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J. Allen Smith: Jeffersonian Critic of the Federalist State*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Howard E. Dean
Howard E. Dean
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

It is a commonplace that every period rewrites history in the light of its own problems, and with the aid of wisdom after the event. Changes in the climate of opinion and shifts in the winds of doctrine naturally bring the contributions of earlier thinkers under new scrutiny. Today the mood of critical reassessment is strong, for a significant shift has taken place in English and American political opinion during the past decade; the temper of the times is not visionary, but revisionist, and the pull is not toward revolution, but toward revaluation. The spate of books and articles on the “new conservatism,” the “new right,” and the “conservative tradition,” however, and if ever, defined; the reconsiderations of liberal and reformist thought; the succession of Michael Oakeshott to the chair of Harold J. Laski; the recantations of repentant liberals, and the curious spectacle of revolutionaries triumphantly in reverse; the vogue of Burke and De Tocqueville; and even the difference between D. W. Brogan's earlier acid etching of the American political scene and his recent essay in contentment, all make clear in their varying ways that times have changed.

Type
Studies in American Political Thought
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 1093 - 1104
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1956

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Footnotes

*

This article is a revision of a paper read at the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association meeting at Moscow, Idaho, April 1955.

References

1 The New American Right, ed. Bell, Daniel (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar; Rossiter, Clinton L., Conservatism in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

2 Goldman, Eric F., Rendezvous with Destiny (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

3 Brogan, D. W., Government of the People (New York, 1933)Google Scholar; Politics in America (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

4 Hartz, op. cit., p. 27. Professor Hartz suggests that Progressives like Beard, Smith, Parrington, Louis Boudin, and Gustavus Myers did not really grasp the America in which they lived (p. 237).

5 Becker, Carl L., Everyman His Own Historian (New York, 1935), p. v Google Scholar.

6 The phrase is Edmund Burke's. Reflections on the French Revolution, Everyman's Library edition (London, 1953), p. 40 Google Scholar.

7 Parrington, Vernon L., Introduction to Smith, J. Allen, The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government (New York, 1930), p. xvi Google Scholar. Cited henceforth as Growth. Smith was dropped from the faculty of Marietta College ostensibly as a retrenchment measure, but a replacement was appointed: “apparently money was available if a suitable man was found.” Beach, Arthur G., A Pioneer College: The Story of Marietta (Privately printed, 1935), p. 227 Google Scholar.

8 Parrington, ibid.

9 For accounts of Smith's life and work see Goldman, Eric F., “J. Allen Smith: The Reformer and His Dilemma,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 35, pp. 195–214 (July, 1944)Google Scholar; MacMahon, Edward, “James Allen Smith”, Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 17, pp. 286–87 (1935)Google Scholar.

10 Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913)Google Scholar. Joseph Dorfman has argued that Beard's book was not a documented vindication of Smith's interpretation, but, on the contrary, was partly an effort to meet Smith's charge that the Constitution was a “reactionary” document. The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York, 1949), Vol. 3, pp. 348–49Google Scholar. In similar vein, Robert E. Thomas has emphasized that Beard had little patience with what he regarded as the imbecilities of the Articles of Confederation; that he had tremendous admiration for the Founding Fathers, was an opponent of Populist-Wilsonian ideas, and an ardent defender of judicial review. “A Reappraisal of Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution,” American Historical Review, Vol. 57, pp. 370–375 (January, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Thomas notes, chapter IV of Beard's The Supreme Court and the Constitution New York, 1912)Google Scholar, entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution,” is in marked contrast to Smith's evaluation of that spirit.

11 Parrington, Vernon L., Main Currents in American Thought, 3 Vols. (New York, 1927–1930)Google Scholar.

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17 The Spirit of American Government (New York, 1907)Google Scholar. Cited henceforth as Spirit.

18 Ibid., p. 305.

19 Herbert Croly, in rejecting Smith's conspiracy theory of the Constitution, asked why the Jeffersonians had not undone the Federalist handiwork when they assumed power. His answer was that the political system was harmonious with the economic interests of the Jeffersonians. Progressive Democracy (New York, 1914), pp. 46–51 Google Scholar.

20 Goldman, op. cit. supra n. 2, at p. 146.

21 Spirit, p. 293.

22 See American Political Science Association Committee on Political Parties, “Toward a More Responsible Two-party System.” Supplement to this Review, Vol. 44 (September, 1950)Google Scholar. Austin Ranney has suggested that the failure to develop such a system in the United States is not due to popular ignorance of the case for its virtues, but rather to the point emphasized by A. Lawrence Lowell, that “responsible and disciplined parties will appeal only to a people committed to the desirability of unlimited majority rule, and that the American people, far from believing in majority rule, are devoted to the preservation of minority rights against majority rule.” The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (Urbana, Ill., 1954), p. 160 Google Scholar.

