1! 
 
 1 
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LIBRARY 
 THE GAS AGE 
 
 No. 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS, 
 
 BY 
 
 PARKE GODWIN. 
 
 [From Contributions to Putnam s Magazine.] 
 
 NEW YOEK : 
 
 DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY. 
 1856. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 
 
 DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States 
 for the Southern District of New York. 
 
TO 
 
 CHARLES SUMNEE, 
 
 MY DEAR SUMNER: 
 
 I TAKE the liberty of dedicating this volume to 
 you, because I know of no one more likely to 
 approve its general objects, or whose name will lend 
 it greater honor. Before you were prostrated by the 
 hand of violence, you stood first in the admiration 
 of your young countrymen but now, the effect of 
 that cowardly blow has been, to make you first also 
 in their sympathy and love. 
 
 I have the honor to be, 
 
 Your Friend, 
 
 PARKE GODWIN. 
 
 M182G33 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS .... 1 
 
 THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM . . . 57 
 
 OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY . . 89 
 
 ANNEXATION . . .* . . 128 
 
 "AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS" . . 175 
 
 SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? . . .210 
 
 THE GREAT QUESTION .... 250 
 
 NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? . . . 280 
 
 KANSAS MUST BE FREE . . . . 307 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS, 
 
 FOREIGNERS complain that they cannot easily 
 understand oar political parties, and we do not 
 wonder at it, because those parties do not al 
 ways understand themselves. Their contro 
 versies, like the old homoousian disputes of the 
 church, often turn upon such niceties of dis 
 tinction, that to discern their differences requires 
 optics as sharp as those of Butler s hero, who 
 could 
 
 " Sever and divide 
 
 Betwixt northwest and northwest side." 
 
 What with whigs, democratic whigs, demo 
 crats, true democrats, barnburners, hunkers, 
 silver grays, woolly heads, soft shells, hard 
 shells, national reformers, fire-eaters, and filli- 
 busteros, it is easy to imagine how the exotic 
 intellect should get perplexed ! Even to our 
 native and readier apprehensions, the diversity 
 of principle hidden under this diversity of 
 
2 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 names is not always palpable ; while it must 
 be confessed, that our parties are not universally 
 so consistent with themselves as to enable one 
 to write their distinctive creeds in a horn-book. 
 
 Yet, on a closer survey, it will be found 
 that parties here are very much the same, in 
 their characteristic tendencies and aims, as 
 parties elsewhere. They originate in that 
 human nature which is the same everywhere 
 (modified by local circumstances only), and 
 they exhibit, under the various influences of 
 personal constitution, ambition, interest, etc., 
 the same contrasts of selfishness and virtue, of 
 craft and honesty, of genius and falsehood, of 
 wisdom and folly. 
 
 It is true that our differences are not seem 
 ingly so fundamental and well-pronounced as 
 those of older nations. We have no contests 
 here as the elementary principles of govern 
 ment. A monarchist is, perhaps, not to be found 
 from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, any 
 more than a rhinoceros or lammergeyer. We 
 are all republicans; we all believe in the su 
 premacy of the people ; and our convictions, 
 as to the general nature and sphere of legis- 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 3 
 
 lation, are as uniform as if they had been pro 
 duced by a mental ambrotype. 
 
