MASTER-BUILDERS OF THE NATION ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND JAMES MADISON It is now appropriate to examine the form and character of the organisation and government which the new nation had adopted and which, under Washington's guidance, had been set in operation. Here there is some danger of not being able to see the wood for the trees. So vigorous, so sharp, and so interesting were the discussions both in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia and in the conventions called by the several states to ratify the constitution, that there is strong temptation to deal with many matters other than those that are essential to an understanding of the elementary principles of the constitution itself. Disposition must first be made of the notion recently advanced that the provisions of the constitution of the United States were framed and accepted under the primary influence of the economic appetites and the economic interests of men. The crude, immoral, and unhistorical teaching of Karl Marx as to the moving forces in human history has affected the views of many who do not by any means accept all the conclusions which Marx himself drew from his premises. To assign motives for the action of another is to reveal one's self; it means that the writer would be influenced under similar conditions by the motives that he ascribes to those of whom he writes. If one be without fixed and definite principles of life and conduct, and if he be guided merely by self-interest and personal advantage, he will find only these characteristics when he attempts to interpret the actions of other men. Just this has happened in the case of those recent writers who would have us believe that the ruling motive behind the constitution of the United States was the protection of the property interest of those individuals and groups that were chiefly concerned in its framing and ratification. It is a travesty to dignify so unscholarly an adventure by the title of an economic interpretation of history. Such a view-point would see in the hearts and minds of the millions of young Britons and Americans who crossed the dividing waters in the years 1914 to 1918, in order to give battle on the soil of France and of Belgium in the great war, nothing more than a selfish desire to protect and make good their investments in the war loans and liberty bonds issued by the respective governments of their native lands. Before so amazing a picture argument stands helpless, and must give way to ridicule. A word of warning must also be spoken to those who would write history from the documents and |