[Transcriber's notes:
blank pages have been removed
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Corrected obvious printer errors:
page [51], "comparision" changed to "comparison." ("A comparison of the men ....")
page [270], "Tuilleries" changed to "Tuileries." ( "... the poor king was driven from the Tuileries.")
page [315], missing " added. ("... à casser les œufs.""")
page [365], missing "." added. ("Dalrymple, General, 125.")
page [366], "De Lancys" changed to "De Lanceys." ("De Lanceys, 16, 21, 45.")
page [368], "salôn" changed to "salon." ("literary life of the salon")]

American Statesmen

EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR

American Statesmen

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1892

Copyright, 1888,
By THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

[INTRODUCTION.]

Two generations ago the average American biographer was certainly a marvel of turgid and aimless verbosity; and the reputations of our early statesmen have in no way proved their vitality more clearly than by surviving their entombment in the pages of the authors who immediately succeeded them. No one of the founders of the Constitution has suffered more in this respect than has he who was perhaps the most brilliant, although by no means the greatest, of the whole number,—Gouverneur Morris.

Jared Sparks, hitherto Morris's sole biographer, wrote innumerable volumes on American history, many of which are still very valuable, and some of them almost indispensable, to the student. The value, however, comes wholly from the matter; Mr. Sparks is not only a very voluminous writer, but he is also a quite abnormally dull one. His "Life of Gouverneur Morris" is typical of most of his work. He collected with great industry facts about Mr. Morris, and edited a large number of his letters and state papers, with numerous selections, not always well chosen, from his Diary. Other merits the book has none, and it has one or two marked faults. He failed to understand that a biographer's duties are not necessarily identical with those of a professional eulogist; but for this he is hardly to blame, as all our writers then seemed to think it necessary to shower indiscriminate praise on every dead American—whether author, soldier, politician, or what not—save only Benedict Arnold. He was funnily unconscious of his own prolix dullness; and actually makes profuse apologies for introducing extracts from Morris's bright, interesting writings into his own drearily platitudinous pages, hoping that "candor and justice" will make his readers pardon the "negligence" and "defects of style," which the extracts contain. He could not resist the temptation now and then to improve Morris's English, and to soften down, or omit anything that he deemed either improper or beneath the stilted "dignity" of history. For example, Morris states that Marie Antoinette, when pursued by the Parisian fishwives, fled from her bed "in her shift and petticoat, with her stockings in her hand;" such particularity struck Mr. Sparks as shockingly coarse, and with much refinement he replaced the whole phrase by "in her undress." An oath he would not permit to sully his pages on any terms; thus when Morris wrote that Pennsylvania would find Sir Henry Clinton "a most damnable physician," Mr. Sparks simply left out the offending sentence altogether. This kind of thing he did again and again.

Still he gives almost all of Morris's writings that are of political interest. It is, however, greatly to be desired that we should have a much more complete edition of his letters and Diary, on account of the extremely interesting descriptions they contain of the social life of the period, both in America and in Europe. As regards his public career, and his views and writings on public subjects, we already have ample material, much of which has appeared since Sparks's biography was written, and some of which is here presented for the first time.

Morris's speeches in the Constitutional Convention have been preserved, in summarized form, by Madison in his "Debates:" of these, of course, Sparks was necessarily ignorant. Miss Annie Carey Morris has written two articles in "Scribner's Magazine" for January and February, 1887, on her grandfather's life in Paris during the French Revolution, giving some new and interesting details. A good article appeared in "Macmillan's Magazine" for November, 1885, the writer evidently having been attracted to the subject by the way in which Taine made Morris's writings a basis for so much of his own great work on the Revolution. Decidedly the best piece upon Morris that has yet been written, however, is the admirable sketch by Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge in the "Atlantic Monthly" for April, 1886.

My thanks are especially due the Hon. John Jay for furnishing me many valuable letters, hitherto unpublished, of both Jay and Morris; and for giving me additional information about Morris's private life, and other matters. All the letters here quoted that are not given by Sparks are to be found either in the Jay MSS. or the Pickering MSS. Mr. Jay also furnished me with the account of the way in which Louis Philippe was finally persuaded to pay the debt he owed Morris.

CONTENTS

[GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.]

[CHAPTER I.]

HIS YOUTH: COLONIAL NEW YORK.

When, on January 31, 1752, Gouverneur Morris was born in the family manor-house at Morrisania, on the lands where his forefathers had dwelt for three generations, New York colony contained only some eighty thousand inhabitants, of whom twelve thousand were blacks. New York city was a thriving little trading town, whose people in summer suffered much from the mosquitoes that came back with the cows when they were driven home at nightfall for milking; while from among the locusts and water-beeches that lined the pleasant, quiet streets, the tree frogs sang so shrilly through the long, hot evenings that a man in speaking could hardly make himself heard.

Gouverneur Morris belonged by birth to that powerful landed aristocracy whose rule was known by New York alone among all the northern colonies. His great-grandfather, who had served in the Cromwellian armies, came to the seaport at the mouth of the Hudson, while it was still beneath the sway of Holland, and settled outside of Haerlem, the estate being invested with manorial privileges by the original grant of the governor. In the next two generations the Morrises had played a prominent part in colonial affairs, both the father and grandfather of Gouverneur having been on the bench, and having also been members of the provincial legislature, where they took the popular side, and stood up stoutly for the rights of the Assembly in the wearisome and interminable conflicts waged by the latter against the prerogatives of the crown and the powers of the royal governors. The Morrises were restless, adventurous men, of erratic temper and strong intellect; and, with far more than his share of the family talent and brilliancy, young Gouverneur also inherited a certain whimsical streak that ran through his character. His mother was one of the Huguenot Gouverneurs, who had been settled in New York since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and it was perhaps the French blood in his veins that gave him the alert vivacity and keen sense of humor that distinguished him from most of the great Revolutionary statesmen who were his contemporaries.

He was a bright, active boy, fond of shooting and out-door sports, and was early put to school at the old Huguenot settlement of New Rochelle, where the church service was still sometimes held in French; and he there learned to speak and write this language almost as well as he could English. Thence, after the usual preparatory instruction, he went to King's College—now, with altered name and spirit, Columbia—in New York.

The years of his childhood were stirring ones for the colonies; for England was then waging the greatest and most successful of her colonial contests with France and Spain for the possession of eastern North America. Such contests, with their usual savage accompaniments in the way of Indian warfare, always fell with especial weight on New York, whose border lands were not only claimed, but even held by the French, and within whose boundaries lay the great confederacy of the Six Nations, the most crafty, warlike, and formidable of all the native races, infinitely more to be dreaded than the Algonquin tribes with whom the other colonies had to deal. Nor was this war any exception to the rule; for battle after battle was fought on our soil, from the day when, unassisted, the purely colonial troops of New York and New England at Lake George destroyed Baron Dieskau's mixed host of French regulars, Canadian militia, and Indian allies, to that still more bloody day when, on the shores of Lake Champlain, Abercrombie's great army of British and Americans recoiled before the fiery genius of Montcalm.

When once the war was ended by the complete and final overthrow of the French power, and the definite establishment of English supremacy along the whole Atlantic seaboard, the bickering which was always going on between Great Britain and her American subjects, and which was but partially suppressed even when they were forced to join in common efforts to destroy a common foe, broke out far more fiercely than ever. While the colonists were still reaping the aftermath of the contest in the shape of desolating border warfare against those Indian tribes who had joined in the famous conspiracy of Pontiac, the Royal Parliament passed the Stamp Act, and thereby began the struggle that ended in the Revolution.

England's treatment of her American subjects was thoroughly selfish; but that her conduct towards them was a wonder of tyranny, will not now be seriously asserted; on the contrary, she stood decidedly above the general European standard in such matters, and certainly treated her colonies far better than France and Spain did theirs; and she herself had undoubted grounds for complaint in, for example, the readiness of the Americans to claim military help in time of danger, together with their frank reluctance to pay for it. It was impossible that she should be so far in advance of the age as to treat her colonists as equals; they themselves were sometimes quite as intolerant in their behavior towards men of a different race, creed, or color. The New England Puritans lacked only the power, but not the will, to behave almost as badly towards the Pennsylvania Quakers as did the Episcopalian English towards themselves. Yet granting all this, the fact remains, that in the Revolutionary War the Americans stood towards the British as the Protestant peoples stood towards the Catholic powers in the sixteenth century, as the Parliamentarians stood towards the Stewarts in the seventeenth, or as the upholders of the American Union stood towards the confederate slave-holders in the nineteenth; that is, they warred victoriously for the right in a struggle whose outcome vitally affected the welfare of the whole human race. They settled, once for all, that thereafter the people of English stock should spread at will over the world's waste spaces, keeping all their old liberties and winning new ones; and they took the first and longest step in establishing the great principle that thenceforth those Europeans, who by their strength and daring founded new states abroad, should be deemed to have done so for their own profit as freemen, and not for the benefit of their more timid, lazy, or contented brethren who stayed behind.

The rulers of Great Britain, and to a large extent its people, looked upon the American colonies as existing primarily for the good of the mother country: they put the harshest restrictions on American trade in the interests of British merchants; they discouraged the spread of the Americans westward; and they claimed the right to decide for both parties the proportions in which they should pay their shares of the common burdens. The English and Americans were not the subjects of a common sovereign; for the English were themselves the sovereigns, the Americans were the subjects. Whether their yoke bore heavily or bore lightly, whether it galled or not, mattered little; it was enough that it was a yoke to warrant a proud, free people in throwing it off. We could not thankfully take as a boon part only of what we felt to be our lawful due. "We do not claim liberty as a privilege, but challenge it as a right," said the men of New York, through their legislature, in 1764; and all Americans felt with them.

Yet, for all this, the feeling of loyalty was strong and hard to overcome throughout the provinces, and especially in New York. The Assembly wrangled with the royal governor; the merchants and shipmasters combined to evade the intolerable harshness of the laws of trade that tried to make them customers of England only; the householders bitterly resented the attempts to quarter troops upon them; while the soldiers of the garrison were from time to time involved in brawls with the lower ranks of the people, especially the sailors, as the seafaring population was large, and much given to forcibly releasing men taken by the press-gang for the British war-ships; but in spite of everything there was a genuine sentiment of affection and respect for the British crown and kingdom. It is perfectly possible that if British statesmen had shown less crass and brutal stupidity, if they had shown even the wise negligence of Walpole, this feeling of loyalty would have been strong enough to keep England and America united until they had learned how to accommodate themselves to the rapidly changing conditions; but the chance was lost when once a prince like George the Third came to the throne. It has been the fashion to represent this king as a well meaning, though dull person, whose good morals and excellent intentions partially atoned for his mistakes of judgment; but such a view is curiously false. His private life, it is true, showed the very admirable but common-place virtues, as well as the appalling intellectual littleness, barrenness, and stagnation, of the average British green-grocer; but in his public career, instead of rising to the level of harmless and unimportant mediocrity usually reached by the sovereigns of the House of Hanover, he fairly rivaled the Stuarts in his perfidy, wrongheadedness, political debauchery, and attempts to destroy free government, and to replace it by a system of personal despotism. It needed all the successive blunders both of himself and of his Tory ministers to reduce the loyal party in New York to a minority, by driving the moderate men into the patriotic or American camp; and even then the loyalist minority remained large enough to be a formidable power, and to plunge the embryonic state into a ferocious civil war, carried on, as in the Carolinas and Georgia, with even more bitterness than the contest against the British.

The nature of this loyalist party and the strength of the conflicting elements can only be understood after a glance at the many nationalities that in New York were being blended into one. The descendants of the old Dutch inhabitants were still more numerous than those of any other one race, while the French Huguenots, who, being of the same Calvinistic faith, were closely mixed with them, and had been in the land nearly as long, were also plentiful; the Scotch and Scotch- or Anglo-Irish, mostly Presbyterians, came next in point of numbers; the English, both of Old and New England, next; there were large bodies of Germans; and there were also settlements of Gaelic Highlanders, and some Welsh, Scandinavians, etc. Just prior to the Revolution there were in New York city two Episcopalian churches, three Dutch Reformed, three Presbyterian (Scotch and Irish), one French, two German (one Lutheran and one Calvinistic, allied to the Dutch Reformed); as well as places of worship for the then insignificant religious bodies of the Methodists, Baptists (largely Welsh), Moravians (German), Quakers and Jews. There was no Roman Catholic church until after the Revolution; in fact before that date there were hardly any Roman Catholics in the colonies, except in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and in New York they did not acquire any strength until after the War of 1812.

This mixture of races is very clearly shown by the ancestry of the half-dozen great men brought forth by New York during the Revolution. Of these, one, Alexander Hamilton, stands in the very first class of American statesmen; two more, John Jay and Gouverneur Morris, come close behind him; the others, Philip Schuyler, Robert Livingston, and George Clinton, were of lesser, but still of more than merely local, note. They were all born and bred on this side of the Atlantic. Hamilton's father was of Scotch, and his mother of French Huguenot, descent; Morris came on one side of English, and on the other of French Huguenot, stock; Jay, of French Huguenot blood, had a mother who was Dutch; Schuyler was purely Dutch; Livingston was Scotch on his father's, and Dutch on his mother's, side; the Clintons were of Anglo-Irish origin, but married into the old Dutch families. In the same way, it was Herkomer, of German parentage, who led the New York levies, and fell at their head in the bloody fight against the Tories and Indians at Oriskany; it was the Irishman Montgomery who died leading the New York troops against Quebec; while yet another of the few generals allotted to New York by the Continental Congress was MacDougall, of Gaelic Scotch descent. The colony was already developing an ethnic type of its own, quite distinct from that of England. No American state of the present day, not even Wisconsin or Minnesota, shows so many and important "foreign," or non-English elements, as New York, and for that matter Pennsylvania and Delaware, did a century or so ago. In fact, in New York the English element in the blood has grown greatly during the past century, owing to the enormous New England immigration that took place during its first half; and the only important addition to the race conglomerate has been made by the Celtic Irish. The New England element in New York in 1775 was small and unimportant; on Long Island, where it was largest, it was mainly tory or neutral; in the city itself, however, it was aggressively patriotic.

Recent English writers, and some of our own as well, have foretold woe to our nation, because the blood of the Cavalier and the Roundhead is being diluted with that of "German boors and Irish cotters." The alarm is needless. As a matter of fact the majority of the people of the middle colonies at the time of the Revolution were the descendants of Dutch and German boors and Scotch and Irish cotters; and in a less degree the same was true of Georgia and the Carolinas. Even in New England, where the English stock was purest, there was plenty of other admixture, and two of her most distinguished Revolutionary families bore, one the Huguenot name of Bowdoin, and the other the Irish name of Sullivan. Indeed, from the very outset, from the days of Cromwell, there has been a large Irish admixture in New England. When our people began their existence as a nation, they already differed in blood from their ancestral relatives across the Atlantic much as the latter did from their forebears beyond the German Ocean; and on the whole, the immigration since has not materially changed the race strains in our nationality; a century back we were even less homogeneous than we are now. It is no doubt true that we are in the main an offshoot of the English stem; and cousins to our kinsfolk of Britain we perhaps may be; but brothers we certainly are not.

But the process of assimilating, or as we should now say, of Americanizing, all foreign and non-English elements was going on almost as rapidly a hundred years ago as it is at present. A young Dutchman or Huguenot felt it necessary, then, to learn English, precisely as a young Scandinavian or German does now; and the churches of the former at the end of the last century were obliged to adopt English as the language for their ritual exactly as the churches of the latter do at the end of this. The most stirring, energetic, and progressive life of the colony was English; and all the young fellows of push and ambition gradually adopted this as their native language, and then refused to belong to congregations where the service was carried on in a less familiar speech. Accordingly the Dutch Reformed churches dwindled steadily, while the Episcopalian and Presbyterian swelled in the same ratio, until in 1764 the former gained a new and lasting lease of life by reluctantly adopting the prevailing tongue; though Dutch was also occasionally used until forty years later.

In fact, during the century that elapsed between the final British conquest of the colony and the Revolution, the New Yorkers—Dutch, French, German, Irish, and English—had become in the main welded into one people; they felt alike towards outsiders, having chronic quarrels with the New England States as well as with Great Britain, and showing, indeed, but little more jealous hostility towards the latter than they did towards Connecticut and New Hampshire.

The religious differences no longer corresponded to the differences of language. Half of the adherents of the Episcopalian Church were of Dutch or Huguenot blood; the leading ministers of the Dutch Church were of Scotch parentage; and the Presbyterians included some of every race. The colonists were all growing to call themselves Englishmen; when Mayor Cruger, and a board of aldermen with names equally Dutch, signed the non-importation agreement, they prefaced it by stating that they claimed "their rights as Englishmen." But though there were no rivalries of race, there were many and bitter of class and religion, the different Protestant sects hating one another with a virulence much surpassing that with which they now regard even Catholics.

The colony was in government an aristocratic republic, its constitution modeled on that of England and similar to it; the power lay in the hands of certain old and wealthy families, Dutch and English, and there was a limited freehold suffrage. The great landed families, the Livingstons, Van Rennselaers, Schuylers, Van Cortlandts, Phillipses, Morrises, with their huge manorial estates, their riches, their absolute social preëminence and their unquestioned political headship, formed a proud, polished, and powerful aristocracy, deep rooted in the soil; for over a century their sway was unbroken, save by contests between themselves or with the royal governor, and they furnished the colony with military, political, and social leaders for generation after generation. They owned numerous black slaves, and lived in state and comfort on their broad acres, tenant-farmed, in the great, roomy manor-houses, with wainscoted walls and huge fireplaces, and round about the quaint old gardens, prim and formal with their box hedges and precise flower beds. They answered closely to the whig lords of England, and indeed were often connected with the ruling orders abroad by blood or marriage; as an example, Staats Long Morris, Gouverneur's elder brother, who remained a royalist, and rose to be a major-general in the British army, married the Duchess of Gordon. Some of the manors were so large that they sent representatives to the Albany legislature, to sit alongside of those from the towns and counties.

Next in importance to the great manorial lords came the rich merchants of New York; many families, like the Livingstons, the most prominent of all, had representatives in both classes. The merchants were somewhat of the type of Frobisher, Hawkins, Klaesoon, and other old English and Dutch sea-worthies, who were equally keen as fighters and traders. They were shrewd, daring, and prosperous; they were often their own ship-masters, and during the incessant wars against the French and Spaniards went into privateering ventures with even more zest and spirit than into peaceful trading. Next came the smaller landed proprietors, who also possessed considerable local influence; such was the family of the Clintons. The law, too, was beginning to take high rank as an honorable and influential profession.

Most of the gentry were Episcopalians, theirs being practically the state church, and very influential and wealthy; some belonged to the Calvinistic bodies,—notably the Livingstons, who were in large part Presbyterians, while certain of their number were prominent members of the Dutch congregations. It was from among the gentry that the little group of New York revolutionary leaders came; men of singular purity, courage, and ability, who, if they could not quite rank with the brilliant Virginians of that date, nevertheless stood close behind, alongside of the Massachusetts men and ahead of those from any other colony; that, too, it must be kept in mind, at a time when New York was inferior in wealth and population to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, or Virginia, and little, if at all, in advance of Maryland or Connecticut. The great families also furnished the leaders of the loyalists during the war; such were the De Lanceys, whose influence around the mouth of the Hudson was second to that of none others; and the Johnsons, who, in mansions that were also castles, held half-feudal, half-barbaric sway over the valley of the upper Mohawk, where they were absolute rulers, ready and willing to wage war on their own account, relying on their numerous kinsmen, their armed negro slaves, their trained bands of Gaelic retainers, and their hosts of savage allies, drawn from among the dreaded Iroquois.

The bulk of the people were small farmers in the country, tradesmen and mechanics in the towns. They were for the most part members of some of the Calvinistic churches, the great majority of the whole population belonging to the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed congregations. The farmers were thrifty, set in their ways, and obstinate; the townsmen thrifty also, but restless and turbulent. Both farmers and townsmen were thoroughly independent and self-respecting, and were gradually getting more and more political power. They had always stood tenaciously by their rights, from the days of the early Stuart governors, who had complained loudly of the "Dutch Republicans." But they were narrow, jealous of each other, as well as of outsiders, and slow to act together.

The political struggles were very bitter. The great families, under whose banners they were carried on, though all intermarried, were divided by keen rivalries into opposing camps. Yet they joined in dreading too great an extension of democracy; and in return were suspected by the masses, who grumblingly followed their lead, of hostility to the popular cause. The Episcopalians, though greatly in the minority, possessed most power, and harassed in every way they dared the dissenting sects, especially the Presbyterians—for the Dutch Reformed and Huguenot churches had certain rights guaranteed them by treaty. The Episcopalian clergy were royalists to a man, and it was in their congregations that the main strength of the Tories lay, although these also contained many who became the stanchest of patriots. King's College was controlled by trustees of this faith. They were busy trying to turn it into a diminutive imitation of Oxford, and did their best to make it, in its own small way, almost as much a perverse miracle of backward and invariable wrong-headedness as was its great model. Its president, when the Revolution broke out, was a real old wine-bibbing Tory parson, devoted to every worn-out theory that inculcated humble obedience to church and crown; and he was most summarily expelled by the mob.

Some important political consequences arose from the fact that the mass of the people belonged to some one or other of the branches of the Calvinistic faith—of all faiths the most republican in its tendencies. They were strongly inclined to put their republican principles into practice as well in state as in church; they tended towards hostility to the crown, and were strenuous in their opposition to the extension of the Episcopal power, always threatened by some English statesmen; their cry was against "the King and the Bishops." It is worth noting that the Episcopalian churches were shut up when the Revolution broke out, and were reopened when the British troops occupied the city. The Calvinistic churches, on the contrary, which sided with the revolutionists, were shut when the British came into New York, were plundered by the troops, and were not reopened until after the evacuation.

Thus three parties developed, although the third, destined to overwhelm the others, had not yet come to the front. The first consisted of the royalists, or monarchists, the men who believed that power came from above, from the king and the bishops, and who were aristocratic in their sympathies; who were Americans only secondarily, and who stood by their order against their country. This party contained many of the great manorial families and also of the merchants; and in certain places, as in Staten Island, the east end of Long Island, the upper valley of the Mohawk, and part of Westchester County, the influence of the upper classes combined with the jealousy and ignorance of large sections of the lower, to give it a clear majority of the whole population. The second party was headed by the great families of Whig or liberal sympathies, who, when the split came, stood by their country, although only very moderate republicans; and it held also in its ranks the mass of moderate men, who wished freedom, were resolute in defense of their rights, and had republican leanings, but who also appreciated the good in the system under which they were living. Finally came the extremists, the men of strong republican tendencies, whose delight it was to toast Pym, Hampden, and the regicides. These were led by the agitators in the towns, and were energetic and active, but were unable to effect anything until the blunders of the British ministers threw the moderate men over to their side. They furnished none of the greater revolutionary leaders in New York, though the Clintons came near the line that divided them from the second party.

The last political contest carried on under the crown occurred in 1768, the year in which Morris graduated from college, when the last colonial legislature was elected. It reminds us of our own days when we read of the fears entertained of the solid German vote, and of the hostility to the Irish, who were hated and sneered at as "beggars" by the English party and the rich Episcopalians. The Irish of those days, however, were Presbyterians, and in blood more English than Gaelic. St. Patrick's Day was celebrated then as now, by public processions, as well as otherwise; but when, for instance, on March 17, 1766, the Irish residents of New York celebrated the day by a dinner, they gave certain toasts that would sound strangely in the ears of Milesian patriots of the present time, for they included "The Protestant Interest," and "King William, of glorious, pious, and immortal memory."

