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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030484046 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 CONSIDERED AS A PARTY NAME AND AS A 
 
 POLITICAL ORGANIZATION 
 
 JONATHAN :gORCROSS 
 
 AUTHOR OF ''the CONFLICT OF LABOR AND CAPITAL," " COMMON-SENSE VIEWS OF 
 STATE SOVEREIGNTY verstts UNITED STATES SUPREMACY," '^ DEMOC- 
 RACY EXAMINED," ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS . 
 1883 
 
^^^ 9 v*?- 
 
 4. 
 
 Copyright by 
 JONATHAN NORCROSS 
 
 18S3 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 XVII. 
 
 Introductory ....... 
 
 Democracy in Ancient Greece .... 
 
 The Results of Democracy in Athens 
 
 Democracy and Clisthenes, and the Exchange of the 
 Ballot-box for the Lottery-box 
 
 The Democracy, the Ostracism, and the Court of 
 Registration ...... 
 
 Pericles, the Guardian of Athens, and Democracy 
 
 Republicanism and Democracy further Contrasted, 
 Interrogatories ...... 
 
 The First Democratic Party in America . 
 
 Thomas Jefferson Not a Democrat. — Democracy 
 Classified. — The Declaration of Independence Not 
 a JJemocratic Document. — The Articles of. Con- 
 federation Purely Democratic. — The Constitution 
 of the United States Providentially Ratified by the 
 People, Regardless of Democracy 
 
 Alien and Sedition Laws and Kentucky Resolutions . 
 
 The Democratic Party and the Condition of the 
 Country when it Acceded to Supreme Power 
 
 Jackson's First Views of the Great Measures and 
 Principles of the Fathers, and the Programme of 
 Destruction Concocted by his Advisers 
 
 Observations on the Situation, and Further Narra- 
 tion of Reactionary Movements .... 
 
 The Protective Tariff and Democratic Warfare 
 Against it. — Henry Clay 
 
 The Bank of the United States and the Democratic 
 Party 
 
 Thomas H. Benton and Modern Democracy 
 
 The Bank of the United States Further Discussed 
 
 20 
 
 24 
 
 49 
 
 57 
 
 <35 
 
 72 
 
 79 
 
 87 
 
 94 
 
 114 
 
 121 
 
IV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The Bank of the United States and its Discussion 
 Continued ...... 
 
 The Removal of the Deposits . 
 " " " " Continued 
 
 State Banks and Public Plunderers . 
 Tlie Crash of 1837 and the Steps which Led to it 
 Retrospect, and Comparative Pilferings and Expen- 
 ditures of Different Parties and Administrations 
 Conclusion ....... 
 
 130 
 147 
 155 
 164 
 
 173 
 
 193 
 
 204 
 215 
 
THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY CON- 
 SIDERED AS A PARTY NAME 
 AND AS A POLITICAL 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Now that sectional and partisan strifes for sec- 
 tional and partisan purposes are greatly abated, and 
 those who read can give more attention to the prin- 
 ciples and influences which lie at the foundation of, 
 and the vices which endanger, free institutions, it is 
 proposed to give in these chapters a historical sketch 
 of the word Democracy as a party name and organi- 
 zation, together with such reflections and inferences 
 as the narration may suggest. 
 
 The word Democracy has a variety of meanings. 
 It means, according to popular usage, a government 
 by the people ; the same, or nearly the same, as the 
 word Republicanism. In its last analysis, it means 
 no government at all ; or it means a despotism the 
 most cruel, galling, and destructive ever known to 
 mankind ; or it means a political party and organi- 
 zation which, when in possession of supreme power, 
 knows no rule, precedent, or law for its guidance, 
 except its own will, or the will of its chiefs. It 
 
2 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 is, therefore, chiefly its history as a party name and 
 organization that it is proposed to give in these 
 articles. There maybe some objections to the word 
 RepubHcanism as a party name, and some dark stains 
 upon its history. If so, it is the duty of some patriot 
 to point them out. I shall content myself with 
 exposing and commenting upon Democracy as a 
 party name and organization. And I trust it will be 
 by no means difficult to show that the word used as 
 a party name or title has almost invariably proved 
 to be, in practice, as far from the abstract or popular 
 meaning of the word as the east is from the west, or 
 as darkness is from light. If, then, this charge can be 
 established from the history of Democracy, such a 
 party ought not to exist, and cannot exist without 
 endangering free institutions and the representative 
 form of government. But if the charge be not well 
 founded, or if it will apply as well to any other party 
 or party name, then the benefits to arise from its 
 investigation should stimulate patriots to enter upon 
 the work. From such an investigation would likely 
 come a truer estimation and correction of party 
 abuses, and a higher elevation and purification of 
 the means for maintaining free government and 
 equal rights, and consequently greater security and 
 safety for the people. But of all this the reader 
 must judge as we proceed with these historical 
 sketches. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DEMOCRACY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 
 
 The history of Greece, or rather the history of 
 Athens, in its relations and intercourse with other 
 parts of Greece, from the days of Solon till the 
 fall of Athens — about two hundred years, — is as 
 thorough and comprehensive as that of any other 
 country. Its poets, historians, orators, and artists, 
 whose works have come down to the present time, 
 are numerous, and such as have enabled modern 
 students to place the history of the people and their 
 wars and politics in glowing light, affording thorough 
 bases for reflection upon such history. But in a 
 study like this only salient points and leading events 
 can be touched upon, as illustrations for the subject 
 in hand. 
 
 The first Democratic party of which we have any 
 account sprang into existence in ancient Athens in 
 the days of Solon, about twenty-five hundred years 
 ago, or 600 years B.C. At that time Athens, or the 
 state of Attica, was or had been in a flourishing 
 condition. Letters had been introduced into Greece, 
 and learning, philosophy, architecture, music, and 
 many other arts had made great progress, especially 
 in Athens. Homer and Hesiod had long since pro- 
 duced their immortal poems. The famous Court of 
 the Areopagus and the Senate of Four Hundred had 
 
 3 
 
4 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 been in existence time out o.f mind. A governor, or 
 archon, was elected for ten years by the people, and 
 probably all, except the judges of the Areopagus, 
 who consisted of ex-archons, were elected by popu- 
 lar vote. The Wise Men of Greece, some of whose 
 moral and political maxims have come down to this 
 day, had lived and exercised their influence upon the 
 people of their country. 
 
 Attica was a small state comprising not more than 
 eight or nine hundred square miles of territory, or a 
 little less than is contained in the State of Rhode 
 Island. On that small territory there appear to 
 have long existed Democratic sentiments and local 
 sovereignty doctrines, founded upon the interests of 
 the city of Athens, the interests of the level country 
 adjacent to Athens, and the interests of the hilly or 
 mountainous districts. These Democratic and local 
 sovereignty factions often caused the most serious 
 disturbances and conflicts in the state, the people 
 joining themselves first to one leader and then to 
 another, and thus enabling first one leader and then 
 another to become tyrant of the state. 
 
 The peninsula of Greece is situated about midway 
 in the Mediterranean Sea, adjacent to the continents 
 of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its soil was productive, 
 its mines and minerals were valuable, its climate was 
 delightful, as it is at this day ; and in the absence of 
 the mariner's compass, the quadrant, and the science 
 of astronomy and navigation, as understood and em- 
 ployed at this day, Greece was the most favorably 
 located for maritime commerce and navigation of 
 any part of the then known world. Nearly all of 
 
DEMOCRACY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 5 
 
 her territory was penetrated by gulfs, bays, rivers, 
 and harbors well adapted to shipping. She had ad- 
 jacent to her coast numerous islands, and large por- 
 tions of Europe, Asia, and Africa could be reached 
 upon water without passing out of the sight of land. 
 Under these circumstances and favors of Providence, 
 the Greek people became the greatest agricultural, 
 manufacturing, and commercial people of the world, 
 and Athens the chief manufacturing and commercial 
 city of Greece, as well as the chief emporium of learn- 
 ing, philosophy, and arts of every kind. To such an 
 extent had these arts and employments been carried 
 at the time of which we are speaking, that people 
 flocked to Athens from -all parts of the world. In 
 the midst of this tempting prosperity, the Athenian 
 capitalists had enlarged and extended credits beyond 
 all prudent limits, and the people had run into debt 
 and imprudent speculations, as they do under such 
 conditions in modern times. But there came, as 
 there does in modern times, from such causes, a 
 financial panic and a crash. Perhaps free trade and 
 excessive importations from Egypt and Phoenicia 
 helped to bring on the panic, and deepen the finan- 
 cial trouble, as did the free-trade principles and 
 excessive importations into the United States pro- 
 duce the fearful crisis of 1837 in this country. But 
 be this as it may, the merchants and manufacturers 
 of Athens failed, the laboring people were thrown 
 out of employment, and poverty and distress came 
 upon all classes except the capitalists, filling the 
 country with tramps and loafers. 
 
 In the midst of this distress there arose mobs. 
 
6 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 riots, and an insurrection against the government and 
 the wealthy citizens, which soon resulted in the for- 
 mation of a Democratic party and an aristocratic 
 party as its counterpart. The Democratic party thus 
 formed, demanded the repudiation of all the debts ; 
 and secondly, an equal division of all the property 
 among the citizens. But finding this latter demand 
 attended with many difficulties, and formidable 
 opposition from the property-holders, a compromise 
 was effected between the Democracy and the wealthy 
 citizens. This was to invest Solon, one of the Wise 
 Men of Greece, with dictatorial powers, which posi- 
 tion being accepted by Solon, he quieted the tumult 
 by abolishing the debts, freeing the debtors from im- 
 prisonment, debasing the coin, and allowing the 
 property to remain as it was, in the hands of its 
 owners. Solon also enacted some other laws of a 
 radical character, for the restraint of the Democracy 
 and for the improvement of the manners and morals 
 of the people generally. 
 
 Notwithstanding the poetic and romantic accounts 
 of the poverty of Athens in the time of Solon, 
 it had long been a great commercial and industrial 
 emporium. This is evidenced from the facts already 
 mentioned, and that Athens figured largely in the 
 Trojan War, and had frequently sent out military, 
 trading, and colonizing expeditions, and that Solon 
 himself was a merchant, and had accumulated his 
 wealth by foreign trade. 
 
 The elements which composed this early Demo- 
 cratic party, and the facility with which it arrayed 
 itself under captivating and different leaders, and on 
 
DEMOCRACY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 7 
 
 any side of any principle or question, manifest, as we 
 shall see, a striking resemblance to each and every 
 party formed under the name of Democracy from 
 that day to this ; and the fearful tragedies and revo- 
 lutions, enacted in its name, seem to be the pre- 
 dominating characteristics and outgrowth of the word 
 Democracy as a party name. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RESULTS OF DEMOCRACY IN ATHENS. 
 
 It was during the dictatorship of Solon and the 
 struggle between the Democracy and the wealthy 
 and conservative classes in Athens, there sprang 
 into existence the Democratic General Assembly 
 of Five Thousand, which continued as a great politi- 
 cal factor in that state for the next two hundred 
 years or more. At the first establishment of this 
 general assembly its members were evidently chosen 
 by popular elections, like the members of our State 
 Legislatures. The number required to pass upon any 
 measure was five thousand. But its powers at that 
 time embraced the veto and ratifying power only, 
 upon the acts of the Areopagus and the Senate of 
 Four Hundred. The right also of censure of the acts 
 of the executive and administrative ofiScers of the 
 state was exercised by this assembly on some occa- 
 sions. It had at that time no right to originate 
 measures for the consideration of the Senate or Court 
 of the Areopagus. So large an assembly, from so 
 small a state, must, as every one can see, have been 
 incapable of cool deliberation or wise action upon 
 any measure, except by accident, or through and by 
 the means of a loud-mouthed and talented leader ; 
 and, in fact, as experience soon demonstrated, it 
 hardly ever served any other purpose than to become 
 
THE RESULTS OF DEMOCRACY IN ATHENS. 9 
 
 a tool or power in the hands of popular and adroit 
 demagogues, for the promotion of their own ambi- 
 tious purposes. It served mainly as a tub to the 
 great Democratic whale, for its amusement and 
 gratification ; or a chess-board in the hands of wily 
 politicians, to play their games upon. The prob- 
 ability is that the leading men of that day foresaw 
 the purposes for which such an assembly could be 
 used, and helped to augment its size to the utmost 
 limits, for their ulterior purposes, as well as for the 
 neutralization of Democratic influence and power. 
 
 As before observed, Solon enacted many excellent 
 laws, but before the people had become accustomed 
 to them, and before Solon's death, Pisistratus, an 
 artful and unscrupulous demagogue, who had become 
 very popular with the people, collected a gang of 
 his reckless followers, seized upon the citadel, the 
 treasury, and the government of the state. This act, 
 as a matter of course, greatly alarmed the conserva- 
 tive citizens, and sent them flying from their country. 
 But the rank and file of the Democratic party stood 
 by him and defended him in this despotic act, and 
 what is also true and worthy of remembrance, is the 
 fact that the General Assembly of Five Thousand, 
 and the rank and file of the Democratic party, not only 
 stood by Pisistratus in this desperate and despotic 
 act, but, as a general rule, supported and defended 
 him and his sons, as Tyrants of Athens, for the next 
 fifty years, and until one of his sons was killed and 
 the other driven out of the country by two high and 
 hot-blooded young men, Aristogiton and Harmodius. 
 
 It may be some satisfaction to modern Democrats, 
 
lO THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 and some credit to Democracy in general, to mention 
 the fact that Pisistratus proved to be a very clever 
 and successful ruler, who tried to enforce the laws of 
 Solon, reinforced by his own despotic power, which 
 part of the game Solon condemned. And it may be 
 further mentioned as a comfort to modern Demo- 
 crats, that the Democratic leaders of Greece, or 
 especially of Athens, were generally men of military 
 renown, and men of learning, eloquence, and ability ; 
 and that they, as a rule, when in possession of 
 supreme and despotic power, gave projection to the 
 citizens, to the rights of property, and encourage- 
 ment to all the arts and enterprises which contrib- 
 uted to the grandeur and greatness of the state ; 
 and which probably comprise the only way and 
 the only methods by which Democracy ever con- 
 tributed to the fame of the Grecian states, — if, in- 
 deed, this fame and name were ever any benefit, 
 political or moral, to the people of Greece. Nor 
 is it to be denied, divided as the Greek states were, 
 one from another, on the Democratic state-sov- 
 ereignty theory, and governed, as they generally 
 were, by tyrannical rulers of some kind, they could 
 not have carried on the military enterprises in which 
 they were generally engaged, one state or more 
 against the others, without such despotisms. Nor 
 without such rule and such a state of affairs in en- 
 lightened Greece, could the history of so many intes- 
 tine and fratricidal wars have been handed down to 
 succeeding generations and nations for their en- 
 lightenment and admonition. 
 
 But whether such principles, such governments. 
 
THE RESULTS OF DEMOCRACY IN ATHENS. II 
 
 and such results are what is meant by a Democratic 
 party and Democratic rule at this day, form ques- 
 tions worthy the consideration of leading Democrats 
 and other intelligent men. For there are indeed two 
 great facts to be kept in mind in reading the politi- 
 cal history of Greece, and especially that of Athens 
 from the days of Solon till the death of Pericles — a 
 space of about two hundred years : — first, the para- 
 mount power and influence of the country was in the 
 Democratic party, or rather several Democratic 
 parties in different states ; and, secondly, the normal 
 and general condition of the country was internecine 
 war — war among the states and war with foreign 
 nations — rather than a state of peace and quiet ; 
 which wars were supported by the agricultural, 
 mineral, and commercial resources of the country, 
 these, as before mentioned, being very great. 
 
 It is true, that Pisistratus was twice driven from 
 power, and twice restored, but by what parties or 
 influences we are not fully informed. Yet as the Dem- 
 ocratic Assembly of Five Thousand was continued 
 throughout the fifty years' rule of the Pisistratidae, 
 we are authorized to conclude that their chief sup- 
 port came from the Democratic party. 
 
 It may as well be mentioned here as elsewhere, 
 that slavery existed in Athens throughout the entire 
 Democratic era of two hundred years. Nor were 
 the slaves all Africans, but the system included 
 people of all colors and nations, not excepting the 
 native Athenians themselves. And it may also be 
 mentioned, that we have no account of a Dem- 
 ocratic party or a Democratic government that ever 
 
12 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 abolished slavery. It is true we read of several 
 factions and leaders claiming to be Democratic 
 that freed many slaves to make soldiers of them, 
 but as soon as supreme powder was obtained by 
 them, as was sometimes the case, the " institution " 
 was restored to its former strength and conditions. 
 If, then, this state of affairs was the normal status, 
 and a part and parcel of the ancient Democracy, 
 as far as our country and times are concerned, this 
 great bone of contention, slaveiy, having been 
 brushed away in the great Civil War in our country, 
 waged for its maintenance, and our people being a 
 peace and union loving people, rather than a mili- 
 tary and fighting people, there would seem to 
 be no further use for a Democratic party in our 
 nation, unless, indeed, it has a mission to uphold, and 
 perpetuate its State-sovereignty theory and inter- 
 State strife, which has been a great part and parcel 
 of Democracy, ever since the days of Solon.' 
 
 ' The history of ancient Greece, or rather the history of Athens in 
 its relations and intercourse with other parts of Greece, from the 
 days of Solon to the fall of Athens, is probably as full and complete 
 as that of any other nation. The productions of her poets, orators, 
 historians, sculptors, and architects, that have survived the ravages of 
 time, are very numerous, and have enabled modern historians to give 
 us well-digested records. Among the many records given, the 
 " History of Ancient Greece," by George Grote, seems to be the 
 most complete. From its pages many of the facts herein given are 
 derived. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND CLISTHENES, AND THE EXCHANGE OF 
 THE BALLOT-BOX FOR THE LOTTERV-BOX. 
 
 After the fall of the Pisistratidae, Athens was 
 for twenty or more years in great disorder, fluc- 
 tuating between Democratic and despotic rule, and 
 between peace and internecine war, when there 
 arose a popular and talented Democratic leader by 
 the name of Clisthenes. And although lexicogra- 
 phers and encyclopedists do not give Clisthenes prom- 
 inence, some historians claim him as the most astute 
 politician and leader that Athens had as yet found. 
 This man observed that the Democrats were becom- 
 ing tired of being called sovereigns without the enjoy- 
 ment of the rewards which sovereignty had been 
 claimed to impart, or what was pretty near the same 
 thing, the Democrats had acquired an insatiable ap- 
 petite for the spoils of office, probably such as our 
 Democrats manifested in the days of Andrew Jack- 
 son, and such as both Republicans and Democrats 
 manifest at the present day. Clisthenes also ob- 
 served that the Athenian Democrats had become 
 tired of voting year after year for the learned, 
 rich, and artful demagogues for fat and influential 
 places, while they, the voters, were left out in the 
 cold. This condition of things, it is true, might have 
 obtained, had the party been called Republican, or 
 
 13 
 
14 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 by any other name, as we see political partisans act 
 under similar circumstances in our country at the 
 present day. All I claim as peculiar to the Democracy 
 is that the feat, — the revolution — which then took 
 place, never could have taken place, in a free country, 
 under any other name or party organization ever 
 known to mankind, for the reason that no other 
 party ever formed contained the elements to be so 
 readily induced to turn upon and trample under foot 
 and into the dust its own professed principles, or a 
 principle so essential to the liberties of mankind as 
 the elective franchise. 
 
 Clisthenes having gained the confidence of the 
 Democrats, and full control of the party, proposed 
 to divide and did divide, the people of Attica into 
 ten tribes or sections, called by some historians 
 " cantons." Up to this time the people had been 
 divided into four tribes or classes, according to- their 
 wealth and standing, for political purposes. Each of 
 Clisthenes' ten tribes was to contain as near as prac- 
 ticable an equal number of citizens, without distinc- 
 tion of rank, standing, or wealth. He then took 
 from each of these tribes, by lot or draft, six hundred 
 men, making in all six thousand. He then provided 
 for drawing five hundred men from each six hun- 
 dred, to serve as legislators in the General Assembly 
 of Five Thousand. The surplus — one hundred — from 
 each tribe to stand as supernumeraries, from which 
 the general assembly could be kept full up to five 
 thousand, which was the legal quorum for the trans- 
 action of business. Nor did the lot or draft stop 
 with the general assembly. All the civil offices of 
 
DEMOCRACY AND CLISTHENES, ETC. 15 
 
 the state, including archons, were filled by lot or draft 
 in a similar way, except perhaps a very few places, 
 where great learning and efficiency were absolutely 
 necessary to keep the state from falling into com- 
 plete paralysis or anarchy, and these were appointed 
 by the general assembly. And what is also worthy 
 of note is the fact that the generals and other high 
 officers of the army were appointed by the General 
 Assembly of Five Thousand. I say by the general 
 assembly, for the truth is, from that day forth, as 
 history shows, the government of Athens became a 
 military despotism, under the name of Democracy ; 
 the general assembly and all the civil offices becom- 
 ing mainly places for recording the acts and wishes 
 of the successful generals of the army, and for the 
 performance of police duties, in accordance with the 
 commanding general's orders. 
 
 Or perhaps it should be further observed that the 
 General Assembly of Five Thousand became a forum 
 of debate, and was used mainly for generals and 
 orators in their conflicts one with another ; the 
 executive power being always lodged in the hands 
 of the most successful general or orator, the civil 
 authority being as completely swallowed up in the 
 military as it is in the island of Cuba under the rule 
 of Spain. And thus were the elective franchise and 
 popular elections abolished, at one fell swoop, by 
 the Democratic party. 
 
 Does any one ask what reason can be given for 
 this revolution ? I will venture two or three. First, 
 it was intended to gratify the morbid appetite of the 
 Democracy for the spoils of office, without regard to 
 
1 6 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 capacity or merit. Second, to cripple the efforts of 
 the learned, the wealthy, and intelligent portion of 
 society, which ordinarily got into office under the 
 elective franchise. And thirdly, as a means, in the 
 hands of the ambitious, of upholding military and 
 despotic power by the force of Democratic numbers, 
 and their partiality for despotism. 
 
 It is possible that this system of government, 
 which continued in Athens for near two hundred 
 years, and to some extent in other Greek states, 
 was as well adapted to the rambling adventurers and 
 warlike spirits of the Greeks, and especially to the 
 inhabitants of Athens at that time, as any other 
 system that could have been devised by man. But 
 be this as it may, it eventually operated to bring the 
 city of Athens, after a series of wars upon wars, to a 
 condition when " all the Athenians and strangers 
 which were there spent their time in nothing else but 
 either to tell or to hear some new thing." This 
 state of affairs, however, as expressed by St. Paul, 
 came to pass several centuries after the. days of 
 Clisthenes ; hence it is our duty to speak more 
 particularly of the immediate and near results of this 
 Clisthenic revolution, which, as before observed, not 
 only abolished popular elections, both for the general 
 assembly and other places of honor and trust, but 
 actually operated in the near future to abohsh the 
 Senate of Four Hundred, by causing its members to 
 be appointed by this general assembly. It also 
 caused the Court of the Areopagus to disappear, or 
 become a mockery of its former self, by virtue of 
 the archons, from whom it had been made up, being 
 
DEMOCRACY AND CLISTHENES, ETC. 1 7 
 
 selected by lot from the mass of the citizens, prob- 
 ably under the same spirit in which it was proposed 
 to abolish the Senate and the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, under the administration of Andrew 
 Jackson. In truth, this Democratic General As- 
 sembly of Five Thousand soon absorbed or abolished 
 all other legislative and judicial departments of the 
 government, and invested, or pretended to invest, 
 their powers in this great assembly. All of which re- 
 sults, as a matter of course, were brought about by 
 the dictation of ambitious Democratic leaders and 
 supporters of this Clisthenic constitution, who 
 chose to have all real obstacles to their despotic in- 
 fluence and power removed from their path. 
 
 It may be said, and probably with some truth, 
 that through and by means of this Clisthenic consti- 
 tution, the learned, the wealthy, and the intelligent 
 citizens came into influence and power as military 
 men, with less trouble than through and by means 
 of the elective franchise in the hands of the citizens, 
 and got rid of the noise, expense, and uncertainty of 
 popular elections. And it is also probable that the 
 lot system was favored by the common people, or at 
 least by extreme and bigoted Democrats, because 
 they came into small places of honor and trust 
 with far less trouble and uncertainty. The size of 
 the general assembly in so small a state as Attica, 
 and other numerous small offices, rendered it almost 
 certain that each voter could come into some office 
 or place of honor as often as once in four or five 
 years ; which was counted much better than to be 
 always out in the cold, and destitute of all official 
 influence throughout their lives* 
 
1 8 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Or it may be possible that the popular elections, 
 under Democratic rule and manipulations for many 
 years, had become slightly corrupt. It may be that 
 ballot-box stuffings, false counting and returning of 
 votes, and tissue ballots, had become common. Or 
 it may be that false naturalization papers and colo- 
 nization of voters were employed ; and possibly 
 corner and cross-road groceries were numerous, and 
 stocked with mean whisky or other drinks to influ- 
 ence voters, and that drunkenness had become the 
 order of the day, especially on election days. Or 
 perhaps it had become the practice of Democratic 
 voters to support the most unscrupulous rascals for 
 ofifice, rather than the most honest and capable men : 
 and hence those grand old immaculate Democratic 
 leaders, such as Pisistratus, Clisthenes, and Pericles, 
 instead of enacting efficient electoral laws, came to 
 the conclusion that the best way to purify the ballot- 
 box was to abolish it altogether, substituting the 
 draft in its place, with a plenty of small offices for 
 the entertainment and occupancy of the sovereigns ; 
 they, the great leaders, taking the state and its entire 
 affairs into their own hands, for the special benefit 
 of the sovereigns, and as a matter of patriotic devo- 
 tion to their beloved country. 
 
 Some old Whigs of much experience in political 
 affairs insinuate that our Democratic brethren of to- 
 day have only transferred these arts, tricks, and vices 
 at elections from their Greek prototypes, and that, 
 like them, they are very fond of change, of some- 
 thing new, of something startling and revolutionary, 
 even, if need be, to the substitution of the lottery- 
 
DEMOCRACY AND CLISTHENES, ETC. I9 
 
 box for the ballot-box, and that we should, there- 
 fore, be as charitable as possible to the idiosyncrasies 
 of the ancient and modern Democracy, and try to 
 hold them to the practices and principles of our 
 Republican fathers. 
 
 Query : Has a Democratic party ever been known 
 to improve or reform election laws ? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DEMOCRACY, THE OSTRACISM, AND THE COURT OF 
 REGISTRATION. 
 
 No doubt many readers are astonished at the 
 account given in the last chapter about the Athe- 
 nian Democracy, and the exchange they made of 
 the ballot-box for the lottery-box, in the selection 
 of civil officials, both high and low. Yet it is sub- 
 stantially true, if the most learned and minute his- 
 torians are to be believed. 
 
 Under the Clisthenic constitution more changes 
 were wrought in the machinery and polity of the 
 government of Attica than can here be described. 
 At first, instead of one general of the army, there 
 were ten, one for each tribe ; which Democratic law, 
 as a matter of course, when war came, produced 
 anarchy, unless all gave way to one commander-in- 
 chief, as in the battle of Marathon. The courts were 
 a kind of committees of safety, or lynching parties. 
 Under one of these courts, Socrates, the great phil- 
 osopher of his age, whose virtues and sayings gave 
 great celebrity to Greek philosophy, was tried, con- 
 victed, and executed, and in a short time thereafter, 
 another Democratic court of the same kind tried, 
 convicted, and executed his judges, for putting to 
 death so great and good a man. 
 
 Under this constitution the law of ostracism was 
 
THE DEMOCRACY, THE OSTRACISM, ETC. 21 
 
 instituted, by which any political leader or aspirant 
 who became obnoxious to the Democracy, or who 
 was troublesome in the Assembly of Five Thousand 
 could be banished from the state by six thousand 
 votes cast for the purpose. Under it Themistocles, 
 Aristides, Cimon, and other great men of Athens, 
 distinguished for their services, were driven from 
 their homes and their country into exile. This law 
 was somewhat in advance of the barbaric methods 
 of driving out with arms, or assassinating obnoxious 
 leaders, that had before been practised in Greece and 
 the surrounding nations, and somewhat in advance of 
 old-fashioned Democratic local-sovereignty practices 
 of disposing of obnoxious chiefs, among the Ameri- 
 can Indian tribes, by slaughter. Of course, we do 
 not here insinuate that the Democracy of to-day 
 wish to revive the law of ostracism, but allude to 
 it because it was a method of disposing of 
 troublesome opponents without a trial before court 
 and jury, or without the long and tedious political 
 campaigns which are required for the overthrow in 
 our country of such men as John Quincy Adams, 
 Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and John McPherson 
 Berrien, and other obstinate and troublesome old 
 Whigs. Nevertheless, the ostracism was a purely 
 Democratic institution, and the best method at that 
 time known to the Democracy of getting rid of ob- 
 noxious leaders. 
 
 It would be impracticable, in briefly tracing the 
 history of Athenian Democracy, to name all the riots, 
 tumults, enterprises, and wars with which the old 
 Democratic leaders regaled themselves and the 
 
22 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 people. The truth is, the General Assembly of Five 
 Thousand was very much like the modern mass-meet- 
 ing, before which the orators could air themselves, 
 while there was no legal right or power to get 
 up a counter mass-meeting. It therefore virtually 
 placed all great questions, civil and military, of peace 
 and of war, in the hands of their great chieftains, 
 generals, and orators, and who, by virtue of control 
 once gained, wielded the entire power of the state, 
 making war, or making peace, as best suited their 
 views and interests, the vast assembly being well 
 adapted to promote such despotism ; if indeed it can 
 be called despotism where a great leader has cor- 
 rupted the people, and has a great assembly of the 
 people at his back to second his .designs, and register 
 and enforce the sentiments and decrees he may ad- 
 vance, and busy itself with appointing and removing 
 members of the police, and other small matters. 
 
 From the time when the great Democratic Assem- 
 bly of Five Thousand was instituted, and more espe- 
 cially from the time when, for the selection of 
 officials, the lottery-box was substituted for the bal- 
 lot-box, down to the days of Pericles, the Democracy 
 of Athens seems never to have doubted that the 
 party possessed and enjoyed the sovereign power of 
 the state, and that all had been done that could be 
 done to strengthen and perpetuate the rights and 
 liberties of the citizens, albeit a large portion of the 
 people were all the while in slavery, and all the great 
 leaders were taken from the old aristocratic families 
 who had no use for the common people except as 
 soldiers to fight their battles, and when, if ever, they 
 
THE DEMOCRACY, THE OSTRACISM, ETC. 23 
 
 failed to come up to their call, they generally liber- 
 ated, and made enough soldiers from the slaves to 
 bring them to terms, thus enlarging the Democratic 
 idea and area of liberty. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, AND DEMOCRACY. 
 
 But, as before hinted, whether the influence 
 and power of these great leaders were acquired 
 by their swords in domestic broils, in foreign wars, 
 or by the force of their oratory, the position of 
 leadership once established, their next ambition was 
 to contribute to the wealth, grandeur, and greatness 
 of Athens. This was their chief political economy, 
 if any they had, and in this the entire population. 
 Democratic and aristocratic, co-operated with the 
 utmost enthusiasm. And hence it came to pass, 
 notwithstanding the frequent domestic broils grow- 
 ing out of the competition of aspirants for supremacy, 
 that Athens, from the encouragement of the industrial 
 and liberal arts, schools, commerce, and shipping, 
 and from successful wars and alliances with other 
 states and provinces, became by far the most beauti- 
 ful and wealthy city on the Mediterranean, and 
 attracted more visitors than any other city in the 
 known world. Athens had, at the time of which we 
 are speaking, one thousand tributary cities and 
 provinces. Her treasury was overflowing with 
 money. Her people revelled in luxuiy and ex- 
 travagance, and rolled the despotic sway of their 
 leaders as a sweet morsel under their tongues. 
 Words would fail to paint the Sybaritic folly and 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 2$ 
 
 pride to which Democratic institutions had carried 
 the people. 
 
 A learned writer of Greek history, in speaking of 
 the morals and manners of Athens at that time, 
 says : " Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare 
 recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians 
 availed themselves of their extensive commerce 
 to import the delicacies of distant countries. 
 The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in 
 summer ; in winter the most delightful flowers 
 adorned the tables and persons of wealthy Athe- 
 nians. Nor jyas it sufficient to be crowned with 
 roses, unless they were likewise annointed with the 
 most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and 
 buffoons were a usual appendage of every enter- 
 tainment. Among the weaker sex, the passion for 
 delicate birds, distinguished for their voice and 
 plumage, was carried to such excess as to merit the 
 name of madness." And in speaking of the political 
 condition of the people, he says : " The Grecian 
 history of those times affords a more striking con- 
 trast than ever appeared in any other age or country 
 of wisdom and folly, of magnanimity and meanness, 
 of liberty and tyranny, of simplicity and refinement, 
 of austerity and voluptuousness." This is a striking 
 description, but by no means an incorrect one, of 
 the moral and political condition unavoidably spring- 
 ing from Democracy as a party name and organiza- 
 tion in possession of the supreme power of the 
 state. 
 
 Under these circumstances, about one hundred 
 years after the days of Solon, and forty years after 
 
26 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the Persian invasion and its overthrow, Pericles, 
 the most talented and ambitious man of his age, 
 came upon the stage as a Democratic leader. 
 
 Pericles was born, grew to manhood, and came to 
 notoriety and influence under the Clisthenic consti- 
 tution. He had several competitors for popularity. 
 But being a general in the army, a sagacious politi- 
 cian, and accomplished orator, he rose rapidly, 
 and soon became sole dictator of Attica, and her 
 afifiliated states, cities, and provinces ; and what may 
 seem almost incredible to those who have not 
 studied the history of the Greek Dem@cracy, is the 
 fact that he ruled and directed the affairs of Attica 
 and her allies as with a rod of iron, for forty con- 
 secutive years, without ever having received a civil 
 appointment, unless it was in the form of a request 
 to deliver an oration to the people. All his influence 
 and power, and especially over the Democratic As- 
 sembly of Five Thousand, came from his generalship 
 in the army and his great power as an orator. By 
 means of these and a few unscrupulous political 
 bummers, he swayed and controlled the Democracy, 
 and through them the state, as effectually as a 
 pedagogue controls a crowd of noisy urchins, or as a 
 herdsman his bleating flocks. 
 
 But he had not long attained to this perilous 
 height of power, before he commenced plundering 
 the allies, and using the funds which they had 
 contributed to the public treasury, for general pur- 
 poses, for the adornment and enriching of Athens ; 
 and so many grand edifices, monuments, temples, 
 theatres, arches, statues, and fortifications did he put 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 27 
 
 on foot, and push so rapidly to completion, that al- 
 most before the allies were aware of it, the public 
 funds and common treasury and revenues were 
 all absorbed. But as soon as these facts became 
 known, the allies began to revolt. Nor was it long 
 before Sparta and her allies were co-operating with 
 these revolting allies, and making war upon Attica. 
 This was called the Second Peloponnesian War, and 
 lasted twenty-seven years. In the midst of it the 
 plague broke out in Athens, and raged with great 
 violence, probably for the want of suitable food, 
 clothing, and shelter, as Athens was then besieged 
 by Sparta and her allies. Pericles himself took the 
 contagion, and became one of its victims, and died 
 in the strength of his manhood, am.id the terrible 
 throes of his country, which he had himself caused. 
 But the war went on, and only ended in the fall and 
 sack of that large and beautiful city, and the setting 
 up in her midst of the Thirty Tyrants, a catastrophe 
 hardly more complimentary to the Greek Democ- 
 racy than the fall of Jerusalem under Titus to the 
 Jewish hierarchy. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten, or denied, that each 
 supreme government, like each head of a family, 
 often finds itself in a condition to so concentrate its 
 powers and discount its resources as to live in luxury 
 and extravagance for a short time, and thus so cap- 
 tivating and corrupting its constituents as to soon 
 plunge them into idleness, imbecility, poverty, and 
 ruin. The resources of Athens, at the time of which 
 we are speaking, as before stated, were almost bound- 
 less. Her commanding position, her shipping, and 
 
28 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 her enterprising merchants had, like London at the 
 present time, made nearly the whole world tributary 
 to her wealth. As it was said of Jerusalem in the 
 days of Solomon, four or five hundred years earlier, 
 " silver and gold was as plenteous in her streets as 
 stones," and her Democratic despots, being destitute 
 or regardless of God and the true principles of mo- 
 rality and political economy, and having great power 
 and influence over the people, by fraud and military 
 force, caused the wealth of other parts of the world 
 to be appropriated to the gratification of Athenian 
 appetites, vanity, and pride ; first, by theatrical enter- 
 tainments, then by splendid architecture, statuary, 
 and fortifications round about the city. But against 
 all such pride, folly, and wickedness, mankind soon 
 revolted, and in the providence of God, the doomed 
 city was brought to retribution, thus affording a 
 great moral and political lesson to succeeding gen- 
 erations. Our own country has already experienced 
 a bitter dose of this despotic, alias Democratic, 
 perverseness, and wise, happy, and fortunate will 
 our people be, if in the future they avoid the vanity 
 and pride which inevitably lead to the destruction 
 and ruin of the generations yielding to them. 
 
 It is not the design of these articles to discourse 
 learnedly on Greek history, arts, and civilization, ex- 
 cept so far as to trace the Democratic features of the 
 Greek governments, and especially of the govern- 
 ment of Athens, and the effect these features had 
 upon the Greek people until the fall of Athens, as 
 indicated in our last chapter. This I have en- 
 deavored to do, both in letter and spirit, in ac- 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 29 
 
 cordance with the most authentic history. If, in 
 faithfully doing this, it exhibits Democracy as a 
 name and party organization in possession of 
 supreme political power, the most exclusive and 
 tyrannical, the most hypocritical and corrupting 
 system that ever afflicted and ruined any en- 
 lightened community, that is to be ascribed to the 
 system itself, to its inherent depravity rather than to 
 the natural depravity of mankind ; and if it should 
 be made manifest before we get through that Democ- 
 racy as a party name and organization is always 
 the same depraved and corrupting system, it is to be 
 ascribed to the same inherent cause, and the labor 
 that is required to present these facts should be 
 counted a duty which devolves upon every student 
 of sound and safe government and well-regulated 
 liberty. And if our Democratic brethren of the 
 present day can make out better qualities, or give us 
 a better history of a Democratic party, the people of 
 this country will doubtless be glad to consider such 
 views. Sound and safe government and well-regu- 
 lated liberty spring from and rest upon wisdom, 
 virtue, justice, and peace, and not upon vice, cruelty, 
 and war, such as seemed to be the animating forces 
 among the Greeks under Democratic rule. 
 