 But within the range of this more general 
 unanimity, there has been room and verge 
 enough, for the evolution of many heated and 
 distempered antagonisms. We are agreed that 
 our governments shall be republican, but as to 
 what functions they should exercise and what 
 they should leave to the people we are not 
 agreed ; we agree that the separate States shall 
 be sovereign and independent, but to what ex 
 tent they may carry that sovereignty and in 
 dependence we do not agree ; we agree that 
 the benefits of the Federal Union shall be, from 
 time to time, extended to new territories, but 
 on what terms they may be extended we do 
 not agree ; we agree, generally, to keep aloof 
 from the domestic affairs of other nations, but 
 as to the details of our foreign policy inside of 
 this salutary rule, we do not agree. There have 
 been among us always, on all these points, 
 radical dissents and oppositions. We have 
 parties of many stripes and calibres some 
 which favor, and some which oppose, a larger 
 concentration of power in the Federal Govern- 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ment ; some which propose to accomplish their 
 social objects by legislative, and others by 
 voluntary action ; some which desire to restrict 
 the elective franchise, and others to extend it; 
 some which repel the acquisition of more ter 
 ritory, and others willing to run the risk of war 
 for its sake ; some which aim at the destruction 
 of the Union, and others eager to sacrifice honor 
 and liberty itself to the preservation of the 
 Union. In short, there is among our differences 
 of opinion, an endless scope for the formation of 
 parties. 
 
 It is a common saying, we know, that there 
 can be but two parties in any nation the 
 movement and the stationary parties and this 
 is true as a philosophical generalization, de 
 duced from the changes of large periods of time ; 
 but it is not true always as a contemporary and 
 actual fact. In the long run, of course, alJ 
 parties will be found to have advanced or re 
 tarded the progress of society ; but in the im 
 mediate and present aspect of things, parties 
 are more than two are half a dozen at least. 
 Look where we will, provided free political dis 
 cussion is allowed, and we shall find, to use the 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 5 
 
 French mode of marking their relations, a 
 centre, a right, a left, a right centre, and a left 
 centre, besides a miscellaneous herd of eccen 
 trics, each representing some contrast or gra 
 dation of opinion. In France, for instance, 
 before France was reduced by the bayonet to 
 a single man, there were the several branches 
 of the legitimists, the Napoleonites, the repub 
 licans, the mountain, and the socialists ; and in 
 Great Britain, there are the tories, the whigs, 
 the radicals, the chartists, etc. In the same 
 way, in this country, we possess the several 
 combinations to which we referred in the open 
 ing paragraph ; and though their differences, as 
 we have said, are not so marked as those which 
 prevail between the legitimists and the repub 
 licans of Europe, they are still valid, positive, 
 and important. 
 
 The earliest parties known to our history 
 were those of the colonial times, when the 
 grand debate as to the rights of the colonies 
 was getting under way, and all men took sides, 
 either as whigs or tories. They had imported 
 their distinctive names, and to some extent 
 their distinctive principles, from the mother 
 
6 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 country, from the iron times of Cromwell and 
 the Puritans ; but, in the progress of the con 
 troversy, as it often happens, they were led 
 upon wholly new and vastly broader grounds 
 of dispute than they had at first dreamed. The 
 little squabble, as to the limits and reaches of 
 the imperial jurisdiction, expanded into a war 
 for national existence, nay, for the rights of 
 humanity ; and what was at the outset a violent 
 talk only about stamp-duties, and taxes on tea 
 mean and trivial even in its superficial as 
 pects concealed the noblest political theories, 
 the sublimest political experiments, that had 
 yet been recorded in the annals of our race. 
 The whigs of the Revolution gave to the world 
 a new idea that of a state founded upon the 
 inherent freedom and dignity of the individual 
 man. Gathering out of the ages all the aspira 
 tions of great and noble souls, all the yearnings 
 of oppressed peoples, they had concentrated 
 them into one grand act of emancipation. They 
 actualized the dreams of time, and in the latest 
 era of the world, and on a new continent, in 
 troduced, as they fondly supposed, that reign 
 of heavenly justice which the primitive golden 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 7 
 
 ages had faintly foreshadowed, which patriots 
 had so long struggled and sighed for in vain, 
 and which the political martyrs of eveiy clime 
 had welcomed only in beatific vision. 
 
