Morris first met Dumouriez when the latter was minister of foreign affairs, shortly before the poor king was driven from the Tuileries. He dined with him, and afterwards noted down that the society was noisy and in bad style; for the grace and charm of French social life were gone, and the raw republicans were ill at ease in the drawing-room. At this time Morris commented often on the change in the look of Paris: all his gay friends gone; the city sombre and uneasy. When he walked through the streets, in the stifling air of a summer hot beyond precedent, as if the elements sympathized with the passions of men, he met, instead of the brilliant company of former days, only the few peaceable citizens left, hurrying on theirways with frightened watchfulness; or else groups of lolling ruffians, with sinister eyes and brutalized faces; or he saw in the Champs de Mars squalid ragamuffins signing the petition for thedéchéance.
Morris wrote Washington that Dumouriez was a bold, determined man, bitterly hostile to the Jacobins and all the extreme revolutionary clubs, and, once he was in power, willing to risk his own life in the effort to put them down. However, the hour of the Jacobins had not yet struck, and the Revolution had now been permitted to gather such headway that it could be stopped only by a master genius; and Dumouriez was none such.
Still he was an able man, and, as Morris wrote home, in his military operations he combined the bravery of a skilled soldier and the arts of an astute politician. To be sure, his victories were not in themselves very noteworthy; the artillery skirmish at Valmy was decided by the reluctance of the Germans to come on, not by the ability of the French to withstand them; and at Jemappes the imperialists were hopelessly outnumbered. Still the results were most important, and Dumouriez overran Flanders in the face of hostile Europe. He at once proceeded to revolutionize the government of his conquest in the most approvedFrench fashion, which was that all the neighbors of France should receive liberty whether or no, and should moreover pay the expense of having it thrust upon them: accordingly he issued a proclamation to his new fellow-citizens, "which might be summed up in a few words as being an order to them to be free forthwith, according to his ideas of freedom, on pain of military execution."
He had things all his own way for the moment, but after a while he was defeated by the Germans; then while the Gironde tottered to its fall, he fled to the very foes he had been fighting, as the only way of escaping death from the men whose favorite he had been. Morris laughed bitterly at the fickle people. One anecdote he gives is worth preserving: "It is a year ago that a person who mixed in tumults to see what was doing, told me of asans culotteswho, bellowing against poor Lafayette, when Petion appeared, changed at once his note to 'Vive Petion!' and then, turning round to one of his companions, 'Vois tu! C'est notre ami, n'est ce pas? Eh bien, il passera comme les autres.' And, lo! the prophecy is fulfilled; and I this instant learn that Petion, confined to his room as a traitor or conspirator, has fled, on the 24th of June, 1793, from those whom he sent, on the 20th of June, 1792, to assault the kingin the Tuileries. In short you will find, in the list of those who were ordered by their brethren to be arrested, the names of those who have proclaimed themselves to be the prime movers of the revolution of the 10th of August, and the fathers of the republic."
About the time thesans culotteshad thus bellowed against Lafayette, the latter met Morris, for the first time since he was presented at court as minister, and at once spoke to him in his tone of ancient familiarity. The Frenchman had been brought at last to realize the truth of his American friend's theories and predictions. It was much too late to save himself, however. After the 10th of August he was proclaimed by the Assembly, found his troops falling away from him, and fled over the frontier; only to be thrown into prison by the allied monarchs, who acted with their usual folly and baseness. Morris, contemptuously impatient of the part he had played, wrote of him: "Thus his circle is completed. He has spent his fortune on a revolution, and is now crushed by the wheel which he put in motion. He lasted longer than I expected." But this momentary indignation soon gave way to a generous sympathy for the man who had served America so well, and who, if without the great abilities necessary to grapple with the tumult of French affairs,had yet always acted with such unselfish purity of motive. Lafayette, as soon as he was imprisoned, wrote to the American minister in Holland, alleging that he had surrendered his position as a French subject, and was now an American citizen, and requesting the American representatives in Europe to procure his release. His claim was of course untenable; and, though the American government did all it could on his behalf through its foreign ministers, and though Washington himself wrote a strong letter of appeal to the Austrian emperor, he remained in prison until the peace, several years later.
All Lafayette's fortune was gone, and while in prison he was reduced to want. As soon as Morris heard this, he had the sum of ten thousand florins forwarded to the prisoner by the United States bankers at Amsterdam; pledging his own security for the amount, which was, however, finally allowed by the government under the name of compensation for Lafayette's military services in America. Morris was even more active in befriending Madame de Lafayette and her children. To the former he lent from his own private funds a hundred thousand livres, enabling her to pay her debts to the many poor people who had rendered services to her family. To the proud, sensitive lady the relief was great, much though it hurther to be under any obligation: she wrote to her friend that he had broken the chains that loaded her down, and had done it in a way that made her feel the consolation, rather than the weight, of the obligation. But he was to do still more for her; for, when she was cast into prison by the savage Parisian mob, his active influence on her behalf saved her from death. In a letter to him, written some time later, she says, after speaking of the money she had borrowed: "This is a slight obligation, it is true, compared with that of my life, but allow me to remember both while life lasts, with a sentiment of gratitude which it is precious to feel."
There were others whose fortunes turned with the wheel of fate, for whom Morris felt no such sympathy as for the Lafayettes. Among the number was the Duke of Orleans, now transformed intocitoyen Egalité. Morris credited this graceless debauchee with criminal ambitions which he probably did not possess, saying that he doubted the public virtue of a profligate, and could not help distrusting such a man's pretensions; nor is it likely that he regretted much the fate of the man who died under the same guillotine which, with his assent, had fallen on the neck of the king, his cousin.
It needed no small amount of hardihood fora man of Morris's prominence and avowed sentiments to stay in Paris when Death was mowing round him with a swath at once so broad and so irregular. The power was passing rapidly from hand to hand, through a succession of men fairly crazy in their indifference to bloodshed. Not a single other minister of a neutral nation dared stay. In fact, the foreign representatives were preparing to go away even before the final stroke was given to the monarchy, and soon after the 10th of August the entirecorps diplomatiqueleft Paris as rapidly as the various members could get their passports. These the new republican government was at first very reluctant to grant; indeed, when the Venetian ambassador started off he was very ignominiously treated and brought back. Morris went to the British ambassador's to take leave, having received much kindness from him, and having been very intimate in his house. He found Lord Gower in a tearing passion because he could not get passports; he had burned his papers, and strongly advised his guest to do likewise. On this advice the latter refused to act, nor would he take the broad hints given him to the effect that honor required him to quit the country. Morris could not help showing his amusement at the fear and anger exhibited at the ambassador's, "which exhibition ofspirits his lordship could hardly bear." Talleyrand, who was getting his own passport, also did all in his power to persuade the American minister to leave, but without avail. Morris was not a man to be easily shaken in any determination he had taken after careful thought. He wrote back to Jefferson that his opinion was directly opposed to the views of such people as had tried to persuade him that his own honor, and that of America, required him to leave France; and that he was inclined to attribute such counsel mainly to fear. It was true that the position was not without danger; but he presumed that, when the president named him to the embassy, it was not for his own personal pleasure or safety, but for the interests of the country; and these he could certainly serve best by staying.