 Now, Democracy as a sentiment is a very good 
 thing where the people are scarce, as they were in 
 the early American settlements, and all are intelli- 
 gent, moral, honest, and law-abiding, and where the 
 homesteads are twenty miles apart, and where, if 
 every man does as he pleases, he will not trespass 
 upon his neighbors' rights. But where people are 
 
30 THE HISTORY- OF DEMOCRACY." 
 
 numerous and compact, and where the relations and 
 dependencies of life are almost infinite in number, 
 the " everybody do as you please " sentiment is 
 nothing but hypocritical cant, that soon contradicts 
 itself by rallying around the greatest demagogue in 
 the land as a leader, and by howling for the most 
 proscriptive and oppressive measures that cruelty can 
 invent, such as were often practised among the 
 Greeks in the name of Democracy. It is true, con- 
 centrated political power in a numerous community 
 is a good and necessary thing, but when we form or 
 find a political party which knows and will tolerate 
 no other method than that of a despotic chief in 
 whom to invest this necessary power, and a party 
 which counts its will, and his will, above all law, as 
 was done under the old Greek Democracy, Democ- 
 racy becomes a sentiment and system utterly de- 
 structive of sound and safe government, and drives 
 the most learned, virtuous, and patriotic citizens into 
 practices and manners which are destructive of civili- 
 zation itself, as abundantly indicated in the history 
 of Democracy in Greece, and in the fall of Athens, 
 " the head and centre " of its spirit and influence. 
 
 The most noted and brilliant days of Athens were 
 those including and following the battles of Ther- 
 mopylae, Platea, and Salamis, by which the Persians 
 were driven from Greek . territory, to the fall of 
 Athens, — a space of about seventy years, — forty years 
 of which Pericles was absolute ruler. These were also 
 the most pompous days of Democracy. From the 
 days of Solon to the close of this Persian War Democ- 
 racy and oligarchy were constantly struggling for 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 3 1 
 
 supremacy, and hence it is hard to say whether 
 Democracy or oligarchy is entitled to the most 
 credit in those splendid victories over the Persians, 
 or whether the native energy, genius, and bravery 
 of the Greeks gained those great achievements in 
 spite of both. Wherever the merit lay, one thing is 
 certain, they (the victories) placed the state of Attica 
 and the Greeks as a nation in the most commanding 
 position for good or for evil of which we have any 
 account in ancient history, unless we except the 
 Israelites in the days of David and Solomon. And 
 had the people possessed the virtue and patriotism 
 sufficient to have formed and maintained a firm 
 national government, according to human reasoning 
 they must have long continued the most powerful 
 people in the world. But Democracy and its most 
 intimate relative and companion, state sovereignty, 
 having full sway, soon culminated in a catastrophe 
 that wrecked the most enlightened people known, 
 and shook the then civilized world from centre to 
 circumference. It might almost be said in the lan- 
 guage of Milton : 
 
 " Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, 
 Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe 
 That all was lost." 
 
 We have already quoted from a writer of Greek 
 history, an account of the morals and manners of the 
 Athenians which grew up under the Democratic 
 regime, and we now give the lament of Thucydides 
 over the twenty-seven years' war, brought on and 
 continued, as the fruit of Democracy and state 
 sovereignty combined. He says : " As it exceeded 
 
32 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the ordinary duration of human power or resent- 
 ment, it was accompanied with unusual circum- 
 stances of terror, which to the pious credulity of an 
 unfortunate age, naturally announced the wrath of 
 Heaven, justly provoked by human cruelty. Whilst 
 pestilence and famine multiplied the actual suffer- 
 ings, eclipses and earthquakes increased the conster- 
 nation and horror of that lamentable period. Several 
 warlike communities were expelled from their 
 hereditary possessions ; others were not only driven 
 from Greece, but utterly extirpated from the earth; 
 some fell a prey to party rage, others to the ven- 
 geance of foreign enemies ; some were slowly ex- 
 hausted by the contagion of a malignant atmosphere ; 
 others overwhelmed at once by sudden violence ; 
 while the combined weight of calamity assailed the 
 power of Athens, and precipitated the downfall of 
 that republic from the pride of prosperous dominion 
 to the dejection of dependence and misery." 
 
 This short account seems almost incredible, yet it 
 is unquestionably and literally true, and the fruit and 
 outgrowth of Democracy in power. 
 
 It should be observed, and perhaps should have 
 been sooner stated, that before the commencement 
 of this twenty-seven years' war, Athens and Sparta, 
 the two leading states of Greece, had managed to 
 absorb all or nearly all the separate Greek commu- 
 nities in Greece proper, in Italy, Ionia, and other 
 parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa bordering on the 
 Mediterranean, as allies and dependencies; and as 
 each of them gained influence and control over these 
 separate communities, they tried to force, and did in 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 33 
 
 the main force, their respective pohtical tenets and 
 forms of government upon them, which, on the 
 part of the Athenians, consisted in their radical 
 Democracy, their large General Assembly, and the 
 despotic leaders which these produced, thus caus- 
 ing the State to be arrogant, dictatorial and quarrel- 
 some ; while on the part of the Spartans, their govern- 
 ment was, in the main, hereditary and aristocratic. 
 The main polity of the Spartans had been, under Ly- 
 curgus, to make soldiers of all the men, for home 
 defence, and the holding of their slaves in subjection. 
 And the probability is that they never aimed at for- 
 eign conquest until they were spurred into such 
 ambitious projects by the restless, aggressive, and 
 quarrelsome disposition of the Athenian Democracy. 
 And hence the just conclusion, both from this dispo- 
 sition and the beginning and events of the Pelopon- 
 nesian war, is that Democracy was at the botk^m of 
 the whole affair, and responsible for the shocking 
 disasters brought upon the civilized world, as de- 
 scribed by Thucydides. 
 
 From the historical facts now given, it is difficult 
 to see how our Democratic brethren of to-day can 
 draw any consolation, encouragement, or comfort 
 from their brethren, or prototypes, in old Greece, or 
 how they can fail to draw some valuable lessons from 
 their conduct and its consequences. It would seem 
 that instead of holding up, as they do, the Democracy 
 of Greece as a pattern of political philosophy and 
 patriotism, they ought to acknowledge, that the 
 almost incessant wars and frequent domestic tumults 
 in the states where a Democratic party predomi- 
 
34 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 nated, are proofs that such a party is a fearful 
 scourge to any people, and that it is constantly forc- 
 ing upon them the question, not what style or form 
 of government is best, but whether the people shall 
 have a government or no government, or, what is 
 nearly the same thing, no government, or despotism, 
 upheld by constant tumults and wars. 
 
 And, secondly, it is difficult to see how our 
 Democratic brethren of to-day can refuse to 
 acknowledge that under no other system than that 
 of Democracy and state sovereignty, its intimate re- 
 lation and constant companion, in so small a country 
 as that of Greece, and among so enlightened a 
 people, could so many wars have been engendered, 
 and one so long and destructive as this twenty- 
 seven years' war have been kept up. Verily, ye 
 modern Democrats, you must confess that such 
 sentiments, such a system, such vices, such crimes, 
 such ruin as a Democratic party brought upon 
 Greece, and brings upon every country where it 
 has full sway, are of such a moral and political 
 character that Heaven itself is shocked at the spec- 
 tacle, and wills the destruction and the punishment 
 of any people who tolerate it. 
 
 In speaking of Pericles, the great Athenian 
 Democratic leader, the same historian from whom 
 we have quoted, says of him and his administra- 
 tion : 
 
 "According to the popular principles which he 
 professed, he deemed it the duty of a statesman to 
 provide not merely for the army, the navy, the 
 judges, and others immediately employed in the 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 35 
 
 public service ; the great body of the people he 
 regarded as the constant and most important object 
 of his ministerial care. The immense revenues of 
 the state, which had hitherto been chiefly squan- 
 dered in shows and festivals, in gaudy ostentation 
 and perishing luxury, he directed to objects more 
 solid and durable which while they embellished the 
 city, might exercise the industry and display the 
 talents of the citizens. Guided by such motives he 
 boldly opened the treasury, and expended four 
 thousand talents ; a sum which then might com- 
 mand as much labor as six or seven millions sterling 
 in the present age. By this liberal encouragement, 
 he animated every art, excited every hand, enlivened 
 every exertion, and called forth into the public ser- 
 vice the whole dexterity, skill, and genius of his 
 countrymen ; while the motives of gain or glory 
 which he proposed, allured from all quarters the in- 
 genious strangers who readily transported their 
 talents to Athens, as the best market and most 
 conspicuous theatre." 
 
 This scrap of history is introduced to our Demo- 
 cratic brethren of to-day to show how lavish a 
 Democratic chieftain can be with public funds, and 
 not be brought to account, when he has a radical 
 Democratic party at his back. And, secondly, to 
 show what a fine time their old Democratic proto- 
 types had with free theatres, free festivals, and free 
 games of every kind. And, thirdly, to show that 
 any political party, in the possession of supreme 
 power, which yields to the passions and follies of the 
 multitude, or cuts loose from precedents, and the 
 
36 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 time-honored lessons of the ages, is liable, not only 
 to plunge its country into despair, but to be com- 
 pelled to tear down with its own hands the bul- 
 warks and monuments which its pride and ambi- 
 tion has reared, as the Athenians were obliged to 
 do, under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants placed over 
 them by Lysander, their Spartan conqueror. Such 
 was the terrible fate of the great and proud city of 
 Athens, and thus too was sung the funeral dirge of 
 genuine Democracy throughout all Greece. 
 
 We trust that all good Republicans have long 
 since drawn valuable lessons from these historical 
 records, and that both Democratic and all other 
 political parties will profit by them in the future. 
 
 The ancient Greeks are counted the most intelli- 
 gent and highly civilized people in olden times. As 
 stated in a former chapter, the peninsula and country 
 of the Greeks proper did not contain as much terri- 
 tory as the State of South Carolina. But its soil and 
 mines were highly productive, and the best situated 
 for trade and navigation of any part of the world. 
 Reasoning then from natural causes, and the general 
 conduct of mankind in a civilized state, had not the 
 Greeks been overtaken and possessed by the Demo- 
 cratic mania, they must have soon become as great 
 in political economy and statesmanship as they were 
 in literature, arts, and warlike enterprises, as well as 
 the most wealthy nation upon the face of the earth. 
 Every facility, both of land and water, was at their 
 command. Reasoning, therefore, from the size of 
 their country and other causes, it would seem that so 
 intelligent a people could not have been induced by 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 37 
 
 the arts of ambitious men to adopt a form of gov- 
 ernment, either too weak or too strong, or one which 
 would lead to the depression of their energies, loss 
 of their just liberties, or the destruction of the coun- 
 try. Had they possessed the wisdom and patriotism 
 to form and maintain a firm national governinent, 
 the world would not have been compelled, while ad- 
 miring their arts, to behold also the tumults and 
 wars, and their rivers of blood that deluged the coun- 
 try from the days of Pisistratus to the fall of Athens. 
 No man can account for these terrible scenes among 
 so gifted a people, upon any other hypothesis than 
 that they were due to the introduction of the Demo- 
 cratic theory, as developed under such a party name 
 and organization. 
 
 We must admit that in that age of the world a 
 purely republican form of government and constitu- 
 tion like that of the United States could not have 
 been conceived, wrought out, and adopted. Even 
 Plato, two hundred years after Pisistratus, could not 
 or did not suggest such a systern in his essay on gov- 
 ernment. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that 
 the Greeks could have adopted and should have 
 adopted some such a system as that of Rome. For 
 it was in the days of Solon that the Romans came to 
 Athens to learn laws and of a government suitable 
 to their own country, which affords evidence that 
 such a system as that of the Romans had been con- 
 templated, or had been in existence in Greece. Had 
 some such system been adopted as that of the Ro- 
 mans, or that of some other nation known to them, 
 it would have doubtless kept them from destroying 
 
38 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 each other as they did under the reign of Democ- 
 racy. Had they adopted some such system of laws 
 and government as that of the Hebrews under the 
 Judges, which continued over four hundred years, 
 their utter ruin under the Democracy might have 
 been averted. 
 
 Nor is this the only view to be taken of the short- 
 sightedness and culpable course of the Greeks, and 
 the miserable end to which they were led by the 
 fascination of the Democratic system. 
 
 It is claimed, and not disputed by historians, that 
 the alphabet and its concomitant arts were intro- 
 duced into Greece several centuries before Solon. 
 It is also well known that the Olympic, Isthmian, and 
 other games and expositions were established about 
 the same time, the chief object of which was to 
 " form a bond of union for the Grecian states." 
 Besides these expositions good and patriotic men 
 instituted the Amphictyonic Council, made up of 
 deputies from the various states for the discussion of 
 religious and political subjects, both of which were 
 well calculated to produce harmony, and lead to a 
 national government, and probably would have done 
 this had not the theory of Democracy and local 
 sovereignty been sprung upon the people in the time 
 of Solon. And again there is another point to be 
 noticed. Some historians claim that the original 
 governments of the Greek communities were repub- 
 lican in form, like that of the Romans, and that 
 royalty and tyranny were the exceptions to the gen- 
 eral rule, and that for centuries they lived in peace 
 and harmony ; which must be true, as we do not 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 39 
 
 read of frequent or any great wars between the 
 states before the days of Solon and the rise of 
 Democracy. The conjectures, for we can call them 
 nothing but historical conjectures, that the Greek 
 communities in so small a country, in early times, 
 held little or no intercourse, one with another, would 
 be to place them, in point of civilization, below the 
 North American Indian tribes. They were doubt- 
 less for many centuries quiet, peace-loving, and en- 
 terprising communities ; their religion, siich as it was, 
 having a moral and softening influence upon the 
 manners of the people. The only conclusion, 
 therefore, that we can cordially, affectionately, and 
 honestly commend to our Democratic brethren of 
 to-day, is that the introduction of the Democratic 
 and local-sovereignty theory into Greece became the 
 great red dragon that trampled down and stamped 
 out all Grecian civilization and liberty, and reduced 
 the state of Attica from greatness and grandeur to 
 the lowest depths of misery and degradation. 
 
 Another learned writer of Greek history in speak- 
 ing of the Democratic period of the country, says: 
 " We seek in vain, either in the history of Athens or 
 Lacedsemon, for the beautiful idea of a well-ordered 
 commonwealth. The revolutions of government 
 which they were ever experiencing, the external fac- 
 tions with which they were embroiled, plainly demon- 
 strate that there was a radical defect in the structure 
 of the machine, which precluded the possibility of 
 regular motion. The condition of the people under 
 those governments was such as partook more of 
 servitude and oppression, than that of the subjects 
 
40 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of the most despotic monarchies. The slaves formed 
 the actual majority of the inhabitants in all the 
 states of Greece. To these the free citizens were 
 rigorous bond-masters. Bondage being a conse- 
 quence of the contraction of debts, even by free- 
 men, a great proportion of these was subject to the 
 tyrannical control of their fellow-citizens. Nor were 
 the richer classes in the actual enjoyment of inde- 
 pendence. They were perpetually divided into fac- 
 tions, which servilely ranked themselves under the 
 banners of the contending chiefs of the republic. 
 Those parties were kept together solely by corrup- 
 tion. The whole was therefore a system of servility 
 and debasement of spirit, which left nothing of a 
 free or ingenuous nature in the condition of indi- 
 viduals, nor any thing that could furnish encomium 
 to a real advocate for the dignity of human na- 
 ture." 
 
 It might seem to some that no further comments 
 were here required on the fearful vices of a Demo- 
 cratic party. But as we have a Democratic party of 
 our own to deal with, whose sins roll mountain-high 
 when it is in possession of supreme power, we 
 must defer such remarks until we come to its own 
 record. " Sufficient unto the day is the evil there- 
 of." 
 
 Modern Democrats, and many other admirers of 
 Greek literature and arts, point to them as the fruits 
 of Democratic institutions. This is evidently faulty 
 reasoning and leads to wrong conclusions, unless it 
 can be shown that Republicanism and Democracy 
 are in all respects the same, and that Greece had no 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 41 
 
 literature and arts before Democracy became pre- 
 dominant in Greece, and this, as we have shown, it 
 is not possible to do. The Greeks were a hterary 
 and artistic people centuries before Democracy, as a 
 party name and organization, was known. Before 
 the times of Homer and Hesiod, the great poets, 
 we have accounts of Greek writers whose works 
 have, been lost. This fact is mentioned because 
 some writers claim that poetry in Greece was 
 prior to prose writing. To admit this would be 
 like supposing that architects were prior to car- 
 penters, that sculptors were prior to masons, or 
 that historians were prior to school-masters, and 
 poems prior to primers, all of which must, of 
 course, be faulty reasoning and wild fancy. Prose 
 writing must, as a natural consequence, have ex- 
 isted long before poetry was committed to paper or 
 parchment, and have been contemporary, or nearly 
 contemporary, with the introduction of the alphabet. 
 And although poetry may have played an early part 
 with prose writings, it could not have had currency 
 and popularity as literature without the simplest and 
 most practical forms of composition. It must have 
 been the use of prose writings rather than poetry, 
 and oratory rather than verse, that enabled the poor 
 and laboring portions of society to form political 
 opinions. 
 
 And here I venture the opinion for what it may be 
 worth, that the vast catalogue of Greek gods, demi- 
 gods, heroes, and heroines was the outgrowth of 
 prose romances by gifted writers, after the style of 
 our modern novel-writers, or rather our modern nov- 
 
42 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 elists seem to have derived their spirit and life from 
 Grecian mythology. It is impossible to account for 
 the host of characters honored and worshipped by 
 them on any other ground than that there was a 
 class of romance writers and impostors who gave 
 to the gods and heroes character and fascination 
 among the people. The author of almost every 
 sentiment, art, and opinion was deified by these 
 writers. And it is not to be denied that the 
 demoralizing effect of so many lying and licentious 
 gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, naturally 
 resulted in the development of radical Democracy, 
 with its endless " isms " and impracticable theories. 
 Nor is it by any means discreditable to Christianity 
 and modern civilization, that Democracy is traceable 
 in its origin to the abominable Greek mythology. 
 
 It is true that literature and arts blazed forth with 
 great splendor during the reign of Democracy in 
 Greece, or rather in Athens ; or especially oratory, 
 architecture, statuary, and licentious poetry, which 
 last requires for its translation in modern times a man 
 whose ethical standard is low. Athenian Democracy 
 established and upheld the General Assembly of Five 
 Thousand, before which great orators aired themselves 
 to great advantage. It also established and upheld 
 the lottery system upon the ruins of the elective fran- 
 chise, by which these same Democratic orators became 
 the controlling power of the state, and enabled the 
 Athenians to enforce their full-fledged Democratic 
 system in other states. And by this same means all 
 rival assemblies were prevented from acting as a check 
 on this legal assembly, the party, and its leaders thus 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 43 
 
 virtually overthrowing the popular views of Demo- 
 cratic rights and privileges as understood at this day. 
 Under these circumstances, it seems quite probable 
 that political oratory operated as a scourge rather 
 than a blessing to the people, however much that art 
 was elevated by such a condition of affairs, and how- 
 ever much it has been imitated in modern times. 
 And however much also the greatness and grandeur 
 of Greek architecture and statuary grew up under 
 Democratic reign, we must bear in mind that nearly 
 all this greatness and grandeur were built up from 
 funds plundered from other states and provinces. 
 Outside of Athens, and aside from the reign of Peri- 
 cles, the great Democratic leader, we iind or read of 
 no more architecture, statuary, or oratory than is 
 found in other civilized countries. And what is also 
 here worthy of note is the fact, that these great and 
 grand specimens of architecture and statuary, and 
 the plunder of funds to construct them, more perhaps 
 than all other causes, provoked the destruction of 
 Athens by the other Greek states. 
 
 Let us now suppose we have a President of the 
 United States elected by our present Democratic 
 party with all the madness and insanity that charac- 
 terize such a party when in power, and that this 
 President should take the bits of government into his 
 teeth, as did Pericles, and that he should be as bold, 
 talented, and audacious as Pericles was, and should 
 take it into his head to open the treasury of the 
 United States, as Andrew Jackson did in 1833, and . 
 remove the public deposits to some other places 
 selected by himself. But instead of stopping at this 
 
44 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 removal, with the two hundred million dollars in 
 the treasury of the United States as at the present 
 time, he should say : " I will use forty, thirty, or 
 even twenty million dollars a year to establish the- 
 atres, temples, museums, cathedrals, monuments, 
 and statuary for the ornamentation and grandeur of 
 the capital," and that he should be allowed to do all 
 this, as he certainly would be, under an all-powerful 
 Democratic party, precisely as Pericles was allowed 
 to do, and precisely as Jackson was allowed to 
 to do with the treasury of the United States, in the 
 removal of the public deposits. Nor is this all im- 
 agination and speculation. For when Jackson, the 
 great Democratic chief of this country, removed in an 
 illegal and despotic manner the public deposits from 
 the place of lawful custody to places of his own selec- 
 tion (where they were lost), the Democratic party, 
 which put him in power, did not offer a single remon- 
 strance, or utter a. word of complaint at the act, 
 but shouted Bravo ! bravo ! precisely the same as 
 the Athenians did at the despotic acts of Pericles. 
 And when the Senate of the United States ventured 
 to censure Jackson for this act of despotism, this 
 same Dem»ocratic party beat down and beat out the 
 old Whigs who opposed this bold proceeding, as 
 though they were public robbers, and as though 
 Jackson and his advisers were saints and heroes. 
 And when Jackson and his followers squandered and 
 stole the public funds, as they did by the million, 
 and by the ten million, until the amount swelled to 
 thirty or forty million dollars, in the course of three 
 or four years, in the face and eyes of all this, the 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 45 
 
 Democratic party shouted : " Old Hickory forever !" 
 and " Great is the Democracy and General Jackson !" 
 If, we say, a Democratic President with a powerful 
 Democratic party at his back, which had put him in 
 power, should attempt such a scheme as that of Peri- 
 cles, with the two huridred million dollars in' our 
 treasury, and with no more boldness and audacity 
 than our Democratic leaders have often manifested, 
 would not all the architects and sculptors, artists and 
 artisans, and, as for that, all the rascals in the world, 
 flock to Washington as they flocked to Athens ? and 
 how long would it be before our modern Athens 
 would stand forth as the greatest and grandest city 
 in the world for arts, artists, luxury, and vice of 
 every kind ? This is virtually what the Democracy 
 in its halcyon days did in old Athens, at the expense 
 and offence of all other parts of Greece, and laid the 
 foundation for the near-by humiliation and ruin of 
 Athens itself. And this is precisely what some great 
 Democratic leader in the Presidential chair may and 
 probably will do in this country, when, if ever again, 
 the party gets full control of our government. 
 
 This was the Democratic scheme that made 
 Athens great and grand in statuary and architecture, 
 for the admiration of after-ages ; but the means by 
 which it was accomplished inflicted misery and death 
 upon other parts of Greece, as well as upon Athens 
 herself. Possibly a Republican or any other party 
 in power might attempt such a scheme of plunder 
 and luxury in our country, but no other but a 
 Democratic chief with a Democratic party at his 
 back is likely to attempt it, or, if attempted, would 
 
46 THE HISTORY OF •DEMOCRACY. 
 
 stand one chance in a hundred, as compared with a 
 Democratic chief, of bringing the inevitable result 
 of extravagance and disaster upon the people. 
 
 But we must close this sketch of the Greek Democ- 
 racy. It is true that, by an alliance with Persia, her 
 old enemy, Athens was able to throw off the Spartan 
 yoke. But her political greatness and power were 
 gone forever ; and although she was able to re-estab- 
 lish her General Assembly of Five Thousand, it was, 
 as before, nothing but a stage upon which her orators 
 could spout and boast of their patriotism and valor, 
 and through which the most adroit of her demagogues 
 could become despotic chiefs whose patriotism con- 
 sisted mainly in keeping alive their state-sovereignty 
 theory, which continued to keep the Greek states at 
 logger-heads with each other for fifty-five or sixty 
 years thereafter, or until Philip of Macedon gathered 
 all of them into his military net, to be handed over to 
 Alexander, his son. All this was accomplished de- 
 spite Demosthenes, Athens' last and greatest orator, 
 who, after vainly striving to rally his countrymen to 
 the defence of liberty and union, finally seeing that 
 all was lost, died by his own hand, at the altar of 
 his country's religion. 
 
 And here I affectionately call the attention of our 
 Democratic brethren to this last paragraph which is 
 for their special benefit. The word Democracy, as we 
 have seen, was of Greek origin ; the word Republican- 
 ism, of Roman origin. The use of the two words as 
 expressive of political systems in the world was con- 
 temporaneous, or nearly so. The history also of the 
 Greeks and Romans was mainly contemporaneous. 
 
PERICLES, THE GUARDIAN OF ATHENS, ETC. 47 
 
 The countries of the two nations were similar in cli- 
 mate, features, and productions. But the Romans, 
 under Republicanism, arose from a low estate to be 
 a great nation, and continued in that greatness, un- 
 der Republican form of government, five hundred 
 years, and became the most powerful people upon 
 the face of the earth. Under the Democracy, the 
 Greeks, a brilliant and highly intellectual people, 
 flourished in greatness about one hundred years — that 
 iSj from the overthrow of the Pisistratidse to the fall 
 of Athens, or only eighty-five years, if we count from 
 the battle of Marathon to the fall of Athens ; which 
 period, in fact, includes all that is counted great and 
 grand under the reign of Democracy in Greece, unless 
 constant internecine commotions and wars can be 
 counted as greatness. It is true. Republicanism in 
 Rome, at the end of five hundred years, was super- 
 seded by an empire which ruled the world six hun- 
 dred years longer, but Democracy in Greece, and 
 the people whose virtues it turned into vices, sank 
 into abject slavery under the Philip and Alexander 
 dynasty, and thence into slavery still more abject 
 under the Romans, and soon thereafter into the 
 oblivion of the grave. From the days of Republi- 
 canism in Rome to these days, the word has lived 
 as a system and expression of human rights through- 
 out the world, and has been applied to many nations 
 as the synonym of their government and institutions. 
 From the days of Democratic Greece, for the space 
 of more than two thousand years, so far as history 
 informs us, no people used or applied the word 
 Democracy as a political name or system, or as the 
 
48 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 synonym of liberty, equal rights, or any other moral 
 or political virtues among mankind. Democracy 
 among the Romans was known as Agrarianism, and 
 is so regarded at the present time by nineteen twen- 
 tieths of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 REPUBLICANISM AND DEMOCRACY FURTHER CON- 
 TRASTED. INTERROGATORIES. 
 
 Before proceeding to the history of Democracy 
 in modern times, it is fit and proper to seek to draw 
 some further moral and political lessons from what 
 we know of Greek Democracy. 
 
 As remarked in a previous chapter, it is a note- 
 worthy fact in history, that after the fall of Demo- 
 cracy in Greece, the word, as a party name, or 
 government name, was not revived by any people, 
 so far as we are informed, for the space of two 
 thousand years. It is also a noteworthy fact that 
 while the literature, the arts, including the moral 
 and mental philosophy of the ancient Greeks, have 
 been preserved in great perfection, their politi- 
 cal economy, and especially the principles of De- 
 mocracy as a system of government, were not dis- 
 cussed ; or if discussed, were not preserved, unless 
 we except and accept the writings of Plato and 
 Aristotle, both of whom lived and wrote, the former 
 after the fall of Athens, and the latter in the days of 
 Macedonian despotism, and neither of whom have 
 left any approval of Democracy as a form of 
 government. There must, therefore, be several 
 potent reasons for the brilliancy of the Greeks in 
 literature and arts, and for their silence on the side 
 
 49 
 
50 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of political economy. Some of these reasons are 
 herein given for the enlightenment of our modern 
 Democrats, and for what they may be worth. 
 
 First, the disreputable origin and uncertain mean- 
 ing of the word Democracy, in all its bearings and 
 relations. Second, the demoralizing and disorganiz- 
 ing influence which it always exercised upon society 
 in whatever form it was used. Third, the utter 
 moral and political wreck to which it led the Greeks, 
 and all other civilized people who adopted it as a 
 political system. 
 
 We also alluded to Rome and its Republicanism, 
 which continued to prevail in that country for five 
 hundred years, and now we add that when the 
 empire had taken the place of the republic, the gov- 
 ernment, out of respect to the work that Republi- 
 canism had accomplished, was for several centuries 
 still called a republic. And when the fall of the em- 
 pire took place, after six hundred years of its exist- 
 ence, and the people in different parts of the world 
 were left free to form independent governments of 
 their own, numerous communities used the word 
 Republic as the name of their governments. Such 
 was the case with the little republic of San Marino, 
 the republic of Genoa, the republic of Milan, the 
 republic of Florence, the republic of Venice, and 
 lastly, the republic of Switzerland, to say nothing of 
 the republics that have sprung up on the American 
 continent. The reason for this difference and dis- 
 tinction in point of popularity, fame, and usage, in 
 favor of Republicanism, is and must be that the 
 word had a reputable origin, a certainty of meaning. 
 
REPUBLICANISM AND DEMOCRACY, ETC. 5 1 
 
 and that it secured to the people order and well- 
 regulated liberty, and had an excellent moral influ- 
 ence wherever it was applied as a political name. 
 
 In view, then, of the difference in the meaning, his- 
 tory, and fame of the two words, and before pro- 
 ceeding to the history of Democracy in our country, 
 it may not be improper to propound to our modern 
 Democratic fellow-citizens a few interrogatories, and 
 to urge upon them the propriety of answering them 
 at a period as early as practicable. If they should 
 look upon these questions as a sort of political cat- 
 echism which they dislike to study, they ought to 
 write such a one for the Republicans, for the benefit 
 of all parties, obligating themselves at the same time 
 to answer the following questions. From such 
 cross-examination much more good might arise than 
 from baseless charges and the denial of the truth. 
 
 First, then, was there ever a political party formed 
 under the name of Democracy that did not convey 
 to the minds of its friends and its foes, the learned 
 and the unlearned, the virtuous and the depraved, 
 the idea that its tendency and intention were to gather 
 into its ranks the discontented and dissolute, the de- 
 praved and the dangerous portion of society, as its 
 chief strength and support ? 
 
 Second, was there ever a party formed under this 
 , name that did not convey to its friends and its foes, 
 the learned and the unlearned, the virtuous and the 
 depraved, the idea that it was intended to pull down 
 those in influence and authority, however sound 
 in principle, however pure and patriotic they might 
 be, and substitute in their places such leaders as 
 
52 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 would pander to the worst passions, prejudices, and 
 appetites of human nature ? 
 
 Third, was there ever a party formed under this 
 name which was not ready, whenever it could find a 
 suitable leader, to plunge the community into 
 disorder and revolution, either with or without a 
 sufficient cause ? 
 
 Fourth, was there ever a Democratic party in pos- 
 session of supreme power for a single decade, that 
 did not produce, or attempt to produce, a revolution 
 in the state, however sound that state's policy and 
 constitution might be ? 
 
 Fifth, was there ever a party under the name of 
 Democracy, which succeeded in gaining supreme 
 power, that did not when out of power leave the 
 state in a far worse condition than when it gained 
 control over it, if, indeed, it had not plunged the 
 state into civil or some other dangerous war? 
 
 Sixth, was there ever a Democratic party that did 
 not when in possession of supreme power keep the 
 state in social strife, or develop a despotic leader, 
 whom it blindly followed in trampling down liberty 
 and equal rights, until some great catastrophe was 
 the result ? 
 
 Seventh, was there ever a well-organized Demo- 
 cratic party which was not opposed in its practices, 
 if not in its theory, to the purity and integrity of the 
 elective franchise, and that did not gravitate to the 
 utter subversion of this great and fundamental prin- 
 ciple of a representative form of government ? 
 
 Eighth, was there ever a Democratic party on the 
 face of the earth that did not cherish and uphold 
 
REPUBLICANISM AND DEMOCRACY, ETC. 53 
 
 the slavery of some portion of the people, and glory- 
 in the overthrow and ostracism of the great and 
 good men of the land ? 
 
 Ninth, has not Democracy, as a party name and 
 brganization, been more prolific of despotism and 
 oppression in free states than any and all other 
 parties ever heard of ? 
 
 Tenth, was it not Democracy, in spirit and 
 methods, that laid the foundation for the overthrow 
 of the free governments of ancient times ? 
 
 Eleventh, has not a Democratic party, in spirit and 
 methods, if not in name, been the most reliable and 
 powerful ally of despotism in all ages and in all parts 
 of the world ? 
 
 Twelfth, was it not a Democratic party or Agra- 
 rianism, as Democracy was called in Rome, in spirit 
 and methods, rather than Republicanism, that enabled 
 Csesar and Antony to overthrow the liberties of 
 Rome, and change it into an empire? Read Anto- 
 ny's funeral oration, and Louis Napoleon's history of 
 Ceesar, for an answer. 
 
 All these interrogatories are susceptible of direct 
 answers from history, and by any one who is but 
 superficially acquainted with the annals of nations 
 and of governments. But there are a few more ques- 
 tions in theory and the natural relations of mankind, 
 which are necessary to complete this comprehensive 
 catechism, here subjoined for the consideration of all, 
 whether Democrats or Republicans, Whigs or Tories, 
 loyal or disloyal men. 
 
 Thirteenth, is not human nature, in its natural 
 state, lamentably vile, suggesting to the mental 
 
54 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 vision the truth of the orthodox tenet of " total 
 depravity," and the truth of King David's suspicion 
 that " all men are liars," and that Democracy lives 
 and thrives upon this depravity rather than upon 
 truth and virtue ? 
 
 Fourteenth, or if you demur at this old-fashioned 
 doctrine, which has stood the test of four thousand 
 years, will you not confess that at least one half 
 of the human family are in their hearts very wicked, 
 and that a Democratic party lives and thrives upon 
 this depravity and weakness of human nature ? 
 
 Fifteenth, do we not all know that numerous com- 
 munities which have stood high in civilization, 
 learning, virtue, and intelligence, have, for the want 
 of a firm and vigorous government, been deprived 
 of civil liberty, and have been precipitated into 
 despotism or mobs, which only ended in their 
 destruction? 
 
 Sixteenth, has not a Democratic party always been 
 the hot-bed of political vagaries, and treason- 
 able schemes against rational liberty, and equal 
 rights, such as Agrarianism, Jacobinism, Communism, 
 Chartism, and Nihilism ? 
 
 Seventeenth, are there not several communities, 
 large and small, in our country at the present time, 
 where the people are upon the verge of anarchy, 
 where human life is as cheap and as readily taken 
 as that of a cat or a dog, and is not this state of 
 affairs directly or indirectly traceable to a Democratic 
 party, and the disintegrating and anarchical senti- 
 ments it propagates ? 
 
 Eighteenth, and if these and hundreds of other 
 
REPUBLICANISM AND DEMOCRACY, ETC. 55 
 
 vices inseparable from a Democratic party, and 
 hundreds of calamities have been the outgrowth of 
 a Democratic party in possession of supreme power, 
 what evils may we not expect from such a party in 
 such a country as ours, when our population is in- 
 creased two, three, or fivefold, and the temptations 
 to anarchy and crime are vastly augmented ? 
 
 Nineteenth, has not free government, rational lib- 
 erty, and equal rights ever been the most difficult 
 problem to solve, the most difficult work to accom- 
 plish ever undertaken by mankind ? And does not 
 such a government, such labor, such liberty, such 
 rights, require that the most intelligent and virtuous 
 portion of the people, as measured by Christian 
 principles and precepts, bear sway rather than 
 the most ignorant and depraved portion, such 
 as but too frequently predominate in a Demo- 
 cratic party ? » 
 
 Twentieth, are not the liberties and equal rights of 
 the people, and the safety and security of any coun- 
 try, more perfect and complete without a Demo- 
 cratic party than with one ? 
 
 Twenty-first, has any Democratic party in posses- 
 sion of supreme power ever wrought out or conferred 
 any substantial benefit on any people or country ? 
 
 Twenty-second, has any Democratic party ever 
 been known to extend or enlarge the area of liberty 
 and equal rights, or remove the shackles of slavery 
 from any people or country ? 
 
 Twenty-third, has any Democratic party once in 
 possession of supreme power ever been known to 
 yield up such power, without plunging the country 
 into a bloody and cruel war of some kind ? 
 
$6 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 When these interrogatories are fully and fairly an- 
 swered, it will be a good time for some one to make 
 a history for the friends of Democracy. Or when 
 our Democratic leaders can give us the history of a 
 Democratic party that ha? not been distinguished for 
 the vices and calamities implied in these interroga- 
 gatories, our present Democratic party will be en- 
 titled to prepare a catechism for the Republican or 
 any other political party, seeking to mount into 
 supreme power. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN AMERICA. 
 
 The first great political parties in this country 
 were the Whigs and Tories, which sprang up previous 
 to the Revolutionary War, and which continued 
 to its close. The Whigs were the friends and 
 advocates of independence, and the Tories were its 
 opponents, and fought against independence and 
 home government to the close of the war. The first 
 Democratic party in this country sprang into exist- 
 ence at or near the close of the Revolutionary 
 struggle, and "with charity for all and' malice 
 toward none," it is our duty to inform the reader 
 that this first Democratic party in America was com- 
 prised mainly of the Tories, and such other men 
 as naturally fall into a disintegrating and anarchical 
 party wherever one is found. It may be true, 
 that for two or three years after the Revolutionary 
 War was over, party lines were not sharply defined, 
 or their principles fully developed. Yet the 
 Whigs were the fast, firm friends of independence 
 and a firm national government from the beginning, 
 while the Tory Democrats were always and every- 
 where conspicuous as the opponents of these great 
 American principles, using their influence and means 
 to keep the country first under the British yoke, 
 and failing in that, under the hackle of state 
 
 57 
 
S8 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 sovereignty and anarchy, and finally animated by a 
 desire to throw the country back under the control 
 of Great Britain, or some other European govern- 
 ment. And, strange as it may seem to us of the 
 present day, this Democratic party first^gained 
 formidable proportions and strength in the_taa3-great 
 States of Virginia and Massachusetts. From these 
 two great commonwealths, the Democratic party 
 soon spread out and over other States, upsetting 
 not only old English forms and customs, but up- 
 setting and deranging all laws and civilized prog- 
 ress, as all Democratic parties have an unfortunate 
 aptness for doing. 
 