 It was this patriot party of the Kevolution 
 which gave the inspiration and original impulse 
 to our nation, which formed its character and 
 sentiment, and erected the standard of opinion, 
 which was destined, for some years, at least, to 
 be the guide of all our movements. It fused 
 the national mind by the warmth of its con 
 victions, or rather by the fiery earnestness of 
 them, into that single thought of democratic 
 freedom which has been the ground and sub 
 stance of our national unity. The medley of 
 settlers, chance-wafted hitherward, from the 
 several corners of Europe, like seeds borne by 
 the winds, were nourished by it into an organic 
 whole, and have since been retained by its 
 influences, under all diversities of constitu 
 tion, climate, and interest, in the coherence 
 and uniformity of a national being. Our 
 fathers were so not merely after the flesh, but 
 after the spirit. They generated our minds as 
 well as our bodies, and their sublime thought 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of a free state (an inspiration greater than their 
 knowledge), has been the fruitful genii of our 
 best inward and outward life. No other people 
 have had so grand a national origin ; for we 
 were born in a disinterested war for human 
 rights, and not for territory, and under the 
 stimulus of an idea which still transcends the 
 highest practical achievements -of our race. 
 
 It has been the greatness, the predominance, 
 the profound inherency of this original Ameri 
 can idea, which, forcing a general conviction, 
 has produced the comparative uniformity 
 of our parties, and confined their divisions 
 to transient or trivial and personal differ 
 ences. But there is also another cause for 
 that uniformity, in the fact that as societies ad 
 vance in the career of civilization, their politi 
 cal divisions are less marked, but more subtle 
 in principle ; less gross, but more indirect in 
 the display of animosity and feeling. The rival 
 chiefs of two factions of savages, who quarrel as 
 to which shall eat the other, settle the matter 
 with a blow of the tomahawk; but in a more 
 refined community, the entire population may 
 get at loggerheads, over the construction of a 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 9 
 
 phrase in some dubious document, which they 
 determine by vociferous clamors at a public 
 meeting, or in able leading articles. One 
 is sometimes amused, therefore, when a 
 foreigner in the United States an English 
 man, for instance complacently remarks that 
 we have no great parties, no profound ra 
 dical, comprehensive questions, about which 
 we may beat out each other s brains. 
 " You have no question of church and state," 
 he says ; " no immense projects for parliament 
 ary reform ; no tremendous interests hanging 
 upon some old law ; no widely-separated and 
 powerful classes to be plunged into fierce and 
 terrific conflicts. All that you quarrel about is 
 summed up in the per centage of a tariff, the 
 building of a railroad, or the possession of 
 a few offices." In saying this, John imagines 
 that he has reduced us to a lilliputian insigni 
 ficance and littleness, especially by the side of 
 his obese and ponderous magnitude. But we 
 answer him, that those " great questions," 
 about which he and his fellows, all the world 
 over, are pummeling each other, or at least, 
 
 tearing their passions to tatters, were settled 
 1* 
 
10 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 for us before we were born, and that we esteem 
 it a happiness and glory to have got rid of 
 them, even though they have left us little more 
 to quarrel about than the cut of a neighbor s 
 coat, or the shape of his nose. We also hint to 
 him, further, that the progress of nations, as we 
 conceive it, consists in the gradual decay of 
 political, and the growth of social questions, 
 or, in other words, in the simplification and re 
 duction of the machinery of government, with 
 which politics have chiefly to do, and the conse 
 quent extinction of politicians, who become 
 more and more a pernicious class, with, at the 
 same time, a continuous aggrandizement of so 
 ciety itself, of its industry, its arts, its local 
 improvements, and its freedom as well as order. 
 The most natural and the most permanent 
 of our past political divisions has arisen out 
 of the peculiar structure of the federal govern 
 ment, the nature and extent of its jurisdiction, 
 and its relations to the States. As soon as the 
 Federal Constitution went into effect, the 
 differences which had almost defeated its ratifi 
 cation before the people the counteracting 
 centripetal and centrifugal forces, as they are 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 11 
 
 called were developed into strong and positive 
 party hostilities. The federalists and the anti- 
 federalists took possession of the political field, 
 and the noise of their conflicts sounded 
 through many years, giving a sting to the 
 debates of the Senate House, embittering 
 the intercourse of domestic life, and bequeath 
 ing prejudices to the minds of posterity. 
 
