Yet Jefferson claimed that if he was right in his assumption that the common man was honest, able, and capable of self-government, the governments most honestly and frugally[Pg 94] conducted would be those nearest to him, the local rather than the Federal. Jefferson’s whole philosophy was agrarian. It was based on the one population in the world he thought worthy of it—a population of which ninety per cent were farmers, mostly owning their own homes. He hoped it would remain so for many hundreds of years and believed that it would. It did so for only a few decades. How long are we to go on preaching Jefferson and practising Hamilton? Jefferson’s philosophy develops from his premise and hangs together. So does Hamilton’s. But the two do not mix at all, as both men recognized in deadly earnest. We have been trying to mix them ever since, oratorically at least. We practise Hamilton from January 1 to July 3 every year. On July 4 we hurrah like mad for Jefferson. The next day we quietly take up Hamilton again for the rest of the year as we go about our business. I do not care which philosophy a man adopts, but to preach one and to practise the other is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy in the long run poisons the soul. Personally I prefer Jefferson as a man to Hamilton. In his spirit I believe he was far more of an aristocrat than Hamilton ever was, with all his social pretensions. I prefer the America which Jefferson visualized and hoped for to that which Hamilton dreamed of and brought to pass on a scale he never could measure. On the other hand, I believe that the future will be, as the past has been, Hamilton’s. His hopes and Jefferson’s fears have come true. The small farmer, the shopkeeper, the artisan are being more and more crowded out from the interest of a plutocratic government. A Hamiltonian philosophy or government cares nothing for[Pg 95] them as compared with the large manufacturer and larger trust. If we want to know why they should not be helped or protected as well as corporations which can declare hundreds of per cent in stock dividends and then cash dividends on the stock dividends and so on ad infinitum, we must go back to Hamilton and the beginning of his system. I do not see now that any other system is possible. Perhaps some day we may secure a lowering of the tariff to less swinish levels and certain other reforms, but as a whole the system must stand. Jefferson’s dream of a new and better world at last opened to men, with a whole continent at their back over which as freeholders they could slowly expand for ages, has passed. We have swallowed our heritage almost at a gulp. We have become as a nation colossally rich. But if anyone thinks we have become more honest or more capable of self-government, let him study the records.