CHAPTER XXIII.

JEFFERSON AS A STATES-RIGHTS REPUBLICAN AND JEFFERSON AS A DEMOCRAT.

HE man who took the oath of office as President of

THE

timism.

the United States in 1801, believed that his administration was to introduce a new era in the history of the world. For the first time, as he believed, men were to see a government for the sake of the govJefferson's op erned. When government was devoted to such a purpose he believed that its customary incidents, armies, navies, national debts, banking systems, internal taxes, wars-could be entirely dispensed with. The confident optimism and serene disregard of the teachings of the past which were so characteristic of Americans found their perfect expression in Jefferson, and in the selfishness of the governing classes Jefferson saw a satisfactory explanation of the miseries of mankind.

It never occurred to him that his administration should signalize itself merely by its rigid and consistent adherence to a strict construction of the constitution. As Hamilton hoped to increase the powers conferred upon the government by the constitution through construction, so Jefferson, consciously or unconsciously, aimed to decrease them by disuse.

The changes which Jefferson hoped in this way to

ory of the prop

Federal govern

make in the constitution related both to foreign and domestic matters. Regarding the state gov- Jefferson's theernments as the guardians of the liberties er work of the of the people, he thought the general gov. ment. ernment should exercise none of the powers conferred upon it by the constitution, the exercise of which tended to increase its powers at the expense of those of the states. He did, indeed, use language which implied that he thought that the constitution had intended to confine the general government to foreign affairs, leaving all matters of domestic concern to the states. In an important letter to Gideon Granger in 1800, he said: "The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a very inexpensive one-a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants." Twenty-one years later, in 1821, he repeated the same idea, although in not quite so unqualified a form: "The people to whom all authority belongs have divided the powers of government into two distinct departments, the leading characters of

*Italics are mine.

which are foreign and domestic; and they have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These they have made co-ordinate, checking and balancing each other, like the three cardinal departments in the individual states— each equally supreme as to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized ultimately to decide what belongs to itself or to its copartner in government. As independent, in fact, as different nations, a spirit of forbearance and compromise, therefore, and not of encroachment and usurpation is the healing balm of such a constitution." Three years later, in 1824, he expressed the same opinion: "The Federal is in truth our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate states."

But Jefferson was not in the habit of expressing himself with scientific accuracy, and the evidence makes it clear that he did not mean what an accurate writer would have meant by such language. For he expressed the same idea in 1787 in speaking of the sort of constitution he thought the country ought to have, although in the same letter he expressed his disapproval of the constitution. "My own general idea was," he wrote in 1787, "that the states should severally preserve their sovereignty in whatever concerns themselves alone, and that whatever may concern another state or any foreign nation, should be made a part of the Federal sovereignty."

It is clear, therefore, that in saying that the general government was the foreign, and the state governments

the domestic, branch of our governmental system, he was not expounding his theory of what the framers of the constitution intended them to be. His purpose was to state his idea of what they ought to be, and of what, by precedent and construction, they could be made to be. The quotation already made from him about the time of the Whisky Insurrection is a further confirmation of this conclusion. He said, it will be remembered, that the excise tax was an infernal one; that the first error was to admit it by the constitution; the second, to act on that admission. In other words, that the framers of the constitution had made the mistake of conferring upon the general government the power of laying an excise was no reason why those who administered the general government should use the power conferred upon it. For, as Jefferson believed, the laying of such a tax was the exercise of a power that tended to aggrandize the general government at the expense of the states.

If now we seek to mark off in a general way the field into which Jefferson thought the general government ought not to enter, whether the constitution gave it the right so to do or not, the quotations already made from him combined with a passage in his inaugural address, enable us to do it. Except to encourage commerce and agriculture, and diffuse information-these exceptions were made in his inaugural-the general government should undertake no domestic functions: these should be left to the states.

Jefferson's

theory of foreign "concerns.'

With the above trifling exceptions, the whole function of the general government was confined to the management and control of our foreign affairs. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns," he had written to Granger. But what was his theory of foreign concerns? His private correspondence contains the answer to this question. In a letter to Thomas Paine, written a few days after his inauguration, he said: "Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we mean to pursue. We believe we can enforce these principles as to ourselves by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public counsels detached from foreign views." But how were we to enforce our principles by peaceable means? A letter to a Dr. Logan written a few days later, contained the answer: "Our commerce is so valuable to them," he wrote, "that they will be glad to purchase it when the only price we ask is to do us justice. I believe we have in our hands the means of peaceable coercion; and that the moment they see our government so united as that we can make use of it, they will, for their own interest, be disposed to do us justice." *

This, then, was the Republican theory of "foreign concerns." If other nations insulted us, if they made in*See page 176.