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Some persons in Europe have formed an opinion of the possible influence of General Jackson upon the affairs of his country, which appears highly extravagant to those who have seen more of the subject. We have been told that General Jackson has won sundry battles, that he is an energetic man, prone by nature and by habit to the use of force, covetous of power, and a despot by taste. All this may perhaps be true; but the inferences which have been drawn from these truths are exceedingly erroneous. It has been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establishing a dictatorship in America, on introducing a military spirit, and on giving a degree of influence to the central authority which cannot but be dangerous to provincial liberties. But in America, the time for similar undertakings, and the age for men of this kind, is not yet come; if General Jackson had entertained a hope of exercising his authority in this manner, he would infallibly have forfeited his political station, and compromised his life; accordingly he has not been so imprudent as to make any such attempt.
Far from wishing to extend the federal power, the president belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the bare and precise letter of the constitution, and which never puts a construction upon that act, favourable to the government of the Union; far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent of all the jealousies of the states; and he was placed in the lofty station he occupies, by the passions of the people which are most opposed to the central government. It is by perpetually flattering these passions, that he maintains his station and his popularity. General Jackson is the slave of the majority: he yields to its wishes, its propensities, and its demands; say rather, that he anticipates and forestalls them.
Whenever the governments of the states come into collision with that of the Union, the president is generally the first to question his own rights: he almost always outstrips the legislature; and when the extent of the federal power is controverted, he takes part, as it were, against himself; he conceals his official interests, and extinguishes his own natural inclinations. Not indeed that he is naturally weak or hostile to the Union; for when the majority decided against the claims of the partisans of nullification, he put himself at its head, asserted the doctrines which the nation held, distinctly and energetically, and was the first to recommend forcible