The royalist or conservative side in this contest in 1768 was led by the De Lanceys, their main support being drawn from among the Episcopalians, and most of the larger merchants helping them. The Whigs, including those with republican leanings, followed the Livingstons, and were drawn mainly from the Presbyterian and other Calvinistic congregations. The moderate men on this occasion went with the De Lanceys, and gave them the victory. In consequence the colonial legislature was conservative and loyal in tone, and anti-republican, although not ultra-tory, as a whole; and thus when the revolutionary outbreak began it went much slower than was satisfactory to the patriot party, and its actions were finally set aside by the people.

When Morris graduated from college, as mentioned above, he was not yet seventeen years old. His college career was like that of any other bright, quick boy, without over much industry or a passion for learning. For mathematics he possessed a genuine taste; he was particularly fond of Shakespeare; and even thus early he showed great skill in discussion and much power of argument. He made the oration, or graduating address, of his class, choosing for the subject "Wit and Beauty;" it was by no means a noteworthy effort, and was couched in the dreadful Johnsonian English of the period. A little later, when he took his master's degree, he again delivered an oration,—this time on "Love." In point of style this second speech was as bad as the first, disfigured by cumbrous Latinisms and a hopeless use of the superlative; but there were one or two good ideas in it.

As soon as he graduated, he set to work to study law, deciding on this profession at once as being best suited for an active, hopeful, ambitious young man of his social standing and small fortune, who was perfectly self-confident and conscious of his own powers. He soon became interested in his studies, and followed them with great patience, working hard and mastering both principles and details with ease. He was licensed to practice as an attorney in 1771, just three years after another young man, destined to stand as his equal in the list of New York's four or five noted statesmen, John Jay, had likewise been admitted to the bar; and among the very few cases in which Morris was engaged of which the record has been kept is one concerning a contested election, in which he was pitted against Jay, and bore himself well.

Before this, and while not yet of age, he had already begun to play a part in public affairs. The colony had been run in debt during the French and Indian wars, and a bill was brought forward in the New York Assembly to provide for this by raising money through the issue of interest-bearing bills of credit. The people, individually, were largely in debt, and hailed the proposal with much satisfaction, on the theory that it would "make money more plenty;" our revolutionary forefathers being unfortunately not much wiser or more honest in their ways of looking at the public finances than we ourselves, in spite of our state repudiators, national greenbackers, and dishonest silver men.

Morris attacked the bill very forcibly, and with good effect, opposing any issue of paper money, which could bring no absolute relief, but merely a worse catastrophe of bankruptcy in the end; he pointed out that it was nothing but a mischievous pretense for putting off the date of a payment that would have to be met anyhow, and that ought rather to be met at once with honest money gathered from the resources of the province. He showed the bad effects such a system of artificial credit would have on private individuals, the farmers and tradesmen, by encouraging them to speculate and go deeper into debt; and he criticised unsparingly the attitude of the majority of his fellow-citizens in wishing such a measure of relief, not only for their short-sighted folly, but also for their criminal and selfish dishonesty in trying to procure a temporary benefit for themselves at the lasting expense of the community; finally he strongly advised them to bear with patience small evils in the present rather than to remedy them by inflicting infinitely greater ones on themselves and their descendants in the future.

At the law he did very well, having the advantages of his family name, and of his own fine personal appearance. He was utterly devoid of embarrassment, and his perfect self-assurance and freedom from any timidity or sense of inferiority left his manner without the least tinge of awkwardness, and gave clear ground for his talents and ambition to make their mark.

However, hardworking and devoted to his profession though he was, he had the true family restlessness and craving for excitement, and soon after he was admitted to the bar, he began to long for foreign travel, as was natural enough in a young provincial gentleman of his breeding and education. In a letter to an old friend (William Smith, a man of learning, the historian of the colony, and afterwards its chief justice), in whose office he had studied law, he asks advice in the matter, and gives as his reasons for wishing to make the trip the desire "to form my manners and address by the example of the truly polite, to rub off in the gay circle a few of the many barbarisms which characterize a provincial education, and to curb the vain self-sufficiency which arises from comparing ourselves with companions who are inferior to us." He then anticipates the objections that may be made on the score of the temptations to which he will be exposed by saying: "If it be allowed that I have a taste for pleasure, it may naturally follow that I shall avoid those low pleasures which abound on this as well as on the other side of the Atlantic. As for these poignant joys which are the lot of the affluent, like Tantalus I may grasp at them, but they will certainly be out of my reach." In this last sentence he touches on his narrow means; and it was on this point that his old preceptor harped in making his reply, cunningly instilling into his mind the danger of neglecting his business, and bringing up the appalling example of an "Uncle Robin," who, having made three pleasure trips to England, "began to figure with thirty thousand pounds, and did not leave five thousand;" going on "What! 'Virtus post nummos? Curse on inglorious wealth?' Spare your indignation. I, too, detest the ignorant miser; but both virtue and ambition abhor poverty, or they are mad. Rather imitate your grandfather [who had stayed in America and prospered] than your uncle."

The advice may have had its effect; at any rate Morris stayed at home, and, with an occasional trip to Philadelphia, got all he could out of the society of New York, which, little provincial seaport though it was, was yet a gay place, gayer then than any other American city save Charleston, the society consisting of the higher crown officials, the rich merchants, and the great landed proprietors. Into this society Morris, a handsome, high-bred young fellow, of easy manners and far from puritanical morals, plunged with a will, his caustic wit and rather brusque self-assertion making him both admired and feared. He enjoyed it all to the full, and in his bright, chatty letters to his friends pictures himself as working hard, but gay enough also: "up all night—balls, concerts, assemblies—all of us mad in the pursuit of pleasure."

But the Revolution was at hand; and both pleasure and office-work had to give way to something more important.

[CHAPTER II.]

THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION: MORRIS IN THE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.

During the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, almost all people were utterly in the dark as to what their future conduct should be. No responsible leader thought seriously of separation from the mother country, and the bulk of the population were still farther from supposing such an event to be possible. Indeed it must be remembered that all through the Revolutionary War not only was there a minority actively favorable to the royal cause, but there was also a minority—so large that, added to the preceding, it has been doubted whether it was not a majority—that was but lukewarm in its devotion to the American side, and was kept even moderately patriotic almost as much by the excesses of the British troops and blunders of the British generals and ministers, as by the valor of our own soldiers, or the skill of our own statesmen. We can now see clearly that the right of the matter was with the patriotic party; and it was a great thing for the whole English-speaking race that that section of it which was destined to be the most numerous and powerful should not be cramped and fettered by the peculiarly galling shackles of provincial dependency; but all this was not by any means so clear then as now, and some of our best citizens thought themselves in honor bound to take the opposite side,—though of necessity those among our most high-minded men, who were also far-sighted enough to see the true nature of the struggle, went with the patriots.

That the loyalists of 1776 were wrong is beyond question; but it is equally beyond question that they had greater grounds for believing themselves right than had the men who tried to break up the Union three quarters of a century later. That these latter had the most hearty faith in the justice of their cause need not be doubted; and he is but a poor American whose veins do not thrill with pride as he reads of the deeds of desperate prowess done by the confederate armies; but it is most unfair to brand the "tory" of 1776 with a shame no longer felt to pertain to the "rebel" of 1860. Still, there is no doubt, not only that the patriots were right, but also that they were as a whole superior to the tories; they were the men with a high ideal of freedom, too fond of liberty, and too self-respecting, to submit to foreign rule; they included the mass of hard-working, orderly, and yet high-spirited yeomen and freeholders. The tories included those of the gentry who were devoted to aristocratic principles; the large class of timid and prosperous people (like the Pennsylvania Quakers); the many who feared above all things disorder; also the very lowest sections of the community, the lazy, thriftless, and vicious, who hated their progressive neighbors, as in the Carolinas; and finally the men who were really principled in favor of a kingly government.

Morris was at first no more sure of his soundings than were the rest of his companions. He was a gentleman of old family, and belonged to the ruling Episcopalian Church. He was no friend to tyranny, and he was a thorough American, but he had little faith in extreme democracy. The Revolution had two sides; in the northern Atlantic States at least it was almost as much an uprising of democracy against aristocracy as it was a contest between America and England; and the patriotic Americans, who nevertheless distrusted ultra-democratic ideas, suffered many misgivings when they let their love for their country overcome their pride of caste. The "Sons of Liberty," a semi-secret society originating among the merchants, and very powerful in bringing discontent to a head, now showed signs of degenerating into a mob; and for mobs Morris, like other clear-headed men, felt the most profound dislike and contempt.

Throughout 1774 he took little part in the various commotions, which kept getting more and more violent. He was angered by the English encroachments, and yet was by no means pleased with the measures taken to repel them. The gentry, and the moderate men generally, were at their wits' ends in trying to lead the rest of the people, and were being pushed on farther and farther all the time; the leadership, even of the revolutionary party, still rested in their hands; but it grew continually less absolute. Said Morris: "The spirit of the English constitution has yet a little influence left, and but a little. The remains of it, however, will give the wealthy people a superiority this time; but, would they secure it, they must banish all schoolmasters and confine all knowledge to themselves.... The gentry begin to fear this. Their committee will be appointed; they will deceive the people, and again forfeit a share of their confidence. And if these instances of what with one side is policy, with the other perfidy, shall continue to increase and become more frequent, farewell, aristocracy. I see, and see it with fear and trembling, that if the dispute with Britain continues, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions; we shall be under the dominion of a riotous mob. It is the interest of all men, therefore, to seek for reunion with the parent state." He then goes on to discuss the terms which will make this reunion possible, and evidently draws ideas from sources as diverse as Rousseau and Pitt, stating, as preliminaries, that when men come together in society, there must be an implied contract that "a part of their freedom shall be given up for the security of the remainder. But what part? The answer is plain. The least possible, considering the circumstances of the society, which constitute what may be called its political necessity;" and again: "In every society the members have a right to the utmost liberty that can be enjoyed consistent with the general safety;" while he proposes the rather wild remedy of divorcing the taxing and the governing powers, giving America the right to lay her own imposts, and regulate her internal police, and reserving to Great Britain that to regulate the trade for the entire empire.

Naturally there was no hope of any compromise of this sort. The British ministry grew more imperious, and the Colonies more defiant. At last the clash came, and then Morris's thorough Americanism and inborn love of freedom and impatience of tyranny overcame any lingering class jealousy, and he cast in his lot with his countrymen. Once in, he was not of the stuff to waver or look back; but like most other Americans, and like almost all New Yorkers, he could not for some little time realize how hopeless it was to try to close the breach with Great Britain. Hostilities had gone on for quite a while before even Washington could bring himself to believe that a lasting separation was inevitable.

The Assembly, elected as shown in the previous chapter, at a moment of reaction, was royalist in tone. It contained several stanch patriots, but the majority, although unwilling to back up the British ministers in all their doings, were still more hostile to the growing body of republican revolutionists. They gradually grew wholly out of sympathy with the people; until the latter at last gave up all attempts to act through their ordinary representatives, and set about electing delegates who should prove more faithful. Thereupon, in April, 1775, the last colonial legislature adjourned for all time, and was replaced by successive bodies more in touch with the general sentiment of New York; that is, by various committees, by a convention to elect delegates to the Continental Congress, and then by the Provincial Congress. The lists of names in these bodies show not only how many leading men certain families contributed, but also how mixed the lineage of such families was; for among the numerous Jays, Livingstons, Ludlows, Van Cortlandts, Roosevelts, Beekmans, and others of Dutch, English, and Huguenot ancestry appear names as distinctly German, Gaelic-Scotch, and Irish, like Hoffman, Mulligan, MacDougall, Connor.[1]

To the Provincial Congress, from thenceforth on the regular governmental body of the colony, eighty-one delegates were elected, including Gouverneur Morris from the county of Westchester, and seventy were present at the first meeting, which took place on May 22 at New York. The voting in the Congress was done by counties, each being alloted a certain number of votes roughly approximating to its population.

Lexington had been fought, and the war had already begun in Massachusetts; but in New York, though it was ablaze with sympathy for the insurgent New Englanders, the royal authority was still nominally unquestioned, and there had been no collision with the British troops. Few, if any, of the people of the colony as yet aimed at more than a redress of their grievances and the restoration of their rights and liberties; they had still no idea of cutting loose from Great Britain. Even such an avowedly popular and revolutionary body as the Provincial Congress contained some few out and out tories and very many representatives of that timid, wavering class, which always halts midway in any course of action, and is ever prone to adopt half-measures,—a class which in any crisis works quite as much harm as the actively vicious, and is almost as much hated and even more despised by the energetic men of strong convictions. The timid good are never an element of strength in a community; but they have always been well represented in New York. During the Revolutionary War it is not probable that much more than half of her people were ever in really hearty and active sympathy with the patriots.

Morris at once took a prominent place in the Congress, and he showed the national bent of his mind when he seconded a resolution to the effect that implicit obedience ought to be rendered to the Continental Congress in all matters pertaining to the general regulation of the associated colonies. The Assembly, however, was by no means certain how far it would be well to go; and the majority declined either to approve or disapprove of the proceedings of the late Continental Congress. They agreed to subscribe to the association, and recommended the same course to their constituents; but added that they did not believe the latter should be forced to do so.

Still, with all their doubting and faint-heartedness, they did set about preparing for resistance, and for at least the possibility of concerted action with the other colonies. The first step, of course, was to provide for raising funds; this was considered by a committee of which Morris was a member, and he prepared and drew up their report. In the state of public feeling, which was nearly a unit against "taxation without representation" abroad, but was the reverse of unanimous as to submitting even to taxation with representation at home, it was impossible to raise money by the ordinary method; indeed, though the mass of active patriots were willing to sacrifice much, perhaps all, for the cause, yet there were quite as many citizens whose patriotism was lukewarm enough already, and could not stand any additional chilling. Such people are always willing to face what may be called a staved-off sacrifice, however; and promises to pay in the future what they can, but will not pay in the present, come under this head. Besides, there would have been other difficulties in the way, and in fact it was impossible to raise the amount needed by direct taxation. Accordingly Morris, in his report on behalf of the committee, recommended an issue of paper money, and advised that this should not be done by the colony itself, but that the Continental Congress should strike the whole sum needed, and apportion the several shares to the different colonies, each of them being bound to discharge its own particular part, and all together to be liable for whatever any particular colony was unable to pay. This plan secured a wide credit and circulation to the currency, and, what was equally desirable, created throughout the colonies a common interest and common responsibility on a most important point, and greatly strengthened the bonds of their union. Morris even thus early showed the breadth of his far-seeing patriotism; he was emphatically an American first, a New Yorker next; the whole tone of his mind was thoroughly national. He took the chief part in urging the adoption of the report, and made a most telling speech in its favor before the Assembly, a mixed audience of the prominent men of the colony being also present. The report was adopted and forwarded to the Continental Congress; Morris was felt on all sides to have already taken his place among the leaders, and from thenceforth he was placed on almost every important committee of the Provincial Congress.

This body kept on its course, corresponding with the other colonies, exchanging thinly veiled threats with the Johnsons, the powerful Tory over-lords of the upper Mohawk, and preparing rather feebly for defense, being hampered by a total lack of funds or credit until the continental currency was coined. But they especially busied themselves with a plan of reconciliation with England; and in fact were so very cautions and moderate as to be reproached by their chosen agent in England, Edmund Burke, for their "scrupulous timidity." The Congress, by the way, showed some symptoms of an advance in toleration, at least so far as the Protestant sects went; for it was opened and closed by ministers of the Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, and other sects, each in turn; but, as will shortly be seen, the feeling against Catholics was quite as narrow-minded and intense as ever. This was natural enough in colonial days, when Protestantism and national patriotism were almost interchangeable terms; for the hereditary and embittered foes of the Americans, the French and Spaniards, were all Catholics, and even many of the Indians were of the same faith; and undoubtedly the wonderful increase in the spirit of tolerance shown after the Revolution was due in part to the change of the Catholic French into our allies, and of the Protestant English into our most active foes. It must be remembered, however, that the Catholic gentry of Maryland played the same part in the Revolution that their Protestant neighbors did. One of the famous Carroll family was among the signers of the Declaration of Independence; and on the other hand, one of the Cliftons was a noted loyalist leader.

Morris took a prominent part, both in and out of committee, in trying to shape the plan of reconciliation, although utterly disapproving of many of the ways in which the subject was handled; for he had all the contempt natural to most young men of brains, decision, and fiery temper, for his timid, short-sighted, and prolix colleagues. The report was not all to his taste in the final shape in which it was adopted. It consisted of a series of articles recommending the repeal of the obnoxious statutes of the Imperial Parliament, the regulation of trade for the benefit of the whole empire, the establishment of triennial colonial legislatures, and also asserting the right of the colonies to manage their internal polity to suit themselves, and their willingness to do their part, according to their capacities, for the general defense of the empire. The eighth article contained a denial of the right of "Great Britain, or any other earthly legislature or tribunal, to interfere in the ecclesiastical or religious concerns of the colonies," together with a "protest against the indulgence and establishment of popery all along their interior confines;" this being called forth by what was known as the "Quebec Bill," whereby the British Parliament had recently granted extraordinary powers and privileges to the Canadian clergy, with the obvious purpose of conciliating that powerful priesthood, and thereby converting—as was actually done—the recently conquered French of the St. Lawrence valley into efficient allies of the British government against the old Protestant colonies.

This eighth article was ridiculous, and was especially objected to by Morris. In one of his vigorous, deliciously fresh, and humorous letters, dated June 30, 1775, and addressed to John Jay, then in the Continental Congress, he writes:—

The foolish religious business I opposed until I was weary; it was carried by a very small majority, and my dissent entered.... The article about religion is most arrant nonsense, and would do as well in a high Dutch Bible as the place it now stands in.

I drew a long report for our committee, to which they could make no objections excepting that none of them could understand it.... I was pleased at the rejection, because, as I observed to you before, I think the question ought to be simplified.

I address this letter to you, but I shall be glad [if] you will read it to Livingstone, for I intend it for both of you; make my compliments to him, and tell him that I shall write to him when I have time to write a good letter—this is a damned bad one, and would not exist, if I did not think it a duty to myself to show my friends that I had no hand in that foolish religious business, I am, as you well know, your friend, etc.

Morris did not believe in a colonial assembly making overtures for a reconciliation, as he thought this was the province of the Continental Congress. The majority was against him, but he was a clever politician and parliamentary tactician, as well as a great statesman, and he fairly outwitted and hoodwinked his opponents, persuading them finally to adopt the report in the form of a mere expression of opinions to be sent to their congressional delegates, with a prayer that the latter would "use every effort for the compromising of this unnatural quarrel between the parent and child." In this shape it was forwarded to the delegates, who answered that they would do all in their power to compromise the quarrel, and added a postscript, written by Jay himself, to the effect that they deemed it better not to make any mention of the religious article before the Congress, as they thought it wise to bury "all disputes on ecclesiastical points, which have for ages had no other tendency than that of banishing peace and charity from the world."

While all this was pending, and though Bunker Hill had been fought, and the war was in full progress round Boston, New York yet maintained what might almost be described as an attitude of armed neutrality. The city was so exposed to the British war-ships in the bay, and the surrounding population was so doubtful, that the patriot party dared not take the deciding steps, especially as so many of its members still clung to the hope of a peaceful settlement. Morris announced frankly that he did not believe in breaking the peace until they were prepared to take the consequences. Indeed, when the few British troops left the city to join the garrison in Boston, he strongly opposed the action of the Sons of Liberty, who gathered hastily together, and took away the cartloads of arms and ammunition that the soldiers were taking with them. The Congress, to their honor, discouraged, to the best of their power, the rioting and mobbing of Tories in the city.

In fact, New York's position was somewhat like that of Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War. Her backwardness in definitely throwing in her lot with the revolutionists was clearly brought out by a rather ludicrous incident. General Washington, on his way to take command of the continental army round Boston, passed through New York the same day the royal governor, Tryon, arrived by sea, and the authorities were cast into a great quandary as to how they should treat two such kings of Brentford when the one rose was so small. Finally they compromised by sending a guard of honor to attend each; Montgomery and Morris, as delegates from the Assembly, received Washington and brought him before that body, which addressed him in terms of cordial congratulation, but ended with a noteworthy phrase,—that "when the contest should be decided by an accommodation with the mother country, he should deliver up the important deposit that had been confided to his hands."

These words give us the key to the situation. Even the patriots of the colony could not realize that there was no hope of an "accommodation"; and they were hampered at every step by the fear of the British frigates, and of the numerous Tories. The latter were very bold and defiant; when Congress tried to disarm them, they banded themselves together, bade the authorities defiance, and plainly held the upper land on Staten Island and in Queens County. New York furnished many excellent soldiers to the royal armies during the war, and from among her gentry came the most famous of the Tory leaders,—such as Johnson and De Lancey, whose prowess was felt by the hapless people of their own native province; De Peyster, who was Ferguson's second in command at King's Mountain; and Cruger, who, in the Carolinas, inflicted a check upon Greene himself. The Tories were helped also by the jealousy felt towards some of the other colonies, especially Connecticut, whose people took the worst possible course for the patriot side by threatening to "crush down" New York, and by finally furnishing an armed and mounted mob which rode suddenly into the city, and wrecked the office of an obnoxious loyalist printer named Rivington. This last proceeding caused great indignation, and nearly made a split in the revolutionary camp.

New York had thus some cause for her inaction; nevertheless, her lack of boldness and decision were not creditable to her, and she laid herself open to just reproaches. Nor can Morris himself be altogether freed from the charge of having clung too long to the hope of a reconciliation and to a policy of half measures. He was at that time chairman of a legislative committee which denounced any projected invasion of Canada (therein, however, only following the example of the Continental Congress), and refused to allow Ethan Allen to undertake one, as that adventurous partisan chieftain requested. But Morris was too clear-sighted to occupy a doubtful position long; and he now began to see things clearly as they were, and to push his slower or more timid associates forward along the path which they had set out to tread. He was instrumental in getting the militia into somewhat better shape; and, as it was found impossible to get enough continental money, a colonial paper currency was issued. In spite of the quarrel with Connecticut, a force from that province moved in to take part in the defense of New York.

Yet, in the main, the policy of the New York Congress still continued both weak and changeable, and no improvement was effected when it was dissolved and a second elected. To this body the loyalist counties of Richmond and Queens refused to return delegates, and throughout the colony affairs grew more disorderly, and the administration of justice came nearly to a standstill. Finding that the local congress seemed likely to remain unable to make up its mind how to act, the continental leaders at last took matters into their own hands, and marched a force into New York city early in February, 1776. This had a most bracing effect upon the provincial authorities; yet they still continued to allow the British war-ships in the bay to be supplied with provisions, nor was this attitude altered until in April Washington arrived with the main continental army. He at once insisted that a final break should be made; and about the same time the third Provincial Congress was elected. Morris, again returned for Westchester, headed the bolder spirits, who had now decided that the time had come to force their associates out of their wavering course, and to make them definitely cast in their lot with their fellow Americans. Things had come to a point which made a decision necessary; the gathering of the continental forces on Manhattan Island and the threatening attitude of the British fleet and army made it impossible for even the most timid to keep on lingering in a state of uncertainty. So the Declaration of Independence was ratified, and a state constitution organized; then the die was cast, and thereafter New York manfully stood by the result of the throw.

The two Provincial Congresses that decided on this course held their sessions in a time of the greatest tumult, when New York was threatened hourly by the British; and long before their work was ended they had hastily to leave the city. Before describing what they did, a glance should be taken at the circumstances under which it was done.

