The Promise of American Life. Herbert David Croly

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СКАЧАТЬ it could give stability to the banking system of the country. Finally he sought by means of his proposed fiscal and commercial policy to make the central government the effective promoter of a wholesome and many-sided national development. He detected the danger to political stability and self-control which would result from the continued growth of the United States as a merely agricultural and trading community, and he saw that it was necessary to cultivate manufacturing industries and technical knowledge and training, because diversified activity and a well-rounded social and economic life brings with it national balance and security.

      Underlying the several aspects of Hamilton's policy can be discerned a definite theory of governmental functions. The central government is to be used, not merely to maintain the Constitution, but to promote the national interest and to consolidate the national organization. Hamilton saw clearly that the American Union was far from being achieved when the Constitution was accepted by the states and the machinery of the Federal government set in motion. A good start had been made, but the way in which to keep what had been gained was to seek for more. Unionism must be converted into a positive policy which labored to strengthen the national interest and organization, discredit possible or actual disunionist ideas and forces, and increase the national spirit. All this implied an active interference with the natural course of American economic and political business and its regulation and guidance in the national direction. It implied a conscious and indefatigable attempt on the part of the national leaders to promote the national welfare. It implied the predominance in American political life of the men who had the energy and the insight to discriminate between those ideas and tendencies which promoted the national welfare, and those ideas and tendencies whereby it was imperiled. It implied, in fine, the perpetuation of the same kind of leadership which had guided the country safely through the dangers of the critical period, and the perpetuation of the purposes which inspired that leadership.

      So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency. On the persistent vitality of Hamilton's national principle depends the safety of the American republic and the fertility of the American idea, but he did not seek a sufficiently broad, popular basis for the realization of those ideas. He was betrayed by his fears and by his lack of faith. Believing as he did, and far more than he had any right to believe, that he was still fighting for the cause of social stability and political order against the seven devils of anarchy and dissolution, he thought it necessary to bestow upon the central government the support of a strong special interest. During the Constitutional Convention he had failed to secure the adoption of certain institutions which in his opinion would have established as the guardian of the Constitution an aristocracy of ability; and he now insisted all the more upon the plan of attaching to the Federal government the support of well-to-do people. As we have seen, the Constitution had been framed and its adoption secured chiefly by citizens of education and means; and the way had been prepared, consequently, for the attempt of Hamilton to rally this class as a class more than ever to the support of the Federal government. They were the people who had most to lose by political instability or inefficiency, and they must be brought to lend their influence to the perpetuation of a centralized political authority. Hence he believed a considerable national debt to be a good thing for the Federal national interest, and he insisted strenuously upon the assumption by the Federal government of the state war-debts. He conceived the Constitution and the Union as a valley of peace and plenty which had to be fortified against the marauders by the heavy ramparts of borrowed money and the big guns of a propertied interest.

      In so doing Hamilton believed that he was (to vary the metaphor) loading the ship of state with a necessary ballast, whereas in truth he was disturbing its balance and preventing it from sailing free. He succeeded in imbuing both men of property and the mass of the "plain people" with the idea that the well-to-do were the peculiar beneficiaries of the American Federal organization, the result being that the rising democracy came more than ever to distrust the national government. Instead of seeking to base the perpetuation of the Union upon the interested motives of a minority of well-to-do citizens, he would have been far wiser to have frankly intrusted its welfare to the good-will of the whole people. But unfortunately he was prevented from so doing by the limitation both of his sympathies and ideas. He was possessed by the English conception of a national state, based on the domination of special privileged orders and interests; and he failed to understand that the permanent support of the American national organization could not be found in anything less than the whole American democracy. The American Union was a novel and a promising political creation, not because it was a democracy, for there had been plenty of previous democracies, and not because it was a nation, for there had been plenty of previous nations, but precisely and entirely because it was a democratic nation—a nation committed by its institutions and aspirations to realize the democratic idea.

      Much, consequently, as we may value Hamilton's work and for the most part his ideas, it must be admitted that the popular disfavor with which he came to be regarded had its measure of justice. This disfavor was indeed partly the result of his resolute adherence to a wise but an unpopular foreign policy; and the way in which this policy was carried through by Washington, Hamilton, and their followers, in spite of the general dislike which it inspired, deserves the warmest praise. But Hamilton's unpopularity was fundamentally due to deeper causes. He and his fellow-Federalists did not understand their fellow-countrymen and sympathize with their purposes, and naturally they were repaid with misunderstanding and suspicion. He ceased, after Washington's retirement, to be a national leader, and became the leader of a faction; and before his death his party ceased to be the national party, and came to represent only a section and a class. In this way it irretrievably lost public support, and not even the miserable failure of Jefferson's policy of embargo could persuade the American people to restore the Federalists to power. As a party organization they disappeared entirely after the second English war, and unfortunately much that was good in Hamilton's political point of view disappeared with the bad. But by its failure one good result was finally established. For better or worse the United States had become a democracy as well as a nation, and its national task was not that of escaping the dangers of democracy, but of realizing its responsibilities and opportunities.

      It did not take Hamilton's opponents long to discover that his ideas and plans were in some respects inimical to democracy; and the consequence was that Hamilton was soon confronted by one of the most implacable and unscrupulous oppositions which ever abused a faithful and useful public servant. This opposition was led by Jefferson, and while it most unfortunately lacked Hamilton's statesmanship and sound constructive ideas, it possessed the one saving quality which Hamilton himself lacked: Jefferson was filled with a sincere, indiscriminate, and unlimited faith in the American people. He was according to his own lights a radical and unqualified democrat, and as a democrat he fought most bitterly what he considered to be the aristocratic or even monarchic tendency of Hamilton's policy. Much of the denunciation which he and his followers lavished upon Hamilton was unjust, and much of the fight which they put up against his measures was contrary to the public welfare. They absolutely failed to give him credit for the patriotism of his intentions or for the merit of his achievements, and their unscrupulous and unfair tactics established a baleful tradition in American party warfare. But Jefferson was wholly right in believing that his country was nothing, if not a democracy, and that any tendency to impair the integrity of the democratic idea could be productive only of disaster.

      Unfortunately Jefferson's conception of democracy was meager, narrow, and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more serious than the consequences of Hamilton's inadequate conception of American nationality. In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. He conceived a democratic society to be composed of a collection of individuals, fundamentally alike in their abilities and deserts; and in organizing such a society, politically, the prime object was to provide for the greatest satisfaction of its individual members. The good things of life which had formerly been monopolized by the privileged few, were now to be distributed among all the people. It was unnecessary, moreover, to make any very artful arrangements, in order to effect СКАЧАТЬ