He was able to hold his own only by a mixture of tact and firmness. Any signs of flinching would have ruined him outright. He would submit to no insolence. The minister of foreign affairs was, with his colleagues, engaged in certain schemes in reference to the American debt, which were designed to further their own private interests; he tried to bully Morris into acquiescence, and, on the latter's point-blank refusal, sent him a most insulting letter. Morris promptly retorted by demanding his passports.France, however, was very desirous not to break with the United States, the only friend she had left in the world; and the offending minister sent a sullen letter of apology, asking him to reconsider his intention to leave, and offering entire satisfaction for every point of which he complained. Accordingly Morris stayed.
He was, however, continually exposed to insults and worries, which were always apologized for by the government for the time being, on the ground, no doubt true, that in such a period of convulsions it was impossible to control their subordinate agents. Indeed, the changes from one form of anarchy to another went on so rapidly that the laws of nations had small chance of observance.
One evening a number of people, headed by a commissary of the section, entered his house, and demanded to search it for arms said to be hidden therein. Morris took a high tone, and was very peremptory with them; told them that they should not examine his house, that it held no arms, and moreover that, if he had possessed any, they should not touch one of them; he also demanded the name of "the blockhead or rascal" who had informed against him, announcing his intention to bring him to punishment. Finally he got them out of the house,and the next morning the commissary called with many apologies, which were accepted.
Another time he was arrested in the street for not having acarte de citoyen, but he was released as soon as it was found out who he was. Again he was arrested while traveling in the country, on the pretence that his passport was out of date; an insult for which the government at once made what amends they could. His house was also visited another time by armed men, whom, as before, he persuaded to go away. Once or twice, in the popular tumults, even his life was in danger; on one occasion it is said that it was only saved by the fact of his having a wooden leg, which made him known to the mob as "a cripple of the American war for freedom." Rumors even got abroad in England and America that he had been assassinated.
Morris's duties were manifold, and as harassing to himself as they were beneficial to his country. Sometimes he would interfere on behalf of America as a whole, and endeavor to get obnoxious decrees of the Assembly repealed; and again he would try to save some private citizen of the United States who had got himself into difficulties. Reports of the French minister of foreign affairs, as well as reports of thecomité de salut public, alike bear testimony to the success of his endeavors, whenever successwas possible, and unconsciously show the value of the services he rendered to his country. Of course it was often impossible to obtain complete redress, because, as Morris wrote home, the government, while all-powerful in certain cases, was in others not merely feeble, but enslaved, and was often obliged to commit acts the consequences of which the nominal leaders both saw and lamented. Morris also, while doing all he could for his fellow-citizens, was often obliged to choose between their interests and those of the nation at large; and he of course decided in favor of the latter, though well aware of the clamor that was certain to be raised against him in consequence by those who, as he caustically remarked, found it the easiest thing in the world to get anything they wanted from the French governmentuntil they had tried.
One of his most important transactions was in reference to paying off the debt due by America for amounts loaned her during the war for independence. The interest and a part of the principal had already been paid. At the time when Morris was made minister, the United States had a large sum of money, destined for the payment of the public debt, lying idle in the hands of the bankers at Amsterdam; and this sum both Morris and the Americanminister to Holland, Mr. Short, thought could be well applied to the payment of part of our remaining obligation to France. The French government was consulted, and agreed to receive the sum; but hardly was the agreement entered into before the monarchy was overturned. The question at once arose as to whether the money could be rightfully paid over to the men who had put themselves at the head of affairs, and who, a month hence, might themselves be ousted by others who would not acknowledge the validity of a payment made to them. Short thought the payment should be stopped, and, as it afterwards turned out, the home authorities agreed with him. But Morris thought otherwise, and paid over the amount. Events fully justified his course, for France never made any difficulty in the matter, and even had she done so, as Morris remarked, America had the staff in her own hands, and could walk which way she pleased, for she owed more money, and in the final adjustment could insist on the amount paid being allowed on account of the debt.
The French executive council owed Morris gratitude for his course in this matter; but they became intensely irritated with him shortly afterwards because he refused to fall in with certain proposals they made to him as to themanner of applying part of the debt to the purchase of provisions and munitions for San Domingo. Morris had good reason to believe that there was a private speculation at the bottom of this proposal, and declined to accede to it. The urgency with which it was made, and the wrath which his course excited, confirmed his suspicions, and he persisted in his refusal although it almost brought about a break with the men then carrying on the government. Afterwards, when these men fell with the Gironde, he wrote home: "I mentioned to you the plan of a speculation on drafts to have been made on the United States, could my concurrence have been procured. Events have shown that this speculation would have been a good one to the parties, who would have gained (and the French nation of course have lost) about fifty thousand pounds sterling in eighty thousand. I was informed at that time that the disappointed parties would attempt to have me recalled, and some more tractable character sent, who would have the good sense to look after his own interest. Well, sir, nine months have elapsed, and now, if I were capable of such things, I think it would be no difficult matter to have some of them hanged; indeed it is highly probable that they will experience a fate of that sort."
Much of his time was also taken up in remonstrating against the attacks of French privateers on American shipping. These, however, went steadily on until, half a dozen years afterwards, we took the matter into our own hands, and in the West Indies inflicted a smart drubbing, not only on the privateers of France, but on her regular men-of-war as well. He also did what he could for the French officers who had served in America during the War of Independence, most of whom were forced to flee from France after the outbreak of the Revolution.
His letters home, even after his regular duties had begun to be engrossing, contained a running commentary on the events that were passing around him. His forecasts of events within France were remarkably shrewd, and he displayed a wonderful insight into the motives and characters of the various leaders; but at first he was all at sea in his estimate of the military situation, being much more at home among statesmen than soldiers. He had expected the allied sovereigns to make short work of the raw republican armies, and was amazed at the success of the latter. But he very soon realized how the situation stood; that whereas the Austrian and Prussian troops simply came on in well-drilled, reluctant obedienceto their commanding officers, the soldiers of France, on the contrary, were actuated by a fiery spirit the like of which had hardly been seen since the crusades. The bitterness of the contest was appalling, and so was the way in which the ranks of the contestants were thinned out. The extreme republicans believed in their creed with a furious faith; and they were joined by their fellow-citizens with an almost equal zeal, when once it had become evident that the invaders were hostile not only to the Republic but to France itself, and very possibly meditated its dismemberment.