The peaceable citizens, especially those with any property, gradually left New York; and it remained in possession of the raw levies of the continentals, while Staten Island received Howe with open arms, and he was enabled without difficulty to disembark his great force of British and German mercenaries on Long Island. The much smaller, motley force opposed to him, unorganized, ill armed, and led by utterly inexperienced men, was beaten, with hardly an effort, in the battle that followed, and only escaped annihilation through the skill of Washington and the supine blundering of Howe. Then it was whipped up the Hudson and beyond the borders of the State, the broken remnant fleeing across New Jersey; and though the brilliant feats of arms at Trenton and Princeton enabled the Americans to reconquer the latter province, southern New York lay under the heel of the British till the close of the war.

Thus Morris, Jay, and the other New York leaders were obliged for six years to hold up their cause in a half-conquered State, a very large proportion of whose population was lukewarm or hostile. The odds were heavy against the patriots, because their worst foes were those of their own household. English writers are fond of insisting upon the alleged fact that America only won her freedom by the help of foreign nations. Such help was certainly most important, but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that during the first and vital years of the contest the revolutionary colonists had to struggle unaided against the British, their mercenary German and Indian allies, Tories, and even French Canadians. When the French court declared in our favor the worst was already over; Trenton had been won, Burgoyne had been captured, and Valley Forge was a memory of the past.

We did not owe our main disasters to the might of our foes, nor our final triumph to the help of our friends. It was on our own strength that we had to rely, and it was with our own folly and weakness that we had to contend. The revolutionary leaders can never be too highly praised; but taken in bulk the Americans of the last quarter of the eighteenth century do not compare to advantage with the Americans of the third quarter of the nineteenth. In our Civil War it was the people who pressed on the leaders, and won almost as much in spite of as because of them; but the leaders of the Revolution had to goad the rank and file into line. They were forced to contend not only with the active hostility of the Tories, but with the passive neutrality of the indifferent, and the selfishness, jealousy, and short-sightedness of the patriotic. Had the Americans of 1776 been united, and had they possessed the stubborn, unyielding tenacity and high devotion to an ideal shown by the North, or the heroic constancy and matchless valor shown by the South, in the Civil War, the British would have been driven off the continent before three years were over.

It is probable that nearly as great a proportion of our own people were actively or passively opposed to the formation of our union originally as were in favor of its dissolution in 1860. This was one of the main reasons why the war dragged on so long. It may be seen by the fact, among others, that when in the Carolinas and Georgia a system of relentless and undying partisan warfare not only crushed the Tories, but literally destroyed them from off the face of the earth, then the British, though still victorious in almost every pitched battle, were at once forced to abandon the field.

Another reason was the inferior military capacity of the revolutionary armies. The continental troops, when trained, were excellent; but in almost every battle they were mixed with more or less worthless militia; and of the soldiers thus obtained all that can be said is that their officers could never be sure that they would fight, nor their enemies that they would run away. The revolutionary troops certainly fell short of the standard reached by the volunteers who fought Shiloh and Gettysburg. The British rarely found them to be such foes as they afterwards met at New Orleans and Lundy's Lane. Throughout the Revolution the militia were invariably leaving their posts at critical times; they would grow either homesick or dejected, and would then go home at the very crisis of the campaign; they did not begin to show the stubbornness and resolution to "see the war through" so common among their descendants in the contending Federal and Confederate armies.

The truth is that in 1776 our main task was to shape new political conditions, and then to reconcile our people to them; whereas in 1860 we had merely to fight fiercely for the preservation of what was already ours. In the first emergency we needed statesmen, and in the second warriors; and the statesmen and warriors were forthcoming. A comparison of the men who came to the front during these, the two heroic periods of the Republic, brings out this point clearly.

Washington, alike statesman, soldier, and patriot, stands alone. He was not only the greatest American; he was also one of the greatest men the world has ever known. Few centuries and few countries have ever seen his like. Among the people of English stock there is none to compare with him, unless perhaps Cromwell, utterly different though the latter was. Of Americans, Lincoln alone is worthy to stand even second.

As for our other statesmen: Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, and their fellows, most surely stand far above Seward, Sumner, Chase, Stanton, and Stevens, great as were the services which these, and those like them, rendered.

But when we come to the fighting men, all this is reversed. As a mere military man Washington himself cannot rank with the wonderful war-chief who for four years led the Army of Northern Virginia; and the names of Washington and Greene fill up the short list of really good Revolutionary Generals. Against these the Civil War shows a roll that contains not only Lee, but also Grant and Sherman, Jackson and Johnson, Thomas, Sheridan, and Farragut,—leaders whose volunteer soldiers and sailors, at the end of their four years' service, were ready and more than able to match themselves against the best regular forces of Europe.

[CHAPTER III.]

INDEPENDENCE: FORMING THE STATE CONSTITUTION.

The third Provincial Congress, which came together in May, and before the close of its sessions was obliged to adjourn to White Plains, had to act on the Declaration of Independence, and provide for the foundation of a new state government.

Morris now put himself at the head of the patriotic party, and opened the proceedings by a long and very able speech in favor of adopting the recommendation of the Continental Congress that the colonies should form new governments. In his argument he went at length into the history and growth of the dispute with Great Britain, spoke of the efforts made in the past for reconciliation, and then showed clearly how such efforts were now not only hopeless, but also no longer compatible with the dignity and manhood of Americans. He sneered at those who argued that we ought to submit to Great Britain for the sake of the protection we got from her. "Great Britain will not fail to bring us into a war with some of her neighbors, and then protect us as a lawyer defends a suit: the client paying for it. This is quite in form, but a wise man would, I think, get rid of the suit and the lawyer together. Again, how are we to be protected? If a descent is made upon our coasts and the British navy and army are three thousand miles off, we cannot receive very great benefit from them on that occasion. If, to obviate this inconvenience, we have an army and navy constantly among us, who can say that we shall not need a little protection against them?" He went on to point out the hopelessness of expecting Great Britain to keep to any terms which would deprive Parliament of its supremacy over America: for no succeeding Parliament could be held bound by the legislation of its predecessor, and the very acknowledgment of British supremacy on the part of the Americans would bind them as subjects, and make the supremacy of Parliament legitimate. He bade his hearers remember the maxim "that no faith is to be kept with rebels;" and said: "In this case, or in any other case, if we fancy ourselves hardly dealt with, I maintain there is no redress but by arms. For it never yet was known that, when men assume power, they will part with it again, unless by compulsion."

He then took up the subject of independence, showed, for the benefit of the good but timid men who were frightened at the mere title, that, in all but name, it already existed in New York, and proved that its maintenance was essential to our well-being. "My argument, therefore, stands thus: As a connection with Great Britain cannot again exist without enslaving America, an independence is absolutely necessary. I cannot balance between the two. We run a hazard in one path, I confess; but then we are infallibly ruined if we pursue the other.... We find the characteristic marks and insignia of independence in this society, considered in itself and compared with other societies. The enumeration is conviction. Coining moneys, raising armies, regulating commerce, peace, war: all these things you are not only adepts in, but masters of. Treaties alone remain, and even those you have dabbled at. Georgia you put under the ban of empire, and received her upon repentance as a member of the flock. Canada you are now treating with. France and Spain you ought to treat with, and the rest is but a name. I believe, sir, the Romans were as much governed, or rather oppressed, by their emperors, as ever any people were by their king. But emperor was more agreeable to their ears than king. [So] some, nay, many, persons in America dislike the word independence."

He then went on to show how independence would work well alike for our peace, liberty, and security. Considering the first, he laughed at the apprehensions expressed by some that the moment America was independent all the powers of Europe would pounce down on her, to parcel out the country among themselves; and showed clearly that to a European power any war of conquest in America would be "tedious, expensive, uncertain, and ruinous," and that none of the country could be kept even if it should come to pass that some little portion of it were conquered. "But I cannot think it will ever come to this. For when I turn my eyes to the means of defense, I find them amply sufficient. We have all heard that in the last war America was conquered in Germany. I hold the converse of this to be true, namely, that in and by America his Majesty's German dominions were secured.... I expect a full and lasting defense against any and every part of the earth." After thus treating of the advantages to be hoped for on the score of peace, he turns attention "to a question of infinitely greater importance, namely, the liberty of this country;" and afterwards passes to the matter of security, which, "so long as the system of laws by which we are now governed shall prevail, is amply provided for in every separate colony. There may indeed arise an objection because some gentlemen suppose that the different colonies will carry on a sort of land piracy against one another. But how this can possibly happen when the idea of separate colonies no longer exists I cannot for my soul comprehend. That something very like this has already been done I shall not deny, but the reason is as evident as the fact. We never yet had a government in this country of sufficient energy to restrain the lawless and indigent. Whenever a form of government is established which deserves the name, these insurrections must cease. But who is the man so hardy as to affirm that they will not grow with our growth, while on every occasion we must resort to an English judicature to terminate differences which the maxims of policy will teach them to leave undetermined? By degrees we are getting beyond the utmost pale of English government. Settlements are forming to the westward of us, whose inhabitants acknowledge no authority but their own." In one sentence he showed rather a change of heart, as regarded his former aristocratic leanings; for he reproached those who were "apprehensive of losing a little consequence and importance by living in a country where all are on an equal footing," and predicted that we should "cause all nations to resort hither as an asylum from oppression."

The speech was remarkable for its incisive directness and boldness, for the exact clearness with which it portrayed things as they were, for the broad sense of American nationality that it displayed, and for the accurate forecasts that it contained as to our future course in certain particulars,—such as freedom from European wars and entanglements, a strong but purely defensive foreign policy, the encouragement of the growth of the West, while keeping it united to us, and the throwing open our doors to the oppressed from abroad.

Soon after the delivery of this speech news came that the Declaration of Independence had been adopted by the Continental Congress; and Jay, one of the New York delegates to this body, and also a member of the Provincial Congress, drew up for the latter a resolution emphatically indorsing the declaration, which was at once adopted without a dissenting voice. At the same time the Provincial Congress changed its name to that of "The Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York."

These last acts were done by a body that had been elected, with increased power, to succeed the third Provincial Congress and provide for a new constitution. Just before this, Morris had been sent to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to complain that the troops from New England were paid more largely than those from the other colonies; a wrong which was at once redressed, the wages of the latter being raised, and Morris returned to New York in triumph after only a week's absence.

The Constitutional Convention of New York led a most checkered life; for the victorious British chevied it up and down the State, hunting it in turn from every small town in which it thought to have found a peaceful haven of refuge. At last it rested in Fiskhill, such an out-of-the-way place as to be free from danger. The members were obliged to go armed, so as to protect themselves from stray marauding parties; and the number of delegates in attendance alternately dwindled and swelled in a wonderful manner, now resolving themselves into a committee of safety, and again resuming their functions as members of the convention.

The most important duties of the convention were intrusted to two committees. Of the first, which was to draft a plan for the Constitution, Morris, Jay, and Livingston were the three leading members, upon whom all the work fell; of the second, which was to devise means for the establishment of a state fund, Morris was the chairman and moving spirit.

He was also chairman of a committee which was appointed to look after the Tories, and prevent them from joining together and rising; and so numerous were they that the jails were soon choked with those of their number who, on account of their prominence or bitterness, were most obnoxious to the patriots. Also a partial system of confiscation of Tory estates was begun. So greatly were the Tories feared and hated, and so determined were the attempts to deprive them of even the shadow of a chance to do harm, by so much as a word, that the convention sent a memorial, drafted by Morris, to the Continental Congress, in which they made the very futile suggestion that it should take "some measures for expunging from the Book of Common Prayer such parts, and discontinuing in the congregations of all other denominations all such prayers, as interfere with the interests of the American cause." The resolution was not acted on; but another part of the memorial shows how the Church of England men were standing by the mother country, for it goes on to recite that "the enemies of America have taken great pains to insinuate into the minds of the Episcopalians that the church is in danger. We could wish the Congress would pass some resolve to quiet their fears, and we are confident that it would do essential service to the cause of America, at least in this State."

Morris's position in regard to the Tories was a peculiarly hard one, because among their number were many of his own relatives, including his elder brother. The family house, where his mother resided, was within the British lines; and not only did he feel the disapproval of such of his people as were loyalists, on the one side, but, on the other, his letters to his family caused him to be regarded with suspicion by the baser spirits in the American party. About this time one of his sisters died; the letter he then wrote to his mother is in the usual formal style of the time, yet it shows marks of deep feeling, and he takes occasion, while admitting that the result of the war was uncertain, to avow, with a sternness unusual to him, his intention to face all things rather than abandon the patriot cause. "The worst that can happen is to fall on the last bleak mountain of America; and he who dies there in defense of the injured rights of mankind is happier than his conqueror, more beloved by mankind, more applauded by his own heart." The letter closes by a characteristic touch, when he sends his love to "such as deserve it. The number is not great."

The committee on the constitution was not ready to report until March, 1777. Then the convention devoted itself solely to the consideration of the report, which, after several weeks' discussion, was adopted with very little change. Jay and Morris led the debate before the convention, as they had done previously in committee. There was perfect agreement upon the general principles. Freehold suffrage was adopted, and a majority of the freeholders of the State were thus the ultimate governing power. The executive, judicial, and legislative powers were separated sharply, as was done in the other States, and later on in the Federal Constitution as well. The legislative body was divided into two chambers.

It was over the executive branch that the main contest arose. It was conceded that this should be nominally single headed; that is, that there should be a governor. But the members generally could not realize how different was a governor elected by the people and responsible to them, from one appointed by an alien and higher power to rule over them, as in the colonial days. The remembrance of the contests with the royal governors was still fresh; and the mere name of governor frightened them. They had the same illogical fear of the executive that the demagogues of to-day (and some honest but stupid people, as well) profess to feel for a standing army. Men often let the dread of the shadow of a dead wrong frighten them into courting a living evil.

Morris himself was wonderfully clear-sighted and cool-headed. He did not let the memory of the wrong-doing of the royal governors blind him; he saw that the trouble with them lay, not in the power that they held, but in the source from which that power came. Once the source was changed, the power was an advantage, not a harm, to the State. Yet few or none of his companions could see this; and they nervously strove to save their new State from the danger of executive usurpation by trying to make the executive practically a board of men instead of one man, and by crippling it so as to make it ineffective for good, while at the same time dividing the responsibility, so that no one need be afraid to do evil. Above all, they were anxious to take away from the governor the appointment of the military and civil servants of the State.

Morris had persuaded the committee to leave the appointment of these officials to the governor, the legislature retaining the power of confirmation or rejection; but the convention, under the lead of Jay, rejected this proposition, and after some discussion adopted in its place the cumbrous and foolish plan of a "council of appointment," to consist of the governor and several senators. As might have been expected, this artificial body worked nothing but harm, and became simply a peculiarly odious political machine.

Again, Morris advocated giving the governor a qualified veto over the acts passed by the legislature; but instead of such a simple and straightforward method of legislative revision, the convention saw fit to adopt a companion piece of foolishness to the council of appointment, in the shape of the equally complicated and anomalous council of revision, consisting of the governor, chancellor, and judges of the supreme court, by whom all the acts of the legislature had to be revised before they could become laws. It is marvelous that these two bodies should have lived on so long as they did—over forty years.

The convention did one most praiseworthy thing in deciding in favor of complete religious toleration. This seems natural enough now; but at that time there was hardly a European state that practiced it. Great Britain harassed her Catholic subjects in a hundred different ways, while in France Protestants were treated far worse, and, in fact, could scarcely be regarded as having any legal standing whatever. On no other one point do the statesmen of the Revolution show to more marked advantage when compared with their European compeers than in this of complete religious toleration. Their position was taken, too, simply because they deemed it to be the right and proper one; they had nothing to fear or hope from Catholics, and their own interests were in no wise advanced by what they did in the matter.

But in the New York convention toleration was not obtained without a fight. There always rankled in Jay's mind the memory of the terrible cruelty wrought by Catholics on his Huguenot forefathers; and he introduced into the article on toleration an appendix, which discriminated against the adherents of the Church of Rome, denying them the rights of citizenship until they should solemnly swear before the supreme court, first, "that they verily believe in their conscience, that no pope, priest, or foreign authority on earth has power to absolve the subjects of this State from their allegiance to the same;" and, second, "that they renounce ... the dangerous and damnable doctrine that the Pope or any other earthly authority has power to absolve men from sins described in and prohibited by the Holy Gospel." This second point, however important, was of purely theological interest, and had absolutely nothing to do with the state constitution; as to the first proposition, it might have been proper enough had there been the least chance of a conflict between the Pope, either in his temporal or his ecclesiastical capacity, and the United States; but as there was no possibility of such a conflict arising, and as, if it did arise, there would not be the slightest danger of the United States receiving any damage, to put the sentence in would have been not only useless, but exceedingly foolish and harmful, on account of the intense irritation it would have excited.

The whole clause was rejected by a two to one vote, and then all the good that it aimed at was accomplished by the adoption, on the motion of Morris, of a proviso that the toleration granted should not be held to "justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of this State." This proviso of Morris remains in the Constitution to this day; and thus, while absolute religious liberty is guaranteed, the State reserves to itself full right of protection, if necessary, against the adherents of any religious body, foreign or domestic, if they menace the public safety.

On a question even more important than religious toleration, namely, the abolition of domestic slavery, Jay and Morris fought side by side; but though the more enlightened of their fellow-members went with them, they were a little too much in advance of the age, and failed. They made every effort to have a clause introduced into the constitution recommending to the future legislature of New York to abolish slavery as soon as it could be done consistently with the public safety and the rights of property; "so that in future ages every human being who breathes the air of this State shall enjoy the privileges of a free man." Although they failed in their immediate purpose, yet they had much hearty support, and by the bold stand they took and the high ground they occupied they undoubtedly brought nearer the period when the abolition of slavery in New York became practicable.

The Constitution was finally adopted by the convention almost unanimously, and went into effect forthwith, as there was no ratification by the people at large.

As soon as it was adopted a committee, which included Morris, Jay, and Livingston, was appointed to start and organize the new government. The courts of justice were speedily put in running order, and thus one of the most crying evils that affected the State was remedied. A council of safety of fifteen members—again including Morris—was established to act as the provincial government, until the regular legislature should convene. An election for governor was also held almost immediately, and Clinton was chosen. He was then serving in the field, where he had done good work, and, together with his brother James, had fought with the stubborn valor that seems to go with Anglo-Irish blood. He did not give up his command until several months after he was elected, although meanwhile keeping up constant communication with the council of safety, through whom he acted in matters of state.

Meanwhile Burgoyne, with his eight or nine thousand troops, excellently drilled British and Hessians, assisted by Tories, Canadians, and Indians, had crossed the northern frontier, and was moving down towards the heart of the already disorganized State, exciting the wildest panic and confusion. The council of safety hardly knew how to act, and finally sent a committee of two, Morris being one, to the headquarters of General Schuyler, who had the supreme command over all the troops in the northern part of New York.

On Morris's arrival he found affairs at a very low ebb, and at once wrote to describe this condition to the president of the council of safety. Burgoyne's army had come steadily on. He first destroyed Arnold's flotilla on Lake Champlain. Then he captured the forts along the Lakes, and utterly wrecked the division of the American army that had been told off to defend them, under the very unfortunate General St. Clair. He was now advancing through the great reaches of wooded wilderness towards the head of the Hudson. Schuyler, a general of fair capacity, was doing what he could to hold the enemy back; but his one efficient supporter was the wilderness itself, through which the British army stumbled painfully along. Schuyler had in all less than five thousand men, half of them short service continental troops, the other half militia. The farmers would not turn out until after harvest home; all the bodies of militia, especially those from New England, were very insubordinate and of most fickle temper, and could not be depended on for any sustained contest; as an example, Stark, under whose nominal command the northern New Engenders won the battle of Bennington, actually marched off his whole force the day before the battle of Stillwater, alleging the expiration of the term of service of his soldiers as an excuse for what looked like gross treachery or cowardice, but was probably merely sheer selfish wrong-headedness and mean jealousy. Along the Mohawk valley the dismay was extreme, and the militia could not be got out at all. Jay was so angered by the abject terror in this quarter that he advised leaving the inhabitants to shift for themselves; sound advice, too, for when the pinch came and they were absolutely forced to take arms, they did very fairly at Oriskany. It was even feared that the settlers of the region which afterwards became Vermont would go over to the enemy; still, time and space were in our favor, and Morris was quite right when he said in his first letter (dated July 16, 1777): "Upon the whole I think we shall do very well, but this opinion is founded merely upon the barriers which nature has raised against all access from the northward." As he said of himself, he was "a good guesser."

He outlined the plan which he thought the Americans should follow. This was to harass the British in every way, without risking a stand-up fight, while laying waste the country through which they were to pass so as to render it impossible for an army to subsist on it. For the militia he had the most hearty contempt, writing: "Three hundred of the militia of Massachusetts Bay went off this morning, in spite of the opposition—we should have said, entreaties—of their officers. All the militia on the ground are so heartily tired, and so extremely desirous of getting home, that it is more than probable that none of them will remain here ten days longer. One half was discharged two days ago, to silence, if possible, their clamor; and the remainder, officers excepted, will soon discharge themselves."

The council of safety grew so nervous over the outlook that their letters became fairly querulous; and they not unnaturally asked Morris to include in his letters some paragraphs that could be given to the public. To this that rather quick-tempered gentleman took exceptions, and replied caustically in his next letter, the opening paragraph being: "We have received yours of the 19th, which has afforded us great pleasure, since we are enabled in some measure to collect from it our errand to the northward, one of the most important objects of our journey being, in the opinion of your honorable body, to write the news," and he closes by stating that he shall come back to wait upon them, and learn their pleasure, at once.

Meanwhile the repeated disasters in the north had occasioned much clamor against Schuyler, who, if not a brilliant general, had still done what he could in very trying circumstances, and was in no wise responsible for the various mishaps that had occurred. The New England members of Congress, always jealous of New York, took advantage of this to begin intriguing against him, under the lead of Roger Sherman and others, and finally brought about his replacement by Gates, a much inferior man, with no capacity whatever for command. Morris and Jay both took up Schuyler's cause very warmly, seeing clearly, in the first place, that the disasters were far from ruinous, and that a favorable outcome was probable; and, in the second place, that it was the people themselves who were to blame and not Schuyler. They went on to Philadelphia to speak for him, but they arrived just a day too late, Gates having been appointed twenty-four hours previous to their coming.

When Gates reached his army the luck had already begun to turn. Burgoyne's outlying parties had been destroyed, his Indians and Canadians had left him, he had been disappointed in his hopes of a Tory uprising in his favor, and, hampered by his baggage-train, he had been brought almost to a stand-still in the tangled wilds through which he had slowly ploughed his way. Schuyler had done what he could to hinder the foe's progress, and had kept his own army together as a rallying point for the militia, who, having gathered in their harvests, and being inspirited by the outcome of the fights at Oriskany and Bennington, flocked in by hundreds to the American standard. Gates himself did literally nothing; he rather hindered his men than otherwise; and the latter were turbulent and prone to disobey orders. But they were now in fine feather for fighting, and there were plenty of them. So Gates merely sat still, and the levy of backwoods farmers, all good individual fighters, and with some excellent brigade and regimental commanders, such as Arnold and Morgan, fairly mobbed to death the smaller number of dispirited and poorly led regulars against whom they were pitted. When the latter were at last fought out and forced to give in, Gates allowed them much better terms than he should have done; and the Continental Congress, to its shame, snatched at a technicality, under cover of which to break the faith plighted through its general, and to avoid fulfilling the conditions to which he had so foolishly agreed.

Morris and Jay, though unable to secure the retention of Schuyler, had, nevertheless, by their representations while at Philadelphia, prevailed on the authorities largely to reinforce the army which was about to be put under Gates. Morris was very angry at the intrigue by which the latter had been given the command; but what he was especially aiming at was the success of the cause, not the advancement of his friends. Once Gates was appointed he did all in his power to strengthen him, and, with his usual clear-sightedness, he predicted his ultimate success.