 The mere disputes as to the authority of 
 the general government might not, perhaps, 
 have led to such earnest and envenomed bat 
 tles, at the outset, if they had not been com 
 plicated, especially under the leadership of 
 Jefferson and Hamilton, with the profounder 
 questions of individual rights just then agitat 
 ing the Old World. Hamilton, a man of talent, 
 bred in camps, distrustful of the masses, an 
 admirer of the British Constitution, and accus 
 tomed to the rigor of military rule, was disposed 
 to rely upon the strong arm of government, 
 and may be regarded as the representative of 
 the sentiment of LAW : while Jefferson, on the 
 other hand, a man of genius, self-confident, 
 generous, sanguine, tolerant of theories, an 
 acolyte, if not a teacher, of the French school 
 
12 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of manners and thought, leaned to the sponta 
 neous action of the people, and was the repre 
 sentative of LIBERTY. Thus, the party of 
 State rights and the party of liberty came to be 
 identified, and took the name, after a time, of 
 the democratic republican party, while feder 
 alism, or the doctrine of a strong central gov 
 ernment, jumped in naturally with the doctrine 
 of law and order. There was a double pres 
 sure of tendencies separating the two parties, 
 and intensifying their hatreds, and, in the ex 
 acerbations of the times, inducing them to 
 accuse each other respectively of tyranny and 
 licentiousness. A federalist, in the opinions of 
 the republicans of those days, was only a mon 
 archist in disguise, watching his opportunity to 
 strangle the infant liberties of his country in 
 the cradle, and to restorer the emancipated 
 colonies to their dependence upon Great Bri 
 tain, while the federalist retorted the generous 
 imputation of his adversary, by calling him a 
 jacobin, a scoundrel, and a demagogue, eager to 
 uproot the foundations of order, and let loose 
 the lees and scum of French infidelity and 
 French immorality upon society. We, at this 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 13 
 
 day, looking through the serener atmosphere 
 of history, know that they were both mistaken 
 in their extreme opinions, and that they were 
 both good patriots after all, necessary to each 
 other, as it now appears, in tempering the dan 
 gerous excesses which might have followed the 
 unchecked predominance of either, and in giv 
 ing a more uniform and stable action to our 
 untried political system. But we cannot con 
 ceal the deep significance of the contest in 
 which they were engaged. 
 
 In all the subsequent changes of parties, the 
 distinction of federalist and anti-federalist 
 has been maintained, in theory at least, 
 and sometimes in name, if not so rigidly 
 in practice. It is a distinction that will 
 only pass away with the final establishment 
 of the truth, though it may often be ob 
 scured in the fluctuating movements of poli 
 tics. During the war of 1812-15, the Federal 
 ists, as they were termed, were the most vigor 
 ous opponents of the use of power by the 
 general government, and their most offensive 
 acts the proceedings of the Hartford Conven 
 tion were nothing worse than an attempt, as 
 
14 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 it was deemed, to arrest and restrain the en 
 croachments of the central authority upon the 
 rights and interests of the separate States ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, the most enormous 
 exercise of that authority the acquisition of 
 Louisiana by Jefferson the suppression of 
 South Carolina nullification by Jackson the 
 annexation of Texas by Tyler have been re 
 sorted to by the leaders of the so-called demo 
 cratic or anti-federalist party. Indeed, so little 
 consistency has been exhibited by parties in 
 this respect, that it has been observed, that in 
 general, whatever party is in possession of the 
 federal government is disposed to push the use 
 of its functions to the utmost practicable 
 verge, while the party out of power opposes 
 this use, and assumes the virtue of continence. 
 Under the administration of Jackson, when the 
 struggle with the National Bank arose, the 
 lines of demarcation between the principles of 
 the federalists and anti-federalists were once 
 more somewhat strictly drawn, and the shib 
 boleths and rallying cries of that day have 
 continued to be used by the politicians, for the 
 most part impertinently, up to the present 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 15 
 
