l convention which made the Federal
Constitution, and of the State conventions which ratified it, we should
be justified in saying that the chief object of "the fathers" was to
prevent the existence of a democracy in America. Their words and deeds
are alike adverse to the notion that democracy had many friends here in
the years that followed the achievement of our nationality. What might
have happened, had the work of constitution-making been entered upon two
or three years later, so that we should have had to read of Frenchmen
and Americans engaged at the same time in the same great business, it
might be interesting to inquire, as matter of curiosity; but our
government under the Constitution had been fairly organized some days
before the last States-General of France met, and, much as this country
was subsequently influenced by considerations that proceeded from the
French Revolution, they did not affect our polity, while they largely
affected our policy. Some eminent men, who were much under the influence
of French ideas, and others who were democratically inclined by their
mental constitution, did not altogether approve of the polity which had
been formed and ratified, and they represented the extreme left of the
country,--as others, who thought that polity too liberal, (too feeble,
they would have said,) represented the extreme right. These men agreed
in nothing but this, that the Federal Constitution was but a temporary
contrivance, and destined to last only until one extreme party or the
other should succeed in overthrowing it, and substituting for it a
polity in which either liberty or power should embody a complete
triumph. Probably not one of their number ever dreamed that it would
have seventy-two years of unbroken existence, or that the first serious
attack made on it would proceed from the quarter whence that attack was
destined to come.

That our polity ever should have been looked upon as democratical in its
character, as well at home as abroad, is one of the strangest facts in
political history. Probably it is owing to some popular expressions in
the Constitution itself. "We, the People of the United States," are the
first words of the instrument, and they are represented as ordaining and
establishing the Constitution. Some of the provisions of the
Constitution are of a popular character, beyond doubt; but they are, in
most instances, not inspirations, but derived from English
experience,--and it will ha