Schuyler was a man of high character and public spirit, and he behaved really nobly in the midst of his disappointment; his conduct throughout affording a very striking contrast to that of McClellan, under somewhat similar circumstances in the Civil War. Morris wrote him, sympathizing with him, and asking him to sink all personal feeling and devote his energies to the common weal of the country while out of power just as strenuously as he had done when in command. Schuyler responded that he should continue to serve his country as zealously as before, and he made his words good; but Gates was jealous of the better man whose downfall he had been the instrument of accomplishing, and declined to profit by his help.

In a later letter to Schuyler, written September 18, 1777, Morris praised the latter very warmly for the way he had behaved, and commented roughly on Gates' littleness of spirit. He considered that with such a commander there was nothing to be hoped for from skillful management, and that Burgoyne would have to be simply tired out. Alluding to a rumor that the Indians were about to take up the hatchet for us, he wrote, in the humorous vein he adopted so often in dealing even with the most pressing matters: "If this be true, it would be infinitely better to wear away the enemy's army by a scrupulous and polite attention, than to violate the rules of decorum and the laws of hospitality by making an attack upon strangers in our own country!" He gave Schuyler the news of Washington's defeat at the battle of Brandywine, and foretold the probable loss of Philadelphia and a consequent winter campaign.

In ending he gave a thoroughly characteristic sketch of the occupations of himself and his colleagues. "The chief justice (Jay) is gone to fetch his wife. The chancellor (Livingston) is solacing himself with his wife, his farm, and his imagination. Our senate is doing, I know not what. In assembly we wrangle long to little purpose.... We have some principles of fermentation which must, if it be possible, evaporate before business is entered upon."

[CHAPTER IV.]

IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

At the end of 1777, while still but twenty-five years old, Morris was elected to the Continental Congress, and took his seat in that body at Yorktown in the following January.

He was immediately appointed as one of a committee of five members to go to Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge and examine into the condition of the continental troops.

The dreadful suffering of the American army in this winter camp was such that its memory has literally eaten its way into the hearts of our people, and it comes before our minds with a vividness that dims the remembrance of any other disaster. Washington's gaunt, half-starved continentals, shoeless and ragged, shivered in their crazy huts, worn out by want and illness, and by the bitter cold; while the members of the Continental Congress not only failed to support them in the present, but even grudged them the poor gift of a promise of half-pay in the future. Some of the delegates, headed by Samuel Adams, were actually caballing against the great chief himself, the one hope of America. Meanwhile the States looked askance at each other, and each sunk into supine indifference when its own borders were for the moment left unthreatened by the foe. Throughout the Revolutionary War our people hardly once pulled with a will together; although almost every locality in turn, on some one occasion, varied its lethargy by a spasm of terrible energy. Yet, again, it must be remembered that we were never more to be dreaded than when our last hope seemed gone; and if the people were unwilling to show the wisdom and self-sacrifice that would have insured success, they were equally determined under no circumstances whatever to acknowledge final defeat.

To Jay, with whom he was always intimate, Morris wrote in strong terms from Valley Forge, painting things as they were, but without a shadow of doubt or distrust; for he by this time saw clearly enough that in American warfare the darkest hour was often followed close indeed by dawn. "The skeleton of an army presents itself to our eyes in a naked, starving condition, out of health, out of spirits. But I have seen Fort George in 1777." The last sentence refers to what he saw of Schuyler's forces, when affairs in New York State were at the blackest, just before the tide began to turn against Burgoyne. He then went on to beseech Jay to exert himself to the utmost on the great question of taxation, the most vital of all. Morris himself was so good a financier that revolutionary financial economics drove him almost wild. The Continental Congress, of which he had just become a member, he did not esteem very highly, and dismissed it, as well as the currency, as having "both depreciated." The State of Pennsylvania, he remarked, was "sick unto death;" and added that "Sir William [the British general] would prove a most damnable physician."

Most wisely, in examining and reporting, he paid heed almost exclusively to Washington's recommendations, and the plan he and his colleagues produced was little more than an enlargement of the general's suggestions as to filling out the regiments, regulating rank, modeling the various departments, etc. In fact, Morris now devoted himself to securing the approval of Congress for Washington's various plans.

In urging one of the most important of these he encountered very determined opposition. Washington was particularly desirous of securing a permanent provision for the officers by the establishment of a system of half-pay, stating that without some such arrangement he saw no hope whatever for the salvation of the cause; for as things then were the officers were leaving day by day; and of those who went home on furlough to the Eastern and Southern States, many, instead of returning, went into some lucrative employment. This fact, by the way, while showing the difficulties with which Washington had to deal, and therefore his greatness, since he successfully dealt with them, at the same time puts the officers of the Revolution in no very favorable light as compared with their descendants at the time of the great rebellion; and the Continental Congress makes a still worse showing.

When Morris tried to push through a measure providing for half-pay for life he was fought, tooth and nail, by many of his colleagues, including, to their lasting discredit be it said, every delegate from New England. The folly of these ultra-democratic delegates almost passes belief. They seemed incapable of learning how the fight for liberty should be made. Their leaders, like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, did admirable service in exciting the Americans to make the struggle; but once it was begun, their function ended, and from thence onward they hampered almost as much as they helped the patriot cause. New England, too, had passed through the period when its patriotic fervor was at white heat. It still remained as resolute as ever; and if the danger had been once more brought home to its very door-sill, then it would have risen again as it had risen before; but without the spur of an immediate necessity it moved but sluggishly.

The New Englanders were joined by the South Carolina delegates. Morris was backed by the members from New York, Virginia, and the other States, and he won the victory, but not without being obliged to accept amendments that took away some of the good of the measure. Half-pay was granted, but it was only to last for seven years after the close of the war; and the paltry bounty of eighty dollars was to be given to every soldier who served out his time to the end.

At the same period Morris was engaged on numerous other committees, dealing chiefly with the finances, or with the remedy of abuses that had crept into the administration of the army. In one of his reports he exposed thoroughly the frightful waste in the purchase and distribution of supplies, and, what was much worse, the accompanying frauds. These frauds had become a most serious evil; Jay, in one of his letters to Morris, had already urgently requested him to turn his attention especially to stopping the officers, in particular those of the staff, from themselves engaging in trade, on account of the jobbing and swindling that it produced. The shoddy contractors of the Civil War had plenty of predecessors in the Revolution.

When these events occurred, in the spring of 1778, it was already three years after the fight at Lexington; certainly, the continental armies of that time do not compare favorably, even taking all difficulties into account, with the Confederate forces which, in 1864, three years after the fall of Sumter, fronted Grant and Sherman. The men of the Revolution failed to show the capacity to organize for fighting purposes, and the ability to bend all energies towards the attainment of a given end, which their great-grandsons of the Civil War, both at the North and the South, possessed. Yet, after all, their very follies sprang from their virtues, from their inborn love of freedom, and their impatience of the control of outsiders. So fierce had they been in their opposition to the rule of foreigners that they were now hardly willing to submit to being ruled by themselves; they had seen power so abused that they feared its very use; they were anxious to assert their independence of all mankind, even of each other. Stubborn, honest, and fearless, they were taught with difficulty, and only by the grinding logic of an imperious necessity, that it was no surrender of their freedom to submit to rulers chosen by themselves, through whom alone that freedom could be won. They had not yet learned that right could be enforced only by might, that union was to the full as important as liberty, because it was the prerequisite condition for the establishment and preservation of liberty.

But if the Americans of the Revolution were not perfect, how their faults dwindle when we stand them side by side with their European compeers! What European nation then brought forth rulers as wise and pure as our statesmen, or masses as free and self-respecting as our people? There was far more swindling, jobbing, cheating, and stealing in the English army than in ours; the British king and his ministers need no criticism; and the outcome of the war proves that their nation as a whole was less resolute than our own. As for the other European powers, the faults of our leaders sink out of sight when matched against the ferocious frivolity of the French noblesse, or the ignoble, sordid, bloody baseness of those swinish German kinglets who let out their subjects to do hired murder, and battened on the blood and sweat of the wretched beings under them, until the whirlwind of the French Revolution swept their carcasses from off the world they cumbered.

We must needs give all honor to the men who founded our Commonwealth; only in so doing let us remember that they brought into being a government under which their children were to grow better and not worse.

Washington at once recognized in Morris a man whom he could trust in every way, and on whose help he could rely in other matters besides getting his officers half-pay. The young New Yorker was one of the great Virginian's warmest supporters in Congress, and took the lead in championing his cause at every turn. He was the leader in putting down intrigues like that of the French-Irish adventurer Conway, his ready tongue and knowledge of parliamentary tactics, no less than his ability, rendering him the especial dread and dislike of the anti-Washington faction.

Washington wrote to Morris very freely, and in one of his letters complained of the conduct of some of the officers who wished to resign when affairs looked dark and to be reinstated as soon as they brightened a little. Morris replied with one of his bright caustic letters, sparing his associates very little, their pompous tediousness and hesitation being peculiarly galling to a man so far-seeing and so prompt to make up his mind. He wrote: "We are going on with the regimental arrangements as fast as possible, and I think the day begins to appear with respect to that business. Had our Saviour addressed a chapter to the rulers of mankind, as he did many to the subjects, I am persuaded his good sense would have dictated this text: Be not wise overmuch. Had the several members who compose our multifarious body been only wise enough, our business would long since have been completed. But our superior abilities, or the desire of appearing to possess them, lead us to such exquisite tediousness of debate that the most precious moments pass unheeded away.... As to what you mention of the extraordinary demeanor of some gentlemen, I cannot but agree with you that such conduct is not the most honorable. But, on the other hand, you must allow that it is the most safe and certainly you are not to learn that, however ignorant of that happy art in your own person, the bulk of us bipeds know well how to balance solid pudding against empty praise. There are other things, my dear sir, beside virtue, which are their own reward."

Washington chose Morris as his confidential friend and agent to bring privately before Congress a matter in reference to which he did not consider it politic to write publicly. He was at that time annoyed beyond measure by the shoals of foreign officers who were seeking employment in the army, and he wished Congress to stop giving them admission to the service. These foreign officers were sometimes honorable men, but more often adventurers; with two or three striking exceptions they failed to do as well as officers of native birth; and, as later in the Civil War, so in the Revolution, it appeared that Americans could be best commanded by Americans. Washington had the greatest dislike for these adventurers, stigmatizing them as "men who in the first instance tell you that they wish for nothing more than the honor of serving in so glorious a cause as volunteers, the next day solicit rank without pay, the day following want money advanced to them, and in the course of a week want further promotion, and are not satisfied with anything you can do for them." He ended by writing: "I do most devoutly wish that we had not a single foreigner among us, except the Marquis de Lafayette, who acts upon very different principles from those which govern the rest." To Lafayette, indeed, America owes as much as to any of her own children, for his devotion to us was as disinterested and sincere as it was effective; and it is a pleasant thing to remember that we, in our turn, not only repaid him materially, but, what he valued far more, that our whole people yielded him all his life long the most loving homage a man could receive. No man ever kept pleasanter relations with a people he had helped than Lafayette did with us.

Morris replied to Washington that he would do all in his power to aid him. Meanwhile he had also contracted a very warm friendship for Greene, then newly appointed quartermaster general of the army, and proved a most useful ally, both in and out of Congress, in helping the general to get his department in good running order, and in extricating it from the frightful confusion in which it had previously been plunged.

He also specially devoted himself at this time to an investigation of the finances, which were in a dreadful condition; and by the ability with which he performed his very varied duties he acquired such prominence that he was given the chairmanship of the most important of all the congressional committees. This was the committee to which was confided the task of conferring with the British commissioners, who had been sent over, in the spring of 1778, to treat with the Americans, in accordance with the terms of what were known as Lord North's conciliatory bills. These bills were two in number, the first giving up the right of taxation, about which the quarrel had originally arisen, and the second authorizing the commissioners to treat with the revolted colonies on all questions in dispute. They were introduced in Parliament on account of the little headway made by the British in subduing their former subjects, and were pressed hastily through because of the fear of an American alliance with France, which was then, indeed, almost concluded.

Three years before, these bills would have achieved their end; but now they came by just that much time too late. The embittered warfare had lasted long enough entirely to destroy the old friendly feelings; and the Americans having once tasted the "perilous pleasure" of freedom, having once stretched out their arms and stood before the world's eyes as their own masters, it was certain that they would never forego their liberty, no matter with what danger it was fraught, no matter how light the yoke, or how kindly the bondage, by which it was to be replaced.

Two days after the bills were received, Morris drew up and presented his report, which was unanimously adopted by Congress. Its tenor can be gathered from its summing up, which declared that the indispensable preliminaries to any treaty would have to be the withdrawal of all the British fleets and armies, and the acknowledgment of the independence of the United States; and it closed by calling on the several States to furnish without delay their quotas of troops for the coming campaign.

This decisive stand was taken when America was still without allies in the contest; but ten days afterwards messengers came to Congress, bearing copies of the treaty with France. It was ratified forthwith, and again Morris was appointed chairman of a committee, this time to issue an address on the subject to the American people at large. He penned this address himself, explaining fully the character of the crisis, and going briefly over the events that had led to it; and shortly afterwards he drew up, on behalf of Congress, a sketch of all the proceedings in reference to the British commissioners, under the title of "Observations on the American Revolution," giving therein a masterly outline not only of the doings of Congress in the particular matter under consideration, but also an account of the causes of the war, of the efforts of the Americans to maintain peace, and of the chief events that had taken place, as well as a comparison between the contrasting motives and aims of the contestants.

Morris was one of the committee appointed to receive the French minister, M. Gerard. Immediately afterwards he was also selected by Congress to draft the instructions which were to be sent to Franklin, the American minister at the court of Versailles. As a token of the closeness of our relations with France, he was requested to show these instructions to M. Gerard, which he accordingly did; and some interesting features of the conversation between the two men have been preserved for us in the despatches of Gerard to the French court. The Americans were always anxious to undertake the conquest of Canada, although Washington did not believe the scheme feasible; and the French strongly, although secretly, opposed it, as it was their policy from the beginning that Canada should remain English. Naturally the French did not wish to see America transformed into a conquering power, a menace to themselves and to the Spaniards as well as to the English; nor can they be criticised for feeling in this way, or taunted with acting only from motives of self-interest. It is doubtless true that their purposes in going into the war were mixed; they unquestionably wished to benefit themselves, and to hurt their old and successful rival; but it is equally unquestionable that they were also moved by a generous spirit of sympathy and admiration for the struggling colonists. It would, however, have been folly to let this sympathy blind them to the consequences that might ensue to all Europeans having possessions in America, if the Americans should become not only independent, but also aggressive; and it was too much to expect them to be so far-sighted as to see that, once independent, it was against the very nature of things that the Americans should not be aggressive, and impossible that they should be aught but powerful and positive instruments, both in their own persons and by their example, in freeing the whole western continent from European control.

Accordingly M. Gerard endeavored, though without success, to prevail on Morris not to mention the question of an invasion of Canada in the instructions to Franklin. He also warned the American of the danger of alarming Spain by manifesting a wish to encroach on its territory in the Mississippi valley, mentioning and condemning the attitude taken by several members of Congress to the effect that the navigation of the Mississippi should belong equally to the English and Americans.

Morris's reply showed how little even the most intelligent American of that time—especially if he came from the Northern or Eastern States—could appreciate the destiny of his country. He stated that his colleagues favored restricting the growth of our country to the south and west, and believed that the navigation of the Mississippi, from the Ohio down, should belong exclusively to the Spaniards, as otherwise the western settlements springing up in the valley of the Ohio, and on the shores of the Great Lakes, would not only domineer over Spain, but also over the United States, and would certainly render themselves independent in the end. He further said that some at least of those who were anxious to secure the navigation of the Mississippi, were so from interested motives, having money ventures in the establishments along the river. However, if he at this time failed fully to grasp his country's future, he was later on one of the first in the Northern States to recognize it; and once he did see it he promptly changed, and became the strongest advocate of our territorial expansion.

Accompanying his instructions to Franklin, Morris sent a pamphlet entitled "Observations on the Finances of America," to be laid before the French ministry. Practically, all that the pamphlet amounted to was a most urgent begging letter, showing that our own people could not, or would not, either pay taxes, or take up a domestic loan, so that we stood in dire need of a subsidy from abroad. The drawing up of such a document could hardly have been satisfactory employment for a high spirited man who wished to be proud of his country.

All through our negotiations with France and England Morris's views coincided with those of Washington, Hamilton, Jay, and the others who afterwards became leaders of the Federalist party. Their opinions were well expressed by Jay in a letter to Morris written about this time, which ran: "I view a return to the domination of Britain with horror, and would risk all for independence; but that point ceded, ... the destruction of Old England would hurt me; I wish it well; it afforded my ancestors an asylum from persecution." The rabid American adherents of France could not understand such sentiments, and the more mean spirited among them always tried to injure Morris on account of his loyalist relatives, although so many families were divided in this same way, Franklin's only son being himself a prominent Tory. So bitter was this feeling that when, later on, Morris's mother, who was within the British lines, became very ill, he actually had to give up his intended visit to her, because of the furious clamor that was raised against it. He refers bitterly, in one of his letters to Jay, to the "malevolence of individuals," as something he had to expect, but which he announced that he would conquer by so living as to command the respect of those whose respect was worth having.

When, however, his foes were of sufficient importance to warrant his paying attention to them individually, Morris proved abundantly able to take care of himself, and to deal heavier blows than he received. This was shown in the controversy which convulsed Congress over the conduct of Silas Deane, the original American envoy to France. Deane did not behave very well, but at first he was certainly much more sinned against than sinning, and Morris took up his cause warmly. Thomas Paine, the famous author of "Common Sense," who was secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, attacked Deane and his defenders, as well as the court of France, with peculiar venom, using as weapons the secrets he became acquainted with through his official position, and which he was in honor bound not to divulge. For this Morris had him removed from his secretaryship, and in the debate handled him extremely roughly, characterizing him with contemptuous severity as "a mere adventurer from England ... ignorant even of grammar," and ridiculing his pretensions to importance. Paine was an adept in the art of invective; but he came out second best in this encounter, and never forgot or forgave his antagonist.

As a rule, however, Morris was kept too busily at work to spare time for altercations. He was chairman of three important standing committees, those on the commissary, quartermaster's, and medical departments, and did the whole business for each. He also had more than his share of special committee work, besides playing his full part in the debates and consultations of the Congress itself. Moreover, his salary was so small that he had to eke it out by the occasional practice of his profession. He devoted himself especially to the consideration of our finances and of our foreign relations; and, as he grew constantly to possess more and more weight and influence in Congress, he was appointed, early in 1779, as chairman of a very important committee, which was to receive communications from our ministers abroad, as well as from the French envoy. He drew out its report, together with the draft of instructions to our foreign ministers, which it recommended. Congress accepted the first, and adopted the last, without change, whereby it became the basis of the treaty by which we finally won peace. In his draft he had been careful not to bind down our representatives on minor points, and to leave them as large liberty of action as was possible; but the main issues, such as the boundaries, the navigation of the Mississippi, and the fisheries, were discussed at length and in order.

At the time this draft of instructions for a treaty was sent out there was much demand among certain members in Congress that we should do all in our power to make foreign alliances, and to procure recognitions of our independence in every possible quarter. To this Morris was heartily opposed, deeming that this "rage for treaties," as he called it, was not very dignified on our part. He held rightly that our true course was to go our own gait, without seeking outside favor, until we had shown ourselves able to keep our own place among nations, when the recognitions would come without asking. Whether European nations recognized us as a free people, or not, was of little moment so long as we ourselves knew that we had become one in law and in fact, through the right of battle and the final arbitrament of the sword.

Besides these questions of national policy, Morris also had to deal with an irritating matter affecting mainly New York. This was the dispute of that state with the people of Vermont, who wished to form a separate commonwealth of their own, while New York claimed that their lands came within its borders. Even the fear of their common foe, the British, against whom they needed to employ their utmost strength, was barely sufficient to prevent the two communities from indulging in a small civil war of their own; and they persisted in pressing their rival claims upon the attention of Congress, and clamoring for a decision from that harassed and overburdened body. Clinton, who was much more of a politician than a statesman, led the popular party in this foolish business, the majority of the New Yorkers being apparently nearly as enthusiastic in asserting their sovereignty over Vermont as they were in declaring their independence of Britain. Morris, however, was very half-hearted in pushing the affair before Congress. He doubted if Congress had the power, and he knew it lacked the will, to move in the matter at all; and besides he did not sympathize with the position taken by his State. He was wise enough to see that the Vermonters had much of the right on their side in addition to the great fact of possession; and that New York would be probably unable to employ force enough to conquer them. Clinton was a true type of the separatist or states-rights politician of that day: he cared little how the national weal was affected by the quarrel; and he was far more anxious to bluster than to fight over the matter, to which end he kept besieging the delegates in Congress with useless petitions. In a letter to him Morris put the case with his usual plainness, telling him that it was perfectly idle to keep worrying Congress to take action, for it would certainly not do so, and if it did render a decision, the Vermonters would no more respect it than they would the Pope's Bull. He went on to show his characteristic contempt for half-measures, and capacity for striking straight at the root of things: "Either let these people alone, or conquer them. I prefer the latter; but I doubt the means. If we have the means let them be used, and let Congress deliberate and decide, or deliberate without deciding,—it is of no consequence. Success will sanctify every operation.... If we have not the means of conquering these people we must let them alone. We must continue our impotent threats, or we must make a treaty.... If we continue our threats they will either hate or despise us, and perhaps both.... On the whole, then, my conclusion is here, as on most other human affairs, act decisively, fight or submit—conquer or treat." Morris was right; the treaty was finally made, and Vermont became an independent State.

But the small politicians of New York would not forgive him for the wisdom and the broad feeling of nationality he showed on this and so many other questions; and they defeated him when he was a candidate for reëlection to Congress at the end of 1779. The charge they urged against him was that he devoted his time wholly to the service of the nation at large, and not to that of New York in particular; his very devotion to the public business, which had kept him from returning to the State, being brought forward to harm him. Arguments of this kind are common enough even at the present day, and effective too, among that numerous class of men with narrow minds and selfish hearts. Many an able and upright Congressman since Morris has been sacrificed because his constituents found he was fitted to do the exact work needed; because he showed himself capable of serving the whole nation, and did not devote his time to advancing the interests of only a portion thereof.

[CHAPTER V.]

FINANCES: THE TREATY OF PEACE.

At the end of 1779 Morris was thus retired to private life; and, having by this time made many friends in Philadelphia, he took up his abode in that city. His leaving Congress was small loss to himself, as that body was rapidly sinking into a condition of windy decrepitude.

He at once began working at his profession, and also threw himself with eager zest into every attainable form of gayety and amusement, for he was of a most pleasure-loving temperament, very fond of society, and a great favorite in the little American world of wit and fashion. But although in private life, he nevertheless kept his grip on public affairs, and devoted himself to the finances, which were in a most wretched state. He could not keep out of public life; he probably agreed with Jay, who, on hearing that he was again a private citizen, wrote him to "remember that Achilles made no figure at the spinning-wheel." At any rate, as early as February, 1780, he came to the front once more as the author of a series of essays on the finances. They were published in Philadelphia, and attracted the attention of all thinking men by their soundness. In fact it was in our monetary affairs that the key to the situation was to be found; for, had we been willing to pay honestly and promptly the necessary war expenses, we should have ended the struggle in short order. But the niggardliness as well as the real poverty, of the people, the jealousies of the states, kept aflame by the states-rights leaders for their own selfish purposes, and the foolish ideas of most of the congressional delegates on all money matters, combined to keep our treasury in a pitiable condition.

