The New Star Chamber and Other Essays Alexander Hamilton
by Edgar Lee Masters
An American statesman bewitched by the English system; a revolutionary soldier fighting against the British crown as the unwilling tories fought against James II; a monarchist consulting with republicans in the formation of a perfect union of sovereign states; a thinker whose eyes were clouded with the mist of dissolving feudalism; a politician unconsciously clinging to the doctrines of divine right and haunted by a fear of a tumultuary democracy -- such a man gave a lasting impact to the constitution of the only republic of the world.
Alexander Hamilton at 30 years of age was a member of the constitutional convention. He conferred with Washington; he debated with Madison; he deferred to none. On the contrary, he conjured the frightful specters of a degraded continental confederacy and played upon the fears of the stoutest republicans. Among a body of men notable for intellectual energy, rich in experience and above all trained in the disquisitions of Locke and Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French encyclopedists, he launched the schemata of a monarchial system to be set up in America. Nor was he put down for doing this. He in a sense succeeded. He imbedded deep in the body of that constitution some of the germs of monarchy. He nourished them. He founded a school of political thought which has cherished his memory and blinked at his principles when it was not safe to avow them openly. And thus his ghost has stalked throughout the history of the republic.
Hence this is a dramatic episode in political history. The commanding genius of Jefferson has scarcely been able to divide the control of American polity with the inferior genius of Hamilton. A republic submitting to the incantations of a monarchial thinker is the paradoxical relation which has thriven between Hamilton's influence and the United States.
This complex and fascinating mystery dwarfs the significance of Hamilton's personal career. It is of subordinate consequence that he was indiscreet, vain and opinionated; that he envied Burr's superior success in affairs of the heart; that he published his own amours with a frankness not surpassed by Rousseau; that he boldly advocated a system of governmental corruption; that he was not scrupulous in achieving his ends and that he concocted a scheme to steal the election in the state of New York from Jefferson. To dwell upon these things and to neglect the supreme importance of his political influence would result in missing the main points of his career.
Hamilton's mother was a French woman and to her we trace his refinement, his spirit and his imagination. His father was a Scotchman and from his father he inherited resolution, pertinacity in conviction, great powers of analysis, and a predilection for metaphysics. Thus endowed he looked far into the future; he sounded deeply into the tides of destiny; he penetrated the secrets of the human heart and laid hold upon those impulses which from their permanency and strength could be relied upon to carry forward his projects.
Yet his mental construction made him the prey of groundless fears. It led him to assert fallacious premises as the bases of the most elaborate political superstructures. It made him theoretical and impractical. It, in the belief of one great school of thought, veiled with a specious splendor a false and indefensible system of government. All his political reasonings were characterized by the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. He seldom exhausted the contents of a proposition. And therefore his famous dictum that all power should be given neither to the many nor the few has no accurate meaning when analyzed. It fails to include the third term that the only true government is one of law and not of men at all. This is the definition of a republic, a word not understood by him or by many of his contemporaries.
Hamilton had an unreasoning fear of popular institutions. They suggested to him the hybrid experiment of Rome, in which a pure democracy was adulterated with the despotism of mobs and torn by the strife of warring factions. He dwelt upon the fate of the Amphictyonic council; he drew lessons from the history of the German confederacy and the compact of the Swiss cantons. And after traversing the entire field of history he could not escape the conclusion that the United States must be governed by a constitutional monarch. This was his hobby. He bestrode it until his friends were wearied. Even Gouverneur Morris, his most intimate friend and eulogist, wrote: "More a theoretic than a practical man, he was not sufficiently convinced that a system may be good in itself and bad in relation to particular circumstances."
Hamilton could not see that monarchy had its place and its time in the political evolution of man, but that development logically led to popular institutions. In this sense the significance of the English revolution was lost upon him. He could look far into the future and plan for a contingency when his machinations upon human endeavor and sentiment might degenerate a once glorious people into monarchy. But he could not interpret his own age. He was wedded to the past. He worshiped power. He dreaded a free system of government because it might dissolve into anarchy. That a strong government might become despotic did not give him the least concern. Nor could he see that the English system which he affected to admire had not reached the end of its popularization; and that a liberty based upon scripture and a liberty based upon philosophy were co-operating toward a realization of human rights. He abhorred the French revolution as a tragedy of disorder, anarchy and blood. He could not see that it was a great democratic epic which had its place in the history of the world. And so measured by the test of insight, of mental power, of influence upon men and nations, Hamilton was greatly beneath Jefferson. Hamilton believed that the love of gold in man was an energy which could be employed to operate an exclusive system of government. All his measures were fashioned upon the principle of welding the interests of money and government so indissolubly together that the spirit of monarchy would control the body of the republic. And he worked to this end with a patience, a subtlety and a power which have challenged the admiration of all parties.
