Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

ply that an increasing public debt is a means to prosperity and that it adds strength to the government. In olden times there was supposed to be a causal relation between the conjunction of planets and a national calamity. Sometimes national prosperity is attributed to national character; not taking into account abundant minerals and coal, a fertile soil and a favorable climate, national harbors and means of commerce.

Children associate fortune with a four-leafed clover. And all mercantilists of which Hamilton was a confirmed disciple believe that a national debt is a source of prosperity; that taxing ourselves makes us rich. So the protective tariff, also inaugurated by Hamilton, has clung to the United States in spite of all efforts to throw it off. Whenever the people have voted it out they repent the act and invite it back. When more men are wiser and when those who are wiser are more candid the attempt to confuse public thought on the questions of balance of trade, public debt, government banks, paper money, tariffs, subsidies, bounties and special privilege as efficient means of prosperity will decrease. There will then be an advance beyond the pale of the seventeenth century in economics. If the foregoing plans are constructive, then Hamilton is entitled to the immortal reverence of the American people.

But is not a spirit of justice pervading all systems and all polities the only constructive force? Can a great nation be constructed except by building up its people as a whole? At least more than half of the people of both England and the United States believe that justice and equality applied to these subjects are

the only curatives. They are not sufficiently organized or cohesive, however, to push forward with much speed against casual undertows and countervailing currents.

While Hamilton and Jefferson were not political friends no man has spoken more favorably of the former than the founder of the democratic party. In the much abused "Anas" Jefferson wrote in 1818: "Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British example as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation." And to Benjamin Rush he wrote: "Hamilton believed in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men."

Hamilton and Burr had maligned each other for years. This hatred culminated in a duel. Hamilton fell. Gouverneur Morris pronounced his funeral oration, gliding with trepidation over the dark places in the great man's career. His body was buried in Trinity churchyard at the foot of Wall street, where imagination may picture his spirit hovering over the temple of English monarchy and peering down one of the greatest money centers of the world.

IMPLIED POWERS AND IMPERIALISM.

No "progressive development" of the constitution can ever obliterate its original character and meaning upon many of its important features. This is true because its authors employed language as a whole which is remarkably clear; and the proceedings of state conventions and the writings of contemporary statesmen furnish additional data for construction and exposition. Thus the federal principle of the United States government is one of the most conspicuous things in the constitution. The constitution was adopted by states, it was to be binding between states when nine had ratified it, and it was to be amended by states. The senators, first called ambassadors, were to represent states. The president was to be elected by electors from states. The federal courts were to decide controversies between citizens of different states, and controversies where conflicting claims of different states were involved. Though development may wipe out the practical effects of these principles of the constitution, history cannot be obscured. So long as writings exist the original nature of the government will be clear to any man who can read.

Nor can any ingenuity argue away the fact that the United States government was created as a government of special and limited powers. For the ninth amendment to the constitution reads: "The enumeration in

the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This is a most pregnant provision. For it is equivalent to saying that the failure to deny a power in the general government shall not be construed to grant it. It means that the constitution is not a limitation upon power. Directly bearing upon the limited character of this government is the Tenth amendment which reads "the powers not delegated to the United States nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people." Human speech is not capable of more precise meanings than these clauses convey. How did they come to be inserted in the constitution?

A confederation of states comprising a population of some 3,000,000 people had repelled an army of subjugation, and had returned to the walks of civil life. This birth of freedom brought its reaction. The aristocracy never wanted war with England. After it was over the cynical and selfish elements of the people hastened the dying down of the patriotic fires. The war had interrupted business and now to return to practical questions since the country was cut loose from the parent government, treaties must be made, commerce must resume its offices, and the United States must take their place as an entity in the world. If that day could be reconstructed in imagination the people as a whole would be seen going their way in the usual routine of life as happy and contented as they have done since under the constitution. People and not charters are the realities of life. Little credit can be given by the philosophic historian to the claim

that the people were drifting toward anarchy because the articles of confederation contained defects-defects which did not break down the people during a period of war and revolution. But conceding that changes in the organic law were needful and important the convention-call expressed the purpose of "revising the articles of confederation." The commercial interests demanded the revision. In order that the States could act with unity in foreign relations it was necessary that the general government should have more direct powers; for in such things energy and celerity are prerequisites of safety.

The constitution created a form of government never known before. There had been successful confederacies before the American confederacy, and the latter was certainly successful. These confederacies fell through the decay of the particular sentiment which gave them birth. The American confederacy was unified, it was given the spirit by the impulse of liberty which had been enkindled by oppression. Once the revolution was over the spirit of liberty subsided to some extent from a national channel, through the removal of the cause that drew it there and returned to more local and more individual and therefore more practical channels. It is probably beyond the capacity of the human intellect to determine determine whether if no change had been made in the form of the government the legitimate development of the people would have been different from what it turned out to be. If the people could once unite in a confederacy and save themselves they could do so again so long as they kept the spirit of independence; and when that is gone

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »