Individuals, also, there may be now, and not a few too, who, when suffering some pique from the democracy, or alarmed at the mad policy of our radicals, fancy themselves to be in favor of monarchy; but there is not and never has been any monarchical party in the country, and never have our politics turned in any sense whatever on the questions between monarchy and republicanism.

Mr. Jefferson and his party, however, saw proper to accuse the old Federalists of being anti-republican, and of aiming at the establishment of monarchy. They succeeded but too well in making a large portion of the American people believe it, and the prejudices they created still linger in the minds of not a few of our citizens. He who should pronounce himself in favor of the old Federalists would stand a very good chance of being termed by the infallible American press a monarchist, and, as such, of being held up to public indignation. Yet the accusation was false, and known by Mr. Jefferson, as well as others, to be false. He himself confesses it, and says in his first inaugural address: "We have called brethren of the same faith by different names. We are all federalists; we are all republicans." Wherefore, then, had he charged his opponents with being monarchists? It was party injustice, and has to be put down to the unscrupulousness of party spirit, from which Mr. Jefferson, we are sorry to say, was not himself entirely free. Both parties, then, agreed as to their general principles of government. Both were republican, both held, after the fashion of the times, the origin of government in compact, in a real or imaginary popular convention, and both asserted the sovereignty of the people. Both, also, agreed, that the Union, instead of a mere confederation, of the states must be preserved. Wherein, then, did they differ?

This question requires a twofold answer; first, in relation to the general government, and second, in relation to the state governments, or government in general. In relation to the general government, the Federalists wished to consolidate its powers, and to give it as much the character of a supreme central government as could be done without transcending its constitutional limits. Their tendency was to develop and confirm the powers of the Union, rather than the reserved rights of the states. Their policy was to render the government strong and efficient at home, and respectable abroad; to protect commerce and navigation, to found a navy and to maintain an army to prevent national

insults, and to protect our maritime and national rights. These were, in brief, the principles and policy of the Federalists. The Republicans were more intent on the reserved rights of the states than on the powers granted to the Union, were opposed to making the federal government a strong government, and in favor of restricting its sphere, and diminishing the patronage of the executive, as far as possible under the constitution. They clamored for "retrenchment and economy," opposed the accumulation of a national debt, the general fundholding system, the creation of a navy, the maintenance of an army, and the protection of commerce and navigation, otherwise than by diplomacy and bargain. They were in favor of leaving our commerce to foreigners, to be carried on in foreign vessels, and of pocketing national insults, instead of going to the expense of guarding against them or of redressing them. Mr. Jefferson had no very lively sensibility to national honor, and lived in mortal dread of war and national expenditures. If he had been a son of the cold, calculating North, instead of the warm, chivalric South, of Massachusetts instead of Virginia, it is probable we should never have heard the last of his tameness, his meanness of spirit, and his fear of expense; and certain it is, that we owe to him and his party much of that low national character which we still bear abroad,-that common belief among foreigners that an American will do any thing and put up with any thing for money. Another war with Great Britain, perhaps, is needed to enable us to retrieve our character, and prove that there is something that Yankees prize more than money.

The natural tendency of the Republican party, pushed to its extreme, would have too much restricted the powers of the general government, made the Union a mere rope of sand, and thrown the country back into that chaotic state from which the constitution had rescued it. Its policy would, if carried out, have rendered the government inefficient at home and contemptible abroad, exposed our trade, our maritime and national rights, to perpetual insult and injury, and prevented us from ever becoming a great commercial and manufacturing people. It was, therefore, a policy which, with such a bold and enterprising people, and in a country of such rich and varied natural resources as ours, could by no human possibility be practicable, except for a very brief period. The tendency of the Federalists, if

pushed to its extreme, might have swallowed up the states in the Union, and deprived us of the advantages of that federative element so essential in our system of government. But the general policy of the party was unobjectionable, and has, with the exception of one or two particulars, been adopted to the letter by the Republican party, and become the settled policy of the country. There was, however, never much danger of the centralizing tendency of the Federalists being pushed to an extreme, and we have been unable to find an instance in which the party while in power transcended its constitutional limits or usurped for the Union any of the reserved rights of the states. The Republican party, after all, was, when in power, more of a state-rights party in profession than in practice. The Federalists may have had the stronger tendency to centralization through the legislative and judicial departments of the government; but the Republicans had much the stronger tendency to it through the executive department; which shows that the Republicans were far more likely to develop into monarchists than were the Federalists whom they charged with being in favor of monarchy. No Federalist ever grasped more power for the Union than did Mr. Jefferson in his purchase of Louisiana, and his Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts. No Federalist document was ever issued containing stronger centralizing doctrines than those set forth in General Jackson's famous proclamation against the southern nullifiers, while, on the other hand, the Federalists in the Hartford convention pushed the state-rights doctrines to the very verge of nullification. In fact, either party, when in power, tended to magnify the powers of the Union, and widen the sphere of the general government as much as possible, while either, in opposition, fell back more or less on the reserved rights of the states.

