Volume I Part 36 (1/2)
Very considerable were the obligations ”public and private” which Madison wrote his father that he ”strongly suspected” a part of the country intended to repudiate. The public debt, foreign and domestic, of the Confederation and the States, at the close of the Revolutionary War, appeared to the people to be a staggering sum.[911] The private debt aggregated a large amount.[912] The financial situation was chaos. Paper money had played such havoc with specie that, in Virginia in 1786, as we have seen, there was not enough gold and silver to pay current taxes.[913] The country had had bitter experience with a fict.i.tious medium of exchange. In Virginia by 1781 the notes issued by Congress ”fell to 1000 for 1,” records Jefferson, ”and then expired, as it had done in other States, without a single groan.”[914]
Later on, foreigners bought five thousand dollars of this Continental scrip for a single dollar of gold or silver.[915] In Philadelphia, toward the end of the Revolution, the people paraded the streets wearing this make-believe currency in their hats, with a dog tarred and covered with paper dollars instead of feathers.[916] For land sold by Jefferson before paper currency was issued he ”did not receive the money till it was not worth Oak leaves.”[917]
Most of the States had uttered this fiat medium, which not only depreciated and fluctuated within the State issuing it, but made trade between citizens of neighboring States almost impossible. Livingston found it a ”loss to shop it in New York with [New] Jersey Money at the unconscionable discount which your [New York] brokers and merchants exact; and it is as d.a.m.nifying to deal with our merchants here [New Jersey] in that currency, since they proportionably advance the price of their commodities.”[918] Fithian in Virginia records that: ”In the evening I borrowed of _Ben Carter_ 15/--I have plenty of money with me but it is in Bills of Philadelphia Currency and will not pa.s.s at all here.”[919]
Virginia had gone through her trial of financial fiction-for-fact, ending in a law fixing the scale of depreciation at forty to one, and in other unique and bizarre devices;[920] and finally took a determined stand against paper currency.[921] Although Virginia had burned her fingers, so great was the scarcity of money that there was a formidable agitation to try inflation again.[922] Throughout the country there once more was a ”general rage for paper money.”[923] Bad as this currency was, it was counterfeited freely.[924] Such coin as existed was cut and clipped until Was.h.i.+ngton feared that ”a man must travel with a pair of money scales in his pocket, or run the risk of receiving gold of one fourth less by weight than it counts.”[925]
If there was not money enough, let the Government make more--what was a government for if not for that? And if government could not make good money, what was the good of government? Courts were fine examples of what government meant--they were always against the common people. Away with them! So ran the arguments and appeals of the demagogues and they found an answer in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the thoughtless, the ignorant, and the uneasy. This answer was broader than the demand for paper money, wider than the protest against particular laws and specific acts of administration. This answer also was, declared General Knox, ”that the property of the United States ... ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.” Knox was convinced that the discontented were ”determined to annihilate all debts, public and private.”[926]
Ideas and purposes such as these swayed the sixteen thousand men who, in 1787, followed Daniel Shays in the popular uprising in Ma.s.sachusetts against taxes, courts, and government itself.[927] ”The restlessness produced by the uneasy situation of individuals, connected with lax notions concerning public and private faith, and erroneous[928]
opinions which confound liberty with an exemption from legal control, produced ... unlicensed conventions, which, after voting on their own const.i.tutionality, and a.s.suming the name of the people, arrayed themselves against the legislature,” was John Marshall's summary of the forces that brought about the New England rebellion.
The ”army” of lawlessness, led by Shays, took the field, says Marshall, ”against taxes, and against the administration of justice; and the circulation of a depreciated currency was required, as a relief from the pressure of public and private burdens, which had become, it was alleged, too heavy to be borne. Against lawyers and courts the strongest resentments were manifested; and to such a dangerous extent were these dispositions indulged, that, in many instances, tumultuous a.s.semblages of people arrested the course of law, and restrained the judges from proceeding in the execution of their duty.”
”The ordinary recourse to the power of the country was found insufficient protection,” records Marshall, ”and the appeals made to reason were attended with no beneficial effect. The forbearance of the government was attributed to timidity rather than moderation, and the spirit of insurrection appeared to be organized into a regular system for the suppression of courts.”[929] Such was Marshall's a.n.a.lysis of the Northern convulsion; and thus was strengthened in him that tendency of thought started at Valley Forge, and quickened in the Virginia House of Delegates.
”It rather appears to me,” wrote David Humphries to Was.h.i.+ngton, in an attempt to explain the root of the trouble, ”that there is a licentious spirit prevailing among many of the people; a levelling principle; and a desire of change; with a wish to annihilate all debts, public and private.”[930] Unjust taxes were given as the cause of the general dislike of government, yet those who composed the mobs erupting from this crater of anarchy, now located in New England, paid few or no taxes.