 time. In the administration of the States, too, 
 there has been an undeniable line drawn, a 
 gulf fixed, as we may say, between the friends 
 of a strong and centralized government and the 
 friends of social and popular freedom ; but we 
 may add, that as no party is now entitled to a 
 monopoly of either class, this distinction has 
 subsided. The feelings and convictions in 
 which it originated have not passed away, and 
 they will not speedily pass away ; but there 
 has been a lull in the public mind, in respect 
 to them, partly produced by the decided gravi 
 tation of opinion to the democratic theory both 
 of Federal and State Government, and partly 
 by the emergencies of new grounds of conflict. 
 The debris of former convulsions is all that the 
 older parties have left us. 
 
 An anomaly in the social system of some of 
 the States, however, not supposed, when the 
 Federal Union was formed, to be so pregnant 
 with consequences, as it has since proved, has 
 been a chief cause of the complication of 
 parties, and the principal incentive and danger 
 of our more modern contests. 
 
 The primary idea of our institutions was, as 
 
16 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 we have seen, that of a free Democratic Repub 
 lic. The liberty and equality of the people 
 were the animating spirit of our revolution, 
 and the inspiring genius of the constitutional 
 structure to which it gave rise. But among 
 the States, which form the elements of the 
 confederacy, there are some not strictly demo 
 cratic, and scarcely republican. They are aris 
 tocracies or oligarchies, built upon a diversity 
 of races. Their political and social privileges 
 are confined to a class, while all the rest of their 
 inhabitants are slaves. 
 
 The consequence has been a growing diver 
 gency, though it was not always apparent or 
 even suspected, between the convictions, the 
 interests and the tendencies of one half the 
 Union, which was eminently free and democra 
 tic, and those of the other half, which was 
 slaveholding and aristocratic. 
 
 The reasons why this difference was not 
 so strongly felt at the outset, were, because the 
 slaves were few, and the great and good men 
 who formed the Union, and helped to knit and 
 bind together its primitive filaments, were 
 almost unanimous in the sentiment, that this 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 17 
 
 system of bondage would be only temporary. 
 Like a growing youth in the flush and im 
 pulse of his young strength, they were scarcely 
 conscious of the cancer lurking in the blood. 
 
 But the vice, contrary to their expectations, 
 has developed itself the sentiment in regard 
 to it has changed it has become interwoven 
 with vast and intricate interests, and it is now 
 sustained positively by political and philoso- , 
 phical argument 
 
 Another reason why the radical vices of the 
 federal relation were not more speedily extruded 
 and discovered, was this : the slaveholders have 
 been, for the most part, in alliance with the 
 democratic or popular party. Devoted stick 
 lers for equality among themselves, fierce lovers 
 of their own liberties, which were to be secured 
 from the molestation of others only by a rigid 
 maintenance of the sovereignty of the sepa 
 rate States, they have naturally sympathized 
 with the party which appeared to be most 
 devoted to these ends. Their sentiment of per 
 sonal independence and right was the same sen 
 timent which animates the masses of the free 
 States in their opposition to the encroachments 
 
18 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of power, while their need of security dictated 
 the same doctrine of State-rights, to which 
 the people adhered in their instinct for local self- 
 government. Thus, the democratic party of 
 the North, and the State-rights party of the 
 South, have formed what was called the great 
 Republican party of the Union. The model 
 democrats of the nation, Jefferson, who wrote 
 the Declaration of Independence, Madison, who 
 was one of the ablest expounders of the Con 
 stitution, Macon, who tolerated no injustice in 
 legislation, were slaveholders in their local 
 spheres ; while the popular party of the North, 
 clamoring against the pretensions of law and 
 privilege for a larger liberty, were still, strange 
 to say, their adherents and friends. 
 
