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The Essay - Politics
The Essay - Politics
Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth`s fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Boded Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great, -
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust, -
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat,
Where the statesman ploughs
Furrow for the wheat;
When the Church is social worth,
When the state - house is the hearth,
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.
In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are
not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are not
superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of a single
man: every law and usage was a man`s expedient to meet a particular case; that
they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.
Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid
repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak - trees to
the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old
statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres;
but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel
the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus,
or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul,
does forever. But politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be
treated with levity. Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the
laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of
living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and
religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd,
may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a
law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which
perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the
character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got
rid of; and they only who built on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the
form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation
exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We
are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat: so much life as it has in
the character of living men, is its force. The statute stands there to say,
yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to - day? Our
statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomes
unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the mint. Nature is not
democratic, nor limited monarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or
abated of any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons: and as fast as
the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code is seen to be brute
and stammering. It speaks not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the
education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple
are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints to -
day, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the
resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of
rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and
establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new
prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline the
progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of
aspiration.
The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, and which
they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their
revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose
protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of
being identical in nature. This interest, of course, with its whole power
demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue
of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man
owns his clothes, and another owns a county. This accident, depending,
primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every
degree, and secondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, of
course, are unequal. Personal rights, universally the same, demand a
government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government
framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds,
wishes them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites
shall drive them off, and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or
herds, and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It
seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer,
who is to defend their persons, but that Laban and not Jacob, should elect the
officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, if question arise whether
additional officers or watch - towers should be provided, must not Laban and
Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the
rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who, because he
is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own?
In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so
long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would arise
in any equitable community, than that property should make the law for
property, and persons the law for persons.
But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not
create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner`s, as labor
made it the first owner`s, in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an
ownership, which will be valid in each man`s view according to the estimate
which he sets on the public tranquillity.
It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily admitted principle,
that property should make law for property, and persons for persons: since
persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction. At last it seems
settled, that the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors should have
more elective franchise than non - proprietors, on the Spartan principle of
"calling that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just."
That principle no longer looks so self evident as it appeared in former
times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had not been
allowed in the laws, to property, and such a structure given to our usages, as
allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly,
because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate,
that the whole constitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious,
and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only
interest for the consideration of the State, is persons; that property will
always follow persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of
men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their
improvement, and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land.
If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is
less when we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by better guards
than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect. Society always
consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have
seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom
to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their
age. With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to
ruin, but that there are limitations beyond which the folly and ambition of
governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse
to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it
is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the
chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it. Under any
forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert
their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth
never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to
gas; it will always weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist other
matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight; - and the attributes of a
person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law of
extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, - if not overtly, then covertly; if
not for the law, then against it; with right, or by might.
The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons
are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the dominion of an idea.
Which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious
sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A
nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound
the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all
proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the
Americans, and the French have done.
In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own attraction.
A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity.
Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so
much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do what it will with the
owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent. The law may
in a mad freak say, that all shall have power except the owners of property:
they shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will,
year after year, write every statute that respects property. The non -
proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do,
the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in
defiance of it. Of course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the
great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the
joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns
something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, 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 character 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
freetrade, 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 reappearance
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, or
feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favorable
circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church,
for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he is the law - giver; no money, for
he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the
life of the creator shoots through him and looks from his eyes. He has no
personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all
men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select
and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them;
his presence, frankincense and flowers.
We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the
cock - crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of
character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is
to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected.
Malthus and Ricard quite omit it; the Annual Register is silent; in the
Conversations` Lexicon, it is not set down; the President`s Message, the
Queen`s Speech, have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every
thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. The
gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and
simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and
ambition are confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are
the poor amends, the fig - leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide
its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because
we know how much is due from us that we are impatient to show some petty
talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a conscience of this right
to grandeur of character, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent,
can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative.
That we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching the
mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it
on the notice of our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not
smooth our own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk
abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are
constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as
somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our
permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit
appeal. Each seems to say, "I am not all here." Senators and presidents have
climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially
agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in
our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being
of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of
forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: climb they must or
crawl. If a man found himself so rich - natured that he could enter into
strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene around him by the
dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor
of the caucus and the press, and covert relations so hollow and pompous, as
those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to
be sincere.
The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self - government, and
leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own
constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on
artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in
modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the
revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely
moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It
separates the individual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to
the race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those of personal
freedom, or the security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be
trusted, to be loved, to be revee. The power of love, as the basis of a State,
has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into
confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in
certain social conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters
carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an
end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could
not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not
the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of
the bayonet, and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature,
which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a
government of force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to
abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public
ends of the post - office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of
property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be
answered.
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to
governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and
instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the
moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade
them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as
the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good
neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too,
there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to
inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of
right and love. All those who have pretended this design, have been partial
reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I
do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority
of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full
of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as
air - pictures. If the individual who exhibits them, dare to think them
practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women
of superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature
continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and
there are now men, - if indeed I can speak in the plural number, - more
exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no
weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that
thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and
simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
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