A History of the American People Part 4

The third compromise, in early September, was perhaps the most important of all in the long run, dealing as it did with the election of the president. Although federalists like Hamilton lost the general battle about the nature of the state, which remained decentralized rather than concentrated, they won a significant victory over the presidency. Hamilton won this by tactical skill, compromising on the election procedure-if no candidate got a majority of the popular vote, the House elected one from among the top three, voting by states, not as individuals. Each state was further given the right to decide how to choose its electoral college. This appeared to be a gesture to the states, balancing the fact that the president was directly elected by the people. But it left open the possibility of popular partic.i.p.ation. Thus in practice the president was elected independently of the legislature. Moreover he was given a veto (offset by a two-thirds overriding rule) over Congressional legislation, and very wide executive powers (offset to a limited degree by the requirement that the Senate should 'advise and consent').

Almost by accident, then, America got a very strong presidency-or, rather, an office which any particular president could make strong if he chose. He was much stronger than most kings of the day, rivaled or exceeded only by the 'Great Autocrat,' the Tsar of Russia (and in practice stronger than most tsars). He was, and is, the only official elected by the nation as a whole and this fact gave him the moral legitimacy to exercise the huge powers buried in the const.i.tutional thickets. These powers were not explored until Andrew Jackson's time, half a century on, when they astonished and frightened many people; and it is perhaps fortunate that the self-restraint and common sense of George Washington prevented any display of them in the I790s, when they would certainly have led to protest and const.i.tutional amendment. As it was, the new republic got a combined head of state and head of government entrusted with formidable potential authority.

Although the Convention worked with some speed, which was necessary, and desirable for its own sake-too long debates on const.i.tutions lead to niggling and confusion of issues-it worked deliberatively. The making of the United States Const.i.tution ought to be a model to all states seeking to set up a federal system, or changing their form of government, or beginning nationhood from nothing. Alas, in the 200 and more years since the US Const.i.tution was drawn up, the text itself has been studied (often superficially) but the all-important manner in which the thing was done has been neglected. The French Revolutionaries in the next decade paid little attention to how the Americans set about const.i.tution-making-what had this semi-barbarous people to teach Old Europe? was the att.i.tude-and thirty years later the Latin Americans were in too much of a hurry to set up their new states to learn from the history of their own hemisphere. So it has gone on. The federal const.i.tutions of the Soviet Union (1921) and of Yugoslavia (1919) were enacted virtually without reference to the American experience, and both eventually provided disastrous and b.l.o.o.d.y failures. It was the same with the Central African Federation, the Federation of Malaysia, and the West Indies Federation, all of which had to be abandoned. The federal structure of the European Union is likewise being set up with no attempt to scrutinize and digest the highly successful American precedent, and attempts to persuade the European const.i.tution-makers to look at the events of the 1780s are contemptuously dismissed.

Just as important as the process for drawing up the Const.i.tution was the process of ratifying it. In some ways it was more important because it went further to introduce and habituate the country to the democratic principle. Article VII of the Const.i.tution provided for the way it was to be adopted, and resolutions pa.s.sed by the Convention on September 17, 1787 set out a four-stage process of ratification. The first was the submission of the doc.u.ment to the Congress of the old Confederation. This was done on September 25, and, after three days of pa.s.sionate debate, federalists (who supported ratification) and anti-federalists (who wanted it rejected) agreed to send the Const.i.tution to the individual states, the second stage, without endorsing or condemning it. The third stage was the election of delegates in each state to consider the Const.i.tution, and the fourth was ratification by these conventions of at least nine of the Thirteen States. When the ninth state signified its acceptance, the Const.i.tution then became the basic law of the Union, irrespective of what other states did.

This introduction of the rule of majority, as opposed to unanimity, itself signified the determination of the federalists to create a forceful and robust government. Majority rule made fast action possible. It reflected the desire that the ratification process proceed briskly, and the hope that quick ratification by key states early in the day would stampede the rest into acquiescence. It was a high-risk strategy, obviously. If any of the four biggest states, Virginia, Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, let alone all of them, rejected the Const.i.tution, ratification by all the rest would be meaningless. But the federalists thought they could be pretty sure of the Big Four. Again, the Const.i.tution took an even bigger risk in insisting ratification had to be by popular, specially elected conventions rather than by state legislatures. This was to introduce the people-democracy indeed-with a vengeance. But it was felt that approval by state legislators was not enough. Here was a fundamental law, affecting everyone in the nation and their children and grandchildren and generations to come. The people ought to partic.i.p.ate, as a nation, in deciding whether to endorse it, and the ratification process itself would encourage them to look beyond the borders of their own states and consider the national interest as well as their own. This was a wise decision, again with momentous consequences, because once the people had thus been invited onto the political stage, and asked their opinion, they could never be pushed into the wings again.

Ratification by convention also had the effect of inviting a grand public debate on the issue, and in a way this was the most significant aspect of the whole process. If Jefferson, Madison, and Adams were right in believing that education, virtue, and good government went together, then there was a positive merit in getting not just state legislatures but the people themselves to debate the Const.i.tution. The wider the discussions, the more partic.i.p.ants, the better-for public political debate was a form of education in itself, and a vital one. If, in the 1760s and early 1770s, the Americans, or their representatives, had been allowed to debate with the British, or their representatives, on the proper relationship between the two peoples, the Revolution might have been avoided. Words are an alternative to weapons, and a better one. But a debate was refused, and the issue was put to the arbitrament of force. The Americans had learned this lesson (as indeed had the British by now) and were determined to give words their full play. In the next decade the French were to ignore the lesson, at the cost of countless lives and ideological bitterness which reverberates to this day.