Morris tried to show the people at large the advantage of submitting to reasonable taxation, while at the same time combating some of the theories entertained as well by themselves as by their congressional representatives. He began by discussing with great clearness what money really is, how far coin can be replaced by paper, the interdependence of money and credit, and other elementary points in reference to which most of his fellow-citizens seemed to possess wonderfully mixed ideas. He attacked the efforts of Congress to make their currency legal tender; and then showed the utter futility of one of the pet schemes of revolutionary financial wisdom, the regulation of prices by law. Hard times, then as now, always produced not only a large debtor class, but also a corresponding number of political demagogues who truckled to it; and both demagogue and debtor, when they clamored for laws which should "relieve" the latter, meant thereby laws which would enable him to swindle his creditor. The people, moreover, liked to lay the blame for their misfortunes neither on fate nor on themselves, but on some unfortunate outsider; and they were especially apt to attack as "monopolists" the men who had purchased necessary supplies in large quantities to profit by their rise in price. Accordingly they passed laws against them; and Morris showed in his essays the unwisdom of such legislation, while not defending for a moment the men who looked on the misfortunes of their country solely as offering a field for their own harvesting.

He ended by drawing out an excellent scheme of taxation; but, unfortunately, the people were too short-sighted to submit to any measure of the sort, no matter how wise and necessary. One of the pleas he made for his scheme was, that something of the sort would be absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Federal Union, "which," he wrote, "in my poor opinion, will greatly depend upon the management of the revenue." He showed with his usual clearness the need of obtaining, for financial as well as for all other reasons, a firmer union, as the existing confederation bade fair to become, as its enemies had prophesied, a rope of sand. He also foretold graphically the misery that would ensue—and that actually did ensue—when the pressure from a foreign foe should cease, and the states should be resolved into a disorderly league of petty, squabbling communities. In ending he remarked bitterly: "The articles of confederation were formed when the attachment to Congress was warm and great. The framers of them, therefore, seem to have been only solicitous how to provide against the power of that body, which, by means of their foresight and care, now exists by mere courtesy and sufferance."

Although Morris was not able to convert Congress to the ways of sound thinking, his ability and clearness impressed themselves on all the best men; notably on Robert Morris,—who was no relation of his, by the way,—the first in the line of American statesmen who have been great in finance; a man whose services to our treasury stand on a par, if not with those of Hamilton, at least with those of Gallatin and John Sherman. Congress had just established four departments, with secretaries at the head of each. The two most important were the Departments of Foreign Affairs and of Finance. Livingstone was given the former, while Robert Morris received the latter; and immediately afterwards appointed Gouverneur Morris as Assistant Financier, at a salary of eighteen hundred and fifty dollars a year.

Morris accepted this appointment, and remained in office for three years and a half, until the beginning of 1785. He threw himself heart and soul into the work, helping his chief in every way; and in particular giving him invaluable assistance in the establishment of the "Bank of North America," which Congress was persuaded to incorporate,—an institution which was the first of its kind in the country. It was of wonderful effect in restoring the public credit, and was absolutely invaluable in the financial operations undertaken by the secretary.

When, early in 1782, the secretary was directed by Congress, to present to that body a report on the foreign coins circulating in the country, it was prepared and sent in by Gouverneur Morris, and he accompanied it with a plan for an American coinage. The postscript was the really important part of the document, and the plan therein set forth was made the basis of our present coinage system, although not until several years later, and then only with important modifications, suggested, for the most part, by Jefferson.

Although his plan was modified, it still remains true that Gouverneur Morris was the founder of our national coinage. He introduced the system of decimal notation, invented the word "cent" to express one of the smaller coins, and nationalized the already familiar word "dollar." His plan, however, was a little too abstruse for the common mind, the unit being made so small that a large sum would have had to be expressed in a very great number of figures, and there being five or six different kinds of new coins, some of them not simple multiples of each other. Afterwards he proposed as a modification a system of pounds, or dollars, and doits, the doit answering to our present mill, while providing also an ingenious arrangement by which the money of account was to differ from the money of coinage. Jefferson changed the system by grafting on it the dollar as a unit, and simplifying it; and Hamilton perfected it further.

To understand the advantage, as well as the boldness, of Morris's scheme, we must keep in mind the horrible condition of our currency at that time. We had no proper coins of our own; nothing but hopelessly depreciated paper bills, a mass of copper, and some clipped and counterfeited gold and silver coin from the mints of England, France, Spain, and even Germany. Dollars, pounds, shillings, doubloons, ducats, moidores, joes, crowns, pistareens, coppers, and sous, circulated indifferently, and with various values in each colony. A dollar was worth six shillings in Massachusetts, eight in New York, seven and sixpence in Pennsylvania, six again in Virginia, eight again in North Carolina, thirty-two and a half in South Carolina, and five in Georgia. The government itself had to resort to clipping in one of its most desperate straits; and at last people would only take payment by weight of gold or silver.

Morris, in his report, dwelt especially on three points: first, that the new money should be easily intelligible to the multitude, and should, therefore, bear a close relation to the coins already existing, as otherwise its sudden introduction would bring business to a stand-still; and would excite distrust and suspicion everywhere, particularly among the poorest and most ignorant, the day-laborers, the farm servants, and the hired help. Second, that its lowest divisible sum, or unit, should be very small, so that the price and the value of little things could be made proportionate; and third, that as far as possible the money should increase in decimal ratio. The Spanish dollar was the coin most widely circulated, while retaining everywhere about the same value. Accordingly he took this, and then sought for a unit that would go evenly into it, as well as into the various shillings, disregarding the hopelessly aberrant shilling of South Carolina. Such a unit was a quarter of a grain of pure silver, equal to the one fourteen hundred and fortieth part of a dollar; it was not, of course, necessary to have it exactly represented in coin. On the contrary, he proposed to strike two copper pieces, respectively of five and eight units, to be known as fives and eights. Two eights would then make a penny in Pennsylvania, and three eights one in Georgia, while three fives would make one in New York, and four would make one in Massachusetts. Morris's great aim was, while establishing uniform coins for the entire Union, to get rid of the fractional remainders in translating the old currencies into the new; and in addition his reckoning adapted itself to the different systems in the different states, as well as to the different coins in use. But he introduced an entirely new system of coinage, and moreover used therein the names of several old coins while giving them new values. His originally proposed table of currency was as follows:—

But he proposed that for convenience other coins should be struck, like the copper five and eight above spoken of, and he afterwards altered his names. He then called the bill of one hundred units a cent, making it consist of twenty-five grains of silver and two of copper, being thus the lowest silver coin. Five cents were to make a quint, and ten a mark.

Congress, according to its custom, received the report, applauded it, and did nothing in the matter. Shortly afterwards, however, Jefferson took it up, when the whole subject was referred to a committee of which he was a member. He highly approved of Morris's plan, and took from it the idea of a decimal system, and the use of the words "dollar" and "cent." But he considered Morris's unit too small, and preferred to take as his own the Spanish dollar, which was already known to all the people, its value being uniform and well understood. Then, by keeping strictly to the decimal system, and dividing the dollar into one hundred parts, he got cents for our fractional currency. He thus introduced a simpler system than that of Morris, with an existing and well-understood unit, instead of an imaginary one that would have to be, for the first time, brought to the knowledge of the people, and which might be adopted only with reluctance. On the other hand, Jefferson's system failed entirely to provide for the extension of the old currencies in the terms of the new without the use of fractions. On this account Morris vehemently opposed it, but it was nevertheless adopted. He foretold, what actually came to pass, that the people would be very reluctant to throw away their local moneys in order to take up a general money which bore no special relation to them. For half a century afterwards the people clung to their absurd shillings and sixpences, the government itself, in its post-office transactions, being obliged to recognize the obsolete terms in vogue in certain localities. Some curious pieces circulated freely up to the time of the Civil War. Still, Jefferson's plan worked admirably in the end.

All the time he was working so hard at the finances, Morris nevertheless continued to enjoy himself to the full in the society of Philadelphia. Imperious, light-hearted, good-looking, well-dressed, he ranked as a wit among men, as a beau among women. He was equally sought for dances and dinners. He was a fine scholar and a polished gentleman; a capital story-teller; and had just a touch of erratic levity that served to render him still more charming. Occasionally he showed whimsical peculiarities, usually about very small things, that brought him into trouble; and one such freak cost him a serious injury. In his capacity of young man of fashion, he used to drive about town in a phaeton with a pair of small, spirited horses; and because of some whim, he would not allow the groom to stand at their heads. So one day they took fright, ran, threw him out, and broke his leg. The leg had to be amputated, and he was ever afterwards forced to wear a wooden one. However, he took his loss with most philosophic cheerfulness, and even bore with equanimity the condolences of those exasperating individuals, of a species by no means peculiar to revolutionary times, who endeavored to prove to him the manifest falsehood that such an accident was "all for the best." To one of these dreary gentlemen he responded, with disconcerting vivacity, that his visitor had so handsomely argued the advantage of being entirely legless as to make him almost tempted to part with his remaining limb; and to another he announced that at least there was the compensation that he would be a steadier man with one leg than with two. Wild accounts of the accident got about, which rather irritated him, and in answer to a letter from Jay he wrote: "I suppose it was Deane who wrote to you from France about the loss of my leg. His account is facetious. Let it pass. The leg is gone, and there is an end of the matter." His being crippled did not prevent him from going about in society very nearly as much as ever; and society in Philadelphia was at the moment gayer than in any other American city. Indeed Jay, a man of Puritanic morality, wrote to Morris somewhat gloomily to inquire about "the rapid progress of luxury at Philadelphia;" to which his younger friend, who highly appreciated the good things of life, replied light-heartedly: "With respect to our taste for luxury, do not grieve about it. Luxury is not so bad a thing as it is often supposed to be; and if it were, still we must follow the course of things, and turn to advantage what exists, since we have not the power to annihilate or create. The very definition of 'luxury' is as difficult as the suppression of it." In another letter he remarked that he thought there were quite as many knaves among the men who went on foot as there were among those who drove in carriages.

Jay at this time, having been successively a member of the Continental Congress, the New York Legislature, and the State Constitutional Convention, having also been the first chief justice of his native state, and then president of the Continental Congress, had been sent as our minister to Spain. Morris always kept up an intimate correspondence with him. It is noticeable that the three great revolutionary statesmen from New York, Hamilton, Jay, and Morris, always kept on good terms, and always worked together; while the friendship between two, Jay and Morris, was very close.

The two men, in their correspondence, now and then touched on other than state matters. One of Jay's letters which deals with the education of his children would be most healthful reading for those Americans of the present day who send their children to be brought up abroad in Swiss schools, or English and German universities. He writes: "I think the youth of every free, civilized country should be educated in it, and not permitted to travel out of it until age has made them so cool and firm as to retain their national and moral impressions. American youth may possibly form proper and perhaps useful friendships in European seminaries, but I think not so probably as among their fellow-citizens, with whom they are to grow up, whom it will be useful for them to know and be early known to, and with whom they are to be engaged in the business of active life.... I do not hesitate to prefer an American education." The longer Jay stayed away, the more devoted he became to America. He had a good, hearty, honest contempt for the miserable "cosmopolitanism" so much affected by the feebler folk of fashion. As he said he "could never become so far a citizen of the world as to view every part of it with equal regard," for "his affections were deep-rooted in America," and he always asserted that he had never seen anything in Europe to cause him to abate his prejudices in favor of his own land.

Jay had a very hard time at the Spanish court, which, he wrote Morris, had "little money, less wisdom, and no credit." Spain, although fighting England, was bitterly jealous of the United States, fearing most justly our aggressive spirit, and desiring to keep the lower Mississippi valley entirely under its own control. Jay, a statesman of intensely national spirit, was determined to push our boundaries as far westward as possible; he insisted on their reaching to the Mississippi, and on our having the right to navigate that stream. Morris did not agree with him, and on this subject, as has been already said, he for once showed less than his usual power of insight into the future. He wrote Jay that it was absurd to quarrel about a country inhabited only by red men, and to claim "a territory we cannot occupy, a navigation we cannot enjoy." He also ventured the curiously false prediction that, if the territory beyond the Alleghanies should ever be filled up, it would be by a population drawn from the whole world, not one hundredth part of it American, which would immediately become an independent and rival nation. However, he could not make Jay swerve a handsbreadth from his position about our western boundaries; though on every other point the two were in hearty accord.

In relating and forecasting the military situation, Morris was more happy. He was peculiarly interested in Greene, and from the outset foretold the final success of his Southern campaign. In a letter written March 31, 1781, after the receipt of the news of the battle of Guilford Court-house, he describes to Jay Greene's forces and prospects. His troops included, he writes, "from 1,500 to 2,000 continentals, many of them raw, and somewhat more of militia than regular troops,—the whole of these almost in a state of nature, and of whom it ought to be said, as by Hamlet to Horatio, 'Thou hast no other revenue but thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee.'" The militia he styled the "fruges consumere nati of an army." He then showed the necessity of the battle being fought, on account of the fluctuating state of the militia, the incapacity of the state governments to help themselves, the poverty of the country ("so that the very teeth of the enemy defend them, especially in retreat,"), and above all, because a defeat was of little consequence to us, while it would ruin the enemy. He wrote: "There is no loss in fighting away two or three hundred men who would go home if they were not put in the way of being knocked on the head.... These are unfeeling reflections. I would apologize for them to any one who did not know that I have at least enough of sensibility. The gush of sentiment will not alter the nature of things, and the business of the statesman is more to reason than to feel." Morris was always confident that we should win in the end, and sometimes thought a little punishment really did our people good. When Cornwallis was in Virginia he wrote: "The enemy are scourging the Virginians, at least those of Lower Virginia. This is distressing, but will have some good consequences. In the mean time the delegates of Virginia make as many lamentations as ever Jeremiah did, and to as good purpose perhaps."

The war was drawing to an end. Great Britain had begun the struggle with everything—allies, numbers, wealth—in her favor; but now, towards the close, the odds were all the other way. The French were struggling with her on equal terms for the mastery of the seas; the Spaniards were helping the French, and were bending every energy to carry through successfully the great siege of Gibraltar; the Dutch had joined their ancient enemies, and their fleet fought a battle with the English, which, for bloody indecisiveness, rivaled the actions when Van Tromp and De Ruyter held the Channel against Blake and Monk. In India the name of Hyder Ali had become a very nightmare of horror to the British. In America, the centre of the war, the day had gone conclusively against the Island folk. Greene had doggedly fought and marched his way through the Southern States with his ragged, under-fed, badly armed troops; he had been beaten in three obstinate battles, had each time inflicted a greater relative loss than he received, and, after retiring in good order a short distance, had always ended by pursuing his lately victorious foes; at the close of the campaign he had completely reconquered the Southern States by sheer capacity for standing punishment, and had cooped up the remaining British force in Charleston. In the Northern States the British held Newport and New York, but could not penetrate elsewhere; while at Yorktown their ablest general was obliged to surrender his whole army to the overwhelming force brought against him by Washington's masterly strategy.

Yet England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, fronted them all with a grand courage. In her veins the Berserker blood was up, and she hailed each new enemy with grim delight, exerting to the full her warlike strength. Single-handed she kept them all at bay, and repaid with crippling blows the injuries they had done her. In America alone the tide ran too strongly to be turned. But Holland was stripped of all her colonies; in the East, Sir Eyre Coote beat down Hyder Ali, and taught Moslem and Hindoo alike that they could not shake off the grasp of the iron hands that held India. Rodney won back for his country the supremacy of the ocean in that great sea-fight where he shattered the splendid French navy; and the long siege of Gibraltar closed with the crushing overthrow of the assailants. So, with bloody honor, England ended the most disastrous war she had ever waged.

The war had brought forth many hard fighters, but only one great commander,—Washington. For the rest, on land, Cornwallis, Greene, Rawdon, and possibly Lafayette and Rochambeau, might all rank as fairly good generals, probably in the order named, although many excellent critics place Greene first. At sea Rodney and the Bailli de Suffren won the honors; the latter stands beside Duquesne and Tourville in the roll of French admirals; while Rodney was a true latter-day buccaneer, as fond of fighting as of plundering, and a first-rate hand at both. Neither ranks with such mighty sea-chiefs as Nelson, nor yet with Blake, Farragut, or Tegethof.

All parties were tired of the war; peace was essential to all. But of all, America was most resolute to win what she had fought for; and America had been the most successful so far. English historians—even so generally impartial a writer as Mr. Lecky—are apt greatly to exaggerate our relative exhaustion, and try to prove it by quoting from the American leaders every statement that shows despondency and suffering. If they applied the same rule to their own side, they would come to the conclusion that the British empire was at that time on the brink of dissolution. Of course we had suffered very heavily, and had blundered badly; but in both respects we were better off than our antagonists. Mr. Lecky is right in bestowing unstinted praise on our diplomatists for the hardihood and success with which they insisted on all our demands being granted; but he is wrong when he says or implies that the military situation did not warrant their attitude. Of all the contestants, America was the most willing to continue the fight rather than yield her rights. Morris expressed the general feeling when he wrote to Jay, on August 6, 1782: "Nobody will be thankful for any peace but a very good one. This they should have thought on who made war with the Republic. I am among the number who would be extremely ungrateful for the grant of a bad peace. My public and private character will both concert to render the sentiment coming from me unsuspected. Judge, then, of others, judge of the many-headed fool who can feel no more than his own sorrowing.... I wish that while the war lasts it may be real war, and that when peace comes it may be real peace." As to our military efficiency, we may take Washington's word (in a letter to Jay of October 18, 1782): "I am certain it will afford you pleasure to know that our army is better organized, disciplined, and clothed than it has been at any period since the commencement of the war. This you may be assured is the fact."

Another mistake of English historians—again likewise committed by Mr. Lecky—comes in their laying so much stress on the help rendered to the Americans by their allies, while at the same time speaking as if England had none. As a matter of fact, England would have stood no chance at all had the contest been strictly confined to British troops on the one hand, and to the rebellious colonists on the other. There were more German auxiliaries in the British ranks than there were French allies in the American; the loyalists, including the regularly enlisted loyalists as well as the militia who took part in the various Tory uprisings, were probably more numerous still. The withdrawal of all Hessians, Tories, and Indians from the British army would have been cheaply purchased by the loss of our own foreign allies.

The European powers were even a shade more anxious for peace than we were; and to conduct the negotiations for our side, we chose three of our greatest statesmen,—Franklin, Adams, and Jay.

Congress, in appointing our commissioners, had, with little regard for the national dignity, given them instructions which, if obeyed, would have rendered them completely subservient to France; for they were directed to undertake nothing in the negotiations without the knowledge and concurrence of the French cabinet, and in all decisions to be ultimately governed by the advice of that body. Morris fiercely resented such servile subservience, and in a letter to Jay denounced Congress with well-justified warmth, writing: "That the proud should prostitute the very little dignity this poor country is possessed of would be indeed astounding, if we did not know the near alliance between pride and meanness. Men who have too little spirit to demand of their constituents that they do their duty, who have sufficient humility to beg a paltry pittance at the hands of any and every sovereign,—such men will always be ready to pay the price which vanity shall demand from the vain." Jay promptly persuaded his colleagues to unite with him in disregarding the instructions of Congress on this point; had he not done so, the dignity of our government would, as he wrote Morris, "have been in the dust." Franklin was at first desirous of yielding obedience to the command; but Adams immediately joined Jay in repudiating it.

We had waged war against Britain, with France and Spain as allies; but in making peace we had to strive for our rights against our friends almost as much as against our enemies. There was much generous and disinterested enthusiasm for America among Frenchmen individually; but the French government, with which alone we were to deal in making peace, had acted throughout from purely selfish motives, and in reality did not care an atom for American rights. We owed France no more gratitude for taking our part than she owed us for giving her an opportunity of advancing her own interests, and striking a severe blow at an old-time enemy and rival. As for Spain, she disliked us quite as much as she did England.

The peace negotiations brought all this out very clearly. The great French minister Vergennes, who dictated the policy of his court all through the contest, cared nothing for the revolutionary colonists themselves; but he was bent upon securing them their independence, so as to weaken England, and he was also bent upon keeping them from gaining too much strength, so that they might always remain dependent allies of France. He wished to establish the "balance of power" system in America. The American commissioners he at first despised for their blunt, truthful straightforwardness, which he, trained in the school of deceit, and a thorough believer in every kind of finesse and double-dealing, mistook for boorishness; later on, he learned to his chagrin that they were able as well as honest, and that their resolution, skill, and far-sightedness made them, where their own deepest interests were concerned, over-matches for the subtle diplomats of Europe.

America, then, was determined to secure not only independence, but also a chance to grow into a great continental nation; she wished her boundaries fixed at the great lakes and the Mississippi; she also asked for the free navigation of the latter to the Gulf, and for a share in the fisheries. Spain did not even wish that we should be made independent; she hoped to be compensated at our expense, for her failure to take Gibraltar; and she desired that we should be kept so weak as to hinder us from being aggressive. Her fear of us, by the way, was perfectly justifiable, for the greatest part of our present territory lies within what were nominally Spanish limits a hundred years ago. France, as the head of a great coalition, wanted to keep on good terms with both her allies; but, as Gerard, the French minister at Washington, said: if France had to choose between the two, "the decision would not be in favor of the United States." She wished to secure for America independence, but she wished also to keep the new nation so weak that it would "feel the need of sureties, allies, and protectors." France desired to exclude our people from the fisheries, to deprive us of half our territories by making the Alleghanies our western boundaries, and to secure to Spain the undisputed control of the navigation of the Mississippi. It was not to the interest of France and Spain that we should be a great and formidable people, and very naturally they would not help us to become one. There is no need of blaming them for their conduct; but it would have been rank folly to have been guided by their wishes. Our true policy was admirably summed up by Jay in his letters to Livingston, where he says: "Let us be honest and grateful to France, but let us think for ourselves.... Since we have assumed a place in the political firmament, let us move like a primary and not a secondary planet." Fortunately, England's own self-interest made her play into our hands; as Fox put it, it was necessary for her to "insist in the strongest manner that, if America is independent, she must be so of the whole world. No secret, tacit, or ostensible connection with France."

Our statesmen won; we got all we asked, as much to the astonishment of France as of England; we proved even more successful in diplomacy than in arms. As Fox had hoped, we became independent not only of England, but of all the world; we were not entangled as a dependent subordinate in the policy of France, nor did we sacrifice our western boundary to Spain. It was a great triumph; greater than any that had been won by our soldiers. Franklin had a comparatively small share in gaining it; the glory of carrying through successfully the most important treaty we ever negotiated belongs to Jay and Adams, and especially to Jay.

[CHAPTER VI.]

THE FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION.

Before peace was established, Morris had been appointed a commissioner to treat for the exchange of prisoners. Nothing came of his efforts, however, the British and Americans being utterly unable to come to any agreement. Both sides had been greatly exasperated,—the British by the Americans' breach of faith about Burgoyne's troops, and the Americans by the inhuman brutality with which their captive countrymen had been treated. An amusing feature of the affair was a conversation between Morris and the British general, Dalrymple, wherein the former assured the latter rather patronizingly that the British "still remained a great people, a very great people," and that "they would undoubtedly still hold their rank in Europe." He would have been surprised, had he known not only that the stubborn Island folk were destined soon to hold a higher rank in Europe than ever before, but that from their loins other nations, broad as continents, were to spring, so that the South Seas should become an English ocean, and that over a fourth of the world's surface there should be spoken the tongue of Pitt and Washington.

