IV

These experiences became the guiding influence in the growth of John Taylor’s ideas and the key to his philosophy. He had been born in 1753 and was coming into manhood in the stirring birth years of the American Revolution. His father died when he was three and he was brought up by a kinsman, Edmund Pendleton. His guardian was a lawyer and politician, judge and legislator. Young Taylor was sent to William and Mary College and afterwards studied law with Pendleton. He became a practising attorney at the age of twenty-one in r 774, just as the Revolution was brewing.

He had been educated, not only in the classics and in the law, but likewise in politics and political theory. From 1760 to 1776, Virginia had been talking politics, seeking to define its various relations with Great Britain and with the British Government. From Patrick Henry’s speech in the Parsons’ Cause, until Richard Henry Lee’s resolutions in the Continental Congress and Thomas Jefferson’s report on the Declaration of Independence, the anvils in the smithy of ideas were ringing with heavy blows from mighty hammers. Pendleton was one of those at work at the forges and Taylor in his most impressionable years was ably tutored in the revolutionary philosophy of rights and liberties.

Taylor served in the Virginia militia and in the Continental army during much of the war and emerged from the last Virginia campaign as a lieutenant-colonel. Furthermore he was a member of the Virginia legislature during the most perilous period of the struggle. He was not only indoctrinated with republicanism but he had practical experience in putting these doctrines into effect.

After the struggle was over Taylor married the daughter of a wealthy lawyer-planter, John Penn, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Taylor, like most of his neighbours now that the peaceful days had come, settled down to farm and practise law. He and his wife bought and inherited several plantations and he was as ardent an agriculturist as he had been a revolutionary. Also he was fond of reading and kept up with the times, and then there was always the Virginia planters’ dash of politics to add zest to life. He was one of the republican oligarchy of lawyer-planters who ruled the counties of Virginia and either went to the legislature or chose those who were to go. He was the friend of Jefferson and since boyhood the companion of James Madison.

Taylor was not in any official position at the time that the question of ratification of the Constitution was in the public eye, so he did not participate actively in this contest. However, he was doubtful about the document because it contained no bill of rights. He did not follow Washington, with whom he seems to have had no particular contact at any time. His real activity in politics waited until i792 , when he was appointed Senator to fill an unexpired term. Appearing in the then capital city of Philadelphia while the heat generated by Hamilton’s financial policies ran high, he became convinced that there was danger to the Republic from the creation of a monied interest, and he published a pamphlet, A Definition of Parties, or the Political Effects of the Paper System Considered, which exposed what he felt approached corruption. The promoters of Hamilton’s plan, said the author, were receiving a profit which they did not deserve and which they would secure at the expense of the taxpayers.

From this time forward Taylor worked with Thomas Jefferson in building up the party which was to curb the Federalists, christened the Democratic-Republican party. His term in the Senate was brief, lasting less than two years, after which he returned to Virginia though not entirely to private life. He was a Presidential elector supporting Jefferson in 1796 and shortly afterwards he entered the Virginia legislature. In the meantime the interests of the Federalists had not been confined to establishing a strong central government and a sound credit; difficulties connected with the European war had led the Federalist administration of John Adams to take repressive measures in the interests of public security. Fearing particularly the intrigues of foreigners and the attacks which the Republican friends of France were making upon the government, Congress enacted laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts, which empowered the Federal government to suppress certain types of freedom of expression and political activity.

Jefferson and his friends saw, not only that these acts were really dangerous to the spirit of liberty, but also that they would make good political ammunition. Thereupon they proceeded to use them effectively. They began a propaganda attacking the Federalists as violating the Constitution, destroying liberty and favouring Great Britain. In true eighteenth-century fashion they decided that they must put their views in writing. So John Taylor introduced into the Virginia legislature the famous series of resolutions which he suggested to Jefferson and which Madison composed, denouncing the Federal administration for tyrannical laws and calling upon the states to interpose, to arrest them as violations of the Constitution. These pronouncements, together with a similar series passed by the Kentucky legislature, became popularly known as the ‘Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions’ and became the political platform of Jefferson’s party.

The appeal of Jeffersonian principles, the astuteness of Jefferson as leader, the ineptitude of the Federalists and the weakness bred of twelve years of power produced the downfall of the Federalists in 1800 and the accession of Jefferson to the Presidency. During this administration Taylor returned to the Senate, again for a brief time, 1803–1804. Here he undertook to defend the Chief Executive, even accepting the Louisiana Purchase. However, the party ofJefferson was not to be wholly harmonious and he, like Washington, found that he could not keep the Virginians in line. There were rivals for the succession. Jefferson favoured Madison but James Monroe, coming back from a futile mission to Great Britain with a grievance, soon joined those opposing the elevation of Madison. This anti-Madison faction varied in different states but represented a common desire seemingly to express dissatisfaction with Jefferson’s methods of political management. These schismatics were generally known as ‘Tertium Quids’, i.e. neither Jeffersonians nor Federalists, but something else.

John Taylor found himself among the Tertium Quids as he was coming to the belief that Jefferson was not true to Republican ideals and that it was necessary to speak out. Colonel Taylor in fact had been engaged, in rather desultory fashion, for nearly twenty years in formulating an eighteenth-century inquiry into the reason for things political. Scarcely realizing that it pertained to a century which was past, he nevertheless felt it was time to bring this long analysis to a close and give it to the public. He may have wanted it to be campaign material for the Presidential election of i812, but so large was the work and so slow the printer that it did not appear until 1814.