Читать книгу History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States - George Ticknor Curtis - Страница 24

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1786-1787.

No Security afforded by the Confederation to the State Governments.—Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts, and its Kindred Disturbances.

No federative government can be of great permanent value, which is not so constructed that it may stand, in some measure, as the common sovereign of its members, able to protect them against internal disorders, as well as against external assaults. The Confederation undertook but one of these great duties. It was formed at a time when the war with England was the great object of concern to the revolted Colonies, and when they felt only the exigencies which that war created. Hence its most important powers, as well as its leading purpose, concerned the common cause of resistance to a foreign domination. A federal league of States independent of each other, formed principally for mutual defence against a common enemy, was all that succeeded to the general superintending power of the British crown, by which the internal affairs of each of them had always been regulated and controlled, in the last resort. When the tie was broken by which they had been held to the parent state, each of them created for itself a new government, resting for its basis on the popular will, and deriving its authority directly from the people; but none of them provided for the creation of a power, external to itself, which might stand as the guarantor and protector of their new institutions, and secure the principles on which they rested against violence and overthrow. Yet the constitutions thus formed, from their peculiar nature, eminently needed the safeguards which such a power could afford.

These constitutions were admirably constructed. They contained principles imperfectly known to the ancient governments; found in modern times only in the government of England; and applied there with far less consistency and completeness. They embraced the regular distribution of political power into distinct departments; legislative checks and balances, by means of two coördinate branches of the legislature; a judiciary in general holding office during good behavior; and the representation of the people in the legislature, by deputies of their own actual election, in which the theory of such representation was more perfectly carried into practice than it had ever been in the country from which it was derived. But the fundamental principle on which they all rested, and without which they could not maintain existence, required means of defence. They were established upon the great doctrine, that it is the right of every political society to govern itself, and for the purposes of such self-government, to create such constitutions and ordain such fundamental laws as its own judgment and its own intelligent choice may find best suited to its own interests. But society can act only by an expression of the aggregate will of its members; and as there may be members who dissent from the views and determinations of the great mass of society, and it is therefore necessary to decide with whom the power of compelling obedience resides,—since there must be obedience in order that there may be peace,—nature and reason have determined that this power is to reside with a majority of the members. The American constitutions, therefore, are founded wholly upon the principle, that a majority expresses the will of the whole society, and may establish, change, and abrogate forms of government at its pleasure.254 It follows, as a necessary deduction from this fundamental doctrine, that so soon as society has acted in the formation and establishment of a government, upon this principle, no change can take place, but by a new expression of the will of society through the voice of a majority; and whether a majority desires or has actually decreed a change, is a fact that must be made certain, and can only be made certain in one of two modes,—either by the evidence and through the channels which the society has previously ordained for this purpose, or by the submission of all its members to a violent and successful revolution.

The first constitution of Massachusetts did not designate any mode in which it was to be amended or changed. But no peaceable change can take place in any government founded on the expressed will of a majority of the people, consistently with the principle on which it had been established, until it has been ascertained, in some mode, that a change is demanded by the same authority. The vital importance of ascertaining this fact with precision was not so clearly perceived, at that early period, as it is now.

Seizing upon the newly established doctrine, which made them the sources of all political power, the people did not at once apprehend the rule which preserves and upholds that power, and makes the doctrine itself both practicable and safe. Hence, when troubles arose, individuals were led to suppose that they had only to declare a grievance, to demand a change, and to compel a compliance with their demand by force. So far as they reasoned at all, they persuaded themselves that, as their government was the creation of the people, by their own direct act, bodies of the people could assemble in their primary capacity, and, by obstructing any of its functions which they connected with a particular grievance, produce a reform, which the people have always a right to make. By overlooking, in this manner, the only safe and legitimate mode in which the popular will can be really ascertained, they passed into the mischiefs of anarchy and rebellion, mistaking the voices of a minority for the ascertained will of society.

To these tendencies, the recently established governments of New England, where the spirit of liberty was most vigorous, could oppose no efficient check; while, in any open outbreak, they were without any external defender, on whose power they could lean. The Confederation succeeded to the Revolutionary Congress, as we have more than once had occasion to observe, with less power than its predecessor might have exercised. It was formed by a written constitution, yet it was, strictly speaking, scarcely a government. It was a close union of the States; but it was a union from which all powers had been jealously withheld which would have enabled it to interfere with vigor and success between an insurgent minority of the people of a State and its lawful rulers. The Revolutionary Congress was once possessed of such large, indefinite powers, that, upon principles of public necessity, it might have assumed, in a great emergency, to hold a direct relation to the internal concerns of any Colony. It was, in fact, looked to, in some degree, for direction in the formation of the State governments, after it had broken the bonds of colonial allegiance to the English crown; and it might very properly have undertaken to support the governments whose establishment it had recommended. But such a relation between the early States and the continental power, though it certainly existed in 1776, was soon lost in the independent and jealous attitude which they began to occupy, and the Union rapidly assumed a position, where the character of sovereignty which it appeared to wear when it promulgated the Declaration of Independence was scarcely to be discerned. At no period in the history of the Confederation did it act upon the internal concerns or condition of a State. Its written articles of union hardly admitted of a construction which would have enabled it to do so, and certainly contained no express delegation of such a power.

