Moreover, if the Government kept faith with the treaty of 1778, it would have to reckon with the turbulent masses of excited citizenry at home—"all the old spirit of 1776,” wrote Mr. Jefferson, “rekindling the newspapers from Boston to Charleston.” The whole debtor class was involved; a quarrel with England would void the stipulations for payment written into the treaty of 1783, and to a man they were determined, as Wolcott put it, “to weaken the public force so as to render the recovery of these debts impossible.” From this it would be a short step to summary dealing with domestic exploiting interests. Hatred of Hamilton’s “corrupt squadron of paper-dealers” in Congress, and resentment at the oppressive ascendency of their affiliated interests outside, the “stock-jobbers and king-jobbers,” was being busily organized; so-called “democratic societies” were springing up everywhere, and propounding what seemed to the Government a thinly-veiled Jacobinism. If America took the side of France, Hamilton wrote, “it was to be feared that the war would be conducted in a spirit which would render it more than ordinarily calamitous. There are too many proofs that a considerable party among us is deeply infected with those horrid principles of Jacobinism which, proceeding from one excess to another, have made France a theatre of blood. . . . It was too probable that the direction of the war, if commenced, would have fallen into the hands of men of this description. The consequences of this, even in imagination, are such as to make any virtuous man shudder.”
Washington’s perplexity was as deep as his difficulties. A sincere republican, he was really friendly to the French struggle towards republicanism. An honest man, he felt the profound inconsistency of his position if, as head of the new Western republic, he should discountenance or discourage that struggle. Sensitive to oppression in its gross and obvious forms, he believed in revolution—had he not been a revolutionist himself?—as long as its conduct remained in the right hands and brought the right kind of people out on top. He could see the point of a revolution against the British King and his ministers, for instance, but not of one against American revenue-officers in Pennsylvania or against the merchant-creditor ring in Massachusetts. He understood rebellion against taxation arbitrarily imposed by an interested foreign Power, but not against taxation as arbitrarily imposed by an interested native minority. His mind was “slow in operation,” Mr. Jefferson said, “being little aided by invention or imagination,” and his education had been rudimentary, “merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.” He read little. He was one of the richest men in the country, and though a Virginian and a planter, neither his instincts nor his pursuits were primarily those of a producer; his chief interests were in landholding and money-lending; and his predilections followed his interests no less closely, and no more, probably, than is the case with the average of upright men. Paine’s bitter condemnation of him for having turned the country over to the tender mercies of monopolists and speculators merely wounded his sensibilities without ever reaching his understanding. Why, to whom else should the country be turned over?—to the ignorant rabble of workingmen and farmers? He had done the best he could. Had he not himself bitterly deplored speculation when it got out of the hands of the judicious and began to run wild among Tom, Dick and Harry? He was, in short, a thorough-going liberal of the best type, eager to see “with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good,” but with all a liberal’s nervous horror of an overdose, and all a liberal’s naïve assumption of competent natural authority to prescribe and regulate the dose.
Washington set himself against the French. The treaty of 1778 did not trouble his conscience; he had gone far enough in statecraft to become aware that a treaty is merely the memorandum of an accomodation of interests, usually made under duress, and that it imposes no moral obligation when the balance of those interests shifts. He therefore announced that the treaty had been made with the French monarchy, now defunct, and that he could not recognize the right of a succeeding government to claim American assistance under its provisions.
One of Mr. Jefferson’s last acts as Secretary of State was to arrange for the recall of Genêt. He was disgusted with the bad manners, so necessary to successful popular agitation, which Genêt displayed in the character of agent provocateur to embroil Washington with Congress and the whole Administration with the people. Never, he thought “was so calamitous an appointment made as that of the present minister of France here. . . . His conduct is indefensible by the most furious Jacobin.” Yet he dealt with him patiently, “doing everything in my power to moderate the impetuosity of his movements,” and thought he should be put up with as long as possible, believing that his heated indecencies would overreach themselves, and that the net effect of his presence might be to make some weight in favour of “a fair neutrality,” which was what Mr. Jefferson most desired.
He too had no scruples or superstitions about the treaty of 1778, always having strong notions of the value of American neutrality as a bargaining-point whereby the incessant wars of Europe might be regularly used as leverage for the promotion of American producing interests. In a letter from Paris in 1788, he had urged this upon Washington as a continuous national policy; and a sense of it had most to do, probably, with his inveterate aversion to entangling alliances abroad. Though he disliked war, he was never a doctrinaire pacifist; he kept his sentiments and preferences quite separate from his practical view of national circumstances. He saw peace, in the present instance, as simply the most profitable asset of the American producer, and war as the most profitless sacrifice of the producer’s welfare. “I hope France, England and Spain will all see it their interest to let us make bread for them in peace, and to give us a good price for it.” America could well afford to put up with a good deal of chivvying for the sake of this hope, and though he feared that at first “a fair neutrality will prove a disagreeable pill,” to the French, he knew that only a fair neutrality could realize his hope, and he was confident that self-interest would in the end cause France to worry down the pill without overmuch retching.
