Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy
By William Leggett
Ten years after Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826, an outspoken young editor in New York City was reformulating and extending the Jeffersonian philosophy of equal rights. William Leggett, articulating his views in the columns of the New York
Evening Post,Examiner, and
Plaindealer, gained widespread recognition as the intellectual leader of the
laissez-faire wing of Jacksonian democracy…. [From the Foreword by Lawrence H. White.]
Translator/Editor
Lawrence H. White, ed.
First Pub. Date
1834
Publisher
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. Liberty Press
Pub. Date
1984
Comments
Essays first published 1834-1837.
Copyright
Portions of this edited edition are under copyright. Picture of William Leggett courtesy of United States Library of Congress. Original contains the inscription: "Engraved by Sealey, from a Painting by T. S. Cummings, N A." and includes Leggett's signature below.
- Foreword by Lawrence H. White
- Part I, 1. True Functions of Government
- Part I, 2. The Reserved Rights of the People
- Part I, 3. Objects of the Evening Post
- Part I, 4. Reply to the Charge of Lunacy
- Part I, 5. The Legislation of Congress
- Part I, 6. Religious Intolerance
- Part I, 7. Direct Taxation
- Part I, 8. The Course of the Evening Post
- Part I, 9. Chief Justice Marshall
- Part I, 10. Prefatory Remarks
- Part I, 11. The Sister Doctrines
- Part I, 12. The True Theory of Taxation
- Part I, 13. Strict Construction
- Part I, 14. Legislative Indemnity for Losses from Mobs
- Part I, 15. The Despotism of the Majority
- Part I, 16. Morals of Legislation
- Part I, 17. The Morals of Politics
- Part II, 1. Bank of United States
- Part II, 2. Small Note Circulation
- Part II, 3. The Monopoly Banking System
- Part II, 4. Uncurrent Bank Notes
- Part II, 5. Fancy Cities
- Part II, 6. Causes of Financial Distress
- Part II, 7. Why Is Flour So Dear
- Part II, 8. Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents
- Part II, 9. Strictures on the Late Message
- Part II, 10. The Value of Money
- Part II, 11. The Way to Cheapen Flour
- Part II, 12. The Money Market and Nicholas Biddle
- Part II, 13. The Pressure, the Cause of it, and the Remedy
- Part II, 14. Connexion of State with Banking
- Part II, 15. The Crisis
- Part II, 16. The Bankrupt Banks
- Part II, 17. What We Must Do, and What We Must Not
- Part II, 18. The Foresight of Individual Enterprise
- Part II, 19. The Safety Fund Bubble
- Part II, 20. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 21. The Remedy for Broken Banks
- Part II, 22. Blest Paper Credit
- Part II, 23. Questions and Answers
- Part II, 24. The True and Natural System
- Part II, 25. The Bugbear of the Bank Democrats
- Part II, 26. Bank and State
- Part II, 27. Theory and Practice
- Part II, 28. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 29. Specie Basis
- Part II, 30. The Natural System
- Part II, 31. The Credit System and the Aristocracy
- Part II, 32. The Divorce of Politicks and Banking
- Part III, 1. Riot at the Chatham-Street Chapel
- Part III, 2. Governor McDuffie's Message
- Part III, 3. The Abolitionists
- Part III, 4. Reward for Arthur Tappan
- Part III, 5. The Anti-Slavery Society
- Part III, 6. Abolitionists
- Part III, 7. Slavery No Evil
- Part III, 8. Progress of Fanaticism
- Part III, 9. An Argument Against Abolition Refuted
- Part III, 10. Commencement of the Administration of Martin Van Buren
- Part III, 11. The Question of Slavery Narrowed to a Point
- Part III, 12. Abolition Insolence
- Part IV, 1. Despotism of Andrew Jackson
- Part IV, 2. The Division of Parties
- Part IV, 3. Rich and Poor
- Part IV, 4. The Street of the Palaces
- Part IV, 5. American Nobility
- Part IV, 6. The Inequality of Human Condition
- Part IV, 7. A Bad Beginning
- Part IV, 8. The Whig Embassy to Washington, and Its Result
- Part IV, 9. Right Views Among the Right Sort of People
- Part IV, 10. Newspaper Nominations
- Part IV, 11. Foreign Paupers
- Part V, 1. Monopolies: I
- Part V, 2. A Little Free-Trade Crazy
- Part V, 3. Asylum for Insane Paupers
- Part V, 4. Monopolies: II
- Part V, 5. Revolutionary Pensioners
- Part V, 6. Joint-Stock Partnership Law
- Part V, 7. The Ferry Monopoly
- Part V, 8. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 9. Stock Gambling
- Part V, 10. Weighmaster General
- Part V, 11. State Prison Monopoly
- Part V, 12. Corporation Property
- Part V, 13. Regulation of Coal
- Part V, 14. Free Ferries and an Agrarian Law
- Part V, 15. Thanksgiving Day
- Part V, 16. Municipal Docks
- Part V, 17. Associated Effort
- Part V, 18. The Coal Question
- Part V, 19. The Corporation Question
- Part V, 20. Free Trade Weights and Measures
- Part V, 21. Associated Effort
- Part V, 22. Sale of Publick Lands
- Part V, 23. Manacles Instead of Gyves
- Part V, 24. The Meaning of Free Trade
- Part V, 25. Gambling Laws
- Part V, 26. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 27. Free Trade, Taxes, and Subsidies
- Part V, 28. Meek and Gentle with These Butchers
- Part V, 29. The Cause of High Prices, and the Rights of Combination
- Part V, 30. Omnipotence of the Legislature
- Part VI, 1. Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 2. The Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 3. Right of Property in the Fruits of Intellectual Labour
NEWSPAPER NOMINATIONS
Plaindealer, May 20, 1837.
