Neither of the new parties was in any sense either aristocratic or democratic.  “The Democracy,” or Democratic party, has continued in existence ever since, and through most of Lincoln’s life ruled America.  In trying to fix the character of a party in a foreign country we cannot hope to be exact in our portraiture.  At the first start, however, this party was engaged in combating certain tendencies to Government interference in business.  It was more especially hostile to a National Bank, which Jackson himself regarded as a most dangerous form of alliance between the administration and the richest class.  Of the growth of what may be called the money power in American politics he had an intense, indeed prophetic, dread.  Martin Van Buren, his friend and successor, whatever else he may have been, was a sound economist of what is now called the old school, and on a financial issue he did what few men in his office have done, he deliberately sacrificed his popularity to his principles.  Beyond this the party was and has continued prone, in a manner which we had better not too clearly define, to insist upon the restrictions of the Constitution, whether in the interest of individual liberty or of State rights.  This tendency was disguised at the first by the arbitrary action of Jackson’s own proceedings, for Jackson alone among Presidents displayed the sentiments of what may be called a popular despot.  Its insistence upon State rights, aided perhaps by its dislike of Protection, attracted to it the leading politicians of the South, who in the main dominated its counsels, though later on they liked to do it through Northern instruments.  But it must not in the least be imagined that either party was Northern or Southern; for there were many Whigs in the South, and very many Democrats in the North.  Moreover, it should be clearly grasped, though it is hard, that among Northern Democrats insistence on State rights did not involve the faintest leaning towards the doctrine of secession; on the contrary a typical Democrat would believe that these limitations to the power of the Union were the very things that gave it endurance and strength.  Slavery, moreover, had friends and foes in both parties.  If we boldly attempted to define the prevailing tone of the Democrats we might say that, while they and their opponents expressed loyalty to the Union and the Constitution, the Democrats would be prone to lay the emphasis upon the Constitution.  Whatever might be the case with an average Whig, a man like Lincoln would be stirred in his heart by the general spirit of the country’s institutions, while the typical Democrat of that time would dwell affectionately on the legal instruments and formal maxims in which that spirit was embodied.