THE HISTORY

OF

POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.

I

CHAPTER I.

WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT.

PROPOSE to write an outline of the history of

book.

political parties in the United States. I wish to describe the great currents of thought and action in our political life, and the forces that have determined their direction. I wish to describe Purpose of this the forces that have made the Mississippis and Ohios and Missouris in our history, leaving to larger books the detailed and microscopic study of the little streams which have resulted from comparatively unimportant causes.

From such a point of view, we may say that the history of political parties in this country begins with the Federalists.

The first question to ask of every political party is, What is it trying to do? What public want does it seek to satisfy? What motive influences the men that belong to it to associate together in a political organization? Let us put this question to the Federalist party; let us ask what it was organized to do.*

Object of political parties.

To this question it is possible to give a definite answer. From the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1781 to the organization of the government under our present constitution in 1789, we were without a government. "Without a government! Did not Congress meet every year and pass laws, and levy taxes, and send ministers to foreign countries, and seek to make treaties with them?" Yes, it did all this and much more. But a body may pass laws, and levy taxes, and make treaties without being a government. If you wish to determine whether

What constitutes a government?

an organization really constitutes a government, you can apply a simple, and at the same time, an infallible test. Ask what happens in case any one on whom its so-called laws operate, or upon whom its taxes are levied, refuses to obey the law, or to pay the tax. If the body that passed the law or levied the tax, can do nothing about it, if it can only remonstrate, it can pass all the laws and levy all the taxes it likes. It is not a government. A law that I can obey or not, is not a law; a tax that I may

*See Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VI., page 593.

pay or not, is not a tax. The one is a suggestion or a piece of advice, and the other a request for the payment of money. It was Madison who said "A sanction is essential to the idea of law, as coercion is to that of government." And Washington, in a circular letter which he addressed to the governors and presidents of the states in 1783, declared that one of the things which was essential to the very existence of the United States as an independent power, was that there must be an indissoluble union of all the states under a single federal government, which must have power to enforce its decrees; since without such power it would be a government only in

name.

I say, therefore, that the Congress of the Confederation was not a government. No one paid any attention to its so-called laws unless he chose; every one did as he pleased about paying its taxes. The states

Character of the Congress of the Confederation.

on whom these requests, or requisitions, as they were called, for money were made, had indeed solemnly agreed to pay them, when they assented to the Articles of Confederation. But since these requisitions were nothing but requests, the states could break their promises and disregard them.* The result was that of $6,000,000 called for by Congress from 1782 to 1786 only $1,000,000 had been paid at the end of March, 1787.

*Madison characterized the requisitions of Congress as mere calls for voluntary contributions.

Condition of a nation without a government.

It will require a vigorous.effort of the imagination to enable us to realize the terrible condition of a nation which has no national government. More than anything else, it reminds me of a mind, a soul, an intelligence, a thinking, feeling, conscious, personality, which here in this world should somehow get detached from its body without losing any of the desires natural to it in its ordinary state. Think of such an intelligence, unable to communicate with its friends, unable to gratify its desire for knowledge, unable to see the beauties of the world of nature and of art, and deprived even of the poor boon of giving expression to its despair and you will be able to form some idea of the condition of a nation without any national government. Fitly did Hamilton say: "A nation without a national government, is an awful spectacle." Unlike the disembodied intelligence of which I have spoken, the nation had indeed an organ through which it could express its wishes, but none through which it could execute them. It had to sit with its hands folded and see the states violate its solemn treaties, and bring upon it the contempt of the civilized world. And when the state refused to pay the taxes which the government asked for in order to pay the interest on the money which had been lent us in our struggle for independence, it was powerless to compel them.

What is the explanation of this fact? Why was it that the men of the Revolution went to the trouble of

creating an organization with every attribute of a government, except the all-essential one of power to execute its will? The answer is simple: Aonfederation

Why were the

adopted?

The people did not look upon themselves as a nation; they had not attained to national self-consciousness. The people of each state, looking upon their state as their country, regarded every government but the state government as foreign. Another of the things which Washington in the circular letter of which I have already spoken, declared was essential to the very existence of the United States as a nation, was a willingness on the part of the people to sacrifice some of their local interests to the common good, a feeling that they were fellow citizens of a common country. But the people of the various states were not willing to do this; they did not regard one another as citizens of a common country. The love of the union which seventy-five years later had become a passion that men were willing to die for, hardly existed then. One of the truest patriots of New England spoke on the floor of the Massachusetts House of Deputies of the Congress of the United States as a foreign government.* Accordingly, the men of the Revolution wished to make it impossible for Congress to imitate the example of England and play the tyrant. But if you

* At one time the delegates to Congress from Massachusetts were ordered to write to the Governor as often as once a fortnight, and at another a committee of the legislature was appointed to correspond with the delegates, who were expected to be minute in their accounts of what was done.