Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

X

OUR TWO GREAT PARTIES: THEIR
ORIGIN AND TASKS 1

N

I. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

OTHING is more false than the cynicism, uttered often of late, that the end for which parties exist is the power and patronage of office. It is true that this is the end of the "party boss" and the "party machine," but it is not the end of parties themselves. Every legitimate party - and one may add that every great and durable party is legitimate - comes into being in order to do a particular work in the service of the state. Parties are born of public wants. It is with the state as with other organisms; its development waits on the satisfaction of its new wants. In the course of this development whenever a want appears for which the policy of the government and the policies of existing parties do not provide, then, in order to procure for it the satisfaction which cannot be found elsewhere, those citizens to whom this want appeals most strongly organize as a political party. To provide satisfaction for the particular public want which calls it into existence is the proper work of every party - the task assigned it by its master, the state. The success of a party depends on the clearness with which it perceives and on the fidelity with which it executes its allotted task. A just idea of this task is essential to every one who would be a good citizen. With this idea before him, he knows what the policy of his party should be, and he is able to do his share in securing its adoption and observance; without this idea, he is at the mercy of associates whose aim is to use party for the advancement of their own personal fortunes. Scarcely less important is a true conception of the tasks of parties other than one's own; for it enables each one to judge with fairness the conduct of all and to occupy a standpoint sufficiently elevated to command the entire political field. In order to ascertain with precision what are the tasks, both general and specific, of any given party, we need to study the circumstances of its origin; a commission is most legible when first made out.

1 Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VI, December, 1891; Vol. VII, September,

1892.

1. Origin of the Democratic Party

This, the older of the two great parties of the present, was organized on a national basis within the first five years after the inauguration of Washington. The situation at that time was as follows: The state parties which had led the way hitherto in the treatment of public questions could do so no longer. With the establishment of the new Constitution the centre of political interest had shifted; national concerns were now uppermost and were destined to remain so. But national parties had not as yet come into existence. The struggle over ratification which began in 1787 had taken the form of a series of state campaigns, in which each commonwealth decided for itself the matter at issue. Nevertheless there were certain features of the contest which prepared the way for the approaching consolidation of local into national parties. The questions debated were everywhere the same. From New Hampshire to Georgia, identical or very similar arguments were urged for and against the new plan. The leaders, and in particular those who were friendly to the proposed change, did not confine their efforts to their own States. In all of the commonwealths the influence of Washington was felt; in many of them the same was true of Madison and Hamilton, and, on the other side, of Henry and Lee. This hearty coöperation of political leaders belonging to the different States was a long step towards the union of their followers in national party organizations. But the event which finally effected this union and made it durable was the adoption of a definite and strongly national policy by the new federal government.

This policy, devised in the main by Hamilton, but receiving the cordial and earnest support of Washington, ran in important respects counter to the predilections of the majority of the American people. In the first place, its manifest and indeed avowed tendency to nationalize the Union offended those who still believed in the sovereignty of the individual States. In the second place, the energetic use which the government made of powers like that of imposing excises, which, although denied to its predecessor, were explicitly conferred by the new Constitution, alarmed those who were averse to strong government and in particular to a strong central government. The bold appropriation of other highly important powers, such as that of creating a bank, on the ground that they were conferred by implication - a principle which seemed of indefinite extensibility - had a like and even greater effect. Again, the financial policy of Hamilton, although it restored public credit and gave a healthful stimulus to general industry, was obnoxious to many because it established an alliance between the government and the owners and managers of capital, and thus threatened to bring into politics the corrupting influence of the "money power." To others this policy was objectionable because they thought that it sacrificed the interests of the South, where "the debt was owed," to those of the North, where "it was owned." In the fourth place, when the government at the beginning of the struggle in Europe declared for strict neutrality and made earnest endeavors to compose the old irritating differences with England, its course was altogether unpopular. France the people loved and wished to help; England they hated and wished to humble. Finally, the moderately but distinctly aristocratic tone of the administration brought it into collision with the social movement of the time which was increasingly democratic, and, what was of greater immediate importance, gave color to the charge, made repeatedly by Jefferson and his friends, that those in control of the government were at heart traitors to republicanism, and were secretly plotting its overthrow and the reintroduction of monarchy. We have, it is true, convincing proof that the accusation was false; but it was honestly made, was widely believed and had very great influence. One noteworthy result was that it led the opposition to pose as defenders-in-chief of the Constitution against those who had taken the leading part in framing it and in securing its adoption. Despite its untruth and injustice, the delusion in respect to the anti-republican spirit and purposes of the Federalists was useful in repressing revolutionary tendencies, and in developing loyalty to the new system among those who at first regarded it with suspicion if not enmity.

It was during the five years beginning with 1789 that the government, in a series of remarkable measures, defined its policy in reference to the matters named above, and that the different classes of citizens whom it offended began, with little regard to state or sectional lines, to draw together and to act with a common purpose. At first the opposition was prompted more by instinct than by calculation, and was both irregular and ineffective; but before the end of 1793, under the leadership of Jefferson and the discipline of repeated contests over definite issues, it became organized as a durable and formidable party. But organization does not provide the material of

1

1 In a letter written to Washington, dated May 23, 1792, Jefferson summarizes his objections to the policy of the government. In the arrangement of the funding scheme and associated measures he asserts, under the form of reporting the views of others: "That all the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass: that it nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness, instead of industry and morality; that it has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed: that this corrupt squadron, deciding the voice of the legislature, have manifested their dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed by the Constitution on the general legislature, limitations on the faith of which the States acceded to that instrument: that the ultimate object of all this is to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the English constitution is to be the model." - Jefferson, Works, III, 359.

which a new party is composed; it can only bring together material already in existence. Hence the real beginnings of a party must be sought for, not in the few months or years during which its organization is effected, but in a greatly extended earlier period. They are to be found only in the slow growth of ideas and convictions which are the foundation of political character, and as such determine the attitude of citizens toward public questions. There must have been Democrats before there could be a Democratic party; and the beginnings of the party are to be traced in the processes which developed in citizens the spirit and purposes of democracy.

We have seen that antagonism to the centralizing and conservative policy of the early Federal administrations was the immediate motive that led to the formation of the first Republican, or as we now term it, Democratic party. But this antagonism itself was the fruit of the progress of many centuries. Indeed it is not too much to say that to its growth every influence ministered which worked for the establishment of two ideas: first, that citizens should have equal civil and political rights; second, that government should be under the control and in the service, not of privileged classes, nor of favored individuals, but of the people. Looking simply at the field of American history, it would be just to enumerate among the causes of the origin of the Democratic party all influences which from the beginning of the colonial period carried forward at a really marvelous rate the democratization of American character. Of these it will suffice to mention three: first, that sifting process by which the persecutors of the Old World sent to the leading colonies of the new those of their subjects who were most democratically inclined, - the men who, although not yet ready to concede freedom to others, were most resolute in asserting it for themselves; second, the protracted and severe but altogether wholesome discipline, economic, social, military and political, through which in the course of somewhat more than a century and a half the colonists grew into fitness for self-government; and lastly, the Revolution itself, which was a social as well as a political up

« AnteriorContinuar »