tial, persisting, and unmalleable, mightier than the mightiest despots, and against which the best-devised theories are sure to break. You cannot alter this essential genius of a people without destroying it. We were essentially an English people, living essentially an English life. We had grown up under and with the English social system. Whether the Federalists understood this in theory better than Mr. Jefferson and his friends, may be a question, but they certainly understood it better in practice. They adhered more closely to the English model, and wished, in their interpretation of our institutions and the administration of the government, to depart as little from the English type as possible. They were therefore, in our judgment, the truer statesmen. They sought not to change the social system or the genius of the American people, but to conform to it, and to make the best of it. They indulged no dreams of ideal perfection, imagined no Utopia, and were content to draw from fact and experience. They were as strongly republican or anti-monarchical as their opponents, even more so; but they were less democratic, they were more English and less French, more American and less foreign, more practical and less speculative, more disposed to be satisfied with the existing order, and less disposed to try new experiments.

The American genius is republican as opposed to monarchy, but it is not democratic. Democracy as an exclu-· sive element is in American society an exotic, imported originally frem the philosophers and speculators of continental Europe. The American people did not throw off their allegiance to the British crown because they wanted to establish a democracy, or because they wanted to get rid of monarchy, but they did it because they wanted national independence. With all the talk to-day about democracy, the American people at bottom remain as they were under Washington and Adams. Democracy is a speculation with them, not a life. At bottom, in their interior political life, they are, as we have so often contended, constitutionalists, and cling to Magna Charta. A struggle is no doubt going on in our country between the constitutional order, inherited from our British ancestors, and the democratic order, imported by the Anti-federalists from France, and reinforced by the foreign radicals naturalized or resident amongst us, and on the result of this struggle depends the life of the American people. If the efforts

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made to conform our life to the foreign democratic theory succeed, the United States of Washington and Adams, the "Model Republic," is no more, whatever may take its place, whether anarchy or despotism.

Whether the democratic order be the best of all possible orders or not, this much is certain, it is not the American system, and whoever labors to introduce it, or to secure its triumph, labors to destroy the very life of the American people. As yet, democracy is with us only a theory, a false interpretation of our system. We are more American in our practice than in our doctrines, and act far better than we speculate. But how long this will continue to be the case it is not easy to say. The manifest discrepancy be tween our speculative theory and our interior habits, instincts, and inherited constitutionalism, is certainly fraught with danger, and if we do not before a great while conform our theory to our political and social system, we may be sure that, with the influence of unprincipled demagogues, aided by the mass of foreign radicals pouring into our larger towns and cities, and who, as we have elsewhere shown, confound republicanism with democracy, we shall conform our practice to our theory, and not so much change as utterly destroy American life.

Names have great influence. "It is very unfortunate," said one evening to us, in a long conversation on this subject, the great southern statesman, Mr. Calhoun, "that the Republican party calls itself democratic." That party does and will rule the country, for, as a party, it is the most truly national party now in existence. The Federal party has long since ceased to exist; the Whig party numbers a great many excellent individuals in its ranks, who have correct views of government, but they do not determine the policy or the action of their party. As a party, it has no principles, no definite policy, and seeks success by courting almost any and every temporary or local excitement, which is undoubtedly a proof that it is weak, and feels itself weak. In former times it did good service to the country as a check on the excesses of the dominant party; but since 1838, when the Boston Atlas denounced the "Aristocratic Whigs," claimed the name of Democrat for the Whig party, and recommended its party to descend into the forum and to take the people by the hand, it has attempted to outbid the Democratic party, and has served only to push the country into a wilder and more excessive democracy.

It may have some local and temporary successes, but, as we have said, when it attains to place, it possesses in too feeble a degree the confidence of the people to be able to govern. As a general rule, the government of the country will remain in the hands of the Democratic party. We do not complain of this, for it is not that party we are opposing in what we call democracy, as so many fools imagine, and so many knaves pretend. That party, though from the first inclining too much to the democracy of the European school, is not, properly speaking, democratic, and ought not to call itself by that name. The fact that it has so called itself does harm, for we cannot bring out and insist on American constitutionalism, in opposition to exclusive democracy, without seeming to many to be making war on that party itself, and not without being represented as doing t by a much larger number. If we warn the country against the dangers of democracy, a hue and cry is raised against us, as if we wished to displace the party in power, and put in some other party. Such, however, is by no means our wish. What we want is, not to turn out the Democratic party, or to throw any obstacle in the way of its success, for, faulty as it is, we prefer it as a national party to any other organized party in the country; but we do wish to impress upon that party itself certain wholesome lessons, lessons which it would readily accept if it had adhered to its old name of Republican, and had not suffered itself to consecrate by its new name certain unAmerican speculations. The safety of the country requires it to develop and render more prominent its conservative elements, and to restrain within more moderate limits its ultra-democratic or radical tendencies.