 It was an alliance, however, which, in the 
 very nature of its components, could not en 
 dure forever. An aristocracy is compelled, by 
 the exigencies of its position, to become con 
 servative ; while a democracy, on the other 
 hand, is progressive. A league between them 
 may be maintained, so long as they have cer 
 tain objects in common an enemy to repulse, 
 or a conquest to achieve but when these 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 19 
 
 common objects are attained, their radical in 
 compatibility will begin to appear. It is im 
 possible for men who sincerely believe in the 
 equal rights of men, to coalesce permanently 
 with others whose practice is an habitual in 
 vasion of those rights ; it is impossible for an 
 order of society, founded upon the most un 
 limited freedom of labor, to coexist long in 
 intimate relations with a society founded upon 
 bond or forced labor ; and it is no less impossi 
 ble for political leaders, the breath of whose 
 nostrils is popular emancipation and progress, 
 to combine with leaders whose life is an utter 
 denial of emancipation and progress. 
 
 So long as the South and the North, in the 
 earlier periods of national development, looked 
 to the same ends to certain general organizing 
 purposes to a strict construction of the Con 
 stitution to a denial of the schemes for en 
 larging the federal power to the independence 
 of the States they were able to act together, 
 and the happiest results have been promoted 
 by that unity ; but when their mutual solicitude 
 for these ends was outgrown when, in the pro 
 gress of empire, the question arose, whether the 
 
20 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 social system of the one or the other should 
 prevail, to the exclusion, which is unavoidable, 
 of its opponent, their friendship grew sultry, 
 and a strenuous grapple and fight became im 
 minent. 
 
 If we were called upon, then, to describe the 
 political parties of this nation, as they are, or 
 as they have been gradually formed, by its 
 developing circumstances, we should say that 
 they were, 1st, The Pro-slavery, sometimes, 
 though unjustly, called the Southern party, 
 which is the propagandist of the opinions and 
 interests of the small oligarchy about 60,000 
 i n a l] w ho hold their fellow-men in bondage ; 
 2d, The Democrats, divided into the traditional 
 or routine democrats, who masquerade in the 
 faded wardrobe of democracy, but care more for 
 office than principle, and the real democrats, 
 who still retain the inspirations of the Jefferson 
 school ; 3d, The Whigs, who are the legitimate 
 depositories of federal principles, crossed and 
 improved by modern liberalism ; 4th, The Fire- 
 eaters, who seem to be opposed to the union 
 of the Northern and Southern States under any 
 circumstances ; and 5th, The Abolitionists, who 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 21 
 
 are rather a moral than a political combination, 
 though a large branch of them are not opposed 
 to decided political action. These we shall 
 notice briefly in the reverse order in which they 
 are named.* 
 
 The Abolitionists and the Fire-eaters, rep 
 resenting the extremes of northern and south 
 ern feeling, have had no little influence on pub 
 lic opinion, but hardly any as yet on the direct 
 action of the government. In eloquence, earn 
 estness, and, we suspect, integrity of purpose, 
 they are superior to the other parties (the 
 Abolitionists, in particular, absorbing some of 
 the finest ability of the country, oratorical and 
 literary, and a great deal of the noblest aspira 
 tion), but they are both too extravagant in 
 opinion, and too violent in procedure, to con 
 ciliate a large and effective alliance. Their de 
 nunciations of the Union, proceeding from con- 
 
 * At the time this was written, the new Republican party, 
 which is a fusion of the liberal men of all the old parties, on 
 the ground of hostility to the spread of slavery, and the 
 " Know-Nothing party," who, fancying that they have had 
 a surfeit of foreigners, are afflicted with a kind of political 
 indigestion and nausea, were not born. They are referred 
 to elsewhere. 
 