When the royal and imperial forces invaded France in 1792, they threatened such ferocious vengeance as to excite the most desperate resistance, and yet they backed up their high sounding words by deeds so faulty, weak, and slow as to make themselves objects of contempt rather than dread. The Duke of Brunswick in particular, as a prelude to some very harmless military manœuvres, issued a singularly lurid and foolish manifesto, announcing that he would deliver up Paris to utter destruction and would give over all the soldiers he captured to military execution. Morris said that his address was in substance, "Be all against me, for I am opposed to you all, and make a good resistance, for there is no longer any hope;" andadded that it would have been wiser to have begun with some great success and then to have carried the danger near those whom it was desired to intimidate. As it was, the Duke's campaign failed ignominiously, and all the invaders were driven back, for France rose as one man, her warriors overflowed on every side, and bore down all her foes by sheer weight of numbers and impetuous enthusiasm. Her government was a despotism as well as an anarchy; it was as totally free from the drawbacks as from the advantages of the democratic system that it professed to embody. Nothing could exceed the merciless energy of the measures adopted. Half-way wickedness might have failed; but a wholesale murder of the disaffected, together with a confiscation of all the goods of the rich, and a vigorous conscription of the poor for soldiers, secured success, at least for the time being. The French made it a war of men; so that the price of labor rose enormously at once, and the condition of the working classes forthwith changed greatly for the better—one good result of the Revolution, at any rate.
Morris wrote home very soon after the 10th of August that the then triumphant revolutionists, the Girondists or party of Brissot, who had supplanted the moderate party of Lafayette exactlyas the latter had succeeded the aristocracy, would soon in their turn be overthrown by men even more extreme and even more bloodthirsty; and that thus it would go on, wave after wave, until at last the wizard arose who could still them. By the end of the year the storm had brewed long enough to be near the bursting point. One of the promoters of the last outbreak, now himself marked as a victim, told Morris that he personally would die hard, but that most of his colleagues, though like him doomed to destruction, and though so fierce in dealing with the moderate men, now showed neither the nerve nor hardihood that alone could stave off the catastrophe.
Meanwhile the king, as Morris wrote home, showed in his death a better spirit than his life had promised; for he died in a manner becoming his dignity, with calm courage, praying that his foes might be forgiven and his deluded people be benefited by his death,—his words from the scaffold being drowned by the drums of Santerre. As a whole, the Gironde had opposed putting the king to death, and thus capping the structure whose foundations they had laid; they held back all too late. The fabric of their system was erected on a quagmire, and it now settled down and crushed the men who had built it. "All people of moralityand intelligence had long agreed that as yet republican virtues were not of Gallic growth;" and so the power slipped naturally into the grasp of the lowest and most violent, of those who were loudest to claim the possession of republican principles, while in practice showing that they had not even the dimmest idea of what such principles meant.
The leaders were quite at the mercy of the gusts of fierce passion that swayed the breasts of their brutal followers. Morris wrote home that the nominal rulers, or rather the few by whom these rulers were directed, had finally gained very just ideas of the value of popular opinion; but that they were not in a condition to act according to their knowledge; and that if they were able to reach harbor there would be quite as much of good luck as of good management about it, and, at any rate, a part of the crew would have to be thrown overboard.
Then the Mountain rose under Danton and Marat, and the party of the Gironde was entirely put down. The leaders were cast into prison, with the certainty before their eyes that the first great misfortune to France would call them from their dungeons to act as expiatory victims. The Jacobins ruled supreme, and under them the government became a despotism in principle as well as in practice. Part of theConvention arrested the rest; and the revolutionary tribunals ruled red-handed, with a whimsical and ferocious tyranny. Said Morris: "It is an emphatical phrase among the patriots thatterror is the order of the day; some years have elapsed since Montesquieu wrote that the principle of arbitrary governments isfear." The prisons were choked withsuspects, and blood flowed more freely than ever. Terror had reached its highest point. Danton was soon to fall before Robespierre. Among a host of other victims the queen died, with a brave dignity that made people half forget her manifold faults; and Philippe Egalité, the dissolute and unprincipled scoundrel, after a life than which none could be meaner and more unworthy, now at the end went to his death with calm and unflinching courage.
One man had a very narrow escape. This was Thomas Paine, the Englishman, who had at one period rendered such a striking service to the cause of American independence, while the rest of his life had been as ignoble as it was varied. He had been elected to the Convention, and, having sided with the Gironde, was thrown into prison by the Jacobins. He at once asked Morris to demand him as an American citizen; a title to which he of course had no claim. Morris refused to interfere tooactively, judging rightly that Paine would be saved by his own insignificance and would serve his own interests best by keeping still. So the filthy little atheist had to stay in prison, "where he amused himself with publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ." There are infidels and infidels; Paine belonged to the variety—whereof America possesses at present one or two shining examples—that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity. It is not a type that appeals to the sympathy of an onlooker, be said onlooker religious or otherwise.
Morris never paid so much heed to the military events as to the progress of opinion in France, believing "that such a great country must depend more upon interior sentiment than exterior operations." He took a half melancholy, half sardonic interest in the overthrow of the Catholic religion by the revolutionists; who had assailed it with the true French weapon, ridicule, but ridicule of a very grim and unpleasant kind. The people who five years before had fallen down in the dirt as the consecrated matter passed by, now danced the carmagnole in holy vestments, and took part in some other mummeries a great deal more blasphemous. At the famous Feast of Reason,which Morris described as a kind of opera performed in Notre Dame, the president of the Convention, and other public characters, adored on bended knees a girl who stood in the placeci-devantmost holy to personate Reason herself. This girl, Saunier by name, followed the trades of an opera dancer and harlot; she was "very beautiful and next door to an idiot as to her intellectual gifts." Among her feats was having appeared in a ballet in a dress especially designed, by the painter David, at her bidding, to be more indecent than nakedness. Altogether she was admirably fitted, both morally and mentally, to personify the kind of reason shown and admired by the French revolutionists.
Writing to a friend who was especially hostile to Romanism, Morris once remarked, with the humor that tinged even his most serious thoughts, "Every day of my life gives me reason to question my own infallibility; and of course leads me further from confiding in that of the pope. But I have lived to see a new religion arise. It consists in a denial of all religion, and its votaries have the superstition of not being superstitious. They have this with as much zeal as any other sect, and are as ready to lay waste the world in order to make proselytes." Another time, speaking of his countryplace at Sainport, to which he had retired from Paris, he wrote: "We are so scorched by a long drought that in spite of all philosophic notions we are beginning our procession to obtain the favor of thebon dieu. Were it proper forun homme public et protestantto interfere, I should be tempted to tell them that mercy is before sacrifice." Those individuals of arrested mental development who now make pilgrimages to our Lady of Lourdes had plenty of prototypes, even in the atheistical France of the Revolution.
