possessing a competent knowledge of the means and character of the applicants for loans. It will yet be found that the only possible mode of retrieving our condition, and securing a currency uniform in amount and value, will be a return to the financial system of Hamilton; just as a return to the maxims and policy of Washington will be the only safe guarantee for the domestic peace and order of the country. The approval of the Bank by all the departments of government, and by the Supreme Court as soon as the question could be presented to that tribunal, only served to increase and imbitter the hostility of Jefferson to a construction so opposed to all his theories, and, in his estimation, so fraught with danger to that portion of the country with which, not only as a citizen, but from his training, habits, and ideas, he was so closely identified. The Bank, indeed, seemed beyond his reach. To claim such a measure as this to be sufficient ground for breaking up the government would only expose him to ridicule and contempt; and he patiently bided his time. This was not long in coming. Washington in due time was succeeded by Mr. Adams, whose great personal unpopularity exposed him to constant and virulent attacks from newspapers and foreigners in the interest of France. To protect him, as well as the government, were passed the famous "Alien and Sedition Laws," enacted to punish libellers, and foreigners who used the asylum offered by the country for the purpose of embroiling it in war. The laws were very probably illadvised and inopportune, although Washington did not so regard them. They were Jefferson's great occasion. In opposition to them, he immediately drafted the celebrated resolutions which were passed by the legislature of the State of Virginia in 1798, and by that of Kentucky in 1799; and which, among other things, declared: "That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government, but that, by a compact under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes; delegated to that government certain definite powers; reserving, each State to itself, the residuary measure of right to their own self-government; and that, whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and JEFFERSON'S CONSTRUCTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 477 of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress, and that a nullification by those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts done under the color of that instrument is the rightful remedy." These resolutions embodied in a most complete and perfect form Jefferson's construction of the Constitution as opposed to that of Hamilton, who insisted that it united the people not as a confederacy, but as a nation. They took the whole question out of the arena of the National Legislature and of the courts, and submitted it to the opinions and judgment of the whole people; by whom, or by a great majority of whom, at least so far as their decision could be gathered from the expressions of their popular assemblies, they were accepted as the cardinal rule for the construction of the Constitution, and as justifying the destruction of the government, whenever it should suit the interest or caprice of any member of it. It will be proper in this connection to consider further the opinions upon government, and upon the nature of our own, of this extraordinary man, who exerted such a paramount and baleful influence over the nation for the first hundred years of its existence. He was, in fact, opposed to all governments worthy the name. No one had the natural right to bind any generation not a party to it. "Can," he said, "one generation bind another, and all others, in succession for ever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of matter which composed their bodies make part now of the bodies of other animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thousand forms. To what, then, are attached the rights and powers they held while in the form of men? A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of men." 1 1 Letter to Major Cartwright, Jefferson's Works, vol. vii. p. 859. "The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The will and the power of man expire with his life, by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial continuance for the encouragement of industry; some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians. The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation, free and unencumbered; and so on, successively, from one generation to another for ever. We We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation more than the inhabitants of another country. Or the case may be likened to the ordinary one of a tenant for life, who may hypothecate the land for his debts during the continuance of his usufruct; but at his death the reversioner (who is for life only) receives it exonerated from all burden. The period of a generation, or the term of its life, is determined by the laws of mortality, which, varying a little only in different climates, offer a general average to be found by observation.1 Jefferson's notions of the nature of what little government we had in this country were well set out in the letter to Major Cartwright, above quoted: "With respect to our State and Federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. This is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of a single and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the Federal Government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign, branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the two departments should claim the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but, if neither can be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best." 2 His hostility to the present Constitution was early proclaimed. Writing from Paris, under date of Nov. 13, 1787, he says, 1 Letter to J. W. Eppes, Jefferson's Works, vol. vi. p. 136. "Indeed, I think all the good of this new Constitution might have been couched in three or four new articles, to be added to the good, old, and venerable fabric, which should have been preserved even as a religious relique."' 1 From the preceding extracts, it will be seen that Jefferson completely ignored the Supreme Court of the United States as the authorized expounder of the Constitution. In reference to this tribunal, he says: "The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our constitutional fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet; and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem. We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride these five lawyers" (judges) "have lately taken. Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scarecrow, they consider themselves secure for life; they skulk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold upon them,— under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in conclave (perhaps by a majority of one), delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge" (Marshall), "who sophisticates the law to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning,' A judiciary law was once reported by the Attorney-General to Congress, requiring each judge to deliver his opinion seriatim and openly, and then to give it in writing to the clerk to be entered on the record. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government." Jefferson would have no government capable of binding the future, and no courts as the final arbiters of disputes. His remedy for misgovernment and political oppression was rebellion: "Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat, and model into every form, lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed 1 Letter to John Adams, Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. p. 317. 2 The case referred to was McCulloch v. The State of Maryland, in which Judge Marshall made his famous argument in support of the constitutionality of the Bank. * Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Jefferson's Works, vol. vii. p. 192. them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and, what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honorably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion! The people cannot be all and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. 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 and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”1 Jefferson not only most earnestly opposed Washington's principles of government, but he claimed to have been, by his election to the Presidency, the instrument for their complete overthrow. Writing to Judge Roane, under date of September 6, 1819, soon after the famous decision of Judge Marshall affirming the constitutionality of the United States Bank, he said: 2 "The Revolution of 1800 was as complete a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected, indeed, by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches-executive and legislative submitted to their election. Over the judiciary department the Constitution had deposed them of their control. That, therefore, has continued the reprobated system." The preceding extracts, which might be multiplied in kind, so as to fill a volume, furnish the key, and the only one, by means of which the political as well as the financial history of this country can be made intelligible, not only to foreigners, but to ourselves. Up to 1860, Jefferson was the patron saint of the nation. His teachings in reference to the 1 Letter to Colonel Smith, Jefferson's Works, vol. ii. pp. 318, 319. |