So that ratification process was a war of words. And what words! It was the grandest public debate in history up to that point. It took place in the public square, at town meetings, in the streets of little towns and big cities, in the remote countryside of the Appalachian hills and the backwoods and backwaters. Above all it took place in print. America got its first daily newspaper in 1783 with the appearance of the Philadelphia Evening Post, and dailies (often ephemeral) and weeklies were now proliferating. Printing and paper, being completely untaxed, were cheap. It cost little to produce a pamphlet and the stages carried packets of it up and down the coast. Americans were already developing the device (eventually to be called the syndicated column) of getting articles by able and prominent writers, usually employing pseudonyms like 'Cato ' 'Cicero ' 'Brutus ' 'Publius ' 'A Farmer,' 'A Citizen of New York,' and 'Landholder,' circulated to all newspaper editors, to use as they pleased. So literally thousands of printed comments on the issues were circulated, and read individually or out loud to groups of electors, and then discussed and replied to. It was the biggest exercise in political education ever conducted. An important issue was felt to be at stake, which went beyond the bounds of the Const.i.tution as such. As Hamilton, writing as 'Publius,' put it, the process was to determine 'whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government by reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political const.i.tutions, on accident and force.'

The federalists were led by Alexander Hamilton, the most active of all, James Madison, who came second, John Jay, John Marshall, James Wilson, John d.i.c.kinson, and Roger Sherman. They had the initial advantage that George Washington was known to favor ratification, and his name carried weight everywhere. Franklin was also a declared supporter, and he counted for a lot in Philadelphia, the biggest city. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay produced jointly the Federalist, a series of eighty-five newspaper essays, much reproduced and printed in book form in 1788. Hamilton was the princ.i.p.al author and collectively they represent the first major work of political theory ever produced in America, discussing with great clarity and force such fundamental questions of government as the distribution of authority between the center and the periphery, between government and people, and the degree to which the const.i.tuent elements of government, executive, legislature, and judiciary, ought to be separate. It is the one product of the great debate which is still widely read. How widely it was read, and understood, at the time is debatable. It certainly served as a handbook for speakers on the federalist side before and during the ratification conventions. In that sense it was very important.

The most popular publication on the federalist side was John Jay's Address to the People of the State o f New York, which was reprinted many times, and another bestseller, as a pamphlet, was the major speech made by James Wilson on November 24, 1787 to the Pennsylvania convention. It was Wilson who put the stress on election and representation as the core of the const.i.tution. That, he argued, was what distinguished this new form from the ancient orders of Athens and Rome and the curious mixture of voting and inherited right which made up the British Const.i.tution. 'The world,' he wrote, 'has left to America the glory and happiness of forming a government where representation shall at once supply the basis and the cement of the superstructure. For representation, Sir, is the true chain between the people and those to whom they entrust the administration of the government.' After Madison, Wilson's was the most important hand in shaping the Const.i.tution, and after Hamilton's his was the most important voice in getting it accepted.

The anti-federalists, such as Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, John Hanc.o.c.k, James Monroe, Elbridge Gerry, George Clinton, Willie Jones, Melancton Smith, and Sam Adams, were formidable individually but lacked the cohesive force of the federalists. Their objections varied and they appeared unable to agree on an alternative to what they rejected. The Letters of Brutus, probably written by Robert Yates, Otis Warren's Observations on the New Const.i.tution, the anonymous Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican and Luther Martin's General Observation contradict each other and leave a negative impression. One pamphleteer, signing himself 'A Republican Federalist,' equated the proposed Congress with the British: 'The revolution which separated the United States from Great Britain was not more important to the liberties of America, than that which will result from the adoption of a new system. The former freed us from a foreign subjugation, and there is too much reason to apprehend that the latter will reduce us to a federal domination.' This fear of Big Government was allied to a widespread conviction, which the anti-federalists articulated, that the new federal congress and government would quickly fall into the hands of special interests and groups who would oppress the people. Hamilton's notion of lawyers as a disinterested cla.s.s formed by nature to run the center did not impress. As Amos Singeltary of Ma.s.sachusetts put it, 'These lawyers, and men of learning, and monied men, that talk so finely, and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pills, expect to get into Congress themselves: they expect to be the managers of this Const.i.tution, and get all the power and the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folks, like the great Leviathan.'

But the alternative some anti-federalists proposed, of Small Government on the lines of the Swiss cantons, did not go down well. After all, America had experienced small government already, during the war and since, and most people knew it had not worked well-would not have worked at all without Washington. The problem, during the war and since, had not been too much government but too little. That was a very general view, in all states; and fear of Big Government was further mitigated by a general a.s.sumption that, once the new Const.i.tution was in force, Washington would again be summoned to duty and would prevent its power from being abused just as once he had made good its lack of powers. Where the anti-federalists struck home was in stressing that the new Const.i.tution said little or nothing about rights, especially of the individual. But the federalists admitted this defect, and they agreed that, once the Const.i.tution was ratified, the first thing was to draw up and pa.s.s a Bill of Rights which (as a const.i.tutional amendment) would require the consent of three-quarters of the states and would thus be sure to satisfy the vast majority.

With this qualification in mind, the ratification procedure began. The first five ratifications took place December 1787-January 1788: Delaware (unanimous), Pennsylvania (46-23), New Jersey and Georgia (unanimous), and Connecticut (128-40). In Ma.s.sachusetts, the two leading anti-federalists, Sam Adams and John Hanc.o.c.k, negotiated a rider to ratification under which the state agreed to accept the Const.i.tution on condition it was amended with a Bill of Rights. This went through in February 1788 (187-168). All the other states adopted this device, and insured the acceptance of the Const.i.tution, though making it imperative that the rights provisions be adopted quickly. Maryland ratified in April (63-11), South Carolina in May (149-73), New Hampshire (57-47) and Virginia (89-79) in June, and New York in July (30-27). That made eleven states and insured the Const.i.tution's adoption. North Carolina's ratification convention adjourned in August 1788 without voting, and Rhode Island refused to call a convention at all. But the virtual certainty that amendments would be introduced guaranteeing rights persuaded both states to change their minds: North Carolina ratified November 1789 (195-77) and Rhode Island May 1790 (34-32).

Thus, in the end, the ratification by states was unanimous, and the Const.i.tution was law. Benjamin Franklin, who had attended every session of the Const.i.tutional Convention and who had actually fathered the idea that the House should represent the people and the Senate the states, hailed the adoption of the Const.i.tution with a memorable remark: 'Our Const.i.tution is an actual operation,' he wrote to a friend in Europe, 'and everything appears to promise that it will last: but in this world nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes.'

