All orders of the colonists, save a few favorites, were by these and similar means united, as a band of brothers, in a movement such as the world had never before, and has never since seen, for the overthrow of a government by which they were so sorely oppressed.
This union was in other respects composed of very discordant materials. It consisted, on the one hand, of men and the descendants of men on whose hearts the fires of persecution had burned a hatred of royalty too deep to be erased and too zealous to be trifled with; of men who were at the same time too conversant with human nature to allow themselves to believe that the love of power and the proneness to its abuse were confined to its hereditary possessors, and who were therefore anxious to restrict grants of authority to their public functionaries to the lowest point consistent with good government, and to subject what they did grant to the most stringent responsibilities. They continued, also, to cherish the same preference for their local organizations, and to entertain the same distrust of an overshadowing central government, for which the great body of the people had long been distinguished. They were men whose highest ambition and desire for themselves and the country was that it should have a plain, simple, and cheap government for the management of the affairs of the Confederacy, republican in its construction and democratic in its spirit—a government that should, as far as practicable, be deprived of the power of creating artificial distinctions in society, and of corrupting and thus subverting the independence of the people by the possession of a redundant patronage. Such a government had long been the subject of their meditations, and they braved the hazards and encountered the hardships of the Revolutionary contest for the opportunity of establishing it.
The Revolutionary brotherhood by which the recognition of our Independence was enforced, contained, on the other hand, men respectable in numbers, and distinguished by talent, public service, and high social position, who dissented from many (I may say from most) of these views, and who regarded them as Utopian in themselves, or as too contracted for the exigencies of the public service.
This difference in the opinions of men who had been engaged in such a contest was all but unavoidable, and was never absent from any political struggle of sufficient importance to be compared with it. It results, besides those which have been indicated as peculiar to our own condition and history, from simple but potent causes of universal operation, such as diversities in social condition, in education, in the influence and tendencies of previous pursuits, and in individual character and temperament, producing diversities of views on such occasions.
Although an aversion to royalty and opposition to hereditary government in any form, were sentiments that pervaded the masses and exercised a controlling influence in the Revolution, there were not a few, of the character I have described, who, though they doubtless did not at the moment design the reintegration of those institutions after the overthrow of the actual Government, could yet contemplate, without great revulsion of feeling, their ultimate establishment in this country. Prompt to resist tyranny in any shape, and stung by the oppressions practiced upon the colonies by the British Government, they hesitated not to peril their lives for its subversion here, whilst theoretically they not only tolerated its form and constitution, but regarded them as the best that could be devised to promote the welfare and to secure the happiness of mankind. Of the existence of this opinion on the part of many sincere friends and able advocates of the Revolutionary cause, in every stage of the contest and for years after its close, we have indubitable evidence. I will notice a few cases of this description, on account of the influence exerted on the formation of political parties by the knowledge of the existence of such opinions, and by the suspicions, perhaps unjust, and in some respects certainly so, as to the extent to which those who held them were willing to carry them out. In so doing, it is by no means my design to cast reproach upon the memories of the great men who entertained them, and who stood by their country in her severest extremity, and established the highest claims to her gratitude and favor.
No ingenuous mind can doubt that a large majority of the Whigs were opposed to the substitution of a government similar either in form or spirit to that from which they had emancipated themselves. Our Revolutionary creed was, "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
Under such a creed all were entitled as of right to a perfect freedom of choice in regard to the character of the new government. Neither for the formation of their opinions, however erroneous these may have been, nor for the maintenance of them by lawful means, did any subject themselves to just reproach, or to other forfeiture than perhaps a loss of the confidence of those who thought differently.
James Otis, Stephen Hopkins, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton, may be selected from many others as representatives of the principles of that class to which I have referred as dissenting from the popular or preponderating ideas of the time.
I select them the more readily from a desire to avoid mistakes, as they were possessed of temperaments too sanguine and too fearless to be deterred from advancing openly opinions they honestly entertained, by their unpopularity.
There were certainly not many individuals, if there was one, who did more to set the ball of the Revolution in motion than James Otis; and if his career had not been cut short by the hand of violence he would have taken high rank among the great and good men who survived the struggle. His speech against the issuing of the Writs of Assistance had an effect corresponding to those of Patrick Henry. Yet this highly gifted man, whose patriotic spirit was sufficiently aroused by the oppressions of the mother country, while yet in their incipiency, to induce him to peril his life in acts of resistance, was an enthusiastic admirer of the principles of the English system, and honestly believed, as he said, "that the British Constitution came nearest the idea of perfection of any that had been reduced to practice."
The patriotic Hopkins, one of the Rhode Island Representatives in the General Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote—and that colony authoritatively published its concurrence in the declaration—that "The glorious Constitution of Great Britain is the best that ever existed among men."
Gouverneur Morris's unyielding hostility to democratic principles, and his preference for aristocratic and monarchical institutions, were often exhibited and unreservedly avowed, as well on the floor of the Federal Convention as elsewhere, and have become familiar among his countrymen as household words. There were not many, if indeed there was a single one of his contemporaries, who went beyond him in hostility to the State governments. "State attachments and State importance," said he in the Federal Convention, "have been the bane of this country! We cannot annihilate them, but we may, perhaps, take out the teeth of the serpents." Such as were his principles at the commencement of his career they remained to the close of his life.
But the opinions of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, from their larger agency in the politics of the country, in the administration of its government, and in the actual formation of parties, are of still greater importance. A full exposition of these, beyond the single point upon which there existed the greatest jealousy at the period at which we have now arrived—that of their preference for the English system—will be best postponed until we come to consider the times and occasions which were presented for an ampler display of them. I will, therefore, only refer at this place to the contents of a statement prepared and signed by Thomas Jefferson, in February, 1818, and designed to explain a portion of his writings. In this he says, among other things: "But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption. In proof of this I will relate an anecdote for the truth of which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out upon his Southern tour, in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the 4th of that month,