22 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 trary views of its effects, the one condemning 
 it because it is supposed to sanction, and the 
 other, because it is supposed to interfere with 
 slavery, neutralize each other, and lead more 
 tranquil minds minds whose brains are not 
 boiling in their skulls to a conviction that 
 they are both alike wrong. The federal Con 
 stitution does not recognize the existence of 
 slavery as such, at all, and in no form, except 
 indirectly ; nor does it, on the other hand, con 
 fer upon the government any authority for 
 meddling with slavery, treating the subject 
 wisely as a matter of exclusive state juris 
 diction ; yet the spirit and the letter of that 
 instrument are alike instinct with freedom, and 
 rightly interpreted, set up an insuperable 
 barrier against the extension of any form of 
 servitude. The malice of its enemies finds 
 food, not in the legitimate operations of the 
 organic law, as the framers of it intended it to 
 operate, but "in those deviations which the craft 
 of politicians has superinduced upon its action, 
 in those warpings and torturings of its struc 
 ture, by which it has been made to cover more 
 than it reaches. 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 23 
 
 It is no offense to the Whigs, we trust, for 
 indeed it is only repeating the frequent avowals 
 of their own leading exponents to say, that as 
 a party they are pretty much defunct. What 
 ever uses their organization may have subserved 
 in the course of our political history, and no 
 body will deny them some merits, however 
 splendid the talent by which their long but 
 losing struggle has been illustrated, from the 
 day in which their policy was inaugurated by 
 Hamilton, until that in which its funeral dis 
 course was uttered in " a fine rich brogue," by 
 by General Scott, it has never succeeded in 
 becoming, for more than a year or two at a 
 time, a predominant party. It has been able, 
 on occasions, to carry its principles into effect, 
 but not to the satisfaction of a permanent ma 
 jority. Its distinguishing measures have been, 
 on the other hand, repeatedly and unequivocally 
 condemned. Not the most sanguine adherent 
 can now hope to see them revived. The ques 
 tions of a National Bank, of a Protective Tariff, 
 of Internal Improvements, of the Distribution 
 of the Public Lands, are adjudicated questions; 
 no court exists wherein to bring an appeal; 
 
24 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and the wisest thing, for those who have been 
 worsted in the controversy, is to do what the 
 most of them have done submit. Their once 
 great and accomplished leaders sleep in honor 
 able graves ; no exigencies of state will ever 
 again awaken the solemn eloquence of Webster, 
 nor the clarion voice of Clay ever again summon 
 his lieges to the battle. The masters are dead, 
 and their followers are dispersed or at feud ; or 
 should they rally again, it can only be under 
 other names and for deeper and nobler objects. 
 A remnant of the camp of former times, a for 
 lorn hope with Millard Fillmore as the drum- 
 major, may strive to keep the old organism 
 alive ; but it is clear, in the present aspect of 
 affairs, that it cannot possess more than a semi- 
 vitality, useless for good and painful to behold. 
 We do not say that the theory of politics which 
 has hitherto animated the Whigs is extinct, 
 that our people will no more be dazzled by 
 visions of strong and splendid governments, nor 
 seek to effect by unitary legislation what others 
 hope to accomplish by voluntary effort ; on the 
 contrary, this tendency is perhaps as strong now 
 as ever it was ; but what we assert is, that the 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 25 
 
 particular measures for which the Whigs have 
 been banded together, are obsolete, and the 
 party, as a party, utterly without meaning. 
 
 The Democrats of the purer stamp, the real 
 Democrats as we have called them, are like the 
 Whigs, in a state of comparative dissolution ; 
 or rather, they are scattered through their party 
 at large, and elsewhere, as leaven through meal, 
 without having any effective control in it. 
 These democrats still abide by the original 
 principles of democracy represent the popu 
 lar instincts cling to living ideas of justice, 
 and equal rights and progress, and refuse to 
 follow their fellows in a pell-mell abandonment 
 of themselves to the seductions of the slave 
 holders. They are not few in number, as we 
 are inclined to think, either at the North or the 
 South, comprising, as we fain hope, a majority 
 of the young men of the nation, yet uncorrupt- 
 ed by official contacts, as well as possessing the 
 sympathies of many among parties which go by 
 other names ; but, having no separate organi 
 zation anywhere, they are sadly overborne by 
 the practiced managers of the old organiza 
 tions, who wield the machinery of party action, 
 
26 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and consequently of power. In their external 
 or immediate pretensions they are not formida 
 ble ; but in the might of their sentiments they 
 will capture the future. A steady continuance 
 in integrity, a deaf ear turned to the charmings 
 of the adders of office, an eagerness to consult, 
 amid all the shiftings of policy, the fresh im 
 pulses of the honest young heart of the nation, 
 will, ere long, gather about them the intellect, 
 the virtue, and the popular instinct of right, 
 which are the redeeming elements of states. 
 
