few months its fate hung trembling in the balance. It was for a long time doubtful,' said Washington, whether we were to survive as an independent Republic, or decline from our Federal dignity into insignificant and withered fragments of empire.' The people feared that their State rights, which they prized so highly, would some day be infringed, perhaps destroyed, by this new device of a Federal government. Congress, many of them believed, would become tyrannical, and the liberties of the States would perish. Such apprehensions as these were dealt with on one occasion by a member of the Massachusetts Convention, a farmer named Smith. He was, he said, a plain man who got his living by the plough, and who begged to say a few words to his brother plough-joggers.' There had been disturbances the previous winter in his own county, and neither life nor property was safe. 'Some were taken captive, children [were] taken out of their schools and carried away. Had any person that was able to protect us come and set up his standard we should all have flocked to it, even if it had been a monarch, and that monarch might have proved a tyrant.'' Better, in fact, was a strong government than anarchy. Farmer Smith perceived in the Constitution the sign and promise of such a government, and therefore he supported it. I did not go to any lawyer,' he said, 'to ask his opinion; we have no lawyer in our town, and we do well enough without.' And then, by a practical illustration, he disposed of some of the chief objections which had been brought forward. 'Suppose,' he said, 'two or three of you had been at the pains to break up a piece of rough land, and sow it with wheat; would you let it lie waste because you could not agree what sort of a fence to make? Would it not be better to put up a fence that did not please every one's fancy, rather than not fence it at all, or keep disputing about it until the wild beasts came in and devoured it?' Considerations of this nature, urged in simple and homely language, had their weight in other States besides Massachusetts, and prevailed against the arguments of those who were alarmed at what they deemed the dangerous powers to be entrusted to the President. For it was the Executive, and not the Legislative power, which was the particular object of dread. The authority exercised by the chief magistrate would be fatal, it was commonly thought, to the liberties of the people. Subsequent events have sufficiently proved that, if any branch of the government is likely to assume powers not originally conferred upon it, and not contemplated by any parties or statesmen from 1787 to Elliott's Debates on the Federal Constitution,' III. 102-3. a 1860, it is the Legislative and not the Executive. Congress has shown that in time of stress and emergency it is able to take the whole powers of government into its own hands, without meeting with serious resistance. The President himself may be stripped of all but a nominal authority, if he is unwise enough to enter into a trial of strength with a Legislature which is supported and approved by the people. The first of the Presidents who ascertained this by actual experiment was Andrew Johnson, but the issue was tested under a combination of circumstances which, it is much to be hoped, will never be seen again. In the ordinary state of affairs, the several departments of the government could scarcely come into conflict with each other, or do any violence either to the rights of States or the liberties of the people. American political history dates, as we have said, from the year 1786 or 1787; but the termination of the War of Secession in 1865 marked the beginning of a totally new epoch. All things were changed. Before the outbreak of that war, both the great parties which had governed the country had forsaken their old names and passed through various transformations; but they had acted within certain definite lines, and each could make sure of summoning a thoroughly equipped organization to its support in the periodical struggles for power. The Federalists, after the war with England in 1812, assumed the title of Whigs; and when in 1852 they deemed it expedient to discard that name in its turn, they called themselves Republicans, as they continue to do to this day. But it is the Democratic' party of our time which represents the 'Republican' party of the early days of the Union. The appellations now employed are no guide whatever to the principles of either organization, and are indeed wholly destitute of meaning, apart from that which is connected with the associations of the War of Secession. To be classed as a' Republican' or a 'Democrat' denotes nothing in a country where every man is a Republican and every man a Democrat. The old names were not inaccurate or misleading at the time they were adopted. The Republican party of ninety years ago was really Republican-it was distinguished for its sympathy with the principles and leaders of the French Revolution, and was opposed to the concentration of great powers in a central government. Its leader was Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose predilection for France may have been partly due to his affectionate intimacy with Lafayette. One of his biographers has pointed out that the French politics with which he sympathized resulted in organized massacre and Buonaparte, while the party which he founded in the United States led the people of the South into rebellion. But Jefferson was far from contemplating rebellion in his own country; and as for slavery, he was opposed to it quite as much as Washington. Both these eminent men were themselves slaveholders, and both saw that slavery could not last. As the Democrats of to-day look upon Jefferson as the originator of their party, so the Republicans, with a less unquestionable right, profess to have inherited the opinions of Washington. That Washington was a Federalist at heart there is little doubt, and the Republican party of 1882 professes to be lineally descended from the Federalists; but it must be borne in mind, that Washington endeavoured to keep as much as possible beyond the reach of party entanglements, and he gave evidence of his impartiality by appointing Jefferson and Hamilton to posts of equal importance in his Cabinet. Yet Washington's real or supposed partiality for the English form of government brought upon him many violent denunciations as a British Tory.' He, like all the Federalists, aimed at establishing a strong central, or Federal government, even, if need be, at the expense of the State Governments; the Jefferson party were inflexibly hostile to any such theory, and were consequently at first called Anti-Federalists, then Republicans, and finally Democrats. To the main principle of their faith they have always remained stedfast. The Federalists, it has