BOOKS.
THE RISE OF THE UNITED STATES.*
IF it is right that we should try to see ourselves as others see us, it is perhaps also a good thing to try to see others as -they see themselves. Both precepts may well be taken to -heart by Englibhmen in the present relations between this -.country and the United States. Peculiar opportunities for ascertaining the American view of the nature of the United States are afforded by recent American histories. Dr. Hart's Epochs of American History have been fol. lowed by Dr. Channing's History of the United States, while to a more elaborate series of epochs an important contribution -has lately been made by President Francis Walker, the well- -known political economist. President Walker's period is that -between 1783 and 1817, and he has emphasised his judgment with regard to this epoch in American history by entitling -his work The Making of the Nation. The year 1783 is that of the ratification of the treaty of peace between Great -Britain and the United States. The year 1817 marks the close of the first great party conflict of the new Republic, the time when the Democratic, or, as it was then called, the Republican, party of Jefferson had completed the abandon- It is impossible to read the modern American histories of the secession of the United States from the British Empire .vrithout perceiving that the quarrel was one not of principle * The Making of the _Nation, 1783-1817. By Franc's A. Walker, Ph D , LT-..D, President, MamaAnsetts Institute of Technol:Ty. With Maps and Appendices. London : Sampson Low, Marston. and Co. 1893. but of prejudice. There is hardly a doctrine among those by which the colonists justified their rebellion which has not since been abandoned by the Government of the United States, enforcing against its own recalcitrant subjects the principles which the Government of George III. in vain attempted to uphold. The colonists disliked what they thought was the arrogance of the English ; they naturally preferred their own arrogance ; and this mutual ill-feeling was the cause of the rupture. But, like all communities in rebellion, they attempted to justify their action by invoking principles. The political theories most in vogue at the time were the shallow and impracticable sophisms of the Cont rat Social (1762), which inspired most of the Colonial agitators. The period which President Walker describes is occupied with the struggle between these theories and the English common-sense of the colonists. The Articles of Confedera- tion, which came into force in 1781, created no Government, but a Committee of diplomatists, without authority and without power. Common-sense showed that a Government was necessary, and brought about the Convention of 1787. In the Convention the advocates of a Government, then called Federalists, had to fight their battle against the Anti- Federalists, who hated government, and the tenth amend- ment declaring "that powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people," is the high-water mark of the success of the Anti. Governmentparty. When the Government had been estab- lished, the first effort of the Anti-Federalists was to discredit it, their second to capture it for themselves by appealing to the democratic instincts of the people. All the old cries which had served against England were raised against Washington and Adams, with the result that Jefferson and his party came into power. Once in possession of the Government, this party abandoned all its principles, and in order to prolong its tenure of office, and to crush the remnant of the Federalist party, precipitated a new war with England in which their interest was so purely partisan that they made peace without settling any of the questions which they alleged as its causes. President Walker does much to mitigate the two disad- vantages of his subject. American history, except during the periods of Washington and of Lincoln, tends to be the record of the wrangles between factions which as a rule deserve the epithet "provincial." Our author skilfully displays the nation in the background. A survey of a period confined to the affairs of one nation is apt to be too fragmentary to yield any general ideas ; it is like a chapter from the middle of a story. President Walker neatly takes up the threads of the earlier time, and sufficiently suggests the connection with what is to follow. Nothing better has been written on American affairs in the era between the Presidency of Washington and that of Monroe. This period, however, contains only the beginnings of the two great conflicts which make up the first century of American history, and which turn upon the question between the central Government and the several States and upon the question of slavery. These controversies owe their settlement, not to argument, not to sentiment, not to statesmen, but to causes as simple and as effective as the powers of Nature. These causes were the colonisation of the Western lands beyond the Alleghanies, and the introduction of modern machinery, of steam navigation, and of railways. The eastern half of the Mississippi basin was ceded by Great Britain to the -United States in the treaty of peace. It was impossible for any one of the thirteen States to be allowed by the others to acquire this enormous area, and the ordinance of 1787, the one creditable act of the first confederation, decided that it was the common property of the United States, that it should be gradually formed into new States, and that in the portion west of the Ohio slavery should never be permitted. The creation of new States, the offspring of the central Government, rendered certain the ultimate triumph of that central Govern- ment over the doctrine of State rights which received an even more deadly blow when the typical anti-Federalist, Jefferson, found himself buying from France the western half of the Mississippi basin, a purchase which was not authorised by the Constitution, and which, therefore, killed the doctrine of strict construction of that document. The invention of modern machinery was an enormous stimulus to slavery in the cotton States, and Larried the system into the southern portion of the new territories. This extension of slave labour converted the middle States, which might otherwise have become free, into slave-breeding nurseries. In this way the interests of the South were bound up with the institution of slavery. But steam-transport, while it brought millions of immigrants from Europe, carried them into the free North-West, the area where loyalty to the central Government was, as has been seen, the foundation of public life. Cotton cultivation by slave labour exhausts the soil, and is therefore necessarily aggressive. The South was bound to attempt the extension of the area subject to slavery; the North and North-West were equally bound to resist it, and the North and North-West being, by their freedom, by the multitude of their immigrants, and by their devotion to work, infinitely stronger than the South, were 'bound to win. The Southerners, brought up in the doctrines of Jefferson and Calhoun, chose as the pretext of their action the doctrine of State rights ; the victory of the North destroyed that doctrine for ever. In all probability the strength thus acquired by the national sentiment will suffice to overcome all the tremendous difficulties which will yet be caused by the climatic, economical, and social differences between East and West. It may be doubted whether modern means of communica- tion have exhausted their modifying influence upon American policy. Washington's rule of conduct in regard to foreign nations was "in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible." In the next generation Monroe developed this doctrine, which now, at least in the popular mind, covers a distinction between the Old World, to which Washington's maxim is applied, and the New, in which, according to Mr. Olney, the United States is the supreme Power. Modern communications will break down this distinction. The sea makes the whole world one, and sooner or later the United States will become aware of this, and will seek to assert in all the affairs of the world an influence proportionate to the loftiness of their ideal and to the devotion of their people to its realisation.
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