Complete Prose Works
of the race, but just as much the bad ones, are prominently brought
forward. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or
whether with freedom.
"The ideal form of human society," Canon Kingsley declares, "is
democracy. A nation--and were it even possible, a whole world--of free
men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master,
for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their duties toward
the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; not from fear,
nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they have seen the beauty
of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because the law of God is in
their hearts. Such a nation--such a society--what nobler conception of
moral existence can we form? Would not that, indeed, be the kingdom of
God come on earth?"
To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold--and never abandon
or lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by our
American democracy to-day!
FOUNDATION STAGES--THEN OTHERS
Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our
current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of
absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed
for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through
society our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the
subject which I find possessing many good people. The advent of America,
the history of the past century, has been the first general aperture and
opening-up to the average human commonalty, on the broadest scale, of
the eligibilities to wealth and worldly success and eminence, and has
been fully taken advantage of; and the example has spread hence, in
ripples, to all nations. To these eligibilities--to this limitless
aperture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring and rushing and crude,
and fiercely, turbidly hastening--and we have seen the first stages,
and are now in the midst of the result of it all, so far. But there will
certainly ensue other stages, and entirely different ones. In nothing
is there more evolution than the American mind. Soon, it will be fully
realized that ostensible wealth and money-making, show, luxury, &c.,
imperatively necessitate something beyond--namely, the sane, eternal
moral and spiritual-esthetic attributes, elements. (We cannot have even
that realization on any less terms than the price we are now paying
for it.) Soon, it will be understood clearly, that the State cannot
flourish, (nay, cannot exist,) without those elements. They will
gradually enter into the chyle of sociology and literature. They will
finally make the blood and brawn of the best American individualities
of both sexes--and thus, with them, to a certainty, (through these very
processes of to-day,) dominate the New World.
GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC.
It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure,
officially, the best wit and capacity--whether, through them, the
first-class genius of America will ever personally appear in the high
political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading State
offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won,
by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings, the
superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs over the
ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of the people, are
useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, but the average
of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want of judgment,
sense, justice.) We elect Presidents, Congressmen, &c., not so much to
have them consider and decide for us, but as surest practical means of
expressing the will of majorities on mooted questions, measures, &c.
As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far, the more
general it is, the better. I favor the widest opening of the doors. Let
the ventilation and area be wide enough, and all is safe. We can never
have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell
or groggery keeper, for President--though such may not only emulate, but
get, high offices from localities--even from the proud and wealthy city
of New York.
WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?
The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the glittering
delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial
exports--so many millions from this source, and so many from that--such
a seductive, unanswerable show--an immense revenue of annual cash from
iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all
bolstered up by "protection." But the really important point of all
is, _into whose pockets does this plunder really go?_ It would be some
excuse and satisfaction if even a fair proportion of it went to the
masses of laboring-men--resulting in homesteads to such, men, women,
children--myriads of actual homes in fee simple, in every State, (not
the false glamour of the stunning wealth reported in the census, in
the statistics, or tables in the newspapers,) but a fair division
and generous average to those workmen and workwomen--_that_ would be
something. But the fact itself is nothing of the kind. The profits of
"protection" go altogether to a few score select persons--who, by
favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special
advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in
the British or European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the
past. As Sismondi pointed out, the true prosperity of a nation is not in
the great wealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain'd
in having the bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee
simple. This may not be the best show, but it is the best reality.
FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE)
Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plenty
of people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, see
anything in that last, wisest, most envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendship
rules the World." Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially
intellectual, infidelistic--secretly admires, and depends most on,
pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty--is, in short, in
"cultivated" quarters, deeply Napoleonic.
"Friendship," said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes of
candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one--not even my
brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from
habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one,
I love in a sort--but why? He suits me; he is cool, undemonstrative,
unfeeling--has no weak affections--never embraces any one--never weeps."
I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases, often
seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the intellectual
faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual, affectional, and
sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic and moral elements
of cognition.
LACKS AND WANTS YET
Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest times
known, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directly
or indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize and
increase the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points of
view attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, the holy
Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the Cid Campeador,
the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the passions and of the feudal lords,
Burns's songs, Goethe's in Germany, Tennyson's poems in England, Victor
Hugo's in France, and many more, are the widely various yet integral
signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the highest set up by the
human mind and soul, beyond science, invention, political amelioration,
&c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways, the long, long routes of
history, and giving identity to the stages arrived at by aggregate
humanity, and the conclusions assumed in its progressive and varied
civilizations.... Where is America's art-rendering, in any thing like
the spirit worthy of herself and the modern, to these characteristic
immortal monuments? So far, our Democratic society, (estimating its
various strata, in the mass, as one,) possesses nothing--nor have we
contributed any characteristic music, the finest tie of nationality--to
make up for that glowing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional,
artistic, indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which
fused the separate parts of the old feudal societies together, in their
wonderful interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief,
and loyalty, running one way like a living weft--and picturesque
responsibility, duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other
way. (In the Southern States, under slavery, much of the same.)...
In coincidence, and as things now exist in the States, what is more
terrible, more alarming, than the total want of any such fusion
and mutuality of love, belief, and rapport of interest, between
the comparatively few successful rich, and the great masses of the
unsuccessful, the poor? As a mixed political and social question, is not
this full of dark significance? Is it not worth considering as a problem
and puzzle in our democracy--an indispensable want to be supplied?
RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES
In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training,
thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for statesmen, I would present
the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty years ago--and
has been curiously verified since:
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals,
unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that
supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a
thousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the present
personnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, and
naval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when qualified mechanics
and young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sent
in their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, and
returning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare
to do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing gives
place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean
superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship,
conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any
scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American
mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these
States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and more
than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd to see some
heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced
American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West across the
Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a clean suit of
working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms;
I would certainly vote for that sort of man, possessing the due
requirements, before any other candidate.
(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson,
Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the
Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really with
more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using
that sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far beyond
their political or party ones?)
MONUMENTS--THE PAST AND PRESENT
If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient and massive
still,) you cannot stir without meeting venerable mementos--cathedrals,
ruins of temples, castles, monuments of the great, statues and
paintings, (far, far beyond anything America can ever expect to