North Carolina did not ratify the Constitution till November, 1789; Rhode Island not till May, 1790.

The Swiss Confederation was scarcely yet a nation, and the few democratic cantons were so small as hardly to come into account.

Of these writers Hamilton must be deemed the leading spirit, not merely because he wrote by far the larger number of letters, but because his mind was more independent and more commanding than Madison’s. The latter rendered admirable service in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, but afterwards yielded to the (in the main unfortunate) influence of Jefferson, a character with less purity but more vehemence.

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

See Federalist, No. LIV.

Federalist, No. LXVI, p. 667. “Calculating upon the aversion of the people to monarchy, the writers against the Constitution have endeavored 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 shewn 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.”

Federalist, No. LXII.

Federalist, Nos LVI and LIX.

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

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

Federalist, No. LXII.

Federalist, No. LXI.

Federalist, No. LXXII.

“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.” Federalist, No. XLVII.

Federalist, No. L.

Federalist, No. XII.

Federalist, No. LXVII. In ad 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, 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.

“The private fortunes of the President and Senators, as they must all be American citizens, cannot possibly be sources of danger.” Federalist, No. LIV.

But as to the early emergence of the opposition of Northern and Southern men over slavery, see the first chapter of Dr. Von Holst’s History.

“I hold with Montesquieu that a government must be fitted to a nation as much as a coat to the individual and consequently that what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at Paris and ridiculous at Petersburgh.” To Lafayette, Jan. 6th, 1799.

The first cargo of cotton was sent from America to Europe in 1791 and the cotton gin invented in 1793.

When we come to De Tocqueville, we shall find him touching but lightly on the two first of the above tendencies (partly, perhaps, because he attends too little to the State governments), but emphasizing the third and fearing from the fourth the dissolution of the Union.

Sainte Beuve says somewhere of him, “Il a commencé à penser avant d’avoir rien appris: ce qui fait qu’il a quelquefois pensé creux.” Thiers once said, in the Chamber, “Quand je considère intuitivement, comme dirait M. de Tocqueville.”

To none of whom, oddly enough, does De Tocqueville refer. He is singularly sparing in his references to individuals, mentioning no one except Jackson for blame, and Livingston (of the Louisiana Code and Secretary of State, 1831-33) for praise.

An interesting discussion of the effects in this respect of the War of 1812 is contained in Mr. N. M. Butler’s paper in the Johns Hopkins University Studies, No. VII of the Fifth Series.

Dr. Von Holst gives at the beginning of the second part of his Constitutional History a powerful picture of the democratic revolution, and inswarming of a new class of men, which accompanied the election and installation of Andrew Jackson.

Note the singular fact that he does not give any description of a State as a commonwealth, nor characterize the general features of its government.

This is a common remark of visitors to America, but it arises from their mistaking the people they see in society for the “governed” in general. They go with introductions to educated people: if they mixed with the masses they would form a different notion of the “governed,” as De Tocqueville rather oddly calls the ordinary citizens.

It is remarkable that De Tocqueville should have supposed this to be the chief cause of the excellence he ascribes to the Senate.

The only instance given of this is in the discretion allowed to the officers of the New England townships, whose functions are, however, unimportant. I greatly doubt if the statement is or ever was generally true.

Still true as regards public offices, save and except the Judges of the Supreme Court when sitting at Washington.

This has ceased to be true in Federal administration, and in that of the more advanced States.

De Tocqueville does not say whether he intends this remark to apply to State legislation only or to Federal legislation also. He quotes dicta of Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson to the same effect, but these testimonies all refer to a time anterior to the creation of the Federal Constitution. Admitting that such instability did exist in 1832 as respects the States, one is tempted to believe that De Tocqueville was unconsciously comparing America with France, where the Code has arrested legislation to an extent surprising to an English observer. During the last thirty years there have been more important changes in the ordinary law annually made by the English Parliament than by most American legislatures.

Every one knows how prominent this trait is among the observations which European visitors pass upon America. It is now much less noticeable than formerly. I can even say from experience that it had sensibly diminished between 1870 and 1883.

This observation seems strange indeed to any one who has read the commercial history of the United States since the great crisis of 1838.

Jackson’s popularity began with his military exploit: but his hold on the people was due to other causes also. His election coincided with the rise of the great democratic wave already referred to.

I do not profess to summarize in these few lines all that De Tocqueville says of the character and influence of Christianity in the United States, for he devotes many pages to it, and they are among the wisest and most permanently true that he has written.

Can this have been true even in 1832?

No proof is given of this proposition, which is by no means self-evident, and which has indeed all the air of a premiss laid down by a schoolman of the thirteenth century.

He has however nowhere proved that the States deserve to be called “peoples.”

The protective tariff was felt as a grievance by the South, being imposed in the interest of the Northern and Middle States. No doubt, the North got more gain out of the Union than the South did.

“Il est impossible d’imaginer une haine plus venimeuse que celle des Americains contre les Anglais.”

In the form of the amendment of particular provisions of State Constitutions.