portionate
representation with the tide-water aristocracy. The rise of democracy as
an effective force in the nation came in with western preponderance
under Jackson and William Henry Harrison, and it meant the triumph of
the frontier--with all of its good and with all of its evil
elements.[31:1] An interesting illustration of the tone of frontier
democracy in 1830 comes from the same debates in the Virginia convention
already referred to. A representative from western Virginia declared:

But, sir, it is not the increase of population in the West
which this gentleman ought to fear. It is the energy which the
mountain breeze and western habits impart to those emigrants.
They are regenerated, politically I mean, sir. They soon
become _working politicians_; and the difference, sir, between
a _talking_ and a _working_ politician is immense. The Old
Dominion has long been celebrated for producing great orators;
the ablest metaphysicians in policy; men that can split hairs
in all abstruse questions of political economy. But at home,
or when they return from Congress, they have negroes to fan
them asleep. But a Pennsylvania, a New York, an Ohio, or a
western Virginia statesman, though far inferior in logic,
metaphysics, and rhetoric to an old Virginia statesman, has
this advantage, that when he returns home he takes off his
coat and takes hold of the plow. This gives him bone and
muscle, sir, and preserves his republican principles pure and
uncontaminated.

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists,
and economic power secures political power. But the democracy born of
free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of
administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty
beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits.
Individualism in America has allowed a laxity in regard to governmental
affairs which has rendered possible the spoils system and all the
manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic
spirit. In this connection may be noted also the influence of frontier
conditions in permitting lax business honor, inflated paper currency and
wild-cat banking. The colonial and revolutionary frontier was the region
whence emanated many of the worst forms of an evil currency.[32:1] The
West in the War of 1812 repeated the phenomenon on the front