discretionary authority to veto any state legislation, and who had declared that the people "wilì never be satisfied till some remedy be applied to the vicissitudes and uncertainties which characterized the state administrations," 1 draughted the Virginia resolutions. They declare the constitution to be "a compact to which the states are parties," so that they have a right to interpose their authority when the federal government attempts "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted in that compact." In 1786, when the states were united only by the loose ties of the Confederation, Jefferson laid down the doctrine that "when any one state in the American union refuses obedience to the Confederation, by which they have bound themselves, the rest have a natural right to compel them to obedience." 2 The time had now arrived when he draughted the Kentucky resolutions, asserting the right of any one state "to nullify of its own authority all assumptions of power by others, within its limits." Thus was developed a resource of opposition which was long in habitual use as a menace to federal policy. During Madison's administration, the New England Federalists carried state opposition almost to the stage of secession. At various times, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts, 1 The Federalist, No. 37. 2 Jefferson's Writings, Vol. IV., p. 147. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Maine have each imitated the example of Virginia and Kentucky and made threats of nullification. All parties in turn have made use of such means of opposition, until it was suppressed forever by the Civil War. The tendency has not ceased altogether, but it is now reduced to such absurd shifts as were displayed during the agitation over the Force Bill in aid of federal election laws, when the most that state opposition could do was to threaten to withhold appropriations for state representation at the Chicago World's Fair. The alien and sedition laws doomed the Federalist party. The people rebelled against the yoke, and the Federalists went down in irretrievable ruin. It may seem strange that a party of which Washington had been the head, and which founded the government, was so deficient in vitality that it could never recover from the shock of defeat, but its position was weak and precarious from the first. The combination of interests which produced it never attained true party union. The deep antagonism, originating in the events of the Revolutionary War, divided it in a way that made it incapable of united action after Washington's control and influence had been removed. John Adams had belonged to the old congressional group. Although thrown by circumstances into party antagonism, Jefferson and Adams had a strong personal esteem for each other. When Adams was elected, Jefferson wrote to Madison, asking if "it would not be worthy of consideration whether it would not be for the public good to come to a good understanding with him." On the other hand, the military group profoundly. distrusted Adams. Washington's relations with Adams were marked by formality and reserve, and Adams wrote that he detested "that contracted principle of monopoly and exclusion which had prevailed through Washington's administration." Hamilton, in his famous denunciation of Adams, made it a count of his indictment that Adams, as a member of the Continental Congress, had supported the system of annual enlistments which had been so injurious to the discipline and efficiency of the army. Hamilton would have prevented Adams' election could he have done so, and Adams was so distrusted by his party that his cabinet officials looked to Hamilton for instruction and advice on important points of public policy. For a considerable period Adams' administration was subject to a secret control and was but nominally under his direction. This false situation ended in an open breach between Hamilton and Adams, which shattered the Federal party. But even had it escaped these intestine disorders, the original Federal party was doomed to extinction. Old-fashioned Federalism was the product of an order of ideas transmitted from the colonial period, and fast becoming obsolete. Under the new conditions of thought and feeling, created by the progress of the nation, it was inevitable either that it should perish or else be completely transformed. Burr's pistol blew the brains out of the Federal party; for Hamilton's death removed the only leader who might have risen to the occasion and made a new departure. Before it died, Federalism had degenerated into a senile Toryism, as much out of touch with the age, and as incapable of political activity, as Jacobitism in England. The extraordinary scenes which disgraced the close of Adams' administration were the natural product of Federalist ideas of government. The constitution seemed to have gone to wreck, and the duty of the hour was to make as great a salvage as possible. "In the future administration of our country," wrote Adams to Jay, in offering him the chief justiceship, "the firmest security we can have against the effects of visionary schemes or fluctuating theories will be in a solid judiciary; and nothing will cheer the hopes of the best men so much as your acceptance of this appointment." Jay declined the office. "I left the bench," he said, "perfectly convinced that under a system so defective it would not obtain the energy, weight, and dignity which were essential to its affording due support to the national government, nor acquire the public confidence and respect which, as the last resort of the justice of the nation, it should possess." Had Jay resolved to brave the perils he feared, John Marshall might have passed obscurely into history as a serviceable partisan, instead of as the great chief justice. Even after his appointment to the bench, Marshall continued at Adams' urgent request to hold the office of Secretary of State. He was kept busy issuing federal commissions, as Federalists were appointed to every office in the reach of the administration. A bill was hurried through Congress, establishing circuit courts and providing for thirty-six new judgeships, which were promptly filled. The work of appointing Federalists to office went on to the very last hour of Adams' term of office. Jefferson's installation in office was an event that was regarded with gloomy foreboding by the old school of statesmen. It seemed that the time had arrived of which Fisher Ames wrote: "The Democrats really wish to see an impossible experiment fairly tried, and to govern without government. There is universally a presumption in Democracy that promises everything; and at the same time an imbecility that can accomplish nothing, nor even preserve itself.” But although it seemed that party spirit had trampled over constitutional government, there was at work, quite unsuspected, a principle of conservatism that seems to be peculiar to party of the English and American type. |