St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-04-24
enthusiastically English, to make reason
able the fear that it can ever die out.
ALFRED T.. T. WATSON
MoNROE,s ADMINISTRATION.
TIE Presidents Tour Through. the United

Many presidents of the United States have
served their country by remaining at Wash
ington, but probably James Monroe was the
only one who accomplished great good by
going on an excursion. Few battles in
the revolution were of so much benefit to
the nation as the journey which, in 1917. the
President decided to undertake. There were
two especial reasons for this beneficent re-
suit; the tour reconciled the people to the
administration, and it reconciled the admin
istration to what seemed the really alarming
growth of the people.
The fact that Monroe was not generally
held to be a very great man enhanced the
value of this expedition. He had been an
unfortunate diplomatist, retrieving his fail
ures by good luck; as a soldier he had
blundered at Washington, and yet had re-
tanned enough of confidence to be talked of
as probable commander of a Canadian in
vasion. All this was rather advantageous.
1t is sometimes q good thing when a ruler is
not personally eminent enough to obscure his
Office. In such a case, what the man loses
the Office may gain. Wherever Washington
went he was received as a father among
Jefferson his adorers; Madison had carried
through a war, which, if not successful, was
at least drawn game. All these, had they
undertaken what play-actors call starring
in the proyinces,n would have been received
as stars, not as officials. Their applauses
would have been given to the individual, not
the president. But when Monroe travelled,
81, OF no
ton who met the eyes Of men. He was not
a star, but member of the company, a stock
actor, one of themselves. In the speeches
with which he was everywhere received there
was very little said about his personality; it
was the head of the nation who was well
coined. Thus stripped of all individual pres
tige, the occasion appealed to every citizen.
For the first time the people of the United
States met their Chief Magistrate as such,
and felt that they were a nation.
1t was at the end OF sixteen years of strife
political strife more bitter than can easily
be paralleled in these calmer days. The re-
suit of this contest may in some respects
have been doubtful, but on one point at
least it was clear. 1t had extinguished the
colonial theory of government, and substi-
tuted the national. Hamilton and the Fed
eralists, with all their high qualities had still
disbelieved IN all that lay beyond the domain
of experience. But experience, as Coleridge
said, is like the stern-li lights of ship, illum-
lining only the track already passed over.
jefferson, with all his faults, had steered for
the open sea. Madison's war had impover-
ished the nation, but had saved its self-re-
spect Henceforward, the American flag
uos hot f inn la,,f
pie ready to submit to nothing, even from
England, which England would not tolerate
in return. And it so happened that all the
immediate honor of this increased self-re-
spect belonged, or seemed to belong, to the
party in power. Jefferson was the most pa
cifc of men, except Madison; both dreaded
a standing army, and shrank with reluct-
ance from navy; yet the laurels of both
arms of the service, such as they were, went
to Madison and Jefferson. The Federalists,
who had begged for a navy, and had threat
ened to raise an army on their own account,
now got no credit for either. That party
held, on the whole, the best educated, the
most high-minded, the most solvent part of
the nation, yet it had been wrecked by its
own want of faith. When in the Electoral
College, Monroe had 1873 votes against 81
for Rufus King, it showed that the contest
was at end, and that the nation was ready to
be soothed. Monroe was precisely the seda-
tive to be applied, and his journey was the
process of application.
So much for the people; but there were al
so solicitudes to be soothed among the ma
toms statesmen. Not only did the people
need to learn confidence in their leaders,
in the people. 1t was not that republican
government itself was on trial, but that its
scale seemed so formidable. Nobody doubt
ed that it was thing available among a few
mountain communities, like those of Switz-
erland. What even the Democratic states
men of that day doubted-and they had plen-
ty of reason for the doubt-was the possbili-
ty Of applying self-government to the length
and breadth of a continent peopled by many
millions of men. They were not dismayed
by the principle, but by its application; not
by the philosophy, but the geography.
Washington himself, we know, was opposed
to undertaking the ownership of the Missis-
sippi River; and Monroe, when member of
the Virginia Convention, had argued against
the adoption of the United States Constitu-
ton for geographical reasons ''Consider"
he said, ''the territory lying between the At
tantic Ocean aud the Mississippi Its extent
far exceeds that OF the German Empire. 1t
der any one free government. 1t is too ex-
tensiye to be governed but by despotic
monarchy" This was the view of James
Monroe in 1888, at time when he could
have little dreamed of ever becoming Presi-
dent. He was heard with respect, for he
had been one OF the Virginia committeeman
who had transferred the northwestern lands
to the United States government, and he was
one Of the few who had personally visited
them. Yet he had these fears, aud the worst
of the alarm was that it had some foundation
But for the unexpected alliances of railway
and telegraph, does anybody believe that
Maine, Louisiana, and California would to-
day form part of the same nation? In the
mean time, while waiting for those mighty
coadjutors, the journey of Mr.. Monroe, by
revealing the immense strength to which the
national feeling had already grown. At any
rate, after this experience he expressed no
more solicitude. In his message on inter
nal improvements, written five years after
his journey, he described the American sys-
TEN Of government as one ''capable Of ex-
pansion over vast territory"
Washington in Momroe's administration.
1t was period when the social etiquette
of Washington was going through some
changes; the population was growing larger,
the classes were less distinct, the social dut-
les of high officials more onerous. The
diary of John Quincy Adams records cabi-
net meetings devoted to the momentous
question who should make the first call, and
who should be included in the official visit
ing lists. Mrs. Monroe, without cabinet
council, made up her own mind to retrench
some OF those profuse ciyilities with which |
her predecessor had fatigued herself. Mrs.
large, heavy, kindly dame, had
retired from Office equally reeretted hv the |