At the same time, some of the State governments, during the period of which we are treating, were singularly exposed to the dangers of anarchy. None of them had any standing forces of any consequence, three years after the peace, and the New England States had no military forces whatever but their militia. No State could call upon its neighbors for aid in quelling an insurrection, for their militia would not have obeyed the summons, if it had been issued; and no State could call upon the federal government, in such an emergency, with any certainty of success in the application.255

In such a state of things, the year 1786 witnessed an insurrection in Massachusetts of a very dangerous character, which, from the fortunate circumstance that her counsels were then guided by a man of singular energy and firmness of character, she was just able to subdue. The remote causes of this insurrection lie too far from the path of our main subject to be more than summarily stated.

At the close of the Revolutionary war, the State of Massachusetts was oppressed with an enormous debt. At the breaking out of that war, the debt of the Colony was less than one hundred thousand pounds. The private debt of the State, in the year 1786, was one million three hundred thousand pounds, besides two hundred and fifty thousand pounds due to the officers and soldiers of the State line of the Revolutionary army. The State's proportion of the federal debt was not less than one million and a half of pounds.256 According to the customary mode of taxation, one third of the whole debt was to be paid by the ratable polls, which scarcely exceeded ninety thousand.257 The Revolution had made the people of Massachusetts familiar with the great general doctrines of liberty and human rights; but it had given them little insight into the principles of revenue and finance, and little acquaintance with the rules of public economy. No sufficient means, therefore, to relieve the people from direct taxation, by encouraging a revival of trade and at the same time drawing from it a revenue, were devised by the legislature. The exports of the State, moreover, had suffered a fearful diminution. The fisheries, which had been a fruitful source of prosperity to the colony, had been nearly destroyed by the war, and the markets of the West Indies and of Europe were now closed to the products of this lucrative industry, by which wealth had formerly been drawn from the wastes of the ocean. The State had scarcely any other commodity to exchange for the precious metals in foreign commerce. Its agriculture yielded only a scanty support to its population, if it yielded so much; its manufactures were in a languishing condition; and its carrying trade had been driven from the seas during the war, and was afterwards annihilated by the oppressive policy of England, which succeeded the Peace. The people were every year growing poorer than they had been the year before, and taxes, onerous taxes, beyond their resources and always odious, were pressing upon them with a constantly increasing accumulation, from which the political state of the country seemed to promise no relief.258

But the demand of the tax-gatherer was not the sole burden which individuals had to encounter. Private debts had accumulated during the war, in almost as large a ratio as the public obligations. The collection of such debts had been generally suspended, while the struggle for political freedom was going on; but that struggle being over, creditors necessarily became active, and were often obliged to be severe. Suits were multiplied in the courts of law beyond all former precedent, and the first effect of this sudden influx of litigation was to bring popular odium upon the whole machinery of justice. In a state of society approaching so nearly to a democracy, the class of debtors, if numerous, must be politically formidable. They had begun to be so before the close of the war. Their clamors and the supposed necessity of the case led the legislature, in 1782, to a violation of principle, in a law known as the Tender Act, by which executions for debt might be satisfied by certain articles of property, to be taken at an appraisement. This law was limited in its operation to one year; but in the course of that year it taught the debtors their strength, and gave the first signal for an attack upon property. A levelling, licentious spirit, a restless desire for change, and a disposition to throw down the barriers of private rights, at length broke forth in conventions, which first voted themselves to be the people, and then declared their proceedings to be constitutional. At these assemblies, the doctrine was publicly broached, that property ought to be common, because all had aided in saving it from confiscation by the power of England. Taxes were voted to be unnecessary burdens, the courts of justice to be intolerable grievances, and the legal profession a nuisance. A revision of the constitution was demanded, in order to abolish the Senate, reform the representation in the House, and make all the civil officers of the government eligible by the people.

A passive declaration of their grievances did not, however, content the disaffected citizens of Massachusetts. They proceeded to enforce their demands. The courts of justice were the nearest objects for attack, as well as the most immediately connected with the chief objects of their complaints. Armed mobs surrounded the court-houses in several counties, and sometimes effectually obstructed the sessions of the courts. These acts were repeated, until, in the autumn of 1786, the insurrection broke out in a formidable manner in the western part of the State. The insurgents actually embodied, and in arms against the government, in the month of December, in the counties of Worcester and Hampshire, numbered about fifteen hundred men, and were headed by one Daniel Shays, who had been a captain in the continental army.259

The executive chair of the State was at that time filled by James Bowdoin; a statesman, firm, prudent, of high principle, and devoted to the cause of constitutional order. In the first stages of the disaffection, he had been thwarted by a House of Representatives, in which the majority were strongly inclined to sympathize with the general spirit of the insurgents; but the Senate had supported him. Afterwards, when the movement grew more dangerous, the legislature became more reconciled to the use of vigorous means to vindicate the authority of the government, and a short time before it actually took the form of an armed and organized rebellion against the Commonwealth, they had encouraged the Governor to use the powers vested in him by the constitution to enforce obedience to the laws. The Executive promptly met the emergency. A body of militia was marched against the insurgents, and by the middle of February they were dispersed or captured, with but little loss of life.