Congress now had to enact rights. Some states had already done so, so there were precedents. The federalists who wrote the Const.i.tution were chary on the subject. Individual rights were presumed to exist in nature-that was the basis on which the Declaration of Independence had been drawn up-and a formal, legal statement of them might imply the extension of government into spheres in which it did not and should not operate. 'The truth is,' Hamilton wrote in the Federalist, 'the Const.i.tution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a bill of rights.' That was a shrewd point and it may be that enacting individual rights formally has proved, especially in the 20th century, a greater source of discord than of rea.s.surance. But Hamilton and the others went along with the general feeling, very strong in some states and especially in the backwoods and country districts, that rights must be enumerated and spelt out.

Hence Madison, who had originally opposed what he called 'parchment barriers' against the tyranny of interests or of the majority, relying instead upon structural arrangements such as the separation of powers and checks and balances, now set about the difficult task of examining all the amendments insisting on rights put forward at the ratifying conventions, and various bills of rights enshrined in state const.i.tutions, and coming up with a synthesis. He also had a complete model in the shape of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), written by the anti-federalist George Mason. Early in the first session of the new Congress in 1789, Madison produced drafts of ten amendments. The first amendment, the most important, prohibits legislative action in certain areas, giving citizens freedom of religion, a.s.sembly, speech, and press, and the right to pet.i.tion. The next seven secure the rights of property, and guarantee the rights of defendants accused of crimes. The ninth protects rights not specifically enumerated. The tenth, reinforcing this, insists that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Const.i.tution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.' The ratification proceeded smoothly and on December 15, 1791, when Virginia ratified, the Bill of Rights became part of the Const.i.tution.

Two more matters remained to be determined. Should representatives be paid? They never had been in England, except sometimes by localities. The states varied. Franklin, who was rich, argued before the convention of 1787 that no salaries be paid-in his self-made-man way he thought the right to represent should be earned and paid for by the ambitious individual. But he was turned down. Even the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly paid 'compensation' for loss of earnings. There was no issue on which the Founding Fathers were more divided. Many 'gentlemen,' such as lawyers, found they could not hold office and make a living, so they demanded salaries, and then complained they were too low. Hamilton, though rich, spoke for them. John Adams had a high view of the dignity of public officials. When he was first sent to England as minister he refused to take a hand with the ship's pumps, like everyone else, 'arguing it was not befitting a person who had public status.' This claim, so un-American (one might think), makes one suppose that Adams would be against salaries. But he was not. He thought it was perks and privileges which produced evil in public men. Without salaries, he said, public office would become the monopoly of the rich. He thought it disgraceful that Washington had been allowed to serve as commander-in-chief without being paid. Jefferson shared Washington's view, adhering to what he called the 'Roman principle.' 'In a virtuous government,' he said, 'public offices are what they should be, burthens to those appointed to them, which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring with them intense labor, and great private loss.''" In general, the Southerners were against salaries, the Northerners in favor. The North won, and it was decided even senators should be paid. The amount was left to Congress, which fixed on $6 a day. It seemed high to critics, but then the first Congress met in New York City, where the cost of living was 'outrageous.' In any event congressmen were soon grumbling it was too little, as were senators, who thought they should be paid more than mere members of the House.

What n.o.body seems to have bothered much about was the cost of electioneering. This could be enormous in 18th-century England, up to 100,000 for a single contest, sometimes even more. Nor was it just an English problem. When George Washington was first elected a Virginia burgess in 1758, it cost him 40 for 47 gallons of beer, 35 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of cider, half a pint of brandy, and 3 barrels of rum-punch. These electioneering costs were going up in both countries all the time and in England parliament was slowly coming to grips with the problem and disqualifying MPs for bribing electors with drink and money. It is curious, and disappointing, that the gentleman-politicians who created the United States did not tackle the problem of election-costs right at the start, and thus save their successors a great deal of trouble-and cash.

By agreeing to let each state send two senators to Congress, the Founding Fathers built states' rights into the representational process. The House, on the other hand, was to represent the people, and it was agreed that each state was to have at least one Congressman and not to exceed one for every 30,000 persons (excluding Indians not paying taxes and allowing for the three-fifths rule for slaves). A census was to take place every ten years to determine the numbers and thus the total and distribution of congressmen. In 1787, for the first Congress, there were sixty-five congressmen, Rhode Island and Delaware getting one each, Georgia and New Hampshire three each, New Jersey four, Connecticut and North and South Carolina five each, New York and Maryland six, Ma.s.sachusetts and Pennsylvania eight each, and Virginia ten. But America was changing and expanding so fast that this allocation was out of date within a year or two. For one thing, more territories were clamoring to get statehood. Vermont had been declared independent in 1777 by delegates from areas originally called New Connecticut and it pinched bits of New Hampshire and New York, neither of which was ready to yield them. Settlers who wanted to get a valid t.i.tle for their lands did not know which state to apply to. Vermont was virtually neutral during the Revolutionary War, though Britain withdrew any claim to its territory, and it considered signing a separate treaty with Britain and claiming a Swiss-style neutral status. It remained aloof until New Hampshire (1782) and New York (1790) withdrew their land claims. Then it applied to and joined the Union in 1791. So when the Congressional structure was reordered in 1793, as a result of the 1790 census, Vermont was given two seats.

There was a long and acrimonious row over the Virginia backcountry-'that dark and b.l.o.o.d.y land' as it was (perhaps unfairly) called-eventually resolved when Virginia withdrew its claims and the new state of Kentucky was admitted in 1792 and given two seats. The Pennsylvania back-country, organized as the independent state of Franklin, and regarded by North Carolina as a rebellious, landgrabbing illegality, collapsed in 1788, and had to be reorganized by Congress as the Southwest Territory in 1790. Settlers poured in and it soon pa.s.sed the 60,000 mark and was admitted as the state of Tennessee, though not till 1796. Hence, in the 1793 reconstruction, fifteen states were represented in Congress and the number of House seats was raised to 105, Virginia now getting nineteen, Ma.s.sachusetts fourteen, Pennsylvania thirteen, and New York ten. The 1790 census revealed that the population of the United States was increasing even faster than optimists like Franklin guessed-it was now 3,929,827. Ten years later, at the end of the century, the census shows a jump to 5,308,483, which was a 35 percent growth in a decade, and double the 1775 estimate.

