large family; but he continued, until he was shot by Burr on July 11, 1804, to take an active interest in public affairs. Hamilton was a contemporary with Frederick the Great, the Pitts, Fox, Burke, Adam Smith, Washington, Turgot, and Napoleon. He was born during the Seven Years War, which in Europe raised Prussia to a place of first rank among the powers and which in India and America established the British Empire on the ruins of French ambition. He died two months after the victor of Marengo was crowned hereditary emperor of the French. He saw the French Revolution begin in bloodshed and terror; he saw it end in despotism. Above all, he saw and helped achieve, first, American independence, and then American unity. Many views have been expressed about Hamilton and his work. Some writers have seen in him a paragon of wisdom and virtue; they are blind to his faults and to the merits of his opponents. Others have condemned him as a Tory and reactionary in politics and as a defender of the fallacies of mercantilism in economics. Still others have seen in him a champion of the capitalistic class with no thought or sympathy for the proletarian masses. These writers have made illuminating studies of Hamilton and his work, but they seem to fail to grasp the significance of the idea of nationality which dominated every phase of his political and economic thinking. The object of this essay is to avoid writing either biography or history. Valuable works already exist on the life of Hamilton and on the history of his times. This essay is addressed to those who are interested in knowing the relation of Hamilton to one of the great historic movements of thought of the nineteenth century. Its object is to state, first, the general principles of nationalism and their relation to other theories of society and, secondly, to show from Hamilton's writings how, in each problem of practical statesmanship which confronted him, these were the principles which influenced and determined his action. The purpose of this essay is not to determine whether the ideas of Hamilton were right or wrong; it is to state, sympathetically, his theory of society and to formulate a philosophic basis for his public acts and writings. CHAPTER SECOND NATIONALISM There are according to Emery three economic theories of society: "the classical theory of competing individuals; the socialistic theory of competing classes; and the protectionist theory of competing nations." The classical theory is the individualism of Adam Smith. This astute Scotchman believed that if every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of every other man, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty will establish itself of its own accord. He regarded the interest of the individual and society as identical since, as he put it, the individual by the study of his own advantages naturally, or rather necessarily, is led to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society. It was the height of presumption, he thought, to endeavor to regulate the employment of labor and capital, for from the nature of the case, any such regulation was sure a Emery, H. C., The New Protectionism. Yale Alumni Weekly, vol. 13, p. 51. b Smith, A., Wealth of Nations (1776) (Cannan edition), Book 4, ch. 9, vol. 2, p. 184. to divert labor and capital from the more to the less productive enterprises. As a protest against certain excesses of regulation and against economic fallacies which existed in the public mind in 1776, Adam Smith's doctrine of individual freedom was valuable; but before the nineteenth century was half gone the weaknesses of free competition had begun to show themselves. Against this individualistic theory of society must be set, as shown above in the quotation from Emery, the two opposing theories which came as reactions to it. The first reaction is found in the socialism of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. To these men the interest of society requires that the interest of the individual be made subservient to the interest of his particular class. Marx regarded all history as the history of class-struggle; the lower or exploited class succeeding from time to time in overthrowing the ruling class and establishing in the place of the old civilization a civilization after its own image. Lassalle held that the influence of a class in a community depends upon the relative amount of power that it possesses and that, as it increases in power, the real constitution of the country reflects its rule These men believed that the individual, and in their day the a Marx, K., Communist Manifesto (1848). b Lassalle, F., Ueber Verfassungswesen (1862). |