"He," wrote Senator Lodge, "had been unable to introduce a class influence into the constitution by limiting the suffrage for the president and senate with a property qualification, but by his financial policy he could bring the existing class of wealthy men, comprising at that day the aristocracy bequeathed by provincial times, to the new system and thus, if at all, assure to the property of the country the control of the government." And why was this to be done? As near as we can gather his idea, Hamilton feared that unless the people at large were under the control of a class which possessed the wealth of the country and by that wealth controlled the government, they would plunge forward into anarchy. This system was a mere expedient based upon no principle. For so soon as the people became, if they were not then, intelligent and virtuous the government must settle down through the sands of expediency to the rock of principle. And, taking the people as they were in his day, the question between Jefferson and his school and Hamilton and his school may be reduced to this: Do the prerogatives of equal rights in government furnish a sufficient inspiration to men to preserve law and order by enlisting their selfish motives on the side of their own rights, or must there be a strong party intrenched in power by governmental favor to curb and govern the tumlultuary classes? No government can long last in which a majority of the people find their rights ignored, and therefore the preservation of government does depend upon that very interest of the majority in the government which Hamilton could not see was a sufficient cohesion to hold it together. But in any event where is that tumultuary mass which would burst asunder the bonds of restraint if they were weakened?
That millions of farmers who ask nothing from the government in times of peace and give their lives for it in times of war; that millions of artisans the most intelligent of the world; that millions of professional men who pursue their way in life so peaceably as to be unconscious of the barriers of the law -- that these, unless restrained by a strong government, will suddenly precipitate disorder and anarchy was the grotesque phantom that haunted the brain of Alexander Hamilton. But it was not more grotesque than most of his reasonings on politics and economics. The question, however, which he had in mind was deeper than he ever expressed it. The strong will overreach the weak; the fit will survive. Shall government, then, be instituted to secure justice? No; government shall be instituted to protect the strong in what they have obtained; to curb an uprising of those who have been wronged in the race of life; to cow that discontent and subdue that disorder which never arose out of mere malice and wantonness, but always as a reaction against oppression, and, in short, to redouble the vigor of the law of the survival of the fittest in order to crush into tributary submission the men whose industry produces national wealth. Hence Hamilton admired the British system, because he conceived it to contain those checks which, within the pale of law and order, restrained the rapacity of the patricians and the rebellion of the plebeians. He saw in the house of lords a body of men having nothing to hope for by any change, endowed with vast property by the government and therefore faithful to the government which had purchased their friendship and, so constituted, forming a barrier against the aggression of the crown and the clamor of the commons. But we know that Hamilton's estimate of the house of lords was unsupported by history. He was about 30 years of age when he made this argument in the constitutional convention. It is impossible to conceive that it did not amuse such scholars as Madison and Franklin.
Hamilton favored the model of the English executive. He contended that the interest of a king is so interwoven with that of the nation and his personal emolument so great that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad. On the other hand, one of the weak sides of republics was their being liable to foreign influence and corruption. He did not call to mind the alliance between Mary of England and Philip II of Spain, nor that of James II and Louis XIV, nor that Charles II was a pensioner of the great French despot. Nor did he consider that in an elective government no alliance between a president and a foreign ruler could be certain or long reliable. That such a contingency has never been even approximated in this country except when Hamilton's peculiar influence was ascendant is sufficient proof that Hamilton's argument was purely theoretic and fantastic. But while he pictured the independence of the house of lords he insisted as a political principle that if we expect men to serve the public their passions must be interested. Hence he applauded that patronage which proceeded from the crown, denominated by David Hume as corruption, as the influence which maintained the equilibrium of the British constitution.
Aside from the unsoundness of these principles their ethical baseness cannot be sufficiently condemned. They involve the fallacy of doing evil that good may come. They constitute a scheme of homeopathy in governmental polity. Petty larceny is to be cured by grand larceny. Private dishonor is to be prevented by public plunder. Men who are capable of thriving above their fellows under any condition are to receive special aid and immunity from the state in order to win their adherence to it. The design presupposes that the strong will not impart their support to a government unless the government first gives them the chief seats and doles out its patronage to them. No account is taken of the better element of human nature, but only of the passions of greed and power. The vast millions who are to be governed and who will raise the revenue for this perfect state must be held in abeyance by a strong military which Hamilton championed with great energy in the convention in order that their anarchistic impulses may have no chance to find expression.
Such a plan could not fail to be immensely successful. As far as history furnishes any record the human race has persistently struggled against the temptation of money. Evangels and prophets have exhorted against the love of money as the root of all evil. That love remains an ineradicable passion in man. Hence a political creed that promised to the faithful bounties and subsidies, privileges and immunities has gained the support of millions. The mixture of fallacy and tergiversation, corruption and greed was brewed into a broth which has brought toil to the masses and trouble to those who seek to press the cup to the lips of a reluctant civilization.
At each anniversary of Hamilton's birth the postprandial orators praise him as a constructive statesman. Was he in truth constructive? Does his scheme tend to strengthen individual character and morality? Does it give hope to the better aspirations of humanity? Does it elevate the race? Does it assist man in his difficult ascent to the heights of a better day? Is it in accord with Christianity? Is there justice in it, or mercy or faith? Or is it armed with fraud and wrong, and masked with the mummery of a hideous skepticism; a skepticism that parades this world as the only theater of hope? These questions must be answered by everyone who cares to read the utterances of Hamilton in the constitutional convention, in his letters, in his state papers and in the faithful reports of his friends.