 This early Democratic party first directed its 
 powers against the improvement and settlement of 
 the State constitutions, by opposing two houses in 
 the legislative bodies, by the curtailment of the 
 salaries and the time of holding offices, but more 
 notably by filling legislative assemblies with disso- 
 lute, ignorant, and wild characters, but more espe- 
 cially by the undermining and disintegration of the 
 national Congress and a national form of govern- 
 ment. As is well known, the first Congress, or 
 national government consisted of only one assembly, 
 chosen at first by the people in the respective States 
 and districts, and although this was the case, the first 
 assembly assumed and exercised in the name of the 
 people the customary and time-honored national 
 powers. This was called the Revolutionary Con- 
 gress, and did its work with energy and fidelity. But 
 it was not long before the Democratic spirit, which 
 soon ripened into a Democratic party and filled the 
 
THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN AMERICA. 59 
 
 State Legislatures with wild and reckless men, filled 
 the Congress of the United States with men of its 
 own way of thinking, and these in turn soon trampled 
 down and out all the powers that the first Congress 
 had assumed and exercised, and so continued to do, 
 until the government itself had become utterly imbe- 
 cile, and the country was in great confusion, distress, 
 and anarchy. This we shall more clearly see as we 
 proceed with our sketches, which are written for the 
 consideration of hard-working and honest people, 
 rather than for the learned and ambitious poKticians, 
 who know all these things, but prefer to keep the 
 people in darkness about them. 
 
 As just remarked, this Democratic distemper, for 
 so it may be called, first broke out in Massachusetts, 
 and showed itself in the form of complaints against 
 the high salary of the governor and other ofidcials. 
 It next attacked the State Senate, as being a super- 
 fluous branch of the government. In the next 
 place it claimed that the State ought to issue treas- 
 ury notes, or, as we would say nowadays, greenbacks 
 and fiat money, in such quantities that every man 
 might have plenty. Upon these issues, the party 
 set on foot a civil war called Shay's Insurrection, 
 and put into the field about fifteen hundred men, 
 who, after committing robberies and various other 
 crimes, were met by an equal number of loyal citi- 
 zens, well armed, and after the fall of ten or fifteen 
 Democrats, they were scattered to the four winds, 
 never again to assemble, at least up to the present 
 time, to threaten the government of that State. 
 
 " 'T is true, and pity 't is 't is true," that Democracy 
 
6o THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 next broke out in Virginia, and raged with great vio- 
 lence in that State for many, many years. It is well 
 known that Virginia, previous to the Revolution, 
 had been under the influence and control of a quasi- 
 aristocracy, similar in spirit and influence to the aris- 
 tocracy of England, but which, under the leadership 
 of Thomas Jefferson, had been torn up by the roots, 
 but unfortunately the counteraction was too sudden 
 to be healthy. It gave the power of the State into 
 the hands of a class of people headed by dema- 
 gogues calling themselves Democrats, which class, 
 when organized, or rather when fired up with Demo- 
 cratic notions, would have done credit to an Athe- 
 nian rabble in the days of Clisthenes, and would 
 probably, with such a leader, have trampled the 
 elective franchise in the dust. John Marshall, who 
 was afterward Chief-Justice of the United States, 
 said " the people of Virginia idolized Democracy." 
 Certain it is that it took so deep root among them 
 that it has had control of the State from that day to 
 this, and, viewed from a human standpoint, it came 
 very near preventing the ratification of our great 
 charter of union, domestic tranquillity, common de- 
 fence, general welfare, and liberty to ourselves and 
 our posterity ; and despite the conservative power of 
 this charter and her many great men, it kept the 
 State in a deplorably dilapidated condition, until the 
 Democrats finally took up arms against the constitu- 
 tion and government of their fathers. 
 
 To form some idea of the demoralization of the 
 people under this early Democracy, and the conse- 
 quent character and impotence of the government 
 
THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN AMERICA. 6 1 
 
 of the State, the following extract is taken from a 
 speech of Governor Edmund Randolph delivered 
 in the Virginia Convention of 1788, called to ratify 
 the great Federal charter. After giving a graphic ac- 
 count of the horrid state of morals, commerce, in- 
 dustry, and manners, he said : — " A man who was a 
 citizen was deprived of his life thus : From mere re- 
 liance on general reports, a gentleman in the House 
 of Delegates informed the House that a certain man 
 (Joseph Phillips) had committed several crimes, and 
 was running at large perpetrating other crimes. He 
 therefore moved for leave to attaint him. He ob- 
 tained that leave instantly, and drawing a bill from 
 his pocket it was read three times in one day and 
 carried to the Senate. He was attainted speedily 
 and precipitately, without any proof better than 
 vague reports, without being confronted with his 
 accusers and witnesses, without the privilege of 
 calling for evidence in his behalf. He was sentenced 
 to death, and was afterward actually executed." 
 
 No one who is able to read and appreciate this 
 piece of history can fail to be struck with the de- 
 plorable condition of the then great State of Vir- 
 ginia, or to see that it had arisen in the main from 
 the baleful excitement of the word Democracy as a 
 party name and influence. 
 
 The moral and political condition of the other 
 States was similar to these leading ones, except 
 Rhode Island, where the Democracy had actually 
 ripened into an oligarchy, which for a longtime held 
 sway in the State, and prevented the ratification of 
 the Constitution of the United States therein for 
 
62 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 three years after it had been presented to the people 
 by the Federal Convention, and until the General 
 Government was about to put its foot on its Demo- 
 cratic, oligarchic, and aristocratic neck. 
 
 As touching this state of affairs in the country, 
 Mr. John Adams, the first Vice-President and the 
 second President under the new Constitution, said: 
 " Negligence of its (the Constitution's) regulations, in- 
 attention to its recommendations, if not disobedience 
 to its authority, not only in individuals but in States, 
 soon appeared, with their melancholy consequences : 
 universal languor, jealousies and rivalries of the 
 States, decline of navigation and commerce, dis- 
 couragement of necessary manufactures, universal 
 fall in the value of lands and their products, con- 
 tempt of public and private faith, loss of considera- 
 tion and credit with foreign nations, and at length 
 in discontents, animosities, and combinations, partial 
 conventions and insurrections, threatening some 
 great national calamity. 
 
 " In this dangerous crisis the American people 
 were not abandoned by their usual good sense, pres- 
 ence of mind, resolution, and integrity." . . . 
 And he might have added : Which, together with the 
 blessing of God, preserved from utter ruin all that 
 the fathers had achieved. 
 
 Mr. James Madison, the fourth President, on one 
 occasion, alluding to the same state of affairs, said : 
 " As a natural consequence of this distracted and 
 disheartening condition of the Union, the Federal 
 authority had ceased to be respected abroad, and 
 dispositions were shown there, particularly in Great 
 
THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN AMERICA. 6^ 
 
 Britain, to take advantage of its imbecility, and to 
 speculate on its approaching downfall. At home it 
 had lost all confidence and credit, the unstable and 
 unjust career of the States had also forfeited the 
 respect and confidence essential to order and good 
 government, involving a general decay of confidence 
 a:nd credit between man and man." 
 
 That the Democracy of those days had greatly de- 
 moralized the good-sense, presence of mind, resolu- 
 tion, and integrity of the people, spoken of by Mr. 
 Adams, and that it had brought all the disorder and 
 ruin upon the country of which Mr. Adams and Mr. 
 Madison speak, and that the Democracy was then 
 opposed to a firm national government, and that its 
 leaders did all they could to defeat the Constitution, 
 there is no ground of doubt. In the discussion of 
 the Constitution in the Federal Convention, and 
 especially upon the question of electing the repre- 
 sentatives in Congress by the people, instead of the 
 State governments, the Democracy was alluded to 
 as an objection and argument against the former 
 method. Edmund Randolph, in the Federal Con- 
 vention, said : " He deplored the turbulence and 
 follies of the Democracy." Mr. Madison also, who 
 was then counted a Democrat, complained of " the 
 oppression and injustice experienced from the De- 
 mocracy." Mr. George Mason, another Democratic 
 delegate from Virginia, "admitted the danger of 
 Democracy." Alexander Hamilton, although in fa- 
 vor of electing the representatives in Congress by 
 the people, said : " He was alarmed by the amazing 
 violence and turbulence of the Democratic spirit." 
 
64 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Elbridge Gerry said : "The Democrats do not want 
 virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots." 
 And again, he said : " It would seem to be a maxim 
 of the Democracy to starve the public servants." 
 And still again, in his State, he thought " Democ- 
 racy the worst of all political evils." 
 
 It is rather heart-rending to make these historical 
 revelations about our Democratic brethren. It 
 would be much pleasanter to offer them more 
 palatable and delightful reading, but as good citizens 
 and patriots they should bear in mind that, if the 
 party should ever again come into power, as it ex- 
 pects to do soon, these developments may, in such 
 a fearful contingency, operate as reminders of their 
 faults, their weak and bad points, and thereby put 
 them on their good behavior, and possibly save 
 them and their country from the ruin which a Demo- 
 cratic party in power has always heretofore brought 
 upon the people. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON NOT A DEMOCRAT. — DEMOCRACY 
 CLASSIFIED. — THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE NOT 
 A DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENT. THE ARTICLES OF CONFED- 
 ERATION PURELY DEMOCRATIC. THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 OF THE UNITED STATES PROVIDENTIALLY RATIFIED BY 
 THE PEOPLE, REGARDLESS OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 It is a sad, a very sad piece of business, to upset 
 the consolation and comfort that our modern Demo- 
 cratic brethren have enjoyed in the belief that 
 Thomas Jefferson was a Democrat. But truth, fair- 
 ness, and good-fellowship demand that it should be 
 done. It is true enough that Jefferson was called a 
 radical, a disorganizer in politics, and did many very 
 naughty things that looked like Democratic deeds, 
 and hence it is, we suppose, that many modern Demo- 
 crats claim him as a man after their own hearts. 
 Yet he was not a Democrat in name, spirit, or prac- 
 tice. His biographer says " he was a Republican and 
 a philanthropist," and that " the term Democracy 
 was seldom used or countenanced by him." In his 
 first inaugural address as President of the United 
 States he said : " We are all Republicans and we 
 are all Federalists," meaning by the term Repub- 
 licans his own friends and party, and by Federalists 
 the party of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton. 
 It is well known that he always repelled the term 
 
 65 
 
66 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Democracy, when applied to him and his party by 
 the Federalists, and that his entire administration of 
 eight years was as far from the instincts and practices 
 of Democracy as that of Washington, unless his bold 
 assumptions of power may be called Democracy. 
 
 It would make this volume too long to undertake 
 a detailed account of the demoralization and dis- 
 orders that took place in various parts of the coun- 
 try as the result of wild and rabid Democratic 
 notions during the years preceding the adoption of 
 the Constitution. The idea of Democracy known 
 as State Sovereignty was most conspicuous, and 
 played a part almost as pernicious as idolatry played 
 among the Israelites after the death of Joshua. 
 
 Yet the Democracy, as a party, as was the case 
 with it in ancient Greece, and as it ever has been 
 with it in this country, was opposed to a " firm, 
 national government." But at that time, disorder 
 and lawlessness were wide-spread, threatening civil 
 war, or some other formidable evil, greatly exciting 
 and alarming the people. As a consequence, the 
 State governments, though Democratic, were com- 
 pelled to take some action, looking toward a national 
 organization. These governments, therefore, pro- 
 ceeded to appoint delegates to the national conven- 
 tion to assemble in Philadelphia. But true to the 
 Democratic instinct, to hold to power as long as 
 practicable, they stipulated in appointing these dele- 
 gates, that, first, the work of the convention should 
 be confined to amendments of the old Articles of 
 Confederation ; and second, that the suggestions the 
 convention might make should be referred back to 
 
DEMOCRACY CLASSIFIED. 6/ 
 
 the State governments, rather than to the people, 
 for ratification or rejection. It is also worthy of note, 
 that these State governments in appointing dele- 
 gates, in order to shield themselves as much as pos- 
 sible from responsibility of the proposed innovation 
 as they called it, took care to select nearly all from 
 the old Whigs and anti-Democrats. This selection 
 might be regarded as an interposition of Divine 
 Providence — who holds the affairs of nations in the 
 hollow of His hand and brings to naught the designs 
 of those who oppose His plans — for the redemption 
 of the people, in the same manner that Providence 
 afterward made use of a Democratic war for the per- 
 petuation of slavery, as a means to free the colored 
 people from their bonds. 
 
 But before proceeding farther on this line of 
 history, we must go back to a point when Democracy 
 had not made its appearance in our country ; namely, 
 to the commencement of the Revolutionary war. 
 
 And here too we may remark that many persons 
 suppose that the people and the Democracy were the 
 same, and that the two words when used as political 
 terms mean the same thing. This is a great mistake. 
 The word people, whether used socially, politically, 
 or numerically, means the entire citizenship, the rich 
 and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the 
 young and the old, the laity and the clergy, those in 
 ofifice and those out of office. The Democracy means 
 everywhere, and on all occasions, a class, or a politi- 
 cal party, composed in the main of the ignorant, the 
 dissolute, and the discontented, who are always so de- 
 fined and addressed by their leaders and spokesmen, 
 
68 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 and who are always appealed to as the oppressed 
 portion of society, whether there are any grounds for 
 such complaint or not, whether the other portion of 
 society is doing all it can for their elevation and 
 happiness or not ; that is to say, they are so appealed 
 to if they are freemen with votes at their command, 
 but if they are slaves, no word of complaint is ever 
 uttered by a Democratic leader in their favor. In 
 the nature of things, the Democracy cannot mean the 
 learned, the moral, and intellectual portion of society. 
 Charles Dickens is said to have been a great friend 
 of the poor, the weak, and the lowly, but he was 
 never counted a Democrat. Socrates was counted a 
 great friend of the poor and humble, but he was 
 never counted a Democrat ; but among the ancient 
 Greeks, Clisthenes, Pericles, and Alcibiades were 
 Democrats, and were great Democratic leaders, who 
 seem to have depended mainly on the dissolute and 
 ignorant portions of society for power and support. 
 In our country, Patrick Henry and Luther Martin 
 were counted Democrats and representatives of the 
 Democratic spirit. In France, Danton, Marat, and 
 Robespierre were representatives of the Democratic 
 party of their day and country. Napoleon Bona- 
 parte was at first a Democrat, and whether so or not 
 when he seized upon imperial power, he always relied 
 upon the Democratic element for power and support. 
 But no one supposes that all the Greek people, all 
 the French people, or all the American people were 
 ever Democrats. Unquestionably there have been 
 more people in all civilized countries who favored 
 and upheld freedom and liberty for all, and whenever 
 
DEMOCRACY CLASSIFIED. 69 
 
 embraced Democratic sentiments, or believed in a 
 Democratic party, than were ever found ia Demo- 
 cratic ranks. Indeed, we do not read of any Demo- 
 cratic party that ever abolished or opposed slavery. 
 Hence we come to the conclusion that the Democ- 
 racy never meant the same thing as the people, or 
 the people the same thing as the Democracy. 
 
 The Revolutionary Congress, which assembled in 
 Philadelphia in 1774, was composed of men and 
 patriots appointed by the people in their primary 
 assemblies, and represented all conditions of people. 
 A Democratic party had not then arisen, and had no 
 part or lot in the movement. The powers that 
 this first Congress exercised were assumed in their 
 representative capacity as the powers of the people 
 and as afterward expressed in the Declaration of 
 Independence. The powers that this first Congress 
 exercised were supreme, as they should have been, 
 and partook of sovereign authority, such as obtains 
 in all legitimate national governments. For two 
 years, and until after the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, there was no hesitancy or question among the 
 people of the supreme character and authority of 
 the Congress. It is true this Congress did not con- 
 stitute a perfect and complete system of government, 
 but it did not shrink from acts or measures which 
 were demanded by the exigencies of the occasion, 
 . as the history of those years fully demonstrates. 
 
 But alas for those days ! when the great sovereign 
 act of independence had been put forth, and the 
 great work of the war had hardly begun, these 
 representatives of the people called a halt, and in- 
 
"JO THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 stead of forming, as they could and should have 
 done, a complete national government, they con- 
 ceived the crude, and almost fatal idea that the 
 newly declared States, with their crude and half- 
 formed governments, could and would perform this 
 great work — a work, by the way, which none but 
 despotic power, or the people, in their primary and 
 representative capacity, have ever been able to per- 
 form. Out of this omission to form a suitable 
 government, which the clangor of war would have 
 sanctioned. State sovereignty arose with its hydra- 
 heads, and Democracy soon began to show its teeth, 
 claws, and glaring eyeballs on every occasion. After 
 years of labor, and days and nights of prayer and sup- 
 plication to these State governments, by good and 
 patriotic men, to consent to a suitable form of na- 
 tional government, the result was the Articles of 
 Confederation, with these truly Democratic words 
 emblazoned upon its front : " Each State retains its 
 sovereignty, freedom, and independence," which, of 
 course, placed a veto power in the hands of each 
 State, and soon reduced what remained of a national 
 government to a nullity, and society to the condition 
 already described. But, fortunately, to again repeat 
 the words of John Adams : " In this dangerous 
 crisis, the American people were not abandoned 
 by their usual good-sense, presence of mind, resolu- 
 tion, and integrity," nor indeed by the presence and 
 blessing of God. 
 
 And again, in this dangerous crisis, the delegates, 
 who had been appointed by the State governments, 
 learning wisdom from the omissions of the Revolution- 
 
DEMOCRACY CLASSIFIED. 7 1 
 
 ary Congress, and not being willing to commit an- 
 other great mistake, took the ship of state into their 
 own hands, regardless of the instructions of the State 
 governments, and framed a complete and thorough 
 national Constitution, providing for its submission to 
 the votes of the people for ratification, rather than 
 to the State governments. This great charter of 
 union, justice tranquillity, common defence, general 
 welfare, and liberty, was thus ratified by an over- 
 whelming majority of the people's votes. 
 
 And now, in closing this chapter, it is a sad thing 
 for our Democratic brethren of to-day for it to be 
 said that the opponents of the Constitution of 1789 
 were unquestionably Democrats in spirit, words, and 
 acts, if not in name and organization, and that so 
 great were the demoralization, disorder, and distress 
 of the people, and so great were the demoralization 
 and weakness of the. State governments and the 
 courts, as the consequence of Democratic senti- 
 ments and methods, and so thoroughly had the 
 people been scourged by Democracy during the thir- 
 teen years from the Declaration of Independence to 
 the adoption of the Constitution of 1789, that the 
 word Democracy, as a party name and organization, 
 became odious, and disappeared, as such, for the 
 next forty years. And in all this we again see the 
 hand of a kind and protecting Providence. 
 
 It is not strange that Thomas Jefferson declined 
 to be called a Democrat. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS AND KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 As related in the foregoing chapters, upon the 
 adoption of the great charter of liberty, and the re- 
 construction of the government under it in 1789, 
 Democracy, as a party name and organization, disap- 
 peared from the country, except so far as the old 
 Whigs and the Constitutional party applied the term 
 to their opponents as a term of reproach. But as 
 darkness is opposed to light, and as the negative is 
 sometimes as valuable for illustration as the affirma- 
 tive, and as the pestilence is better understood when 
 it is past and gone than when present, so are bad 
 political principles better understood when their 
 consequences have been experienced. 
 
 In the absence, then, of the Democratic party, the 
 new Constitution being accepted as the fundamental 
 law of the country, " the great experiment of test- 
 ing the plan," as Patrick Henry said, " was to take 
 place." This great work, as a matter of course, de- 
 manded a large amount of wisdom, a large amount 
 of labor, ingenuity, and patriotic devotion. Almost 
 every part of the Constitution, almost every relation 
 and interest of society, as a nation, as well as the in- 
 ternal interests and relations of the country, required 
 numerous measures, numerous agencies, to regulate 
 and protect these interests. Owing to the reaction- 
 
 72 
 
ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS, ETC, 73 
 
 ary and disturbing tactics of the early Democrats, the 
 work was slow and difficult, and even dangerous. 
 Almost the first measure was that of raising revenue 
 for the use of the government — a task always 
 difficult and delicate, but now rendered more so than 
 usual from the utter failure of the Democratic Arti- 
 cles of Confederation at this very point. Next came 
 the means and methods of furnishing a medium of 
 commercial operations and exchanges, both paper and 
 metallic, both for the use of the people and the gov- 
 ernment itself. Owing to the scarcity of gold and 
 silver in the country, and the sad experience the 
 people had had with paper money, this measure was 
 beset by difficulties and dangers, but the vast surplus 
 products of the country — in prospedu — and the vast 
 fields of foreign commerce inviting enterprise, pre- 
 vented the government from neglecting to provide 
 for the life-blood of industry and trade. Next came 
 the Post-office Department, with all its extended 
 branches, and with all its necessary and complicated 
 parts, comprising a vast piece of machinery in which 
 every living soul had an immediate and direct in- 
 terest at stake. Next came the Department of War, 
 and eventually a Navy, for protection against in- 
 ternal and external foes, all of which vast amount 
 of machinery, with its details, was constructed and 
 put into operation in the absence, and without the 
 interference, of an organized Democratic party ; but 
 God only knows how it could have been done in the 
 presence of such a party, and against the instincts it 
 always has had for obstruction and ruin. 
 
 But it was not long before the young government 
 
74 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 had to contend with insurrections and threatened 
 insurrections, springing from the smouldering em- 
 bers of the defunct Democratic party. It also had 
 Indian wars on its hands, and obstructions and 
 threatening troubles with the Spaniards, who held 
 the mouth of the Mississippi River. It also soon had 
 a war, or a difficulty — if possible worse than a war 
 — with France, its old ally, augmented greatly, as 
 we shall presently see, by surviving Democratic 
 spirits. All this took place within the first few 
 years, and all was surmounted, and the integrity and 
 honor of the government preserved and maintained, 
 in the absence of a Democratic party, and despite its 
 lingering propensities and love of confusion. 
 
 And here, for the purpose of continuing our thread 
 of history and the enlightenment of our Demo- 
 cratic brethren, it should be remarked that out of 
 this difficulty with France, namely, the audacious 
 and insulting interference of the then Democratic 
 French Government with the rights and prerogatives 
 of our government on our own soil, and the capture 
 of our shipping on the high seas, grew the " Alien 
 and Sedition Laws," on the part of our government, 
 for its own protection and defence, about which 
 rivers of filthy Democratic ink and crocodile tears 
 have been shed. Necessary and proper as these 
 laws were in the distressed condition of our country, 
 they were seized upon, not only for abuse of their 
 authors, but as a pretext for the seditious and 
 treasonable Democratic Kentucky resolutions, which 
 may now be considered as an utterance of the 
 slumbering Democratic party. These resolutions 
 
ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS, ETC. 75 
 
 were, as a matter of course, in strong sympathy 
 with the French Democracy and its bloody work, 
 and about which no Democratic penitential ink or 
 tears have been shed from that day to this. 
 
 It is not for the writer of these papers, or for any 
 other person of to-day, to portray the motives of 
 Mr. Jefferson in writing these resolutions, except to 
 say he virtually denied their authorship for twenty 
 years, and thus recognized by his denial "their 
 treasonable character, which the whole world, ex- 
 cept the Democrats, stamped upon them. But be 
 this as it may, it is proper here to speak a little 
 further upon the character of the Alien and Sedition 
 Laws, and to say, as we may with truth, at this day, 
 that these laws were emphatically war measures, well 
 suited to meet the audacious conduct of the French 
 Democratic emissaries who were opening in this 
 couritry, in defiance of our government, recruiting 
 offices for their own army, and who were fitting out 
 armed vessels in our ports to make war upon a 
 nation with whom the United States were at peace, 
 while the French navy were capturing and confiscat- 
 ing our mercantile ships. Nor was the capture of 
 our shipping and these violations under the nose of 
 our government of neutral rights, all that was be- 
 ing done by the French to insult us. They started 
 Democratic newspapers in our cities, among which 
 was one called the Aurora, in Philadelphia, the 
 vilest of the vile, and all filled with such coarse and 
 scurrilous articles against the President and the 
 government of our country, as none but French 
 Democrats schooled in the society of Marat, 
 
"](> THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Danton, and Robespierre, could write, and none 
 but Democrats with the vilest of appetites could 
 swallow. 
 
 It was against these acts and provocations, and such 
 others as French Democrats alone could invent, and 
 in view of the imminent danger of having French 
 Democratic atrocities re-enacted in our own country, 
 that the Alien and Sedition Laws were enacted by 
 the Congress of the United States. The wonder is, 
 and long has been, with all honest men, why it was 
 that, instead of these mild measures, our govern- 
 ment did not apprehend and imprison or hang these 
 Democratic emissaries, instead of treating them as 
 mildly as it did. And here it should be stated, for 
 the information of our Democratic fellow-citizens of 
 to-day, so atrocious were these French acts that 
 more than thirty years after their occurrence Andrew 
 Jackson, the first genuine Democratic President of 
 this country, was exceedingly anxious to make war 
 upon the French on account of them, and because 
 the French Government refused to pay damages for 
 the same. 
 
 It may be repeated, therefore, that the time has 
 come when, in giving a sketch of Democracy, as a 
 party name and organization in our country, these 
 Alien and Sedition Laws should be frankly and open- 
 ly defended before all American readers, and when, 
 if they are to be condemned at all, it should be 
 for their mildness and clemency, rather than for 
 their severity, under the great provocation. The 
 Alien and Sedition Laws, with all the condemnation 
 that the Democracy of this country has been able to 
 
ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS, ETC. TJ 
 
 heap upon them were right, and more especially on 
 the Alien Law, stands at this day upon the statute- 
 books of the country as the law of the land, notwith- 
 standing the fact that the Democratic party of this 
 country has had the control and direction of the 
 government for more than thirty years since that 
 time without attempting its repeal. The Sedition 
 Law was but a temporary measure, having been 
 enacted for three years, and having expired of its 
 own limitation, after some two or three traitors had 
 been arrested under it, and held as prisoners for 
 a short time. 
 
 Such, it may be repeated, were the Alien and Se- 
 dition Laws, which were made a pretext for the truly 
 seditious and treasonable Democratic " Kentucky 
 Resolutions," and which have been a sweet morsel 
 under Democratic tongues until "State-sovereignty" 
 sentiments culminated in the great Democratic Rebel- 
 lion. And here it may be mentioned that these laws 
 enacted by the party of Washington, Adams, and 
 Hamilton, have been made the target and the topic 
 of more Democratic hypocritical cant, and more 
 Democratic lying literature than was ever heard of 
 or drawn from any other subject, and which, in fact, 
 if reproduced in newspaper form, we may suppose 
 would shingle the country from Passammaquoddy 
 to the Golden Gate, and from the Lakes to the Gulf 
 of Mexico : the material would, it is true, be filthy, 
 and if lifted into the air by a very strong wind, 
 might so darken the earth and so blind and disgust 
 the angels of light as to cause them to turn their 
 faces from our country forever. For eighty long 
 
78 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 years these laws have served as a cloak and a 
 shelter, from behind which Denaocrats have been 
 accustomed to blacken the character and stab the 
 reputation of every great and pure patriot of the 
 country from Washington down to the present day. 
 Mr. Jefferson may have written the Kentucky 
 resolutions for partisan and peaceful purposes only. 
 He certainly had too much sense to suppose 
 that these Alien and Sedition Laws, enacted as war 
 measures, had in them any danger to the country, 
 the Constitution, or civil liberty. If he prepared 
 the resolutions for disunion and treasonable purposes, 
 his patriotism must have been very much improved 
 by his election to the Presidency ; and as he did 
 not use in them the terms Democracy or State sover- 
 eignty, we suppose the mantle of charity should be 
 cast over his fame and name. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AND THE CONDITION OF THE 
 COUNTRY, WHEN IT ACCEDED TO SUPREME POWER. 
 
 We must now come to the consideration of the 
 first fully organized, armed, and equipped Demo- 
 cratic party in this country, and a series of reaction- 
 ary movements, and the most surprising and in- 
 consistent Revolution, that ever took place in any 
 country in time of profound peace, and such a reac- 
 tion and Revolution as never could have taken place, 
 from good to bad, in any civilized and enlightened 
 community, except as a consequence of the accession 
 to supreme power of a Democratic, or some equally 
 wild and reckless party. Perhaps it is too early by 
 a generation or two for the entire people of this 
 country to see and fully appreciate the terrible 
 evils that came from the administrations of Andrew 
 Jackson and Martin Van Buren, and the wicked 
 counsels which guided them. But it is not too early 
 for each and every lover of his country to recount 
 these evils, and to seek to warn his countrymen 
 against the recurrence of such. 
 
 Perhaps we should not neglect to observe that 
 there are many good men who call themselves 
 Democrats, who, in State and other local matters, 
 act wisely as public servants. It is also probable 
 that even the political partisans acting under the 
 
 79 
 
8o THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Constitution and laws of the United States, ^vhich 
 constitute nine tenths of the points and rules by 
 which their actions are guided and controlled, and 
 through which every intelligent man can understand 
 what ought and what ought not to be done by the 
 local governments, need not be impugned as to their 
 patriotism or right-doing. But when such a party, 
 a party mainly composed, themselves being judges, 
 of the ignorant and the depraved of all classes, 
 assumes national proportions, to the exclusion of 
 the intelligent, virtuous, and wise portion of society, 
 and, to the exclusion also, if you please, of the rich, 
 and this element of theirs comprises the prepon- 
 derating element in the party, and this party gains 
 possession of supreme, national power, the whole 
 political and moral aspect of the community becomes 
 changed, and the ship of state is soon driven, 
 without compass or chart, among rocks and 
 quicksands, until a wreck ensues. For indeed such 
 a party, in possession of supreme power, dealing 
 with measures which not one in a thousand can 
 fully comprehend, knows and can know no pre- 
 cedent and no rule of action for its course and con- 
 duct, but its own ambition and its own passions, as will 
 be shown was the case during the times of which we 
 are about to speak. Nor can this historical sketch 
 fail to demonstrate the force and truth of the 
 proverb, " when the righteous are in authority the 
 people rejoice, but when the wicked bear rule the 
 people mourn." 
 
 It is well known to all who are familiar with 
 the political history of this country, that at the 
 
CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY IN 1 829. 8 1 
 
 time of Gen. Jackson's elevation to the Presidency 
 in 1829, the people were in the most prosperous con- 
 dition they ever had been since they had achieved 
 their independence. The great New York and 
 Erie Canal had been completed; the Pennsylvania 
 and the Baltimore and Ohio canals were being pushed 
 toward the Western States, so that the products of 
 the Western plains were already conveyed by these 
 routes to and along the Atlantic coast. The Miss- 
 issippi River, its branches, and the lakes had been 
 covered with steamers carrying to and fro, and tow-' 
 ing immense barges loaded, with mineral and agricult- 
 ural products of all kinds. Manufacturing estab- 
 lishments East and West, North and South, 
 were being started, and were everywhere profit- 
 able and prosperous. Mechanics and laborers of 
 every kind found abundant employment at high 
 wages. Thousands of men were flocking westward 
 to get themselves homes upon government lands, 
 and to become wealthy by their industry and en- 
 terprise, as thousands did, before the country was 
 struck by the great Democratic cyclone and the 
 moral contagion that followed. The railway and 
 locomotive had already been invented and were 
 being constructed. The hopes and expectations 
 from these new inventions were very great, and men 
 were looking forward to the national and State 
 governments to aid in driving them over or through 
 the Alleghany Mountains from the East and South 
 to the great Northwest. We may add that the 
 culture of cotton was rapidly on the increase in 
 the South. 
 
82 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The country had then been at peace with all 
 the European powers for fifteen years, and under 
 such rulers as James Madison, James Monroe, and 
 John Quincy Adams, the people had enjoyed the 
 benefit of wise and prudent legislation on the part of 
 the general government, and especially in the great 
 measures of revenue, a tariff with protection for home 
 industry, and a prudent and safe system of internal 
 improvements by Congress, all of which co-operated 
 to give a powerful impetus to industry and enter- 
 prise of every kind. In addition to these a national 
 bank, with twenty-five branches in the leading cities 
 and sections, had been established. This gave addi- 
 tional stimulus to industry and enterprise, while it also 
 provided a sound currency, cheap exchange, and safe 
 places of deposit for the government and the people. 
 In a word, every branch of industry, every branch of 
 business, every line of trade, both foreign and 
 domestic, was in a healthy condition, and the people 
 as a whole were buoyant, prosperous, and happy. 
 And now, before giving the readers some contem- 
 porary testimony of the condition of the country 
 at that time, when the Democracy commenced its 
 overturn, I remark that notwithstanding the howling 
 Dervishes that then arose to condemn the measures 
 of the government, and blacken the character of 
 the statesmen who enacted and upheld them, 
 there is not now a sane man, or an intelligent Demo- 
 crat who would dare to stand up and repeat one 
 of the thousands of libels that were then heaped 
 upon those measures and men who led in them, un- 
 less it be some old Nullifier who had made, without 
 
CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY IN 1829. 83 
 
 shame or reason, a great noise in South Carolina about 
 protection. Nor can any one at this day point to 
 a measure that had been enacted, or that was in 
 prospect, upon which the election of Jackson turned, 
 unless it was the fact, as De Tocqueville expresses 
 it, " that he was called to the ' lofty station,' by 
 virtue of his having been commander of the Ameri- 
 can forces at the battle and defences of New Or- 
 leans, for which latter position he had not a single 
 qualification." 
 
 We shall now give some cotemporary testimony, 
 as to the condition of the country at the time of 
 Jackson's election, the credibility of which neither 
 Whigs nor Tories, Republicans nor Democrats, can 
 question. Mr. Clay, in his speech in the Senate, 
 February, 1832, said : 
 
 " I have now to perform the more pleasing task of 
 exhibiting an imperfect sketch of the existing state 
 of the unparalleled prosperity of the country. On a 
 general survey, we behold cultivation extended, the 
 arts flourishing, the face of the country improved, 
 our people fully and profitably employed, and the 
 public countenance exhibiting tranquillity, content- 
 ment, and happiness. And if we descend into par- 
 ticulars we have the agreeable contemplation of a 
 people out of debt ; land rising slowly in value, but 
 in a secure and salutary degree ; a ready though not 
 extravagant market for all' the surplus productions 
 of our industry ; innumerable flocks and herds bel- 
 lowing and gambolling on ten thousand hills and 
 plains, covered with rich and verdant grasses ; our 
 cities expanded, and whole villages springing up, as 
 
84 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 it were, by enchantment; our exports and imports 
 increased and increasing ; our tonnage, foreign and 
 coastwise, swelling and fully occupied ; the rivers of 
 our interior animated by the perpetual thunder and 
 lightning of countless steam-boats ; the currency 
 sound and abundant ; the public debt of two wars 
 nearly redeemed ; and, to cover all, the public treas- 
 ury overflowing, embarrassing Congress, not to find 
 subjects of taxation, but to select the objects which 
 shall be liberated from the impost. If the term of 
 seven years were to be selected, of the greatest 
 prosperity which this people have enjoyed since the 
 establishment of their present Constitution, it would 
 be exactly that period of seven years which immedi- 
 ately followed the passage of the tariff of 1824." 
 
 To most men this testimony is doubtless sufficient 
 to make clear the prosperous condition of the 
 country. But Democrats may like some evidence 
 from Democratic authority. We find in Jackson's 
 first message to Congress in 1829 the following para- 
 graphs. When these are given, and the record of his 
 administration has been examined, we shall try to pre- 
 sent to our readers some faint conception of the 
 terrible wreck and horrible disasters which his ad- 
 ministration brought upon the nation. He says : 
 
 " In communicating with you for the first time, it 
 is to me a source of unfeigned satisfaction, calling 
 for mutual congratulation and devout thanks to a 
 benign Providence, that we are at peace with all 
 mankind, and that our country exhibits the most 
 cheering evidence of general welfare and progressive 
 improvement." 
 
CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY IN 1 829. 85 
 
 " The public prosperity is evinced in the increased 
 revenue arising from the sales of public lands, and 
 in the steady maintenance of that produced by im- 
 ports and tonnage, notwithstanding the additional 
 duties imposed by the Act of igth of May, 1828, 
 and the usual importations in the early part of the 
 year." 
 
 " The state of the finances exhibits the resources 
 of the nation in an aspect highly flattering to its 
 industry, and auspicious of the ability of the govern- 
 ment in a very short time to extinguish the public 
 debt." 
 
 " The balance in the treasury on the 1st of Janu- 
 ary, 1829, was five millions nine hundred and 
 seventy-two thousand four hundred and thirty-five 
 dollars and eighty-one cents. The receipts of the 
 current year are estimated at twenty-four millions 
 six hundred and two thousand two hundred and 
 thirty dollars." 
 
 In reference to the great measures which it had 
 taken the government nearly forty years to mature 
 and render satisfactory to the people, on March the 
 4th, in his inaugural address, he said : 
 
 " Internal improvement and a diffusion of knowl- 
 edge, so far as they can be promoted by constitu- 
 tional acts of the Federal Government, are of high 
 importance." 
 
 In his first annual message he says again : • 
 
 " Every member of the Union in peace and in 
 war will be benefited by the improvement of inland 
 navigation, and the construction' of highways in the 
 several States." 
 
 And again he says : 
 
86 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " The general rule to be applied in graduating the 
 duties upon articles of foreign growth and manu- 
 facture, is that which will place our own in fair com- 
 petition with those of other countries, and the in- 
 ducements to advance even a step beyond this point 
 are controlling in regard to those articles which are 
 of primary necessity in time of war." 
 
 And now as to the bank, he says : 
 
 " The charter of the Bank of the United States 
 expires in 1836, and its stockholders will most prob- 
 ably apply for a renewal of their privileges. In 
 order to avoid the evils resulting from precipitancy 
 in a measure involving such important principles 
 and such deep pecuniary interests, I feel that I 
 cannot, in justice to the parties interested, too soon 
 present it to the deliberate consideration of the Legis- 
 lature and the people." 
 
