fluence; because the people in the vicinity of a great man are more immediately his dependents, and because this influence has fewer objects to act upon. It has been remarked, that it would be disagreeable to the middle class of men to go to the seat of the new government. If this be so, the difficulty will be enhanced by the gentleman's proposal. If his argument be true, it proves that the larger the representation is, the less will be your chance of having it filled. But it appears to me frivolous to bring forward such arguments as these. It has answered no other purpose than to induce me, by way of reply, to enter into discussions which I consider as useless, and not applicable to our subject.

It is a harsh doctrine, that men grow wicked in proportion as they improve and enlighten their minds. Experience has by no means justified us in the supposition that there is more virtue in one class of men than in another. Look through the rich and the poor of the community; the learned and the ignorant. Where does virtue predominate? The difference indeed consists not in the quantity, but kind of vices, which are incident to various classes; and here the advantage of character belongs to the wealthy. Their vices are probably more favorable to the prosperity of the State than those of the indigent, and partake less of moral depravity.

After all, sir, we must submit to this idea, that the true principle of a republic is, that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. This great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed. Where this principle is adhered to; where, in the organization of the government, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are rendered distinct; where again the legislative is divided into separate houses, and the operations of each are controlled by various checks and balances, and above all by the vigilance and weight of the State governments; to talk of tyranny, and the sub

version of our liberties, is to speak the language of enthusiasm. This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights, they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits, by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them. I am persuaded, that a firm union is as necessary to perpetuate our liberties, as it is to make us respectable; and experience will probably prove, that the national government will be as natural a guardian of our freedom as the State legislatures themselves.

Suggestions, sir, of an extraordinary nature have been frequently thrown out in the course of the present political controversy. It gives me pain to dwell on topics of this kind, and I wish they might be dismissed. We have been told that the old Confederation has proved inefficacious, only because intriguing and powerful men, aiming at a revolution, have been forever instigating the people and rendering them disaffected with it. This, sir, is a false insinuation. The thing is impossible. I will venture to assert, that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular, which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.

The Confederation was framed amidst the agitation and tumult of society. It was composed of unsound materials put together in haste. Men of intelligence discovered the feebleness of the structure, in the first stages of its existence; but the great body of the people, too much engrossed with their distresses to contemplate any but the immediate causes of them, were ignorant of the defects of their constitution. But when the dangers of war were removed, they saw clearly what they had suffered, and what they had yet to suffer, from a feeble form of government. There was no need of discerning men to convince the peo

ple of their unhappy situation; the complaint was co-extensive with the evil, and both were common to all classes of the community. We have been told that the spirit of patriotism and love of liberty are almost extinguished among the people, and that it has become a prevailing doctrine that republican principles ought to be hooted out of the world. Sir, I am confident that such remarks as these are rather occasioned by the heat of argument than by a cool conviction of their truth and justice. As far as my experience has extended, I have heard no such doctrine, nor have I discovered any diminution of regard for those rights and liberties, in defense of which the people have fought and suffered. There have been, undoubtedly, some men who have had speculative doubts on the subject of government; but the principles of republicanism are founded on too firm a basis to be shaken by a few speculative and skeptical reasoners. Our error has been of a very different kind. We have erred through excess of caution, and a zeal false and impracticable. Our counsels have been destitute of consistency and stability. I am flattered with a hope, sir, that we have now found a cure for the evils under which we have so long labored. I trust that the proposed Constitution affords a genuine specimen of representative and republican government, and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.

III

National Government Established

WHEN our forefathers framed and ratified the Federal Constitution they merely forged the mechanism of a government. The setting it up, the adjustment of part to part, and establishing the orderly working of the whole in just relation to the State governments, was the task of the next period following.

The Constitution as adopted might lend itself to a mere confederation of almost sovereign States, or it might in operation develop a truly national government, leaving only subordinate spheres to the States. In tone it might prove either aristocratic or democratic: dominated by the well-born, educated and wealthy few, or by the hard-working, ill-educated, undistinguished many. If the Federalist policy embodied in the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798 had prevailed, it might have proved a government subversive of the rights of free speech, and public meeting; while the success of the Whisky Rebellion of 1794 would have meant the triumph of a personal liberty which spelled anarchy.

That the government was guided into that middle way in which national efficiency was achieved while States' rights were not unduly sacrificed, was largely the result of the opposing influences exerted by Hamilton and Jefferson -the one the champion of a strong, efficient, aristocratic government; the other the ardent advocate of democratic equality. In part also, this result was due to the logical,

statesmanlike, organizing genius of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, whose decisions from 1801 to 1835 gave a strongly national bent to constitutional interpretation and legislation.

Much also was due to social and political changes which developed a sentiment of nationality among the people, and prepared them for the acceptance of the more national cast which was being given to the Federal government. Among these changes must be noted: (1) the westward advance of settlement and the formation of new States under the sanction of the National government; (2) the influx of foreign immigrants, who were without sentimental attachments to the separate States; and (3) improvements in the means of communication, through the construction of turnpikes and the National Road, through canal building and the later growth of railways, and through the invention of the steamboat, which made rivers and lakes usable as never before for purposes of travel and traffic. The influence of (4) the foreign relations of the United States on the development of a national sentiment was also important; for out of the War of 1812 came the ending of the intellectual and political dependence of the United States on Europe, which for a score of years had made our politics an echo of the strife between France and England.

It is not possible, even if space permitted, to illustrate all these developments in oratorical selections. The great discussions which fixed the interpretation of the Constitution on the basis of a broad construction of the powers granted, are to be found mainly in Supreme Court decisions and other state papers. A full setting forth of the relations of the Federal government to the State governments would require the inclusion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which are not properly oratorical. So, too, with other aspects. It will be found, however, that