"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened...
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796.
Showing posts with label George Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Washington. Show all posts
Thursday, August 7, 2008
George Washington on the Future of US Foreign Policy
"If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
---From Washington's Farewell Address, quoted in William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 173.
Williams adds:
"Far from being a call for isolation, what Washington issued was a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengable empire. Whatever one thinks of the logic or of the goal itself, Washington's Farewell Address remains one of the great documents of America's Age of Mercantilism."
---From Washington's Farewell Address, quoted in William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 173.
Williams adds:
"Far from being a call for isolation, what Washington issued was a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengable empire. Whatever one thinks of the logic or of the goal itself, Washington's Farewell Address remains one of the great documents of America's Age of Mercantilism."
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Factionalism and the Two-Party System
Americans may stick to the two-party system as an artifact of the founding fathers' fear of faction. By limiting the number of parties to two Americans limit the number of explicit political divisions.
In Elkins and McKitrick's Age of Federalism* the authors emphasize the universal fear and dislike of faction among the public and the founding fathers in the 1790s and earlier. This came in part from the belief that competition among factions had divided and harmed democracies in antiquity. Madison and Hamilton wrote about this in the Federalist, but the discomfort with factions or private associations of any kind (other than religious ones) was widespread. One exception was the Sons of Liberty during the revolutionary period and another, which Elkins and McKitrick don't mention in their masterful work, was the Freemasons. Also, there were incipient labor unions in the 1790s. Labor courses don't typically discuss the dislike of labor unions evidenced in the famous Philadelphia Cordwainers case as associated with a broader distrust of associations of any kind, but that may have been the case. In the Cordwainers (shoemakers) case a Philadelphia court held the union to be a criminal conspiracy. The criminal conspiracy doctrine was changed in the 1830s under the means-end doctrine enunciated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Hunt. The point is, though, that the shift in attitudes toward unions coincided with a shift in attitudes toward associations more generally. Usually the shift is described as responding to greater power of workingmen in the 1830s associated with Jacksonian presidency.
But the point is that in general private associations of any kind were viewed with suspicion, and minor political parties may be sensed in this way.
During the 1790s, Elkins and McKitrick point out, there was the rise of an early association called the Democratic Societies. The purpose of these clubs was mild, basically to discuss political issues and oppose corruption in government. President Washington viewed these clubs with suspicion, calling them "self-created societies" as did many leading politicians. Two Democratic Societies in Washington Town and Mingo Creek, Pennsylvania were involved in the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania in 1791-4 in which tax collectors were tarred and feathered; Inspector of the Excise John Neville's house was burned after an open battle; and as many as 6,000 armed Pennsylvania militia massed on August 1, 1794. President Washington handled the situation masterfully and ultimately sent militia to quell the revolt, but there was no violence beyond scattered incidents.
Elkins and McKitrick point out that Washington blamed the Democratic Societies for the insurrection (p. 484):
"If Washington ever had a fixed obsession, it was these societies, "self-created in the sense of having no sanction in popular authority, societies which had been up to nothing but mischief since the first ones were formed...He had felt very early that if they were not counteracted they would 'shake the government to its foundations'; and 'now if this uprising were not subdued, we could bid adieu to all government in this Country except Mob and Club Govt.'"
Washington wrote that (quoted on p.494, Elkins and McKitrick)
"all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities are destructive of this fundamental principle (of the duty of every individual to obey the established government)...They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests."
Elkins and McKitrick quote a Senate resolution recorded in the Annals of Congress:
"Our anxiety arising from the licentious and open resistance to the laws in the Western counties of Pennsylvania has been increased by the proceedings of certain self-created societies...proceedings in our apprehension founded in political error, calculated if not intended to disorganize our Government, and which...have been influential in misleading our fellow citizens in the scene of insurrection."
Might this early distrust of associations, which had disappeared by the time De Tocqueville published Democracy in America in 1835, be the source of the American commitment to the two-party system? While the conflict between the Republicans and the Federalists in the 1790s amounted to a battle between centralizers and decentralizers; proponents of government subsidy to business and proponents of Whiggish suspicion of centralized authority, and so was unavoidable, might the fear of more factionalization than the Federalist-Republican or later Democratic-Republican division be the distant remnant of this early American fear of faction?
*Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
In Elkins and McKitrick's Age of Federalism* the authors emphasize the universal fear and dislike of faction among the public and the founding fathers in the 1790s and earlier. This came in part from the belief that competition among factions had divided and harmed democracies in antiquity. Madison and Hamilton wrote about this in the Federalist, but the discomfort with factions or private associations of any kind (other than religious ones) was widespread. One exception was the Sons of Liberty during the revolutionary period and another, which Elkins and McKitrick don't mention in their masterful work, was the Freemasons. Also, there were incipient labor unions in the 1790s. Labor courses don't typically discuss the dislike of labor unions evidenced in the famous Philadelphia Cordwainers case as associated with a broader distrust of associations of any kind, but that may have been the case. In the Cordwainers (shoemakers) case a Philadelphia court held the union to be a criminal conspiracy. The criminal conspiracy doctrine was changed in the 1830s under the means-end doctrine enunciated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Hunt. The point is, though, that the shift in attitudes toward unions coincided with a shift in attitudes toward associations more generally. Usually the shift is described as responding to greater power of workingmen in the 1830s associated with Jacksonian presidency.
But the point is that in general private associations of any kind were viewed with suspicion, and minor political parties may be sensed in this way.
During the 1790s, Elkins and McKitrick point out, there was the rise of an early association called the Democratic Societies. The purpose of these clubs was mild, basically to discuss political issues and oppose corruption in government. President Washington viewed these clubs with suspicion, calling them "self-created societies" as did many leading politicians. Two Democratic Societies in Washington Town and Mingo Creek, Pennsylvania were involved in the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania in 1791-4 in which tax collectors were tarred and feathered; Inspector of the Excise John Neville's house was burned after an open battle; and as many as 6,000 armed Pennsylvania militia massed on August 1, 1794. President Washington handled the situation masterfully and ultimately sent militia to quell the revolt, but there was no violence beyond scattered incidents.
Elkins and McKitrick point out that Washington blamed the Democratic Societies for the insurrection (p. 484):
"If Washington ever had a fixed obsession, it was these societies, "self-created in the sense of having no sanction in popular authority, societies which had been up to nothing but mischief since the first ones were formed...He had felt very early that if they were not counteracted they would 'shake the government to its foundations'; and 'now if this uprising were not subdued, we could bid adieu to all government in this Country except Mob and Club Govt.'"
Washington wrote that (quoted on p.494, Elkins and McKitrick)
"all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities are destructive of this fundamental principle (of the duty of every individual to obey the established government)...They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests."
Elkins and McKitrick quote a Senate resolution recorded in the Annals of Congress:
"Our anxiety arising from the licentious and open resistance to the laws in the Western counties of Pennsylvania has been increased by the proceedings of certain self-created societies...proceedings in our apprehension founded in political error, calculated if not intended to disorganize our Government, and which...have been influential in misleading our fellow citizens in the scene of insurrection."
Might this early distrust of associations, which had disappeared by the time De Tocqueville published Democracy in America in 1835, be the source of the American commitment to the two-party system? While the conflict between the Republicans and the Federalists in the 1790s amounted to a battle between centralizers and decentralizers; proponents of government subsidy to business and proponents of Whiggish suspicion of centralized authority, and so was unavoidable, might the fear of more factionalization than the Federalist-Republican or later Democratic-Republican division be the distant remnant of this early American fear of faction?
*Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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