In his letters home Morris occasionally made clear-headed comments on American affairs. He considered that "we should be unwise in the extreme to involve ourselves in the contests of European nations, where our weight could be but small, though the loss to ourselves would be certain. We ought to be extremely watchful of foreign affairs, but there is a broad line between vigilance and activity." Both France and England had violated their treaties with us; but the latter "had behaved worst, and with deliberate intention." He especially laid stress upon the need of our having a navy; "with twenty ships of the line at sea no nation on earth will dare to insult us;" even aside from individual losses, five years of war would involve more national expense than the support of anavy for twenty years, and until we rendered ourselves respectable, we should continue to be insulted. He never showed greater wisdom than in his views about our navy; and his party, the federalists, started to give us one; but it had hardly been begun before the Jeffersonians came into power, and, with singular foolishness, stopped the work.
Washington heartily sympathized with Morris's views as to the French Revolution; he wrote him that events had more than made good his gloomiest predictions. Jefferson, however, was utterly opposed to his theories, and was much annoyed at the forcible way in which he painted things as they were; characteristically enough, he only showed his annoyance by indirect methods,—leaving Morris's letters unanswered, keeping him in the dark as to events at home, etc. Morris understood all this perfectly, and was extremely relieved when Randolph became secretary of state in Jefferson's stead. Almost immediately afterwards, however, he was himself recalled. The United States, having requested the French government to withdraw Genet, a harlequin rather than a diplomat, it was done at once, and in return a request was forwarded that the United States would reciprocate by relieving Morris, which of course had to be done also. The revolutionaryauthorities both feared and disliked Morris; he could neither be flattered nor bullied, and he was known to disapprove of their excesses. They also took umbrage at his haughtiness; an unfortunate expression he used in one of his official letters to them, "ma cour," gave great offense, as being unrepublican—precisely as they had previously objected to Washington's using the phrase "your people" in writing to the king.
Washington wrote him a letter warmly approving of his past conduct. Nevertheless Morris was not over-pleased at being recalled. He thought that, as things then were in France, any minister who gave satisfaction to its government would prove forgetful of the interests of America. He was probably right; at any rate, what he feared was just what happened under his successor, Monroe—a very amiable gentleman, but distinctly one who comes in the category of those whose greatness is thrust upon them. However, under the circumstances, it was probably impossible for our government to avoid recalling Morris.
He could say truthfully: "I have the consolation to have made no sacrifice either of personal or national dignity, and I believe I should have obtained everything if the American government had refused to recall me." His serviceshad been invaluable to us; he had kept our national reputation at a high point, by the scrupulous heed with which he saw that all our obligations were fulfilled, as well as by the firm courage with which he insisted on our rights being granted us. He believed "that all our treaties, however onerous, must be strictly fulfilled according to their true intent and meaning. The honest nation is that which, like the honest man, 'hath to its plighted faith and vow forever firmly stood, and though it promise to its loss, yet makes that promise good;'" and in return he demanded that others should mete to us the same justice we meted to them. He met each difficulty the instant it arose, ever on the alert to protect his country and his countrymen; and what an ordinary diplomat could barely have done in time of peace, he succeeded in doing amid the wild, shifting tumult of the Revolution, when almost every step he made was at his own personal hazard. He took precisely the right stand; had he taken too hostile a position, he would have been driven from the country, whereas had he been a sympathizer, he would have more or less compromised America, as his successor afterwards did. We have never had a foreign minister who deserved more honor than Morris.
One of the noteworthy features in his lettershome was the accuracy with which he foretold the course of events in the political world. Luzerne once said to him, "Vous dites toujours les chôses extraordinaires qui se realisent;" and many other men, after some given event had taken place, were obliged to confess their wonder at the way in which Morris's predictions concerning it had been verified. A notable instance was his writing to Washington: "Whatever may be the lot of France in remote futurity ... it seems evident that she must soon be governed by a single despot. Whether she will pass to that point through the medium of a triumvirate or other small body of men, seems as yet undetermined. I think it most probable that she will." This was certainly a remarkably accurate forecast as to the precise stages by which the already existing despotism was to be concentrated in a single individual. He always insisted that, though it was difficult to foretell how a single man would act, yet it was easy with regard to a mass of men, for their peculiarities neutralized each other, and it was necessary only to pay heed to the instincts of the average animal. He also gave wonderfully clear-cut sketches of the more prominent actors in affairs; although one of his maxims was that "in examining historical facts we are too apt to ascribe to individuals the events which areproduced by general causes." Danton, for instance, he described as always believing, and, what was worse for himself, maintaining, that a popular system of government was absurd in France; that the people were too ignorant, too inconstant, too corrupt, and felt too much the need of a master; in short, that they had reached the point where Cato was a madman, and Cæsar a necessary evil. He acted on these principles; but he was too voluptuous for his ambition, too indolent to acquire supreme power, and he cared for great wealth rather than great fame; so he "fell at the feet of Robespierre." Similarly, said Morris, there passed away all the men of the 10th of August, all the men of the 2d of September; the same mob that hounded them on with wild applause when they grasped the blood-stained reins of power, a few months later hooted at them with ferocious derision as they went their way to the guillotine. Paris ruled France, and thesans culottesruled Paris; factions continually arose, waging inexplicable war, each in turn acquiring a momentary influence which was founded on fear alone, and all alike unable to build up any stable or lasting government.
Each new stroke of the guillotine weakened the force of liberal sentiment, and diminished the chances of a free system. Morriswondered only that, in a country ripe for a tyrant's rule, four years of convulsions among twenty-four millions of people had brought forth neither a soldier nor yet a statesman, whose head was fitted to wear the cap that fortune had woven. Despising the mob as utterly as did Oliver Cromwell himself, and realizing the supine indifference with which the French people were willing to accept a master, he yet did full justice to the pride with which they resented outside attack, and the enthusiasm with which they faced their foes. He saw the immense resources possessed by a nation to whom war abroad was a necessity for the preservation of peace at home, and with whom bankruptcy was but a starting-point for fresh efforts. The whole energy and power lay in the hands of the revolutionists; the men of the old regime had fled, leaving only that "waxen substance," the propertied class, "who in foreign wars count so much, and in civil wars so little." He had no patience with those despicable beings, the traders and merchants who have forgotten how to fight, the rich who are too timid to guard their wealth, the men of property, large or small, who need peace, and yet have not the sense and courage to be always prepared to conquer it.
In his whole attitude towards the Revolution, Morris represents better than any other manthe clear-headed, practical statesman, who is genuinely devoted to the cause of constitutional freedom. He was utterly opposed to the old system of privilege on the one hand, and to the wild excesses of the fanatics on the other. The few liberals of the Revolution were the only men in it who deserve our true respect. The republicans who champion the deeds of the Jacobins, are traitors to their own principles; for the spirit of Jacobinism, instead of being identical with, is diametrically opposed to the spirit of true liberty. Jacobinism, socialism, communism, nihilism, and anarchism—these are the real foes of a democratic republic, for each one, if it obtains control, obtains it only as the sure forerunner of a despotic tyranny and of some form of the one-man power.
