government provided shelter only , not food , clothes , heating fuel and so forth , so extreme want was common .
In 1770 , for example , seven debtors in Manhattan ’ s “ New Gaol ” suffered from the “ Extreamities of Hunger ” and longed for death rather than remain in a place that contemporaries described as a “ human slaughterhouse ” and a “ dismal cage .” In 1767 , an Anglican minister described the debtors ’ prison in Charleston , South Carolina as 12 feet square and jammed with 16 people . A debtor , he claimed , “ would be in a better Situation in the French Kings Gallies , or the Prisons of Turkey or Barbary , than in this dismal place .” Contemporaries wondered aloud at the justice of imprisoning people because of a distant government ’ s failed economic policies .
Eventually , revolution came and with it a series of internecine struggles over who should rule at home , and how they should do so . The states got it right first , creating governments that were strong enough to adequately protect their citizens ’ lives , liberty and property from foes foreign and domestic , but containing sufficient checks and balances to render the rise of tyrannical government unlikely . Some states , like Pennsylvania , at first erred by making their executives too weak , but later they adjusted to the Massachusetts model of three mostly equal branches , each with its own unique duties but also with the power , via vetoes , overrides , constitutional review and the like , to check venality in the other branches if necessary . State constitutions also explicitly established popular sovereignty by providing at least some individual citizens with numerous checks against arbitrary power , including the rights to criticize and remonstrate against public policies , to vote for public officials and , if need be , to overturn the government by force of arms .
It took longer to get the national frame of government right . The first frame , the Articles of Confederation , was too feeble to turn tyrannical but also too weak to protect Americans from domestic rebels , foreign powers or even Indian incursions . Many believed , correctly as it turned out , that Americans would not “ be secure & happy until Congress command implicitly both purse & sword .”
The Constitution ratified in 1788 gave Congress command of the purse and the President command of the sword . In so doing , it created a relatively strong
Portrait of President George Washington , by Gilbert Stuart , circa 1805 . In his farewell address , Washington deliberately downplayed the sectional and cultural differences that threatened to enfeeble the new nation . To be “ American ,” whether by “ birth or choice ,” was to uphold the national government as a powerful but beneficent “ palladium ” of Americans ’ “ political safety and prosperity .”
national government but one , as amended by the Bill of Rights , that contained the crucial checks and balances against tyrannical predation included in the state constitutions . The states themselves also served as checks against the national government , and vice versa .
The new , federal frame of government was far from perfect but it did protect the rights triad of a large and growing proportion of the population from threats both internal and external , and the founders knew it . As Jefferson wrote in his first inaugural , “ the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor , [ w ] as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad .” The improvement over the British system was palpable . “ The principles of our constitutions and governments and laws ,” jurist James Wilson claimed in 1791 , “ are materially better than the principles of the constitution and government and laws of England .”
The Constitution ’ s positive effect on the economic incentives of white males was immediate and profound . In 1790 , Massachusetts hatter Justin Hitchcock noted the salubrious “ effect of our National Government had upon all classes of people .” From widespread confidence in the new regime emanated “ a new Spring to all kinds of business ,” including a strong desire among farmers to “ cultivate their lands under a sure prospect of a ready market and good price .” Two years later , Philadelphia
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merchant Tench Coxe argued that buildings and “ public works … of every kind , and of species and values unknown among us till the present time , are undertaking everywhere ” due to “ our voluntarily imposing upon ourselves the wholesome restraints of just government .” By 1804 , the collective wisdom proclaimed , at least according to one observer , that “ such an increase of wealth and splendour , within the recollection of a single man ” as independent America enjoyed after implementation of the Constitution , “ admits but of one comparison in the history of the world .”
Many foreign observers came to the same conclusions . After touring America and Canada in the early 1820s , for example , British aristocrat Edward Derby argued “ that in commercial prosperity , or in rapidity of cultivation and improvement , Canada can never vie with the United States — and in fact , the most cursory traveller cannot fail , in passing through the two countries , to have many opportunities of observing & contrasting the universal energy & activity which pervades the latter , and the general supineness and listlessness in which the other appears to be sunk .”
America was not physically superior to Canada as there was , Derby believed , “ no part of the United States which affords a climate and soil superior to the Upper Province … or a lighter share of public taxes .” What made America better , Derby believed , was that “ however free the Constitutions , however mild & equitably administered the laws , however light & impartial the taxation of a Colony may be , it can never excite in the breasts of its inhabitants those feelings of warm patriotism and exclusive attachment , which belong to the citizens of an independent country … There is less temptation to private enterprise & ambition , less employment , less circulation of capital , and less general activity and animation .”
Independent America , by contrast , evinced “ a most satisfactory proof of what may be expected in a rising country from the energy of a people stimulated only by the Certainty of enjoying the return of their labour , & unfettered by vexatious restrictions .” In more modern parlance , Americans rightly expected to enjoy significantly more economic freedom than Canadians and other colonists .
Americans interested in investing in the future , by » continued on page 43
32 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2023 | www . MoAF . org