In regard to those principles of government which find their application with us only within the sphere of the state governments, there were also important differences, as well as resemblances. Both, as we have said, were republican, both asserted the sovereignty of the people, and the origin of government in convention; but the Federalists inclined to a republic of the respectabilities, and the Republicans to a democracy. The difference between the two parties was analogous to that between the Girondins and the Mountain or Jacobins in France. Both agreed in rejecting monarchy and decapitating the king; but the Girondins were for re

taining the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie,-the merchants, manufacturers, tradesmen, and property-holders, who would supply the place of the old nobility; but the Jacobins insisted on placing the power of the state in the hands of the sans culottes or the populace, where it would be more generally at the service of the demagogues. The Republicans professed great confidence in popular instincts and judgments, and were in favor of leaving them free to manage the government as they should see proper, without any but self-imposed restrictions on their will, passions, or caprices; the Federalists held that the people might sometimes deceive themselves, and still oftener be deceived by the arts, intrigues, and declamations of demagogues, and therefore that some restrictions should be placed on their power, and some care should be taken to confine its exercise to those who could give a pledge to the public that they would not abuse it. The Republicans were intent on providing for the free and full expression of the popular will in the government; the Federalists thought more of providing against the abuses of power, and obtaining a reasonable security that the popular will in governing would govern justly. The Federalists loved liberty, and were as ready to make any sacrifice for it as were their opponents; but they and the Republicans did not mean the same thing by liberty. The Republican understood by liberty the liberty of the people, unrestrained by kings or nobles, to govern; the Federalist, as distinguished from him, understood by liberty the freedom of the subject, or his free possession and enjoyment of his natural and vested rights as inviolable in the face of political power. The Republican dreaded the tyranny of the few over the people as the ruling power; the Federalist, the tyranny of the many, and of power in whose hands soever lodged; the former sought the freedom of the people as government to rule, the latter the freedom of the individual to possess. The Republican would remove all restrictions on the power of the people as sovereign, and establish absolute, unlimited government; the Federalist would limit their power as sovereign or as the state, and by wise and wholesome laws secure their freedom as individuals; the former would have a free state, the latter free The Republican, perhaps without knowing it, sought to establish social despotism, the Federalist personal freedom, for the state is as despotic when the power is lodged in the hands of the whole people, with full freedom to gov

men.

ern according to their arbitrary will, as when lodged in the hands of a single ruler, under an absolute monarchy. Properly speaking, then, the Federalists were the party of liberty, and the Republicans the party of despotism. The Federalist placed the sovereignty in the people regulated and restrained by law; the Republican placed it in the people without law; and therefore made the government a government of mere human will, which is the very essence of despotism.

Undoubtedly, the pretence, and, we willingly concede, the belief, of the Republican party was the reverse of all this. They no doubt imagined that, if the political power was vested in the whole people, and if all obstacles to the free and full expression of their will in the government were removed, not only the freedom of the people as the state, but the freedom of the people as individuals, that is, the freedom of the people distributively as well as collectively, would be secured. But they forgot that power, in whose hands soever lodged, is always liable to be abused; that there is always a large class of individuals, called courtiers in a monarchy, demagogues in a democratic republic, who make it their business to flatter and deceive the sovereign power, and induce it to abuse its trusts; and that every government of absolute will, whether the will of the many, the few, or the one, is essentially a despotism, and wholly incompatible with the individual liberty or the personal freedom of the subject. The objections to the modern democratic theory are twofold. One objection is, that it leads to anarchy, because it derives the right to govern from a human source, and denies the divine origin of all legal power. Before the law of nature, and even before the eternal law, all men are equal; and if all are equal, no one has any right to govern another, and consequently every government of man over man, or of men over men, must be founded in usurpation, and every one has an indefeasible right to resist. it whenever he pleases, which is anarchy. But this is not the greatest objection to the theory. The greatest objection is of a contrary character, namely, that pure, unlimited democracy is social despotism, and enslaves the people distributively to the people collectively. Under a pure democracy the individual has a certain nominal freedom as a part of the governing body, but not a particle as a part of the body governed. The will of the community, of the majority, is unlimited, and governs as absolutely as the