Morris, an American, took a clearer and truer view of the French Revolution than did any of the contemporary European observers. Yet while with them it was the all-absorbing event of the age, with him, as is evident by his writings, it was merely an important episode; for to him it was dwarfed by the American Revolution of a decade or two back. To the Europeans of the present day, as yet hardly awake to the fact that already the change has begun that will make Europe but a fragment, instead of the whole, of the civilized world, the FrenchRevolution is the great historical event of our times. But in reality it affected only the people of western and central Europe; not the Russians, not the English-speaking nations, not the Spaniards who dwelt across the Atlantic. America and Australia had their destinies moulded by the crisis of 1776, not by the crisis of 1789. What the French Revolution was to the states within Europe, that the American Revolution was to the continents without.
Monroe, as Morris's successor, entered upon his new duties with an immense flourish, and rapidly gave a succession of startling proofs that he was a minister altogether too much to the taste of the frenzied Jacobinical republicans to whom he was accredited. Indeed, his capers were almost as extraordinary as their own, and seem rather like the antics of some of the early French commanders in Canada, in their efforts to ingratiate themselves with their Indian allies, than like the performance we should expect from a sober Virginian gentleman on a mission to a civilized nation. He stayed long enough to get our affairs into a snarl, and was then recalled by Washington, receiving from the latter more than one scathing rebuke.
However, the fault was really less with him than with his party and with those who sent him. Monroe was an honorable man with a very un-original mind, and he simply reflected the wild, foolish views held by all his fellowsof the Jeffersonian democratic-republican school concerning France—for our politics were still French and English, but not yet American. His appointment was an excellent example of the folly of trying to carry on a government on a "non-partisan" basis. Washington was only gradually weaned from this theory by bitter experience; both Jefferson and Monroe helped to teach him the lesson. It goes without saying that in a well-ordered government the great bulk of the employees in the civil service, the men whose functions are merely to execute faithfully routine departmental work, should hold office during good behavior, and should be appointed without reference to their politics; but if the higher public servants, such as the heads of departments and the foreign ministers, are not in complete accord with their chief, the only result can be to introduce halting indecision and vacillation into the counsels of the nation, without gaining a single compensating advantage, and without abating by one iota the virulence of party passion. To appoint Monroe, an extreme Democrat, to France, while at the same time appointing Jay, a strong Federalist, to England, was not only an absurdity which did nothing towards reconciling the Federalists and Democrats, but, bearing in mind how these parties stood respectivelytowards England and France, it was also an actual wrong, for it made our foreign policy seem double-faced and deceitful. While one minister was formally embracing such of the Parisian statesmen as had hitherto escaped the guillotine, and was going through various other theatrical performances that do not appeal to any but a Gallic mind, his fellow was engaged in negotiating a treaty in England that was so obnoxious to France as almost to bring us to a rupture with her. The Jay treaty was not altogether a good one, and a better might perhaps have been secured; still, it was better than nothing, and Washington was right in urging its adoption, even while admitting that it was not entirely satisfactory. But certainly, if we intended to enter into such engagements with Great Britain, it was rank injustice to both Monroe and France to send such a man as the former to such a country as the latter.
Meanwhile Morris, instead of returning to America, was forced by his business affairs to prolong his stay abroad for several years. During this time he journeyed at intervals through England, the Netherlands, Germany, Prussia, and Austria. His European reputation was well established, and he was everywhere received gladly into the most distinguished society of the time. What made him especiallywelcome was his having now definitely taken sides with the anti-revolutionists in the great conflict of arms and opinions then raging through Europe; and his brilliancy, the boldness with which he had behaved as minister during the Terror, and the reputation given him by the Frenchemigrés, all joined to cause him to be hailed with pleasure by the aristocratic party. It is really curious to see the consideration with which he was everywhere treated, although again a mere private individual, and the terms of intimacy on which he was admitted into the most exclusive social and diplomatic circles at the various courts. He thus became an intimate friend of many of the foremost people of the period. His political observation, however, became less trustworthy than heretofore; for he was undoubtedly soured by his removal, and the excesses of the revolutionists had excited such horror in his mind as to make him no longer an impartial judge. His forecasts and judgments on the military situation in particular, although occasionally right, were usually very wild. He fully appreciated Napoleon's utter unscrupulousness and marvelous mendacity; but to the end of his life he remained unwilling to do justice to the emperor's still more remarkable warlike genius, going so far, after the final Russian campaign, as tospeak of old Kutusoff as his equal. Indeed, in spite of one or two exceptions,—notably his predicting almost the exact date of the retreat from Moscow,—his criticisms on Napoleon's military operations do not usually stand much above the rather ludicrous level recently reached by Count Tolstoï.
Morris was relieved by Monroe in August, 1794, and left Paris for Switzerland in October. He stopped at Coppet and spent a day with Madame de Staël, where there was a little French society that lived at her expense and was as gay as circumstances would permit. He had never been particularly impressed with the much vaunted society of the salon, and this small survival thereof certainly had no overpowering attraction for him, if we may judge by the entry in his diary: "The road to her house is up-hill and execrable, and I think I shall not again go thither." Mankind was still blind to the grand beauty of the Alps,—it must be remembered that the admiration of mountain scenery is, to the shame of our forefathers be it said, almost a growth of the present century,—and Morris took more interest in the Swiss population than in their surroundings. He wrote that in Switzerland the spirit of commerce had brought about a baseness of morals which nothing could cure but the same spirit carried still further:—"Itteaches eventually fair dealing as the most profitable dealing. The first lesson of trade is, My son, get money. The second is, My son, get money, honestly if you can, but get money. The third is, My son, get money; but honestly, if you would get much money."
He went to Great Britain in the following summer, and spent a year there. At one time he visited the North, staying with the Dukes of Argyle, Atholl and Montrose, and was very much pleased with Scotland, where everything he saw convinced him that the country was certain of a rapid and vigorous growth. On his return he stopped with the Bishop of Landaff, at Colgate Park. The bishop announced that he was a stanch opposition man, and a firm whig; to which statement Morris adds in his diary: "Let this be as it will, he is certainly a good landlord and a man of genius."
But Morris was now a favored guest in ministerial, even more than in opposition circles; he was considered to belong to what the czar afterwards christened the "parti sain de l'Europe." He saw a good deal of both Pitt and Grenville, and was consulted by them not only about American, but also about European affairs; and a number of favors, which he asked for some of his friends among theemigrés, were granted. All his visits were not on business,however; as, for instance, on July 14th: "Dine at Mr. Pitt's. We sit down at six. Lords Grenville, Chatham, and another come later. The rule is established for six precisely, which is right, I think. The wines are good and the conversation flippant." Morris helped Grenville in a number of ways, at the Prussian court for instance; and was even induced by him to write a letter to Washington, attempting to put the English attitude toward us in a good light. Washington, however, was no more to be carried off his feet in favor of the English than against them; and the facts he brought out in his reply showed that Morris had rather lost his poise, and had been hurried into an action that was ill advised. He was quite often at court; and relates a conversation with the king, wherein that monarch's language seems to have been much such as tradition assigns him—short, abrupt sentences, repetitions, and the frequent use of "what."
