The Crown of Wild Olive
or kind of minority, we should have verbiage enough. But there is only
one right name--"oligarchy."
124. So also the terms "republic" and "democracy"[63] are confused,
especially in modern use; and both of them are liable to every sort of
misconception. A republic means, properly, a polity in which the state,
with its all, is at every man's service, and every man, with his all, at
the state's service--(people are apt to lose sight of the last
condition), but its government may nevertheless be oligarchic (consular,
or decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial). But a
democracy means a state in which the government rests directly with the
majority of the citizens. And both these conditions have been judged
only by such accidents and aspects of them as each of us has had
experience of; and sometimes both have been confused with anarchy, as it
is the fashion at present to talk of the "failure of republican
institutions in America," when there has never yet been in America any
such thing as an institution, but only defiance of institution; neither
any such thing as a _res-publica_, but only a multitudinous
_res-privata_; every man for himself. It is not republicanism which
fails now in America; it is your model science of political economy,
brought to its perfect practice. There you may see competition, and the
"law of demand and supply" (especially in paper), in beautiful and
unhindered operation.[64] Lust of wealth, and trust in it; vulgar faith
in magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness; besides that
faith natural to backwoodsmen--"lucum ligna,"[65]--perpetual
self-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity; total ignorance of the
finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach and bestow; and the
discontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of
uncomprehended change, and progress they know not whither;[66]--these
are the things that have "failed" in America; and yet not altogether
failed--it is not collapse, but collision; the greatest railroad
accident on record, with fire caught from the furnace, and Catiline's
quenching "non aqua, sed ruina."[67] But I see not, in any of our talk
of them, justice enough done to their erratic strength of purpose, nor
any estimate taken of the strength of endurance of domestic sorrow, in
what their women and children suppose a righteous cause. And out of that
endurance and suffering, its own fruit will be born with time; [_not_
abolition of slavery, however. See Sec. 130.] and Carlyle's prophecy of
them (June, 1850), as it has now come true in the first clause, will, in
the last:--
"America, too, will find that caucuses, divisionalists, stump-oratory,
and speeches to Buncombe will not carry men to the immortal gods; that
the Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is
there, as here, naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such;
and, in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will require
to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet)
remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed, torn asunder, put together
again--not without heroic labour and effort, quite other than that of
the stump-orator and the revival preacher, one day."
125.[68] Understand, then, once for all, that no form of government,
provided it be a government at all, is, as such, to be either condemned
or praised, or contested for in anywise, but by fools. But all forms of
government are good just so far as they attain this one vital necessity
of policy--_that the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise
and unkind_; and they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse
it. Not does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its
_firmness_, and adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish
persons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few govern;
and if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is good that the
many govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then it is good that
one should govern; and so on. Thus, we may have "the ant's republic, and
the realm of bees," both good in their kind; one for groping, and the
other for building; and nobler still, for flying;--the Ducal
monarchy[69] of those
Intelligent of seasons, that set forth
The aery caravan, high over seas.
126. Nor need we want examples, among the inferior creatures, of
dissoluteness, as well as resoluteness, in government. I once saw
democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of North Switzerland, who by
universal suffrage, and elytric acclamation, one May twilight, carried
it, that they would fly over the Lake of Zug; and flew _short_, to the
great disfigurement of the Lake of Zug,--[Greek: Kantharon limen]--over
some leagues square, and to the close of the cockchafer democracy for
that year. Then, for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the stork
finely touches one form of it; but truth will image it more closely than
fable, for tyranny is not complete when it is only over the idle, but
when it is over the laborious and the blind. This description of
pelicans and climbing perch, which I find quoted in one of our popular
natural histories, out of Sir Emerson Tennant's _Ceylon_, comes as near
as may be to the true image of the thing:--
"Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on the high ground, we observed a
pelican on the margin of the shallow pool gorging himself; our people
went towards him, and raised a cry of 'Fish, fish!' We hurried down, and
found numbers of fish struggling upward through the grass, in the rills
formed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely water to cover
them, but nevertheless they made rapid progress up the bank, on which
our followers collected about two baskets of them. They were forcing
their way up the knoll, and had they not been interrupted, first by the
pelican, and afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few minutes have
gained the highest point, and descended on the other side into a pool
which formed another portion of the tank. In going this distance,
however, they must have used muscular exertion enough to have taken them
half a mile on level ground; for at these places all the cattle and wild
animals of the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the
surface was everywhere indented with footmarks, in addition to the
cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the fish tumbled in
their progress. In those holes, which were deep, and the sides
perpendicular, they remained to die, and were carried off by kites and
crows."[70]
127. But whether governments be bad or good, one general disadvantage
seems to attach to them in modern times--that they are all _costly_.[71]
This, however, is not essentially the fault of the governments. If
nations choose to play at war, they will always find their governments
willing to lead the game, and soon coming under that term of
Aristophanes, "[Greek: kapeloi aspidon]," "shield-sellers." And when
([Greek: pem epi pemati])[72] the shields take the form of iron ships,
with apparatus "for defence against liquid fire,"--as I see by latest
accounts they are now arranging the decks in English dockyards--they
become costly biers enough for the grey convoy of chief mourner waves,
wreathed with funereal foam, to bear back the dead upon; the massy
shoulders of those corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work,
and to bear the living, and food for the living, if we would let them.