23 Spirit, pp. 203–29.

24 For an extreme example see Riker, William H., Democracy in the United States (New York, 1953), pp. 346–65Google Scholar.

25 Spirit, p. 145.

26 Ibid., p. 146.

27 Seagle, William, “James Allen Smith,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 14, p. 116 (1935)Google Scholar.

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30 See Dorfman, loc. cit. supra n. 10, at pp. 294–9.

31 Smith, , “The Multiple Money Standard,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 7, pp. 173–232 (March, 1896)Google Scholar.

32 Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, ed. Figgis, John Neville and Laurence, Reginald Vere (London, 1907), p. 57 Google Scholar. Like Edward A. Ross, John R. Commons, and others in the Populist-Progressive tradition (see Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, pp. 8–9; 173–184), J. Allen Smith was quite hostile toward the tide of immigrants, and was particularly concerned with the need to restrict immigration from the Far East. In a paper presented to a meeting of the American Economic Association, “The Relation of Oriental Immigration to the General Immigration Problem,” Bulletin of the American Economic Association, Fourth Series, Vol. I, No. 2, pp. 237–42 (April, 1911)Google Scholar, Smith pointed to the contradiction in having a protective tariff alongside an open immigration policy which benefitted some employers by providing cheap labor and harmed the American laborer by depressing the standard of living. The furthering of the great purpose of America, the diffusion and preservation of a high level of general wellbeing, justified in Smith's view the exclusion of “undesirable” immigrants. His argument was largely economic, for he defined “undesirable immigrant” as one willing to work for less than the prevailing rate of wages (p. 242). But his position had a moral basis in addition, for he spoke of “low grade immigrants who lacked the initiative, the energy, and the means” (p. 238) to have come in prior to the exploitation of immigration as a regular business by the great steamship companies. The appearance of “the Chinese coolie, with his low standard of living and his patient endurance, was an undeniable meance to the wellbeing of the American laborer” (p. 239). The same might be said, Smith added, of much of the immigration from Europe. Exclusion of Oriental immigrants, he explained, “does not necessarily imply a belief on our part that the Oriental races are inferior to our own, but that they are fundamentally different, and if they were admitted in considerable numbers, it would mean a race problem of serious import” (p. 238).

33 Spirit, p. 386.

34 Ibid., p. 380.

35 Ibid., p. 378.

36 Becker, op. cit. supra n. 5, at p. 119.

37 Agar, Herbert, The Price of Union (Boston, 1950), pp. 690–91Google Scholar.

38 Published posthumously (New York, 1930) with an introduction by V. L. Parrington. “A few minutes before his death Parrington had put his signature to a foreword for a book by his late friend and colleague, J. Allen Smith.” Harrison, Joseph B., Vernon Louis Parrington, University of Washington Chapbooks, No. 31 (Seattle, 1929), p. 29 Google Scholar.

39 Parrington, Main Currents, Vol. 3, p. 412 Google Scholar.

40 In a letter to John A. Kingsbury, quoted in Goldman, op. cit. supra n. 9, at p. 210.

41 Growth, pp. 194–95.

42 Goldman, ibid., pp. 210–11.

43 Growth, pp. 226–28.

44 Ibid., p. 14.

45 Ibid., p. 185.

46 Ibid., p. 163.

47 Ibid., p. 114.

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53 Ibid., p. 92.

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56 Ibid., p. 194.

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64 Walter Lippmann used this phrase of G. B. Shaw's to characterize the longings of Bryan and Wilson. Drift and Mastery (New York, 1914), pp. 128–48Google Scholar.

65 Parrington, ibid., Vol. 3, p. xx.

66 Ibid., p. xxvii.

67 Ibid., p. xxviii.

68 Bacon, Francis, “Of Empire,” Essays, No. 19, World's Classics edition (Oxford 1930), p. 52 Google Scholar.

69 Seagle, loc. cit. supra n. 27.

70 Goldman, op. cit. supra n. 9, at p. 212.

71 David Lloyd George, characterizing Lord Kitchener. War Memoirs (Boston, 1933), Vol. 2, p. 194 Google Scholar, quoted by Rogers, Lindsay, Foreword to Connery, Robert H., The Administration of an N. B. A. Code (Chicago, 1938), p. xviii Google Scholar.

72 Parrington, ibid., Vol. 2, p. i.

73 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. vii.

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