This rapid growth gratified many but alarmed some, including the elite. Franklin, who worried himself about the dangers of over-population a generation before Malthus systematized them, did not object to settlers of English descent breeding fast but was disturbed by the prospect of the Englishness of America being watered down by new, non-English, and non-white arrivals. It was one reason he objected to the slave-trade and slavery itself: 'Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America,' he asked, 'where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawnys, of increasing the lovely white and red?' His mind reaching forward as always, he feared a future world in which the white races, and especially the English, would be swamped:

The number of purely white people in the world is proportionately very small. All Africa is black or tawny; Asia chiefly tawny; America (exclusive of the newcomers) wholly so. And in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes [sic] are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the princ.i.p.al body of white people on the face of the earth. I would wish their numbers were increased ... But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.

He was not at all happy about the number of Germans coming to America, especially to Pennsylvania, where they tended to vote en bloc, the first instance of ethnicity in politics. 'Why should the Palatine boor be suffered to swarm into our settlements and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanise us, instead of us Anglicising them?' He wanted language qualifications 'for any Post of trust, profit or honor.' He also considered monetary rewards to encourage Englishmen to marry the German women, but dismissed the idea for 'German women are generally so disagreeable to an English eye that it wou'd require great portions to induce Englishmen to marry them.' These views were by no means unusual among the founders. Neither Washington nor Jefferson wanted unlimited or even large-scale immigration.

Defining what const.i.tuted an American citizen was not easy. As early as 1776, New Hampshire and South Carolina, writing their new const.i.tutions, laid down that all state officers must swear an oath 'to support, maintain and defend' the provisional const.i.tution. Six months later, Congress, in adopting independence, replaced loyalty to the crown by loyalty to the nation: 'All persons residing within any of the United Colonies, and deriving their protection from the laws of the same, owe allegiance to the said laws, and are members of such colony ... [and] all persons, members of or owing allegiance to any of the United Colonies ... who shall level war against any of the said colonies ... or be adherents to the King of Great Britain ... are guilty of treason against any such colony.'

This did not settle what citizenship was, however. Indeed the term was then new and little understood. The a.s.sumption was that everyone belonged to his or her particular state and thence derived their citizenship of the United States, a view later categorized by justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) of the Supreme Court, who laid down that 'Every citizen of a State is ipso facto a citizen of the United States.' Most states had citizenship rules of one kind or another. But what of immigrants coming to the country from outside? The federal Const.i.tution of 1787 laid down a national standard of neutralization by Act of Congress. Several Acts were pa.s.sed, in 1795, 1798, and again in 1802, before Congress felt it had got the formula right, the main difference being the length of residence required before the applicant got nationality-the first criterion, two years, was considered too short, the next, fourteen, too long, and finally five years was judged right. The federal Const.i.tution, and the states, reserved citizenship to whites, implicitly excluding blacks (even if free) and still-tribalized Indians, regarded as belonging to foreign nations. White women were citizens except for voting purposes, a rule which was not changed till 1920. Blacks did not get automatic citizenship till 1868, Indians not till 1924. But the most important point was that the new country, like the old colonies, continued to admit immigrants virtually without restriction, and they continued to come, in ever growing numbers.

After five years, most immigrants got the vote, for, as a result of the Revolution, America was rapidly becoming democratic. The Founding Fathers might insist on checks and balances and take precautions against 'the tyranny of the majority,' but though const.i.tutions are made by educated elites, what actually happens on the ground is usually determined by ordinary people. Their demands, as citizens and taxpayers, turned on its head the Revolution slogan 'No taxation without representation.' If the King of England was not allowed to tax Americans without giving them representation, why should states tax any American citizen without giving him a vote about how his taxes were raised and spent? Most states readily agreed. In New York State the federalists, who generally opposed what one of their leaders, Chancellor James Kent, called 'the evil genius of democracy,' fought a determined rearguard action to retain a freehold property qualification, at any rate for the electors of the state Senate. Kent argued that, while everyone else was worshiping 'the idol of universal suffrage,' New York should set an example and maintain property as qualification because it was 'a sort of moral and independent test of character in the electorate, which we could get at in no other practicable mode,' and only voters of sound character could defend society against 'the onrushing rabble.' But he was answered that making distinctions between one set of Americans and another, especially one based on ownership of land, was 'an odious remnant of aristocracy,' a system of 'privilege,' running directly contrary to the principle that in a true republic 'there is but one estate-the people.' Kent was thus driven to fall back on the argument that property qualifications were needed to protect 'the farmers.' But that made farmers into a mere interest, and why should farming, as an interest, get more protection than any other? Manning the barriers against democracy was a losing cause as early as the 1780s and by 1800 was a lost one. By 1790 five states permitted all males (in some of them only white males) the vote for some or all offices, provided they paid tax. These states, and others, increasingly recognized residency, rather than land-ownership, as the qualification for 'attachment' to the state, and most set the period as two years (some, one).

It struck Europeans as amazing that, after arriving, penniless, from a country where they could never have a vote at all, even if their ancestors had lived there a thousand years, and however rich they grew, they could get off a ship in New York, cross the Hudson to New Jersey, and exercise a vote the following year-in five they would be voting for the president. New Jersey was particularly free and easy. From 1776 it had given the vote to all 'worth' 50 pounds after a year's residence and election officials even permitted women to vote if they thus qualified (until 1809). The wartime inflation made the old property qualification pretty meaningless anyway, and states like North Carolina and New Hampshire, with poll-taxes and taxpayer qualifications, adopted near-universal male suffrage as a matter of course. By 1783 the eligible electorate in the states ran from 60 to 90 percent, with most states edging towards the l00 percent mark. New states, like Kentucky, automatically embraced universal white male adult suffrage when they were admitted, if not before. But while states rapidly enfranchised white males, they usually disenfranchised free blacks at the same time. Rhode Island, true to its tradition of being odd man out, alone resisted the democratic flood. Its qualification of a $134 freehold-the dollar had been fixed by law in 1792-was enforced increasingly fiercely and half the male citizens were disenfranchised.