What he most feared was that Washington’s proclamation of neutrality would not really mean a fair neutrality. He had an inkling of the conscious solidarity of Anglo-American monopolistic and capitalistic interest. He wrote Madison in May, 1793, that “the line is now drawn so clearly as to show on one side, 1. The fashionable circles of Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston (natural aristocrats). 2. Merchants trading on British capital. 3. Paper men (all the old Tories are found in some one of the three descriptions). On the other side are, 1. Merchants trading on their own capital. 2. Irish merchants. 3. Tradesmen, mechanics, farmers, and every other possible description of our citizens.” Would the Government, in its international relations, take the same side that it had always taken in its domestic relations? Would it go over to the side of the producer by “a manly neutrality, claiming the liberal rights ascribed to that condition by the very Powers at war,” or would it, by “a sneaking neutrality,” really pro-English, keep on the side of the international monopolist and exploiting interests? There was no doubt about the disposition of the President’s advisers; a good deal depended upon the President’s own disposition; but much more depended upon the producer’s own vigilant readiness to assert himself. “If anything prevents its being a mere English neutrality,” Mr. Jefferson wrote his anxious friend Madison, “it will be that the penchant of the President is not that way, and above all, the ardent spirit of our constituents.”
Washington made his proclamation. He then sent to London the best Anglo-American in the country, Chief Justice Jay, a man of flawless character and great ability, whose devotion to Hamilton’s principle of preponderance for “the rich and well-born” was austerely conscientious. He was downright candid in declaring that “those who own the country should govern the country.” John Jay negotiated a treaty with the British Foreign Office, which William Cobbett, then acting as a propagandist in the United States, afterwards described in a letter to Pitt as a
victory for England, “infinitely more important than all [Lord Melville’s] victories in the West Indies put together, which latter victories cost England thirty thousand men and fifty millions of money.” Mr. Jefferson, in retirement at Monticello, spoke of it indignantly as “really nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England and the Anglomen of this country against the Legislature and people of the United States.” News of the treaty shook the country. “I have never,” Mr. Jefferson wrote Monroe, who was then minister in Paris—poor soul!—trying in sincere puzzlement to smooth down the irate French, “I have never known the public pulse beat so full and in such universal union on any subject since the Declaration of Independence.” Jay was burned in effigy from one end of the country to the other, and Hamilton was stoned from the platform while speaking in defence of the treaty.
Even Washington, whose second term was about expiring, went under a cloud. When he refused the demand of the House of Representatives that he should lay before them a copy of Jay’s instructions and the correspondence relating to the British treaty, the people lost faith in him. Mr. Jefferson, whose estimate of him was always singularly just, defended him staunchly. “He errs as other men do,” he wrote to a wrathful neighbour in Virginia, “but he errs with integrity”; and somewhat more informally he wrote later to Madison, “I wish that his honesty and his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, ‘Curse on his virtues, they have undone his country!’” Resentment against Washington, however, did not last. Indeed, in the long-run quite probably, as Mr. Jefferson said, his reputation came to be even “more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans,” whose regard for his virtues was disinterested, “than in the pharasaical homage of the federal monarchists,” whose main concern was with making use of him, and with building a supporting tradition around him in behalf of their policies. Long after the death of the three men whose names are most closely associated with the establishment of America’s economic system, John Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson a rambling disquisition on the “abuses of grief,” in which he made a vivid incidental reference to this technique of tradition building.
The death of Washington diffused a general grief. The old Tories, the hyperfederalists, the speculators, set up a general howl. Orations, prayers, sermons, mock funerals, were all employed, not that they loved Washington, but to keep in countenance the funding and banking system; and to cast into the background and the shade all others who had been concerned in the service of their country in the Revolution.
The death of Hamilton, under all its circumstances, produced a general grief. His most determined enemies did not like to get rid of him in that way. They pitied, too, his widow and children. His party seized the moment of public feeling to come forward with funeral orations and printed panegyrics, reinforced with mock funerals and solemn grimaces, and all this who have buried Otis, Sam Adams, Hancock and Gerry in comparative obscurity. And why? Merely to disgrace the old Whigs, and keep the funds and banks in countenance.
The death of Mr. Ames excited a general regret. His long consumption, his amiable character and reputable talents, had attracted a general interest, and his death a general mourning. His party made the most of it by processions, orations and mock funeral. And why? To glorify the Tories, to abash the Whigs, and maintain the reputation of funds, banks and speculations.
