Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-03-06
THE DECAY OF REPUBLICAN
SENTIMENT.

1t is certain that we are less
Republican nation than we were;
that the idea of a change in our
constitutional forms giving greater
power to the Federal Government
and less to the States, mere to the
executive and less to the legislative,
is contemplated with much less
alarm and jealousy than in former
days. Defects in our present sys-
tenn are more angrily proclaimed
than ever before, and the supposed
superiority of other Governments
are looked at with a sentimental
eomplacency peculiar to those who
gaze on landscape
"where distance lends enchantment to the
view"
The most OminOus part Of this
unsettled state of political opinion
is that the political forms on which
so many Of our people cast half
longing chances are not those which
have so long secured a sober, steady
liberty in the mother country, but
the more brilliant though less per-
manent regimes established by the
two Nap'Oleons and Bismarck. Not
a limited monarchy, but a military
empire is the phantom which is
alluring so many Of the disconnected
from the old paths in which we
have so long walked.
Many causes have contributed to
this querulOus dissatisfaction with
our own institutions and this hank
ering after foreign models, some of
which we propose to consider in
the present paper.
First among these is that chronic
discomfort with things as they are
which we have in common with all
other nations. All nations have
their Disseminated classes. Those
who in the old mOnarchial countries
of Europe are dissatisfied, long after
an ideal republic which when once
established is to remove all grounds
of discomfort, while our American
malcontents think they have had
enough of the republic and would
like to try the empire. The execu-
tive is too strong in Russia, in
America it is not strong enough for
the discontinued.
But indeed, though this discOn-
tent is now louder and more pro-
nounced element in political agita-
tiOns than ever before, it has never
been entirely absent from our peo-
pie. From its very first adoption,
the Constitution was always objected
to by two extremes of political opin-
ion. The Federalists always thought
that too much had been conceded to
the State Governments, and the
Republicans of that day thought
that too many facilities had been
left for Federal encrOachment upon
them. The former looked to the
British Constitution as their model,
the latter to the French revolution;
and when that fierce Democracy
was merged in the splendid empire
of the first Napoleon, the French
school of politicians did not aban-
don their dream altogether, but
some of them still hankered after
imperial France as a development
of the revolution and a realization
of its principles, The number of
since been gradually increasing. OF
course the prolonged passions of the
revolutionary war had much to do
with this. In that struggle the
English had been our antagonists
and the French our allies, and it
was more than natural that the ma
tiOnal affections should go out more
warmly to the latter than to the
former. The imposing figure of the
first Napoleon had everything in it
to attract the admiration of our
romantic youth, and our older men
hailed him with equal readiness as
the antagonist of their old enemy,
England.
The Democracy of JacksOn's day
was a strange and discordant mix
ture of the revolutionary and i'm
perial ideas, which had been de-
rived by previous generation from
French politics. Jackson himself
stood very much in a Napoleonic
attitude, welding Democratic thun-
der with an imperial hand. His
type of Democracy was not that of
Jefferson; that was represented by
the contemporary Calhoun type,
and it was very soon found that the
two were in irreconcilable antipa-
thy. The autOcratic exercise of the
one man power by Jackson was not
more vigorously denounced by Clay
and the Wings than by Calhoun
and the Southern Democrats. The
truth is that if Jackson had studied
history at all, even the history of
his own youthful days, he would
have seen that the principles of his
administration were not Democratic
at all, but Imperial. After his
time the true Democracy was repre-
scented by the Southern State rights
men, while the Jackson idea, in the
hands OF Marcy and Van Buren,,
- degenerate into a struggle for vic
tory and the spoils.
The disguised Imperialism of
JacksOn's days prepared the ground |
for a luXuriant growth of such a
literature as is represented by |
Theirs history of the Consulate and |
Empire and the flimsy limitations
and repetitions of it prepared by |
Headly and Abbott. Theirs books
were justly designated by Lord |
Brougham as pamphlets BlOaStres, or
pamphlets on large scale.
Theirs wanted to pull down the
Government of Louis Philippe, and
he wrote his history of the French
Revolution, and then being dissat-