Chapter II: Predictions of the Opponents and Advocates of the Constitution

Those who opposed the Draft Constitution of 1787, a party both numerous and influential in nearly every State, were the men specially democratic and also specially conservative. They disliked all strengthening of government, and especially the erection of a central authority. They were satisfied with the system of sovereign and practically independent States. Hence they predicted the following as the consequences to be expected from the creation of an effective Federal executive and legislature[144].

1. The destruction of the States as commonwealths. The central government, it was said, would gradually encroach upon their powers; would use the federal army to overcome their resistance; would supplant them in the respect of their citizens; would at last swallow them up. The phrase ‘consolidation of the Union,’ which had been used by the Convention of 1787 to recommend its draft, was laid hold of as a term of reproach. ‘Consolidation,’ the absorption of the States by or into one centralized government, became the popular cry, and carried away the unthinking.

2. The creation of a despot in the person of the President. His legal authority would be so large as not only to tempt him, but to enable him, to extend it further, at the expense of the liberties both of States and of people. ‘Monarchy,’ it was argued, ‘thrown off after such efforts, will in substance return with this copy of King George III, whose command of the federal army, power over appointments, and opportunities for intriguing with foreign powers on the one hand and corrupting the legislature on the other[145], will render the new tyrant more dangerous than the old one. Or if he be more open to avarice than to ambition, he will be the tool of foreign sovereigns and the means whereby they will control or enslave America[146].’

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Footnote 144:

I take no account of those objections to the Constitution which may be
deemed to have been removed by the first eleven amendments.

Footnote 145:

See _The Federalist_, No. LIV.

Footnote 146:

_The Federalist_, No. LXVI, p. 667. ‘Calculating upon the aversion of
the people to monarchy, the writers against the Constitution have
endeavoured to enlist all their jealousies and apprehensions in
opposition to the intended President of the United States, not merely
as the embryo but as the full-grown progeny of that detested parent.
They have to establish the pretended affinity, not scrupled to draw
resources even from the regions of fiction. The authority of a
magistrate in few instances greater, in some instances less, than
those of a Governor of New York, have been magnified into more than
royal prerogatives. He has been decorated with attributes superior in
dignity and splendour to those of a King of Great Britain. He has been
shown to us with the diadem sparkling on his brow and the imperial
purple flowing in his train. He has been seated on a throne surrounded
with minions and mistresses, giving audience to the envoys of foreign
potentates in all the supercilious pomp of majesty. The images of
Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness have scarcely been wanting to
crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the
terrific visages of murdering janizaries, and to blush at the unveiled
mysteries of a future seraglio.’

These were the days when Johnson and Gibbon ruled English style.

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3. The Senate will become an oligarchy. Sitting for six years, and not directly elected by the people, it ‘must gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and finally transform it into a tyrannical aristocracy[147].’

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Footnote 147:

_The Federalist_, No. LXII.

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4. The House of Representatives will also, like every other legislature, aim at supremacy. Elected only once in two years, it will forget its duty to the people. It will consist of ‘the wealthy and well-born,’ and will try to secure the election of such persons only as its members[148].

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Footnote 148:

_The Federalist_, Nos. LVI and LIX.

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5. The larger States will use the greater weight in the government which the Federal constitution gives them to overbear the smaller States.

6. The existence of a strong central government is not only likely, by multiplying the occasions of diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers, to give openings for intrigues by them dangerous to American independence, but likely also to provoke foreign wars, in which the republic will perish if defeated, or if victorious maintain herself only by vast expenditure, with the additional evil of having created in an army a standing menace to freedom.

That some of these anticipations were inconsistent with others of them was no reason why even the same persons should not resort to both in argument. Any one who wishes to add to the number, for I have quoted but a few, being those which turn upon the main outlines of the Philadelphia draft, may do so by referring to the record, known as Elliott’s Debates, of the discussions in the several State Conventions which deliberated on the new Constitution. It is an eminently instructive record.

I pass from the opponents of the Constitution to its advocates. Hamilton and its friends sought in it a remedy against what they deemed the characteristic dangers of popular government. It is by dwelling on these dangers that they recommend it. We can perceive, however, that, while lauding its remedial power, they are aware how deep-seated such dangers are, and how likely to recur even after the adoption of the Constitution. The language which Hamilton held in private proves that he desired a more centralized government, which would have approached nearer to that British Constitution which he regarded as being, with all its defects (and partly owing to its corruptions!), the best model for free nations[149]. He feared anarchy, and thought that only a strong national government could avert it. And in a remarkable letter written in February, 1802, under the influence of disappointment with the course events were then taking, he describes, in his somewhat sweeping way, the Constitution he was ‘still labouring to prop’ as a ‘frail and worthless fabric.’

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Footnote 149:

Though he, like other observers of that time, had not realized, and
might not have relished, the supremacy, now become omnipotence, which
the House of Commons had already won.

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We may therefore legitimately treat his list of evils to be provided against by the new Federal Government as indicating the permanently mischievous tendencies which he foresaw. Some of them, he is obliged to admit, cannot be wholly averted by any constitutional devices, but only by the watchful intelligence and educated virtue of the people.

