Essays — Second Series
something, if it is only a cow, or a wheel-barrow, or his arms, and so
has that property to dispose of.
The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property
against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines the form
and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation and to its
habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In
this country we are very vain of our political institutions, which are
singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men,
from the character and condition of the people, which they still express
with sufficient fidelity,--and we ostentatiously prefer them to any
other in history. They are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be
wise in asserting the advantage in modern times of the democratic
form, but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the
monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for
us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better
with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy,
which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also
relatively right. But our institutions, though in coincidence with the
spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects
which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good
men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal
the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages
has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in
the parties, into which each State divides itself, of opponents and
defenders of the administration of the government. Parties are also
founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims
than the sagacity of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their
origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might as
wisely reprove the east wind or the frost, as a political party, whose
members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but
stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.
Our quarrel with them begins when they quit this deep natural ground at
the bidding of some leader, and obeying personal considerations, throw
themselves into the maintenance and defence of points nowise belonging
to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst
we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same
charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal
of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily our parties are parties of
circumstance, and not of principle; as the planting interest in conflict
with the commercial; the party of capitalists and that of operatives;
parties which are identical in their moral character, and which can
easily change ground with each other in the support of many of their
measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of
free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition
of capital punishment,--degenerate into personalities, or would inspire
enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may
be cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is that they
do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which they
are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying
of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth.
Of the two great parties which at this hour almost share the nation
between them, I should say that one has the best cause, and the other
contains the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man
will of course wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free-trade,
for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal
code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and
the poor to the sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely
accept the persons whom the so-called popular party propose to him as
representatives of these liberalities. They have not at heart the ends
which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The
spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not
loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends, but is destructive only out
of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the conservative party,
composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the
population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates
no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no
generous policy; it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts,
nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science,
nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the
immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit
to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the
resources of the nation.
I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the
mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human
nature always finds itself cherished; as the children of the convicts
at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other
children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic
institutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cautious among
ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our
turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the
Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor;
and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the
sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our
Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely,
when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying that a monarchy is a
merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and
go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink,
but then your feet are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous
importance whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no
difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so
long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass
a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is
equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and
centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops
the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty,
by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch-law'
prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in
the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency; everybody's interest requires
that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.
We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which
shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as
characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads; and an
abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common
conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.
Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other.
There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so
many or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his
simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls
Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find a perfect
agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear,
good use of time, or what amount of land or of public aid, each is
entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently endeavor to make
application of to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service,
the protection of life and property. Their first endeavors, no doubt,
are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every
government is an impure theocracy. The idea after which each community
is aiming to make and mend its law, is the will of the wise man. The
wise man it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward but earnest
efforts to secure his government by contrivance; as by causing the
entire people to give their voices on every measure; or by a double
choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of the
best citizens; or to secure the advantages of efficiency and internal
peace by confiding the government to one, who may himself select his
agents. All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common
to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men
exist, perfect where there is only one man.
Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character
of his fellows. My right and my wrong is their right and their wrong.
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my
neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for
a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not
sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep
the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more
skill or strength than he that he cannot express adequately his sense of
wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love
and nature cannot maintain the assumption; it must be executed by a
practical lie, namely by force. This undertaking for another is the
blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the
world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite
so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my
setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody
else act after my views; but when a quarter of the human race assume to
tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances
to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public
ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For any laws but those
which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the
place of my child, and we stand in one thought and see that things are
thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there,
both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over
into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that,
he will never obey me. This is the history of governments,--one man does
something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with
me, taxes me; looking from afar at me ordains that a part of my labor
shall go to this or that whimsical end,--not as I, but as he happens to
fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts men are least willing to pay
the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think
they get their money's worth, except for these.
Hence the less government we have the better,--the fewer laws, and the
less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government is
the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the
appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of
the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but
a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe; which freedom,
cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is
character; that is the end of Nature, to reach unto this coronation
of her king. To educate the wise man the State exists, and with
the appearance of the wise man the State expires. The appearance of
character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He
needs no army, fort, or navy,--he loves men too well; no bribe,