If they wanted popularity, they had to purchase it by compromises, whereas Andrew Jackson obtained a much larger popular following by acting strictly in accordance with the dictates of his temperament and ideas.  He was effective and succeeded because his personality was representative of the American national democracy, whereas they failed, on the whole, because the constituency they represented concealed limited sympathies and special interests under words of national import.  Jackson, who in theory was the servant and mouthpiece of his followers, played the part of a genuine leader in his campaign against the National Bank; while the Whigs, who should have been able to look ahead and educate their fellow-countrymen up to the level of their presumably better insight, straggled along in the rear of the procession.

The truth is that the Democrats, under the lead of Jackson, were temporarily the national party, although they used their genuinely national standing to impose in certain respects a group of anti-national ideas on their country.  The Whigs, on the other hand, national as they might be in ideas and aspirations, were in effect not much better than a faction.  Finding that they could not rally behind their ideas an effective popular following, they were obliged to seek support, partly at the hands of special interests and partly by means of the sacrifice of their convictions.  Under their guidance the national policy became a policy of conciliation and compromise at any cost, and the national idea was deprived of consistency and dignity.  It became equivalent to a hodge-podge of policies and purposes, the incompatibility of whose ingredients was concealed behind a smooth crust of constitutional legality and popular acquiescence.  The national idea and interest, that is, was not merely disarmed and ignored, as it had been by Jefferson.  It was mutilated and distorted in obedience to an erroneous democratic theory; and its friends, the Whigs, deluded themselves with the belief that in draining the national idea of its vitality they were prolonging its life.  But if its life was saved, its safety was chiefly due to its ostensible enemies.  While the Whigs were less national in feeling and purpose than their ideas demanded, the Democrats were more national than they knew.  From 1830 to 1850 American nationality was being attenuated as a conscious idea, but the great unconscious forces of American life were working powerfully and decisively in its favor.

Most assuredly the failure of the Whigs is susceptible of abundant explanation.  Prevailing conditions were inimical to men whose strength lay more in their intelligence than in their will.  It was a period of big phrases, of personal motives and altercations, of intellectual attenuation, and of narrow, moral commonplaces,—­all of which made it very difficult for any statesman to see beyond his nose, or in case he did, to act upon his knowledge.  Yet in spite of all this, it does seem as if some