He also saw a good deal of the royalist refugees. Some of them he liked and was intimate with; but the majority disgusted him and made him utterly impatient with their rancorous folly. He commented on the strange levity and wild negotiations of the Count d'Artois, and prophesied that his character was such as to make his projected attempt on La Vendéehopeless from the start. Another day he was at the Marquis de Spinola's: "The conversation here, where our company consists of aristocrats of the first feather, turns on French affairs. They, at first, agree that union among the French is necessary. But when they come to particulars, they fly off and are mad. Madame Spinola would send the Duke of Orleans to Siberia. An abbé, a young man, talks much and loud, to show hisesprit; and to hear them one would suppose they were quite at their ease in apetit souper de Paris." Of that ponderous exile, the chief of the House of Bourbon, and afterwards Louis XVIII, he said that, in his opinion, he had nothing to do but to try to get shot, thereby redeeming by valor the foregone follies of his conduct.
In June, 1796, Morris returned to the continent, and started on another tour, in his own carriage; having spent some time himself in breaking in his young and restive horses to their task. He visited all the different capitals, at one time or another; among them, Berlin, where, as usual, he was very well received. For all his horror of Jacobinism, Morris was a thorough American, perfectly independent, without a particle of the snob in his disposition, and valuing his acquaintances for what they were, not for their titles. In his diary he putsdown the Queen of England as "a well-bred, sensible woman," and the Empress of Austria as "a good sort of little woman," and contemptuously dismisses the Prussian king with a word, precisely as he does with any one else. One of the entries in his journal, while he was staying in Berlin, offers a case in point. "July 23d, I dine, very much against my will, with Prince Ferdinand. I was engaged to a very agreeable party, but it seems the highnesses must never be denied, unless it be from indisposition. I had, however, written a note declining the intended honor; but the messenger, upon looking at it, for it was a letter patent, like the invitation, said he could not deliver it; that nobody ever refused; all of which I was informed of after he was gone. On consulting I found that I must go or give mortal offense, which last I have no inclination to do; so I write another note, and send out to hunt up the messenger. While I am abroad this untoward incident is arranged, and of course I am at Bellevue." While at court on one occasion he met, and took a great fancy to, the daughter of the famous Baroness Riedesel; having been born in the United States, she had been christened America.
In one of his conversations with the king, who was timid and hesitating, Morris told himthat the Austrians would be all right if he would only lend them some Prussian generals—a remark upon which Jena and Auerstadt later on offered a curious commentary. He became very impatient with the king's inability to make up his mind; and wrote to the Duchess of Cumberland that "the guardian angel of the French Republic kept him lingering on this side of the grave." He wrote to Lord Grenville that Prussia was "seeking little things by little means," and that the war with Poland was popular "because the moral principles of a Prussian go to the possession of whatever he can acquire. And so little is he the slave of what he calls vulgar prejudice, that, give him opportunity and means, and he will spare you the trouble of finding a pretext. This liberality of sentiment greatly facilitates negotiation, for it is not necessary to clothe propositions in honest and decent forms." Morris was a most startling phenomenon to the diplomatists of the day, trampling with utter disregard on all their hereditary theories of finesse and cautious duplicity. The timid formalists, and more especially those who considered double-dealing as the legitimate, and in fact the only legitimate, weapon of their trade, were displeased with him; but he was very highly thought of by such as could see the strength and originalityof the views set forth in his frank, rather over-bold language.
At Dresden he notes that he was late on the day set down for his presentation at court, owing to his valet having translatedhalb zwölfas half past twelve. The Dresden picture galleries were the first that drew from him any very strong expressions of admiration. In the city were numbers of theemigrés, fleeing from their countrymen, and only permitted to stop in Saxony for a few days; yet they were serene and gay, and spent their time in busy sightseeing, examining everything curious which they could get at. Morris had become pretty well accustomed to the way in which they met fate; but such lively resignation surprised even him, and he remarked that so great a calamity had never lighted on shoulders so well fitted to bear it.
At Vienna he made a long stay, not leaving it until January, 1797. Here, as usual, he fraternized at once with the various diplomatists; the English ambassador, Sir Morton Eden, in particular, going out of his way to show him every attention. The Austrian prime minister, M. Thugut, was also very polite; and so were the foreign ministers of all the powers. He was soon at home in the upper social circles of this German Paris; but from the entries inhis journal it is evident that he thought very little of Viennese society. He liked talking and the company of brilliant conversationalists, and he abominated gambling; but in Vienna every one was so devoted to play that there was no conversation at all. He considered a dumb circle round a card-table as the dullest society in the world, and in Vienna there was little else. Nor was he impressed with the ability of the statesmen he met. He thought the Austrian nobles to be on the decline; they stood for the dying feudal system. The great families had been squandering their riches with the most reckless extravagance, and were becoming broken and impoverished; and the imperial government was glad to see the humiliation of the haughty nobles, not perceiving that, if preserved, they would act as a buffer between it and the new power beginning to make itself felt throughout Europe, and would save the throne if not from total overthrow, at least from shocks so fierce as greatly to weaken it.
Morris considered Prince Esterhazy as an archtypical representative of the class. He was captain of the noble Hungarian Guard, a small body of tall, handsome men on fiery steeds, magnificently caparisoned. The Prince, as its commander, wore a Hungarian dress, scarlet, with fur cape and cuffs, and yellow moroccoboots; everything embroidered with pearls, four hundred and seventy large ones, and many thousand small, but all put on in good taste. He had a collar of large diamonds, a plume of diamonds in his cap; and his sword-hilt, scabbard, and spurs were inlaid with the same precious stones. His horse was equally bejeweled; steed and rider, with their trappings, "were estimated at a value of a quarter of a million dollars." Old Blücher would surely have considered the pair "very fine plunder."
The Prince was reported to be nominally the richest subject in Europe, with a revenue that during the Turkish war went up to a million guilders annually; yet he was hopelessly in debt already and getting deeper every year. He lived in great magnificence, but was by no means noted for lavish hospitality; all his extravagance was reserved for himself, especially for purposes of display. His Vienna stable contained a hundred and fifty horses; and during a six weeks' residence in Frankfort, where he was ambassador at the time of an imperial coronation, he spent eighty thousand pounds. Altogether, an outsider may be pardoned for not at first seeing precisely what useful function such a merely gorgeous being performed in the body politic; yet when summoned before the bar of the new world-forces, Esterhazy and hiskind showed that birds of such fine feathers sometimes had beaks and talons as well, and knew how to use them, the craven flight of the French noblesse to the contrary notwithstanding.