The evils chiefly feared are the following:—

1. The spirit and power of faction, which is so clearly the natural and necessary offspring of tendencies always present in mankind, that wherever liberty exists it must be looked for[150].

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Footnote 150:

_The Federalist_, No. X (written by Madison), and in other letters.

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Its causes are irremovable; all you can do is to control its effects, and the best prospect of overcoming them is afforded by the representative system and the wide area of the United States with the diversities among its population.

2. Sudden impulses, carrying the people away and inducing hasty and violent measures[151].

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Footnote 151:

_The Federalist_, No. LXII.

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3. Instability in foreign policy, due to changes in the executive and in public sentiment, and rendering necessary the participation of a comparatively small council or Senate in the management of this department.

4. Ill-considered legislation. ‘Facility and excess of law-making[152],’ and ‘inconstancy and mutability in the laws[153],’ form the ‘greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments.’

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Footnote 152:

_The Federalist_, No. LXI.

Footnote 153:

_The Federalist_, No. LXXII.

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5. The Legislature is usually the strongest power in free governments. It will seek, as the example of the English Parliament shows, to encroach upon the other departments; and this is especially to be feared from the House of Representatives as holding the power of the purse[154].

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Footnote 154:

‘The Legislative Department is everywhere (_i.e._ in all the States)
extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its
impetuous vortex.... It is against the enterprising ambition of this
department that the People ought to indulge all their jealousy and
exhaust all their precautions’ (_The Federalist_, No. XLVII). The
people have now begun to resort to precautions; but it is not the
ambition of State legislatures that is feared, it is their
subserviency to private interests or the party machine.

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6. The States, and especially the larger States, may overbear the Federal Government. They have closer and more constant relations with the citizen, because they make and administer the ordinary laws he lives under. His allegiance has hitherto belonged to them, and may not be readily given to the central authority. In a struggle, should a struggle come, State power is likely to prevail against Federal power.

7. There is in republics a danger that the majority may oppress the minority. Already conspicuous in some of the State governments, as for instance in Rhode Island, this danger may be diminished by the application of the federal system to the great area of the Union, where ‘society will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority[155].’

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Footnote 155:

_The Federalist_, No. L.

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8. Another source of trouble is disclosed by the rash and foolish experiments which some States have tried in passing laws which threaten the validity of contracts and the security of property. There are also signs of weakness in the difficulty which State Governments have found in raising revenue by direct taxation[156]. Citizens whose poverty does not excuse their want of public spirit refuse to pay; and the administration fears to coerce them.

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Footnote 156:

_The Federalist_, No. XII.

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Not less instructive than the fears of _The Federalist_ writers are their hopes. Some of the perils which have since been disclosed are not divined. Some institutions which have conspicuously failed are relied on as full of promise.

The method of choosing the President is recommended with a confidence the more remarkable because it was the point on which the Convention had been most divided and had been latest in reaching an agreement.

‘If the manner of the appointment of the Chief Magistrate be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages the union of which was to be wished for.... The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any one who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honours in a single State, but it will require other talents and a different kind of merit to establish him in the confidence and esteem of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue[157].’

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Footnote 157:

_The Federalist_, No. LXVII. In A.D. 1800, twelve years after Hamilton
wrote this passage, the contest for the Presidency lay between
Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and Hamilton was compelled by his sense of
Burr’s demerits to urge his party to vote (when the choice came before
the House of Representatives) for Jefferson, his own bitter enemy.
What he thought of Burr, who, but for his intervention, would
certainly have obtained the chief magistracy of the nation (and by
whose hand he ultimately died), may be inferred from the fact that he
preferred as President the man of whom he thus writes: ‘I admit that
his (Jefferson’s) politics are tinctured with fanaticism; that he is
too much in earnest in his democracy; that he has been a mischievous
enemy to the principal measures of our past administration; that he is
crafty and persevering in his objects; that he is not scrupulous about
the means of success, nor very mindful of truth; and that he is a
contemptible hypocrite. But, &c.’ (Letter to James A. Bayard, Jan. 16,
1801.)

After this it is superfluous, as it would be invidious, to dwell on
the deficiencies of some recent Presidents or Presidential candidates.

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It is assumed that America will continue an agricultural and (to a less extent) a commercial country, but that she will not develop manufactures; and also that the fortunes of her citizens will continue to be small[158]. No serious apprehensions regarding the influence of wealth in elections or in politics generally are expressed.

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Footnote 158:

‘The private fortunes of the President and Senators, as they must all
be American citizens, cannot possibly be sources of danger’ (_The
Federalist_, No. LIV).

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The contingency of a division of the States into two antagonistic groups is not contemplated. When the possibility of State combinations is touched on, it is chiefly with reference to the action of small and of large States respectively. In particular no hint is dropped as to the likelihood of the institution of slavery becoming a bond to unite the Southern States and a cause of quarrel between them and the Northern. Yet slavery had given trouble in the Philadelphia Convention, and an opposition of North and South grounded upon it soon emerged.

Although the mischiefs of faction are dwelt on, nothing indicates that its embodiment in highly developed party systems, whose organizations might overshadow the legal government, had occurred to any one’s mind. Still less, of course, is there any anticipation of the influence to be exerted on politics by the distribution of offices. Not till long afterwards were they treated as ‘spoils of war.’