A remarkable letter has survived which gives an indication of how the arrival of democracy was seen by one highly intelligent American. It was written in 18o6 to the Italian nationalist Philip Mazzei by Benjamin Latrobe, an Englishman who had settled in Philadelphia ten years before and had become America's first professional architect. He wrote:

After the adoption of the federal const.i.tution, the extension of the right of Suffrage in all the states to the majority of all the adult male citizens ... has spread actual and practical democracy and political equality over the whole union ... The want of learning and science in the majority is one of those things which strike foreigners who visit us very forcibly. Our representatives to all our Legislative bodies, National as well as of the States, are elected by the majority unlearned. For instance from Philadelphia and its environs we sent to Congress not one man of letters. One of them indeed is a lawyer but of no eminence, another a good Mathematician but, when elected, he was a Clerk in a bank. The others are plain farmers. From the next county is sent a Blacksmith, and from just over the river a Butcher. Our state legislature does not contain one individual of superior talents. The fact is, that superior talents actually excite distrust.

But Latrobe was not discouraged. America was about 'getting on,' and he was getting on very well. He admitted that 'to a cultivated mind, to a man of letters, to a lover of the arts [America might] present a very unpleasant picture.' But 'the solid and general advantages are undeniable.' 'There is no doubt whatsoever,' he concluded, 'that [democracy] produces the greatest sum of human happiness that perhaps any nation ever enjoyed.'

Since the arrival of democracy made the 'tyranny of the majority,' feared by Jefferson, Madison, and others, a real threat, who was to protect minorities-or indeed the ordinary citizen confronted by the federal Leviathan? The Bill of Rights went some way. But that depended for its efficacy on enforcement by the courts. Considering the importance the Founding Fathers attached to the separation of powers, and their insistence that the judiciary, along with the executive and legislature, was one of the tripods on which government must rest, the Convention paid little attention to it. Indeed, perhaps the most important provision in the Const.i.tution dealing with the judiciary came about by accident, and is a cla.s.sic example of Karl Popper's Law of Unintended Effect. Luther Martin, the great states' rights champion, proposed that instead of a federal veto on state laws, federal laws and treaties should be 'the supreme law of the individual states,' whose courts 'bound thereby in their decisions, anything in the respective laws of the individual states to the contrary notwithstanding.' This obscure formulation was accepted unanimously and would have made state courts the authority, in each state, on questions of federal law. This would have been a decisive victory for the states, and altered the whole course of American history. But in subsequent wrangling over the judiciary, especially the provisions for inferior federal courts, the proposal was amended to make state const.i.tutions, as well as law, subordinate to the federal Const.i.tution and the laws and treaties enacted by Congress. This made all the difference in the world, though its importance does not seem to have been grasped at the time.

Indeed the Const.i.tution really left the detailed provision for a judiciary to the first Congress, which in 1789 enacted the judiciary Act. This law, written mainly by Oliver Ellsworth (1745-1807), the agile Connecticut lawyer who had earlier put together the 'Connecticut Compromise,' is a remarkable piece of work because it has remained virtually unchanged for over two centuries. It created a bottom tier of federal district courts, usually matching state lines, and a middle level of three circuit courts, composed of two Supreme Court justices plus a district judge, who traveled to hear cases twice a year. They heard appeals from district courts and gave a first hearing to cases involving different states-a system which endured until 1891. The Act also formally set up the Supreme Court, as envisaged in the Const.i.tution, with one chief and five a.s.sociate justices, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. (It had changed size repeatedly, being reduced from six to five in 1801, increased to seven in 1807, to nine in 1833, to ten in 1863, reduced to eight in 1866 and increased to nine in 1869, but otherwise functioning in the same manner.) But Ellsworth's Act, probably inadvertently, gave the Supreme Court an additional right of great importance, the executive power of ordering federal officials to carry out their legal responsibilities.

These aspects of the judiciary's role, however, were little pondered at the time. It is a serious criticism of the Founding Fathers that they devoted insufficient attention to the role judges might play in interpreting a written const.i.tution, and took no steps either to encourage or to inhibit judicial review. The truth is, they were brought up in the English tradition of the common law, which the judges were constantly modifying as a matter of course, to solve new problems as they arose. They did not appreciate that, with a written const.i.tution, which had never existed in England, judge-made law a.s.sumed far greater significance, with almost limitless possibilities of expansion, and should have been dealt with in the Const.i.tution. As it was, and is, the American federal judiciary have always been, in a sense, a law unto themselves, evolving organically as, in their wisdom, they saw fit. The process began shortly after the Const.i.tution came into effect. In England, law and politics had always been closely enmeshed, and America had followed that pattern. Until the second half of the 16th century, English governments had always been presided over by the Lord Chancellor, the head of the law, and only gradually had the judiciary and the government bifurcated, and even then incompletely, with the Lord Chancellor continuing to sit in the Cabinet, as he still does. The Founding Fathers decided on a complete and formal separation of powers but they did not follow the logic of this course and insist on separating, at a personal level, judicial sheep from political goats. Thus the early chief justices tended to be professional lawyer-politicians, who saw running the court as merely a step on a public ladder which might lead to higher things rather than as the culmination of a legal career placing the occupant high above all political temptations.