 There is, there can be, no question that in these 
 first addresses (1829) Jackson gave a candid and cor- 
 rect account of the condition of the people and the 
 finances of the country, as well as a correct reflex of 
 his own mind and the public expectations at that 
 time, on all the great questions touched upon by 
 him ; and that he also gave voice to the public 
 sentiment in regard to the tariff, in regard to 
 internal improvements, and the re-charter of the 
 Bank of the United States, there are no grounds to 
 doubt ; and that if he had had honest and patriotic 
 men about him, as confidential advisers, instead of 
 what was called a " kitchen Cabinet," comprised of a 
 gang of political bummers, his administration might 
 have been a benefit, rather than a scourge, to the 
 American people. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Jackson's first views of the great measures and 
 principles of the fathers, and the programme of 
 destruction concocted by his advisers. 
 
 It is evident from various circumstances, and 
 especially from the addresses of Jackson in 1829, 
 from which the extracts in the foregoing chapter were 
 taken, and which clearly show the prosperous con- 
 dition of the country at that time, that he, Jackson, 
 had not conceived the idea of assailing, much less 
 the thought of destroying, the great measures and 
 policies of the fathers of the republic. Nor is it at 
 all probable that he then had any just conception of 
 the nature and instincts of a genuine Democratic 
 party, or the proclivities that such a party has 
 always manifested for the overthrow of great and 
 good men, and any and all measures such men 
 have supported and upheld. But there were men, 
 sharp and unscrupulous men, in the party, who had 
 taken part in forming it ; men who had been fore- 
 most in traducing the great leaders of the country, 
 whether dead or alive ; men who comprehended the 
 situation, who understood what such a party meant, 
 who had studied and mastered its elements and 
 its susceptibilities, especially when in possession of 
 supreme power.. They knew that such a party 
 always has an insatiable thirst for place and the 
 
 87 
 
88 THE HISTORY 'OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 spoils of office, and that its chief delight is, and 
 always has been, in ripping up and tearing down 
 what has been built up, whether it be the character 
 of great men or the merits of great measures. And 
 hence, instead of being disposed to restrain or 
 moderate the ambition of their followers, instead of 
 being content to add to or improve the measures 
 and policies of the fathers, and thereby adapt them 
 to the growing interests and necessities of the coun- 
 try, these leaders resolved to mount the chariot of 
 passion and frenzy, like Phaeton of old, and drive it 
 with reckless speed, regardless of consequences, giv- 
 ing their followers no time to reflect or moderate 
 their views. To this end, being already in posses- 
 sion of the government, they assailed the great 
 measures and men of the country with a bitterness 
 and vulgarity never before known in this or any 
 other country since the days* of Catiline, and roused 
 the ignorant and vicious portion of society to a 
 pitch of passion and prejudice such as was never 
 before witnessed without producing an internecine 
 war, and which would have produced such a war at 
 that time had not nearly all the virtue and intelli- 
 gence of the country been found among the oppo- 
 nents of Democracy, and had not these opponents 
 chosen to suffer calumny and all sorts of wrongs, 
 rather than see their country deluged with fraternal 
 blood. 
 
 It seems at this day quite incredible that such 
 men as Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, and \Vm. 
 L. Marcy did not see and clearly understand that 
 the reversal of the system of internal improvements 
 
JACKSON ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FATHERS. 89 
 
 recommended by Washington and inaugurated under 
 Jefferson ; the overthrow of the protective tariff, 
 inaugurated in the first year of Washington's admin- 
 istration, and approved by every President up to the 
 time of Jackson, and especially the overthrow of the 
 Bank of the United States and its twenty-five 
 branches, the system of which had been first inaugu- 
 rated under Washington, and had been approved by 
 every other President, would plunge the country 
 into the throes of ruin and death. But fascinated 
 by such an apt leader and spokesman as Thos. H. 
 Benton, the most egotistical, vain, and pompous 
 man in America, they installed him as chief driver, 
 orator, and boss ; they mounted his chariot, they 
 swallowed his ribald language until his own State^ 
 and the rank and file of Democracy throughout the 
 land, became sick, and spewed him out, as Demo, 
 crats always do when they find a leader powerless to 
 feed them on spoils of ofifice and public plunder, 
 which, fortunately for the country, Benton was not 
 always able to do. 
 
 But before proceeding to discuss further the 
 doings of the Democracy touching these great 
 measure's, we must refer to another point, another 
 political principle, if principle it may be called, 
 which, it must be acknowledged, was a leading one 
 in the canvass that brought Jackson into the Presi- 
 dency, and the only well-defined tenet of the party, 
 as it always has been in every Democratic party that 
 has ever existed, — namely. State or local sovereignty. 
 This dogma comprised the chief topic, and the chief 
 principle of the Jackson party, if any principle it 
 
90 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 had, in the canvass which resulted in the first election 
 of Jackson to the Presidency. All else was calumny 
 and vulgar abuse of all who opposed his election to 
 the exalted position. Nearly all the Democratic 
 newspapers, and all the Democratic stumps from 
 Maine to Louisiana, and from the Lakes to the Capes 
 of Florida, resounded with this State-sovereignty 
 theory, and with calumny and abuse of the old 
 Republican and Federal leaders, all of which talk 
 was tipped and garnished with hypocritical cant 
 about the "Alien and Sedition Laws," which had 
 been passed thirty years before. 
 
 No one ever questioned Jackson's loyalty to the 
 Union or the Government of the United States, or 
 his skill and bravery as a soldier. But he was a man 
 of limited education, limited political information, 
 and of a stubborn and vindictive disposition. When 
 his mind was made up on any point, often enough 
 from one-sided information, however wrong or ab- 
 surd the conclusion, he followed it with perti- 
 nacity, and became intensely bitter, dogged, and 
 inimical to all who opposed his views. Hence it 
 came to pass when he became President, after having 
 read the newspapers and speeches of his friends only, 
 and having studied their arguments in favor of State 
 sovereignty, we have the astounding phenomenon of 
 a President of the United States, while swearing to 
 execute the office of President of the United States, 
 and to the best of his ability to preserve, protect, 
 and defend the Constitution of the United States, 
 almost in the same breath declaring his adhesion and 
 fidelity to the doctrine of State sovereignty, a doc- 
 
JACKSON ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FATHERS. 9 1 
 
 trine, or rather heresy, which the Constitution of the 
 United States was mainly, if not expHcitly, designed 
 to obviate and eliminate from the country, and 
 which every sound and safe statesman throughout 
 the world regarded then, and still regards, as mean- 
 ing disunion and the destruction of the Constitution 
 and Government of the United States, and which 
 was indeed being invoked at Jackson's time under 
 the name of Nullification for the express purpose of 
 destroying the government, and was only crushed 
 out and the Constitution and government saved by 
 the existing fact that no considerable portion of the 
 United States had been made ready by Democratic 
 demagogues to return to a heresy which had given 
 their fathers floods of trouble and distress. 
 
 Here is what General Jackson said in his inaugural 
 address on the 4th of March, 1829 : 
 
 "In regard to the rights of the separate States, 
 I hope to be animated by a proper respect for those 
 sovereign members of the Union, taking care not to 
 confound the powers they have reserved to them- 
 selves with those they have granted to the con- 
 federacy." 
 
 In his first annual message to Congress, December 
 8, 1829, he uses the following language : 
 
 " I cannot, therefore, too strongly or too earnest- 
 ly, from my own sense of its importance, warn you 
 against all encroachments upon the legitimate sphere 
 of State sovereignty. Sustained by its healthful and 
 vigorous influence, the Federal system can never fall." 
 
 Here, I ^repeat, we have a President of the United 
 States, while under the solemn obhgations of an 
 
92 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 oath taken before the whole American people, de- 
 claring in his first official words, not fidelity to the 
 Constitution, as his oath declares, but fidelity to an 
 anarchical principle which was then being invoked for 
 its destruction. And here, too, we have a sample of 
 the folly and madness to which he had been wrought 
 up by his Democratic advisers. We also give an ex- 
 tract from his veto message on the Bank of the 
 United States, all of which was written and pub- 
 lished before State sovereignty had culminated in 
 the South Carolina ordinance of nullification. He 
 says : 
 
 " The Congress, the Executive, and the Court 
 must, each for itself, be guided by its own opinion of 
 the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an 
 oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will 
 support it as he understands it, and not as it is under- 
 stood by others. It is as much the duty of the 
 House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the 
 President, to decide upon the constitutionality of 
 any bill or resolution which may be presented to 
 them for passage or approval as it is of the Supreme 
 Judges when it may be brought before them for ju- 
 dicial decision ; the opinion of the Judges has no 
 more authority over Congress than the opinion of 
 Congress has over the Judges; and, on that point, 
 the President is independent of both. The authority 
 of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be per- 
 mitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, 
 when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have 
 only such influence as the force of their reasoning 
 may deserve." 
 
JACKSON ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FATHERS. 93 
 
 No such folly, no such madness, no such anarchi- 
 cal teaching ever could have taken place under any 
 other party name or organization than that of De- 
 mocracy. 
 
 We might here give an abundance of this kind of 
 Democratic literature, which might be called Demo- 
 cratic trash, were it not for the fact that just such 
 teachings and philosophy as these prepared the party 
 and prepared the way for the great Democratic Re- 
 bellion of 1 861. 
 
 It is only necessary to here repeat, that out of the 
 State-sovereignty heresy, taught by nearly all the 
 Democratic papers and orators of Jackson's day, 
 taken up and repeated by Jackson himself, the nulli- 
 fication of South Carolina gradually grew into for- 
 midable proportions ; and according to these orators 
 and newspapers, and the , passages from Jackson's 
 official utterances. South Carolina should have been 
 let alone, and allowed to break up the Constitution 
 and government at that time. But the truth is, 
 Jackson, Democratic as he was in all his fibre and 
 disposition, would not, or could not, brook the defi- 
 ance of his own authority, and hence upon this 
 Democratic thread hung the peace of the country at 
 that time, which was secured through the proclama- 
 tion against nullification (a synonym of State sover- 
 eignty), December 11, 1832. 
 
 Having thus briefly sketched the first attempt to 
 enforce State sovereignty under the existing Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, we will return to the Demo- 
 cratic warfare on internal improvements, protection 
 to home industry, and the Bank of the United States. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SITUATION, AND FURTHER 
 NARRATION OF REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS. 
 
 In discussing political questions in a free country, 
 we should bear in mind that so great is the amount 
 of ignorance, depravity, passion, prejudice, cupidity, 
 avarice, and ambition for place and power, in the 
 most highly civilized nation, — as we are taught by 
 history, — that all the intelligence, virtue, morality, 
 patriotism, honesty, and religious sentiments which 
 can be mustered into service are required to enable 
 any people to establish and uphold a -free or a repre- 
 sentative form of government ; and it is known, or 
 ought to be known to all men, that so far as these 
 virtues and qualities are discarded or supplanted by 
 the influence of vicious, ambitious, and dishonest 
 men, so far, and to the same extent, free government 
 sinks into anarchy or despotism. Probably nearly 
 one half of mankind, in their best estate, are anar- 
 chists, or foes to good order and civil government of 
 any kind, and hence the elements and materials with 
 which ambitious and dishonest men deal, and out of 
 which anarchy or despotism arise. " Organized 
 society," says a writer of distinction, " at its best 
 is but a thin crust over a seething ocean of evil and 
 destructive passions, which continually threaten to 
 break through and destroy." 
 
 94 
 
FURTHER REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS. 95 
 
 But we must now return to a more detailed account 
 of the reactionary and vandal programme set on foot 
 by the great Democratic leaders soon after they found 
 themselves in control of the government. At the 
 time of the meeting of Congress in December, 1829, 
 there seems to have been no party platform, or pro- 
 gramme, marked out or agreed upon, except perhaps 
 the dogma of State sovereignty, which was to be kept 
 permanently before the people. This is evident from 
 the Democratic speeches of the day, and from Jack- 
 sons own utterances previously quoted, as well as 
 from his entire silence in his first message concerning 
 other parts of this programme. Until Congress had 
 met in 1829, the Democratic chiefs had no opportu- 
 nity to concoct or agree upon a plan by which the 
 great measures of the fathers were to be assailed, or 
 as to whether they should be assailed at all. Conse- 
 quently, neither Jackson nor the public knew any 
 thing about it until- after his first message had been 
 delivered. And here it may be mentioned that the 
 leaders, rather than the party as a whole, were the 
 exclusive authors of this plan; for there never was a 
 Democratic party as a whole that ever had any thing 
 to do with the construction of a platform, unless they 
 saw in it some terrible vengeance to be visited upon 
 their opponents, or the destruction of some great 
 measure or time-honored policy of the country. 
 
 It is hardly to be denied that the rank and file of a 
 genuine Democratic pSrty generally follow its leaders 
 with as much precision, docility, and rapidity, as a 
 drove of Kentucky mules driven through a city street, 
 and with as little regard to policy, or the turns to be 
 
96 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 made, or the work to be done, provided always that 
 the spoils of office and public plunder are kept dis- 
 tinctly in view. We repeat, therefore, the pro- 
 gramme of this civil revolution and material destruc- 
 tion must have been concocted after the delivery of 
 Jackson's first annual message in 1829, and the sud- 
 denness with which he, the President, was brought to 
 its approval and acceptance constitutes one of the 
 most astounding specimens of political jugglery and 
 change ever witnessed among civilized men in time 
 of peace, and such as no party or party leaders could 
 have accomplished with their chief, outside of a 
 Democratic party. 
 
 The Cumberland Road, which had been commenced 
 under Jefferson's administration, from the Atlantic to 
 the Western States, was intended to have branches 
 to the principal cities of the West, and had already 
 received appropriations from Congress to the amount 
 of two million five hundred thousand dollars, besides 
 appropriations to various other roads and canals. 
 The leading internal-improvement measure of this 
 Congress was for a branch of this national road from 
 Maysville to Lexington, Kentucky, about sixty miles 
 in length. The bill appropriating the necessary 
 funds having passed both branches of Congress, and 
 having been vetoed by the President, afforded the 
 first development of the Democratic programme of 
 reaction against the policy of the fathers. This took 
 place on the 27th of May, 1830. 
 
 At that time appropriations 'by the general gov- 
 ernment were supposed to afford the only available 
 means of opening eas}' and efficient intercommuni- 
 
FURTHER REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS. 97 
 
 cation, or lines of travel and transportation for stock 
 and products of the soil and other merchandise, back 
 and forth over the Alleghany Mountains. And, in 
 truth, these appropriations were, and had been for a 
 long time, exercising a potent influence in opening 
 and improving the Western country. It is true that 
 the enterprise of individuals and of the State govern- 
 ments on the Atlantic side was spending millions of 
 dollars with these great ends and benefits in view. 
 But no such undertaking had succeeded, except the 
 great New York canal, an enterprise that has been 
 induced and stimulated by the possibility of forming 
 through the break in the mountain chain and in con- 
 nection with the great lakes a water-line of commu- 
 nication with the great West. These features and 
 encouragements were not presented to any other 
 State. The only hope, therefore, of opening a line of 
 communication from any other Atlantic port to the 
 West was through and by means of aid from the 
 general government, as thirty years of struggle and 
 failure, even after the introduction of railroads with- 
 out national aid, proved to be the case. 
 
 The Democratic party claimed in those days, as all 
 Democratic parties do, to contain the only friends of 
 the poor and laboring men ; and although this na- 
 tional internal-improvement system was, and had 
 been for many years, giving employment to thou- 
 sands of laboring men, and was opening new sections 
 of country in which they were to seek and secure 
 homes for themselves and families ; and although the 
 system had received the sanction and approval of 
 every President and almost every other statesman 
 
98 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 down to that time, these Democratic leaders and 
 would-be friends of the laboring juan were at that 
 time concocting, and did concoct, a policy to tear 
 the system up by the roots, to the destruction of the 
 labor and enterprise of the country, — a policy which 
 was executed not by reason, logic, or sound states- 
 manship, but by exciting the passions, prejudices, 
 and animosities of an excitable chief magistrate, and 
 by the use of his veto, all of which great changes and 
 revolutionary measures were inaugurated and set on 
 foot in less than six months after Jackson had de- 
 livered his first annual message, containing the con- 
 gratulations, sentiments, and facts regarding the 
 condition of the country, its finances, and needs, as 
 quoted in the foregoing chapter. And thus was in- 
 augurated that programme of Democratic vandalism 
 which soon plunged the country first into unparalleled 
 financial distress, and started it on the road to the 
 terrible civil war which eventually ensued. This 
 same party still hovers like a dark and threatening 
 cloud over our country, charged, doubtless, with the 
 same elements and means of disaster and ruin. 
 
 But here the question arises, what were the mo- 
 tives, what were the ' objects that animated this 
 Democratic conclave, or cabal, to put this vandal 
 programme into operation, and push it until the 
 people were precipitated over the precipice into a 
 gulf of ruin, darkness, and death } The answer is 
 plain. It all grew out of the fact, as everybody now 
 knows, that the internal-improvement system, the 
 protective tariff, and the Bank of the United States 
 had found their chief advocates and supporters in 
 
FURTHER REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS. 99 
 
 Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John M. Clayton, and 
 other great opponents of Jackson's elevation to the 
 Presidency, and that this Democratic cabal saw no 
 other way to destroy their influence with the people 
 than to lead their hoodwinked hordes, as Demo- 
 cratic hordes are always led by adroit chiefs, to 
 unconsciously destroy themselves, provided that in 
 doing so they could destroy the greatest and best 
 men of the country ; which piece of history goes 
 far to demonstrate the utter want of patriotism, the 
 utter want of statesmanship, and the utter want of 
 common sense and common honesty in a great 
 Democratic party. 
 
 The question also arises. Did these party tactics, 
 or, more properly speaking, did this party trickery 
 have the effect of putting a stop to appropriations for 
 internal improvements ? For a short time it did ; 
 but it had a still greater effect in destroying the 
 honesty and patriotic motives upon which such 
 appropriations had been made. In their stead there 
 grew up a system of bargaining, a system of " log- 
 rolling " appropriations, which soon grew into vastly 
 augmented proportions, in which Democratic politi- 
 cians have always been conspicuous as shareholders. 
 
 Whether it was the ambition of the Democratic 
 leaders to overreach and overthrow their opponents, 
 regardless of the best interests of the country ; 
 whether from the natural and instinctive depravity 
 of such a party; or whether from a providential 
 blindness brought upon the people that they might 
 be punished for some cherished sin, the veto of the 
 Maysville Road bill was the beginning and the first 
 
lOO THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 step in a downward policy, which deprived the 
 Southern States of their rightful share of national 
 appropriations, thus consigning them to comparative 
 poverty and weakness for the next thirty years, and 
 finally ending in the entire prostration of business 
 throughout the country, as such tactics always do 
 end with any people, where the party is in the as- 
 cendant long enough to accomplish such a result. 
 
 It should be also observed that this act fell upon 
 the country like a clap of thunder in a clear sky. It 
 gave a fearful shock to business, it dazed politicians, 
 put a stop to many enterprises and threw thousands 
 of laboring men out of employment; and before the 
 country had recovered, other parts of this terrible 
 programme came into effect, and so the people were 
 driven or dragged into terrible demoralization and 
 disasters by the party in power. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF AND DEMOCRATIC WARFARE 
 AGAINST IT. HENRY CLAY. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that the most able advo- 
 cates of a protective tariff were first found in the 
 Southern States, and that, under their support and 
 encouragement, manufacturing establishments, both 
 North and South, had their first rapid and substantial 
 growth. It is true that, owing, to the sterility of 
 the soil and the frigidity of the climate along the 
 Northern coast, the Northern establishments had 
 their most rapid growth, and that owing to the 
 profitableness of the culture of cotton, rice, tobacco, 
 and sugar, which were then assuming large propor- 
 tions in the South, the manufacturing establishments 
 there were not so numerous or large as at the North. 
 But it is nevertheless true, that there arose in the 
 South, under such a tariff, many cotton, iron, and 
 other mechanical establishments which proved to be 
 highly profitable. These were found in great num- 
 bers, for those times, in Maryland, Virginia, North 
 Carolina, and Georgia. Nor have the Southern 
 States or the entire country ever been more pros- 
 perous and thriving, at any time, than under the 
 highest tariffs yet levied up to the present day. 
 And though the Northern States took the lead in 
 manufacturing enterprises, it may be said, consider- 
 
102 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ing the fascinations of cotton-planting and other 
 Southern interests, such as rice, tobacco, sugar, and 
 lumber, that there was no reasonable ground for the 
 South to complain, or be dissatisfied with a protec- 
 tive tariff, as a candid and careful review of the 
 situation, during those years, will clearly demonstrate 
 to the understanding of all honest and truth-loving 
 men. 
 
 But no sooner had Democracy begun to show it- 
 self, and Democratic clubs and Democratic organiza- 
 tions begun to be formed from 1820 to 1824, than, 
 the Democratic spirit, true to its instincts and tra- 
 ditions, began to seek for men and measures to be 
 attacked, and some great policy to be overturned, or 
 rather its leaders began to assail the protective tariff, 
 and many of them went so far as to oppose the tariff, 
 as a means of obtaining any revenue, with a vigor 
 and ferocity that would have done, credit to hungry 
 wolves dashing upon a flock of sheep, and such as 
 none but such leaders ever manifest. The first 
 premeditated and combined attack upon this policy 
 was made in 1824, when Gen. Jackson was first 
 brought forward as the first Democratic candidate 
 for the Presidency. Nor were such attacks con- 
 fined to the Democratic leaders of the South. 
 Pennsylvania and New York, and especially the city 
 of New York, the hottest hot-bed of Democracy and 
 Democratic ferocity on the American continent, — 
 the city of New York, the great emporium, or the 
 great inlet and outlet through which nearly all our 
 foreign trade is carried on, and by means of which 
 astute merchants, operators, and speculators, who 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. IO3 
 
 were of course advocates of free trade, such as 
 would close every manufacturing shop in America, 
 are enabled to gather into their coffers the chief 
 wealth of the country, — joined hand-in-hand with 
 Southern Democrats in this wild and anti-Ameri- 
 can crusade against a protective tariff. And hence 
 we must repeat that the astute merchants, operators, 
 and speculators in that hottest and most dangerous 
 hot-bed of Democracy in the world, very well under- 
 stood that if American manufactories could be kept 
 down, as they would be, under a free-trade policy, 
 all or nearly all the vast imports and suppHes 
 for this country, and all or nearly all the vast 
 products of the country for sale, would have to 
 pass through New York, thereby collecting all 
 or nearly all the wealth of the country into 
 that great city ; and hence it is, too, these astute 
 leaders availed themselves of the hordes of ignorant 
 Europeans who flock to that city to fill up the ranks 
 of free-trade Democracy, and thereby strengthen a 
 policy whose chief influence and end was to rob and 
 plunder honest, industrious, and enterprising Ameri- 
 cans of the fruits of their labor. It was this most 
 corrupt and untrustworthy body of politicians ever 
 known, that caressed and shouted " bravo " to the 
 Southern Nullifiers, when they were trying to push 
 the constitution and government of the United 
 States to the wall, because of the protective policy. 
 Nor should it be forgotten that this school of poli- 
 ticians is at the present time flooding the country 
 with free-trade tracts, from their free-trade league, 
 that they may thus further gorge themselves with 
 
104 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the legitimate and rightful products of the honest 
 industry and enterprise of the country at large. 
 
 There seem to be two schools of writers on politi- 
 cal economy in this country. One contends for free 
 trade, or the abolition of all tariffs; and the other, 
 that there is no science or universal rule in political 
 economy: and as these conflicting views gave much 
 trouble to the Jacksonian Democracy, and still 
 agitate men's minds, it may not be out of place to 
 touch upon the subject, so far as to say: 
 
 First, that it is the duty of every civil government 
 to encourage and protect the commercial and in- 
 dustrial interests of its own people, as against the 
 arts and management of rival governments. 
 
 Second, that every nation of people has interests 
 peculiar to itself, to be encouraged, guarded, and 
 protected by its government and by suitable legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 Third, the best, if not the only, method of protec- 
 tion known to commercial nations in time of peace, 
 is by a tariff, or impost, upon importations of such 
 articles as come into competition with home pro- 
 ducts. 
 
 Fourth, that such a tax is divided between the 
 producers and consumers, the foreign producer pay- 
 ing about one half, thus lightening to that extent the 
 burdens on the consumer. 
 
 It is acknowledged, at least by most people, that 
 these are self-evident truths in political economy, and 
 therefore worthy the consideration of statesmen. 
 But as it is not so much the object of these pages 
 to analyze theories as to give historical facts which 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 105 
 
 illustrate Democratic proclivities, we must go on 
 with the narration. As heretofore observed, no 
 sooner had this party come into possession of su- 
 preme power, whether from natural instinct or de- 
 liberate design, every great measure of the fathers 
 was assailed with great bitterness, the leaders adopt- 
 ing the motto that to the victors belong the spoils, 
 thus trampling upon every principle of free govern- 
 ment and equal rights, counted sound and safe by 
 the fathers. 
 
 These assaults were made, some from one point 
 and some from another, some from one motive and 
 some from another, according to the locality and in- 
 terest of the attacking parties, and the prospect and 
 hope of reward. Among the prominent suggestions 
 was a scheme for the application of the dogma of State 
 sovereignty, under the name and style of " nullifica- 
 tion," — namely, the right of a State to abrogate a 
 tariff levied by the government of the United States 
 upon imports. This, we repeat, was one of the ways 
 in which Democracy claimed the right to act as it 
 pleases, just as soon as a majority of the people of 
 the State could be brought up to the point of resist- 
 ance. To make out a case that was adequate to fire 
 up the people, this branch of the Democracy, which 
 had its headquarters in South Carolina, put forth 
 what was called in those days " the forty-bale theory." 
 It may be stated in this way. South Carolina claimed 
 to raise and export eight million dollars' worth of 
 cotton per annum. The tariff was estimated to be 
 forty per cent, on the cost of articles imported under 
 it. Of course, coffee, tea, and some other imported 
 
106 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 articles paid little or no duty. Yet the South Caro- 
 lina Democrats claimed that out of each one hundred 
 bales of cotton, forty bales were required to pay the 
 tariff duties on imported goods consumed in that 
 State. Or, in other words, that forty hundredths of 
 the eight million dollars' worth of cotton raised in 
 the State, or two million six hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, was consumed in paying the duties on the im- 
 ported goods consumed in the State. This the 
 Democratic leaders made their Democratic followers 
 believe was the truth, notwithstanding that Henry 
 Clay, the great patriot of his day, demonstrated to 
 them on the floor of Congress, that instead of two 
 million six hundred thousand dollars paid by the 
 people of South Carolina on account of the tariff, 
 they paid less than three hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars, or about one tenth of the amount claimed 
 to be paid. But, notwithstanding all this, the Demo- 
 crats, having a majority in the State, drove ahead, 
 and passed an ordinance to nullify the tariff in South 
 Carolina, the Constitution and Government of the 
 United States to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 This case affords a fair example of Democratic 
 reasoning, or rather its I'ecklessness and disregard of 
 reason, when it cannot have its own way. Or, to 
 present this piece of history in other language, 
 Democracy, with the theory of State sovereignity as 
 a sweet morsel under its tongue, in the name and 
 style of nullification, actually set on foot in 1832, 
 without rhyme or reason, an insurrection which 
 boded fearful calamities to our country, but which 
 fortunately was nipped in the bud, because neither 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 1 07 
 
 the American people, nor the Southern people had 
 been sufficiently contaminated by Democratic senti- 
 ments to allow it to spread, and because General 
 Jackson, with all his faults, was too much of a pa- 
 triot to stand by and see the Constitution and flag 
 of his country torn into shreds by a Democratic 
 faction ; and hence the proclamation' of Jackson, 
 which struck nullification between the eyes. It was 
 written by the great " Defender of the Constitution," 
 Daniel Webster, and acted like oil upon troubled 
 water, until another Democratic insurrection was set 
 on foot. 
 
 But as this nullification movement occupied quite 
 a large space in the history of the country, and 
 comprised the beginning of those Democratic tactics 
 which led to the great Rebellion, and inasmuch as the 
 circumstances and relations in connection with the 
 tariff are nearly the same now in 1883 as they were 
 in 1832, the reader will not object to some extracts 
 from Mr. Clay, covering the main grounds of the 
 controversy, and meeting the same kind of argu- 
 ments made by free-trade advocates at the present 
 time. He spoke as follows in February, 1832: 
 
 "But it is confidently argued that the import 
 duty falls upon the growth of cotton ; and the case 
 has been put in debate, and again and again in 
 conversation, of the South Carolina planter who 
 exports one hundred bales of cotton to Liverpool, 
 exchanges them for one hundred bales of mer- 
 chandise, and when he brings them home, is com- 
 pelled to leave at the custom-house forty bales in 
 the form of duties. The argument is founded on 
 
108 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the assumption that a duty of forty per centum 
 amounts to a subtraction of forty from the one hun- 
 dred bales of merchandise. The first objection to 
 it is, that it supposes a case of barter which never 
 occurs. If it be replied, that it nevertheless occurs 
 in the operations of commerce, the answer would be, 
 that since the export of Carolina cotton is chiefly 
 made by New York or foreign merchants, the loss 
 stated, if it really accrued, would fall upon them, 
 and not upon the planter. But to test the correct- 
 ness of the hypothetical case, let us suppose that 
 the duty, instead of forty per centum, should be one 
 hundred and fifty, which is asserted to be the duty 
 in some cases. Then the planter would not only 
 lose the whole hundred bales of merchandise — mer- 
 chandise which he had gotten for his hundred bales 
 of cotton, but he would have to purchase, with other 
 means, an additional fifty bales, in order to enable him 
 to pay the duties accruing on the proceeds of the 
 cotton. Another answer is, that if the producer of 
 cotton in America, exchanged against English fabrics, 
 pays the duty, t\\& producer of those fabrics also pays 
 it, and then it is twice paid. Such must be the con- 
 sequence, unless the principle is true on the one side 
 of the Atlantic, and false on the other. The true 
 answer is, that the exporter of an article, if he 
 invests its proceeds in a foreign market, takes care to 
 make the investment in such merchandise as, when 
 brought home, he can sell with a fair profit ; and, 
 consequently, the consumer would pay the original 
 cost and charges and profit." 
 
 " The next objection to the American system is 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 1 09 
 
 that it subjects South Carolina to the payment of 
 an undue proportion of the public revenue. The 
 basis of this objection is the assumption, shown to 
 have been erroneous, that the producer of the ex- 
 ports from this country pays the duty on its imports, 
 instead of the consumer of those imports. No 
 more than that of any other States, can the amount 
 which South Carolina really contributes to the 
 public revenue be precisely ascertained. It depends 
 upon her consumption of articles paying duties, and 
 we may make an approximation sufficient for all 
 practical purposes. The cotton planters of the valley 
 of the Mississippi with whom I am acquainted, gen- 
 erally expend about one third of their income in the 
 support of their families and plantations. On this 
 subject I hold in my hands a statement from a 
 friend of mine, of great accuracy, and a member of 
 the Senate. According to this statement, in a crop 
 of ten thousand dollars, the expenses may fluctuate 
 between two thousand eight hundred dollars and 
 three thousand two hundred dollars. Of this sum, 
 about one fourth, from seven to eight hundred 
 dollars, may be laid out in articles paying the pro- 
 tective duty ; the residue is disbursed for provision, 
 mules, horses, oxen, wages of overseer, etc. Esti- 
 mating the exports of South Carolina at eight 
 millions, one third is two millions six hundred and 
 sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six dollars ; 
 of which one fourth will be six hundred and sixty- 
 six thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two- 
 thirds dollars. Now, supposing the protection to be 
 fifty per centum, and that it all enters into the price of 
 
no. THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the article, the amount paid by South Carolina would 
 only be three hundred and thirty-three thousand 
 three hundred and thirty-three and one third dollars. 
 But the total revenue of the United States may be 
 stated at twenty-five millions, of which the propor- 
 tion of South Carolina, whatever standard, whether 
 of wealth or population, be adopted, would be about 
 one million. Of course, on this view of the subject, 
 she actually pays only about one third of her fair 
 and legitimate share." 
 
 Such was the analysis of the " forty-bale theory " of 
 South Carolina, by the greatest statesman of his age, 
 but which would never, owing to its absurdity, have 
 been seriously discussed by Mr. Clay, had not that 
 State been placed in a false position, and flattered with 
 false hopes by Democratic leaders in all other parts of 
 the country, and had it not been for the unmitigated 
 calumny and abuse heaped by them upon the great 
 statesmen, and the great measures which had brought 
 the country to the prosperous condition spoken of by 
 Jackson in 1829. But let us see how the protective 
 tariff, against which Democracy was everywhere 
 arrayed, operated upon the interests of the country 
 in those days. To do this we must give a few more 
 extracts from the same speech of the same great 
 patriot. 
 
 " But it is contended, in the last place, that the 
 South cannot, from physical and other causes, engage 
 in the manufacturing arts. I deny the premises, and 
 I deny the conclusion ; I deny the fact of inability ; 
 and if it existed, I deny the conclusion, that we must, 
 therefore, break down our manufactures, and nourish 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. Ill 
 
 those of foreign countries. The South possesses, in 
 an extraordinary degree, two of the most important 
 elements of manufacturing industry, water-power and 
 labor. The former gives to our whole country a 
 most decided advantage over Great Britain." 
 He also says, of the benefits of a high tariff : 
 " I plant myself upon this fact, of cheapness and 
 superiority, as upon impregnable ground. Gentle- 
 men may tax their ingenuity, and produce a thousand 
 speculative solutions of the fact, but the fact itself 
 will remain undisturbed. Let us look into some par- 
 ticulars. The total consumption of bar-iron in the 
 United States is supposed to be about one hundred 
 and forty-six thousand tons, of which one hundred and 
 twelve thousand eight hundred and sixty-six tons are 
 made within the country, and the residue imported. 
 The number of men employed in the manufacture is 
 estimated at twenty-nine thousand two hundred and 
 fifty-four, and the total number of persons subsisted 
 by it, at one hundred and forty-six thousand two 
 hundred and seventy-three. The measure of protec- 
 tion extended to this necessary article was never 
 fully adequate until the passage of the act of 1828 ; 
 and what has been the consequence ? The annual 
 increase of quantity, since that period, has been in a 
 ratio of near twenty-five per centum, and the whole- 
 sale price of bar-iron in the Northern cities was, in 
 1828, one hundred and five dollars per ton ; in 1829, 
 one hundred dollars ; in 1830, ninety dollars ; and in 
 183 1, from eighty-five to seventy-five dollars, con- 
 stantly diminishing. 
 
U2 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY, 
 
 " My honorable friend from Massachusetts, now in 
 my eye (Mr. Silsbee), informed me, that on his depart- 
 ure from home, among the last orders which he gave, 
 one was for the exportation of coarse cotton to 
 Sumatra, in the vicinity of Calcutta. I hold in my 
 hand a statement derived from the most authentic 
 source, showing that the identical description of 
 cotton cloth, which sold in 1817 at twenty-nine 
 cents per yard, was sold in 18 19 at twenty-one 
 cents, in 1821 at nineteen and a half cents, in 1823 
 at seventeen cents, in 1825 at fourteen and a half 
 cents, in 1827 at thirteen cents, in 1828 at nine 
 cents, in 1830 at nine and a half cents, and 
 in 1 83 1 at from ten and a half to eleven. 
 Such is the wonderful effect of protection, com- 
 petition, and improvement in skill, combined ! " 
 
 Now, whether we make deductions from the history 
 and operations of a tariff as a means of revenue and 
 protection, or whether we draw conclusions from 
 these words of Mr. Clay, or from hundreds of other 
 facts and arguments put forth in those days by 
 other old Whigs, we must acknowledge : 
 
 First, that a protective tariff, that is to say, a tariff 
 for revenue, with discriminations in favor of home 
 industry, was highly beneficial to the entire country, 
 North and South, inasmuch as Gen. Jackson and Mr. 
 Clay agreed in affirming that the country had never 
 before been in so prosperous a condition. 
 
 Second, that opposition to the tariff and nullifica- 
 tion sprung from the State-sovereignty dogma, and 
 the force and influence given to both, the one and 
 the other, by Democratic organs and orators in all 
 parts of the country. 
 
WARFARE AGAINST A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. II 3 
 
 Third, that it was the danger and influence thus im- 
 parted to them by Democratic leaders, together with 
 the dread and fear of civil strife and bloodshed in our 
 country, that induced the old Whigs, with Mr. Clay 
 at their head, to abandon the protective system, in 
 the adoption of the so-called Clay Compromise of 
 
 1833- 
 
 Fourth, that the abandonment of the protective 
 system was one of the great causes that contributed 
 to the fearful financial and material crash of 1837. 
 
 And fifth, th5t the vandal and destructive policy 
 of the Democracy struck the country when it was 
 more prosperous, both North and South, than it had 
 ever been before, and that in about seven years this 
 policy reduced the country to a depth of misery and 
 distress never before seen or suffered by any country 
 in a time of peace. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE DEMOCRATIC 
 PARTY. 
 
 The main study, the main policy, and the chief 
 ambition of the Democratic leaders in Jackson's day 
 was to destroy the Bank of the United States. To 
 this end Democratic newspapers. Democratic dis- 
 courses in and out of Congress, in and out of office, 
 were larded and interlarded with anti-bank literature, 
 anti-bank logic, and anti-bank sophistry. And be- 
 sides these, many Presidential messages and many offi- 
 cial reports were wholly framed and directed to con- 
 vince the people of the United States that they had 
 no need of a national bank, and no need of a national 
 paper currency to carry on their minute or their vast 
 industries and commerce, and that such institutions 
 were dangerous to liberty, and solely designed to 
 rob them of their property and their just rights. 
 For ten long years, extending through Jackson's and 
 Van Buren's administrations, this anti-bank litera- 
 ture and anti-bank sophistry loaded the Democratic 
 presses, and burdened the mails of the country, to 
 the exclusion of almost every thing that was patriotic 
 and useful to the people. And as experience has 
 since demonstrated, this was a clear case in which 
 the folly and madness of men in authority were 
 allowed by the providence of God to prevail over 
 
 114 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. I15 
 
 wisdom and sound statesmanship, that He, the 
 Ruler of nations, might punish the people, or that 
 they might punish themselves, for some great na- 
 tional sin. In this, as in most other cases, when a 
 Democratic party comes to the front, the Democracy 
 became the scourge of the people, as the Philistines 
 became a scourge to the ancient Israelites, on ac- 
 count of their sins. And here we must leave it to 
 the Democracy of to-day to say whether the relation 
 their fathers occupied to the country on that occa- 
 sion is an honor or a disgrace to their party at this 
 time. 
 
