CHAP. XI.

HOPES OF THE PEOPLE.

241

workshops and association. Several establishments based on this principle have already been tried in the West. In New York the experiment has failed. But the scheme is still regarded with confidence, and the idea of the "progressive" party is that there shall be no more hired labourers in the country, but that men shall work for a share of profits instead of for wages.10 These aims can be accomplished in the United States, if anywhere. Almost any experiment can be attempted there with safety. But the good is all to be achieved in the future, for at present the working man, without capital to assist him, is scarcely any better off in America than he is in England, and a skilled workmen is not often so well off. He is taxed as heavily as in England, if the price he is compelled to pay for clothing be taken into account, and his wages are only nominally higher. The dollar in these days is not more than the equivalent of the English shilling. The addition of that modern specific for all human troubles, the "vote," is not always sufficient to compensate the workman for the inconvenience of uprooting his old associations, and for the expense of settling his family in a strange land.

10 See the North American Review,' for July, 1867.

R

CHAPTER XII.

PROSPECTS OF THE UNION.

WE have seen that at every stage in the history of the Union a large proportion of the people have been profoundly dissatisfied with the government, and that even the founders of the Constitution seriously questioned its stability. In three States only was the Constitution adopted unanimously, and in other States there was scarcely a sufficient majority to carry the measure.' The Convention in which the instrument was drawn up several times nearly separated without coming to any agreement. Washington admitted that the contest had been one, not so much for glory, as for existence. John Quincy Adams spoke of the Constitution as a compact "extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation." It had no sooner been ratified than it brought into existence two great parties, which have ever since, under various names, been at issue concerning the construction of its fundamental provisions. The interests of the States were incompatible, and their bitter dissensions have deepened with

2

] Story, chapter ii. p. 191.

2 Sixth President.

CHAP. XII. EARLY APPREHENSIONS FOR THE UNION.

243

each successive generation. In a very remarkable letter from Jefferson to the ex-President Martin Van Buren,3 he says-" General Washington was himself sincerely a friend to the republican principles of our Constitution. His faith, perhaps, in its duration might not have been as confident as mine; but he repeatedly declared to me that he was determined it should have a fair chance of success." Hamilton, it is well known, thought that the government could not last; and men like Otis, Hopkins, John Adams, and Gouverneur Morris-all of whom had an important share in defining the Constitution-fully agreed with him. Two years before Hamilton's death— namely, in 1802—he wrote a letter to Gouverneur Morris, in which he spoke of himself as "still labouring to prop the frail and worthless fabric." more than one great American it has been held that the founders of the Constitution intended to provide the means for bringing the government to a peaceable end, by the failure of choice of electors.5 Others anticipated dismemberment from the increasing area of the Union, and from the impossibility of establishing a complete identity of feeling or interests." With the growth and prosperity of the country,

By

3 Written 29th June, 1824, and first published in 1867. See 'Political Parties,' by Martin Van Buren (New York, 1867). Appendix, p. 434.

5 Ibid. p. 48, and supra, p. 58.

4 Ibid. p. 84. 6 “This country, fully peopled or half-peopled, is large enough to make five or six great nations, each with its system of central and local government. The time will come when it will be so divided,

unforeseen sources of danger have arisen. That new and vast community which is growing up on the Pacific coast may not always be contented to endure the restraints of the Federal bond, and may insist on casting it off. Except in their attachment to the national idea, the Union has little hold upon the Pacific States. Indeed, the most potent cause of disaffection, and the one which is ever at work, is the want of strong political sympathy between the people North and South, East and West. The determination of the North to extinguish the individualism of the South, and of the East to perpetuate a policy of prohibitory tariffs and protection, so fatal to the interests of the West, are far from being the only instances of a lack of a general regard for the general welfare. Whatever may be said in disproof of Calhoun's arguments for State rights, the accuracy of his remarks with regard to the position of rival sections has never been disputed. "The equilibrium between the two sections," he writes, "has been permanently destroyed. The Northern section in consequence will ever concentrate within itself the two majorities of which the government is composed; and should the Southern be excluded from all Territories now acquired, or to be hereafter acquired, it will soon have so decided a preponderance in the government and the Union as to be able to mould the Constitution to its pleasure. There can

with or without such a system for each of its parts."-Fisher's Trial of the Constitution,' p. 160.

CHAP. XII. GLOOMY PREDICTIONS OF AMERICANS.

245

be no safety for the weaker section. It places in the hands of the stronger and hostile section the power to crush her and her institutions, and leaves her no alternative but to resist, or sink down into a colonial condition."" Time has fully accomplished these predictions. The South is not only excluded from Territories, but her independent existence has been destroyed. There remain only ten or eleven millions of white citizens living under military surveillance in a great camp.

The indignation which Americans are accustomed to profess concerning the gloomy prophecies of European observers during the war of 1861-65, is a strange example of national forgetfulness and inconsistency. The separation of the States is the end which a large number of their greatest statesmen and publicists have constantly foretold. At least one half of the American people themselves either feared or believed that a dissolution of the Union was rendered inevitable by the revolt of the South. Fully as large a proportion of the public journals in America predicted that result as could be found in England, at any time during the war. It was not alone the Democratic press which uttered these prognostications. The organs of the Republican party were equally decided in their tone. The 'Tribune' is the most powerful organ of the Radicals, and on the 9th of November, 1860, it said," If the cotton States shall

7 'Disquisition on Government,' Calhoun's Works, i. p. 300.