754 Chapter XXXI
more modern than England in other important respects: it now represented a so-
ciety in which tradition had been rejected, planning for the future was thought to
be possible, government was detached from an institutional church and from le-
gally defined social classes, land law and local government had lost their old sei-
gneurial features, careers were to be open to talent, promotions made by merit, and
schools and higher education developed by the state in the interests of public util-
ity. Where older societies, to obtain general acceptance, stressed the duties of social
subordination and religious faith, the newer society stressed the duties of citizen-
ship and the advantages of modern enlightenment. In the test of war the new
order in France, with its citizen army and its popular patriotic enthusiasm, had
proved itself stronger than the old regimes which opposed it. The announced prin-
ciples of the new order, liberty, equality, and the recognition of human and civic
rights—originally developed as weapons against the older society, and still far from
being realized in the new—proved to have a strong appeal in all countries to which
news of them came. Indeed, they had their own roots in many parts of Europe and
in the United States. To call them “French ideas” was a mere allegation of their
opponents.
In the United States, hardly had the new federal constitution gone into effect,
when differences of opinion began to show themselves on the course which the
new republic ought to take. One view held that the country needed economic de-
velopment, along the lines in which Western Europe was then more advanced. The
other view held that the older, simpler, and in a way more native ways in America
were better and should be adhered to. The former view held that the country
needed more banking, credit, shipping, transportation, and manufactures, both as
things desirable in themselves and as a means of consolidating national indepen-
dence, and that the central government should have enough power to plan and
sponsor such innovations. In the other view it was better to favor the existing agri-
cultural character of the country, keeping trade in an auxiliary position; a central
government with minimum powers would suffice. In the former view, the new
central government should associate itself with men of means, persons who had
capital of their own to invest, or who could borrow it abroad, and who in any case
might make trouble for the new regime if they withheld their support; in the op-
posing view, such a policy smacked of favoritism or privilege for the rich. Finally,
in the one view it was necessary to seek good relations with an advanced European
country, which for Americans could only be England, in view of the familiarity of
the language and methods of doing business, the availability of long- term credit,
and the British predominance at sea; while in the opposing view it was distasteful
to try to conciliate England, whose government had not yet accepted the Ameri-
can Revolution very gracefully, and against which there remained a good deal of
popular hostility, generated by the still recent War of Independence.
It need hardly be said that the first of these views was Alexander Hamilton’s,
and the second, that of the men who came gradually to look to Thomas Jefferson
as their leader. Hamilton managed to enact his program during the first years
under the new constitution. The assumption of pre- existing state debts by the na-
tional government, the paying off at par of all public securities however depreci-