Morris was often at court, where the constant theme of conversation was naturally the struggle with the French armies under Moreau and Bonaparte. After one of these mornings he mentions: "The levee was oddly arranged, all the males being in one apartment, through which the Emperor passes in going to chapel, and returns the same way with the Empress and imperial family; after which they go through their own rooms to the ladies assembled on the other side."
The English members of theCorps Diplomatiquein all the European capitals were especially civil to him; and he liked them more than their continental brethren. But for some of their young tourist countrymen he cared less; and it is curious to see that the ridicule to which Americans have rightly exposed themselves by their absurd fondness for uniforms and for assuming military titles to which they have no warrant, was no less deservedly earned by the English at the end of the last century. One of Morris's friends, Baron Groshlaer, being, like the other Viennese, curious to know theobject of his stay,—they guessed aright that he wished to get Lafayette liberated,—at last almost asked him outright about it. "Finally I tell him that the only difference between me and the young Englishmen, of whom there is a swarm here, is, that I seek instruction with gray hairs and they with brown.... At the Archduchess's one of the little princes, brother to the Emperor, and who is truly anarch-duke, asks me to explain to him the different uniforms worn by the young English, of whom there are a great number here, all in regimentals. Some of these belong to no corps at all, and the others to yeomanry, fencibles and the like, all of which purport to be raised for the defense of their country in case she should be invaded; but now, when the invasion seems most imminent, they are abroad, and cannot be made to feel the ridiculous indecency of appearing in regimentals. Sir M. Eden and others have given them the broadest hints without the least effect. One of them told me that all the world should not laugh him out of his regimentals. I bowed.... I tell the prince that I really am not able to answer his question, but that, in general, their dresses I believe are worn for convenience in traveling. He smiles at this.... If I were an Englishman I should be hurt at these exhibitions, and as it is I am sorry forthem.... I find that here they assume it as unquestionable that the young men of England have a right to adjust the ceremonial of Vienna. The political relations of the two countries induce the good company here to treat them with politeness; but nothing prevents their being laughed at, as I found the other evening at Madame de Groshlaer's, where the young women as well as the girls were very merry at the expense of these young men."
After leaving Vienna he again passed through Berlin, and in a conversation with the king he foreshadowed curiously the state of politics a century later, and showed that he thoroughly appreciated the cause that would in the end reconcile the traditional enmity of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. "After some trifling things I tell him that I have just seen his best friend. He asks who? and, to his great surprise, I reply, the Emperor. He speaks of him well personally, and I observe that he is a very honest young man, to which his Majesty replies by asking, "Mais, que pensez vous de Thugut." "Quant à cela, c'est une autre affaire, sire." I had stated the interest, which makes him and the Emperor good friends, to be their mutual apprehensions from Russia. "But suppose we all three unite?" "Ce sera un diable de fricassée, sire, si vous vous mettez tous les trois à casser les œufs.""
At Brunswick he was received with great hospitality, the Duke, and particularly the Duchess Dowager, the King of England's sister, treating him very hospitably. He here saw General Riedesel, with whom he was most friendly; the general in the course of conversation inveighed bitterly against Burgoyne. He went to Munich also, where he was received on a very intimate footing by Count Rumford, then the great power in Bavaria, who was busily engaged in doing all he could to better the condition of his country. Morris was much interested in his reforms. They were certainly needed; the Count told his friend that on assuming the reins of power, the abuses to be remedied were beyond belief—for instance, there was one regiment of cavalry that had five field officers and only three horses. With some of the friends that Morris made—such as the Duchess of Cumberland, the Princess de la Tour et Taxis and others—he corresponded until the end of his life.
While at Vienna he again did all he could to get Lafayette released from prison, where his wife was confined with him; but in vain. Madame de Lafayette's sister, the Marquise de Montagu, and Madame de Staël, both wrote him the most urgent appeals to do what he could for the prisoners; the former writing,"My sister is in danger of losing the life you saved in the prisons of Paris ... has not he whom Europe numbers among those citizens of whom North America ought to be most proud, has not he the right to make himself heard in favor of a citizen of the United States, and of a wife, whose life belongs to him, since he has preserved it?" Madame de Staël felt the most genuine grief for Lafayette, and very sincere respect for Morris; and in her letters to the latter she displayed both sentiments with a lavish exaggeration that hardly seems in good taste. If Morris had needed a spur the letters would have supplied it; but the task was an impossible one, and Lafayette was not released until the peace in 1797, when he was turned over to the American consul at Hamburg, in Morris's presence.
Morris was able to render more effectual help to an individual far less worthy of it than Lafayette. This was the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, who had fled from France with Dumouriez. Morris's old friend, Madame de Flahaut, appealed to him almost hysterically on the duke's behalf; and he at once did even more than she requested, giving the duke money wherewith to go to America, and also furnishing him with unlimited credit at his own New York banker's, during hiswanderings in the United States. This was done for the sake of the Duchess of Orleans, to whom Morris was devotedly attached, not for the sake of the duke himself. The latter knew this perfectly, writing: "Your kindness is a blessing I owe to my mother and to our friend" (Madame de Flahaut). The bourgeois king admirably represented the meanest, smallest side of the bourgeois character; he was not a bad man, but he was a very petty and contemptible one; had he been born in a different station of life, he would have been just the individual to take a prominent part in local temperance meetings, while he sanded the sugar he sold in his corner grocery. His treatment of Morris's loan was characteristic. When he came into his rights again, at the Restoration, he at first appeared to forget his debt entirely, and when his memory was jogged, he merely sent Morris the original sum, without a word of thanks; whereupon Morris, rather nettled, and as prompt to stand up for his rights against a man in prosperity as he had been to help him when in adversity, put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, through whom he notified Louis Philippe that if the affair was to be treated on a merely business basis, it should then be treated in a strictly business way, and the interest for the twenty years that had gone by should beforwarded also. This was accordingly done, although not until after Morris's death, the entire sum refunded being seventy thousand francs.
Morris brought his complicated business affairs in Europe to a close in 1798, and sailed from Hamburg on October 4th of that year, reaching New York after an exceedingly tedious and disagreeable voyage of eighty days.
Morris was very warmly greeted on his return; and it was evident that the length of his stay abroad had in nowise made him lose ground with his friends at home. His natural affiliations were all with the Federalist party, which he immediately joined.
During the year 1799 he did not take much part in politics, as he was occupied in getting his business affairs in order and in putting to rights his estates at Morrisania. The old manor house had become such a crazy, leaky affair that he tore it down and built a new one; a great, roomy building, not in the least showy, but solid, comfortable, and in perfect taste; having, across the tree-clad hills of Westchester, a superb view of the Sound, with its jagged coast and capes and islands.