Unquestionably in a country like ours popular sentiment will in the long run have its way, but men who really love their country will take as much pains to form a wise and just popular sentiment as they will to ascertain and follow the popular sentiment for the time. The will of the people constitutionally expressed is law for us in all civil matters, but it does not follow from that that the will of the people is always just, or that popular sentiment is infallible. The statesman, if worthy of the name, has something more to do than to ascertain the wishes of his constituents and to conform to them. He is bound, indeed, to consult those wishes, but he is bound also to go back of them, and to ascertain whether they are wise and just; for there is for

every statesman a higher law than the popular will, that of right, of justice, of the public good. A truly national party should aim to form as well as to follow public opinion, and it should be prompt to call back public opinion to the constitution, to the genius and essential nature of our political and social system, whenever it departs from them either on the right hand or the left.

We think, as we have often said, that public opinion misinterprets the American political and social system, and makes it far more democratic than it really is, and that the prevailing public opinion on the subject cannot be safely followed. It is that public opinion we wish to see corrected. To correct it is, no doubt, a difficult task, but not in our judg ment impracticable, for we believe the great body of the American people are yet sound at the heart. We do not believe the old Federalists were free from errors, but we do believe that they had in their political creed the corrective of the errors of the present Democratic party. Hence we believe that the publication and study of the writings they have left behind them will have a salutary effect on the public mind. A few by the study of these writings will no doubt adopt old Federalism as a whole, and utterly condemn their opponents, which in our judgment would be both unjust and foolish. Times have changed, and Federalism has passed away. But the larger class of readers, while they will not make themselves Federalists, will yet learn that the question involved has two sides, and that all the truth, the wisdom, or the patriotism was not on the side of Jefferson and his party, and they will take broader and juster views of our institutions themselves, and modify their previous doctrine by the addition or infusion of the political truths held by the old Federalists, which have been rejected or not sufficiently appreciated by their Republican opponents. The merit of the Federalists was in their just appreciation of the un-American character of the Jacobinism favored by Mr. Jefferson and his party. They may have leaned too much to the English system, and failed to make sufficient account of the modifications which that system might and ought to undergo in being transplanted to this New World. They perhaps were unwilling to allow the democratic element of that system so prominent a place as it had already attained in the Anglo-American colonies, and it is probable that this is the reason why they failed to maintain themselves in power. In the American modification and devel

opment of the English system, the democratic element has and will have a prominent place. Under any just interpretation of our system the democratic element must be recognized, and the labor of the statesman must not be to exclude or suppress it, but to prevent it, as it is constantly striving to become, from becoming exclusive. Restricted to this, the old Federalists were right, and meritorious. Understood simply as maintaining that our system is not a pure democracy, that it is, on the contrary, a mixed system, in which none of the simple elements of government are excluded, or permitted to be exclusive, their writings are just the sort of thing now to be studied, and the study of them. will go far to check the tendency to render the democratic element exclusive, and to bring back the thought of the country to the genius of its institutions. To this end will contribute the publication of the papers of Hamilton, the life and correspondence of Gouverneur Morris, and the life and works of the elder Adams, edited by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams. These works bring up the other phase of American politics, and compel us to reëxamine our system from the other point of view.

Among the recent publications of this class, there is none from which we augur more practical utility than the volumes before us, which are not a simple republication of the volume published in 1809, with an exquisitely written life. of Fisher Ames by the late Dr. Kirkland. The edition contains one volume of entirely new matter, never before published, consisting chiefly of the correspondence of the author during the period he held a seat in congress. There may have been greater men in the Federal party than Fisher Ames, but there were none purer, honester, or more sagacious. We have read no American writer who had a clearer or more just appreciation of the nature and elements of government. He foresaw and distinctly pointed out the dangers of Jacobinism, both at home and abroad. We can almost read in his pages the political history of our country for the whole period since his death. His writings seem to us specially adapted to our times, and the patriotic warnings with which they are filled are as applicable now as they were when written. In fact, the struggle between Americanism and Jacobinism had commenced in his time, and still continues with unabated fury.

We regret that our limits do not permit us to enrich our pages with some extracts from these most interesting vol