 And yet so great was the interest the people had 
 and felt in a national currency, in a national bank 
 with its twenty-five branches, notwithstanding the 
 tons and thousands of tons of anti-bank literature 
 and sophistry foisted upon them for ten or twelve 
 years by these mad and ambitious statesmen, in 
 1840, the people placed their seal of condemnation on 
 all the conclusions of this literary and political trash, 
 by the election of a bank congress and William 
 Henry Harrison to the Presidency. And yet again, 
 for some inscrutable purpose, God, in his providence, 
 through the early death of Harrison, changed this vic- 
 tory of the people to ashes upon their lips, and the 
 national currency and the bank went by the board 
 for the time being, accompanied by calamities upon 
 the people, beyond the .power of man to estimate or 
 describe. But let us inquire for a few moments 
 what it was that this party of ambitious madmen 
 destroyed, in destroying these institutions. 
 
 It is well known that when modern nations began 
 
Il6 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 to rise from the dark ages, and engage in commerce 
 and manufactures, they also began to use, as a me- 
 dium for the transfer of values, bills of exchange, 
 and other paper representatives of money. Such 
 mediums may have been suggested at first by the 
 scarcity of the precious metals, and the greater con- 
 venience and safety of carriage. These bits of paper 
 representing money were doubtless first issued by 
 wealthy merchants of high moral standing. But out 
 of this practice soon grew frauds and failures to re- 
 deem these bits of paper according to promise. So 
 convenient, however, was this paper medium found to 
 be in the various forms and transactions of trade, that 
 even with these frauds and failures, the people of 
 civilized communities continued to use it, rather than 
 to be burdened with, and suffer the dangers incident 
 to, metallic money. And in fact it was also ascer- 
 tained that much trade could be carried on by means 
 of this paper medium, which could not be safely con- 
 ducted without it. And hence it was not long be- 
 fore commercial men began to call for the establish- 
 ment of what were called banks, under the guaranty 
 of the government, and for the quadruple purpose of 
 obtaining a safe paper currency, a safe place of de- 
 posit both for the people and the government, safe 
 bills of exchange both for the people and the gov- 
 ernment, and institutions from which both the peo- 
 ple and the government could borrow money in 
 cases of need ; and which they found to be of 
 great convenience and value, both to the people and 
 the government in their thousands of financial trans- 
 actions. These, we repeat, were the chief reasons, 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. II7 
 
 and sufficient reasons, why banks and paper-money 
 were brought into existence. 
 
 From this state of things, and from the nature of 
 trade and finance, we naturally infer came national 
 banks — that is to say, banks in which the government 
 took a part of the stock and a leadihg part in the 
 management, and especially a leading part in the re- 
 demption or guaranty of this paper representation of 
 money ; the government itself being rewarded for its 
 service by getting thereby a safe place of deposit for 
 its funds, cheap and safe exchange, and loans at low 
 rate of interest, but above all, a safe paper currency 
 for the people, which objects were, and should be, 
 as a matter of course, of paramount importance with 
 any government worthy the name of government. 
 
 It is out of trade, commerce, and manufactures 
 among the people, that all governments of civilized 
 people derive their support, which important truth, 
 by the way, seems never to have found a lodgment 
 in the heads of Democratic leaders or Democratic 
 statesmen, during all the times in which they have had 
 the control of the government of this country. In 
 no other way can we account for the warfare the 
 party has always made upon trade, commerce, and 
 manufactures combined, and, through these great 
 features of modern civilization, war upon the great 
 interests of agriculture, and of the people in general. 
 
 Banks had been in general use in European 
 countries more than two hundred years before the 
 government of the United States came into existence. 
 The national bank of Venice had been in operation 
 about six hundred years, and had probably been the 
 
Il8 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 chief source of the great prosperity and strength of 
 that republic during several hundred years. All 
 this our forefathers well understood, and having wit- 
 nessed frequent failures of local banks and their 
 utter inadequacy to supply the proper currency, suit- 
 able exchanges, and safe places of deposit for suc- 
 cessful commerce, one of their first great acts under 
 our present Constitution was to charter a Bank of 
 the United States, which was done in 1791. 
 
 It is true, that at the time many good men opposed 
 the measure, upon the ground of supposed uncon- 
 stitutionality, and because they counted it an off- 
 spring and instrument of monarchy. But so great 
 and so numerous were the advantages, and so great 
 was the increase of wealth in those nations which 
 had adopted a national bank, over those nations 
 which had not, and so great was the need in 
 our country of such an institution, that Washington 
 himself and a large majority of the Congress gave it 
 their support, the government itself subscribing for 
 a part of the stock. It ran its course of twenty 
 years, and proved to be of signal benefit to the gov- 
 ernment and the people. But its charter having ex- 
 pired in 181 1, owing to the prevalence at that time 
 of what was called Jeffei'sonian Democracy, and 
 some scruples in the mind of President Madison as 
 to its constitutionality, it failed at that time to ob- 
 tain a renewal of its charter. The war with 
 Great Britain came on in 1812, and the country and 
 the government itself were soon plunged into a most 
 deplorable and pitiable condition. State banks 
 failed, money and credit — both private and public — 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. II9 
 
 disappeared, and it was witli the utmost difficulty 
 that the government and the people contended with 
 the few thousand soldiers that England was able to 
 send over at that time. For the want of funds, both 
 private and public, many parts of the country were 
 ravaged, our maritime commerce was destroyed, and 
 the city of Washington itself was captured by a 
 British army so small that American patriots have 
 felt a tinge of shame from that day to this. 
 
 But the war being over, the same Jeffersonian 
 Democrats, as they still call themselves, having seen 
 the terrible ravages and suffering of the government 
 and the people for the want of such an institution, 
 in a fit of patriotism, brought upon them by hard 
 licks, assisted in chartering another bank of the 
 United States. This took place in 1816, President 
 Madison, himself, giving the charter his approval. 
 
 It was under the influence and financial assistance 
 of this bank, that the government and people of the 
 United States reached the pitch of prosperity and 
 happiness already set forth in these pages, and 
 which are very well remembered by many living 
 men. But, in an evil hour, in the cloisters of dark- 
 ness, or the caucuses of the newly formed Jackson 
 Democracy, the institution was marked for destruc- 
 tion. This bank, according to the suggestions of 
 Jackson, in 1829, was re-chartered, so far as Congress 
 could do it, by a large majority in each House, but 
 the bill was vetoed by Jackson, July 10, 1832. If we 
 have not already made clear that none but a Demo- 
 cratic party and a Democratic President could have 
 been embarked in so crazy, so cruel, and so disas- 
 
I20 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 trous a crusade against the interest of the govern- 
 ment and the people, we trust it will be clear to the 
 understanding of every reader, when we shall have 
 reviewed the terrible condition into which, in the 
 course of a few years thereafter, the country was 
 plunged by this Democratic crusade. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THOMAS H. BENTON AND MODERN DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Thomas H. Benton was the veritable father of 
 the present Democratic party. All sects and parties 
 have a leader or a chief who may be styled its father. 
 Benton was the great stumper of the campaign in 
 which Jackson was first elected to the Presidency. 
 During the early stages of this party many of Jack- 
 son's friends called it the Jackson party. Many of 
 them were strongly inclined to hold to the word 
 Republican as a party name, but Benton insisted on 
 its being called the Democratic party, and his voice 
 prevailed, thus entitling him to the appellation of 
 " father." But he is entitled to be called its father 
 from other points of view. According to his own 
 account- and well remembered facts, he was the 
 champion and animating spirit in the warfare against 
 the measures and policy of the fathers, sought to be 
 overthrown by this party ; perhaps we should say 
 more especially in the warfare against the Bank of 
 the United States, upon the destruction of which the 
 party staked its entire hopes and fortunes. Indeed, 
 he was the chief debater and boss of the party for 
 twenty years, beginning with Jackson's first adminis- 
 tration and ending with that of James K. Polk, when 
 the party spewed him out, as all Democratic parties . 
 do with a leader when it finds he can no longer 
 
122 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 control and direct the spoils of office and public 
 plunder. 
 
 It is well known that Benton was a man of great 
 industry and varied talents, but it would be an omis- 
 sion not to observe that he was the most egotistical, 
 vain, and pompous character ever produced by this 
 or any other country, and was in every way fitted to 
 he a successful Democratic leader. He was impu- 
 dent, dictatorial, and arrogant in his manners. And if 
 we should say he was more reckless, audacious, and 
 unscrupulous, and dealt more in political promises, 
 predictions, and prophecies that time proved to be 
 illusory, false, and pernicious than any other man of 
 his generation, we should not vary far from the truth. 
 Nor can any one prove that he was not the veritable 
 father of- modern Democracy and responsible for the 
 nefarious tactics and principles the party put in 
 operation as soon as it got possession of supreme 
 power. 
 
 Benton was a sort of modern Alcibiades, without 
 his military qualities, or perhaps it would be more 
 appropriate to say he was a modern Mirabeau, a 
 Danton, or a Robespierre, without the opportunity 
 of putting into execution their bloody programmes. 
 He was both reactionary and revolutionary, suggest- 
 ing and upholding practices and measures which, if 
 carried out, would always call for the bottom rails 
 of society to be placed on top, or, more properly 
 speaking, would produce a despotism based upon 
 and supported by the lowest strata of society, as was 
 the case under his prototypes in France during her 
 memorable Revolution. His faculty for calumny and 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 123 
 
 detraction, or, to speak in plain Saxon, his faculty 
 for adroit blackguardism and his power of blackening 
 great characters and sound political principles 
 were unsurpassed by his French prototypes, and 
 under the same circumstances and among the same 
 kind of people, must have led to the same results as 
 theirs did. If he had any settled plan of statesman- 
 ship, it must have been the division of the Union 
 into three parts, the North, the South, and the 
 West, over the last of which he hoped to be boss 
 for life. Certain it is, no man had ever lived since 
 the Declaration of Independence who did so much 
 to alienate the three sections of the country. The 
 audacity, arrogance, and fiendish disposition of the 
 man are manifest by his often-repeated assertion that 
 the excitement and distress of the people were all 
 " about nothing." 
 
 But it must be confessed, however, that the advent 
 of a Democratic party to power, when the country 
 was prosperous and at peace with all the world, was 
 favorable to the operations of such a party, and such 
 a boss as Benton, and the consequent ravages that 
 followed, inasmuch as there was but little room for 
 improvement on the policy and measures pursued 
 and adopted by the patriots who had ruled the 
 country for the previous twenty years, and inasmucli- 
 as a Democratic party, if not revolutionary and 
 destructive of what has been built up, is not in its 
 true element, nor performing its natural and instinc- 
 tive mission. 
 
 It is well remembered by all old men that Benton's 
 numerous speeches were distributed by tons and 
 
124 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 hundreds of tons throughout the country by his ad- 
 mirers and by the Democratic administration. Every 
 house was reached by them, and his most extrava- 
 gant and vile assertions were swallowed and followed 
 by the rank and file of the party with a gusto and 
 shouts that would have done honor to a Parisian 
 Democratic mob in the heyday of Jacobinism. 
 But fortunately for our country and the world, 
 and as had been done with some of the men to 
 whom we have compared him, public sentiment 
 spewed him out of all places of honor and power, 
 and his days were ended before the great conflict, 
 which his course and conduct helped to inaugu- 
 rate, began. The chief and last effort of his 
 ambition was to get himself appointed by Presi- 
 dent Polk commander-in-chief of the army in Mexico, 
 which had just achieved the conquest of that coun- 
 try under Generals Taylor and Scott, who were, not- 
 withstanding their brilliant military achievements, 
 to be punished for being old Whigs, while Democ- 
 racy was to be exalted in the person of Benton. 
 Pending the confirmation by the Senate, which, by 
 the way, was never obtained, Benton strutted up 
 and down the streets of Washington in his " regi- 
 mentals," like a certain bird distinguished for the 
 length and brilliancy of its feathers. Such, we re- 
 peat, was the chief boss and father of the present 
 Democratic party, and as this modern Hercules 
 claimed to be the slayer of the bank, as he unques- 
 tionably was the chief enemy of the long-cherished 
 interests of the people, he is commended to the 
 tender care of the party which he had done so much 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 125 
 
 to organize, and had successfully bossed for twenty 
 years. 
 
 Benton made, in i83i,the first speech in Congress 
 against the recharter of the bank. It occupied nearly 
 a week in its delivery, and the following are ex- 
 tracts from the same, with his account of it, found in 
 his " Thirty Years in the United States Senate." He 
 says : 
 
 " From the time of President Jackson's intimations 
 against the recharter of the bank " (?) " in the annual 
 message of 1829, there had been a ceaseless and pre- 
 vailing activity in behalf of the bank in all parts of 
 the Union, and in all forms — in newspapers, in the 
 halls of Congress, in the State Legislatures, even in 
 much of the periodical literature, in the elections, 
 and in conciliation of presses and individuals, — all 
 conducted in a way to operate most strongly upon 
 the public mind, and to conclude the question in 
 the forum of the people, before it was brought for- 
 ward in the National Legislature." — Vol. I, page 187. 
 
 But before commenting on this passage, in order 
 to show the defectiveness of memory, not to say the 
 self-contradiction of this verbose and loud-mouthed 
 boaster, and his untrustworthiness, we here give what 
 he said in commenting on the bank veto, which took 
 place the year after this speech was delivered. He 
 says: 
 
 " The appearance of the veto message was the 
 signal for the delivery of the great speeches of the 
 advocates of the bank. Thus far they had held 
 back, refraining from general debate, and limiting 
 themselves to brief answers to current objections. 
 
126 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Now they came forth in all their strength, in speeches 
 elaborate and studied, and covering the whole ground 
 of constitutionality and expediency, and delivered 
 with unusual warmth and vehemence." — Vol. i, 
 page 254. 
 
 In reference to this first extract, the reader can 
 hardly fail to discover the art and adroitness with 
 which he labors to attribute the deep interest the 
 people had and felt in the bank and its twenty-five 
 branches, to venal selfishness of the stockholders and 
 the statesmen who favored its recharter. In refer- 
 ence to the second extract, in his efforts to justify 
 Jackson for the veto, he virtually denies all this, in 
 order to make it appear that the veto message con- 
 tained revelations concerning the interests of the 
 people, about which they were ignorant or indiffer- 
 ent. But the truth is, this misrepresentation and 
 utter perversion of the public sentiment and interest 
 concerning the bank, by Benton and the veto mes- 
 sage itself, together with the glorification of himself 
 and Jackson, seems to have been the chief incentive 
 to fully one half of his speeches, and the writing and 
 compilation of his ponderous volumes, entitled 
 " Thirty Years in the Senate of the United States." 
 The comprehensive truth of the whole matter is 
 this: The newly formed Democratic party was 
 mainly made up of a few ambitious politicians and 
 the most ignorant and depraved portions of society, 
 who cared but little or nothing about the bank of 
 the United States, or any other great leading meas- 
 ure, but having found, as they supposed, in Gen. 
 Jackson a great warrior and patriot, and in Benton 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 12/ 
 
 an apt and congenial boss for such a party, if he had 
 said to them that the glorious old hero, as he called 
 Jackson, was sent to overturn the Constitution of the 
 United States from beginning to end, the whole 
 party, or the whole power of the party, could have 
 been launched against that sacred instrument, as 'in 
 fact it was, as we shall see before we close this 
 history. For there never was any thing too vener- 
 able or sacred for such a party to attack, or too 
 absurd and monstrous for a Democratic party to 
 undertake. 
 
 Benton continues his remarks on his speech thus : 
 
 "The current was all setting one way. I deter- 
 mined to raise a voice against it in the Senate, and 
 made several efforts before I succeeded — the thick 
 array of bank friends throwing every obstacle in my 
 way, and even friends holding me back for the regu- 
 lar course, which was to wait, for the application 
 for the renewed charter to be presented, and then 
 to oppose it." 
 
 Here we perceive the pompous vanity and egotism 
 with which he labors to install himself as the boss 
 and hero of the wreck and ruin he so largly shared 
 in producing. 
 
 "In the session of 1-830-31," he says, "I suc- 
 ceeded in creating the first opportunity of delivering 
 a speech against it ; it was done a little irregularly, 
 by submitting a negative resolution against the re- 
 newal of the charter, and taking the opportunity, 
 while asking leave to introduce the resolution, to 
 speak fully against the charter." 
 
 And thus was commenced the vandal warfare 
 
128 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 against a national bank and a national currency. 
 Here are also some extracts from his speech above 
 referred to, as given by himself. 
 
 " I am willing to see the charter expire, without 
 providing any substitute for the present bank. I am 
 willing to see the currency of the Federal Govern- 
 ment left to the hard money mentioned and in- 
 tended in the Constitution." 
 
 * -X- -){■*** 
 
 " The United States possess gold mines, now yield- 
 ing half a million per annum, with every prospect of 
 equalling those of Peru. But this is not the best de- 
 pendence. We have what is superior to mines, 
 namely, the exports which command the money 
 of the world ; that is to say, the food which sustains 
 life, and the raw materials which sustain manu- 
 factures. Gold and silver is the best currency for a 
 republic ; it suits the men of middle property and 
 the working people best ; and if I was going to 
 establish a workingman's party, it should be on the 
 basis of hard money ; a hard-money party, against a 
 paper party." 
 
 In these extracts we have specimens of the reac- 
 tionary and retrograde schedule which was to be 
 run by the Democratic leaders in reference to the 
 policy of a national bank and a national currency, 
 such as had long been used by the leading nations 
 of Europe and our government, and which above all 
 other means had fostered and extended every 
 branch of industry and commerce, and to which 
 reactionary and retrograde schedule almost the 
 entire power of the Democratic party, and the 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 29 
 
 government itself, was devoted for the space of ten 
 or twelve years. This warfare resulted in the over- 
 throw of almost the entire system of American 
 industry and commerce, thereby throwing from our 
 country hundreds of millions of wealth, and landing 
 the same in the laps of those nations which had 
 adopted and retained these great means of wealth 
 and prosperity, to say nothing here of the poverty 
 and distress produced by the schedule in all parts of 
 our country, as a- matter of course. 
 
 At the time Benton was discussing the recharter 
 of our bank, the recharter of the Bank of England 
 was under consideration, and by some hocus-pocus 
 sagacity, which Benton always exhibited in his pro- 
 pensity for prophecies, he made up his own speech, 
 as he himself tells us, mainly from the anti-bank 
 speeches being made in England at that time. We 
 only have space for a short extract, as a sample both 
 of his prophetic visions and the balderdash style of 
 his oratory. ^ 
 
 " Shall English lords and ladies continue to find in 
 the Bank of the United States, the unjust and odious 
 privileges which they can no longer find in the Bank 
 of England ? Shall the copy survive here, after the 
 original has been destroyed there? Shall the young 
 whelp triumph in America, after the old lion has 
 been throttled and strangled in England ? No ! 
 Never ! The thing is impossible ! The Bank of the 
 United States dies, and the Bank of England dies, 
 in all its odious points, upon the limitation of its 
 charter, and the only circumstance of regret is that 
 the generous deliverance is to take effect two years 
 
130 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 earlier in the British monarchy than in the American 
 republic." 
 
 The reader need hardly be informed that the Bank 
 of England was rechartered at that time with all its 
 powers and privileges intact, Benton to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, and remains to this day as the 
 financial centre of the world, and the citadel of the 
 glory and power of Great Britain, while the North 
 American continent was robbed of hundreds of mill- 
 ions of wealth, which would have remained with us 
 had it not been for this false prophet, this boss, and 
 the reactionary and retrograde schedule of the Demo- 
 cratic party, in destroying the bank and the national 
 currency of the United States. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES FURTHER DISCUSSED. 
 
 It was known, or should have been known, to the 
 Democratic leaders of Jackson's day, that there is 
 but one way to destroy the power and influence of 
 wealth in government, and its danger to civil liberty, 
 and that is to destroy wealth itself, and finally reduce 
 the community thereby to the barbaric state. On 
 the other hand, the creation and protection of prop- 
 erty, and the rights of property in the hands of all 
 the citizens, go hand-in-hand with the protection and 
 perpetuation of free government and civil liberty. It 
 was known, or should have been known, to the Demo- 
 cratic leaders, that a national bank was a moral and 
 legitimate institution, — an institution intimately con- 
 nected with the industry and commerce of the 
 country, which could only prosper as they prospered, 
 and must fail if they fail, — an institution also de- 
 signed for a safe place of deposit, and to afford bills 
 of exchange or the transfer of funds, both for the 
 people and the government ; all of which accommoda- 
 tions were, and are still, necessary for active in- 
 dustry and traffic of every kind. And inasmuch as 
 such a bank or banks have always been divided in 
 their management and control between the govern- 
 ment and the citizens ; and inasmuch as the stock or 
 property in the bank has generally been divided into 
 
 13T 
 
132 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 shares so small that each property-holder may have 
 an ownership therein ; and inasmuch as it is and 
 must be the interest of the bank, in promoting its 
 own interest, to promote the interest and prosperity 
 of the people, it cannot be antagonistic to civil gov- 
 ernment and civil liberty. But all these considera- 
 tions were counted as nothing by the Democratic 
 leaders ; and their entire anti-bank literature, amount- 
 ing to thousands of tons, prating and forever prating 
 about monopolies for the space of ten or a dozen 
 years, was stamped and condemned by the world as 
 mere hypocritical cant, when these same leaders set 
 themselves to work to create out of the Treasury of 
 the United States, and did create, a bank a thousand 
 times more powerful and dangerous, in the man- 
 agement of which the citizens had, and could have, 
 no direct influence or control. 
 
 The chief influence and popularity of the Demo- 
 cratic party in those days arose from the fact that 
 Gen. Jackson had been commander at the time, and 
 had won the battle of New Orleans in 1814, which, 
 as De Tocqueville thought, formed a very slight 
 foundation for a President of the United States. As 
 it was, he became, as it were, by virtue of this victory 
 and his reckless audacity, or rather by his obedience 
 to his confidential advisers, the Allah of his party, and 
 Benton its prophet. As a general rule, their follow- 
 ers knew and cared as little about the Bank of the 
 United States, as they did about the House of Stuart, 
 or the Orleans branch of the Bourbons, nor did they 
 perceive the inevitable destruction of the business 
 and industries its overthrow would produce. They 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 33 
 
 cared no more for the advice and statesmanship of 
 such men as Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, 
 Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, than they cared 
 for the introduction of Christianity among the nations 
 of the East. And hence it was that the party fol- 
 lowed its leaders in their reckless ambition to over- 
 throw the bank, and in doing so, to turn down such 
 men as Clay, Webster, and Clayton, until the whole 
 country was involved in a catastrophe, which came 
 near being as disastrous to the American people as 
 was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans to 
 the ancient Jews. And here we have another glimpse, 
 or a clear insight, into the ever-present danger of 
 the despotism and wreck and ruin flowing from the 
 existence and unchecked control of a Democratic 
 party in possession of supreme power. 
 
 Having now given, in our own words, some account 
 of the course and policy of the Democratic leaders, 
 it becomes altogether proper to give the reader 
 some contemporary expressions and statements from 
 the great statesmen of that day who favored the 
 bank and other policies of the fathers. 
 
 After Benton had thrust his long and arrogant 
 speech upon the Senate against the bank, and after 
 his party and the government itself had printed and 
 circulated millions of copies, the Republican, alias 
 the Whig, party held a convention in Baltimore, De- 
 cember, 1 83 1, in which as a part of their proceedings 
 and platform they put forth the following presenta- 
 tion of the subject : 
 
 " Next to the great measures of policy which pro- 
 tect and encourage domestic industry, the most im- 
 
134 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 portant question connected with the economical 
 policy of the country is that of the bank. This great 
 and beneficial institution, by facilitating exchanges 
 between different parts of the Union and maintain- 
 ing a sound, ample, and healthy state of the currency, 
 may be said to supply the body politic, economically 
 viewed, with a continual stream of life-blood, with- 
 out which it must inevitably languish and sink into 
 exhaustion. It was first conceived and organized by 
 the powerful mind of Hamilton. After having been 
 temporarily shaken by the honest though ground- 
 less scruples of other statesmen, it has been recalled 
 to existence by the general consent of all parties, and 
 with the universal approbation of the people. Under 
 the ablest and most faithful management it has been 
 for many years past pursuing a course of steady and 
 constantly increasing influence. Such is the institu- 
 tion which the President has gone out of his way, in 
 several successive messages, without a pretence of 
 necessity, or plausible motive in the first instance, 
 six years before his suggestion could with any pro- 
 priety be acted upon, to denounce to Congress as a 
 sort of nuisance, and to consign, as far as his influence 
 extends, to immediate destruction. 
 
 " For this denunciation no pretext of any adequate 
 motive is assigned. At a time when the institution 
 is known to all to be in the most efificient and pros- 
 perous state, — to be doing all that any bank ever did 
 or can do, — we are briefly told in ten words, that it 
 has not effected the objects for which it was insti- 
 tuted, and must be abolished. Another institution 
 is recommended as a substitute, which, so far as the 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. I35 
 
 description given of it can be understood, would be 
 no better than a machine in the hands of the gov- 
 ernment for fabricating and issuing paper-money 
 without check or responsibility. In his recent mes- 
 sage to Congress the President declares, for the third 
 time, his opinion on these subjects in the same con- 
 cise and authoritative style as before, and intimates 
 that he shall consider his re-election as an expression 
 of the opinion of the people that they ought to be 
 acted upon. If, therefore, the President be re-elected, 
 it may be considered certain "that the bank will be 
 abolished, and the institution which he has recom- 
 mended, or something like it, substituted in its place. 
 " Are the people of the United States prepared 
 for this? Are they ready to destroy one of their 
 most valuable establishments to gratify the caprice 
 of a chief magistrate, who reasons and advises upon 
 a subject with the details of which he is evidently 
 unacquainted, in direct contradiction to the opinion 
 of his own ofificial conSellors ? Are the enterprising, 
 liberal, high-minded, and intelligent merchants of the 
 Union willing to countenance such a measure ? Are 
 the cultivators of the West, who find in the Bank of 
 the United States a never-failing source of that capi- 
 tal which is so essential to their prosperity and 
 which they can get nowhere else, prepared to lend 
 their aid in drying up the fountain of their own pros- 
 perity? Is there any class of the people or any 
 section of the Union so lost to every sentiment of 
 common prudence, so regardless of all the principles 
 of Republican government, as to place in the hands 
 of the Executive Department the means of an irre- 
 
136 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 sponsible and unlimited issue of paper-money — in 
 other words, the means of corruption without check 
 or bounds ? If such be in fact the wishes of the 
 people, they will act with consistency and propriety 
 in voting for General Jackson as President of the 
 United States, for by his re-election all these disas- 
 trous effects will certainly be produced. He is fully 
 and three times over pledged to the people to nega- 
 tive any bill that may be passed for rechartering the 
 bank, and there is little doubt, that the additional 
 influence which he would acquire by a re-election 
 would be employed to carry through Congress the 
 extraordinary substitute which he has repeatedly 
 proposed." 
 
 This address, although partisan at the time, con- 
 tains facts, arguments, and sentiments which never 
 were and never could be shaken, but which, in the 
 presence of Democratic ranks, led by such a man as 
 Benton, were like straws pitched against a mountain. 
 They may, nevertheless, be counted as a voice from 
 the Democratic wilderness, from which men and poli- 
 ticians should profit at this day. "The official coun- 
 sellors" referred to meant Jackson's regular Cabinet, 
 a majority of whom were known to be favorable to 
 the recharter of the bank, but it was equally well- 
 known that Jackson had, besides these " ofificial 
 counsellors," what was known as his " kitchen cabi- 
 net," of whom Benton was the head and front. In fact 
 Benton was Senator, and acted in the capacity of 
 prophet, chief adviser of the President, defender of 
 the Democratic faith and practice, and the Thersites or 
 tongue-stabber of all who dared to question Jackson's 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 37 
 
 infallibility. We may say that he carried the entire 
 Democratic party and the Democratic government 
 upon his shoulders, and would, under different cir- 
 cumstances, have plunged the country, as did 
 Pericles of old, into irretrievable ruin. As it was, 
 booted and spurred, with whip in hand he drove the 
 entire ignorant portion of the people against the 
 bank and a national currency. He, figuratively 
 speaking, opened a political canyon in the midst of 
 the land, and led or drove the people, like a herd of 
 buffaloes, until they found themselves precipitated 
 headlong into the terrible gulf. 
 
 " The other institution recommended as a substi- 
 tute for the bank " was the same that ripened under 
 Democratic hands into an independent treasury, 
 which had power to issue circulating and other kinds 
 of notes,' and which thereby constituted a bank pure 
 and simple, in the management of which the citizens, 
 rich or poor, have no direct voice ; the political powers 
 and dangers of such an institution were a thousand- 
 fold greater than ever could come from a bank, the 
 stock of which is held and managed by citizens. This 
 plan of Jackson and the Democracy, afterward supple- 
 mented by Benton's hard-money, and so-called anti- 
 bank policy, being similar to the recent greenback 
 theory, would, if fully carried out, rob the citizens 
 generally, except as men'als, of any part or lot 
 in this great and leading branch of commerce, and 
 vest the entire finances of the country, and the 
 hundreds of millions in the Treasury of the United 
 States, in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous 
 politicians, such as a Democratic party is but too 
 
138 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 apt to develop and follow ; or, in other words, in the 
 hands of another "kitchen cabinet " with a Benton 
 at its head. Woe to our country, woe to civil 
 liberty on the North American continent, when 
 such a party again gets complete control of our 
 national Treasury, and its tremendous facilities for 
 manufacturing paper-money, with no wiser or 
 better statesmen than Jackson, Benton, Van Buren, 
 and Marcy, or their legitimate successors and repre- 
 sentatives, such as Benjamin F. Butler and other 
 modern greenbackers, to manage the national 
 machinery ! 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THK BANK OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS DISCUS- 
 SION CONTINUED. 
 
 As already stated in former chapters, the first 
 Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791, 
 under the sanction of Washington. It ran its course 
 and served the country witli great efficiency and 
 benefit for twenty years, and expired in 18 11. The 
 Jeffersonian, State-sovereignty Democracy being 
 then in the ascendant, the charter was not renewed at 
 that time. But in 18 16, after a season of wreck and 
 ruin for the want of such an institution, a new bank 
 as a matter of necessity was established, and became 
 the chief instrument of the success and prosperity 
 which followed. It was upon the question of the 
 renewal or extension of this charter that the powers 
 of ignorance vs. the powers of intelligence, the 
 powers of ambition vs. the powers of patriotism, the 
 powers of retrogression vs. the powers of progress, 
 came into conflict, led on the one side by such men 
 as Benton, Jackson, and Amos Kendall, and on the 
 other by such men as Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, 
 and Daniel Webster. The bill for the recharter was 
 introduced in January, 1832. Its friends discussed 
 it on the grounds of reason, logic, and the industrial 
 and commercial necessities of the country. Benton 
 and his party assailed it with pretended but base- 
 
 139 
 
[40 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 less accusations against its integrity and patriotism, 
 with coarse and vulgar appeals to ignorance and 
 depravity ; and so incessant were their appeals and 
 denunciations, and so widely were they circulated by 
 means of government funds and facilities, something 
 like a popular " hue-and-cry " was raised against 
 the bank among the most ignorant portion of the 
 people. This was the outcome of the plot conceived 
 and matured in Jackson's " kitchen cabinet," with- 
 out the approval of his regular Cabinet, a majority 
 of whom were in favor of rechartering the bank. 
 The bill was at length passed through both branches 
 of Congress, by 28 votes to 20 in the Senate, and by 
 106 to 84 in the House of Representatives. Several 
 Democratic members in each House, who had not 
 yet been overawed by Benton's ribaldry or Amos 
 Kendall's infamous calumnies, voted for the bill. 
 
 The veto of the Bank Bill by Jackson was dated 
 July 10, 1832, and although it was expected by 
 some persons, but few believed he would venture on 
 so fearful a step. The intelligent portion of the 
 people were filled with amazement and indignation. 
 Hundreds of public meetings were held to discuss 
 and condemn the audacious act. Business and in- 
 dustries of every kind were greatly shocked and dis- 
 turbed, and so great was the paralysis, and so great 
 was the consternation in all ranks, that many 
 prominent supporters of Jackson denounced him as 
 a tyrant, and took sides against his re-election to his 
 second term. The message, although written with 
 great care, was the most demagogical, sophistical, 
 and absurd document that ever came from the head 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. I4I 
 
 of a nation. Its chief complaint was against the in- 
 stitution as a monopoly, and would as well apply 
 to every corporation and every wealthy citizen, and 
 to any enterprise undertaken for the development 
 of the country, as to a Bank of the United States. 
 Its logic, if any it contained, would, if applied to 
 any of our railroad corporations and banks of to- 
 day, sequestrate their assets, whenever they might 
 call for a renewal of their charters, and invest them 
 in the hands of other parties. Instead of such a 
 document tending to diminish monopoly, it operated 
 to create one grand despotism in the hands of a 
 Democratic President, and a host of other mo- 
 nopolies for plundering and oppressing the people 
 almost beyond endurance, as we shall soon see. 
 As can be perceived by any one who will take 
 the trouble to read the message, it treated the bank 
 as a free State would treat an army of occupation 
 stationed in its midst by a foreign prince to govern 
 the people. No one who esteems his reputation for 
 common sense and common understanding of the 
 rights of property and the Constitution could be 
 found at this day to sanction the document and the 
 positions it assumed. 
 
 Yet Benton, Kendall, and other henchmen of 
 Jackson soon rallied with long speeches and long 
 articles defending the veto, and glorifying its author 
 as the greatest man that ever lived, and denouncing 
 the friends of the bank as the greatest rascals that ever 
 lived. This foul literature and these foul arguments 
 were circulated in tons by the government, and soon 
 brought back loud and long shouts for the conquer- 
 
142 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ing hero. The reciprocal action and re-action, to- 
 gether with hickory poles and flaunting banners 
 stuck up at every cross-road, and venal orators in 
 every nook and corner of the country repeating the 
 trash put forth at the Capitol, soon raised a Derno- 
 cratic furor that carried Jackson into his second term 
 as President of the United States, and equipped him 
 with absolute authority to press forward in other 
 despotic acts. Then followed the series of disasters 
 which he and his henchmen, Kendall, Benton, and 
 others, engineered under the name of victories over 
 what they called monopolies, monopolists, and mon- 
 archists, until the sad catastrophe was reached. 
 
 But let us now give some more apt and forcible illus- 
 trations of the calamities influenced and brought upon 
 the country by these mad partisans and their reck- 
 less acts. This is best done by quoting from those 
 who opposed them and did all they could to prevent 
 the great crime of plunging a great nation into almost 
 irretrievable ruin. 
 
 On the very day, the tenth of July, that the veto 
 message was handed into the Senate, that grand old 
 statesman and patriot, Henry Clay, rose and delivered 
 an address, exposing in a masterly manner its sophis- 
 tries and disorganizing sentiments. The words of 
 Mr. Clay, whether in a party struggle or otherwise, 
 whether in a heated conflict of debate or in calmer 
 times, stood, and will continue to stand, as a model 
 of poHtical philosophy and sound advice. He closed 
 his speech as follows : v v y 
 
 " Mr. President : We are about to close one of 
 the longest and most arduous sessions of Congress 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. I43 
 
 under the present Constitution ; and when we return 
 among our constituents, what account of tlie opera- 
 tions of their government shall we be bound to com- 
 municate ? We shall be compelled to say, that the 
 Supreme Court is paralyzed, and the Missionaries 
 retained in prison in contempt of its authority, and 
 in defiance of numerous treaties and laws of the 
 United States; that the Executive, through the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, sent to Congress a tariff 
 bill which would have destroyed numerous branches 
 of our domestic industry and been the final destruction 
 of all ; that the veto has been applied to the Bank 
 of the United States, our only reliance for a sound 
 and uniform currency ; that the Senate has been 
 violently attacked for the exercise of a clear consti- 
 tutional power ; that the House of Representatives 
 has been unnecessarily assailed ; and that the 
 President promulgated a rule of action for those who 
 have taken the oath to support the Constitution of 
 the United States, that must, if there be practical 
 conformity to it, introduce general nullification, and 
 end in the absolute subversion of the government." 
 
 The following was from Hon. J. M. Clayton, the 
 great Whig senator from Delaware : 
 
 " I ask. What is to be done for the country ? All 
 thinking men must now admit that, as the present 
 bank must close its concerns in less than four years, 
 the pecuniary distress, the commercial embarrass- 
 ments, consequent upon its destruction, must ex- 
 ceed any thing which has ever been known in our 
 history, unless some other bank can be established to 
 relieve us. Eight and a half millions of the bank 
 
144 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 capital, belonging to foreigners, must be drawn fron\ 
 us to Europe. Seven millions of the capital must be 
 paid to the government, not to be loaned again, but 
 to remain, as the President proposes, deposited in a 
 branch of the Treasury, to check the issues of the 
 local banks. The immense available resources of the 
 present institution, amounting, as it appears by the 
 report in the other House, to $82,057,483, are to be 
 used for banking no longer, and nearly fifty millions of 
 d.ollars in notes, discounted on personal and other 
 security, must be paid to the bank. The State banks 
 must pay over all their debts to the expiring institu- 
 tion, and curtail their discounts to do so, or resort, 
 for the relief of their debtors, to the old plan of 
 emitting more paper, to be bought up by speculators 
 at a heavy discount." 
 