The first Chief Justice, John Jay, was primarily a politician, who resigned in 1795 to run for the governorship of New York. The second, John Rutledge (1739-1800), resigned before he could even be confirmed by the Senate, in order to take up what was then regarded as a higher post on the South Carolina Supreme Court. The third, Oliver Ellsworth himself, served 1796-1800 but then resigned to take up a diplomatic post in Paris. One of the Supreme Court justices, Samuel Chase, engaged openly in politics while sitting on the bench. This applied lower down too. Of the twenty-eight judges on the federal district courts during the 1790s, only eight had held high judicial office, but all had been prominent politicians. There was, however, a strong desire, first articulated by Alexander Hamilton, that federal judges should stand above the political battle, should be primarily experts, dedicated to interpreting the law as the ultimate protection of the citizen's rights, rather than politicians engaged in the hurly-burly of making it. There was a complementary feeling among the judges themselves that they should be the new priests of the Const.i.tution, treating it as the secular Ark of the Covenant and performing quasi-sacramental functions in its service. That meant a withdrawal from politics, into a kind of public stratosphere. This hieratic notion was gradually gaining ground in the 1790s, displacing the more robust view of the Revolutionary democrats that, in a republic, any citizen was fit to discharge any public duty, if voted into it. The federal judges, it began to be mooted, were 'special,' remote, G.o.dlike defenders of the public interest and the private rights of all, who sat in the empyreum. But for this to become generally accepted doctrine, confirmed by events, we have to await the arrival of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1801. We will deal with that shortly.

In the meantime, what of the real priesthood, the real religion of the people? We have said nothing, so far, about the part played by the churches, or by Christianity, as such, in the const.i.tution-making. As we have seen, America had been founded primarily for religious purposes, and the Great Awakening had been the original dynamic of the continental movement for independence. The Americans were overwhelmingly church-going, much more so than the English, whose rule they rejected. The Pilgrim Fathers had come to America precisely because England had become immoral and irreligious. They had built the 'City on the Hill.' Again, their descendants had opted for independence and liberty because they felt their subjugation was itself immoral and irreligious and opposed to the Providential Plan. There is no question that the Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and that the Revolutionary War had the approbation of divine providence. They had won it with G.o.d's blessing and, afterwards, they drew up their framework of government with G.o.d's blessing, just as in the 17th century the colonists had drawn up their Compacts and Charters and Orders and Instruments, with G.o.d peering over their shoulders. How came it, then, that the Const.i.tution of the United States, unlike these early doc.u.ments in American history, lacks a religious framework, as well as a religious content? The only reference to religion in the doc.u.ment is in Article VI, Section 3, which bans any 'religious Test' as a 'Qualification to any Office,' and the only mention of G.o.d is in the date at the end-'In the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.' Even the wretched irreligious English had an established church and a head of state crowned in a sacramental ceremony and a parliament which began its proceedings, each day, with a prayer. The American Const.i.tution's first susbtantial reference to religion comes only in the First Amendment, which specifically rejects a national church and forbids Congress to make 'any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' How do we explain this seeming anomaly?

There is no doubt that if the United States Const.i.tution had been drawn up in 1687 it would have had a religious framework and almost certainly provided for a broad-based Protestantism to be the national religion. And if it had been drawn up in 1887 it would have contained provisions acknowledging the strong spirit of religious belief and practice in America and the need for the state to nurture and underpin it. As it happens, by a historical accident, it was actually drawn up at the high tide of 18th-century secularism, which was as yet unpolluted by the fanatical atheism and the b.l.o.o.d.y excesses of its culminating storm, the French Revolution. Within a very few years, this tide began to ebb, and the religious spirit to flood back. In France this was marked by Chateaubriand's epoch-making book Le Genie du Christianisme (1802), in Britain by the formation of the Clapham Sect in the early 1790s, and, the same decade in the United States, by the start of the Second Great Awakening. But in 1787, the new religious impulses, which were to make the 19th century into one of the great ages of religious activity and commitment, were not yet felt. Thus the actual language of the Const.i.tution reflects the spirit of its time, which was secular.

It also reflects the feelings of some of the most prominent of the Founding Fathers. Washington himself, who presided at the convention, was probably a deist, though he would have strenuously denied accusations of not being a Christian, if anyone had been foolish enough to make them. He rarely used the word 'G.o.d,' prefering 'Providence' or 'the Great Ruler of Events.' He was not interested in doctrine. Sometimes he did not trouble himself to go to church on Sunday, rare in those days. He wrote of immigrants, whom he did not much like in general: 'If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa or Europe. They may be Mohammedans, Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists.' He regarded religion as a civilizing force, but not essential. Later hagiographers, such as Parson Weems and Bishop William Meade, tried to make out Washington as more religious than lie was-Weems relates that he was found praying in a wood near Valley Forge, by Quaker Poots, and Meade has him strongly opposed to swearing, drinking, dancing, theater-going, and hunting-all untrue. In fact Washington's adopted son, Parke Curtis, in his book about his father, has chapters on hunting and on b.a.l.l.s and theater-visits. The most notable aspect of Washington's approach to religion was his tolerance-again, unusual for the time.

Franklin was another deist, though much more interested in religion than Washington was. His approach to it reflected America's rising impatience with dogma and its stress on moral behavior. He wrote to his father in 1738: 'I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue; and the scriptures a.s.sure me that at the last day we shall be examined not on what we thought but on what we did; and our recommendation will be that we did good to our fellow creatures." In his characteristically American desire to hustle things along, he felt that religious practices simply took up too much time. He particularly disliked long graces before meals-one should be enough for the whole winter, he felt. He took the trouble to abridge the Book of Common Prayer, producing much shorter services-the time saved on Sunday, he argued, could be then spent studying improving books. His Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (1728) contains a form of religious service he invented whose climax is the singing of Milton's 'Hymn to the Creator,' followed by readings from a book 'discursing on and exciting to Moral Virtue.' He summed up his faith six weeks before he died in a letter to Ezra Stiles, saying he followed the precepts of Christ while doubting his divinity, that he believed in a Supreme Being and 'doing Good to his other Children.'