No sooner was peace declared, and the immediate and pressing danger removed, than the confederation relapsed into a loose knot of communities as quarrelsome as they were contemptible. The states-rights men for the moment had things all their own way, and speedily reduced us to the level afterwards reached by the South-American republics. Each commonwealth set up for itself, and tried to oppress its neighbors; not one had a creditable history for the next four years; while the career of Rhode Island in particular can only be properly described as infamous. We refused to pay our debts, we would not even pay our army; and mob violence flourished rankly. As a natural result the European powers began to take advantage of our weakness and division.

All our great men saw the absolute need of establishing a National Union—not a league or a confederation—if the country was to be saved. None felt this more strongly than Morris; and no one was more hopeful of the final result. Jay had written to him as to the need of "raising and maintaining a national spirit in America;" and he wrote in reply, at different times:[2] "Much of convulsion will ensue, yet it must terminate in giving to government that power without which government is but a name.... This country has never yet been known to Europe, and God knows whether it ever will be. To England it is less known than to any other part of Europe, because they constantly view it through a medium of either prejudice or faction. True it is that the general government wants energy, and equally true it is that the want will eventually be supplied. A national spirit is the natural result of national existence; and although some of the present generation may feel the result of colonial oppositions of opinion, that generation will die away, and give place to a race of Americans. On this occasion, as on others, Great Britain is our best friend; and, by seizing the critical moment when we were about to divide, she has shown us the dreadful consequences of division.... Indeed, my friend, nothing can do us so much good as to convince the Eastern and Southern States how necessary it is to give proper force to the federal government, and nothing will so soon operate that conviction as foreign efforts to restrain the navigation of the one and the commerce of the other." The last sentence referred to the laws aimed at our trade by Great Britain, and by other powers as well,—symptoms of outside hostility which made us at once begin to draw together again.

Money troubles grew apace, and produced the usual crop of crude theories and of vicious and dishonest legislation in accordance therewith. Lawless outbreaks became common, and in Massachusetts culminated in actual rebellion. The mass of the people were rendered hostile to any closer union by their ignorance, their jealousy, and the general particularistic bent of their minds,—this last being merely a vicious graft on, or rather outgrowth of, the love of freedom inborn in the race. Their leaders were enthusiasts of pure purpose and unsteady mental vision; they were followed by the mass of designing politicians, who feared that their importance would be lost if their sphere of action should be enlarged. Among these leaders the three most important were, in New York George Clinton, and in Massachusetts and Virginia two much greater men—Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. All three had done excellent service at the beginning of the revolutionary troubles. Patrick Henry lived to redeem himself, almost in his last hour, by the noble stand he took in aid of Washington against the democratic nullification agitation of Jefferson and Madison; but the usefulness of each of the other two was limited to the early portion of his career.

Like every other true patriot and statesman, Morris did all in his power to bring into one combination the varied interests favorable to the formation of a government that should be strong and responsible as well as free. The public creditors and the soldiers of the army—whose favorite toasts were: "A hoop to the barrel," and "Cement to the Union"—were the two classes most sensible of the advantages of such a government; and to each of these Morris addressed himself when he proposed to consolidate the public debt, both to private citizens and to the soldiers, and to make it a charge on the United States, and not on the several separate states.

In consequence of the activity and ability with which he advocated a firmer Union, the extreme states-rights men were especially hostile to him; and certain of their number assailed him with bitter malignity, both then and afterwards. One accusation was, that he had improper connections with the public creditors. This was a pure slander, absolutely without foundation, and not supported by even the pretence of proof. Another accusation was that he favored the establishment of a monarchy. This was likewise entirely untrue. Morris was not a sentimental political theorist; he was an eminently practical—that is, useful—statesman, who saw with unusual clearness that each people must have a government suited to its own individual character, and to the stage of political and social development it had reached. He realized that a nation must be governed according to the actual needs and capacities of its citizens, not according to any abstract theory or set of ideal principles. He would have dismissed with contemptuous laughter the ideas of those Americans who at the present day believe that Anglo-Saxon democracy can be applied successfully to a half-savage negroid people in Hayti, or of those Englishmen who consider seriously the proposition to renovate Turkey by giving her representative institutions and a parliamentary government. He understood and stated that a monarchy "did not consist with the taste and temper of the people" in America, and he believed in establishing a form of government that did. Like almost every other statesman of the day, the perverse obstinacy of the extreme particularist section at times made him downhearted, and caused him almost to despair of a good government being established; and like every sensible man he would have preferred almost any strong, orderly government to the futile anarchy towards which the ultra states-rights men or separatists tended. Had these last ever finally obtained the upper hand, either in revolutionary or post-revolutionary times, either in 1787 or 1861, the fact would have shown conclusively that Americans were unfitted for republicanism and self-government. An orderly monarchy would certainly be preferable to a republic of the epileptic Spanish-American type. The extreme doctrinaires, who are fiercest in declaiming in favor of freedom are in reality its worst foes, far more dangerous than any absolute monarchy ever can be. When liberty becomes license, some form of one-man power is not far distant.

The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest possible individual freedom on the one hand, while showing an equally remarkable capacity for combination on the other. We have committed plenty of faults, but we have seen and remedied them. Our very doctrinaires have usually acted much more practically than they have talked. Jefferson, when in power, adopted most of the Federalist theories, and became markedly hostile to the nullification movements at whose birth he had himself officiated. We have often blundered badly in the beginning, but we have always come out well in the end. The Dutch, when they warred for freedom from Spanish rule, showed as much short-sighted selfishness and bickering jealousy as even our own revolutionary ancestors, and only a part remained faithful to the end: as a result, but one section won independence, while the Netherlands were divided, and never grasped the power that should have been theirs. As for the Spanish-Americans, they split up hopelessly almost before they were free, and, though they bettered their condition a little, yet lost nine tenths of what they had gained. Scotland and Ireland, when independent, were nests of savages. All the follies our forefathers committed can be paralleled elsewhere, but their successes are unique.

So it was in the few years immediately succeeding the peace by which we won our independence. The mass of the people wished for no closer union than was to be found in a lax confederation; but they had the good sense to learn the lesson taught by the weakness and lawlessness they saw around them; they reluctantly made up their minds to the need of a stronger government, and when they had once come to their decision, neither demagogue nor doctrinaire could swerve them from it.

The national convention to form a Constitution met in May, 1787; and rarely in the world's history has there been a deliberative body which contained so many remarkable men, or produced results so lasting and far-reaching. The Congress whose members signed the Declaration of Independence had but cleared the ground on which the framers of the Constitution were to build. Among the delegates in attendance, easily first stood Washington and Franklin,—two of that great American trio in which Lincoln is the third. Next came Hamilton from New York, having as colleagues a couple of mere obstructionists sent by the Clintonians to handicap him. From Pennsylvania came Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris; from Virginia, Madison; from South Carolina, Rutledge and the Pinckneys; and so on through the other states. Some of the most noted statesmen were absent, however. Adams and Jefferson were abroad. Jay was acting as Secretary for Foreign Affairs; in which capacity, by the way, he had shown most unlooked-for weakness in yielding to Spanish demands about the Mississippi.

Two years after taking part in the proceedings of the American Constitutional Convention, Morris witnessed the opening of the States General of France. He thoroughly appreciated the absolute and curious contrast offered by these two bodies, each so big with fate for all mankind. The men who predominated in and shaped the actions of the first belonged to a type not uncommonly brought forth by a people already accustomed to freedom at a crisis in the struggle to preserve or extend its liberties. During the past few centuries this type had appeared many times among the liberty loving nations who dwelt on the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea; and our forefathers represented it in its highest and most perfect shapes. It is a type only to be found among men already trained to govern themselves as well as others. The American statesmen were the kinsfolk and fellows of Hampden and Pym, of William the Silent and John of Barneveldt. Save love of freedom, they had little in common with the closet philosophers, the enthusiastic visionaries, and the selfish demagogues who in France helped pull up the flood-gates of an all-swallowing torrent. They were great men; but it was less the greatness of mere genius than that springing from the union of strong, virile qualities with steadfast devotion to a high ideal. In certain respects they were ahead of all their European compeers; yet they preserved virtues forgotten or sneered at by the contemporaneous generation of trans-Atlantic leaders. They wrought for the future as surely as did the French Jacobins; but their spirit was the spirit of the Long Parliament. They were resolute to free themselves from the tyranny of man; but they had not unlearned the reverence felt by their fathers for their fathers' God. They were sincerely religious. The advanced friends of freedom abroad scoffed at religion, and would have laughed outright at a proposition to gain help for their cause by prayer; but to the founders of our Constitution, when matters were at a deadlock, and the outcome looked almost hopeless, it seemed a most fit and proper thing that one of the chief of their number should propose to invoke to aid them a wisdom greater than the wisdom of human beings. Even those among their descendants who no longer share their trusting faith may yet well do regretful homage to a religious spirit so deep-rooted and so strongly tending to bring out a pure and high morality. The statesmen who met in 1787 were earnestly patriotic. They unselfishly desired the welfare of their countrymen. They were cool, resolute men, of strong convictions, with clear insight into the future. They were thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the community for which they were to act. Above all they possessed that inestimable quality, so characteristic of their race, hard-headed common sense. Their theory of government was a very high one; but they understood perfectly that it had to be accommodated to the shortcomings of the average citizen. Small indeed was their resemblance to the fiery orators and brilliant pamphleteers of the States General. They were emphatically good men; they were no less emphatically practical men. They would have scorned Mirabeau as a scoundrel; they would have despised Sieyès as a vain and impractical theorist.

The deliberations of the convention in their result illustrated in a striking manner the truth of the American principle, that—for deliberative, not executive, purposes—the wisdom of many men is worth more than the wisdom of any one man. The Constitution that the members assembled in convention finally produced was not only the best possible one for America at that time, but it was also, in spite of its short-comings, and taking into account its fitness for our own people and conditions, as well as its accordance with the principles of abstract right, probably the best that any nation has ever had, while it was beyond question a very much better one than any single member could have prepared. The particularist statesmen would have practically denied us any real union or efficient executive power; while there was hardly a Federalist member who would not, in his anxiety to avoid the evils from which we were suffering, have given us a government so centralized and aristocratic that it would have been utterly unsuited to a proud, liberty-loving, and essentially democratic race, and would have infallibly provoked a tremendous reactionary revolt.

It is impossible to read through the debates of the convention without being struck by the innumerable shortcomings of each individual plan proposed by the several members, as divulged in their speeches, when compared with the plan finally adopted. Had the result been in accordance with the views of the strong-government men like Hamilton on the one hand, or of the weak-government men like Franklin on the other, it would have been equally disastrous for the country. The men who afterwards naturally became the chiefs of the Federalist party, and who included in their number the bulk of the great revolutionary leaders, were the ones to whom we mainly owe our present form of government; certainly we owe them more, both on this and on other points, than we do their rivals, the after-time Democrats. Yet there were some articles of faith in the creed of the latter so essential to our national wellbeing, and yet so counter to the prejudices of the Federalists, that it was inevitable they should triumph in the end. Jefferson led the Democrats to victory only when he had learned to acquiesce thoroughly in some of the fundamental principles of Federalism, and the government of himself and his successors was good chiefly in so far as it followed out the theories of the Hamiltonians; while Hamilton and the Federalists fell from power because they could not learn the one great truth taught by Jefferson,—that in America a statesman should trust the people, and should endeavor to secure to each man all possible individual liberty, confident that he will use it aright. The old-school Jeffersonian theorists believed in "a strong people and a weak government." Lincoln was the first who showed how a strong people might have a strong government and yet remain the freest on the earth. He seized—half unwittingly—all that was best and wisest in the traditions of Federalism; he was the true successor of the Federalist leaders; but he grafted on their system a profound belief that the great heart of the nation beat for truth, honor, and liberty.

This fact, that in 1787 all the thinkers of the day drew out plans that in some respects went very wide of the mark, must be kept in mind, or else we shall judge each particular thinker with undue harshness when we examine his utterances without comparing them with those of his fellows. But one partial exception can be made. In the Constitutional Convention Madison, a moderate Federalist, was the man who, of all who were there, saw things most clearly as they were, and whose theories most closely corresponded with the principles finally adopted; and although even he was at first dissatisfied with the result, and both by word and by action interpreted the Constitution in widely different ways at different times, still this was Madison's time of glory: he was one of the statesmen who do extremely useful work, but only at some single given crisis. While the Constitution was being formed and adopted, he stood in the very front; but in his later career he sunk his own individuality, and became a mere pale shadow of Jefferson.

Morris played a very prominent part in the convention. He was a ready speaker, and among all the able men present there was probably no such really brilliant thinker. In the debates he spoke more often than any one else, although Madison was not far behind him; and his speeches betrayed, but with marked and exaggerated emphasis, both the virtues and the shortcomings of the Federalist school of thought. They show us, too, why he never rose to the first rank of statesmen. His keen, masterful mind, his far-sightedness, and the force and subtlety of his reasoning were all marred by his incurable cynicism and deep-rooted distrust of mankind. He throughout appears as advocatus diaboli; he puts the lowest interpretation upon every act, and frankly avows his disbelief in all generous and unselfish motives. His continual allusions to the overpowering influence of the baser passions, and to their mastery of the human race at all times, drew from Madison, although the two men generally acted together, a protest against his "forever inculcating the utter political depravity of men, and the necessity for opposing one vice and interest as the only possible check to another vice and interest."

Morris championed a strong national government, wherein he was right; but he also championed a system of class representation, leaning towards aristocracy, wherein he was wrong. Not Hamilton himself was a firmer believer in the national idea. His one great object was to secure a powerful and lasting Union, instead of a loose federal league. It must be remembered that in the convention the term "federal" was used in exactly the opposite sense to the one in which it was taken afterwards; that is, it was used as the antithesis of "national," not as its synonym. The states-rights men used it to express a system of government such as that of the old federation of the thirteen colonies; while their opponents called themselves Nationalists, and only took the title of Federalists after the Constitution had been formed, and then simply because the name was popular with the masses. They thus appropriated their adversaries' party name, bestowing it on the organization most hostile to their adversaries' party theories. Similarly, the term "Republican Party," which was originally in our history merely another name for the Democracy, has in the end been adopted by the chief opponents of the latter.

The difficulties for the convention to surmount seemed insuperable; on almost every question that came up, there were clashing interests. Strong government and weak government, pure democracy or a modified aristocracy, small states and large states, North and South, slavery and freedom, agricultural sections as against commercial sections,—on each of twenty points the delegates split into hostile camps, that could only be reconciled by concessions from both sides. The Constitution was not one compromise; it was a bundle of compromises, all needful.

Morris, like every other member of the convention, sometimes took the right and sometimes the wrong side on the successive issues that arose. But on the most important one of all he made no error; and he commands our entire sympathy for his thorough-going nationalism. As was to be expected, he had no regard whatever for states rights. He wished to deny to the small states the equal representation in the Senate finally allowed them; and he was undoubtedly right theoretically. No good argument can be adduced in support of the present system on that point. Still, it has thus far worked no harm; the reason being that our states have merely artificial boundaries, while those of small population have hitherto been distributed pretty evenly among the different sections, so that they have been split up like the others on every important issue, and thus have never been arrayed against the rest of the country.

Though Morris and his side were defeated in their efforts to have the states represented proportionally in the Senate, yet they carried their point as to representation in the House. Also on the general question of making a national government, as distinguished from a league or federation, the really vital point, their triumph was complete. The Constitution they drew up and had adopted no more admitted of legal or peaceable rebellion—whether called secession or nullification—on the part of the state than on the part of a county or an individual.

Morris expressed his own views with his usual clear-cut, terse vigor when he asserted that "state attachments and state importance had been the bane of the country," and that he came, not as a mere delegate from one section, but "as a representative of America,—a representative in some degree of the whole human race, for the whole human race would be affected by the outcome of the convention." And he poured out the flood of his biting scorn on those gentlemen who came there "to truck and bargain for their respective states," asking what man there was who could tell with certainty the state wherein he—and even more wherein his children—would live in the future; and reminding the small states, with cavalier indifference, that, "if they did not like the Union, no matter,—they would have to come in, and that was all there was about it; for if persuasion did not unite the country, then the sword would." His correct language and distinct enunciation—to which Madison has borne witness—allowed his grim truths to carry their full weight; and he brought them home to his hearers with a rough, almost startling earnestness and directness. Many of those present must have winced when he told them that it would matter nothing to America "if all the charters and constitutions of the states were thrown into the fire, and all the demagogues into the ocean," and asserted that "any particular state ought to be injured, for the sake of a majority of the people, in case its conduct showed that it deserved it." He held that we should create a national government, to be the one and only supreme power in the land,—one which, unlike a mere federal league, such as we then lived under, should have complete and compulsive operation; and he instanced the examples as well of Greece as of Germany and the United Netherlands, to prove that local jurisdiction destroyed every tie of nationality.

It shows the boldness of the experiment in which we were engaged, that we were forced to take all other nations, whether dead or living, as warnings, not examples; whereas, since we succeeded, we have served as a pattern to be copied, either wholly or in part, by every other people that has followed in our steps. Before our own experience, each similar attempt, save perhaps on the smallest scale, had been a failure. Where so many other nations teach by their mistakes, we are among the few who teach by their successes.

Be it noted also that, the doctrinaires to the contrary notwithstanding, we proved that a strong central government was perfectly compatible with absolute democracy. Indeed, the separatist spirit does not lead to true democratic freedom. Anarchy is the handmaiden of tyranny. Of all the states, South Carolina has shown herself (at least throughout the greater part of the present century) to be the most aristocratic, and the most wedded to the separatist spirit. The German masses were never so ground down by oppression as when the little German principalities were most independent of each other and of any central authority.

Morris believed in letting the United States interfere to put down a rebellion in a state, even though the executive of the state himself should be at the head of it; and he was supported in his views by Pinckney, the ablest member of the brilliant and useful but unfortunately short-lived school of South Carolina Federalists. Pinckney was a thorough-going Nationalist; he wished to go a good deal further than the convention actually went in giving the central government complete control. Thus he proposed that Congress should have power to negative by a two-thirds vote all state laws inconsistent with the harmony of the Union. Madison also wished to give Congress a veto over state legislation. Morris believed that a national law should be allowed to repeal any state law, and that Congress should legislate in all cases where the laws of the states conflicted among themselves.

Yet Morris, on the very question of nationalism, himself showed the narrowest, blindest, and least excusable sectional jealousy on one point. He felt as an American for all the Union, as it then existed; but he feared and dreaded the growth of the Union in the West, the very place where it was inevitable, as well as in the highest degree desirable, that the greatest growth should take place. He actually desired the convention to commit the criminal folly of attempting to provide that the West should always be kept subordinate to the East. Fortunately he failed; but the mere attempt casts the gravest discredit alike on his far-sightedness and on his reputation as a statesman. It is impossible to understand how one who was usually so cool and clear-headed an observer could have blundered so flagrantly on a point hardly less vital than the establishment of the Union itself. Indeed, had his views been carried through, they would in the end have nullified all the good bestowed by the Union. In speaking against state jealousy, he had shown its foolishness by observing that no man could tell in what state his children would dwell; and the folly of the speaker himself was made quite as clear by his not perceiving that their most likely dwelling-place was in the West. This jealousy of the West was even more discreditable to the Northeast than the jealousy of America had been to England; and it continued strong, especially in New England, for very many years. It was a mean and unworthy feeling; and it was greatly to the credit of the Southerners that they shared it only to a very small extent. The South in fact originally was in heartiest sympathy with the West; it was not until the middle of the present century that the country beyond the Alleghanies became preponderatingly Northern in sentiment. In the Constitutional Convention itself, Butler, of South Carolina, pointed out "that the people and strength of America were evidently tending westwardly and southwestwardly."

Morris wished to discriminate against the West by securing to the Atlantic States the perpetual control of the Union. He brought this idea up again and again, insisting that we should reserve to ourselves the right to put conditions on the Western States when we should admit them. He dwelt at length on the danger of throwing the preponderance of influence into the Western scale; stating his dread of the "back members," who were always the most ignorant, and the opponents of all good measures. He foretold with fear that some day the people of the West would outnumber the people of the East, and he wished to put it in the power of the latter to keep a majority of the votes in their own hands. Apparently he did not see that, if the West once became as populous as he predicted, its legislators would forthwith cease to be "back members." The futility of his fears, and still more of his remedies, was so evident that the convention paid very little heed to either.

On one point, however, his anticipations of harm were reasonable, and indeed afterwards came true in part. He insisted that the West, or interior, would join the South and force us into a war with some European power, wherein the benefits would accrue to them and the harm to the Northeast. The attitude of the South and West already clearly foreshadowed a struggle with Spain for the Mississippi Valley; and such a struggle would surely have come, either with the French or Spaniards, had we failed to secure the territory in question by peaceful purchase. As it was, the realization of Morris's prophecy was only put off for a few years; the South and West brought on the War of 1812, wherein the East was the chief sufferer.

On the question as to whether the Constitution should be made absolutely democratic or not, Morris took the conservative side. On the suffrage his views are perfectly defensible: he believed that it should be limited to freeholders. He rightly considered the question as to how widely it should be extended to be one of expediency merely. It is simply idle folly to talk of suffrage as being an "inborn" or "natural" right. There are enormous communities totally unfit for its exercise; while true universal suffrage never has been, and never will be, seriously advocated by any one. There must always be an age limit, and such a limit must necessarily be purely arbitrary. The wildest democrat of revolutionary times did not dream of doing away with the restrictions of race and sex which kept most American citizens from the ballot-box; and there is certainly much less abstract right in a system which limits the suffrage to people of a certain color than there is in one which limits it to people who come up to a given standard of thrift and intelligence. On the other hand, our experience has not proved that men of wealth make any better use of their ballots than do, for instance, mechanics and other handicraftsmen. No plan could be adopted so perfect as to be free from all drawbacks. On the whole, however, and taking our country in its length and breadth, manhood suffrage has worked well, better than would have been the case with any other system; but even here there are certain localities where its results have been evil, and must simply be accepted as the blemishes inevitably attendant upon, and marring, any effort to carry out a scheme that will be widely applicable.

Morris contended that his plan would work no novel or great hardship, as the people in several states were already accustomed to freehold suffrage. He considered the freeholders to be the best guardians of liberty, and maintained that the restriction of the right to them was only creating a necessary safeguard "against the dangerous influence of those people without property or principle, with whom, in the end, our country, like all other countries, was sure to abound." He did not believe that the ignorant and dependent could be trusted to vote. Madison supported him heartily, likewise thinking the freeholders the safest guardians of our rights; he indulged in some gloomy (and fortunately hitherto unverified) forebodings as to our future, which sound strangely coming from one who was afterwards an especial pet of the Jeffersonian democracy. He said: "In future times a great majority of the people will be without landed or any other property. They will then either combine under the influence of their common situation,—in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be safe in their hands,—or, as is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition."