 We now quote some words of wisdom and 
 warning from the great logician, the profound 
 reasoner, and the defender of the Constitution ; Mr. 
 Webster said : 
 
 " Mr. President: We have arrived. at a new epoch. 
 We are entering on experiments with the govern- 
 ment and the Constitution of the country, hitherto 
 untried, and. of fearful and appalling aspect. This 
 message calls us to the contemplation of a future 
 which little resembles the past. Its principles are at 
 war with all that public opinion has sustained, and 
 all which the experience of the government has 
 sanctioned. It denies first principles. It contradicts 
 truths heretofore received as indisputable. It denies 
 to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and 
 demands to divide with Congress the origination of 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 45 
 
 Statutes. It extends the grasp of Executive preten- 
 sion over every power of the government. But this 
 is not all. It presents the Chief Magistrate of 
 the Union in the attitude of arguing away the 
 powers of the government over which he has been 
 chosen to preside ; and adopting for this purpose, 
 modes of reasoning which, even under the influence 
 of all proper feeling toward high official station, it 
 is difficult to regard as respectable. It appeals to 
 every prejudice which may betray men into a mis- 
 taken view of their own interests ; and to every pas- 
 sion which may lead them to disobey the impulses 
 of their understanding. It urges all the specious 
 topics of State rights, and national encroachment, 
 against that which a great majority of the States have 
 afifirmed to be rightful, and in which all of them have 
 acquiesced. It sows, in an unsparing manner, the 
 seeds of jealousy and ill-will against that govern- 
 ment of which its author is the official head. It 
 raises a cry that liberty is in danger, at the very 
 moment when it puts forth claims to power hereto- 
 fore unknown and unheard of. It affects alarm for 
 public freedom, when nothing so much endangers 
 that freedom as its own unparalleled pretences. 
 This even is not all. It manifestly seeks to influence 
 the poor against the rich. It wantonly attacks whole 
 classes of the people, for the purpose of turning 
 against them the prejudices and resentments of other 
 classes. It is a state paper which finds no topic too 
 exciting for its use ; no passion too inflammable for 
 its address and solicitation. Such is the message. 
 It remains, now, for the people of the United States 
 
146 THE HISTORY OF, DEMOCRACY. 
 
 to choose between the principles here avowed and 
 their government. These cannot subsist together. 
 The one or the other must be rejected. If the sen- 
 timents of the message shall receive general appro- 
 bation, the Constitution will have perished even 
 earlier than the moment which its enemies originally 
 allowed for the termination of its existence. It will 
 not have survived to its fiftieth year." 
 
 The Constitution did " perish " so far as Jackson's 
 crew of advisers and prompters could destroy it. But 
 fortunately there was behind it and the government 
 itself, and beyond the reach of this Democratic crew, 
 a conservative and enduring power, which even a 
 Webster, with his deep research, could not fully fore- 
 cast and comprehend, as experience demonstrated, 
 the continued assaults and warfare of the Democratic 
 party to the contrary notwithstanding. But the great 
 questions of to-day are : Was there ever any other 
 Constitution and government that so long stood the 
 assaults of such a party and such a crew in possession 
 of supreme power, without a thorough and destruc- 
 tive revolution ? And, secondly: Can our Constitu- 
 tion and government ever stand and survive another 
 such Democratic siege ? 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 
 
 At the time the bill for the recharter of the bank 
 was passed in Congress, and vetoed by Jackson, the 
 old charter had four years to run before it expired. 
 By the laws of Congress, and, in fact, by the charter 
 itself, the funds of the government, amounting in 
 those days to about ten million dollars, were re- 
 quired to be deposited in the vaults of the bank and 
 its branches, then numbering twenty-five, in various 
 parts of the country, unless the Secretary of the 
 Treasury should deem the funds unsafe. In such a 
 case, he was authorized to remove them to places of 
 greater security, and make immediate report to Con- 
 gress, and not to the President. The President, as 
 is the case to-day, had no legal authority or control 
 over the funds. He could not legally draw a single 
 dollar from them on his own order or warrant, nor 
 had he any legal authority to transfer a single dollar 
 from one place to another. But during the Congress 
 of 1832 and '33, the session following Jackson's 
 election to his second term, it being noised about 
 that he contemplated seizing upon the deposits, with 
 or without law, by virtue of his popularity and 
 strength with the Democracy, on the 2d of March, 
 1833, the House of Representatives considered the 
 subject, and by a vote of 1 10 to 46 (over two to one) 
 
 147 
 
148 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 resolved " that the government deposits may, in the 
 opinion of the House, be safely continued in the 
 Bank of the United States." 
 
 Almost any man with common sense and common 
 honesty would suppose that with such laws in force, 
 and such a resolution froiti the House of Representa- 
 tives, where all government money and financial 
 questions have their rightful consideration and solu- 
 tion, the President ought to have been willing to let 
 such questions take their legitimate course. But not 
 so. Nor was this all. When the plot of seizing 
 upon the deposits had been concocted in Jackson's 
 "kitchen cabinet," he brought the subject before his 
 regular Cabinet. Here he found all, except one or 
 two, — Roger B. Taney, the Attorney-General, in 
 particular, — opposed to so fearful an experiment, so 
 fearful a crime. But it had been settled in the 
 "kitchen cabinet," where Benton was the "head 
 centre," and where Amos Kendall and F. P. Blair 
 were lieutenants, that the project was to be carried 
 out. And here we may almost as readily imagine 
 the conversation that took place, when Jackson 
 broached the subject to his regular Cabinet, as though 
 we had been present to report the same. " First," 
 says Mr. McLane, "the act of removal would be 
 violative of the laws of Congress, and besides, the re- 
 cent resolution of the House of Representatives 
 takes from the President all responsibility in the 
 matter." "Yes, Mr. President," says Mr. Woodbury, 
 " this would be a fearful undertaking. It would 
 surely bring upon the country all the disturbances and 
 calamities predicted by Clay, Webster, and Clayton 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. I49 
 
 to come from the veto of the Bank Bill ; and besides, 
 there is no suitable place or places for the deposit of 
 the public funds, except the Bank of the United 
 States and its branches. And besides this, too, it 
 devolves upon Congress, and not upon the President, 
 to provide places of deposit when the charter and 
 privileges of the present bank shall expire. Again, 
 we had better suffer the loss of the entire amount, 
 than to have the laws violated in the person of the 
 Executive head of the government. And again, 
 the President has no legal control over the public 
 funds. The Secretary of the Treasury is alone 
 invested with the power, and he acts only as 
 the agent of the Congress, and is bound to 
 report his acts immediately to Congress for 
 their approval or disapproval," "Yes," says Mr. 
 Duane, then Secretary of the Treasury, " I have been 
 considering this project, at the request of the Presi- 
 dent, for some time, and I have come to the conclu- 
 sion to have nothing to do with so violent and 
 dangerous a measure." "Well, gentlemen," says 
 Jackson, " I am sorry to differ with you, and have 
 you differ with me, in so important a step, but, ' by 
 the Eternal ! ' I am going to fight that bank as long 
 as there is any thing to fight, law or no law, let the 
 consequences be what they may" "Yes," says Mr. 
 Roger B. Taney, " Gen. Jackson is right, and I am 
 the man to help carry out his wishes in the genuine 
 Democratic style, let the consequences take care of 
 themselves. When Democracy has spoken, as it did 
 in Jackson's recent re-election to- the Presidency, I 
 regard it as a warrant for any thing and every thing 
 
ISO THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 that may be desired by the party. Such a victory 
 takes the place of all other law, as in the case with a 
 victory in war. The voice of the Democracy, when 
 it speaks, is not only the voice of the people but the 
 voice of God. Its mission is not to follow timid and 
 cautious statesmen, but some leader that is bold and 
 audacious. Democracy means a freshet, a flood, or a 
 cyclone, which no man can resist. I propose to move 
 with il, and hold to it, if the government breaks into 
 fragments, and sinks back into barbarism." This is 
 substantially the conversation that took place at the 
 regular Cabinet meeting, when Jackson first broached 
 his project for the removal of the deposits. 
 
 But there was another — •" the kitchen cabinet " — 
 in which probably before and after this regular 
 meeting the conversation ran as follows : " Yes, Mr. 
 Benton," says Jackson, " I have carefully read and 
 considered all your speeches against the bank and 
 on all financial questions, and especially your hard- 
 money doctrine, your gold and silver currency, — the 
 currency of the fathers and the Constitution, — and I 
 
 am determined to tear that institution up by 
 
 the roots, if the heavens fall. Mr. ■ , Mr. 
 
 , Mr. • , and Mr. may go to ; 
 
 I shall take the responsibility of this great act." 
 "Yes," said Blair, one of the "kitchen cabinet," 
 " Mr. Taney is right ; the rank and file of the 
 Democracy, after much labor, much expenditure of 
 money and brains, and thanks to your military fame, 
 Mr. President, has been consolidated, and is now 
 ready for any thing, even for a war with France, or 
 for the overthrow of the Constitution and govern- 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 151 
 
 ment itself, if need be. Your voice is law, and a 
 million of men are ready to come at a blast of 
 your horn." "Yes," says Benton, "they call you 
 the grand old hero of the battle of New Orleans, and 
 the Herculean slayer of the Bank of the United 
 States, — that great and corrupt monopoly, that 
 great monarchical instrument, that whelp of the 
 Bank of England, which stands in the onward path 
 of Democracy as an obstacle to its consummation. 
 Drive ahead, drive ahead, Mr. President ; I will 
 stand by you. I engage to keep the ranks of De- 
 mocracy closed up, and on your side. I know ex- 
 actly how to tickle their fancy with apt epi- 
 thets and metaphors, with captivating prophecies 
 and promises and thundering denunciations against 
 our opponents. Or, if I should come short at any 
 point, here are Kendall and Blair, who can turn the 
 waste-spout of the kitchen upon Clay, Webster, and 
 Clayton, and even Wm. C. Preston, of South Caro- 
 lina, and cover them out of sight with filth. In all 
 this matter, therefore, the Democracy will have 
 nothing to do but to enjoy the fun, and shout for 
 your ' Excellency.' Yes, Mr. President, go ahead ; 
 we have already secured Mr. Van Buren to be on 
 your side and help fight the battle. Yes, sir, throttle 
 the monster at once, while we seize it by the legs. 
 Kendall by one leg, Blair by another, Taney by an- 
 other, and Van Buren will hold the bridle until the 
 Democracy lands him in the Presidential chair to 
 receive your mantle. England, Russia, Prussia, and 
 Austria seizing upon the hojse of Napoleon, after 
 the battle of Waterloo, formed a spectacle not more 
 
152 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 sublime and animating than you and your friends 
 will present to the world in this warfare with the 
 bank and Nick Biddle, sir." After a great amount 
 of twaddle and talk of this kind, and after trifling 
 with the vast interests of the country, as if it were a 
 theatrical stage, and the people stage-players, and 
 as if their .great interests were as chaff, and the ani- 
 mosities and ambitions of certain individuals were 
 the wheat, Jackson ordered Mr. Duane, the Seqre- 
 tary of the Treasury, to change the government de- 
 posits, then averaging about ten million dollars, from 
 the Bank of the United States and its branches to 
 certain State banks designated by himself. This 
 order Duane refused to obey, whereupon Jackson 
 removed him from office, and appointed Roger B. 
 Taney, a more pliant instrument, in his place. 
 Taney at once showed that he was ready for that or 
 any other Democratic edict. Hence, on the 22d of 
 September, 1833, the order was issued for the change 
 to be made, and funds to be drawn as fast as possible 
 from the Bank of the United States. And although 
 threats and rumors of mobs and insurrections were 
 in circulation, in case this bold and audacious course 
 was adopted, nothing of the kind took place, but it 
 is impossible for words to convey an idea of the con- 
 sternation and panic that followed. 
 
 Benton had been for some time preaching up his 
 so-called gospel of hard money, and his crusade 
 against all banks and paper currency, and as most peo- 
 ple, and even the State banks, knew his potency with 
 Jackson, and feared -that Democracy would soon 
 sweep all banks from the land, and as there were but 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 53 
 
 a few million dollars of specie in the country, every 
 body supposed that manufacturing industries and 
 commerce must soon be reduced to a mere fraction 
 of what then existed, and hence the panic and con- 
 sternation among all classes of people, which were in- 
 creased by the fear of disturbance and tumults, 
 which have always followed a reign of Democracy in 
 every other country. But Jackson and some of his 
 advisers, seeing this dangerous state of affairs, soon 
 came forward with the announcement that the sev- 
 eral States must charter more banks to supply the 
 vacuum caused by the overthrow of the Bank of the 
 United States and its branches, and that the pet 
 banks (so-called) which had received the public de- 
 posits must be liberal with their discounts to the 
 people. These suggestions were, as a matter of 
 course, followed by the pet banks; and nearly all the 
 States, in their next legislative sessions, chartered 
 new banks, ad libitum, and hundreds of millions of 
 paper currency were issued by them, which the peo- 
 ple, as a matter of course, and a matter of necessity, 
 received with avidity. This flood of bank-notes had 
 the effect to revive business, such as it was, after 
 awhile, and to stimulate a rage for speculation and 
 an inflation of prices such as had never before been 
 witnessed in any country in time of peace. 
 
 But even this reaction from the terrible depression 
 consequent upon the veto and the removal of the 
 deposits, was by no means, sudden ; the shock and 
 paralysis of business were too great and wide-spread 
 to be cured, if cured they could be, by any such 
 crazy and hazardous remedies. It was at least two 
 years before business began to recover, and when 
 
154 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 it did recover, it came with a craze and vengeance, 
 which ran every thing and everybody wild. Flour 
 that had been down to three and four dollars a bar- 
 rel soon went up to ten and twelve dollars, meat that 
 had been at six and seven cents a pound went up to 
 eighteen and twenty cents a pound, and other things 
 fluctuated in proportion. And here too we come to 
 the fact and experience that from the reduction of 
 the tariff, and the inflation of the prices of every 
 thing in our country, foreign goods were imported to 
 such an extent, that hardly a dollar of gold or silver 
 could be found iri circulation, owing to the drain of 
 specie to pay for imports. Every kind of merchan- 
 dise during the years of 1835 and '36 seemed to rest 
 upon stilts, and as a bubble ready to burst at any 
 moment. But it was this Democratic froth and en- 
 dorsement of Jackson and Benton that enabled Mr. 
 Van Buren to slip into the Presidency in 1836 and 
 '37, and thus perpetuate a Democratic reign. Had 
 not Jackson, either through fear or prudence, aban- 
 doned Benton's hard-money theory, for the time 
 being, and turned to the State banks for help, it is to 
 be presumed that our country would have been de- 
 livered from the curse of Democracy at that time, 
 either by the aid of Judge Lynch or by the ballot- 
 box in 1836. As it was. Van Buren reached 
 the Presidency but by the skin of his teeth, even with 
 Jackson's endorsement and popularity to aid him. 
 
 In the next chapter we will give the reader some 
 authoritative accounts of the first crop of disasters 
 produced by the Democratic reign, leaving the ac- 
 count of the terrible crash of 1837 for subsequent 
 chapters. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE REMOVAL OF -THE DEPOSITS — CONTINUED. 
 
 The Bank of the United States had a capital of 
 thirty-five million dollars, seven million of which be- 
 longed to the government. Its circulating notes 
 averaged about fifty million dollars, and its line of 
 discounts ran from seventy to eighty million dollars. 
 As before remarked, the government used the bank 
 and its branches as places of deposit, which fund on 
 hand usually amounted to about ten million dollars. 
 The deposits of the mercantile community with the 
 bank probably amounted to as much as those of the 
 government. When, therefore, the government de- 
 posits were suddenly withdrawn from the bank by 
 the President, as a matter of course private deposits 
 were also withdrawn, thus inflicting a terrible blow 
 upon the institution, as well as upon the industrial and 
 mercantile community, inasmuch as the bank and its 
 branches were compelled to withhold and shorten their 
 accommodations to the people, while the State banks 
 were also driven to the necessity of shortening their 
 sails. At that time the population of the United 
 States w^s less than fourteen million, and the pur- 
 chasing power of money was more than twice as 
 great as at the present time. Gold and silver were 
 very scarce, and were being rendered still scarcer 
 by the policy and course of Jackson and his 
 
 155 
 
156 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " kitchen cabinet," and hence we may come to the 
 conclusion that the depressing effect of this policy 
 upon the country could not be excelled or equalled 
 at the present time by the sudden abolition of all 
 the national banks, and the withdrawal of one half 
 the greenbacks from circulation. It was not only 
 the banks that were crippled and- frightened, but all 
 capitalists and financiers, except professional swind- 
 lers, were driven from the markets. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that this policy and despotism of Democ- 
 racy, in the person of its chiefs, produced at first 
 great alarm, then a panic, then a paralysis in all 
 branches of business and industry, such as had never 
 before been witnessed in time of peace. 
 
 Benton has written and compiled two immense 
 volumes to vindicate and extol himself and Jackson, 
 but had he lived a hundred years longer, and pro- 
 duced a hundred more volumes, he could never begin 
 to atone for the calamities they brought upon the 
 country, or have shielded these, their mad acts, from 
 the bitter scorn and righteous condemnation of man- 
 kind. But we must now let those who were on the 
 spot, those who saw and tasted the bitter dose, those 
 who saw and felt the pelting storm raised by a 
 wicked crew of Democratic politicians, speak for 
 themselves. It is true no men or set of men can be 
 found to-day to stand up and defend these acts of the 
 Democratic party and its leaders, or to contend that 
 the support given to the bank and other Whig 
 measures, by the Whigs, was merely partisan, or 
 in any respect venal or wrong. No such calumny 
 can now find consumers or admirers, but the time 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 57 
 
 has come when the entire country, the entire 
 people, and whole world, must look upon the policy 
 and acts of the Democratic party and its leaders of 
 those days as a base and criminal warfare against 
 the best interests of the people and against modern 
 civilization and progress. It is on account of these 
 acts, facts, and fearful results, that the following 
 parts of speeches, made by great statesmen at that 
 time, cannot be too often reproduced for the con- 
 sideration of the American people. 
 
 Soon after the Congress following the removal of 
 the public deposits had met, Mr. Clay arose in the 
 Senate, and commenced his review of the acts as 
 follows : 
 
 "We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto 
 bloodless, but rapidly tending toward a total change 
 of the pure Republican character of the government, 
 and to the concentration of all power in the hands of 
 one man. The powers of Congress are paralyzed, 
 except when exerted in conformity with his will, 
 by frequent and an extraordinary exercise of the 
 Executive veto, not anticipated by the founders of 
 our Constitution, and not practised by any of the 
 predecessors of the present Chief Magistrate. And, 
 to cramp them still more, a new expedient is spring- 
 ing into use, of withholding altogether bills which 
 have received the sanction of both houses of Con- 
 gress, thereby cutting off all opportunity of passing 
 them, even if, after their return, the members should 
 be unanimous in their favor. The constitutional 
 participation of the Senate in the appointing power 
 is virtually abolished by the constant use of the 
 
158 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 power of removal from office, without any known 
 cause, and by tlie appointment of the same in- 
 dividual to the same office, after his rejection by the 
 Senate. How often have we, Senators, felt that the 
 check of the Senate, instead of being, as the Con- 
 stitution intended, a salutary control, was an idle 
 ceremony? How often, when acting on the case of 
 the nominated successor have we felt the injustice 
 of the removal? How often have we said to each 
 other : Well, what can we do ? the office cannot re- 
 main vacant, without prejudice to the public interest, 
 and if we reject the proposed substitute, we cannot 
 restore the displaced, and perhaps some more un- 
 worthy man may be nominated ? 
 
 "The judiciary has not been exempt from the 
 prevailing rage for innovation. Decisions of the 
 tribunals, deliberately pronounced, have been con- 
 temptuously disregarded, and the sanctity of nu- 
 merous treaties openly violated. Our Indian 
 relations, coeval with the existence of the govern- 
 ment, and recognized and established by numerous 
 laws and treaties, have been subverted, the rights of 
 the helpless and unfortunate aborigines trampled in 
 the dust, and they under subjection to unknown 
 laws, in which they have no voice, promulgated in 
 an unknown language. The most extensive and 
 most valuable domain that ever fell to the lot of one 
 nation, is threatened with a total sacrifice. The 
 general currency of the country — the life-blood of all 
 its business — is in the most imminent danger of 
 universal disorder and confusion. The power of 
 internal improvement lies crushed beneath the veto. 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 59 
 
 The system of protection of American industry was 
 snatched from impending destruction at the last 
 session ; but we are now coolly told by the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, without a blush, that it is under- 
 stood to be conceded on all hands, that the tariff 
 for protection merely, is to be finally abandoned. 
 By the 3d of March, 1837, i^ the progress of innova- 
 tion continues, there will be scarcely a vestige re- 
 maining of the government and its policy, as they 
 existed prior to the 3d of March, 1829. In a 
 term of eight years, a little more than equal to that 
 which was required to establish our liberties, the 
 government will have been transformed into an elec- 
 tive monarchy — the worst of all forms of govern- 
 ment." 
 
 This extract is only the exordium of a long and 
 powerful speech in the defence of the Constitution 
 and laws of the country, and denunciatory of the 
 despotic power exercised in the vetoes of the In- 
 ternal Improvement Bill, the Bank Bill, the removal 
 of the deposits, and other despotic acts. There is, 
 there was, no ground to question the profound 
 patriotism and honesty of the great American 
 Commoner, in his efforts against these destructive 
 measures. But as it was, the speeches of this 
 great statesman had no more effect on the ig- 
 norant and depraved masses of the Democratic 
 party and the depraved leaders thereof, than 
 Cicero's philippics against Antony had upon him 
 and his soldiers, or the speeches of St. Paul upon 
 the Jewish Rabbis and the rabble at their heels. 
 Such was the demoralization the Democratic party 
 
l6o THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 had produced. As a matter of course, the main 
 parts of this speech must be omitted here, but the 
 whole can be found and read with profit in the 
 "Life and Speeches of Henry Clay," vol. 2, p. 145. 
 In regard to the bank itself, he said : 
 
 " The bank has been the constant object for years 
 of vituperation and calumny. It has been assailed 
 in every form of bitterness and malignity. Its oper- 
 ations have been misrepresented ; attempts have 
 been made to destroy its credit, and the public con- 
 fidence in its integrity and solidity ; and the char- 
 acter of its officers has been assailed. Under these 
 circumstances, it has dared to defend itself. It has 
 circulated public documents, speeches of members 
 of Congress, reports made by chairmen of com- 
 mittees, friends of the administration, and other 
 papers. As it was necessary to make the defence 
 commensurate with the duration and extensive the- 
 atre of the attack, it has been compelled to incur 
 a heavy expense to save itself from threatened 
 destruction. It has openly avowed, and yet avows, 
 its right and purpose to defend itself. All this was 
 known to the last Congress. Not a solitary material 
 fact has been since disclosed. And when before, in a 
 country where the press is free, -was it deemed 
 criminal for any body to defend itself?" 
 
 As a sample of the financial ability and honesty of 
 Jackson and his gang of advisers, and the institutions 
 which they selected for the keeping of the govern- 
 ment funds, Mr. Clay refers in his speech to the 
 Bank of the Metropolis in Washington, of which 
 bank the managers and stockholders were some 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. l6l 
 
 of Jackson's personal pets, who shared largely in the 
 millions of dollars plundered from the government 
 under this Democratic regime. He said : 
 
 " Let us look into the condition of one of these 
 local banks, the nearest to us, and that with respect 
 to which we have the best information. The banks 
 of this District (and among them that of the 
 Metropolis) are required to make annual reports 
 of their condition on the 1st day of January. The 
 latest official returns from the Metropolis bank is of 
 the 1st of January, 1832. Why it did not make one 
 on the 1st of last January, along with the other 
 banks, I know not. In point of fact, I am informed 
 it made none. Here is its account of January, 1832, 
 and I think you will agree that it is a Flemish one. 
 On the debit side stand capital paid in,- five hundred 
 thousand dollars. Due to the banks, eighty-three 
 thousand seven hundred and ninety-six dollars and 
 ten cents ; individuals on deposit, seventy-four thou- 
 sand nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars and 
 forty-two cents ; dividend and expenses, seventeen 
 thousand five hundred and ninety-one dollars and 
 seventy-seven cents ; and surplus, eight thousand one 
 hundred and thirty-one dollars and two cents : mak- 
 ing an aggregate of six hundred and eighty-four 
 thousand four hundred and ninety-six dollars and 
 thirty-one cents.' On the credit side there are bills 
 and notes discounted, and stock (what sort ?) bearing 
 interest, six hundred and twenty-six thousand and 
 eleven dollars and ninety cents ; real estate, eighteen 
 
 ' " Life and Speeches of Henry Clay," vol. 2, pp. 1S7, 188. Pub- 
 lished by Robert B. Bixby and Co., New York, 1843. 
 
l62 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 thousand four hundred and four dollars and eighty- 
 six cents ; notes of other banks on hand and checks 
 on the same, twenty-three thousand two hundred 
 and thirteen dollars and eighty cents ; specie — now, 
 Mr. President, how much do you imagine ? Recol- 
 lect that this is the bank selected at the seat of 
 government, where there is necessarily concentrated 
 a vast amount of public money, employed in the 
 expenditure of the government. Recollect that, by 
 another Executive edict, all public officers charged 
 with the disbursement of the public money here, are 
 required to make their deposits with this Metropolis ; 
 and how much specie do you suppose it had at the 
 date of its last official return ? Ten thousand nine 
 hundred and seventy-four dollars and seventy-six 
 cents ; due from other banks, five thousand eight 
 hundred and ninety dollars and ninety-nine cents : 
 making in the aggregate on the credit side six hun- 
 dred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and 
 ninety-six dollars and thirty-one cents. Upon look- 
 ing into the items, and casting them up, you will find 
 that this Metropolis bank, on the first of January, 
 1832, was liable to an immediate call for one hun- 
 dred and seventy-six thousand, three hundred and 
 thirty-five dollars and twenty-nine cents, and that 
 the amount which it had on hand ready to meet that 
 call was forty thousand and seventy-nine dollars and 
 fifty-five cents. And this is one of the banks selected 
 at the seat of the general government for the deposit 
 of public moneys of the United States. A bank 
 with a capital of thirty millions of dollars and upward 
 of ten millions of specie on hand has been put aside, 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 63 
 
 and a bank with a capital of half a nnillion and a 
 little more than ten thousand dollars in specie on 
 hand has been substituted in its place ! How that 
 half million has been raised, whether in part or in 
 the whole by the neutralizing operation of giving 
 stock notes in exchange for certificates of stock, does 
 not appear." 
 
 This speech of Mr. Clay's was delivered in Decem- 
 ber, 1833, only three months after the removal had 
 taken place. This Bank of the Metropolis, or rather 
 its managers, shared deeply in the stupendous rob- 
 beries of the government, which came to light in 
 the explosion and crash in 1837, under Van Buren's 
 administration. No words can so well describe the 
 agony and horror of those times as the great Whig 
 speeches made on the occasion. Some further ex- 
 tracts from these speeches will be given in future 
 pages. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS COKTINUED. 
 
 The effect of the removal of the deposits (the 
 order for which was issued on the 22d of September, 
 1833) '^^^s almost instantaneous upon the business of 
 the country, and the paralysis and agony of the 
 people grew worse and worse for nearly two years. 
 But no sooner had Congress assembled, than pro- 
 tests and denunciations of the measure flowed in 
 from all parts of the country. Benton called the 
 assemblies of the people to discuss the matter " dis- 
 tress meetings," and the memorials of Congress 
 "distress memorials," gotten up by Whig leaders for 
 political effect, just as if, just after the Presidential 
 election and inauguration, nearly the whole country 
 could be aroused to frenzy, and almost to arms, by a 
 few private words of advice, and without some great 
 cause; just as if a government order, which had the 
 effect of depriving millions of people ol bread, and 
 millions of people of their wealth and honest expec- 
 tations, was not calculated to arouse any people to 
 madness. But we can let such Democratic false- 
 hoods and slanders pass for what they are worth, 
 since they no longer find believers. These memorials, 
 generally accompanied by large committees of gen- 
 tlemen, to present them both to the President and 
 Congress, continued to flow in for three or four 
 
 164 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 65 
 
 months, so that when they were all printed, together 
 with the speeches made on their presentation in Con- 
 gress, they comprised four closely printed volumes 
 of one thousand pages each. Indeed, there was but 
 little done or said in Congress for four months, but 
 to read and comment on those memorials ; and, in 
 fact, not until it was definitely ascertained that Jack- 
 son and his advisers would not relent of their action 
 did the memorials and speeches cease. 
 
 Among the many speeches which are extant, we 
 can only present, in this chapter, a part of one made 
 by Mr. Webster, on the occasion. The length of the 
 extract will doubtless be excused on account of its 
 simplicity and comprehensiveness. It should be 
 recollected that there were in those days no railroads, 
 and that the great New York canal was the great 
 interior artery of trade for almost the whole country, 
 and hence illustrative of the whole country and its 
 entire interests. Mr. Webster said : 
 
 " Mr. President : I have the honor to present to the 
 Senate a memorial from the city of Albany. 
 
 " New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston 
 have already laid before Congress the opinions en- 
 tertained in those cities by men in all classes of soci- 
 ety, and of all occupations and conditions of life, 
 respecting the conduct of the administration in re- 
 moving the public deposits. To these, Albany now 
 joins her voice, — a voice not less clear, not less strong, 
 not less unanimous, than that of her sister cities. 
 
 " It is well known to you, sir, and to gentlemen 
 on the floor of the Senate, that Albany, for its size, 
 is an extremely commercial city. Connected with 
 
l66 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the sea by one of the noblest rivers on earth, it is 
 placed, also, at a point at or near which many hun- 
 dred miles of inland navigation, from the West and 
 from the North, accumulate the products of a vast 
 and fertile interior, and deliver them for further 
 transport down the North River, by sailing vessels or 
 steamers. In return for these riches of inland 
 industry, thus abundantly poured forth to the sea, 
 Albany receives, of course, large amounts of foreign 
 merchandise, to be forwarded to the interior, and to 
 be distributed for consumption in the western dis- 
 tricts of the State, along the shores of the lakes, and 
 even to the banks of the Mississippi itself. It is 
 necessarily, therefore, a place of vast exchanges of 
 property ; in other words, a place of great trade. 
 
 " Albany, I believe, sir, has a population of twenty- 
 eight or thirty thousand people. It has given, I 
 learn, on interesting occasions, nearly, but not quite, 
 thirty-eight hundred votes. The paper whose folds 
 I am now unrolling, and which I have risen to pre- 
 sent to the Chair, bears twenty-eight hundred names 
 all believed to be qualified electors. Great pains has 
 been taken to be accurate in this particular ; and if 
 there be a single name to this paper not belonging 
 to a qualified voter, it is here not only by mistake, 
 but after careful scrutiny has been had, for the pur- 
 pose of avoiding such mistakes. 
 
 " Every man, sir, whose name is here, is believed to 
 have a right to say : ' I am an American citizen ; I 
 possess the elective franchise ; I hold the right of 
 suffrage ; I possess and exercise an individual share 
 in the sovereign power of the State ; I am one of 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 6/ 
 
 those principals whose agent government is, and I 
 expect from the government a proper regard to my 
 interests.' 
 
 " It will thus be seen, sir, that this paper expresses 
 the sentiments of three fourths as many citizens of 
 Albany as have ever been collected, on any occasion, 
 at the polls of the city. What these sentiments are, 
 the Senate will be at no loss to understand, when the 
 paper shall be read. Its signers possess the faculty 
 of making themselves fully understood. 
 
 " This memorial is brought hither, for the purpose 
 of being laid before Congress, by a committee of 
 eighteen persons. Some of these gentlemen are well 
 known within the walls of the Capitol, and none of 
 them altogether unknown to members of this or the 
 other House. They come, sir, to vouch for the 
 general respectability of the signers to the memorial. 
 They come to answer for them, as persons capable of 
 perceiving, not only the general fact that recent 
 measures of government have deranged the business 
 of society, but of seeing also precisely how those 
 measures have operated on their own business, their 
 own employments, and their own prosperity. 
 
 " Unpromising, sir, as the task is; ungrateful, nay, 
 almost hopeless as it is, this committee have not de- 
 clined the wish of their fellow-citizens. They bring 
 this solemn appeal to the notice of the two Houses 
 of Congress. The Senate can learn from them, by 
 personal inquiry, that there are included among the 
 memorialists individuals of every class, occupation, 
 employment, profession, and trade in society. The 
 members of the committee come to make good the 
 
l68 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 declarations of the memorial as to the state of things 
 actually existing in Albany. 
 
 " Albany, sir, has been flourishing and prosperous, 
 and seemed rapidly rising to greater and greater 
 heights of commercial importance. There are cir- 
 cumstances which would appear to have favored her, 
 and to have enabled her to stand the shock better 
 than her neighbors. In addition to her capital, it 
 has been understood that she was benefited in her 
 money operations, to a considerable extent, by the 
 use or the custody of State funds. But the Senate 
 will not be surprised to learn, notwithstanding all her 
 advantages, that she has not escaped the general dis- 
 aster. Whatever else is to be said against the Sec- 
 retary's measures, they cannot be charged with being 
 partial in their operation. They have the merit of 
 impartiality, inasmuch as they produce universal 
 distress. 
 
 " Sir, our condition is peculiar. One hardly knows 
 how to describe it. In the midst of all the bounties 
 of Providence, and in a time of profound peace, we 
 are poor. Our Secretary of the Treasury, sir, is not 
 Midas. His touch does not turn every thing into gold. 
 It seems rather to turn every thing into stone. It 
 stops the functions and the action of organized, social 
 life, and congeals the whole body politic. It pro- 
 duces a kind of instantaneous petrifaction. We still 
 see the form of our once active social system, but it 
 is without life ; we can trace the veins along its cold 
 surface, but they are bloodless ; we see the muscles, 
 but they are motionless ; the external form is yet 
 fair and goodly, but there is a cessation of the prin- 
 ciple of life within. 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 69 
 
 " Sir, if one could look at the state of the country 
 at this moment, who had never heard what that " EX- 
 PERIMENT " is which the Secretary is trying, he would 
 naturally suppose him to be some necromancer, some 
 Prospero, who had power over the principle of action 
 in the whole nation, and who was amusing himself 
 by the exercise of that power, in seeing what sort of 
 a spectacle a great, busy, stirring community would 
 exhibit when his wand should bring all its members 
 to a sudden pause, check them in a moment of great 
 activity, and hold every one in the precise attitude 
 in which he should be found when the charm begins ; 
 as painters, though they cannot represent progressive 
 action on the canvas, can yet represent action sud- 
 denly arrested ; or as the interior of the mountains 
 discloses animals caught in full life and vigor, and 
 imbedded forever in tlie subsiding elements of the 
 general deluge. 
 
 " Or perhaps, sir, such a spectator might suppose 
 that our Secretary had been imitating infantile curi- 
 osity, which thrusts its busy fingers into the opened 
 watch for the sake of seeing how pretty its little 
 wheels will look when they all stand still. 
 
 " But whatever a disinterested beholder might 
 think of the manner in which the Secretary is amus- 
 ing himself with ' experiments ' upon the nation, 
 the people of Albany have had quite enough of 
 experiments. They find it efficient for every thing 
 but good. There are some things, they admit, which 
 it has fully proved. It has proved the rashness, the 
 delusion, and almost the insanity of those who under- 
 took it. 
 
170 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " One of the most visible effects of this measure, 
 to the people of Albany, is its check to the growth 
 of the city. It has been fast increasing in houses 
 and in the number of its inhabitants. But here are 
 persons well acquainted with the facts and circum- 
 stances who declare that the houses in course of 
 construction this year are not one twentieth the 
 number of last year. What is to be said in answer 
 to that fact ? The carpenter and mason are stand- 
 ing still with the rule and the trowel in their hands, 
 to see when the Secretary shall have done with his 
 experiment. Albany is a great lumber market. 
 The very large sum of two millions of dollars is 
 usually paid annually for this article in that city. 
 But there is now no demand for it. The same 
 causes operating elsewhere which operate in Albany, 
 the timber is not wanted, can not be used, and can 
 not be paid for. A great coasting trade is also, in 
 ordinary times, carried on from Albany. Lumber 
 and other articles brought down the canals are taken 
 down the river and scattered all along the shore 
 almost to the eastern extremity of the Union. And 
 v/e all know what numbers of sloops and steam-boats 
 usually cover the surface of the Hudson, from its 
 mouth to Troy. Last year, as I learn, from thirty 
 to thirty-five steam tow-boats found employment 
 between Troy, Albany, and New York. This great 
 extent of navigation gave wages, of course, to multi- 
 tudes of industrious men, whose present power of 
 finding employment may be judged of by the fact 
 that six or eight of these boats are at this time ade- 
 quate to the calls of commerce. The whole busi- 
 
THE BANK OF TPIE UNITED STATES. 171 
 
 ness, it is said, has fallen off at least two hundred 
 per cent. 
 
 ****** 4f * * 
 
 " One of the gentlemen now here is extensively 
 concerned in the business of transportation on the 
 Western and Northern canals. He is connected 
 with lines which own together two hundred canal 
 boats, and usually employ fourteen hundred to 
 fifteen hundred men and as many horses. An im- 
 mediate loss of employment for at least half of this 
 capital and these hands is already among the con- 
 sequences of the Secretary's experiment. This 
 shows, sir, how the measures of government affect 
 wages — ay, sir, wages, the only source of the poor 
 man's income. Be it remembered, that the adminis- 
 tration is waging war for the benefit of the poor. 
 It has attacked the bank, laid hold of the public 
 treasures, disregarded the votes of Congress, and 
 thrown the whole country into a state of violent 
 excitement, out of pure sympathy for the poor, and 
 to protect them against the grinding power of 
 moneyed corporations ! Well, sir, are the poor 
 bettej off? Are wages higher? Is employment 
 more easily obtained? Is labor more richly re- 
 warded ? Let the Senate judge of this matter when 
 I state, as I am authorized to do, that men in Al- 
 bany who, three months ago, were earning and re- 
 ceiving a dollar and a quarter a day, six days in the 
 week, are now soliciting employment for two days in 
 the week only, and for sixty-two cents a day ! And 
 other industrious men who were receiving a dollar a 
 day are now content to work for their board only. 
 
172 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " There is in the city a large manufacture of iron 
 castings for stoves, hollow-ware, and machinery. 
 Since December it is said that this manufacture has 
 fallen off one half, and a hundred hands have been 
 discharged in a day, most of them heads of families. 
 If this be so, sir, and the case be but a common one, 
 a fearful account must be running up against those 
 who have heedlessly brought such calamities on the 
 laboring classes. 
 