Mr. Jefferson foresaw that Washington’s retirement was coming on the nick of time to carry over a rich legacy of trouble to the succeeding Administration. “The President is fortunate,” he wrote Madison, “to get off just as the bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag. Yet, as his departure will mark the moment when the difficulties begin to work, you will see that they will be ascribed to the new Administration, and that he will have his usual good fortune of reaping credit from the good acts of others, and leaving to them that of his errors.” He was interested in this, inasmuch as he had just been elected to play a kind of supernumerary part in the new Administration, as Vice-President under John Adams.
V
Mr. Jefferson made the most of his three years retirement from the dishevelling squalor of routine politics. For a long time he did not even read the newspapers. He wrote his former colleague, Edmund Randolph, who had succeeded him as Secretary of State, “I think it is Montaigne who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. I am sure it is true as to everything political, and shall endeavour to estrange myself to everything of that character. I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives to the First and Second Congresses, and their implicit devotion to the Treasury. I think I do good in this, because it may produce exertions to reform the evil.” He shortly gravitated into the position, quite alien to his natural bent, of leadership in a great popular movement; and he also came to be regarded, by no means properly, as the philosopher and thinker of that movement. All this came about because a double bill of availability had to be filled, and there was no one else to fill it. Among the profounder students of public affairs, like Taylor, none was enough of a national figure to be a vote-getter; and among those who relished popular leadership and had a gift for it, none had Mr. Jefferson’s peculiar record of aloofness from the general scuffle for easy money. Patrick Henry, for example, in the best sense of the word a great demagogue, had been busy in various speculative enterprises, and had done well out of them—so well that the Federalists thought it safe to approach him as a possible candidate for the Presidency.
Thus Mr. Jefferson was projected into the campaign of 1796, and finally found himself in the one public office that exactly suited him. He was a born Vice-President. He wrote Madison that “it is the only office in the world about which I am unable to decide in my own mind whether I would rather have it than not have it,” which was a great concession. He wrote Gerry that “the second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery,” and to Volney that it seemed possible “you may see me in Philadelphia about the beginning of March, exactly in the character which if I were to reappear at Philadelphia, I would prefer to all others; for I change the sentiment of Clorinda to l’alte temo, l’humile non sdegno.” Gossip went abroad that he would refuse the Vice-Presidency as infra dig., and this rumour set off the only flash of interest that he manifested in the whole campaign. He wrote at once in great consternation to several friends that there was nothing in it; that he had always played second fiddle to John Adams, and had every desire to keep on doing so. “I am his junior in life, was his junior in Congress, his junior in the diplomatic line, his junior lately in the civil Government.” He wrote Madison that the election was likely to be close; if it reached the danger-point, “I pray you, and authorize you fully, to solicit on my behalf that Mr. Adams may be preferred.” Towards the close of the same letter he let the cat out of the bag with the observation that public affairs, as he saw them, “never wore so gloomy an aspect since the year 1783. Let those come to the helm who think they can steer clear of the difficulties. I have no confidence in myself for the undertaking.”
The best thing for the opposition-movement for the next four years was to let it precipitate itself into solidarity, like accretions of limestone, around the fossil of the Vice-Presidency. The election turned out that way by a scary margin of three votes; and there was uncommon warmth in Mr. Jefferson’s letter of thanks to his old friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, for “your congratulations on the public call on me to undertake the second office in the United States, but still more for the justice you do me in viewing as I do the escape from the first. I have no wish again to meddle in public affairs, being happier at home than I can be anywhere else. Still less do I wish to engage in an office where it would be impossible to satisfy either friends or foes, and least of all at a moment when the storm is about to burst, which has been conjuring up for four years past. If I am to act, however, a more tranquil and unoffending station could not have bee
n found for me, nor one more analogous to the dispositions of my mind. It will give me philosophical evenings in the winter, and rural days in summer.”
VI
John Adams’s position as a candidate was somewhat like Mr. Jefferson’s. Both sides were about equally hard up for just the right kind of man. Able men, for the most part, naturally preferred to profit by politics rather than engage in them, especially in a land whose resources made the opportunities for quick profit so great; and hence the practice of politics began quite early to go into the hands of mere professional agents. Washington had great difficulty in filling up his second cabinet, and in the end had to be content with poor figures. Of the few first-rate men available for the Presidency in 1796, the best by far was Jay; but with the odium of the British treaty reeking in the public’s nostrils, he would have been an utter failure as a vote-getter. As Mr. Jefferson sardonically wrote Monroe, he was “completely treatyfoundered.” Hamilton himself never had any popular following; he was never able to attract the confidence of the public in any large way, and he was aware of it. About the only thing left in stock that stood any chance of suiting the market was Adams, and there were prayerful misgivings about him.
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