”High taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far remote from truth as light from darkness,”
a.s.serts Knox. ”The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes,” testifies this stanch Revolutionary officer.
”But,” continues Knox, ”they see the weakness of the government. They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former.”[931]
This condition brought to a head a distrust of the good sense, justice, and moderation of the people, which had been forming in the minds of many of the best and ablest men of the time.[932] ”The knaves and fools of this world are forever in alliance,” was the conclusion reached in 1786[933] by Jay, who thought that the people considered ”liberty and licentiousness” as the same thing.[934] The patient but bilious Secretary of State felt that ”the wise and the good never form the majority of any large society, and it seldom happens that their measures are uniformly adopted, or that they can always prevent being overborne themselves by the strong and almost never-ceasing union of the wicked and the weak.”[935] The cautious Madison was equally doubtful of the people: ”There are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal and on which they must and will be governed by those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and confidence” was Madison's judgment.[936]
Was.h.i.+ngton, black with depression, decided and bluntly said ”that mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.”
Lee had suggested that Was.h.i.+ngton use his ”influence” to quiet the disorders in New England; but, flung back Was.h.i.+ngton, ”_Influence_ is no _government_. Let us have one by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once.... To be more exposed in the eyes of the world, and more contemptible than we already are, is hardly possible.”[937]
”No morn ever dawned more favorably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present.... We are fast verging to anarchy,”[938]
cried the great captain of our war for liberty. The wings of Was.h.i.+ngton's wrath carried him far. ”Good G.o.d!” cried he, ”Who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted” the things that were going on! ”The disorders which have arisen in these States, the present prospect of our affairs ... seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. My mind can scarcely realize it as a thing in actual existence.... There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to.”[939]
Marshall echoed his old commander's views. The dreams of his youth were fading, his confidence in the people declining. He records for us his altered sentiments: ”These violent, I fear b.l.o.o.d.y, dissensions in a state [Ma.s.sachusetts] I had thought inferior in wisdom and virtue to no one in the union, added to the strong tendency which the politics of many eminent characters among ourselves have to promote private and public dishonesty, cast a deep shade over the bright prospect which the revolution in America and the establishment of our free governments had opened to the votaries of liberty throughout the globe. I fear, and there is no opinion more degrading to the dignity of man, that these have truth on their side who say that man is incapable of governing himself.”[940] Thus wrote Marshall in 1787, when he was not yet thirty-two years old.
But Jefferson in Paris was beholding a different picture that strengthened the views which he and Marshall held in common when America, in arms, challenged Great Britain. ”The Spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now & then.
It is like a storm in the atmosphere.” So wrote Jefferson after the Ma.s.sachusetts insurrection had been quelled.[941]
The author of our Declaration of Independence was tasting the delights of the charming French Capital at this time, but he also was witnessing the shallowness and stupidity of the peculiarly weak royalty and n.o.bility; and although it was this same Royal Government that had aided us with men and money in our struggle to throw off the yoke of England, Jefferson's heart grew wrathful against it and hot for popular rule in France. Yet in the same apostrophe to rebellion, Jefferson declares that the French people were too shallow for self-rule. ”This [French]
nation,” writes Jefferson, ”is incapable of any serious effort but under the word of command.”[942]
After having had months to think about it, this enraptured enthusiast of popular upheaval spread his wings and was carried far into crimson skies. ”Can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted?” exclaimed Jefferson, of the Ma.s.sachusetts anarchical outburst, nearly a year after it had ended; and continued thus:--
”G.o.d forbid! we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion....
What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms!... What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.”[943]
Thus did his contact with a decadent monarchy on the one hand and an enchanting philosophy on the other hand, help to fit him for the leaders.h.i.+p of American radicalism. No better training for that mission could have been afforded. French thought was already challenging all forms of existing public control; it was a spirit Gamaliel which found in Jefferson an eager Saul at its feet; and American opinion was prepared for its doctrines. In the United States general dislike and denunciation of the established governments had uncovered the feeling against government itself which lay at the root of opposition to any stronger one.
The existing American system was a very masterpiece of weakness. The so-called Federal Government was like a horse with thirteen bridle reins, each held in the hands of separate drivers who usually pulled the confused and powerless beast in different directions. Congress could make treaties with foreign nations; but each of the States could and often did violate them at will. It could borrow money, but could not levy taxes or impose duties to pay the debt. Congress could get money only by making humble requests, called ”requisitions,” on the ”sovereign” Commonwealths. It had to depend upon the whims of the various States for funds to discharge princ.i.p.al and interest of public obligations; and these springs of revenue, when not entirely dry, yielded so little that the Federal establishment was like to die of financial thirst.[944]