Herbert Croly

“ Jefferson's policy was at bottom the old fatal policy of drift, whose distorted body was concealed by fair-seeming clothes, and whose ugly face was covered by a mask of good intentions. Hamilton's policy was one of energetic and intelligent assertion of the national good. He knew that the only method whereby the good could prevail either in individual or social life was by persistently willing that it should prevail and by the adoption of intelligent means to that end. ”

“ The time may come when the fulfillment of a justifiable democratic purpose may demand the limitation of certain rights, to which the Constitution affords such absolute guarantees; and in that case the American democracy might be forced to seek by revolutionary means the accomplishment of a result which should be attainable under the law.
It was, none the less, a great good thing that the Union under the new Constitution triumphed. Americans have more reason to be proud of its triumph than of any other event in their national history. ”

“ But if for liberty we substitute the word democracy, which means something more than liberty, and if for union, we substitute the phrase American nationality, which means so much more than a legal union, we shall be looking in the direction of a fruitful alliance between two supplementary principles. It can, I believe, be stated without qualification that wherever the nationalist idea and tendency has been divided from democracy, its achievements have been limited and partially sterilized. ”

“ The Federalists themselves must be conciliated, and the national organization achieved by them is by implication accepted. The Federalist structure, so recently the prison of the free American spirit, becomes itself a large part of the temple of democracy. The Union is no longer inimical to liberty. For the first time we begin to hear from good Republican mouths, some sacred words about the necessary connection of liberty and union. Jefferson celebrated his triumph by adopting the work, if not the creed, of his adversaries. ”

“ Founded as the national government is, partly on a distrust of the American democracy, it has always tended to make the democracy somewhat suspicious of the national government. This mutual suspicion, while it has been limited in scope and diminished by the action of time, constitutes a manifest impediment to the efficient action of the American political system. The great lesson of American political experience, as we shall see, is rather that of interdependence than of incompatibility between an efficient national organization and a group of radical democratic institutions and ideals ”

“ Americans deliberately selected the better part. It is true that the evil effects of a loose union were only too apparent, and that public safety, order, and private property were obviously endangered by the feeble machinery of Federal government. Nevertheless, conditions had not become intolerable. The terrible cost of disunion in money, blood, humiliation, and hatred had not actually been paid. It might well have seemed cheaper to most Americans to drift on a little longer than to make the sacrifices and to undertake the labor demanded by the formation of an effective union. ”

“ Neither is there any doubt as to which of these ideas Jefferson and his followers really attached the more importance. Their mouths have always been full of the praise of liberty; and unquestionably they have really believed it to be the corner-stone of their political and social structure. None the less, however, is it true that in so far as any antagonism has developed in American life between liberty and equality, the Jeffersonian Democrats have been found on the side of equality. ”

“ Hamilton was not afraid to exhibit in his own life moral and intellectual independence. He was not afraid to incur unpopularity for pursuing what he believed to be a wise public policy, and the general disapprobation under which he suffered during the last years of his life, while it was chiefly due, as we have seen, to his distrust of the American democracy, was also partly due to his high conception of the duties of leadership. Jefferson, on the other hand, afforded an equally impressive example of the statesman who assiduously and intentionally courted popular favor. ”

“ In taking the utmost advantage of those opportunities, he was not only fulfilling his duty to himself, but he was helping to realize the substantial purpose of democracy. Just as it was the function of the national organization to keep itself undefiled and not to interfere, so it was his personal function to make hay while the sun was shining. The triumph of Jefferson and the defeat of Hamilton enabled the natural individualism of the American people free play. The democratic political system was considered tantamount in practice to a species of vigorous, licensed, and purified selfishness. ”

“ Whatever the people demanded, their leaders should perform, including, if necessary, a declaration of war against England. It was to be a government of and by the people, not a government for the people by popular but responsible leaders; and the leaders to whom the people delegated their authority had in theory no right to pursue an unpopular policy. The people were to guide their leaders, not their leaders the people; and any intellectual or moral independence and initiative on the part of the leaders in a democracy was to be condemned as undemocratic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The interest which lay behind Federalism was that of well-to-do citizens in a stable political and social order, and this interest aroused them to favor and to seek some form of political organization which was capable of protecting their property and promoting its interest. They were the friends of liberty because they were in a position to benefit largely by the possession of liberty; and they wanted a strong central government because only by such means could their liberties, which consisted fundamentally in the ability to enjoy and increase their property, be guaranteed. ”