Hamilton's hobby was to effect consolidation in the government and make it strong. The means by which he proposed to do this was to array property on the side of government. To array property on the side of government he designed to burden the people. His scheme was constructive so far as it built up a plutocracy and strengthened the government. But it was destructive of the people themselves. Hence in accepting or rejecting Hamilton a choice must be made between an artificial body known as the state, created by man as a means to an end, and man himself, who formed the state not for his own oppression, but for the establishment of equity.
Those who look askance upon republican institutions will not deplore the degenerating influence of Hamilton's attacks upon the constitution. They imagine that his genius evolved a true government out of that constitution which was the product of the greatest assembly of men in the history of the United States. And, of course, they are thankful for that. But, moreover, it is urged that the means themselves which Hamilton employed to bring about that consolidation evinced a commanding genius for finance and political economy and as commercial polities were themselves as vital breath. But his national bank had its prototype in the Bank of St. George at Genoa, the Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of England. Its interests -- like the Bank of England -- were designed to be coincident with those of the government. Thereby the money of the country was to be brought to the side of the government. Even to details the bank was not an original conception. The charter contained many of the conditions which parliament had imposed upon the incorporators of the English bank. It was given a monopoly of the national banking business. It could issue paper money. For the virtue of this, Hamilton argued, was to keep the precious metals in the vaults, because when they circulated they became so much dead stock. Such were his ideas upon the subject of money. But they were in harmony with the zealous convictions which he held upon the solecism of a favorable balance of trade, which he worshiped with an ardor approaching the Egyptian reverence for onions and cats. When Hamilton was called upon to defend his banking scheme to President Washington he submitted a written argument in answer to the objections of Jefferson, which, for ingenuity, subtlety and power, did credit to his peculiar mind. Indeed, it overmatched the somewhat desultory and inconclusive paper of Jefferson. The question was: Does the constitution permit congress to incorporate such a bank?
Today the question would be: Is banking a governmental function? Is a national bank an economic utility? Washington was seriously perplexed by the reasons urged for and against the bank, and while he was deliberating upon it the question arose how the ten days clause of the constitution for the president's approval of a bill was to be construed. Hamilton argued that the day of its presentation was to be excluded and the last day also. It resulted that Washington held the bill for eleven days and on the eleventh day approved it. And so a part of Hamilton's collateral plan to overthrow the constitution was accomplished.
Of Hamilton's funding scheme it is only necessary to say that he meant to create a permanent public debt. This was that reservoir into which the money of plutocracy was to be poured, so favorably built and placed as to draw to itself the wealth of the unsuspecting people. Historians relate in triumphant tones that England's prosperity has kept pace with her increasing debt. And the economists have been made the butt of ridicule by men who call themselves practical. The former assert that an increasing public debt will eventually overwhelm any nation. The latter reply that an increasing public debt is a means to prosperity and that it adds strength to the government. In olden times there was supposed to be a causal relation between the conjunction of planets and a national calamity. Sometimes national prosperity is attributed to national character; not taking into account abundant minerals and coal, a fertile soil and a favorable climate, national harbors and means of commerce.
Children associate fortune with a four-leafed clover. And all mercantilists of which Hamilton was a confirmed disciple believe that a national debt is a source of prosperity; that taxing ourselves makes us rich. So the protective tariff, also inaugurated by Hamilton, has clung to the United States in spite of all efforts to throw it off. Whenever the people have voted it out they repent the act and invite it back. When more men are wiser and when those who are wiser are more candid the attempt to confuse public thought on the questions of balance of trade, public debt, government banks, paper money, tariffs, subsidies, bounties and special privilege as efficient means of prosperity will decrease. There will then be an advance beyond the pale of the seventeenth century in economics. If the foregoing plans are constructive, then Hamilton is entitled to the immortal reverence of the American people.
But is not a spirit of justice pervading all systems and all polities the only constructive force? Can a great nation be constructed except by building up its people as a whole? At least more than half of the people of both England and the United States believe that justice and equality applied to these subjects are the only curatives. They are not sufficiently organized or cohesive, however, to push forward with much speed against casual undertows and countervailing currents.
While Hamilton and Jefferson were not political friends no man has spoken more favorably of the former than the founder of the democratic party. In the much abused "Anas" Jefferson wrote in 1818: "Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British example as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation." And to Benjamin Rush he wrote: "Hamilton believed in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men."
Hamilton and Burr had maligned each other for years. This hatred culminated in a duel. Hamilton fell. Gouverneur Morris pronounced his funeral oration, gliding with trepidation over the dark places in the great man's career. His body was buried in Trinity churchyard at the foot of Wall street, where imagination may picture his spirit hovering over the temple of English monarchy and peering down one of the greatest money centers of the world.
