The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 337 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 337 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859.

After this struggle was over, the Federalists, some from conviction and some from disgust at being beaten, gave up the country as lost.  Worthy New-Englanders, like Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Wolcott, had no longer hope.  They sank into the position of mere grumblers, with one leading principle,—­admiration of England, and a willingness to submit to any insults which England in her haughtiness might please to inflict.  “We are sure,” says the “Boston Democrat,” “that George III. would find more desperately devoted subjects in New England than in any part of his dominions.”  The Democrats, of course, clung to their motto, “Whatever is in France is right,” and even accepted the arbitrary measures of Bonaparte at home as a mere change of system, and abroad as forced upon him by British pirates.  It is curious to read the high Federalist papers in the first days of their sorrow.  In their contradictory fault-finding sulkiness, they give some color of truth to Mr. Jefferson’s accusation, that the Federal leaders were seeking to establish a monarchy,—­a charge well known to be unfounded, as Washington said at the time.  “What is the use of celebrating the Fourth of July?” they asked.  “Freedom is a stale, narcotic topic.  The Declaration of Independence a useless, if not an odious libel upon a friendly nation connected with us by the silken band of amity.”  Fenno, in his paper, said the Declaration was “a placard of rebellion, a feeble production, in which the spirit of rebellion prevailed over the love of order.”  Dennie, in the “Portfolio,” anticipating Mr. Choate, called it “an incoherent accumulation of indigestible and impracticable political dogmas, dangerous to the peace of the world, and seditious in its local tendency, and, as a composition, equally at variance with the laws of construction and the laws of regular government.”  The Federalist opinion of the principles of the Administration party was avowed with equal frankness in their papers.  “A democracy is the most absurd constitution, productive of anarchy and mischief, which must always happen when the government of a nation depends upon the caprice of the ignorant, harebrained vulgar.  All the miseries of men for a long series of years grew out of that infamous mode of polity, a democracy; which is to be reckoned to be only the corruption and degeneracy of a republic, and not to be ranked among the legitimate forms of government.  If it be not a legitimate government, we owe it no allegiance.  He is a blind man who does not see this truth; he is a base man who will not assert it.  Democratic power is tyranny, in the principle, the beginning, the progress, and the end.  It is on its trial here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation, and anarchy.”  These and other foolish excerpts were kept before their readers by the “Aurora” and “Boston Chronicle,” leading Democratic organs, and served to sweeten their triumph and to seal the fate of the unlucky Federalists.

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.