es began to look
larger and larger. This licensed selfishness became more domineering in
proportion as it became more successful. If a political question arose,
which in any way interfered with his opportunities, the good American
began to believe that his democratic political machine was out of gear.
Did Abolitionism create a condition of political unrest, and interfere
with good business, then Abolitionists were wicked men, who were
tampering with the ark of the Constitution; and in much the same way the
modern reformer, who proposes policies looking toward a restriction in
the activity of corporations and stands in the way of the immediate
transaction of the largest possible volume of business, is denounced as
un-American. These were merely crude ways of expressing the spirit of
traditional American democracy,--which was that of a rampant
individualism, checked only by a system of legally constituted rights.
The test of American national success was the comfort and prosperity of
the individual; and the means to that end,--a system of unrestricted
individual aggrandizement and collective irresponsibility.

The alliance between Federalism and democracy on which this traditional
system was based, was excellent in many of its effects; but
unfortunately it implied on the part of both the allies a sacrifice of
political sincerity and conviction. And this sacrifice was more
demoralizing to the Republicans than to the Federalists, because they
were the victorious party. A central government, constructed on the
basis of their democratic creed, would have been a government whose
powers were smaller, more rigid, and more inefficiently distributed than
those granted under our Federal Constitution--as may be seen from the
various state constitutions subsequently written under Jeffersonian
influence. When they obtained power either they should have been
faithful to their convictions and tried to modify the Federal machinery
in accordance therewith, or they should have modified their ideas in
order to make them square with their behavior. But instead of seriously
and candidly considering the meaning of their own actions, they opened
their mouths wide enough to swallow their own past and then deliberately
shut their eyes. They accepted the national organization as a fact and
as a condition of national safety; but they rejected it as a lesson in
political wisdom, and as an implicit principle of political action. By
so doing they bega