AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SEVENTY YEARS AGO 269 



ministry was fraught with possibilities affecting our 

 welfare. Our seaports were familiar with the sight of 

 British officials. We depended upon England for fine 

 arts and fashions, as well as for a great many of the 

 manufactured articles in common use. We read Brit- 

 ish historians and essayists, quoted British poets, and 

 taught bur children out of British text-books. We felt 

 that the centre of things was in Europe, while we were 

 comparatively raw communities on the edge of a vast 

 continent, much of which was still unexplored and the 

 greater part of it a wilderness possessed by horrid sav- 

 ages. This state of feeling lasted for some time after 

 the Revolution. For a quarter of a century our politi- 

 cal contests related quite as much to foreign as to 

 domestic questions. The horrors of the French Revo- 

 lution made the Federalists an English party; they 

 looked upon England as the guardian of law and order 

 in Europe. The Republicans, on the other hand, ap- 

 plauded the overthrow of a miserable despotism and 

 sympathized with the ideas of revolutionary France. 

 They accused the Federalists of leanings toward mon- 

 archy ; they called them aristocrats and snobs, and 

 thought it very mean in them to turn a cold shoulder 

 to the people who had helped us win our independence. 

 But it was not merely a question of our sympathies ; 

 we were really forced into taking sides. During nearly 

 the whole of this period France and England were at 

 war with each other, and in accordance with the bar- 

 baric system then prevalent, their privateers preyed 

 upon the shipping of neutral nations. As we had not 

 then discovered how to protect ships out of existence, 

 we did a very large and profitable carrying trade. Our 

 ships were the best in the world, and no other neutral 