been explained, became Whigs, and afterwards Republicans; the old Republican party became the Democratic party; but a fair degree of historical continuity has been preserved by each of these organizations, and therefore it is impossible to comprehend the position which they occupy to-day without some knowledge of their past. Many of the characteristics which marked their birth and growth are still retained. The Federalists always derived their chief strength from the north and east, and the Republicans from the south. The advocates of a strong government ranged themselves on the side of the Federalists, while the defenders of State rights went with the Republicans. These broad and easily recognizable distinctions have been retained down to our own time. The Republicans, heirs of the Federalists, get nearly all their votes from the east, west, and north; and they have constantly sought to increase and consolidate the powers of the Federal government. The Democrats, successors to the old Republicans, still look for support largely to the south and south-west, although several of the Northern States may almost be looked upon as a part of their inheritance, in spite of occasional defections, such as those which lost them the Presidential election of 1880. But if some of the original principles of both parties remain, much has occurred that that would have startled the early leaders on either side. Washington, although in favour of a Federal government, was far from rating the privileges of States so lightly as Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens; and Jefferson or Jackson would, as their writings, words, and actions all attest, have repudiated the view regarding the rights of Secession, which a large section of the Democratic party upheld. Andrew Jackson was a Democrat of the Democrats, but his oath, when South Carolina threatened to secede in 1832 on the Tariff question-the famous Nullification' period-is not yet forgotten: By the Eternal, the Union must and shall be preserved!' If the Southern Democracy had but understood that the majority of the nation would infallibly abide by the spirit of these words, there would have been no war in 1861. 6 If Jefferson and Jackson, though Democrats, never advised or anticipated actual Secession, on the other hand no Federalist or Whig, from the days of Washington down to those of Clay and Webster, would have been ready to enter into a war for the abolition of slavery. All American statesmen hoped that time would provide some remedy, which they confessed themselves to be unable to discern, for the evil of slavery. None of them were willing to defend it, except as an 'institution' which had long existed in the colonies, and which, it was felt, could not be abolished without great danger. As much as I deplore slavery,' said Patrick Henry in 1788, when the Constitution was under discussion in Virginia, I see that prudence forbids its abolition.' He declared that it would rejoice his very soul' to see all the blacks emancipated, but is it practicable,' he asked, by any human means, to liberate them without producing the most dreadful and serious consequences?' The whole system was regarded with mingled dislike and apprehension. I tremble,' said Jefferson, when I look at slavery, and remember that God is just.' John Randolph, of Virginia, detested slavery, but saw no way of abolishing it. The one idea and hope of all the leading men on both sides was, that time and chance would solve the difficulty. Henry Clay merely acted upon the convenient principle of putting off the evil day, when he identified himself with the policy of Compromise.' It had been nothing but compromise from the very first. The word 'slavery,' as Everett reminded his countrymen, was purposely excluded from the Constitution, and a passage referring to it in Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence was carefully struck out. The beginning and end of Henry Clay's * Elliott's Debates,' III. 590. statesmanship statesmanship was compromise; and it would be a hard judgment even now upon his public life, to maintain that he was wrong, and that civil war was better than compromise. In his own day, no doubt was entertained concerning the wisdom of the policy which he pursued, or rather which he recommended, for Henry Clay never had an opportunity of carrying out a policy. No American that ever lived was more popular during his own life; 'men shed tears at his defeat,' as one of his countrymen has told us, ' and women went to bed sick from pure sympathy with his disappointment.' Yet for twenty-eight years he strove with all his might for the one thing which he cared to have-the Presidential office; and the people refused to confer it upon him. When he left his home, 'the public seized him and bore him along over the land, the committee of one State passing him on to the committee of another, and the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught his ear.' He was doomed to live and die a disappointed man. In his day a visit to the Capitol at Washington well repaid the stranger; for Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, were all in the Senate, and debates took place which have never been equalled since. Clay's aim throughout his life was as we have said, to defer the settlement of the slavery question; Calhoun's was to urge it forward before its time. It had seemed, in 1820, that the long-dreaded struggle was inevitable, over the admission of Missouri into the Union; but it was avoided by means of the celebrated Missouri compromise, under which slavery was permitted to continue south of the boundary line of that State, and prohibited on the north of it. Twenty years later, the anti-slavery party, acting with the Republicans, began to reveal itself as a formidable power in political conventions, and the feeling which it never failed to excite, on one side or the other, led to frequent scenes of violence and disorder in various parts of the country. But the agitation against slavery was largely stimulated by the dread of the South gaining a paramount influence in the Union by means of its slaves, who helped to increase the representation of the States in Congress. They were the other persons' of the Constitution, and three-fifths of their number were to be added to the free citizens, and on that basis representation was to be apportioned. Consequently, the more the South multiplied its slaves, the greater became its strength in the Legislature. It was that consideration, more than any other, which caused slavery to become a dangerous issue in 1820, and which brought it up again, in a still more menacing form, in 1845, when Texas was annexed to the Union. Texas was south of the line agreed upon in the Missouri compromise, and therefore it gave the South a new and invaluable territory for the |