In context of my prior post in reply to yours, considering race... this should help clarify much of the confusion that exists in the shifting lines in politics, today... that is about topics other than race:
This is taken from "A collection of the political writings of William Leggett" openlibrary.org
Leggett was a newspaper editor... a Democrat... (and not an abolitionist) here writing on the exact subject of the differences between the parties (ignoring the issues of race and slavery) as he saw it... in 1834:
THE DIVISION OF PARTIES.
[From the Evening Post, November 4, 1834.]
Since the organization of the Government of the
United States the people of this country have been divi
ded into two great parties. One of these parties has un
dergone various changes of name ; the other has con
tinued steadfast alike to its appellation and to its princi
ples, and is now, as it was at first, the DEMOCRACY.
Both parties have ever contended for the same opposite
ends which originally caused the division whatever
may have been, at different times, the particular means
which furnished the immediate subject of dispute. The
great object of the struggles of the Democracy has been
to confine the action of the General Government within
the limits marked out in the Constitution : the great ob
ject of the party opposed to the Democracy has ever been
to overleap those boundaries, and give to the General
Government greater powers and a wider field for their
exercise. The doctrine of the one party is that all pow
er not expressly and clearly delegated to the General
Government, remains with the States and with the Peo
ple : the doctrine of the other party is that the vigour
and efficacy of the General Government should be
strengthened by a free construction of its powers. The
one party sees danger from the encroachments of the
General Government ; the other affects to see danger
from the encroachments of the States.
This original line of separation between the two
great political parties of the republic, though it existed
under the old Confederation, and was distinctly marked
in the controversy which preceded the formation and
adoption of the present Constitution, was greatly widen
ed and strengthened by the project of a National Bank,
brought forward in 1791. This was the first great ques
tion which occurred under the new Constitution to test
whether the provisions of that instrument were to be in
terpreted according to their strict and literal meaning ;
or whether they might be stretched to include objects
and powers which had never been delegated to the Gen
eral Government, and which consequently still resided
with the states as separate sovereignties.
The proposition of the Bank was recommended by the
Secretary of the Treasury on the ground that such an in
stitution would be " of primary importance to the prosper
ous administration of the finances, and of the greatest
utility in the operations connected with the support of pub
lic credit." This scheme, then, as now, was opposed on
various grounds ; but the constitutional objection consti
tuted then, as it does at the present day, the main reason of
the uncompromising and invincible hostility of the de
mocracy to the measure. They considered it as the ex
ercise of a very important power which had never been
given by the states or the people to the General Govern
ment, and which the General Government could not
therefore exercise without being guilty of usurpation.
Those who contended that the Government possessed the
power, effected their immediate object ; but the contro-
versy still exists. And it is of no consequence to tell
the democracy that it is now established by various pre
cedents, and by decisions of the Supreme Court, that
this power is fairly incidental to certain other powers
expressly granted ; for this is only telling them that the
advocates of free construction have, at times, had the
ascendancy in the Executive and Legislative, and, at all
times, in the Judiciary department of the Government.
The Bank question stands now on precisely the same
footing that it originally did ; it is now, as it was at first,
a matter of controversy between the two great parties of
this country between parties as opposite as day and
night ^-between parties which contend, one for the conso
lidation and enlargement of the powers of the General
Government, and the other for strictly limiting that
Government to the objects for which it was instituted,
and to the exercise of the means with which it was en
trusted. The one party is for a popular Government ;
the other for an aristocracy. The one party is compos
ed, in a great measure, of the farmers, mechanics,
labourers, and other producers of the middling and low
er classes, (according to the common gradation by the
scale of wealth,) and the other of the consumers, the rich,
the proud, the privileged of those who, if our Government
were converted into an aristocracy, would become our
dukes, lords, marquises and baronets. The question is
still disputed between these two parties it is ever a new
question and whether the democracy or the aristocracy
shall succeed in the present struggle, the fight will be re
newed, whenever the defeated party shall be again able to
muster strength enough to take the field. The privilege
of self-government is one which the people will never be
permitted to enjoy unmolested. Power and wealth are
continually stealing from the many to the few. There
is a class continually gaining ground in the community,
who desire to monopolize the advantages of the Govern-
ment, to hedge themselves round with exclusive privileges,
and elevate themselves at the expense of the great body
of the people. These, in our society, are emphatically
the aristocracy ; and these, with all such as their means
of persuasion, or corruption, or intimidation, can move to
act with them, constitute the party which are now strug-
ling against the democracy, for the perpetuation of an
odious and dangerous moneyed institution.
Putting out of view, for the present, all other objections
to the United States Bank, that it is a monopoly, that
it possesses enormous and overshadowing power, that it
has been most corruptly managed, and that it is identified
with political leaders to whom the people of the United
States must ever be strongly opposed the constitutional
objection alone is an insurmountable objection to it.
The Government of the United States is a limited
sovereignty. The powers which it may exercise are ex-
pressly enumerated in the Constitution. None not thus
stated, or that are not " necessary and proper" to carry
those which are stated into effect, can be allowed to be ex
ercised by it. The power to establish a bank is not ex-
pressly given ; neither is incidental ; since it cannot be
shown to be " necessary" to carry the powers which
are given, or any of them, into effect. That power can-
not therefore be exercised without transcending the Con-
stitutional limits.
This is the democratic argument stated in its briefest
form. The aristocratic argument in favour of the
power is founded on the dangerous heresy that the Con-
stitution says one thing, and means another. That ne
cessary does not mean necessary, but simply convenient.
By a mode of reasoning not looser than this it would be
easy to prove that our Government ought to be changed
into a Monarchy, Henry Clay crowned King, and the op-
position members of the Senate made peers of the realm ;
and power, place and perquisites given to them and
their heirs forever. |
