And so the Constitution was, in spirit, rewritten.
Partly by actual amendment, partly by practice, as in the case of the
electoral college, but chiefly by looking at it through another set of
stereotypes, the facade was no longer permitted to look oligarchic.
The American people came to believe that their Constitution was a
democratic instrument, and treated it as such. They owe that fiction
to the victory of Thomas Jefferson, and a great conservative fiction
it has been. It is a fair guess that if everyone had always regarded
the Constitution as did the authors of it, the Constitution would have
been violently overthrown, because loyalty to the Constitution and
loyalty to democracy would have seemed incompatible. Jefferson
resolved that paradox by teaching the American people to read the
Constitution as an expression of democracy. He himself stopped there.
But in the course of twenty-five years or so social conditions had
changed so radically, that Andrew Jackson carried out the political
revolution for which Jefferson had prepared the tradition. [Footnote:
The reader who has any doubts as to the extent of the revolution that
separated Hamilton's opinions from Jackson's practice should turn to
Mr. Henry Jones Ford's _Rise and Growth of American Politics_.]
4
The political center of that revolution was the question of patronage.
By the men who founded the government public office was regarded as a
species of property, not lightly to be disturbed, and it was
undoubtedly their hope that the offices would remain in the hands of
their social class.
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