 ********* 
 
 " It would be easy, sir, to run into other details 
 and other particulars. It would be easy to follow 
 the effects of this derangement of the currency, not 
 only into all classes, but until we find it affecting the 
 concerns of every individual, and touching the home 
 comforts of every family. But such details would 
 be only repetition. All evidence and all argument 
 must be lost on those who do not already, from 
 what the country exhibits on all sides, see and feel 
 and acknowledge that the distress of the times is 
 universal and unparalleled." 
 
 This, we repeat, is only an extract from a great 
 address, by one of the greatest of Americans, on that 
 fearful occasion. It contains many other points of 
 interest, and can be found in " The Works of Daniel 
 Webster " (vol. 4, p. 15), by those who would profit 
 from reading the whole speech, as well as other 
 speeches on the ^ame occasion. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS — CONTINUED. 
 
 Benton tells us in his book that he made over 
 thirty speeches during the debates over the removal 
 of the deposits, all of which were, as a matter of 
 course, of the swash-buckler style, and were devoured 
 with voracious appetite by the Democracy of that 
 day, albeit it would give one half of them at the 
 present day the black vomit to read them. But in 
 times when a President of the United States could 
 appoint a government defaulter to be Secretary of 
 State, and, as some say, forced a credit upon the 
 books of the Treasury to render him eligible — in 
 times when men came to Washington as poor as 
 Pharoah's lean kine to feed upon government pap, and 
 soon became millionnaires — in times when a . Presi- 
 dent could order the entire funds of the government 
 to be removed from place to place, upon his own re- 
 sponsibility, there was no difificulty in finding funds 
 to place Benton's speeches in the hands of every 
 man, woman, and child in the entire country, and- 
 consequently no difificulty in obtaining shouts for the 
 conqueror of the British at New Orleans, and the 
 slayer of the Bank of the United States, or in ob- 
 taining imprecations and bowlings against such men 
 as Adams, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, one of whom, 
 as some of the Democratic organs claimed, was 
 
 173 
 
1/4 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 sought to be made king of America by the said 
 bank. 
 
 Mr. Clay once said, let us have war, pestilence, and 
 famine, rather than Gen. Jackson for President ; and 
 Benton himself once said, if Gen. Jackson should 
 be elected President, "we shall have to legislate with 
 pistols and dirks in our hands ;" yet they both lived 
 to see war, pestilence, and famine, and those all com- 
 bined were light calamities, compared with the reign 
 of Democracy, led by such men as Benton and Jack- 
 son. 
 
 It would appal both the senses and judgment of 
 any readers of this day to have one tithe of the evils 
 rehearsed that came upon the country from this 
 reign. No pen or brush can paint the distress 
 that ensued, first from the warfare against the 
 bank, and thence from the wild inflation from the 
 State banks running the country wild with specula- 
 tion, thereafter to be followed by poverty and dis- 
 tress of ten years' duration, brought about by the 
 crash of the State banks' currency and inflation, as 
 recommended by Jackson. 
 
 Mr. Clay thought it proper, before the close of the 
 great debate, to address a few personal words to Mr. 
 Van Buren, then Vice-President of the United States, 
 and President of the Senate, as well as heir apparent 
 to the Democratic despotic dynasty." In the Senate, 
 Mr. Clay said : 
 
 ' Some persons regarded this speech as a banter to Mr. Van Buren, 
 rather than candid advice, but whether it was so or not, it contained 
 patriotic sentiments and admonitions that ought to have been heeded 
 by him, even then, and more especially when he became President of 
 the United States. 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 17S 
 
 " Mr. President, it is with subdued feelings of the 
 profoundest humility and mortification that I am 
 compelled to say, that, constituted as Congress now 
 is, no relief will be afforded by it, unless its members 
 shall be enlightened and instructed by the people 
 
 themselves. 
 
 * * * * ***** 
 
 • But there is another quarter which possesses suf- 
 ficient power and influence to relieve the public dis- 
 tress. In twenty-four hours the Executive branch 
 could adopt a measure which would afford an efifi- 
 cacious and substantial remedy, and re-establish 
 confidence. And those who, in this chamber, sup- 
 port the administration, could not render a better 
 service than to repair to the Executive mansion, and, 
 placing before the Chief Magistrate the naked and 
 undisguised truth, prevail upon him to retrace his 
 steps and abandon his fatal experiment. No one, 
 sir, can perform that duty with more propriety than 
 yourself. You can, if you will, induce him to change 
 his course. To you, then, sir, in no unfriendly spirit, 
 but with feelings softened and subdued by the deep 
 distress which pervades every class of our country- 
 men, I make the appeal. By your official and per- 
 sonal relations with the President, you maintain with 
 him an intercourse which I neither enjoy nor covet. 
 Go to him and tell him, without exaggeration, but in 
 the language of truth and sincerity, the actual con- 
 dition of his bleeding country. Tell him it is nearly 
 ruined and undone by the measures which he has 
 been induced to put in operation. Tell him that/^w 
 experiment is operating on the nation like the phil- 
 
176 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 osopher's experiment upon a convulsed animal in an 
 exhausted receiver, and that it must expire in agony, 
 if he does not pause, give it free and sound circula- 
 tion, and suffer the energies of the people to be re- 
 vived and restored. Tell him that, in a single city, 
 more than sixty bankruptcies, involving a loss of up- 
 ward of fifteen millions of dollars, have occurred. Tell 
 him of the alarming decline in the value of all prop- 
 erty, of the depreciation of all the products of indus- 
 try, of the stagnation in every branch of business, 
 and of the close of numerous manufacturing estab- 
 lishments which, a few short months ago, were in ac- 
 tive and flourishing operation. Depict to him, if 
 you can find language to portray, the heart-rending 
 wretchedness of thousands of the working-classes 
 cast out of employment. Tell him of the tears of 
 helpless widows, no longer able to earn their bread ; 
 and of unclad and unfed orphans, who have been 
 driven by his policy out of the busy pursuits in 
 which but yesterday they were gaining an honest 
 livelihood. Say to him that if firmness be honorable 
 when guided by truth and justice, it is intimately 
 allied to another quality of the most pernicious ten- 
 dency, in the prosecution of an erroneous system. 
 Tell him how much more true glory is to be won by 
 retracing false steps, than by blindly rushing on un- 
 til his country is overwhelmed in bankruptcy and 
 ruin. Tell him of the ardent attachment, the un- 
 bounded devotion, the enthusiastic gratitude toward 
 him, so often signally manifested by the American 
 people, and that they deserve at his hands better 
 treatment. Tell him to guard himself against the 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 77 
 
 possibility of an odious comparison with that worst 
 of Roman emperors who, contemplating with in- 
 difference the conflagration of the mistress of the 
 world, regaled himself during the terrific scene in 
 the throng of his dancing courtiers. If you desire to 
 secure for yourself the reputation of a public bene- 
 factor, describe to him truly the universal distress 
 already produced, and the certain ruin which must 
 ensue from perseverance in his measures. Tell him 
 that he has been abused, deceived, betrayed, by the 
 wicked counsels of unprincipled men around him. 
 Inform him that all efforts in Congress to alleviate 
 or terminate the public distress are paralyzed, and 
 likely to prove totally unavailing, from his influence 
 upon a large portion of the members, who are unwill- 
 ing to withdraw their support, or to take a course re- 
 pugnant to his wishes and feelings. Tell him, that in 
 his bosom alone, under actual circumstances, does the 
 power abide to relieve the country ; and that, unless 
 he opens it to conviction, and corrects the errors of 
 administration, no human imagination can conceive, 
 and no human tongue can express, the awful conse- 
 quences which may follow. Entreat him to pause, 
 and to reflect that there is a point beyond which 
 human endurance cannot go ; and let him not drive 
 this brave, generous,, and patriotic people to madness 
 
 and despair. 
 
 * * * -x- -A- -X- -x- » * 
 
 " If I have deviated from the beaten track of debate 
 in the Senate, my apology must be found in the anx- 
 ious solicitude which I feel for the condition of the 
 country. And, sir, if I shall have been successful in 
 
178 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 touching your hearty, and exciting in you a glow of 
 patriotism I shall be most happy. You can prevail 
 upon the President to abandon his ruinous course ; 
 and if you will exert the influence which you possess, 
 you will command the thanks and the plaudits of a 
 grateful people." 
 
 During the times of the bank veto and the re- 
 moval of the deposits, Mr. Calhoun was standing 
 aloof from both great parties. But seeing and feel- 
 ing that the despotic acts of the administration were 
 too threatening to be tolerated by a civilized people, 
 he also came forward in the Senate with one of his 
 great speeches, covering the financial condition of 
 the country, from which the following extracts are 
 taken : 
 
 " The Secretary alleges that the bank has inter- 
 fered with the politics of the country ; if this be 
 true, it certainly is a most heinous offence. The 
 bank is a great public trust, possessing, for the pur- 
 pose of discharging the trust, great power and influ- 
 ence, which it could not pervert from the object 
 intended, to that of influencing the politics of the 
 country, without being guilty of a great political 
 crime. In making these remarks, I do not intend to 
 give any countenance to the truth of the charge al- 
 leged by the Secretary, nor to deny to the officers of 
 the bank the right which belongs to them, in com- 
 mon with every citizen, freely to form political prin- 
 ciples, and to act on them in their private capacity, 
 without permitting them to influence their official 
 conduct. But it is strange it did not occur to the 
 Secretary, while he was accusing and punishing the 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 79 
 
 bank on the charge of interfering in the poHtics of 
 the country, that the government also was a great 
 trust, vested with powers still more extensive and 
 influence immeasurably greater than that of the 
 bank, given to enable it to discharge the object for 
 which it wasx;reated ; and that it has no more right 
 to pervert its power and influence into the means of 
 controlling the politics of the country than the bank 
 itself. Can it be unknown to him that the fourth 
 auditor of the treasury (an officer in his own de- 
 partment), the man who has made so prominent a 
 figure in this transaction, was daily and hourly med- 
 dling in politics, and that he is one of the principle 
 political managers of the administration? Can he 
 be ignorant that the whole power of the government 
 has been perverted into a great political machine, 
 with a view of corrupting and controlling the coun- 
 try ? Can he be ignorant that the avowed and open 
 policy of the government is to reward political friends 
 and punish political enemies? and that, acting on this 
 principle, it has driven from office hundreds of honest 
 and competent officers for opinion's sake only, and 
 filled their places with devoted partisans ? Can he be 
 ignorant that the real offence of the bank is not that 
 it has intermeddled in politics, but because it would 
 not intermeddle on the side -of power? There is 
 nothing more dignified than reproof from the lips of 
 innocence, or punishment from the hands of justice ; 
 but change the picture^let the guilty reprove and 
 the criminal punish, and what more odious, more 
 hateful, can be presented to the imagination ? 
 
 " The Secretary next tells us, in the same spirit, 
 
l80 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 that the bank has been wasteful of the pubhc funds' 
 that it has spent sonne thirty, forty, or fifty thousand 
 dollars — I do not remember the exact amount (trifles 
 have no weight in the determination of so great a 
 question) — in circulating essays and speeches in 
 defence of the institution, of which sum one fifth 
 part — some seven thousand dollars — belonged to the 
 government. Well, sir, if the bank has really wasted 
 this amount of the public money, it is a grave charge. 
 It has not a right to waste a single cent ; but I 
 must say, in defence of the bank, that, assailed as it 
 was by the Executive, it would have been un- 
 faithful to its trust, both to the stockholders and 
 to the public, had it not resorted to every proper 
 means in its power to defend its conduct, and, 
 among others, the free circulation of able and 
 judicious publications. 
 
 " But admit that the bank has been guilty of 
 wasting the public funds to the full extent charged 
 by the Secretary, I would ask if he, the head of the 
 financial department of the government, is not 
 under as high and solemn obligation to take care 
 of the moneyed interest of the public as the bank 
 itself. I would ask him to answer me a few simple 
 questions : How has he performed his duty in re- 
 lation to the interest which the public holds in the 
 bank? Has he been less wasteful than he has 
 charged the bank to have been ? Has he not 
 wasted thousands, where the bank, even according 
 to his own statement, has hundreds ? Has he not, 
 by withdrawing the deposits, and placing them in 
 the State banks, where the public receives not a cent 
 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. l8l 
 
 of interest, greatly affected the dividends of the Bank 
 of the United States, in which the government, as 
 a stockholder, is a loser to the amount of one fifth 
 of the diminution ? a sum which, I will venture to 
 predict, will many fold exceed the entire amount 
 which the bank has expended in its defence. But 
 this is a small, a very small, proportion of the public 
 loss in consequence of the course which the Execu- 
 tive has pursued in relation to the bank, and which 
 has reduced the value of the shares from 130 to 108 
 (a senator near me says much more — it may be, I 
 am not particular in such things), and on which the 
 public sustains a corresponding loss on its share of 
 the stock, amounting to seven millions of dollars — a 
 sum more than two hundred-fold greater than the 
 waste which he has charged upon the bank. Other 
 administrations may exceed-this in talents, patriotism, 
 and honesty ; but, certainly, in audacity, in effron- 
 tery, it stands without a parallel ! " 
 
 In regard to the despotic act of removal, Mr. 
 Calhoun said, in the same speech : 
 
 " The senator from Kentucky has given a descrip- 
 tion of Caesar forcing himself, sword in hand, into 
 the treasury of the Roman commonwealth. We are 
 at the same stage of our political revolution, and the 
 analogy between the two cases is complete, varied 
 only by the character of the actors and the circum- 
 stances of the times. That was a case^'of an intrepid 
 and bold warrior, as an open plunderer, seizing forci- 
 bly the treasury of the country, which, in that 
 republic as well as ours, was confided to the custody 
 of the legislative department of the government. The 
 
1 82 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 actors in our case are of a different character ; art- 
 ful and cunning politicians, and not fearless war- 
 riors. They have entered the treasury, not sword in 
 hand, as public plunderers, but with the false keys 
 of sophistry, as pilferers, under the silence of mid- 
 night. The motive and object are the same, varied 
 only by character and circumstances. ' With money 
 I will get men, and with men money,' was the 
 maxim of the Roman plunderer. With money we 
 will get partisans, and with partisans votes, and with 
 votes money, is the maxim of our public pilferers. 
 With men and money, Caesar struck down Roman 
 liberty at the battle of Pharsalia, never to rise again ; 
 from which disastrous hour, all the powers of the 
 Roman republic were consolidated in the person of 
 Cssar, and perpetuated in his line. With money 
 and corrupt partisans, a great effort is now making 
 to choke and stifle the voice of American liberty, 
 through all its constitutional and legal organs, by 
 pensioning the press, by overawing the other depart- 
 ments, etc." 
 
 These extracts are sufficient to give a slight con- 
 ception of the distress and ruin that prevailed, the 
 discontent and bitterness engendered by the illegal 
 and tyrannical acts of the administration. And it is 
 here safe and proper to say that under the sway of 
 no other than a Democratic party, and in no country 
 except the United States, could such political villainy 
 have been perpetrated, without producing an inter- 
 necine war or subjecting its authors to condign 
 punishment. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 STATE BANKS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS CONTINUED. 
 
 It is beyond the power of the pen to describe, or 
 the imagination to conceive, the consternation and 
 distress brought upon the country by the despotic 
 and vandal conduct of this Democratic administra- 
 tion. In the midst of this distress, Benton made 
 several of his " spread-eagle " and gasconading 
 speeches, declaring and contending that the distress 
 was all imaginary and gotten up by the Whig ora- 
 tors and newspapers, and that the situation was the 
 same as when the first bank was wound up in 1811, 
 which assertions and assumptions^ though false, were 
 a " good-enough Morgan " for the rank and file of 
 the Democracy. From 1807 to 18 12, Napoleon's 
 "Berlin Decree," and the" British orders " in council, 
 together with Jefferson's embargo, had nearly annihi- 
 lated the commerce of the United States, (except such 
 American contraband enterprises as were engaged 
 in violating the embargo and running the French 
 and British blockades,) thereby cutting off the neces- 
 sity for all or nearly all bank accommodations. Dur- 
 ing those years business was nearly at a standstill from 
 these causes. Hence, says one of the best authorities, 
 " Appleton's Cyclopedia," " the bank was now obliged 
 to wind up its affairs, which was done without at all 
 convulsing the country." Although Benton claimed 
 
 183 
 
l84 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 all the while to be a hard-money man, he saw as 
 clearly as any one, that in tearing the Bank of the 
 United States and its branches up by the roots, 
 great havoc must be worked in all branches of in- 
 dustry and commerce. Hence it was that in Jack- 
 son's Bank veto message, which he unquestionably 
 helped to compose, and then in the order for the 
 removal of deposits, which, he informs us, he drafted 
 with his own hand, it was given out that such State 
 banks as were in existence must be liberal in their 
 accommodations to the public, and that the State 
 governments must also be liberal in granting new 
 charters. This policy, it was claimed, would supply 
 the place of the Bank of the United States and its 
 branches, as they were being crushed out ; a theory 
 which had in it about as much reason and sense as 
 would a plan for closing up all the old factories of 
 the country, and inviting new ones to take their 
 places. An important part of the plot was for the 
 State banks receiving the deposits to inflate the cur- 
 rency and loans to the greatest possible extent. 
 
 These recommendations and influences — the in- 
 fluence of ten millions of dollars to be had without 
 interest — coming, as they did, from the Executive 
 department of the general government, were too 
 potent not to be accepted by prudent business men, 
 and made effective through the cupidity, avarice, 
 and speculative spirit, which is ever ready to spring 
 into activity in all commercial communities. The 
 result was that the State-bank currency was greatly 
 inflated, and all the State governments in the hands 
 of the Democratic party granted bank charters almost 
 
STATE BANKS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS. 1 85 
 
 without a limit. In New York, Pennsylvania, and 
 Ohio, and, in fact, in nearly all the States, except those 
 of New England, charters were granted to all who 
 applied, and even the then Whig State of Kentucky 
 — where, as Mr. Clay tells us, they had only one bank 
 of limited capital — was seized with the mania, and 
 the Legislature granted charters to the amount of 
 ten million dollars; thus was the number of bank 
 charters in the United States more than doubled, in 
 compliance with Executive recommendations, in less 
 than two years after the removal of the deposits. 
 The alarm among prudent business men was very 
 great, but no words and no action could arrest the 
 tidal wave of inflation that had been put in motion 
 by the administration. Among the hundreds of 
 warnings and predictions that were given at that 
 time, as the plot was being unfolded, we can only 
 present one by Mr. Webster, delivered in the Senate, 
 in January, 1834, and less than four months after the 
 removal of the deposits. He said : 
 
 " I have already endeavored to warn the country 
 against irredeemable paper ; against the paper of 
 banks which do not pay specie for their own notes ; 
 against that miserable, abominable, and fraudulent 
 policy which attempts to give value to any paper, of 
 any bank, one single moment longer than such paper 
 is redeemable on demand in gold and silver. I wish 
 most solemnly and earnestly to repeat that warning. 
 I see danger of that state of things ahead. I see 
 imminent danger that a portion of the State banks 
 will stop specie payments. The late measure of the 
 Secretary, and th"e infatuation with which it seems 
 
1 86 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 to be supported, tend directly and strongly to that 
 result. Under pretence, then, of a design to return 
 to a currency which shall be all specie, we are likely 
 to have a currency in which there shall be no specie 
 at all. We are in danger of being overwhelmed with 
 irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not 
 gold nor silver ; no, sir, representing nothing but 
 broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, 
 cheated creditors, and ruined people." 
 
 But this and a thousand other warnings from the 
 Whigs did no good ; the ball had been set in motion 
 by the vandal policy, and nothing could stop it until 
 it reached the bottom of the hill and pit of destruc- 
 tion. The spirit of avarice, the spirit of speculation, 
 and the mania for becoming rich, without work, 
 seized upon one half of the people, and as hard 
 money was known to be very scarce, credit and kiting 
 became the order of the day, — credit in the morning, 
 credit at noon, and credit in the evening; credit upon 
 credit, upon this side and upon that side ; credit for 
 every thing to eat, drink, and to wear, and credit in 
 all sorts of undertakings and enterprises , and all sorts 
 of property were bought and sold upon credit. And 
 from this state of affairs there grew up a spirit and 
 practice of cheating and swindling such as never had 
 before been known in our country. The old maxims 
 of honesty and integrity were scouted as unworthy 
 of the times and inconsistent with Democratic lib- 
 erty. Banks were established entirely upon credit, 
 or upon nothing, the stockholders exchanging their 
 notes with each other and counting them as cash to 
 pay for shares, or if they had a few hard dollars in 
 
STATE BANKS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS. 1 8/ 
 
 the pretended bank they were known to invent draw- 
 ers, or boxes, by which the coin could be counted a 
 dozen times over to answer the demands of the law, 
 where such a law existed. Upon such bases bank- 
 bills were issued by the million, and loaned to the 
 people at high rates of interest, or paid out for the 
 purchase of property of any and every kind to all 
 who could be induced to sell, precisely as was done 
 with Confederate money during the great Democratic 
 rebellion. But even worse than this, banks in remote 
 sections of the country colleagued with each other 
 to exchange and circulate each other's notes. Others 
 located their banks at inaccessible points in the coun- 
 try to prevent their bills from being presented for 
 redemption. Individuals as well as banks, with or 
 without property, gained and gave credit, until it was 
 hard to distinguish the rich from the poor. Out of 
 this Democratic policy and management broods of 
 gamblers sprung into existence, and a great tribe of 
 forgers and counterfeiters spread over the country 
 who were never broken up until the State banks 
 were abolished, and the entire currency was taken 
 into the hands of the general government during the 
 Civil War. 
 
 Commencing in 1835, the prices of every thing 
 went up, and kept going higher and higher until the 
 explosion of 1837 took place, when the prices of 
 every thing went as far below the normal standard 
 as they had gone above it. But not among the least 
 of the evil effects of this Democratic policy was the 
 fact that the high prices of merchandise caused im- 
 mense importations of foreign products, which drew 
 
1 88 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 off what little gold and silver there was in the coun- 
 try to pay for them, thus paralyzing home industry. 
 Notwithstanding the rapid increase of manufac- 
 turing establishments and products from 1820 to 
 1832, and notwithstanding the inflation of the cur- 
 rency and credits, and the wide-spread speculations 
 in all kinds of property from 1835 to 1837, during 
 the decade from 1832 to 1840, manufactures and, in 
 fact, all sorts of industries and productive enterprises 
 actually declined in number and amounts, and the 
 increase of population during the same decade was 
 lower in its percentage than that during any decade 
 in the history of the country, and, in fact, it was esti- 
 mated by able statisticians from the best obtainable 
 data, that the value of the entire property of the 
 United States was diminished thirty-three per cent., 
 or, as some estimated it, four hundred millions of 
 dollars, the whole property being then estimated at 
 about twelve hundred million dollars. If we should 
 say this Democratic policy, this Democratic experi- 
 ment with the currency of the country, was worse 
 than the "John Law Fraud" or the "South Sea 
 Bubble," we should express nothing more than 
 demonstrable facts. We say worse than the "John 
 Law Fraud" or the "South Sea Bubble," because 
 those schemes beguiled and fleeced principally the 
 rich, while this Democratic scheme did more, first, to 
 deprive the poor people of employment, and then to 
 inflate the price of all the necessaries of life, to make 
 the rich richer and the poor poorer, than any other 
 financial humbug ever invented ; for the reason that 
 such schemes are always used by capitalists and 
 
STATE BANKS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS. 1 89 
 
 sharpers to increase their gains at the expense of the 
 laboring classes. All this disorganization and rob- 
 bery had, as a matter of course, to come to an end, 
 as it did in the crash of 1837, and necessitated the 
 calling of an extra session of Congress by President 
 Van Buren, before he had been in office three months, 
 to prevent universal anarchy and chaos in the land. 
 
 But before closing this chapter, it should be men- 
 tioned that Mr. Van Buren was carried into the 
 Presidency in 1836 and '37 by two special influences 
 incidental to a Democratic party. First by heirship 
 to the Democratic despotism which had grown up 
 under Jackson, and which he had inherited by his 
 cunning, his servility, and obsequiousness to Jackson 
 and his " kitchen cabinet," of which Benton was boss. 
 And secondly by means of the influence of the State- 
 bank villainy raised upon the ruins of the crushed 
 National Bank, which villainous bubble continued 
 to expand and to craze the people for two years, 
 covering the period of the Presidential election of 
 1836, and finally burst in two months after Mr. 
 Van Buren's inauguration. Had the explosion taken 
 place one year earlier, it is quite probable that the 
 country would have been rid of Democracy, as a 
 party name and organization, and saved, in part at 
 least, from the desolating calamities which followed 
 in the wake of its wicked reign. 
 
 And as further data for these reflections, we may 
 as well here give some extracts from Mr. Van 
 Buren's message to the extra session of Congress, 
 called by him to meet in September, 1837, on ac- 
 count of the great financial crash, and to prevent 
 
igo THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 universal anarchy and chaos in the land. But it 
 must be borne in mind that these admissions were 
 rendered a necessity by the surrounding circum- 
 stances and condition of affairs, and as there were 
 but few reliable bank statistics in those days, and 
 the President very well knew that all this distress 
 was the result of Democratic policy, he, as a matter 
 of course, drew the picture as mildly and as favora- 
 bly to his own party as possible. His efforts to ac- 
 count for them " from antecedent causes " were all 
 sophistry, as everybody now understands. Mr. Van 
 Buren said : 
 
 " The history of trade in the United States, for 
 the last three or four years, affords the most con- 
 vincing evidence that our present condition is chiefly 
 to be attributed to over-action in all the departments 
 of business ; an over-action deriving, perhaps, its first 
 impulses from antecedent causes, but stimulated to 
 its destructive consequences by excessive issues of 
 bank paper, and by other facilities for the acquisition 
 and enlargement of credit. At the commencement 
 of the year 1834, the banking capital of the United 
 States, including that of the National Bank, then ex- 
 isting, amounted to about two hundred millions of 
 dollars ; the bank-notes, then in circulation, to about 
 ninety-five millions ; and the loans and discounts of 
 the banks, to three hundred and twenty-four millions. 
 Between that time and the first of January, 1836, 
 being the latest period to which accurate accounts 
 have been received, our banking capital was increased 
 to more than two hundred and fifty-one millions, 
 our paper circulation to more than one hundred and 
 
STATE BANKS AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS. I9I 
 
 forty millions, and the loans and discounts to more 
 than four hundred and fifty-seven millions. To this 
 vast increase are to be added the many millions of 
 credit acquired by means of foreign loans, contracted 
 by the States and State institutions, and, above all, 
 by the lavish accommodations extended by foreign 
 dealers to our merchants. 
 
 "The consequences of this redundancy of credit, 
 and of the spirit of reckless speculation engendered 
 by it, were a foreign debt contracted by our citizens, 
 estimated, in March last, at more than thirty millions 
 of dollars ; the extension to traders in the interior of 
 our country of credits for supplies, greatly beyond 
 the wants of the people ; the investment of thirty- 
 nine and a half millions of dollars in unproductive 
 public lands, in the years 1835 and 1836, while in the 
 preceding year the sales amounted to only four and 
 a half millions; the creation of debts, to an almost 
 countless amount, for real estate in existing or an- 
 ticipated cities and villages, equally unproductive, 
 and at prices now seen to have been greatly dispro- 
 portionate to their real value; the expenditure of 
 immense sums in improvements, which in many cases 
 have been found to be ruinously improvident ; the 
 diversion to other pursuits of much of the labor that 
 should have been applied to agriculture, thereby 
 contributing to the expenditure of large sums in the 
 importation of grain from Europe, — an expenditure 
 which amounted, in 1834, to about two hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars, was in the first two quarters 
 of the present year increased to more than two 
 millions of dollars ; and, finally, without enumerating 
 
192 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Other injurious results, the rapid growth among all 
 classes, and in our great commercial towns, of luxuri- 
 ous habits, founded too often on merely fancied 
 wealth, and detrimental alike to the industry, the re- 
 sources, and the morals of the people." 
 
 These extracts, significant as they are, give but a 
 subdued and mild synopsis of the terrible condition 
 in which the country, the government, and the people 
 found themselves at that time. We must therefore 
 continue the discussion of this " crash " in the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE CRASH OF 1837 AND THE STEPS WHICH LED TO IT. 
 
 " The revulsion," as Mr. Van Buren modestly 
 calls the outcome of the terrible Democratic " ex- 
 periment," took place in May, 1837, two months 
 after General Jackson's retirement from, and Mr. 
 Van Buren's succession to, the Presidency. Instead 
 of " revulsion " merely, it was a crash, as it has ever 
 since been called — an explosion, that was heard and 
 felt throughout the civilized world ; an explosion, the 
 effects of which are almost beyond the power of words 
 to describe, or the mind of man to measure ; an explo- 
 sion, a crash, and a paralysis in industrial and business 
 circles from which this country did not fully recover 
 in ten years, and which produced a condition of affairs, 
 as Mr. Van Buren was forced to acknowledge, " detri- 
 mental alike to the industry, the resources, and the 
 morals of the people." This Benton-Jackson Dem- 
 ocratic experiment, as a whole — that is, commencing 
 with the veto of the Bank Bill in 1832, and ending 
 with this crash, — was hardly less disastrous to the en- 
 tire country and the whole people than is a cyclone 
 to the belt of country over which it sweeps, — an " ex- 
 periment " utterly inconsistent with civilized society, 
 and such as never could have been hatched, con- 
 cocted, or executed in any civilized country, without 
 a Democratic party and the vices and dangers it 
 
 193 
 
194 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 engenders. A barbaric or half-civilized people like 
 the ancient Mexicans, with their simple coins and 
 tokens of value, or the nations of Africa with their 
 cowries, might not have felt or cared for the tam- 
 pering of their rulers with their currency and medi- 
 ums of exchange, such as they were, because they 
 could fall back upon their primitive modes of barter, 
 and might have been content ; but free people, whose 
 interests were identified with all the arts, discoveries, 
 facilities, and comforts of a thousand years among 
 their ancestry, could not, and ought not, to stand by 
 and see the choicest of these arts, facilities, and im- 
 provements of civilized life wrenched from them, and 
 consumed in fire and smoke, kindled and fanned by 
 a gang of political charlatans and hypocrites, such as 
 a Democratic party seems always to engender and 
 bring to the surface. 
 
 And here it may, and probably should, be asked, if 
 the old Republicans or Whigs of those days were al- 
 ways on the right side of all the great questions of 
 the day, and always had the weight of logic and ar- 
 gument as well as the public interests on their side, 
 as everybody now acknowledges they had, and the 
 Benton-Jackson Democracy were always on the 
 wrong side, and had nothing but ambition, sophistry, 
 passion, and prejudice to sustain them ; or, in other 
 words, if the Democrats were always on the wrong 
 side of the great questions, and had neither logic, 
 precedence, nor the interests of the people to uphold 
 them, as everybody now acknowledges was the case, 
 why was it and how was it, that these Democratic 
 leaders almost invariably carried a majority of the 
 
THE CRASH OF 1 837. I95 
 
 voting population with them ? This question, or 
 these questions, can be answered in a few words. 
 As before observed, ambitious, artful, and unscru- 
 pulous pohticians, such as exist in all ages and 
 countries, and are ever a standing menace to free 
 government and equal rights, clubbed together, or, 
 as we would say nowadays, formed themselves 
 into a " ring " for selfish and ambitious purposes, 
 and by impassioned speeches and other means well 
 known to artful demagogues, were enabled to excite 
 the people and organize into a party all or nearly all 
 the ignorant and depraved elements of society which 
 have alv/ays rendered the repi'esentative and equi- 
 table form of government very difficult to construct, 
 maintain, or perpetuate. Or to state the case in 
 other words, the Democratic politicians, under the 
 name of Democracy, were enabled to collect into a 
 party all or nearly all the elements — the ignorance 
 and depravity in society — which are ever ready to 
 help artful and unscrupulous demagogues to under- 
 mine and overthrow all rational liberty and equal 
 rights, under the hypocritical cry of friendship for 
 the people, albeit they are animated by nothing but 
 selfish and ambitious aims for place and power. As 
 some incontestable evidence of all these charges 
 against those Democratic leaders, it may be stated 
 that the sessions of Congress held during the admin- 
 istration of John Quincy Adams (from 1825 to 1829) 
 were mainly occupied by these Democratic leaders 
 in introducing and discussing propositions to ferret 
 out, investigate, and expose what they called the 
 extravagance and corruption of the administration. 
 
196 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Boss Benton introduced no less than six of these 
 propositions in one day. Probably not less than fifty 
 such were introduced, and as many committees 
 appointed during the said four years for the same 
 purpose, and probably not less than five hundred 
 speeches were made upon the same subject, all of 
 which were supplemented and garnished inside and 
 out with " State sovereignty," the " Alien and Sedi- 
 tion Laws" of 1798, and overwhelming Democratic 
 arguments to prove that such men as Adams, Clay, 
 and Webster were bending all their energies to 
 establish a monarchy on the ruins of the republic. 
 And as these propositions and tactics were success- 
 ful, not in finding extravagance and corruption in 
 Adams' administration, for there were none there, 
 but successful in lifting the Democratic party into 
 power in 1829, this kind of political economy and 
 management seems to have become a time-honored 
 principle of the party in fighting its opponents and 
 carrying its measures. And thus it happened the 
 same party, or rather its leaders, having obtained a 
 majority in the national House of Representatives in 
 1876, concluded to try the same tactics, with its 
 thirty or forty committees and its terrible speeches 
 against the modern Republican party ; but as the 
 people had gained somewhat in intelligence, and had 
 become better posted as to Democratic humbuggery, 
 the party failed in 1880 to carry the country with 
 them, and to place their man in the Presidency. 
 
 The Bank of the United States and its branches, 
 as heretofore stated, were established by the laws of 
 Congress, and were constituted places of deposit for 
 
THE CRASH OF 1837. 1 97 
 
 the government funds, and, as a natural consequence, 
 became the chief places of deposit for the citizens, 
 as well as depots of exchange, both foreign and 
 domestic, for the government and the people. In 
 this way, and by means of its loans and currency, 
 the bank and its branches had become interwoven 
 with almost every enterprise, interest, and fibre of 
 society. In view, then, of all these circumstances 
 and relations, the warfare upon it, it must be con- 
 fessed, was a bold and audacious one, and such 
 as never would have been undertaken by any 
 leaders except those of a Democratic party, and 
 certainly never could have been crowned with suc- 
 cess, even with a Democratic party, without a great 
 amount of corruption, and " the cohesive power of 
 public plunder " to hold the party intact. And is it 
 hardly possible for any intelligent man to bring 
 himself to the conclusion, at this time, that Gen. 
 Jackson, after putting forth the sentiments of 
 his first annual message, touching the great 
 measures and policies of the fathers, could have 
 been brought to adopt the reactionary course in 
 respect to them which he afterward pursued. But 
 the truth seems to be that he had become intoxicated 
 with the reckless spirit of a Democratic party, and 
 the audacity of the men around him. He had found 
 how easy it was for a leader to profit by the 
 ignorance and depravity which always lie in reserve 
 in a Democratic party, ready to be launched against 
 any thing great and noble, against virtue, merit, and 
 good character ; and having further learned from those 
 around him, that a Democratic party, as such, has no 
 
198 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 conscience, no moral sense, no consistency, no policy 
 or rule of action, but its own will, as expressed by 
 its leaders, and no idea but the blind following of 
 such leaders, regardless of consequences, he boldly 
 and recklessly embarked in the plot to overthrow the 
 great measures and policies of the fathers, vainly sup- 
 posing, and no doubt being told by his intimate advis- 
 ers, that such a course would make him a greater hero 
 than Washington. Even Mr. Van Buren declared that 
 " it was glory enough for him to have served under 
 such a chief." 
 
 The President, therefore, having felt the pulsa- 
 tions, and learned the availability of his party, was 
 prepared for any line of conduct. The first oppor- 
 tunity for the reactionary line of policy vv-as found in 
 the Maysville Road Bill, passed in 183 1, which, 
 notwithstanding the favorable terms in which he had 
 spoken of such measures in his first message, fell 
 under his veto. In accordance with his own sug- 
 gestion, in the same message, the recharter of the 
 bank was brought forward in 1832, and having 
 passed in the Senate by twenty-eight to twenty, 
 and the House of Representatives by one hundred 
 and six to eighty-four, was vetoed by him, in accord- 
 ance with his reactionary policy and with the wishes 
 of the howling political dervishes who had aroused 
 the prejudices of the people against the institution, 
 and in accordance with the instincts of a Demo- 
 cratic party for attacking and uprooting any and 
 • every thing that has been built up, whether good 
 or bad. The party, being thus aroused and pre- 
 pared in 1832, endorsed the Act by reelecting him 
 
THE CRASH OF 1 837. I99 
 
 to the Presidency for the next four years. In this 
 election, the party obtained the complete control of 
 all the offices and patronage of the government, and 
 the removals and appointments soon put into exe- 
 cution its barbaric motto, that "to the victors be- 
 long the spoils," and money speedily flowed like 
 water along all the veins and fibres of the organiza- 
 tion. No such assessment of salaries, no such 
 plunder of the public funds, no such expensive 
 organizations and political parades had ever been seen 
 in our country. No such floods of documents and 
 speeches ever went out before. No such running 
 to and fro of orators aiid managers was ever before 
 witnessed. Nor, indeed, had there ever been seen 
 so much arrogance, so much ruffianism, so much 
 drunkenness and violence in an election. Benton's 
 arrogant speeches served everywhere as the key- 
 notes and political texts of the campaign. So 
 lavishly were the funds poured out, so thoroughly 
 and effectively were the gatherings, orators, 
 managers, and canvassers organized, that the votes 
 in almost all the districts were counted and tabu- 
 lated weeks and even months before the election 
 took place, the ignorance and depravity of the 
 voters being the chief factors and bases of the 
 calculations ; and, strange to say, they turned out to 
 be exceedingly correct when compared with the 
 election returns. There are at this day thousands 
 of living men who can attest the truth of all these 
 facts and charges. 
 