“ The political leaders of the "era of good feeling" who began to use with some degree of conviction certain comely phrases about the eternal and inseparable alliance between "liberty and union" were looking towards the promised land of American democratic fulfillment. As we shall see, the kind of liberty and the kind of union which they had in mind were by no means indissolubly and inseparably united; and both of these words had to be transformed from a negative and legal into a positive moral and social meaning before the boasted alliance could be anything but precarious and sterile. ”

“ Once these conditions were secured, the motto of a democratic government should simply be "Hands Off." There should be as little government as possible, because persistent governmental interference implied distrust in popular efficiency and good-will; and what government there was, should be so far as possible confided to local authorities. The vitality of a democracy resided in its extremities, and it would be diminished rather than increased by specialized or centralized guidance. ”

“ Its success has been due to the fact that its makers, with all their apprehensions about democracy, were possessed of a wise and positive political faith. They believed in liberty. They believed that the essential condition of fruitful liberty was an efficient central government. They knew that no government could be efficient unless its powers equaled its responsibilities. They were willing to trust to such a government the security and the welfare of the American people. The Constitution has proved capable of development chiefly as the instrument of these positive political ideas. ”

“ Without their help there might not have been any American nation at all, or it might have been born under a far darker cloud of political suspicion and animosity. The instrument which they created, with all its faults, proved capable of becoming both the organ of an efficient national government and the fundamental law of a potentially democratic state. ”

“ Did Abolitionism create a condition of political unrest, and interfere with good business, then Abolitionists were wicked men, who were tampering with the ark of the Constitution; and in much the same way the modern reformer, who proposes policies looking toward a restriction in the activity of corporations and stands in the way of the immediate transaction of the largest possible volume of business, is denounced as un-American. ”

“ The American people, after passing through a period of positive achievement, distinguished in all history for the powerful application of brains to the solution of an organic political problem—the American people, after this almost unprecedented exhibition of good-will and good judgment, proceeded to put a wholly false interpretation on their remarkable triumph. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights. ”

“ When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was almost completely woven. Thereafter the American people had only to wear it and keep it in repair. The policy announced in Jefferson's first Inaugural was in all important respects merely a policy of conservatism. The American people were possessed of a set of political institutions, which deprived them of any legitimate grievances and supplied them with every reasonable opportunity ”

“ The values placed upon many political ideas, tendencies, and achievements differ radically from the values placed upon them either by their originators and partisans or in some cases by the majority of American historians. The review, consequently, will meet with a far larger portion of instinctive opposition and distrust than it will of acquiescence. The whole traditional set of values which it criticises is almost as much alive to-day as it was two generations ago, and it forms a background to the political faith of the great majority of Americans. ”

“ In respect to certain fundamental provisions, which necessarily receive the most rigid interpretation on the part of the courts, it is practically unmodifiable. A very small percentage of the American people can in this respect permanently thwart the will of an enormous majority, and there can be no justification for such a condition on any possible theory of popular Sovereignty. This defect has not hitherto had very many practical inconveniences, but it is an absolute violation of the theory and the spirit of American democratic institutions. ”

“ Thanks to the theory of implied powers, to the liberal construction of the Supreme Court during the first forty years of its existence, and to the results of the Civil War the Federal government has, on the whole, become more rather than less efficient as the national political organ of the American people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The extent of this antagonism to democracy, if not in intention at least in effect, is frequently over-rated. The antagonism depends upon the identification of democracy with a political organization for expressing immediately and completely the will of the majority—whatever that will may be; and such a conception of democracy contains only part of the truth. Nevertheless the founders of the Constitution did succeed in giving some effect to their distrust of the democratic principle, no matter how conservatively defined ”

“ THE FEDERALISTS AND THE REPUBLICANS The purpose of the following review of American political ideas and practices is, it must be premised, critical rather than narrative or expository. I am not seeking to justify a political and economic theory by an appeal to historical facts. I am seeking, on the contrary, to place some kind of an estimate and interpretation upon American political ideas and achievements; and this estimate and interpretation is determined chiefly by a preconceived ideal. ”

“ Even the provinces which composed the United Netherlands never submitted to an effective political union during the active and vital period of their history. The small American states had apparently quite as many reasons for separation as the small Grecian and Italian states. The military necessities of the Revolution had welded them only into a loose and feeble confederation, and a successful revolution does not constitute a very good precedent for political subordination. ”