of peace. Louisiana had long since (April 30, 1812) become a State of the Union, and Indiana was also admitted (December 11, 1816). An act was passed under the leadership of Lowndes, of South Carolina, providing for the payment, in instalments of ten millions of dollars annually, of the national debt of one hundred and twenty millions. Taxes were reduced, the tariff was slightly increased, and in April, 1816, a second national bank was chartered for a term of twenty years. Here, as in some other matters, at least one of the parties proved to have changed ground, and the Democratic Republican newspapers began eagerly to reprint Hamilton's arguments for a bank -arguments which they had formerly denounced and derided. To the Federalists the passage of the bank act was a complete triumph, and, while their own party disappeared, they could feel that some of its principles survived. A national bank was their policy, not that of Jefferson; and Jefferson and Madison had, moreover, lived to take up those theories of a strong national government which they had formerly called monarchical and despotic. The Federalists had, indeed, come equally near to embracing the extreme State - rights doctrines which their opponents had laid down; but the laws of physical perspective seem to be reversed in moral perspective, so that our own change of position seems to us insignificant, while an equal change on the other side looks conspicuous and important. Be this as it may, Madison's administration closed in peace, partly the peace of good-nature, partly of fatigue. The usual nominations were made for the Presidency by the Congressional caucuses, but when it came to the voting it was almost all one way. The only States choos

ing Federalist electors were Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. James Monroe-Josiah Quincy's "James the Second"-had 183 electoral votes, against 34 for Rufus King, so that four years more of yet milder Jeffersonianism were secured. The era of bitterness had passed and the "era of good feeling" was at hand.

XVI

THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING

ANY Presidents of the United States have served

MANY

their country by remaining at Washington, but probably James Monroe was the only one who ever accomplished great good by going on an excursion. Few battles in the Revolution were of so much benefit to the nation as the journey which, in 1817, the President decided to undertake. There were two especial reasons for this beneficent result: the tour reconciled the people to the administration, and it reconciled the administration to what seemed the really alarming growth of the people.

The fact that. Monroe was not generally held to be a very great man enhanced the value of this expedition. He had been an unfortunate diplomatist, retrieving his failures by good-luck; as a soldier, he had blundered at Washington, and yet had retained enough of confidence to be talked of as probable commander of a Canadian invasion. All this was rather advantageous. It is sometimes a good thing when a ruler is not personally eminent enough to obscure his office. In such a case, what the man loses the office may gain. Wherever Washington went he was received as a father among grateful children; Adams had his admirers, Jefferson his adorers; Madison had carried through a war which, if not successful, was

at least a drawn game. All these, had they undertaken what play-actors call “starring in the provinces," would have been received as stars, not as officials. Whatever applauses they received would have been given to the individual, not the President. But when Monroe travelled, it was simply the Chief Magistrate of the nation who met the eyes of men. He was not a star, but a member of the company, a stock actor, one of themselves. In the speeches with which he was everywhere received there was very little said about his personality; it was the head of the nation who was welcomed. Thus stripped of all individual prestige, the occasion appealed to every citizen. For the first time the people of the United States met their President as such, and felt that they were a nation.

It was at the end of sixteen years of strife-political strife more bitter than can easily be paralleled in these calmer days. The result of this contest may in some respects have been doubtful, but on one point at least it was clear. It had extinguished the colonial theory of government and substituted the national. Hamilton and the Federalists, with all their high qualities, had still disbelieved in all that lay beyond the domain of experience. But experience, as Coleridge said, is like the stern-lights of a ship, illumining only the track already passed over. Jefferson, with all his faults, had steered for the open sea. Madison's war had impoverished the nation, but had saved its self-respect. Henceforward the American flag was that of an independent people—a people ready to submit to nothing, even from England, which England would not tolerate in return. And it so happened that all the immediate honor of this increased

self-respect belonged, or seemed to belong, to the party in power. Jefferson was the most pacific of men, except Madison; both dreaded a standing army, and shrank with reluctance from a navy; yet the laurels of both arms of the service, such as they were, went to Madison and Jefferson. The Federalists, who had begged for a navy and had threatened to raise an army on their own account, now got no credit for either. That party held, on the whole, the best educated, the most high-minded, the most solvent part of the nation; yet it had been wrecked by its own want of faith. When in the Electoral College Monroe had 183 votes, against 34 for Rufus King, it was plain that the contest was at an end, and that the nation was ready to be soothed. Monroe was precisely the sedative to be applied, and his journey was the process of application.

So much for the people; but there were also anxieties to be quieted among the nation's statesmen. Not only did the people need to learn confidence in their leaders, but the leaders in the people. It was not that republican government itself was on trial, but that its scale seemed so formidable. Nobody doubted that it was a thing applicable among a few mountain communities, like those of Switzerland. What even the Democratic statesmen of that day doubted-and they had plenty of reason for the fear -was the possibility of applying self-government to the length and breadth of a continent peopled by many millions of men. They were not dismayed by the principle, but by its application; not by the philosophy, but the geography. Washington himself, we know, was opposed to undertaking the ownership of the Mississippi River; and Monroe, when a mem