The actual resources of the State, however, to meet an emergency of this kind, were feeble and few. A voluntary loan, from a few public-spirited individuals, supplied the necessary funds, of which the treasury of the State was wholly destitute.260 At one time, so general was the prevalence of discontent, even among the militia on whom the government were obliged to rely, that men were known openly to change sides in the field, when the first bodies of troops were called out.261 Had the government of the State been in the hands of a person less firm and less careless of popularity than Bowdoin, it would have been given up to anarchy and civil confusion. The political situation of the country did not seem to admit of an application to Congress for direct assistance, and there is no reason to suppose that such an application would have been effectively answered, if it had been made.262

When the news of the disturbances in Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1786, was received in Congress, it happened that intelligence from the Western country indicated a hostile disposition on the part of several Indian tribes against the frontier settlements. A resolve was unanimously adopted, directing one thousand three hundred and forty additional troops to be raised, for the term of three years, for the protection and support of the States bordering on the Western territory and the settlements on and near the Mississippi, and to secure and facilitate the surveying and selling of the public lands.263 From the fact that the whole of these troops were ordered to be raised by the four New England States, and one half of them by the State of Massachusetts, and from other circumstances, it is quite apparent that the object assigned was an ostensible one, and that Congress intended by this resolve to strengthen the government of that State and to overawe the insurgents.264 But this motive could not be publicly announced. The enlistment went on very slowly, however, until February, when a motion was made by Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina to stop it altogether, upon the ground that the insurrection in Massachusetts, the real, though not the ostensible, object of the resolve, had been crushed. Mr. King of Massachusetts earnestly entreated that the federal enlistments might be permitted to go on, otherwise the greatest alarm would be felt by the government of the State and its friends, and the insurrection might be rekindled. Mr. Madison advised that the proposal to rescind the order for the enlistments should be suspended, to await the course of events in Massachusetts. At the same time, he admitted that it would be difficult to reconcile an interference of Congress in the internal controversies of a State with the tenor of the Articles of Confederation.265 The whole subject was postponed, and the direct question of the power of Congress was not acted upon. In the Convention which framed the Constitution, it was very early declared, that the Confederation had neither constitutional power, nor means, to interfere in case of a rebellion in any State.266

This generation can scarcely depict to itself the alarm which these disturbances spread through the country, and the extreme peril to which the whole fabric of society in New England was exposed. The numbers of the disaffected in Massachusetts amounted to one fifth of the inhabitants in several of the populous counties. Their doctrines and purposes were embraced by many young, active, and desperate men in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and the whole of this faction in the four States was capable of furnishing a body of twelve or fifteen thousand men, bent on annihilating property, and cancelling all debts, public and private.267

But this great peril was not without beneficial consequences. It displayed, at a critical moment, when a project of amending the Federal Constitution for other purposes was encountering much opposition, a more dangerous deficiency than any to which the public mind had hitherto been turned. While thoughtful and considerate men were speculating upon the causes of diminished prosperity and the general feebleness of the system of government, a gulf suddenly yawned beneath their feet, threatening ruin to the whole social fabric. It was but a short time before, that the people of this country had shed their blood to obtain constitutions of their own choice and making. Now, they seemed as ready to overturn them as they had once been to extort from tyranny the power of creating and erecting them in its place. It was manifest, that to achieve the independence of a country is but half of the great undertaking of liberty;—that, after freedom, there must come security, order, the wise disposal of power, and great institutions on which society may repose in safety. It was clear, that the Federal Union alone could certainly uphold the liberty which it had gained for the people of the States, and that, to enable it to do so, it must become a government.268

From his retreat at Mount Vernon, Washington observed the progress of these disorders with intense anxiety. To him, they carried the strongest evidence of a want of energy in the system of the Federal Union. They did more than all things else to convince him that "a liberal and energetic constitution, well checked and well watched to prevent encroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and consequence to which we had the fairest prospect of attaining."269 He was kept accurately informed of the state of things in New England, and the probability that he would be obliged to come forward, and take an active part in the support of order against civil discord, was directly intimated to him.270 He had foreseen the possibility of this; but the successful issue of the struggle relieved him from the contemplation of this painful task, and left to him only the duty of giving the whole weight of his influence and presence in the Convention, which was to assemble in the following May, for the revision of the Federal Constitution.