Although it was so long since he had practiced law, he was shortly engaged in a very important case that was argued for eight days before the Court of Errors in Albany. Fewtrials in the State of New York have ever brought together such a number of men of remarkable legal ability; for among the lawyers engaged on one side or the other were Morris, Hamilton, Burr, Robert Livingstone, and Troup. There were some sharp passages of arms: and the trial of wits between Morris and Hamilton in particular were so keen as to cause a passing coolness.
During the ten years that had gone by since Morris sailed for Europe, the control of the national government had been in the hands of the Federalists; when he returned, party bitterness was at the highest pitch, for the Democrats were preparing to make the final push for power which should overthrow and ruin their antagonists. Four-fifths of the talent, ability, and good sense of the country were to be found in the Federalist ranks; for the Federalists had held their own so far, by sheer force of courage and intellectual vigor, over foes in reality more numerous. Their great prop had been Washington. His colossal influence was to the end decisive in party contests, and he had in fact, although hardly in name, almost entirely abandoned his early attempts at non-partisanship, had grown to distrust Madison as he long before had distrusted Jefferson, and had come into constantly closer relations with their enemies.His death diminished greatly the chances of Federalist success; there were two other causes at work that destroyed them entirely.
One of these was the very presence in the dominant party of so many men nearly equal in strong will and great intellectual power; their ambitions and theories clashed; even the loftiness of their aims, and their disdain of everything small, made them poor politicians, and with Washington out of the way there was no one commander to overawe the rest and to keep down the fierce bickerings constantly arising among them; while in the other party there was a single leader, Jefferson, absolutely without a rival, but supported by a host of sharp political workers, most skillful in marshaling that unwieldy and hitherto disunited host of voters who were inferior in intelligence to their fellows.
The second cause lay deep in the nature of the Federalist organization: it was its distrust of the people. This was the fatally weak streak in Federalism. In a government such as ours it was a foregone conclusion that a party which did not believe in the people would sooner or later be thrown from power unless there was an armed break-up of the system. The distrust was felt, and of course excited corresponding and intense hostility. Had theFederalists been united, and had they freely trusted in the people, the latter would have shown that the trust was well founded; but there was no hope for leaders who suspected each other and feared their followers.
Morris landed just as the Federalist reaction, brought about by the conduct of France, had spent itself,—thanks partly to some inopportune pieces of insolence from England, in which country, as Morris once wrote to a foreign friend, "on a toujours le bon esprit de vouloir prendre les mouches avec du vinaigre." The famous alien and sedition laws were exciting great disgust, and in Virginia and Kentucky Jefferson was using them as handles wherewith to guide seditious agitation—not that he believed in sedition, but because he considered it good party policy, for the moment, to excite it. The parties hated each other with rancorous virulence; the newspapers teemed with the foulest abuse of public men, accusations of financial dishonesty were rife, Washington himself not being spared, and the most scurrilous personalities were bandied about between the different editors. The Federalists were split into two factions, one following the President, Adams, in his efforts to keep peace with France, if it could be done with honor, while the others, under Hamilton's lead, wished war at once.
Pennsylvanian politics were already very low. The leaders who had taken control were men of mean capacity and small morality, and the State was not only becoming rapidly democratic but was also drifting along in a disorganized, pseudo-jacobinical, half insurrectionary kind of way that would have boded ill for its future had it not been fettered by the presence of healthier communities round about it. New England was the only part of the community, excepting Delaware, where Federalism was on a perfectly sound footing; for in that section there was no caste spirit, the leaders and their followers were thoroughly in touch, and all the citizens, shrewd, thrifty, independent, were used to self-government, and fully awake to the fact that honesty and order are the prerequisites of liberty. Yet even here Democracy had made some inroads.
South of the Potomac the Federalists had lost ground rapidly. Virginia was still a battlefield; as long as Washington lived, his tremendous personal influence acted as a brake on the democratic advance, and the state's greatest orator, Patrick Henry, had halted beside the grave to denounce the seditious schemes of the disunion agitators with the same burning, thrilling eloquence that, thirty years before, had stirred to their depths the hearts of his hearers when hebade defiance to the tyrannous might of the British king. But when these two men were dead, Marshall,—though destined, as chief and controlling influence in the third division of our governmental system, to mould the whole of that system on the lines of Federalist thought, and to prove that a sound judiciary could largely affect an unsound executive and legislature,—even Marshall could not, single-handed, stem the current that had gradually gathered head. Virginia stands easily first among all our commonwealths for the statesmen and warriors she has brought forth; and it is noteworthy that during the long contest between the nationalists and separatists, which forms the central fact in our history for the first three quarters of a century of our national life, she gave leaders to both sides at the two great crises: Washington and Marshall to the one, and Jefferson to the other, when the question was one of opinion as to whether the Union should be built up; and when the appeal to arms was made to tear it down, Farragut and Thomas to the north, Lee and Jackson to the south.
There was one eddy in the tide of democratic success that flowed so strongly to the southward. This was in South Carolina. The fierce little Palmetto state has always been afree lance among her southern sisters; for instance, though usually ultra-democratic, she was hostile to the two great democratic chiefs, Jefferson and Jackson, though both were from the south. At the time that Morris came home, the brilliant little group of Federalist leaders within her bounds, headed by men of national renown like Pinckney and Harper, kept her true to Federalism by downright force of intellect and integrity; for they were among the purest as well as the ablest statesmen of the day.
New York had been going through a series of bitter party contests; any one examining a file of papers of that day will come to the conclusion that party spirit was even more violent and unreasonable then than now. The two great Federalist leaders, Hamilton and Jay, stood head and shoulders above all their democratic competitors, and they were backed by the best men in the state, like Rufus King, Schuyler and others. But, though as orators and statesmen they had no rivals, they were very deficient in the arts of political management. Hamilton's imperious haughtiness had alienated the powerful family of the Livingstones, who had thrown in their lot with the Clintonians; and a still more valuable ally to the latter had arisen in that consummate master of "machine"politics, Aaron Burr. In 1792, Jay, then chief justice of the United States, had run for governor against Clinton, and had received the majority of the votes; but had been counted out by the returning board in spite of the protest of its four Federalist members—Gansevoort, Roosevelt, Jones, and Sands. The indignation was extreme, and only Jay's patriotism and good sense prevented an outbreak. However, the memory of the fraud remained fresh in the minds of the citizens, and at the next election for governor he was chosen by a heavy majority, having then just come back from his mission to England. Soon afterwards his treaty was published, and excited a whirlwind of indignation; it was only ratified in the senate through Washington's great influence, backed by the magnificent oratory of Fisher Ames, whose speech on this occasion, when he was almost literally on his death-bed, ranks among the half dozen greatest of our country. The treaty was very objectionable in certain points, but it was most necessary to our well-being, and Jay was probably the only American who could have negotiated it. As with the Ashburton treaty many years later, extreme sections in England attacked it as fiercely as did the extreme sections here; and Lord Sheffield voiced their feelings when he hailed the war of 1812as offering a chance to England to get back the advantages out of which "Jay had duped Grenville."