 And thus was achieved the greatest victory of 
 ignorance and vice over virtue and intelligence, of 
 
200 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ambition and lust of power over patriotism and 
 statesmanship, and of the wrong over the right, ever 
 witnessed in any election in a civilized community. 
 
 Jackson, having been thus carried into his second 
 term, was greatly elated and emboldened, and pro- 
 ceeded in 1833, as already repeated, to perpetrate the 
 most arbitrary and despotic act that could be con- 
 ceived or undertaken in a country under a repre- 
 sentative and well-organized form of government. 
 This consisted in the seizure of the public deposits, 
 and their removal from the places assigned them by 
 the laws of the land, and in placing them where they 
 were nearly all swallowed up by suspensions, defalca- 
 tions, and downright theft and plunder. But having 
 thus throttled the Bank of the United States, and 
 having thus cajoled and stimulated the State banks 
 to fill the country with unsound and irredeemable 
 currency, and having thus raised a tempest of wild 
 speculation in all kinds of property, — in a word, having 
 called into existence what may be called a financial 
 volcano, he issued, or caused to be issued, what was 
 called his "treasury order," or "the specie circular," 
 forbidding any thing but gold and silver to be re- 
 ceived for public lands. This was Jackson's last 
 card, or the last feather that broke the camel's back, 
 or rather the last shot to uncap the volcano which 
 he and his "kitchen cabinet" had caused to rise and 
 explode in the country. 
 
 This order, as a matter of course, the specie having 
 already been driven out of the country, caused the 
 sales of land, which had, under the spirit of specula- 
 tion, run as high as twenty million dollars a year, to 
 
THE CRASH OF 1 837. 20I 
 
 cease as suddenly as if struck and silenced by the 
 wand of a magician, and, what was quite as signifi- 
 cant, convinced the State banks that the President 
 had decided to turn his battle-axe against them, on 
 account of their failure to pay specie when de- 
 manded. The result was that every bank, with or 
 without real capital, commenced gathering into its 
 possession all the funds and valuable property it 
 could lay its hands on, preparatory to the crash that 
 all now foresaw must come, and soon did come with 
 a vengeance in 1837, in every part of the country, 
 shaking and shivering every branch of industry, every 
 enterprise and financial establishment from centre to 
 circumference, and from dome to foundation. 
 
 And thus was consummated and thus was ex- 
 ploded, not a scheme which anybody regarded as 
 promising a millennium in finance or as a harbinger 
 of better times to come, but a scheme which all able 
 and honest statesmen denounced as worse than 
 visionary, and all honest and sensible men knew must 
 sooner or later meet with a complete overthrow, ac- 
 companied with wide-spread ruin, — a scheme which 
 every honest and sensible man knew at the time 
 it was started to be the fruit of vile ambition, and 
 to have been kept afloat more by the opportunities 
 it afforded for robbery and public plunder than by 
 the expectation of any benefit to come from it to 
 the country at large, — a scheme which, as everji 
 honest and sensible man knew, found its chief sup- 
 port in the ignorance and depravity of the Demo- 
 cratic party, constantly fired up by such harangues as 
 Benton and other leaders had prepared and placed 
 before the party. 
 
202 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 To say that this now exploded Benton-Jackson 
 Democratic " experiment " was to bring poverty and 
 ruin upon the laboring classes, and in fact upon all 
 except a few astute capitalists and speculators ; to say 
 that it had now reached a point when the country was 
 to be filled, as its fruits, with tramps and beggars, and 
 when well-to-do farmers, merchants, manufacturers, 
 and mechanics were to be driven out, like fugitives 
 before their creditors, to seek tread and homes they 
 knew not where ; to say that the entire country and 
 society at large were to be brought almost to a state 
 of anarchy by this wretched " experiment," is to say 
 nothing more than the truth, and still leave many 
 untold calamities which words are inadequate to 
 describe. To say that a gang of political mounte- 
 banks and traders upon public confidence had in a 
 time of profound peace brought a prosperous and 
 happy country to a condition of poverty and distress, 
 worse than is usually found in the track of an invad- 
 ing army or a long and desolating war, is to describe 
 no greater calamities than fell upon the entire 
 co\antry as the result of this Democratic " experi- 
 ment." 
 
 To give the readers of this generation some 
 further insight into the miseries of those days, it 
 should be mentioned that when there are two or 
 three kinds of currency in circulation in any country 
 the worst always crowds the better out. Soon after 
 the State bank inflation policy of the administration 
 was developed, and at the time the crash came, a 
 large portion of the bank paper afloat among the 
 people, both of notes and bills of exchange, came 
 
THE CRASH OF 1 837. 203 
 
 from banks mainly gotten up for swindling purposes. 
 With such trash the country was flooded. The ex- 
 plosion, as a matter of course, did much to expose the 
 frauds, and as almost everybody was in debt, and 
 creditors demanded specie or the property of their 
 debtors at greatly reduced prices, and as there was 
 no specie or further credit to be had, some concep- 
 tion can be formed of the misery and poverty this 
 wicked plot had brought upon the country, and 
 from the effects of which the people did not recover 
 in ten years, if indeed they ever did recover, until 
 this Democratic demoralization and disorder culmi- 
 nated in the great Civil War, and finally ended in a 
 political and financial reconstruction. And, further, 
 as the prices of every thing had been carried by the 
 inflation to an enormous height, so all kinds of prop- 
 erty, when the crash came, sank as it were to noth- 
 ing, thus adding' fuel and fire to this Democratic load 
 of poverty and distress brought upon the people. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 RETROSPECT, AND COMPARATIVE PILFERINGS AND EXPEN- 
 DITURES OF DIFFERENT PARTIES AND AD- 
 MINISTRATIONS. 
 
 " Hills peep o'er hills, and 
 Alps on Alps arise." 
 
 It is well remembered by all old men that the 
 leading cry and arguments employed by the Demo- 
 crats against the Adams and Clay party, while they 
 were in power, were dishonesty, extravagance, and 
 corruption. These complaints and charges were car- 
 ried to such an extent by speeches and investigating 
 committees in Congress, and by Democratic news- 
 papers, that a majority of the people were led to be- 
 lieve them, and vote Gen. Jackson and his party into 
 power in 1828, and, indeed, in 1832. It is, therefore, 
 altogether proper before closing this volume to 
 present the reader with some comparative facts and 
 figures which go far to show which party was the 
 more dishonest, extravagant, and corrupt in handling 
 the public funds, and why it was and how it was that 
 many Democrats who came to Washington as poor 
 as church mice and got into high positions soon be- 
 came rich. Several of them, in fact, in a short time 
 became millionnaires, and were able to entertain 
 in great splendor members of Congress and foreign 
 ministers. 
 
 204 
 
PILF'ERINGS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES. 205 
 
 To this end, we must quote from statistics now- 
 accessible to all, the amount of government moneys 
 collected and disbursed by the respective parties. 
 But first, as to the pilfering, after the funds were in 
 hand, by the agents who handled them. 
 
 Under John Quincy Adams, as President, four 
 years, from 1825 to 1829, the amount lost by such 
 thievery was $885,374. 
 
 Under Andrew Jackson, as President eight years, 
 from 1829 to 1837, the amount lost by such thievery 
 was $3,761,112. 
 
 Under Martin Van Buren, as President four years, 
 from 1837 to i84i,the amount lost was $3,343,792. 
 
 By these figures we see that the losses from such 
 a source were greatly augmented under Democratic 
 rule. They stand in point of loss on each thousand 
 dollars as follows : 
 
 Under Adams, two dollars and seventy-five cents 
 ($2.75) loss on the $1,000. 
 
 Under Jackson, seven dollars and fifty-two cents 
 ($7.52) loss on the $1,000. 
 
 Under Van Buren, eleven dollars and seventy-one 
 cents ($11.71) loss on the $1,000. 
 
 But we must now present the net amount of ex- 
 penditures under the respective parties and adminis- 
 trations. In order to be more comprehensive, we may 
 take two or three decades in which the respective 
 parties were the responsible actors ; first, from 
 1820 to 1830, when the old Republican party had the 
 control and direction of the government, under the 
 administrations of Mr. Monroe and Mr. Adams ; and 
 second, the decade from 1830 to 1840, under the ad- 
 
2o6 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ministrations of Gen. Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. 
 These statistics are compiled from " Appleton's 
 American Cyclopedia," article : History of the 
 United States, which may be counted as reliable 
 authority as any. 
 
 Taking the decade from 1820 to 1830, we find the 
 average population of the United States to have been 
 eleven million two hundred and forty-nine thousand 
 nine hundred and twenty-one (11,249,921), and taking 
 the decade from 183010 1840, we find the average 
 population to have been fourteen million nine hun- 
 dred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and 
 thirty-six (14,967,736). 
 
 Now the net ordinary expenditures of the govern- 
 ment for the decade commencing in 1820 and ending 
 in 1830 amounted to one hundred and twenty-two 
 million dollars ($122,000,000). This amount, accord- 
 ing to the increase and ratio of population for the 
 decade from 1830 to 1840, should have been about 
 one hundred and sixty-three million dollars ($163,- 
 000,000). But instead of this corresponding amount 
 of expenditure by the Jackson Democracy during 
 their ten years, they disposed of two hundred and 
 thirty million seven hundred thousand dollars ($230,- 
 700,000), thus increasing the net ordinary expendi- 
 tures sixty-seven million seven hundred thousand 
 dollars ($67,700,000) over the average expenditure of 
 the previous ten years, and this excessive expendi- 
 ture very accurately expresses the amount of gov- 
 ernment money squandered, plundered, and stolen 
 from the treasury of the United States by the Dem- 
 ocratic politicians during the said ten years. The 
 
PILFERINGS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES. 20/ 
 
 gross expenditures of the two decades, when the 
 amount of the pubHc debt paid in each is taken into 
 account, show about the same difference in the 
 amount of expenditure, or about the same amount 
 of plunder and robbery by the Democracy. 
 
 Benton frequently boasts of the timeliness and 
 power of his own speeches in forming public senti- 
 ment and in meeting and overthrowing the arguments 
 of the Whig orators, and this amount of plunder, 
 being more than five million dollars per annum, ac- 
 counts for the free and wide circulation of Benton's 
 speeches, and the certainty with which the Democratic 
 leaders counted upon the ignorance and depravity of 
 the country to be carried for the Democratic party, 
 while at the same time the conscientious motives and 
 limited fortunes of such men as Adams, Clay, Calhoun, 
 and Webster prevented their speeches from reaching 
 the masses of the people. 
 
 Desiring to be fair with the Democracy, and 
 afford them credit for the benefits derived from 
 the old Whig victory of 1840, — the benefit of which 
 victory was in part lost by a treacherous occupant 
 in the place of President Harrison, deceased, — and 
 wishing to give the Democracy credit for extra ex- 
 penditure growing out of the Mexican war, during 
 the decade from 1840 to 1850, we must, therefore, 
 in order to demonstrate that an unchecked Demo- 
 cratic party is always as extravagant, always as cor- 
 rupt as it can possibly be, compare the expenditures 
 of 1850 to i860 with the old Republican party's ex- 
 penditures of 1820 to 1830, as quoted above. 
 
 Men not yet very old remember that when the 
 
208 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 lamented Harrison died, within one month after he 
 was inaugurated President of the United States in 
 1841, the old Whig Congress voted his wife and 
 family one year's salary of twenty-five thousand dol- 
 lars, and that the Democratic party, or rather its 
 leaders and managers, who had actually robbed, 
 plundered, and stolen during the past decade more 
 than sixty million dollars of the people's money, as 
 shown by the figures above quoted, raised a tre- 
 mendous howl, and placarded the whole country 
 with this Whig extravagance and plunder in voting 
 away twenty-five thousand dollars to Harrison's 
 family for one month's service, and by their howl- 
 ing speeches and placards, assisted by the treachery 
 of Harrison's successor, actually so aroused and ral- 
 lied the ignorance and depravity of the country as to 
 return to the next Congress a Democratic majority 
 of its members. This virtually restored to the 
 Democratic leaders the control of the government 
 in 1843, with Benton still as boss, — and all this, we 
 say, on account of twenty-five thousand dollars paid 
 to the family of the lamented Harrison, in the face 
 and eyes of more than sixty million dollars of the 
 people's money plundered and squandered by the 
 Democratic leaders and managers during the pre- 
 vious decade, as seen by the figures above given. 
 
 And, again, middle-aged men well remember that 
 when that stern patriot and great military chieftain, 
 Zachary Taylor, had been elected President in 1848, 
 and died in 1849, six months after his inauguration, 
 these same immaculate Democratic leaders, Benton 
 excepted and now repudiated, raised another howl of 
 
PILFERINGS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES. 209 
 
 extravagance and plunder on the part of the Whigs, 
 and so aroused the ignorance and depravity of the 
 country as to again carry the country for the De- 
 mocracy, and enable the party to again take control 
 of the government, and finally elect Franklin Pierce 
 to the Presidency in 1852, thus making the said 
 party responsible for the expenditures, robbery, and 
 plunder from 1850 to i860, which must now be com- 
 pared with the old Republican party's expenditures 
 from 1820 to 1830, as above given. 
 
 The decade of 1850 to i860 was another period of 
 profound peace, the usual Indian wars excepted. 
 Consulting the same authority, "Appleton's Cyclo- 
 pedia," we find the average population of that dec- 
 ade to have been twenty-seven million three hundred 
 and seventeen thousand five hundred and ninety-eight 
 (27,317,598), which, compared with the decade of 
 1820 to 1830, would require an expenditure of two 
 hundred ancl twenty-two million six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars only ($222,600,000). But what are the 
 actual facts, what are the figures for this decade 
 of 1850 to i860? They [,are, for the net ordinary 
 expenditures, five hundred and forty-five million five 
 hundred thousand dollars ($545,500,000), and for gross 
 expenditures, six hundred and forty-five million eight 
 hundred thousand dollars ($645,800,000), thus pre- 
 senting the astonishing and almost incredible excess 
 of expenditure of three hundred and twenty-three 
 million dollars ($323,000,000), or about one hundred 
 million dollars ($100,000,000) more than double the 
 average expenditure in the same length of time by 
 the old Republican party. There is, there can be, but 
 
2IO THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 one answer, one explanation to this vast consump- 
 tion of money in a time of profound peace. It is 
 this ; The Democratic leaders and managers must 
 have squandered, plundered, and stolen a large por- 
 tion of this vast amount during the ten years from 
 1850 to i860. And thus were carried out the ten- 
 thousand-times-repeated Democratic promises of 
 economy and reform, and thus were demonstrated the 
 ten-thousand-times-repeated charges of extravagance, 
 robbery, and plunder against the old Republicans, led 
 by John Quincy Adams, and equally false ones against 
 such leaders as Clay, Webster, and Calhoun , and thus, 
 too, was demonstrated the utter absence of truth 
 and patriotism of an organization which has, in all 
 stages of its existence, done all it could to distract, 
 impoverish, and destroy national economy and 
 progress, or to say the least, the utter absence of 
 any power or disposition in a Democratic party to 
 produce any moral, political, or economical reform 
 or improvement, while in pursuit or in possession of 
 supreme power. 
 
 It is true, from 1840 to i860 nearly all materials, 
 goods, and merchandise which enter into the con- 
 sumption of government, and all kinds of labor and 
 salaries, were largely augmented in price during those 
 twenty years, as they have been vastly more aug- 
 mented since that time, by the vast productions .of 
 gold and silver, and the consequent increase of paper 
 currency. But after making all due allowance for 
 all those things, there stand at least two hundred 
 millions of dollars ($200,000,000) to be accounted for, 
 or rather charged up to the Democratic squander. 
 
PILFERINGS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES. 211 
 
 plunder, and stealage account, from 1850 to i860. 
 Such extravagance and robbery naturally take 
 place, or rather unavoidably take place, in a party 
 whose chief element of strength is ignorance and 
 depravity, or in any party which has no conscience, 
 no moral sense, and no rule of conduct or strength 
 but " the cohesive power of public plunder." 
 
 A RETURN TO FORMER HISTORY. 
 
 But having been led into the presentation of these 
 facts and figures by our line of argument, we must 
 now return to the days of Jackson, Benton, and 
 Van Buren. 
 
 It is sometimes the case that wise and prudent 
 men deem it best to direct their blows against the 
 apparent rather than the real authors of the evils 
 they are seeking to correct. Hence Clay, Calhoun, 
 and Webster directed their arguments against Jack- 
 son and his regular Cabinet rather than his " kitchen 
 cabinet," headed by Benton, and backed by the 
 ignorance and depravity of the country, which this 
 cabinet kept in linelDy the free use of public plunder. 
 And having now sketched the prominent features of 
 the present Democratic party from its origin up to 
 or near the time when it embarked in its crowning 
 crime by plunging the country into a terrible civil 
 war, I will now close these remarks for the present, 
 and present a passage or two from that grand old 
 patriot and master of oratory, Henry Clay. In a 
 speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, 
 in February, 1838,- he says: 
 
212 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " Mr. President, we all have but too melancholy a 
 consciousness ot the unhappy condition of our coun- 
 try. We all too well know that our noble and gal- 
 lant ship lies helpless and immovable upon breakers, 
 dismasted, the surge beating over her venerable 
 sides, and the crew threatened with instantaneous de- 
 struction. How came she there ? Who was the pilot 
 at the helm when she was stranded ? The party in 
 power ! The pilot was aided by all the science and 
 skill, by all the charts and instruments, of such dis- 
 tinguished navigators as Washington, the Adamses, 
 Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe , and yet he did not 
 or could not save the public vessel She was placed 
 in her present miserable condition by his bungling 
 navigation, or by his want of skill and judgment. 
 It is impossible for him to escape from one or the 
 other horn of that dilemma. I leave him at liberty 
 to choose between them." 
 
 Speaking of Jackson personally, he said : 
 " His egotism and vanity prompted him to subject 
 every thing to his will ; to change, to remould, and to 
 retouch every thing. Hence the proscription which 
 characterized his administration, the universal expul- 
 sion from office, at home and abroad, of all who 
 were not devoted to him, and the attempt to render 
 the Executive department of government, to use a 
 favorite expression of his own, a complete ' unit.' 
 Hence his seizure of the public deposits in the Bank 
 of the United States, and his desire to unite the 
 purse with the sword. Hence his attack upon all 
 the systems of policy which he found in practical 
 operation, on that of internal improvements, and 
 
PILFERINGS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES. 213 
 
 on that of the protection of national industry. He 
 was animated by the same sort of ambition which 
 induced the master-mind of the age, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, to impress his name upon every thing in 
 France." 
 
 And again, he says : 
 
 " His administration consisted of astounding 
 measures, which fell on the public ear like re- 
 peated bursts of loud and appalling thunder. Before 
 the reverberations of one peal had ceased, another 
 and another came, louder and louder, and more 
 terrifying. Or rather, it was like a volcanic moun- 
 tain, emitting frightful eruptions of burning lava. 
 Before one was cold and crusted, before the voices of 
 the inhabitants of buried villages and cities were 
 hushed in eternal silence, another more desolating 
 was vomited forth, extending wider and wider the 
 circle of death and destruction." 
 
 Thus was planted in the Democratic party of this 
 country the seeds, the principles, and practice, and 
 thus was laid the machinery and the train, which cul- 
 minated in the greatest of all political crimes — a 
 cruel civil war in this country among a homogeneous 
 people, and precisely such a crime and crimes as arc 
 always engendered in a Democratic party when long 
 in possession of supreme power. 
 
 Whether in Greece, in France, in America, or any 
 other country, the history and fruits of a Democratic 
 party have always been the same. Ignorance and 
 depravity, its chief supports, always go hand-in-hand 
 with dishonesty, corruption, and despotism ; and all 
 these being the chief characteristics of a Democratic 
 
214 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 party, its best men are thrust aside, and its most 
 audacious ones become installed as leaders. But no 
 party whose chief element and strength are igno- 
 rance and depravity can long rule any people with- 
 out, plunging them into war, anarchy, or despotism : 
 first, because plunder and spoils are not elements of 
 liberty and justice ; and second, because intelligence, 
 virtue, and morality cannot afford to be ruled by ig- 
 norance and depravity, and cannot and will not 
 submit to such rule, except temporarily for the 
 sake of peace and harmony, or rather for the sake of 
 exemption from bloodshed, as our fathers did in the 
 days of Benton, Van Buren, and Jackson. If the 
 people of this country ever accept as despot a howl- 
 ing demagogue he will most assuredly be a full-fledged 
 Democrat, surrounded by a host of ignorance and de- 
 pravity, such as surrounded and upheld Pericles and 
 Alcibiades in Greece, Csesar and Octavius in Rome ; 
 Marat, Danton, Robespierre, and, finally, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, in France, with their feet on the necks of 
 the most intelligent and virtuous of the people. We 
 repeat, no other than a Democratic party could ever 
 have brought on the great calamity of a great 
 civil war in this country. Hence the just conclusion 
 is, that but for the Democratic party, the great 
 problem of slavery in this country would probably 
 have been solved, and universal freedom have been 
 ultimately established by peaceable means. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Gen. Jackson informs us in his last annual message, 
 December, 1836, that there were in the treasury of the 
 United States forty-one million dollars ($41,000,000). 
 Some of this large amount of money went as surplus- 
 revenue distribution among the States, where, in 
 those evil times, it was mainly absorbed or squan- 
 dered by corrupt politicians. But a large portion of 
 it was lost or stolen by the defaulting deposit banks, 
 and other agents where it had been placed by the Ad- 
 ministration for safe-keeping when taken from the 
 Bank of the United States. Had this money, or a 
 part of it, been judiciously applied to internal im- 
 provement and other objects counted legitimate by 
 the fathers of the republic, but from which Demo- 
 cratic management had diverted it, it might, to say 
 the least, have greatly mitigated the fearful and de- 
 structive crash that came upon the country in less 
 than six months after this message was delivered, and 
 in two months after Jackson's retirement from, and 
 Martin Van Buren's accession to, the Presidency, 
 whereupon the latter called an extra session of Con- 
 gress to authorize him to borrow money to save the 
 government from utter bankruptcy and ruin until 
 more propitious times. 
 
 About this time it was ascertained that out of 
 215 
 
2l5 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 some sixty-five Democratic land-agents in the West- 
 ern States, all except five or six had proved to be 
 defaulters, thus robbing the government of large 
 sums of money. Near the close of his last adminis- 
 tration, Gen. Jackson told Mr. Webster he had 
 always sought honest men for the offices, but nearly 
 all turned out to be thieves as soon as they obtained 
 full possession of the places. Three leading and 
 prominent Democrats connected with the Customs of 
 New York — namely, Swartwout, Hoyt, and Price, 
 pocketed more than two million dollars of the collected 
 revenues — Swartwout a million and a half, Hoyt 
 and Price about three hundred thousand dollars each, 
 and made their escape with their booty and families 
 to Europe where they spent the balance of their 
 days, as we may suppose, in " riotous living," and in 
 extolling the greatness of Gen. Jackson, Col. Benton, 
 and the Democratic party of America. 
 
 And here, too, we must not neglect to refer to 
 William M. Tweed, of New York City, for several 
 years the leader, or rather " the boss," as he was 
 called, of the Tammany Society and the city Democ- 
 racy, which has ever been a potent and pivotal force 
 in the national as well as in the city and State poli- 
 tics. It is true, Tweed and his gang of robbers did 
 not hold national offices, yet they were so prominent 
 and influential in connection with Tammany, and ex- 
 erted so much influence, both in the politics of New 
 York State and the nation, that it would be a ma- 
 terial omission in a survey like this to fail to call at- 
 tention to this piece of Democratic history. In brief, 
 through, and by the means of, the Tammany Society 
 
CONCLUSION. 217 
 
 and the management and tactics well known to most 
 Democratic leaders, Tweed was enabled to assume 
 almost imperial powers, and to abstract royal sums 
 from the city treasury. According to the best esti- 
 mate that could be made, he, with the assistance of 
 his associates, plundered the city, and passed into 
 their own pockets more than thirteen million dollars 
 ($13,000,000), none or*very little of which was ever 
 recovered back to the city treasury. Nor was this all. 
 Mr. D. C. McMillan, m a work entitled " The Elective 
 Franchise," endorsed by ex-Gov. Horatio Seymour, 
 remarks : " The Democratic majority of 50,000 in 
 the city would lead Mr. Tweed to give no concern to 
 the election. Established in the primaries, his 
 power was fixed as firmly as a rock." After speak- 
 ing of the " Canal Ring," which operated in conjunc- 
 tion with Tweed, and robbed the State of New York 
 of many millions, he said : " The tax-payers were 
 bound hand and foot through them, and compelled 
 to meet the expenses of the experiments. The 
 thousand schemes, springing from one centre, in- 
 augurated by the legislative power, increased the 
 debt of the city of New York nearly one hundred 
 million dollars ($100,000,000), and that of the State 
 outside nearly thj same amount — -all in the space of 
 three years." 
 
 As a part of this piece of history, and as a sample 
 of the elements of which our present Democratic 
 party is largely composed, and especially at its head 
 centre in the city of New York, it should be men- 
 tioned that before the present election laws were 
 there in force, it was not uncommon for more votes 
 
2 IS THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 to be counted and returned to head-quarters than 
 there were men, women, and children in the strong 
 Democratic wards from which they came, and that 
 after the Tweed robberies had been exposed by the 
 New York Times, he, Tweed, was elected to the 
 State Senate by more than ten thousand majority. 
 
 With these historical facts, views, and comments, 
 perhaps in some instances too sharply expressed, 
 may not an old man and an old Whig, who has wit- 
 nessed the entire course and conduct of our present 
 Democratic party, be allowed herein to propound 
 the following additional questions for the candid 
 consideration of all patriotic readers ? 
 
 First. Has any Democratic party ever been known 
 to lead in any great moral, political, or economical 
 reform ? 
 
 Second. Has any Democratic party ever been 
 known to extend the area of freedom or break the 
 shackles of slavery among its own countrymen? 
 
 Third. Do we not learn from its history in Greece, 
 its history in France, and its history in the United 
 States, that a Democratic party has an inveterate 
 propensity of casting off its best leaders, and substi- 
 tuting in their places the most audacious and unscru- 
 pulous ones it can find in its owr^or its opponents' 
 ranks ? 
 
 Fourth. Do not all intelligent men know that the 
 measures and instincts of a Democratic party are not 
 so much against its opponents as against the exist- 
 ence of the government itself ? 
 
 Fifth. Does not every well-read man know that 
 the leading propensity of a Democratic party is 
 
CONCLUSION. ,219 
 
 revolution upon revolution until despotism or an- 
 archy is reached ? or, what is the same thing, that it 
 can only find a full expression of its nature and in- 
 stincts in a despotic leader ; or, in other words, does 
 not every intelligent man know that each and every 
 Democratic party that ever existed has contained 
 the very elements and forces which have led the way 
 to the overthrow of all free governments which have 
 heretofore existed, thus entitling such a party to be 
 regarded by the world at large as a synonym of 
 anarchy or an ally of despotism ? 
 
 Sixth. It is true that a Democratic party is the 
 natural and spontaneous outgrowth of free institu- 
 tions. But is it not also true that this naturalness 
 and instinctiveness come mainly from ignorance ^nd 
 depravity, and from passion and prejudice against 
 stable government, and an ambition to overthrow 
 and trample underfoot the most worthy and patri- 
 otic statesmen, and if so, should not such a party be 
 discarded by all honest men ? 
 
 Seventh. Is it not true that if a Democratic party 
 could be induced to change its name for any other 
 title in the English or any other language, that its 
 morals and habits would be greatly improved, or its 
 danger to free institutions vastly diminished ? 
 
 Such is the record of Democracy as a Party 
 Name and Organization, which the writer has felt 
 bound to compile and give to the pubhc, hoping it 
 may accomplish some good to our beloved country. 
 He submits the whole, including his comments, to 
 the candid judgment and criticism of all who may 
 read them. 
 
220 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 But we must now bring this piece of history to a 
 close, and, in doing so, some readers may ask why 
 this halt is called at or near the time when the great 
 Democratic Rebellion was about to take place ? 
 Why not, some may say, go on with the narration of 
 the party's acts and deeds, so full of interest and 
 tragic results, and which filled the world with won- 
 der and astonishment ? 
 
 In the first place, a complete and comprehensive 
 history was not the chief object of these chapters. 
 Their aim has been to present an historical picture of 
 Democracy as a party name and organization only. 
 Secondly, the time has not come for the true merits 
 or demerits of the characters, acts, and events of the 
 war to be estimated. Alexander H. Stephens, in 
 writing his ponderous volumes on " The War Be- 
 tween the States,'' as he called it, was so taken up 
 in defending the Democratic party and the State- 
 sovereignty dogma, which, above all other things, 
 was effective in inaugurating the war, that he said 
 but little about the war itself. In the third place, it 
 was not the design of this work to stir up sectional 
 strife, bitterness, or animosity, or fan the smoulder- 
 ing embers of the bloody conflict into life, now 
 happily cooling off and sinking into oblivion, where 
 time, patriotism, and love of peace should, and, we 
 trust, will, soon consign them all. Nor is it intended 
 by these chapters to deny that there are a great 
 many good men in the Democratic party, however 
 misled and mistaken they may be. 
 
 But there are some acts and measures of, and 
 some positions taken by, the Democratic party as 
 
CONCLUSION. 221 
 
 a whole since "mild-eyed peace smiled upon the 
 land " which are so inconsistent, contradictory, and 
 absurd, and so characteristic of the party, that they 
 can not and should not be passed over in silence. 
 
 In the first place, at the close of the war its leaders 
 were clamorous and persistent for an inflation of the 
 currency, which was already, as a consequence of the 
 war, much swollen. If this attempt had succeeded, 
 the result would have been the complete financial 
 ruin of the government and the country. In 1868 
 it also declared in favor of the taxation of the 
 government bonds and the payment of the same in 
 paper currency. These measures, if adopted, would 
 have consigned the government and country to in- 
 famy for the next hundred years. In 1872 the party 
 declared " for a speedy return to specie payments," 
 knowing I'nat such a movement at that time must 
 have been a failure. In 1876 it denounced the law 
 for resumption of specie payments in 1879 up to the 
 very day when resumption took place, all the while 
 demanding its repeal. In 1868 it denounced recon- 
 struction as " revolutionary and void," but in 1876 
 it declared "its devotion to the amendments of the 
 Constitution " of the United States, thereby con- 
 tradicting itself and giving its approval to recon- 
 struction. 
 
 In 1868 it declared for " such incidental protection 
 to domestic manufactures, as will, without impairing 
 the revenue, best promote and encourage the indus- 
 trial interests of the country." In 1872 it declared 
 that there was " an irreconcilable difference of opin- 
 ion with regard to the systems of protection and free 
 
222 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 trade." In 1876, and in 1880, it declared for a " tariff 
 for revenue only," thus maintaining its consistency 
 for inconsistency and contradiction of its own prin- 
 ciples and positions ; and thus in this short piece of 
 history, within the memory of everybody, proving 
 the correctness and reliability of the picture of the 
 party the writer has sought to present. 
 
 With State sovereignty as its unchangeable and 
 time-honored tenet ; with such a record as the his- 
 tory of a Democratic party presents ; with its myth- 
 ological and Janus-faced name to captivate, deceive, 
 and mislead ; with an organization whose principles 
 — State sovereignty excepted — are carried about in 
 the hats of its leaders, and tossed up and down, 
 backward and forward, like the balls of an acrobat 
 or the boomerang of a Chinaman ; with an organiza- 
 tion in which the will and word of its leaders is the 
 law of the rank and file, and as absolute as that of a 
 military commander, ordering them to advance, re- 
 treat, or wheel about like soldiers ; with the influence 
 of the entire alcoholic and intoxicating beverage in- 
 terests of the country at its command ; with a mill- 
 ion .grog-shops, gambling-shops, and other dens of 
 iniquity for its recruiting-stations ; with ignorance, 
 intemperance, passion, and prejudice as its chief ali- 
 ment and dependence on the day of election ; with 
 no sufficient element or influence within itself to act 
 as a balance-wheel or check upon its wrong-doing ; 
 with all, or nearly all, the vagaries, vices, and ambi- 
 tions which have hitherto undermined and uprooted 
 free institutions and a Republican form of govern- 
 ment ; with a Pericles, a Mirabeau, a Burr, a Benton, 
 
CONCLUSION. 223 
 
 or a Ben Butler as its commander-in-chief, and 
 a Tweed as its typical boss ; with a history which 
 shows but too distinctly that the greater and more 
 numerous the crimes it commits, the more wreck 
 and ruin it produces^ the stronger it grows, until 
 the horrid war it breeds dashes it to pieces, who can 
 say that such a party should have the confidence and 
 support of a great nation with well-established Re- 
 publican institutions and convictions? 
 
 What fearful strides, what fearful movements, 
 backward or forward, reactionary or direct, may not 
 such a party adopt ? and what tricks may it not play 
 " before high Heaven," outstripping in despotism and 
 oppression the capacity of kings and emperors to in- 
 flict ? and what havoc may it not make, as it has 
 often made, with all that is sacred, venerable, and 
 valuable in morals, in politics, and even in civilization 
 itself, if again in possession of supreme power ? 
 Although many of its members are virtuous and 
 patriotic, it is not in the nature of things, nor in the 
 nature of intellect, nor in accordance with the laws 
 of God, for such a party to govern a great people 
 wisely or successfully, or to allow peace, prosperity, 
 and good-fellowship to remain in the land. What 
 authority or influence, moral, political, or religious, 
 can restrain such a party, when, with no fixed prin- 
 ciples, and a time-honored practice of casting off its 
 best men and seeking for leaders the most audacious 
 and unscrupulous in its own or its opponents' ranks, 
 it casts its greedy eyes upon, and sees within its 
 reach, the millions and hundreds of millions in the 
 treasury of a great nation, and the vast amounts of 
 
224 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 wealth which industry, enterprise, and skill have de- 
 veloped under a mild and wise administration of the 
 government and laws? 
 
 The history of such a party in Greece, the history 
 of such a party in France, with its terrible record, the 
 history of such a party in this country from 1829 to 
 1 861, while in possession of supreme power, as well 
 as its shuffling methods and principles since the close 
 of the war, all present the same kind of results, and 
 should warn the American people in unmistakable 
 tones to restrain this party now and forever from 
 the control of our government and its Republican 
 institutions. 
 
 And, finally, inasmuch as we all know that the 
 Democracy is a large and well-organized party ; inas- 
 much as we all believe it contains many good men 
 who wish well tb the government and the nation ; but 
 inasmuch as we all know, and all its leaders and 
 organs know, that its history is stained through and 
 through with all the crimes and all the calamities 
 that are possible to attach to, or spring from, any 
 party ; inasmuch as we all know, and all its leaders 
 know, that its measures, so far as they have pertained 
 to the internal affairs of the country, have been radi- 
 cally and irredeemably wrong: therefore, all these 
 things combined ought to consign the party to con- 
 demnation and oblivion forever. 
 
 If the old Federal party, with Washington, Ham- 
 ilton, and John Adams as its chiefs, after construct- 
 ing and putting into operation the Constitution of 
 the United States, and after twelve years of faithful 
 service without a stain upon its escutcheon, had to 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 225 
 
 retire from the political arena ; if the old Republican 
 party, with Jefferson and Madison as its chiefs, after 
 twenty-five years of honorable service, had to give 
 place to a ranting and raving Democratic party ; if 
 the Whig party of 1832, after twenty years of faith- 
 ful warfare for the right against the wrong, with J. 
 Q. Adams, Clay, and Webster as its chiefs, had to 
 retire from the field, why should not this same 
 Democratic party, after more than fifty years of 
 blunders, wrongs, and crimes of the deepest dye 
 against its country, with hardly a redeeming trait or 
 quality to commend it, be consigned to eternal ob- 
 livion by the people of the United States ? and echo 
 answers why not? for if any one of the blunders, 
 wrongs, and crimes of the Democratic party had 
 been committed by any other party, it would re- 
 mand it to the minority at once. Why not then 
 consign this Democratic party to the minority 
 forever? Disguise the matter as its leaders may, 
 the Democratic party of to-day still contains all 
 the elements, essence, and animus adapted to the 
 overthrow of Republican institutions and well-regu- 
 , lated liberty upon the American continent, and un- 
 questionably presents to the American people, as it 
 has done for the past fifty years, the alternative to 
 overthrow and consign it to oblivion, or to have 
 their institutions eventually overthrown and de- 
 stroyed by this party. Again, suffer it to acquire 
 supreme power, it will thresh the land with flails of 
 iron or the harrow of anarchy, until its inhabitants, 
 like the Israelites of old, cry out in their agony for a 
 king, or again seek relief in a dismemberment ofthis 
 great and glorious Union. 
 
226 THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY. ^ 
 
 The writer has now performed, according to his 
 best abihty, the task indicated in the introductory 
 chapter of this work, and if, in doing so, he has fallen 
 into the style of partisan controversy, he asks to have 
 the responsibility for the fault, if fault it be, ascribed 
 to the characteristics of the era in which we live. 
 Burke and Chatham dealt largely in invective, and 
 Junius poured out a flood of denunciation against 
 parties, lords, and monarchs ; and from such denuncia- 
 tions some of our most valuable political lessons have 
 been derived, and by the use of them many political 
 evils have been eradicated. Why, then, may not 
 political teachers of to-day, in fighting their battles in 
 behalf of good government, be guided by such illus- 
 trious examples? If, in performing this labor, the 
 writer has sought to expose only the vices and dangers 
 of one of the great parties of our country, and has 
 therefore laid himself open to the chai'ge of being one- 
 sided, it should be remembered that the opponents 
 of the other great party have the same privilege, and 
 that it is mainly by sustained discussion between 
 opponents that sound and just principles can be 
 secured in all departments of society. No one has 
 been able to produce axioms and arguments for all 
 parties to any controversy. Should other writers of 
 the day deem it patriotic to present a history of the 
 Republican party, or of any other party of our coun- 
 try, the people should be ready to give due consid- 
 eration to their conclusions and criticisms. As 
 stated in the opening chapter, the writer has con- 
 tented himself with exposing and commenting upon 
 Democracy as a Party Name and Political Or- 
 
CONCLUSION. 227 
 
 ganization. The defence of the party against 
 this arraignment, and the exposure of the blun- 
 ders and crimes of its opponents, present work for 
 others. 
 
 THE END.