Morris also enlarged on this last idea. "Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich," said he. When taunted with his aristocratic tendencies, he answered that he had long ceased to be the dupe of words, that the mere sound of the name "aristocracy" had no terrors for him, but that he did fear lest harm should result to the people from the unacknowledged existence of the very thing they feared to mention. As he put it, there never was or would be a civilized society without an aristocracy, and his endeavor was to keep it as much as possible from doing mischief. He thus professed to be opposed to the existence of an aristocracy, but convinced that it would exist anyhow, and that therefore the best thing to be done was to give it a recognized place, while clipping its wings so as to prevent its working harm. In pursuance of this theory, he elaborated a wild plan, the chief feature of which was the provision for an aristocratic senate, and a popular or democratic house, which were to hold each other in check, and thereby prevent either party from doing damage. He believed that the senators should be appointed by the national executive, who should fill up the vacancies that occurred. To make the upper house effective as a checking branch, it should be so constituted to as have a personal interest in checking the other branch; it should be a senate for life, it should be rich, it should be aristocratic. He continued:—It would then do wrong? He believed so; he hoped so. The rich would strive to enslave the rest; they always did. The proper security against them was to form them into a separate interest. The two forces would then control each other. By thus combining and setting apart the aristocratic interest, the popular interest would also be combined against it. There would be mutual check and mutual security. If, on the contrary, the rich and poor were allowed to mingle, then, if the country were commercial, an oligarchy would be established; and if it were not, an unlimited democracy would ensue. It was best to look truth in the face. The loaves and fishes would be needed to bribe demagogues; while as for the people, if left to themselves, they would never act from reason alone. The rich would take advantage of their passions, and the result would be either a violent aristocracy, or a more violent despotism.—The speech containing these extraordinary sentiments, which do no particular credit to either Morris's head or heart, is given in substance by Madison in the "Debates." Madison's report is undoubtedly correct, for, after writing it, he showed it to the speaker himself, who made but one or two verbal alterations.

Morris applied an old theory in a new way when he proposed to make "taxation proportional to representation" throughout the Union. He considered the preservation of property as being the distinguishing object of civilization, as liberty was sufficiently guaranteed even by savagery; and therefore he held that the representation in the senate should be according to property as well as numbers. But when this proposition was defeated, he declined to support one making property qualifications for congressmen, remarking that such were proper for the electors rather than the elected.

His views as to the power and functions of the national executive were in the main sound, and he succeeded in having most of them embodied in the Constitution. He wished to have the President hold office during good behavior; and, though this was negatived, he succeeded in having him made reëligible to the position. He was instrumental in giving him a qualified veto over legislation, and in providing for his impeachment for misconduct; and also in having him made commander-in-chief of the forces of the republic, and in allowing him the appointment of governmental officers. The especial service he rendered, however, was his successful opposition to the plan whereby the President was to be elected by the legislature. This proposition he combated with all his strength, showing that it would take away greatly from the dignity of the executive, and would render his election a matter of cabal and faction, "like the election of the pope by a conclave of cardinals." He contended that the President should be chosen by the people at large, by the citizens of the United States, acting through electors whom they had picked out. He showed the probability that in such a case the people would unite upon a man of continental reputation, as the influence of designing demagogues and tricksters is generally powerful in proportion as the limits within which they work are narrow; and the importance of the stake would make all men inform themselves thoroughly as to the characters and capacities of those who were contending for it; and he flatly denied the statements, that were made in evident good faith, to the effect that in a general election each State would cast its vote for its own favorite citizen. He inclined to regard the President in the light of a tribune chosen by the people to watch over the legislature; and giving him the appointing power, he believed, would force him to make good use of it, owing to his sense of responsibility to the people at large, who would be directly affected by its exercise, and who could and would hold him accountable for its abuse.

On the judiciary his views were also sound. He upheld the power of the judges, and maintained that they should have absolute decision as to the constitutionality of any law. By this means he hoped to provide against the encroachments of the popular branch of the government, the one from which danger was to be feared, as "virtuous citizens will often act as legislators in a way of which they would, as private individuals, afterwards be ashamed." He wisely disapproved of low salaries for the judges, showing that the amounts must be fixed from time to time in accordance with the manner and style of living in the country; and that good work on the bench, where it was especially needful, like good work everywhere else, could only be insured by a high rate of recompense. On the other hand, he approved of introducing into the national Constitution the foolish New York state inventions of a Council of Revision and an Executive Council.

His ideas of the duties and powers of Congress were likewise very proper on the whole. Most citizens of the present day will agree with him that "the excess rather than the deficiency of laws is what we have to dread." He opposed the hurtful provision which requires that each congressman should be a resident of his own district, urging that congressmen represented the people at large, as well as their own small localities; and he also objected to making officers of the army and navy ineligible. He laid much stress on the propriety of passing navigation acts to encourage American bottoms and seamen, as a navy was essential to our security, and the shipping business was always one that stood in peculiar need of public patronage. Also, like Hamilton and most other Federalists, he favored a policy of encouraging domestic manufactures. Incidentally he approved of Congress having the power to lay an embargo, although he has elsewhere recorded his views as to the general futility of such kinds of "commercial warfare." He believed in having a uniform bankruptcy law; approved of abolishing all religious tests as qualifications for office, and was utterly opposed to the "rotation in office" theory.

One curious incident in the convention was the sudden outcropping, even thus early, of a "Native American" movement against all foreigners, which was headed by Butler, of South Carolina, who himself was of Irish parentage. He strenuously insisted that no foreigners whomsoever should be admitted to our councils,—a rather odd proposition, considering that it would have excluded quite a number of the eminent men he was then addressing. Pennsylvania in particular—whose array of native talent has always been far from imposing—had a number of foreigners among her delegates, and loudly opposed the proposition, as did New York. These States wished that there should be no discrimination whatever between native and foreign born citizens; but finally a compromise was agreed to, by which the latter were excluded only from the Presidency, but were admitted to all other rights after a seven years' residence,—a period that was certainly none too long.

A much more serious struggle took place over the matter of slavery, quite as important then as ever, for at that time the negroes were a fifth of our population, instead of, as now, an eighth. The question, as it came before the convention, had several sides to it; the especial difficulty arising over the representation of the Slave States in Congress, and the importation of additional slaves from Africa. No one proposed to abolish slavery off-hand; but an influential though small number of delegates, headed by Morris, recognized it as a terrible evil, and were very loath either to allow the South additional representation for the slaves, or to permit the foreign trade in them to go on. When the Southern members banded together on the issue, and made it evident that it was the one which they regarded as almost the most important of all, Morris attacked them in a telling speech, stating with his usual boldness facts that most Northerners only dared hint at, and summing up with the remark that, if he was driven to the dilemma of doing injustice to the Southern States or to human nature, he would have to do it to the former; certainly he would not encourage the slave trade by allowing representation for negroes. Afterwards he characterized the proportional representation of the blacks even more strongly, as being "a bribe for the importation of slaves."

In advocating the proposal, first made by Hamilton, that the representation should in all cases be proportioned to the number of free inhabitants, Morris showed the utter lack of logic in the Virginian proposition, which was that the Slave States should have additional representation to the extent of three fifths of their negroes. If negroes were to be considered as inhabitants, then they ought to be added in their entire number; if they were to be considered as property, then they ought to be counted only if all other wealth was likewise included. The position of the Southerners was ridiculous: he tore their arguments to shreds; but he was powerless to alter the fact that they were doggedly determined to carry their point, while most of the Northern members cared comparatively little about it.

In another speech he painted in the blackest colors the unspeakable misery and wrong wrought by slavery, and showed the blight it brought upon the land. "It was the curse of Heaven on the states where it prevailed." He contrasted the prosperity and happiness of the Northern States with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of those where slaves were numerous. "Every step you take through the great region of slavery presents a desert widening with the increasing number of these wretched beings." He indignantly protested against the Northern States being bound to march their militia for the defense of the Southern States against the very slaves of whose existence the northern men complained. "He would sooner submit himself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a Constitution."

Some of the high-minded Virginian statesmen were quite as vigorous as he was in their denunciation of the system. One of them, George Mason, portrayed the effect of slavery upon the people at large with bitter emphasis, and denounced the slave traffic as "infernal," and slavery as a national sin that would be punished by a national calamity,—stating therein the exact and terrible truth. In shameful contrast, many of the Northerners championed the institution; in particular, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, whose name should be branded with infamy because of the words he then uttered. He actually advocated the free importation of negroes into the South Atlantic States, because the slaves "died so fast in the sickly rice swamps" that it was necessary ever to bring fresh ones to labor and perish in the places of their predecessors; and, with a brutal cynicism, peculiarly revolting from its mercantile baseness, he brushed aside the question of morality as irrelevant, asking his hearers to pay heed only to the fact that "what enriches the part enriches the whole."

The Virginians were opposed to the slave trade: but South Carolina and Georgia made it a condition of their coming into the Union. It was accordingly agreed that it should be allowed for a limited time,—twelve years; and this was afterwards extended to twenty by a bargain made by Maryland and the three South Atlantic States with the New England States, the latter getting in return the help of the former to alter certain provisions respecting commerce. One of the main industries of the New England of that day was the manufacture of rum; and its citizens cared more for their distilleries than for all the slaves held in bondage throughout Christendom. The rum was made from molasses which they imported from the West Indies, and they carried there in return the fish taken by their great fishing fleets; they also carried the slaves into the Southern ports. Their commerce was what they especially relied on; and to gain support for it they were perfectly willing to make terms with even such a black Mammon of unrighteousness as the Southern slaveholding system. Throughout the contest, Morris and a few other stout anti-slavery men are the only ones who appear to advantage; the Virginians, who were honorably anxious to minimize the evils of slavery, come next; then the other Southerners who allowed pressing self-interest to overcome their scruples; and, last of all, the New Englanders whom a comparatively trivial self-interest made the willing allies of the extreme slaveholders. These last were the only Northerners who yielded anything to the Southern slaveholders that was not absolutely necessary; and yet they were the forefathers of the most determined and effective foes that slavery ever had.

As already said, the Southerners stood firm on the slave question: it was the one which perhaps more than any other offered the most serious obstacle to a settlement. Madison pointed out "that the real difference lay, not between the small States and the large, but between the Northern and the Southern States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the real line of discrimination." To talk of this kind Morris at first answered hotly enough:—"he saw that the Southern gentlemen would not be satisfied unless they saw the way open to their gaining a majority in the public councils.... If [the distinction they set up between the North and South] was real, instead of attempting to blend incompatible things, let them at once take a friendly leave of each other." He afterwards went back from this position, and agreed to the compromise by which the slaves were to add, by three fifths of their number, to the representation of their masters, and the slave trade was to be allowed for a certain number of years, and prohibited forever after. He showed his usual straightforward willingness to call things by their right names in desiring to see "slavery" named outright in the Constitution, instead of being characterized with cowardly circumlocution, as was actually done.

In finally yielding and assenting to a compromise, he was perfectly right. The crazy talk about the iniquity of consenting to any recognition of slavery whatever in the Constitution is quite beside the mark; and it is equally irrelevant to assert that the so-called "compromises" were not properly compromises at all, because there were no mutual concessions, and the Southern States had "no shadow of right" to what they demanded and only in part gave up. It was all-important that there should be a Union, but it had to result from the voluntary action of all the states; and each state had a perfect "right" to demand just whatever it chose. The really wise and high-minded statesmen demanded for themselves nothing save justice; but they had to accomplish their purpose by yielding somewhat to the prejudices of their more foolish and less disinterested colleagues. It was better to limit the duration of the slave trade to twenty years than to allow it to be continued indefinitely, as would have been the case had the South Atlantic States remained by themselves. The three fifths representation of the slaves was an evil anomaly, but it was no worse than allowing the small states equal representation in the Senate; indeed, balancing the two concessions against each other, it must be admitted that Virginia and North Carolina surrendered to New Hampshire and Rhode Island more than they got in return.

No man who supported slavery can ever have a clear and flawless title to our regard; and those who opposed it merit, in so far, the highest honor; but the opposition to it sometimes took forms that can be considered only as the vagaries of lunacy. The only hope of abolishing it lay, first in the establishment and then in the preservation of the Union; and if we had at the outset dissolved into a knot of struggling anarchies, it would have entailed an amount of evil both on our race and on all North America, compared to which the endurance of slavery for a century or two would have been as nothing. If we had even split up into only two republics, a Northern and a Southern, the West would probably have gone with the latter, and to this day slavery would have existed throughout the Mississippi valley; much of what is now our territory would have been held by European powers, scornfully heedless of our divided might, while in not a few states the form of government would have been a military dictatorship; and indeed our whole history would have been as contemptible as was that of Germany for some centuries prior to the rise of the house of Hohenzollern.

The fierceness of the opposition to the adoption of the Constitution, and the narrowness of the majority by which Virginia and New York decided in its favor, while North Carolina and Rhode Island did not come in at all until absolutely forced, showed that the refusal to compromise on any one of the points at issue would have jeopardized everything. Had the slavery interest been in the least dissatisfied, or had the plan of government been a shade less democratic, or had the smaller States not been propitiated, the Constitution would have been rejected off-hand; and the country would have had before it decades, perhaps centuries, of misrule, violence, and disorder.

Madison paid a very just compliment to some of Morris's best points when he wrote, anent his services in the convention: "To the brilliancy of his genius he added, what is too rare, a candid surrender of his opinions when the light of discussion satisfied him that they had been too hastily formed, and a readiness to aid in making the best of measures in which he had been overruled." Although so many of his own theories had been rejected, he was one of the warmest advocates of the Constitution; and it was he who finally drew up the document and put the finish to its style and arrangement, so that, as it now stands, it comes from his pen.

Hamilton, who more than any other man bore the brunt of the fight for its adoption, asked Morris to help him in writing the "Federalist," but the latter was for some reason unable to do so; and Hamilton was assisted only by Madison, and to a very slight extent by Jay. Pennsylvania, the State from which Morris had been sent as a delegate, early declared in favor of the new experiment; although, as Morris wrote Washington, there had been cause to "dread the cold and sour temper of the back counties, and still more the wicked industry of those who have long habituated themselves to live on the public, and cannot bear the idea of being removed from the power and profit of state government, which has been and still is the means of supporting themselves, their families, and dependents, and (which perhaps is equally grateful) of depressing and humbling their political adversaries." In his own native state of New York the influences he thus describes were still more powerful, and it needed all Hamilton's wonderful genius to force a ratification of the Constitution in spite of the stupid selfishness of the Clintonian faction; as it was, he was only barely successful, although backed by all the best and ablest leaders in the community,—Jay, Livingstone, Schuyler, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Isaac Roosevelt, James Duane, and a host of others.

About this time Morris came back to New York to live, having purchased the family estate at Morrisania from his elder brother, Staats Long Morris, the British general. He had for some time been engaged in various successful commercial ventures with his friend Robert Morris, including an East India voyage on a large scale, shipments of tobacco to France, and a share in iron works on the Delaware River, and had become quite a rich man. As soon as the war was ended, he had done what he could do to have the loyalists pardoned and reinstated in their fortunes; thereby risking his popularity not a little, as the general feeling against the Tories was bitter and malevolent in the highest degree, in curious contrast to the good-will that so rapidly sprang up between the Unionists and ex-Confederates after the Civil War.

He also kept an eye on foreign politics, and one of his letters to Jay curiously foreshadows the good-will generally felt by Americans of the present day towards Russia, running: "If her ladyship (the Czarina) would drive the Turk out of Europe, and demolish the Algerines and other piratical gentry, she will have done us much good for her own sake; ... but it is hardly possible the other powers will permit Russia to possess so wide a door into the Mediterranean. I may be deceived, but I think England herself would oppose it. As an American, it is my hearty wish that she may effect her schemes."

Shortly after this it became necessary for him to sail for Europe on business.

[CHAPTER VII.]

FIRST STAY IN FRANCE.

After a hard winter passage of forty days' length Morris reached France, and arrived in Paris on February 3, 1789. He remained there a year on his private business; but his prominence in America, and his intimate friendship with many distinguished Frenchmen, at once admitted him to the highest social and political circles, where his brilliant talents secured him immediate importance.

The next nine years of his life were spent in Europe, and it was during this time that he unknowingly rendered his especial and peculiar service to the public. As an American statesman he has many rivals, and not a few superiors; but as a penetrating observer and recorder of contemporary events, he stands alone among the men of his time. He kept a full diary during his stay abroad, and was a most voluminous correspondent; and his capacity for keen, shrewd observation, his truthfulness, his wonderful insight into character, his sense of humor, and his power of graphic description, all combine to make his comments on the chief men and events of the day a unique record of the inside history of Western Europe during the tremendous convulsions of the French Revolution. He is always an entertaining and in all matters of fact a trustworthy writer. His letters and diary together form a real mine of wealth for the student either of the social life of the upper classes in France just before the outbreak, or of the events of the Revolution itself.

In the first place, it must be premised that from the outset Morris was hostile to the spirit of the French Revolution, and his hostility grew in proportion to its excesses until at last it completely swallowed up his original antipathy to England, and made him regard France as normally our enemy, not our ally. This was perfectly natural, and indeed inevitable: in all really free countries, the best friends of freedom regarded the revolutionists, when they had fairly begun their bloody career, with horror and anger. It was only to oppressed, debased, and priest-ridden peoples that the French Revolution could come as the embodiment of liberty. Compared to the freedom already enjoyed by Americans, it was sheer tyranny of the most dreadful kind.

Morris saw clearly that the popular party in France, composed in part of amiable visionaries, theoretic philanthropists, and closet constitution-mongers, and in part of a brutal, sodden populace, maddened by the grinding wrongs of ages, knew not whither its own steps tended; and he also saw that the then existing generation of Frenchmen were not, and never would be, fitted to use liberty aright. It is small matter for wonder that he could not see as clearly the good which lay behind the movement; that he could not as readily foretell the real and great improvement it was finally to bring about, though only after a generation of hideous convulsions. Even as it was, he discerned what was happening, and what was about to happen, more distinctly than did any one else. The wild friends of the French Revolution, especially in America, supported it blindly, with but a very slight notion of what it really signified. Keen though Morris's intellectual vision was, it was impossible for him to see what future lay beyond the quarter of a century of impending tumult. It did not lie within his powers to applaud the fiendish atrocities of the Red Terror for the sake of the problematical good that would come to the next generation. To do so he would have needed the granite heart of a zealot, as well as the prophetic vision of a seer.

The French Revolution was in its essence a struggle for the abolition of privilege, and for equality in civil rights. This Morris perceived, almost alone among the statesmen of his day; and he also perceived that most Frenchmen were willing to submit to any kind of government that would secure them the things for which they strove. As he wrote to Jefferson, when the republic was well under weigh: "The great mass of the French nation is less solicitous to preserve the present order of things than to prevent the return of the ancient oppression, and of course would more readily submit to a pure despotism than to that kind of monarchy whose only limits were found in those noble, legal and clerical corps by which the people were alternately oppressed and insulted." To the down-trodden masses of continental Europe the gift of civil rights and the removal of the tyranny of the privileged classes, even though accompanied by the rule of a directory, a consul, or an emperor, represented an immense political advance; but to the free people of England, and to the freer people of America, the change would have been wholly for the worse.

Such being the case, Morris's attitude was natural and proper. There is no reason to question the sincerity of his statement in another letter, that "I do, from the bottom of my heart, wish well to this country [France]." Had the French people shown the least moderation or wisdom, he would have unhesitatingly sided with them against their oppressors. It must be kept in mind that he was not influenced in the least in his course by the views of the upper classes with whom he mingled. On the contrary, when he first came to Europe, he distinctly lost popularity in some of the social circles in which he moved, because he was so much more conservative than his aristocratic friends, among whom the closet republicanism of the philosophers was for the moment all the rage. He had no love for the French nobility, whose folly and ferocity caused the Revolution, and whose craven cowardice could not check it even before it had gathered headway. Long afterwards he wrote of some of the emigrés: "The conversation of these gentlemen, who have the virtue and good fortune of their grandfathers to recommend them, leads me almost to forget the crimes of the French Revolution; and often the unforgiving temper and sanguinary wishes which they exhibit make me almost believe that the assertion of their enemies is true, namely, that it is success alone which has determined on whose side should be the crimes, and on whose the miseries." The truth of the last sentence was strikingly verified by the White Terror, even meaner, if less bloody, than the Red. Bourbon princes and Bourbon nobles were alike, and Morris only erred in not seeing that their destruction was the condition precedent upon all progress.

There was never another great struggle, in the end productive of good to mankind, where the tools and methods by which that end was won were so wholly vile as in the French Revolution. Alone among movements of the kind, it brought forth no leaders entitled to our respect; none who were both great and good; none even who were very great, save, at its beginning, strange, strong, crooked Mirabeau, and at its close the towering world-genius who sprang to power by its means, wielded it for his own selfish purposes, and dazzled all nations over the wide earth by the glory of his strength and splendor.

We can hardly blame Morris for not appreciating a revolution whose immediate outcome was to be Napoleon's despotism, even though he failed to see all the good that would remotely spring therefrom. He considered, as he once wrote a friend, that "the true object of a great statesman is to give to any particular nation the kind of laws which is suitable to them, and the best constitution which they are capable of." There can be no sounder rule of statesmanship; and none was more flagrantly broken by the amiable but incompetent political doctrinaires of 1789. Thus the American, as a far-sighted statesman, despised the theorists who began the Revolution, and, as a humane and honorable man, abhorred the black-hearted wretches who carried it on. His view of the people among whom he found himself, as well as his statement of his own position, he himself has recorded: "To fit people for a republic, as for any other form of government, a previous education is necessary.... In despotic governments the people, habituated to beholding everything bending beneath the weight of power, never possess that power for a moment without abusing it. Slaves, driven to despair, take arms, execute vast vengeance, and then sink back to their former condition of slaves. In such societies the patriot, the melancholy patriot, sides with the despot, because anything is better than a wild and bloody confusion."

So much for an outline of his views. His writings preserve them for us in detail on almost every important question that came up during his stay in Europe; couched, moreover, in telling, piquant sentences that leave room for hardly a dull line in either letters or diary.

No sooner had he arrived in Paris than he sought out Jefferson, then the American minister, and Lafayette. They engaged him to dine on the two following nights. He presented his various letters of introduction, and in a very few weeks, by his wit, tact, and ability, had made himself completely at home in what was by far the most brilliant and attractive—although also the most hopelessly unsound—fashionable society of any European capital. He got on equally well with fine ladies, philosophers, and statesmen; was as much at his ease in the salons of the one as at the dinner-tables of the other; and all the time observed and noted down, with the same humorous zest, the social peculiarities of his new friends as well as the tremendous march of political events. Indeed, it is difficult to know whether to set the higher value on his penetrating observations concerning public affairs, or on his witty, light, half-satirical sketches of the men and women of the world with whom he was thrown in contact, told in his usual charming and effective style. No other American of note has left us writings half so humorous and amusing, filled, too, with information of the greatest value.

Although his relations with Jefferson were at this time very friendly, yet his ideas on most subjects were completely at variance with those of the latter. He visited him very often; and, after one of these occasions, jots down his opinion of his friend in his usual amusing vein: "Call on Mr. Jefferson, and sit a good while. General conversation on character and politics. I think he does not form very just estimates of character, but rather assigns too many to the humble rank of fools; whereas in life the gradations are infinite, and each individual has his peculiarities of fort and feeble:" Not a bad protest against the dangers of sweeping generalization. Another time he records his judgment of Jefferson's ideas on public matters as follows: "He and I differ in our systems of politics. He, with all the leaders of liberty here, is desirous of annihilating distinctions of order. How far such views may be right respecting mankind in general is, I think, extremely problematical. But with respect to this nation I am sure they are wrong, and cannot eventuate well."

