20

WHIGS AND TORIES.

archy; in America, that of a representative democracy under a written constitution.

Reconstruction involved the birth of a prerogative and of an anti-prerogative party. For a time they were without specific names, but before the seventeenth century closed they were known as Whigs and Tories. As party names they meant less in America than in England, but, as time proved, they signified that a great struggle was going on, and that the issue was between the forces exemplified in the assemblies and the power personified in the royal governors. In England, men of ancient family, wealth and learning were found not unequally divided between the two great parties. In America, the liberal party consisted of the discontented, the venturesome, and the poor. Nearly every family of wealth, down to the outbreak of the Revolution, and during its first years, was Tory. The man whose wealth in lands, in ships or in slaves was great; whose ancestral seat was the center of society and fashion; whose family set the manners of the town; whose pew was well down toward the chancel; whose sons were educated at Oxford or Cambridge, and had traveled at their leisure on the continent; whose family alliances extended into adjoining counties, and whose ancestor was a younger son of some great English house; the man whose dress was of the finest material; whose equipage was imported; whose household appointments were after the most elegant European pattern and whose appearance on the street was the signal for courtesy and salutation, was a Tory. But the laborers in the field, the mechanics, the servants, the young lawyers without family name, the small land owners, the keepers of shops, and the clerks, these were Whigs.

When the Revolution came, there were found, here and there, younger sons of Tory families, who abandoned their

DISTRIBUTION OF SENTIMENTS.

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ancestral politics and, like John Hancock, became liberal leaders. Fashion, wealth and family interest, ambition and the hope of maintaining their position in the world, were the elements which cemented the conservative members of the community in one party. The liberals, the levelers, the democrats of the time, were they who, having little to lose and everything to gain, demanded their share of the political estate by a recognition which the prevailing conditions of colonial life had denied them. A reorganization of society, on the basis of more equal opportunities for all, could not fail to secure for them some part in administrative functions and a pre-eminence in the new society such as men of their kind had never known in any colony.

XTory sentiments were more prevalent and more power

ful in the southern than in the northern colonies. Whether the monarchical element in Toryism awakened the sympathy and received the support of the planters and found congenial ground in slave-holding communities, or whether the course of events in the settlement and growth of the South more closely identified its people with the cavalier and feudal notions of England, there is no doubt that democracy, in this part of America, found feeble support and was identified with the less influential portion of the inhabitants.

On the contrary, in the North, and particularly in Massachusetts, the feudal character of southern life was almost unknown. The leveling effects of diversified industry, as diversified industry was then understood, bred New England democracy. It was chiefly in consequence of the masterful spirit of this democracy that the first opposition to the policy of the British ministry, and the first armed effort to withstand it, were made in Boston. In Virginia, the men with democratic proclivities, in

22

LOCAL DIFFERENCES.

the generation that reached middle life soon after the French and Indian war, were not the sons of the first families. There was family stock that claimed greater social prominence and a more ancient name than Jefferson, Madison, Marshall or even Washington represented. The Tory sentiment of the aristocracy of Virginia was of a high prerogative quality, and stood for those ideas against which the leveling forces, led by Jefferson, at last made successful revolt.

Not least among the factors which determined the differences between political sentiment North and South, was the dissimilarity between the organization of their local governments. The township and the town-meeting in the north gave adequate opportunity for the effective organization of democratic sentiments. The county basis, which was the distinguishing feature of local government in the south, gave the control of public affairs to the principal families, and these usually held Tory opinions. In later years, Jefferson lamented that the system of township meetings and township government, for which New England is distinguished, had not existed, from the first, in Virginia. He well knew the power of the conservatism which the county basis of government there enabled his opponents to array against him. Naturally North and South men of liberal sentiments increased with the increase of population. With the exception of a few merchants, the wealthy men of America, in the eighteenth century, were they who had inherited vast tracts of land, the rise of which in value, real or prospective, was the measure of family wealth. After 1751 immigration almost ceased, nor did it begin again, in a strong flow, until about 1820.

The government of the country during the intervening seventy years was therefore almost wholly in the hands

of native Americans. In colonial times and during the years immediately preceding the Revolution, there was a slight movement of population westward. The younger and the later comers in a community were forced to take a subordinate place in its affairs, if they remained in it. If they went further west, they were obliged to deny themselves many of the advantages which the older communities afforded. It followed, therefore, that democracy was more intense among the younger men in the newer parts of the country, which appeared as one traveled westward from the coast. Each colony was thus divided in sentiment, its older, usually its eastern portion, being conservative; its newer, and western portion, being liberal, and even radical.

The frontier in America has always been democratic. It was the frontier which, throughout the Indian wars, beginning with the accession of William of Orange and continuing until after the accession of George III. sent the greatest number of troops to the support of the English government. It was the frontier which, when American independence hung in the balance, furnished the new men, who directed an aggressive public opinion. Jefferson and Gallatin, and later Clay and Lincoln, were from the frontier. It was the frontier which elected Jefferson and Jackson to the Presidency, and which, extending down the Mississippi Valley, at a critical hour in the history of the Nation, willed that the great river should flow "unvexed to the sea."

The colonies were the English frontier and their voice was against prerogative and for the supremacy of the general assembly. It dared to revise and even to ignore long accepted constitutional principles and to reconstruct the theory of the state. It was opportunist in character, and, though unconscious of the significance of its own

24

CONDITIONS OF LIFE.

action, it was obeying the law of evolution which determines the destiny of nations. Therefore, when, in England, the royal prerogative was extended without serious opposition, it was denied in America. In England, the doubt took constitutional form in accordance with the accepted legal maxims of the common law; but in America denial outran the common law and expressed itself in statutes. Had America been formally bound by the common law, it would never have been independent, for by the common law independence was treason. The provision of the old charters, that the assemblies should make all laws necessary and proper, not inconsistent with the laws of England, was divided into two parts, one zealously observed; the other, with equal zeal, ignored.

The conditions of American life fixed the course of its political thought. To one who was struggling for an existence in the wilderness, the royal prerogative might easily seem to be a piece of dynastic presumption resting on mere legal subtility. He might easily conclude that no strictly monarchical form of government could thrive in a new country. Yet, while changes in political thought like these were going on, the Americans were almost continually declaring themselves to be the King's "most loyal and loving subjects." Like all new countries, America was hampered by the commercial laws of the parent The mercantile theory of commerce terrorized over all English legislation. Englishmen in England and America were obliged, first, to trade with each other, and colonial trade was compelled to seek a British market whether in furnishing raw material or in purchasing the finished article. The mercantile class in England grew rich at her expense and ultimately lost her the colonies. In blind obedience to the mercantile theory, all manufacturing was forbidden in America. The inhabitants in

state.