundation of facts, and to furnish a reason and an argument for every thing that was asked. I produced a statement from those engaged in the trade, among others from Mr. Augustus Storrs, late of New Hampshire, then of Missouri – a gentleman of character and intelligence, very capable of relating things as they were, and incapable of relating them otherwise; and who had been personally engaged in the trade. In presenting his statement, and moving to have it printed for the use of the Senate, I said:

      "This gentleman had been one of a caravan of eighty persons, one hundred and fifty-six horses, and twenty-three wagons and carriages, which had made the expedition from Missouri to Santa Fé (of New Mexico), in the months of May and June last. His account was full of interest and novelty. It sounded like romance to hear of caravans of men, horses, and wagons, traversing with their merchandise the vast plain which lies between the Mississippi and the Rio del Norte. The story seemed better adapted to Asia than to North America. But, romantic as it might seem, the reality had already exceeded the visions of the wildest imagination. The journey to New Mexico, but lately deemed a chimerical project, had become an affair of ordinary occurrence. Santa Fé, but lately the Ultima Thule of American enterprise, was now considered as a stage only in the progress, or rather, a new point of departure to our invincible citizens. Instead of turning back from that point, the caravans broke up there, and the subdivisions branched off in different directions in search of new theatres for their enterprise. Some proceeded down the river to the Paso del Norte; some to the mines of Chihuahua and Durango, in the province of New Biscay; some to Sonora and Sinaloa, on the Gulf of California; and some, seeking new lines of communication with the Pacific, had undertaken to descend the western slope of our continent, through the unexplored regions of the Colorado. The fruit of these enterprises, for the present year, amounted to $190,000 in gold and silver bullion, and coin, and precious furs; a sum considerable, in itself, in the commerce of an infant State, but chiefly deserving a statesman's notice, as an earnest of what might be expected from a regulated and protected trade. The principal article given in exchange, is that of which we have the greatest abundance, and which has the peculiar advantage of making the circuit of the Union before it departs from the territories of the republic – cotton – which grows in the South, is manufactured in the North, and exported from the West.

      "That the trade will be beneficial to the inhabitants of the Internal Provinces, is a proposition too plain to be argued. They are a people among whom all the arts are lost – the ample catalogue of whose wants may be inferred from the lamentable details of Mr. Storrs. No books! no newspapers! iron a dollar a pound! cultivating the earth with wooden tools! and spinning upon a stick! Such is the picture of a people whose fathers wore the proud title of "Conquerors;" whose ancestors, in the time of Charles the Fifth, were the pride, the terror, and the model of Europe; and such has been the power of civil and religious despotism in accomplishing the degradation of СКАЧАТЬ