As soon as he began to go out in Parisian society, he was struck by the closet republicanism which it had become the fashion to affect. After his first visit to Lafayette, who received him with that warmth and frank, open-handed hospitality which he always extended to Americans, Morris writes: "Lafayette is full of politics; he appears to be too republican for the genius of his country." And again, when Lafayette showed him the draft of the celebrated Declaration of Rights, he notes: "I gave him my opinions, and suggested several amendments tending to soften the high-colored expressions of freedom. It is not by sounding words that revolutions are produced." Elsewhere he writes that "the young nobility have brought themselves to an active faith in the natural equality of mankind, and spurn at everything which looks like restraint." Some of their number, however, he considered to be actuated by considerations more tangible than mere sentiment. He chronicles a dinner with some members of the National Assembly, where "one, a noble representing the Tiers, is so vociferous against his own order, that I am convinced he means to rise by his eloquence, and finally will, I expect, vote with the opinion of the court, let that be what it may." The sentimental humanitarians—who always form a most pernicious body, with an influence for bad hardly surpassed by that of the professionally criminal class—of course throve vigorously in an atmosphere where theories of mawkish benevolence went hand in hand with the habitual practice of vices too gross to name. Morris, in one of his letters, narrates an instance in point; at the same time showing how this excess of watery philanthropy was, like all the other movements of the French Revolution, but a violent and misguided reaction against former abuses of the opposite sort. The incident took place in Madame de Staël's salon. "The Count de Clermont Tonnerre, one of their best orators, read to us a very pathetic oration; and the object was to show that no penalties are the legal compensations for crimes or injuries: the man who is hanged, having by that event paid his debt to society, ought not to be held in dishonor; and in like manner he who has been condemned for seven years to be flogged in the galleys, should, when he has served out his apprenticeship, be received again into good company, as if nothing had happened. You smile; but observe the extreme to which the matter was carried the other way. Dishonoring thousands for the guilt of one has so shocked the public sentiment as to render this extreme fashionable. The oration was very fine, very sentimental, very pathetic, and the style harmonious. Shouts of applause and full approbation. When this was pretty well over, I told him that his speech was extremely eloquent, but that his principles were not very solid. Universal surprise!"

At times he became rather weary of the constant discussion of politics, which had become the chief drawing-room topic. Among the capacities of his lively and erratic nature was the power of being intensely bored by anything dull or monotonous. He remarked testily that "republicanism was absolutely a moral influenza, from which neither titles, places, nor even the diadem can guard the possessor." In a letter to a friend on a different subject he writes: "Apropos,—a term which my Lord Chesterfield well observes we generally use to bring in what is not at all to the purpose,—apropos, then, I have here the strangest employment imaginable. A republican, and just as it were emerged from that assembly which has formed one of the most republican of all republican constitutions, I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of the nobles, and above all moderation, not only in the object, but also in the pursuit of it. All this you will say is none of my business; but I consider France as the natural ally of my country, and, of course, that we are interested in her prosperity; besides, to say the truth, I love France."

His hostility to the fashionable cult offended some of his best friends. The Lafayettes openly disapproved his sentiments. The Marquis told him that he was injuring the cause, because his sentiments were being continually quoted against "the good party." Morris answered that he was opposed to democracy from a regard to liberty; that the popular party were going straight to destruction, and he would fain stop them if he could; for their views respecting the nation were totally inconsistent with the materials of which it was composed, and the worst thing that could happen to them would be to have their wishes granted. Lafayette half admitted that this was true: "He tells me that he is sensible his party are mad, and tells them so, but is not the less determined to die with them. I tell him that I think it would be quite as well to bring them to their senses and live with them,"—the last sentence showing the impatience with which the shrewd, fearless, practical American at times regarded the dreamy inefficiency of his French associates. Madame de Lafayette was even more hostile than her husband to Morris's ideas. In commenting on her beliefs he says: "She is a very sensible woman, but has formed her ideas of government in a manner not suited, I think, either to the situation, the circumstances, or the disposition of France."

He was considered too much of an aristocrat in the salon of the Comtesse de Tessé, the resort of "republicans of the first feather;" and at first was sometimes rather coldly received there. He felt, however, a most sincere friendship and regard for the comtesse, and thoroughly respected the earnestness with which she had for twenty years done what lay in her power to give her country greater liberty. She was a genuine enthusiast, and, when the National Assembly met, was filled with exultant hope for the future. The ferocious outbreaks of the mob, and the crazy lust for blood shown by the people at large, startled her out of her faith, and shocked her into the sad belief that her life-long and painful labors had been wasted in the aid of a bad cause. Later in the year Morris writes: "I find Madame de Tessé is become a convert to my principles. We have a gay conversation of some minutes on their affairs, in which I mingle sound maxims of government with that piquant légèreté which this nation delights in. She insists that I dine with her at Versailles the next time I am there. We are vastly gracious, and all at once, in a serious tone, 'Mais attendez, madame, est-ce que je suis trop aristocrat?' To which she answers, with a smile of gentle humility, 'Oh, mon Dieu, non!'"

It is curious to notice how rapidly Morris's brilliant talents gave him a commanding position, stranger and guest though he was, among the most noted statesmen of France; how often he was consulted, and how widely his opinions were quoted. Moreover, his incisive truthfulness makes his writings more valuable to the historian of his time than are those of any of his contemporaries, French, English, or American. Taine, in his great work on the Revolution, ranks him high among the small number of observers who have recorded clear and sound judgments of those years of confused, formless tumult and horror.

All his views on French politics are very striking. As soon as he reached Paris, he was impressed by the unrest and desire for change prevailing everywhere, and wrote home: "I find on this side of the Atlantic a resemblance to what I left on the other,—a nation which exists in hopes, prospects, and expectations; the reverence for ancient establishments gone; existing forms shaken to the very foundation; and a new order of things about to take place, in which, perhaps, even the very names of all former institutions will be disregarded." And again: "This country presents an astonishing spectacle to one who has collected his ideas from books and information half a dozen years old. Everything is à l'Anglaise, and a desire to imitate the English prevails alike in the cut of a coat and the form of a constitution. Like the English, too, all are engaged in parliamenteering; and when we consider how novel this last business must be, I assure you the progress is far from contemptible,"—a reference to Lafayette's electioneering trip to Auvergne. The rapidity with which, in America, order had come out of chaos, while in France the reverse process had been going on, impressed him deeply; as he says: "If any new lesson were wanting to impress on our hearts a deep sense of the mutability of human affairs, the double contrast between France and America two years ago and at the present would surely furnish it."

He saw at once that the revolutionists had it in their power to do about as they chose. "If there be any real vigor in the nation the prevailing party in the States-General may, if they please, overturn the monarchy itself, should the king commit his authority to a contest with them. The court is extremely feeble, and the manners are so extremely corrupt that they cannot succeed if there be any consistent opposition, unless the whole nation be equally depraved."

He did not believe that the people would be able to profit by the revolution, or to use their opportunities aright. For the numerous class of patriots who felt a vague, though fervent, enthusiasm for liberty in the abstract, and who, without the slightest practical knowledge, were yet intent on having all their own pet theories put into practice, he felt profound scorn and contempt; while he distrusted and despised the mass of Frenchmen, because of their frivolity and viciousness. He knew well that a pure theorist may often do as much damage to a country as the most corrupt traitor; and very properly considered that in politics the fool is quite as obnoxious as the knave. He also realized that levity and the inability to look life seriously in the face, or to attend to the things worth doing, may render a man just as incompetent to fulfil the duties of citizenship as would actual viciousness.

To the crazy theories of the constitution-makers and closet-republicans generally, he often alludes in his diary, and in his letters home. In one place he notes: "The literary people here, observing the abuses of the monarchical form, imagine that everything must go the better in proportion as it recedes from the present establishment, and in their closets they make men exactly suited to their systems; but unluckily they are such men as exist nowhere else, and least of all in France." And he writes almost the same thing to Washington: "The middle party, who mean well, have unfortunately acquired their ideas of government from books, and are admirable fellows upon paper: but as it happens, somewhat unfortunately, that the men who live in the world are very different from those who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be put back into books again." And once more: "They have all that romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of government, which, happily for America, we were cured of before it was too late." He shows how they had never had the chance to gain wisdom through experience. "As they have hitherto felt severely the authority exercised in the name of their princes, every limitation of that power seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression." Elsewhere he comments on their folly in trying to apply to their own necessities systems of government suited to totally different conditions; and mentions his own attitude in the matter: "I have steadily combated the violence and excess of those persons who, either inspired with an enthusiastic love of freedom, or prompted by sinister designs, are disposed to drive everything to extremity. Our American example has done them good; but, like all novelties, liberty runs away with their discretion, if they have any. They want an American constitution with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support that constitution.... Whoever desires to apply in the practical science of government those rules and forms which prevail and succeed in a foreign country, must fall into the same pedantry with our young scholars, just fresh from the university, who would fain bring everything to the Roman standard.... The scientific tailor who should cut after Grecian or Chinese models would not have many customers, either in London or Paris; and those who look to America for their political forms are not unlike the tailors in Laputa, who, as Gulliver tells us, always take measures with a quadrant."

He shows again and again his abiding distrust and fear of the French character, as it was at that time, volatile, debauched, ferocious, and incapable of self-restraint. To Lafayette he insisted that the "extreme licentiousness" of the people rendered it indispensable that they should be kept under authority; and on another occasion told him "that the nation was used to being governed, and would have to be governed; and that if he expected to lead them by their affections, he would himself be the dupe." In writing to Washington he painted the outlook in colors that, though black indeed, were not a shade too dark. "The materials for a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals; but this general proposition can never convey to an American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by any figure of rhetoric or force of language that the idea can be communicated. A hundred anecdotes and a hundred thousand examples are required to show the extreme rottenness of every member. There are men and women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have the pleasure to number many in my own acquaintance; but they stand forward from a background deeply and darkly shaded. It is however from such crumbling matter that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected here. Perhaps like the stratum of rock which is spread under the whole surface of their country, it may harden when exposed to the air; but it seems quite as likely that it will fall and crush the builders. I own to you that I am not without such apprehensions, for there is one fatal principle which pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation of engagements. Inconstancy is so mingled in the blood, marrow, and very essence of this people, that when a man of high rank and importance laughs to-day at what he seriously asserted yesterday, it is considered as in the natural order of things. Consistency is a phenomenon. Judge, then, what would be the value of an association should such a thing be proposed and even adopted. The great mass of the common people have no religion but their priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but their interest. These are the creatures who, led by drunken curates, are now on the high road à la liberté."

Morris and Washington wrote very freely to each other. In one of his letters, the latter gave an account of how well affairs were going in America (save in Rhode Island, the majority of whose people "had long since bid adieu to every principle of honor, common sense, and honesty"), and then went on to discuss things in France. He expressed the opinion that, if the revolution went no further than it had already gone, France would become the most powerful and happy state in Europe; but he trembled lest, having triumphed in the first paroxysms, it might succumb to others still more violent that would be sure to follow. He feared equally the "licentiousness of the people" and the folly of the leaders, and doubted if they possessed the requisite temperance, firmness, and foresight; and if they did not, then he believed they would run from one extreme to another, and end with "a higher toned despotism than the one which existed before."

Morris answered him with his usual half-satiric humor: "Your sentiments on the revolution here I believe to be perfectly just, because they perfectly accord with my own, and that is, you know, the only standard which Heaven has given us by which to judge," and went on to describe how the parties in France stood. "The king is in effect a prisoner in Paris and obeys entirely the National Assembly. This assembly may be divided into three parts: one, called the aristocrats, consists of the high clergy, the members of the law (note, these are not the lawyers) and such of the nobility as think they ought to form a separate order. Another, which has no name, but which consists of all sorts of people, really friends to a good free government. The third is composed of what is here called the enragées, that is, the madmen. These are the most numerous, and are of that class which in America is known by the name of pettifogging lawyers; together with ... those persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard of change because they are not well. This last party is in close alliance with the populace here, and they have already unhinged everything, and, according to custom on such occasions, the torrent rushes on irresistibly until it shall have wasted itself." The literati he pronounced to have no understanding whatever of the matters at issue, and as was natural to a shrewd observer educated in the intensely practical school of American political life, he felt utter contempt for the wordy futility and wild theories of the French legislators. "For the rest, they discuss nothing in their assembly. One large half of the time is spent in hallooing and bawling."

Washington and Morris were both so alarmed and indignant at the excesses committed by the revolutionists, and so frankly expressed their feelings, as to create an impression in some quarters that they were hostile to the revolution itself. The exact reverse was originally the case. They sympathized most warmly with the desire for freedom, and with the efforts made to attain it. Morris wrote to the President: "We have, I think, every reason to wish that the patriots may be successful. The generous wish that a free people must have to disseminate freedom, the grateful emotion which rejoices in the happiness of a benefactor, the interest we must feel as well in the liberty as in the power of this country, all conspire to make us far from indifferent spectators. I say that we have an interest in the liberty of France. The leaders here are our friends. Many of them have imbibed their principles in America, and all have been fired by our example. Their opponents are by no means rejoiced at the success of our revolution, and many of them are disposed to form connections of the strictest kind with Great Britain." Both Washington and Morris would have been delighted to see liberty established in France; but they had no patience with the pursuit of the bloody chimera which the revolutionists dignified with that title. The one hoped for, and the other counseled, moderation among the friends of republican freedom, not because they were opposed to it, but because they saw that it could only be gained and kept by self-restraint. They were, to say the least, perfectly excusable for believing that at that time some form of monarchy, whether under king, dictator, or emperor, was necessary to France. Every one agrees that there are certain men wiser than their fellows; the only question is as to how these men can be best chosen out, and to this there can be no absolute answer. No mode will invariably give the best results; and the one that will come nearest to doing so under given conditions will not work at all under others. Where the people are enlightened and moral they are themselves the ones to choose their rulers; and such a form of government is unquestionably the highest of any, and the only one that a high-spirited and really free nation will tolerate; but if they are corrupt and degraded, they are unfit for republicanism, and need to be under an entirely different system. The most genuine republican, if he has any common sense, does not believe in a democratic government for every race and in every age.

Morris was a true republican, and an American to the core. He was alike free from truckling subserviency to European opinion,—a degrading remnant of colonialism that unfortunately still lingers in certain limited social and literary circles,—and from the uneasy self-assertion that springs partly from sensitive vanity, and partly from a smothered doubt as to one's real position. Like most men of strong character, he had no taste for the "cosmopolitanism" that so generally indicates a weak moral and mental make-up. He enjoyed his stay in Europe to the utmost, and was intimate with the most influential men and charming women of the time; but he was heartily glad to get back to America, refused to leave it again, and always insisted that it was the most pleasant of all places in which to live. While abroad he was simply a gentleman among gentlemen. He never intruded his political views or national prejudices upon his European friends; but he was not inclined to suffer any imputation on his country. Any question about America that was put in good faith, no matter how much ignorance it displayed, he always answered good-humoredly; and he gives in his Diary some amusing examples of such conversations. Once he was cross-examined by an inquisitive French nobleman, still in the stage of civilization which believes that no man can be paid to render a service to another, especially a small service, and yet retain his self-respect and continue to regard himself as the full political equal of his employer. One of this gentleman's sagacious inquiries was as to how a shoemaker could, in the pride of his freedom, think himself equal to a king, and yet accept an order to make shoes; to which Morris replied that he would accept it as a matter of business, and be glad of the chance to make them, since it lay in the line of his duty; and that he would all the time consider himself at full liberty to criticise his visitor, or the king, or any one else, who lapsed from his own duty. After recording several queries of the same nature, and some rather abrupt answers, the Diary for that day closes rather caustically with the comment: "This manner of thinking and speaking, however, is too masculine for the climate I am now in."

In a letter to Washington Morris made one of his usual happy guesses—if forecasting the future by the aid of marvelous insight into human character can properly be called a guess—as to what would happen to France: "It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when it flies so wild; but as far as it is possible to guess this (late) kingdom will be cast into a congeries of little democracies, laid out, not according to rivers, mountains, etc., but with the square and compass according to latitude and longitude," and adds that he thinks so much fermenting matter will soon give the nation "a kind of political colic."

He rendered some services to Washington that did not come in the line of his public duty. One of these was to get him a watch, Washington having written to have one purchased in Paris, of gold, "not a small, trifling, nor a finical ornamental one, but a watch well executed in point of workmanship, large and flat, with a plain, handsome key." Morris sent it to him by Jefferson, "with two copper keys and one golden one, and a box containing a spare spring and glasses." His next service to the great Virginian, or rather to his family, was of a different kind, and he records it with a smile at his own expense. "Go to M. Hudon's; he has been waiting for me a long time. I stand for his statue of General Washington, being the humble employment of a manikin. This is literally taking the advice of St. Paul, to be all things to all men."

He corresponded with many men of note; not the least among whom was the daring corsair, Paul Jones. The latter was very anxious to continue in the service of the people with whom he had cast in his lot, and in command of whose vessels he had reached fame. Morris was obliged to tell him that he did not believe an American navy would be created for some years to come, and advised him meanwhile to go into the service of the Russians, as he expected there would soon be warm work on the Baltic; and even gave him a hint as to what would probably be the best plan of campaign. Paul Jones wanted to come to Paris; but from this Morris dissuaded him. "A journey to this city can, I think, produce nothing but the expense attending it; for neither pleasure nor profit can be expected here, by one of your profession in particular; and, except that it is a more dangerous residence than many others, I know of nothing which may serve to you as an inducement."

[CHAPTER VIII.]

LIFE IN PARIS.

Although Morris entered into the social life of Paris with all the zest natural to his pleasure-loving character, yet he was far too clear-headed to permit it to cast any glamour over him. Indeed, it is rather remarkable that a young provincial gentleman, from a raw, new, far-off country, should not have had his head turned by being made somewhat of a lion in what was then the foremost city of the civilized world. Instead of this happening, his notes show that he took a perfectly cool view of his new surroundings, and appreciated the over-civilized, aristocratic society, in which he found himself, quite at its true worth. He enjoyed the life of the salon very much, but it did not in the least awe or impress him; and he was of too virile fibre, too essentially a man, to be long contented with it alone. He likewise appreciated the fashionable men, and especially the fashionable women, whom he met there; but his amusing comments on them, as shrewd as they are humorous, prove how little he respected their philosophy, and how completely indifferent he was to their claims to social preëminence.

Much has been written about the pleasure-loving, highly cultured society of eighteenth-century France; but to a man like Morris, of real ability and with an element of sturdiness in his make-up, both the culture and knowledge looked a little like veneering; the polish partook of effeminacy; the pleasure so eagerly sought after could be called pleasure only by people of ignoble ambition; and the life that was lived seemed narrow and petty, agreeable enough for a change, but dreary beyond measure if followed too long. The authors, philosophers, and statesmen of the salon were rarely, almost never, men of real greatness; their metal did not ring true; they were shams, and the life of which they were a part was a sham. Not only was the existence hollow, unwholesome, effeminate, but also in the end tedious: the silent, decorous dullness of life in the dreariest country town is not more insufferable than, after a time, become the endless chatter, the small witticisms, the mock enthusiasms, and vapid affectations of an aristocratic society as artificial and unsound as that of the Parisian drawing-rooms in the last century.

But all this was delightful for a time, especially to a man who had never seen any city larger than the overgrown villages of New York and Philadelphia. Morris thus sums up his first impressions in a letter to a friend: "A man in Paris lives in a sort of whirlwind, which turns him round so fast that he can see nothing. And as all men and things are in the same vertiginous condition, you can neither fix yourself nor your object for regular examination. Hence the people of this metropolis are under the necessity of pronouncing their definitive judgment from the first glance; and being thus habituated to shoot flying, they have what sportsmen call a quick sight. Ex pede Herculem. They know a wit by his snuff-box, a man of taste by his bow, and a statesman by the cut of his coat. It is true that, like other sportsmen, they sometimes miss; but then, like other sportsmen too, they have a thousand excuses besides the want of skill: the fault, you know, may be in the dog, or the bird, or the powder, or the flint, or even the gun, without mentioning the gunner."

Among the most famous of the salons where he was fairly constant in his attendance was that of Madame de Staël. There was not a little contempt mixed with his regard for the renowned daughter of Necker. She amused him, however, and he thought well of her capacity, though in his Diary he says that he never in his life saw "such exuberant vanity" as she displayed about her father, Necker,—a very ordinary personage, whom the convulsions of the time had for a moment thrown forward as the most prominent man in France. By way of instance he mentions a couple of her remarks, one to the effect that a speech of Talleyrand on the church property was "excellent, admirable, in short that there were two pages in it which were worthy of M. Necker;" and another wherein she said that wisdom was a very rare quality, and that she knew of no one who possessed it in a superlative degree except her father.

The first time he met her was after an exciting discussion in the assembly over the finances, which he describes at some length. Necker had introduced an absurd scheme for a loan. Mirabeau, who hated Necker, saw the futility of his plan, but was also aware that popular opinion was blindly in his favor, and that to oppose him would be ruinous; so in a speech of "fine irony" he advocated passing Necker's proposed bill without change or discussion, avowing that his object was to have the responsibility and glory thrown entirely on the proposer of the measure. He thus yielded to the popular view, while at the same time he shouldered on Necker all the responsibility for a deed which it was evident would in the end ruin him. It was a not very patriotic move, although a good example of selfish political tactics, and Morris sneered bitterly at its adoption by the representatives of a people who prided themselves on being "the modern Athenians." To his surprise, however, even Madame de Staël took Mirabeau's action seriously; she went into raptures over the wisdom of the assembly in doing just what Necker said, for "the only thing they could do was to comply with her father's wish, and there could be no doubt as to the success of her father's plans! Bravo!"

With Morris she soon passed from politics to other subjects. "Presented to Madame de Staël as un homme d'esprit," he writes, "she singles me out and makes a talk; asks if I have not written a book on the American Constitution. 'Non, madame, j'ai fait mon devoir en assistant à la formation de cette constitution.' 'Mais, monsieur, votre conversation doit être très intéressante, car je vous entends cité de toute parti.' 'Ah, madame, je ne suis pas digne de cette éloge.' How I lost my leg? It was unfortunately not in the military service of my country. 'Monsieur, vous avez l'air très imposant,' and this is accompanied with that look which, without being what Sir John Falstaff calls the 'leer of invitation,' amounts to the same thing.... This leads us on, but in the midst of the chat arrive letters, one of which is from her lover, Narbonne, now with his regiment. It brings her to a little recollection, which a little time will, I think, again banish, and a few interviews would stimulate her to try the experiment of her fascinations even on the native of a new world who has left one of his legs behind him."

An entry in Morris's Diary previous to this conversation shows that he had no very high opinion of this same Monsieur de Narbonne: "He considers a civil war inevitable, and is about to join his regiment, being, as he says, in a conflict between the dictates of his duty and his conscience. I tell him that I know of no duty but that which conscience dictates. I presume that his conscience will dictate to join the strongest side."

Morris's surmises as to his fair friend's happy forgetfulness of her absent lover proved true: she soon became bent on a flirtation with the good-looking American stranger, and when he failed to make any advances she promptly made them herself; told him that she "rather invited than repelled those who were inclined to be attentive," and capped this exhibition of modest feminine reserve by suggesting that "perhaps he might become an admirer." Morris dryly responded that it was not impossible, but that, as a previous condition, she must agree not to repel him,—which she instantly promised. Afterwards, at dinner, "we become engaged in an animated conversation, and she desires me to speak English, which her husband does not understand. In looking round the room, I observe in him very much emotion, and I tell her that he loves her distractedly, which she says she knows, and that it renders her miserable.... I condole with her a little on her widowhood, the Chevalier de Narbonne being absent in Franche Comté.... She asks me if I continue to think she has a preference for Monsieur de Tonnerre. I reply only by observing that each of them has wit enough for one couple, and therefore I think they had better separate, and take each a partner who is un peu bête. After dinner I seek a conversation with the husband, which relieves him. He inveighs bitterly [poor, honest Swede] against the manners of the country, and the cruelty of alienating a wife's affection. I regret with him on general grounds that prostitution of morals which unfits them for good government, and convince him, I think, I shall not contribute to making him any more uncomfortable than he already is." Certainly, according to Morris's evidence, Madame de Staël's sensitive delicacy could only be truthfully portrayed by the unfettered pen of a Smollett.