Of the Founding Fathers, the man least affected by religion was Jefferson. Some people indeed cla.s.sified him not just as a deist but as an atheist. In 1800 the New England Paladin wrote that 'Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of death is that moment set on our holy religion, our churches will be prostrated and some infamous prost.i.tute, under the t.i.tle of the G.o.ddess of Reason, will preside in the Sanctuaries now devoted to the worship of the Most High.' But this was electoral propaganda. Jefferson was no more an atheist than the much maligned Walter Ralegh, whom he resembled in so many other ways too. And, strongly as he sympathized with the French Revolution, at any rate for a time, he deplored its anti-religious excesses. He believed in divine providence and confided to John Adams, in spring 1816: 'I think it is a good world on the whole, and framed on Principles of Benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.'' Jefferson and his follower Madison certainly opposed Patrick Henry's attempt to get the Virginia legislature to subsidize the churches, but in the whole of their long and voluminous correspondence, amounting to 2,000 printed pages, it is impossible to point to any pa.s.sage, by either of them, showing hostility to religion. What they both hated was intolerance and any restriction on religious practice by those who would not admit the legitimacy of diverse beliefs.

Madison, unlike Jefferson, saw an important role for religious feeling in shaping a republican society. He was a pupil of John Witherspoon (1723-94), president of the New Jersey College at Princeton, and author of a subtle and interesting doctrine which equated the religious polarity of vice/virtue with the secular polarity of ethics/politics-politics understood in their Machiavellian sense.''' Witherspoon seems to have given Madison a lifelong interest in theology. Letters to friends (not Jefferson) are dotted with theological points-he advised one to 'season' his studies 'with a little divinity now and then'-and his papers include notes on the Bible he made in the years 1772-5, when he undertook an extensive study of Scripture. He carried around with him a booklet, The Necessary Duty for Family Prayer, with Prayers for Their Use, and he himself conducted household prayers at his home, Montpelier. Deist he may have been, but secularist-no.

The same can be said for the great majority of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, who attended the Const.i.tutional Convention, and who framed the First Amendment. An investigation by the historian W. W. Sweet revealed that, of the last group, eight were Episcopalians, eight Congregationalists, two Roman Catholics, one Methodist, two Quakers, one a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and only one a deist. Daniel Boorstin discovered that of the Virginians who composed the State Const.i.tutional Convention, over a hundred, only three were not vestrymen. Among the Founding Fathers and First Amendment men were many staunch practicing Christians: Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, Caleb Strong and Elbridge Gerry of Ma.s.sachusetts, William Livingston of New Jersey, Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, Richard Ba.s.sett of Delaware, Hugh Williamson of North Carolina, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, John d.i.c.kinson and Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, Rufus King of Ma.s.sachusetts, David Brearley of New Jersey, and William Few of Georgia.

Even the doubting and the unenthusiastic were quite clear that religion was needed in society, especially in a vast, rapidly growing, and boisterous country like America. Washington served for many years as a vestryman in his local Anglican church, believing this to be a pointed gesture of solidarity with an inst.i.tution he regarded as underpinning a civilized society. Franklin wrote to Tom Paine, rebuking him for dismissing religion as needless: 'He who spits in the wind spits in his own face ... If men are wicked with religion, what would they be without it?' Both men constantly brought providence into their utterances, especially when talking of America. They may not have thought of Americans as the chosen people, like the Pilgrim Fathers, but they certainly believed that America was under some kind of divine protection. John Adams shared this view. The day the Declaration of Independence was signed, Adams wrote to his Abigail: 'The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America ... it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as a great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to G.o.d Almighty.' Adams had been deflected from a career in the church by a spasm of rationalism in 1755, but he never changed his opininon that belief in G.o.d and the regular practice of religion were needful to the good society: 'One great advantage of the Christian religion,' he wrote, 'is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations, love your neighbour as yourself, and do to others as you would that others should do to you-to the knowledge, belief and veneration of the whole people. Children, servants, women as well as men are all professors in the science of public as well as private morality ... The duties and rights of the citizen are thus taught from early infancy to every creature.' Madison held exactly the same view, and even Jefferson would have endorsed it. All these men believed strongly in education as essential to the creation of a workable republic and who else was to supply the moral education but the churches? The Founding Fathers saw education and religion going hand in hand. That is why they wrote, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787: 'Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.'

It is against this background that we should place the opening sentence of the First Amendment, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' This guarantee has been widely, almost willfully, misunderstood in recent years, and interpreted as meaning that the federal government is forbidden by the Const.i.tution to countenance or subsidize even indirectly the practice of religion. That would have astonished and angered the Founding Fathers. What the guarantee means is that Congress may not set up a state religion on the lines of the Church of England, 'as by law established.' It was an anti-establishment clause. The second half of the guarantee means that Congress may not interfere with the practice of any religion, and it could be argued that recent interpretations of the First Amendment run directly contrary to the plain and obvious meaning of this guarantee, and that for a court to forbid people to hold prayers in public schools is a flagrant breach of the Const.i.tution. In effect, the First Amendment forbade Congress to favor one church, or religious sect, over another. It certainly did not inhibit Congress from identifying itself with the religious impulse as such or from authorizing religious practices where all could agree on their desirability. The House of Representatives pa.s.sed the First Amendment on September 24, 1789. The next day it pa.s.sed, by a two-to-one majority, a resolution calling for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving.

It is worth pausing a second to look at the details of this gesture, which may be regarded as the House's opinion of how the First Amendment should be understood. The resolution reads: 'We acknowledge with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty G.o.d, especially by affording them an opportunity peacefully to establish a const.i.tutional government for their safety and happiness.' President Washington was then asked to designate the day of prayer and thanksgiving, thus inaugurating a public holiday, Thanksgiving, which Americans still universally enjoy. He replied: 'It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty G.o.d, to obey His will, to be grateful for His mercy, to implore His protection and favor ... That great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that ever will be, that we may then unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people.'

There were, to be sure, powerful non- or even anti-religious forces at work among Americans at this time, as a result of the teachings of Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, and, above all, Tom Paine. Paine did not see himself as anti-religious, needless to say. He professed his faith in 'One G.o.d-and no more.' This was 'the religion of humanity.' The doctrine he formulated in The Age of Reason (1794-5) was 'My country is the world and my religion is to do good." This work was widely read at the time, in many of the colleges, alongside Jefferson's translation of Volney's skeptical Ruines ou Meditations sur les revolutions des empires (1791), and similar works by Elihu Palmer, John Fitch, John Fellows, and Ethan Allen. The Age o f Reason was even read by some farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers, as well as students. As one Ma.s.sachusetts lawyer observed, it was 'highly thought of by many who knew neither what the age they lived in, nor reason, was.' With characteristic hyperbole and venom, John Adams wrote of Paine: 'I do not know whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satire on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a b.i.t.c.h wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then The Age of Paine.'

