Complete Prose Works
yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it.
And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that it alone can
bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however various
and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. It is the old, yet
ever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her
fond philosophers and poets. Not that half only, individualism, which
isolates. There is another half, which is adhesiveness or love, that
fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing
all. Both are to be vitalized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of
man or State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath
of life. For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the religious
element. All the religions, old and new, are there. Nor may the scheme
step forth, clothed in resplendent beauty and command, till these,
bearing the best, the latest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear.
A portion of our pages we might indite with reference toward Europe,
especially the British part of it, more than our own land, perhaps not
absolutely needed for the home reader. But the whole question hangs
together, and fastens and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-day
has this advantage over antique or mediaeval times, that his doctrine
seeks not only to individualize but to universalize. The great word
Solidarity has arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in
our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of
the people set off from the rest by a line drawn--they not privileged
as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery
teems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not really affect
the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and
justify God, his divine aggregate, the People, (or, the veritable horn'd
and sharp-tail'd Devil, _his_ aggregate, if there be who convulsively
insist upon it)--this, I say, is what democracy is for; and this is what
our America means, and is doing--may I not say, has done? If not, she
means nothing more, and does nothing more, than any other land. And as,
by virtue of its kosmical, antiseptic power, Nature's stomach is fully
strong enough not only to digest the morbific matter always presented,
not to be turn'd aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating
thither--but even to change such contributions into nutriment for
highest use and life--so American democracy's. That is the lesson we,
these days, send over to European lands by every western breeze.
And, truly, whatever may be said in the way of abstract argument, for
or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any
civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European
lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,)
that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource now
left. _That_, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which
grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly
in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything
worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among
the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate
to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and monarchize, or
to look forward and democratize--but _how_, and in what degree and part,
most prudently to democratize.
The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and
revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness and
fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. The latter will
always take care of themselves--the danger being that they rapidly tend
to ossify us. The former is to be treated with indulgence, and even with
respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree
of speculative license to political and moral sanity. Indirectly, but
surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of the very best,) follow freedom.
These, to democracy, are what the keel is to the ship, or saltness to
the ocean.
The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be
a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general
comfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the human
frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kept
together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity,
exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality,
occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the
principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling
property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it
may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks
with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, and
on those out of business. She asks for men and women with occupations,
well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash in the bank--and
with some cravings for literature, too; and must have them, and hastens
to make them. Luckily, the seed is already well-sown, and has taken
ineradicable root.[25]
Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands--and most in their
rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest of the cause. As I
write this particular passage, (November, 1868,) the din of disputation
rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending
questions. Congress convenes; the President sends his message;
reconstruction is still in abeyance; the nomination and the contest
for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and
bustle. Of these, and all the like of these, the eventuations I know
not; but well I know that behind them, and whatever their eventuations,
the vital things remain safe and certain, and all the needed work goes
on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness, disposes of Presidents,
Congressmen, party platforms, and such. Anon, it clears the stage of
each and any mortal shred that thinks itself so potent to its day; and
at and after which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in
a century,) all that relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in
a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit about it
afterward. But the People ever remain, tendencies continue, and all the
idiocratic transfers in unbroken chain go on.
In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far inland, toward
the west. Our future national capital may not be where the present one
is. It is possible, nay likely, that in less than fifty years, it will
migrate a thousand or two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing
belonging to it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The
main social, political, spine-character of the States will probably run
along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and west and north
of them, including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful
brothers toward the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that sea and
its countless paradises of islands,) will compact and settle the traits
of America, with all the old retain'd, but more expanded, grafted on
newer, hardier, purely native stock. A giant growth, composite from
the rest, getting their contribution, absorbing it, to make it more
illustrious. From the north, intellect, the sun of things, also the idea
of unswayable justice, anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests.
From the south the living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily
admitting no demonstration but its own. While from the west itself
comes solid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of
all-accepting fusion.
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America,
with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making
first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of
all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for
freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the
action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we
at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the
strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is
ample. Let the victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play
its part among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the
world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly
pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of tyrants and the
credulity of the populace, in some of their protean forms, no voice can
at any time say, They are not. The clouds break a little, and the sun
shines out--but soon and certain the lowering darkness falls again, as
if to last forever. Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy
in every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances,
capitulate. _Vive_, the attack--the perennial assault! _Vive_, the
unpopular cause--the spirit that audaciously aims--the never-abandon'd
efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.
Once, before the war, (alas! I dare not say how many times the mood has
come!) I, too, was fill'd with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, an acute
and good man, had impressively said to me, that day--putting in form,
indeed, my own observations: "I have travel'd much in the United States,
and watch'd their politicians, and listen'd to the speeches of the
candidates, and read the journals, and gone into the public houses, and
heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your vaunted America
honeycomb'd from top to toe with infidelism, even to itself and its own
programme. I have mark'd the brazen hell-faces of secession and slavery
gazing defiantly from all the windows and doorways. I have everywhere
found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to
offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the
north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public
office in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found
that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection
of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put
through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got
in by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have
noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the
helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have
noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the
government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes."
Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply
confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and
little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the
powerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish maybe, but ever holding
decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute
them as soon as plainly needed--and at times, indeed, summarily crushing
to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride.
In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things from what,
at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important who
is elected governor, mayor, or legislator, (and full of dismay when
incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are
other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c.,
will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep and
clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'd shoddy
gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft
are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race,
the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it