128. Nor have we the least right to complain of our governments being
expensive, so long as we set the government _to do precisely the work
which brings no return_. If our present doctrines of political economy
be just, let us trust them to the utmost; take that war business out of
the government's hands, and test therein the principles of supply and
demand. Let our future sieges of Sebastopol be done by contract--no
capture, no pay--(I admit that things might sometimes go better so); and
let us sell the commands of our prospective battles, with our vicarages,
to the lowest bidder; so may we have cheap victories, and divinity. On
the other hand, if we have so much suspicion of our science that we dare
not trust it on military or spiritual business, would it not be but
reasonable to try whether some authoritative handling may not prosper in
matters utilitarian? If we were to set our governments to do useful
things instead of mischievous, possibly even the apparatus itself might
in time come to be less costly. The machine, applied to the building of
the house, might perhaps pay, when it seems not to pay, applied to
pulling it down. If we made in our dockyards ships to carry timber and
coals, instead of cannon, and with provision for the brightening of
domestic solid culinary fire, instead of for the scattering of liquid
hostile fire, it might have some effect on the taxes. Or suppose that we
tried the experiment on land instead of water carriage; already the
government, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels for us; larger
packages may in time follow;--even general merchandise--why not, at
last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private
litigation, on the railroads of England, been laid out, instead, under
proper government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no
absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already
have had,--what ultimately it will be found we must have,--quadruple
rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great line; and
we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by
well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares. [For, of course, a
railroad company is merely an association of turnpike-keepers, who make
the tolls as high as they can, not to mend the roads with, but to
pocket. The public will in time discover this, and do away with
turnpikes on railroads, as on all other public-ways.]
129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally, that a true government
set to true work, instead of being a costly engine, was a paying one?
that your government, rightly organized, instead of itself subsisting by
an income-tax, would produce its subjects some subsistence in the shape
of an income dividend?--police, and judges duly paid besides, only with
less work than the state at present provides for them.
A true government set to true work!--Not easily to be imagined, still
less obtained; but not beyond human hope or ingenuity. Only you will
have to alter your election systems somewhat, first. Not by universal
suffrage, nor by votes purchasable with beer, is such government to be
had. That is to say, not by universal _equal_ suffrage. Every man
upwards of twenty, who has been convicted of no legal crime, should have
his say in this matter; but afterwards a louder voice, as he grows
older, and approves himself wiser. If he has one vote at twenty, he
should have two at thirty, four at forty, ten at fifty. For every single
vote which he has with an income of a hundred a year, he should have ten
with an income of a thousand, (provided you first see to it that wealth
is, as nature intended it to be, the reward of sagacity and
industry--not of good luck in a scramble or a lottery). For every single
vote which he had as subordinate in any business, he should have two
when he became a master; and every office and authority nationally
bestowed, implying trustworthiness and intellect, should have its known
proportional number of votes attached to it. But into the detail and
working of a true system in these matters we cannot now enter; we are
concerned as yet with definitions only, and statements of first
principles, which will be established now sufficiently for our purposes
when we have examined the nature of that form of government last on the
list in Sec. 105,--the purely "Magistral," exciting at present its full