As it happened, by the time Adams wrote this (1805), Paine's day was done. His 'age' had been the 1780s and the early 1790s. Then the reaction set in. When Paine returned to America in 1802 after his disastrous experiences in Revolutionary France, he noticed the difference. The religious tide was returning fast. People found him an irritating, repet.i.tive figure from the past, a bore. Even Jefferson, once his friend, now president, gave him the brush-off. And Jefferson, as president, gave his final gloss on the First Amendment to a Presbyterian clergyman, who asked him why, unlike Washington and Adams (and later Madison), he did not issue a Thanksgiving proclamation. Religion, said Jefferson, was a matter for the states: 'I consider the government of the United States as interdicted from intermeddling with religious inst.i.tutions, their doctrines, disciplines, or exercises. This results from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, but also from that which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly no power over religious discipline has been delegated to the general government. It must thus rest with the states as far as it can be in any human authority.' The wall of separation between church and state, then, if it existed at all, was not between government and the public, but between the federal government and the states. And the states, after the First Amendment, continued to make religious provision when they thought fit, as they always had done.

With the enactment of the Bill of Rights, the process of const.i.tution-making was completed and it now remained to operate it. That had begun on the first Wednesday in January 1789, when presidential electors were chosen in the different states. They met on the first Wednesday in February to elect, and the first Wednesday in March was chosen 'for commencing proceedings under the said Const.i.tution.' New York was the chosen place and that is where the first permanent government of the new nation began. Electors were chosen on the a.s.sumption that they would cast their votes for Washington, and that he was prepared to accept the duty. Where contests were staged they were for Congressional seats. The anti-federalists did not oppose Washington for president, who was elected unanimously. They did consider putting up George Clinton for vice-president, but in the event John Adams was easily elected. Washington was notified of his election in April and immediately set off for New York, though not before confiding to a friend: 'from the moment when the necessity [of accepting the presidency] had become more apparent, and as it were inevitable, I antic.i.p.ated in a heart filled with distress, the ten thousand embarra.s.sments, perplexities and troubles to which I must again be exposed in the evening of a life already nearly consumed in public cares ... none greater [than those produced] by applications for appointments ... my apprehension has already been too well justified.'

Actually the patriarch protested too much. He was quite prepared to be president and made an excellent one. His disloyal and acerbic vice-president, Adams, might call him Old Muttonhead, but Washington knew very well what he was doing. And the first thing he had to do was to get the national finances in order. That meant appointing Hamilton the first Secretary of the Treasury, and giving him a free hand to get on with the job. The financial mess into which the new nation had got itself as a result of the Revolutionary War and the subsequent failure to create a strong federal executive can be briefly summarized. In 1775 Congress authorized an issue of $2 million of bills of credit called Continentals to finance the war. By 1779 (December) $241.6 million of Continentals had been authorized. This was only part of the borrowing, which also included US Loan Certificates, foreign loans, bills of credit issued by the states, and other paper debts. Together they produced the worst inflation in United States history. By 1780 the Continentals were virtually valueless. When the war died down in 1782, Congress sent commissioners round the country to investigate claims against Congress and the army, and revalue them in terms of hard money. This produced a figure of $27 million. Under the Articles of Confederation Congress had no power to raise revenue. The states did, but were reluctant to come to Congress's aid. So throughout the 1780s interest payments on the debt were met only by issuing more paper. The new Const.i.tution of 1787 of course gave Congress the power to tax, but by the beginning of 1790 the federal government's debt had risen to $40.7 million domestic and $13.2 million foreign. The market price of government paper (that is, proof of debt) had fallen to from 15 to 30 cents in the dollar, depending on the relative worthlessness of the paper. This consequence of inflation and improvidence was precisely the kind of disaster which was to hit all the Latin American republics when they came into being in the next generation, and from which some of them have never recovered to this day. Somehow, the United States, which sprang from the stock of England, whose credit rating was the model for all the world, had to pull itself out of the pit of bankruptcy.

That was Hamilton's contribution to the founding of the nation. It was of such importance that it ranks him alongside Washington himself, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams as a member of the tiny elite who created the country. All these men derived from John Locke the notion that security of one's property was intimately linked to one's freedom. Inflation, by making federal and state paper money valueless, was a direct a.s.sault on property and therefore a threat to liberty. John Adams wrote: 'Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.' Hamilton made the same point: 'Adieu to the security of property, adieu to the security of liberty.' Believing this, Hamilton acted quickly. In January I790 he submitted his 'Report on the Public Credit' to Congress. This was accepted after a lot of debate and one curious by-product of the negotiations was that the government accepted the proposal of Jefferson and his followers that the new national capital should be on the banks of the Potomac, in return for their support of Hamilton's proposals. Hamilton solved the problem of the Continentals, now valueless, by giving one dollar for every hundred, the embittered people who held them counting themselves lucky to get anything at all. The rest of the domestic debt, and the whole of the foreign debt, was fully funded, being rescheduled as long-term securities payable in gold.

Hamilton also had the federal government, as part of his scheme, shoulder the burden of the debts of the states, on the same terms. This was denounced as unfair, because some states had already paid their debts, and the less provident ones seemed to profit from their tardiness. But that could not he helped; the all-important object was to get rid of the burden of debt once and for all and start afresh with sound credit. That was also Hamilton's reply to those who said the scheme was expensive. So it was-but not in the long run. The United States was already a rich country. It was probably already, in per-capita terms, the richest country in the world, even though Britain was emerging as the world's first great industrial power. Being rich, it could afford to pay to restore its creditworthiness, which meant that in future America could borrow cheaply and easily on world markets to finance its expansion. Congress took Hamilton's word for i