In our last number, when commenting on the “nonpartisan” professions of the whig travelling committee, we stated that the proceedings of that veracious body had a direct reference to an intended nomination, at no distant day, of Mr. Webster, as a candidate for the office of President. Circumstances have forced this nomination to be made, in an informal manner, at an earlier day than was anticipated. The
Evening Star, of Thursday last, having intimated, in pretty positive terms, that Mr. Clay is entitled to the support of the aristocracy, as their next candidate for the chief executive office of the Confederacy, the
Commercial Advertiser and the
American of the following evening eagerly reprehended the movement of their contemporary, and protested that Daniel Webster was their man. We are sorry to observe any signs of division in the ranks of our adversaries. We should be much better pleased to see them all unite, with one mind and heart, on a single individual; and we should be still better pleased if that individual were Mr. Webster. This would bring the strife on the true ground of antagonist political principles. It would call upon the people to array themselves under the standard either of democracy or aristocracy. It would show conclusively whether the intelligence of this country acknowledges the maxim that “PROPERTY IS THE TEST OF MERIT,” or whether it still holds to the opposite maxim, “THE EQUALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS.”
The aristocratic party ought to select Mr. Webster for their candidate. They acted scurvily towards him in the last contest. To thrust him aside from the field, that they might array themselves under the petticoat banner of so poor an “available,” such a mere effigy of a leader, as General Harrison, was, to say the least, mortifying treatment. They owe Mr. Webster reparation. They owe it to themselves, too, to pursue a more dignified course. Their political projects, heretofore, have been palpable confessions of inferiority. They have sought to disguise the true issue. They have seized hold of temporary and local questions. They have selected candidates, not with reference to their capacity or principles, but solely with reference to their supposed power of healing divisions, and uniting separate interests. It is time they should come out in their true characters, and avow the real objects for which they contend. Let them declare, then, their rooted distrust of the intelligence and integrity of the mass of the people; their belief that property is the test of merit, and should be the basis of suffrage; their opinion that the duty of government is to take care of the rich, leaving it to the rich to take care of the poor; and their desire, for the furtherance of these objects, to establish a federal bank, with sufficient capital to buy up men and presses, like cattle in the market. At the end of such a confession of faith, nothing could be in better keeping than the nomination of Daniel Webster for the office of President.
Mr. Webster is certainly a great man. We should oppose him, wholly, heartily, and with all the zeal of a firm conviction that his principles are hostile to liberty. But we do not hesitate to call him a great man; a man of strong and capacious mind, much information, vigorous powers of reasoning, and an uncommon flow of stern and majestic eloquence. He is greater as a lawyer than as a statesman; but in both characters he stands in the foremost rank. We admire the energy of his faculties. When passages of his speeches come before us, separate from a consideration of the questions which elicited them, we always peruse them with delight. The pleasure they afford us is but the involuntary homage which the mind pays to a superior intellect; but it changes, by a natural transition, to an opposite feeling, when we are led to reflect upon the nature of the objects for which he is exerting his abilities. Not to assist in enfranchising his fellow-man; not to hasten that glorious day-spring of equal liberty, which is beginning to dawn upon the world; not to spread wider and wider the principles of democratic freedom, and break down the artificial and aristocratic distinctions, which diversify the surface of society with such hideous inequalities, does Mr. Webster raise his voice in the Senate-house. The dogmas of his political creed, like the dogmas of an intolerant religion, would confine the blessings of government, as the latter would those of heaven, to an exclusive few, leaving all the other myriads of men to toil and sweat in a state of immitigable degradation. This is the true end and aim of the aristocratic creed. This is the true and inevitable tendency of their measures who contend for a national bank. This is their open profession when they proclaim that property is the proof of merit, and, by the unavoidable converse, that poverty is the proof of unworthiness. For those who acknowledge such sentiments and motives, Mr. Webster is the proper candidate. He has talents and acquirements that must command respect; his personal character is unimpeached; and he has toiled long and strenuously in their service. We are glad that they are about to do all in their power to render a grateful return. The democracy will now have something to contend against, as well as something to contend for. There will be glory in overthrowing such an antagonist, as well as great gain in preserving the supremacy of their principles. With such an opponent as Harrison, we enter languidly into the contest, as a task of mere duty; with such a one as Webster, we shall rush into it eagerly, as a matter of pride as well as patriotism.
Queen Mab together with notes in 1813. The ninth note was a celebrated essay against legal marriage.—Ed.
THE WHIG EMBASSY TO WASHINGTON, AND ITS RESULT
Examiner satirist.—Ed.
RIGHT VIEWS AMONG THE RIGHT SORT OF PEOPLE
FOREIGN “PAUPERS”