draw their own moral. For them the fact of outstanding significance must doubtless be the steady advance and eventual conquest of democracy over all forms and traditions of aristocracy. But, however impressive this thought may be, the confirmed aristocrat need not lose heart. He may always expect the common people to think with Thomas Jefferson that "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God"; but if history has shown anything, it has demonstrated that the multitude tend to grow careless of their liberties and to think in terms of their own generation rather than with an eye to the future. New conditions and altered circumstances of society have, in the past, rendered possible the creation of new privileges and pretensions for those who were energetic and alert. In the shortcomings of democratic society, therefore, lies the hope of the future for the perpetuation of the aristocratic tradition in America.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The development and interrelations of aristocracy and democracy in the United States have since colonial times excited the intense interest of countless numbers of foreign travelers in this country. This is not surprising since the United States was for many years the great laboratory of democratic social and political experimentation for the world. These foreign observers were not merely interested in democracy in the restricted sense of political selfgovernment but also in its broader social manifestations. When due allowance is made for the motives which brought the travelers to our shores and for their social and political predispositions, this class of literature, distinguished by such names as the Marquis de Chastellux, Alexis de Tocqueville, Harriet Martineau, James Bryce and Edward A. Freeman, contains the most penetrating observations that may be found anywhere of the conflict of aristocratic and democratic ideas in American life at the various stages of our history. A useful index to this extensive literature for the period prior to the date of its publication is Henry T. Tuckerman's America and her Commentators (New York, 1864).

Native Americans of the early days of the republic seldom viewed these contrasting institutions objectively or, if they did, it was with some ulterior political purpose in mind. Nevertheless, such essays

as the following, notwithstanding their polemic purpose, shed considerable light upon the contemporary conceptions of aristocracy and democracy in American history: John Adams's A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787-1788) and his Discourses on Davila (1790); John Taylor's An Enquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814); and John C. Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government and his A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States (published posthumously). C. Edward Merriam's A History of American Political Theories (New York, 1910) offers incidentally an excellent sketch of the growth of democratic ideals in the writings of American statesmen and political philosophers.

It was not until a quarter of a century ago that American students began to single out democracy as a theme for special study and treatment, although it is perhaps true to say that no history of the United States has ever been written which is not, however unconsciously and inadequately, a running commentary upon the expansion of political democracy. In 1898, three works appeared which were concerned with isolating the democratic trend in American history and studying it: Frederick A. Cleveland's The Growth of Democracy in the United States (Chicago), Francis Newton Thorpe's Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850 (2 v., New York); and Bernard Moses's Democracy and Social Growth in the United States (New York). The first two of these works were occupied very largely in setting forth the enlargement of popular rights in government and law; and since then a number of other studies have been carried out along the same lines, among which may be mentioned: J. Allen Smith's The Spirit of American Government (New York, 1907); Kirk H. Porter's A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 1918); Dixon Ryan Fox's The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New York, 1919); and Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin's Steps in the Development of American Democracy (New York, 1920). The volume by Professor Moses paid relatively more attention to the social and economic conditions of democratic development; and this point of view has since then received fuller treatment in such studies as John Bach McMaster's The Acquisition of the Political, Social and Industrial Rights of Man in America (Cleveland, 1903); Frederick Jackson Turner's "Contributions of the West to American Democracy" in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. xci (1903), pp. 83-96, reprinted in his The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920); Robert Tudor Hill's The Public Domain and Democracy (New York, 1910); and Frederick C. Howe's Privilege and Democracy in America (New York, 1910).

An adequate history of aristocracy and democracy in America is yet to be written, for, as the foregoing sketch has indicated, these social ideals have been mirrored not only in government and politic but also in the manners and customs, religion and education, eco nomic organization, literature and thought of the people. The materials for compiling a comprehensive account of the decline of aristocracy will be supplied only when a genuine social history of

the United States is written. Important contributions toward such a history have been made by a host of writers, among whom may be mentioned John Bach McMaster, Philip A. Bruce, Alice M. Earle, Henry Adams, E. D. Fite, William E. Dodd, Arthur W. Calhoun, John R. Commons, and the special writers on American religious history and the history of literature and education in the United States. A handy compendium is the book entitled Social and Economic Forces in American History (New York, 1913), composed of chapters selected from the volumes of The American Nation: a History (New York, 1905-1918). Very suggestive is Albert Bushnell Hart's volume National Ideals Historically Traced (in The American Nation: a History, vol. 26; New York, 1907).

CHAPTER V

RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM IN AMERICAN HISTORY

I

The heated discussion conducted in recent years by press and platform on the merits and demerits of radicalism and conservatism causes the student of American history to search his mind concerning the effects of these opposing types of thought on the past history of the United States. In such an inquiry, an initial difficulty presents itself: what do the terms, "conservative" and "radical," mean? Popular usage has tended to rob these expressions of exact meaning and to convert them into epithets of opprobrium and adulation which are used as the bias or interest of the person may dictate. The conservative, having mapped out the confines of truth to his own satisfaction, judges the depravity and errors of the radical by the extent of his departure from the boundaries thus established. Likewise the radical, from his vantage-point of truth, measures the knavery and infirmities of his opponents by the distance they have yet to travel to reach his goal. Neither conservative nor radical regards the other with judicial calm or "sweet reasonableness." (Neither is willing to admit that the other has a useful function to perform in the progress of society. Each regards the other with deep feeling as the enemy of everything that is fundamentally good in government and society.

In seeking a workable definition of these terms, the philosophic insight of Thomas Jefferson is a beacon light to the

inquirer. When Jefferson withdrew from active political life at the close of his presidency in 1809, he left behind him the heat and smoke of partisan strife and retired to a contemplative life on his Virginia estate, where his fellowcountrymen learned to revere him as the "Sage of Monticello." The voluminous correspondence of these twilight years of his life is full of instruction for the student of history and politics. His tremendous curiosity caused him to find an unfailing source of speculation in the proclivity of mankind to separate into contrasting schools of opinion. In one luminous passage, representative of the bent of his thought, he declared: "Men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are Whigs, Liberals, Democrats, call them what you please. Others are Tories, Serviles, Aristocrats, etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent."

In this passage Jefferson does not use the expressions "conservative" and "radical"-indeed, those words had no place in the American political vocabulary until Civil War times but his penetrating analysis throws a flood of light on the significance of those terms nevertheless. The Tory who fears the people and the Whig who trusts them are equivalent to our own categories of "conservative" and "radical." Thus Jefferson finds the vital distinction between the two schools of opinion in their respective attitudes toward popular government.

But before accepting Jefferson's classification as correct, what shall we do with the common notion that the conservative is a person who opposes change and that the ear-mark of the radical is his liking for innovation? This does not seem