I2TPSESSI0XS OF AMERICA. 



139 



ease very clearly : " The inhabitants of all the 

 colonies, while colonies, admitted themselves 

 bound by their allegiance to the king ; but they 

 disclaimed altogether the authority of Parlia- 

 ment ; holding themselves in this respect to re- 

 semble the condition of Scotland and Ireland 

 before the respective unions of those kingdoms 

 with England, when they acknowledged alle- 

 giance to the same king, but had each its sepa- 

 rate Legislature." l They did not revolt because 

 they had any abstract preference for a republican 

 form of government ; and after their separation 

 from the mother-country they established a re- 

 public simply because a monarchy was impossible. 

 Their political creed consisted of one article — 

 that the right to tax the colonies belonged to 

 the colonial Legislatures, 'which were elected by 

 the colonists, not to the British House of Com- 

 mons, which was elected by Englishmen, Scotch- 

 men, and Irishmen. In their debates they rested 

 their whole case on the ancient principles of the 

 English Constitution. 



It was because they refused to recognize any 

 authority in the British Parliament over the colo- 

 nies that in the Declaration of Independence 

 Parliament was absolutely ignored. The whole 

 instrument was directed against the king. To 

 the colonists Parliament was nothing; it was with 

 the king that they had to do, and they therefore 

 assumed that the misgovernment and tyranny 

 of which they complained were his. The only 

 representative assemblies of which they knew 

 anything were the assemblies which met and 

 legislated in the several American States; in 

 those assemblies, as far as America was con- 

 cerned, were vested all the powers and preroga- 

 tives which were exercised in England by the 

 two Houses of Parliament. This was their the- 

 ory. They believed that they were acting in the 

 true spirit of the English Constitution. 



They followed English precedents with a rab- 

 binical fidelity. At the English Revolution 

 James II. was declared to have " abdicated ; " 

 and the Americans declared that the king " has 

 abdicated government here by declaring us out 

 of his protection and waging war with us." 

 George III. had " abdicated " at the very time 

 that he was putting forth the whole strength of 

 the empire, on sea and on land, to maintain his 

 authority ! 



This recurrence to a British constitutional 



precedent is positively humorous. It is also 



very instructive. It illustrates the political spirit 



of the founders of the American Republic. There 



1 "Works of Daniel Webster," vol. i., p. 127. 



were some of them — Jefferson, for instance — who 

 had theories, and it was Jefferson who drew r up 

 the Declaration of Independence, and inserted in 

 it what has been described by Americans them- 

 selves as the "glittering generality" about all 

 men being created " equal " and having " inalien- 

 able rights ; " but most of the prominent Revolu- 

 tionary statesmen, and most of their followers, 

 desired nothing better than to retain the privi- 

 leges which, as they believed, were secured by 

 the British Constitution to all the subjects of the 

 British crown. The Federal party which, with 

 Washington and Hamilton at its head, claimed 

 to represent " the experience, the prudence, the 

 practical wisdom, the discipline, the conservative 

 reason and instincts of the country," 1 held su- 

 preme power till 1801. While Washington lived 

 the opposition which, according to a Federalist 

 historian, expressed " the hopes of the country, 

 its wishes, theories, many of them enthusiastic 

 and impracticable, more especially its passions, 

 its sympathies and antipathies, its impatience of 

 restraint," had no chance of controlling the pol- 

 icy of the Government. 



The Federalists regarded the French Revolu- 

 tion with a hatred almost as intense as that 

 which inspired the splendid and vehement pages 

 of Edmund Burke. In 1*784 Jefferson was sent 

 as envoy to France. While there he was in the 

 closest relations with the revolutionary leaders, 

 and he sympathized with all their hopes. He 

 made himself acquainted with the hard life of 

 the French peasantry ; he went into their houses 

 and would contrive " to sit upon the bed instead 

 of the offered stool, in order to ascertain of what 

 material it was made ; and he would peep on the 

 sly into the boiling pot of grease and greens to 

 see what was to be the family dinner." 3 He 

 came to the conclusion that the poverty and mis- 

 ery of the common people were the result of bad 

 laws and bad institutions ; monarchy and an 

 hereditary aristocracy were in his judgment the 

 root of all the evil. For the intellectual capacity 

 of kings he had an ineffable contempt. " There 

 is not a crowned head in Europe," he wrote to 

 General Washington in 1784, " whose talents or 

 merits would entitle him to be elected a vestry- 

 man by the people of America." For the nobles 

 he had no deeper reverence. Even the Queen of 

 France, who so intoxicated the imagination of 

 Burke when he saw her, "just above the horizon, 

 decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she 



» Hilclreth's " History of the United States," vol. 

 ii., Second Series, p. 415. 



2 Parton's "Life of Thomas Jefferson," p. 316. 