 The other class of Democrats, whom we 
 denominate the official or machine-democrats, 
 because they move and talk as they are wound 
 up, mean as they might be supposed to be, yet 
 constitute, in reality, a distinct and powerful 
 body. It is not a new remark, we believe, 
 that successful parties collect about them 
 large squads of speculating politicians, who 
 care nothing for truth or righteousness, while 
 they have a ravenous appetite for distinc 
 tion and provender. They are not precisely 
 camp-followers, because they sometimes fight 
 in the ranks, but their interest in contests is 
 determined rather by the prospect of booty 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 27 
 
 than by any convictions they entertain. Like 
 Bunyan s By-ends, who followed Religion for 
 the silver slippers she wore, they are patriots 
 because it is profitable to be patriots. In other 
 words, they are democrats because the demo 
 crats are generally in the ascendant, which 
 means in office. Sometimes they slip round to 
 the Whigs, when the Whigs have a sure look 
 for success ; but they find it safer, in the long 
 run, to be of the other side. No men more 
 noisy than they in shouting the usual rallying 
 cries, none more glib in the commonplaces of 
 electioneering, and none so apparently earnest 
 and sincere. But at heart they are only the 
 greediest and shabbiest of scoundrels. It is 
 upon their shoulders that incompetent and bad 
 men are borne to places of high trust, and from 
 them that the Praetorian guards of republics 
 are selected in the hour of their eclipse and 
 hastening decay. 
 
 This class of democrats flourishes chiefly in 
 those calm times when no great controversy 
 agitates the nation, and awakens strong and 
 burning passions. In crises which call for lofty 
 ambitions and abilities, they are of no use ; in 
 
28 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 fact, they are shriveled and consumed by the 
 heat of them, and slink out of the way till the 
 fiery storm be past. But they return with the 
 return of public indifference or reaction, when 
 there are few who care to watch them, like the 
 flies, which a strong wind had blown from their 
 carrion. As the reins of power at those times 
 are apt to fall into the hands of little men 
 of a Tyler or a Pierce, for instance it is the 
 golden hour for narrow intellects and base 
 hearts. The art of administration at once de 
 generates into mere trickery or management. 
 Toads crawl into the seats of the eagles. Public 
 policy fluctuates between the awkwardness 
 of conscious incompetence and the arro 
 gance of bullyisrn. The possession of office 
 becomes a badge, either of imbecility, or cun 
 ning, or insolence. It is won by services that 
 elsewhere would warrant a halter, and it is 
 conferred, not as the meed of patriotic deserts, 
 but as the wages of supple and mercenary ser 
 vice. They who dispense patronage, do so in 
 the conviction of Walpole, that every man has 
 his price, and they who receive it, take it with 
 a full knowledge that the stamp of venality is 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 29 
 
 on every token of silver. Superiors in place 
 are not superiors in merit, only superiors in 
 craft and recklesness ; while inferiors don the 
 gilt lace and plush of their official varletism 
 without a blush on their cheeks, or a sense of 
 shame at their hearts. Government, in short, 
 is converted into a vast conspiracy of place 
 men, managed by the adroiter villains of the 
 set who control elections, dictate legislation, 
 defeat reforms, and infuse gradually their 
 own muck-worm spirit into the very body of 
 the community. The masses, under the para 
 lysis of such a domination, seem to be rendered 
 insensible to the usual influences of honor and 
 virtuous principle ; are deadened almost to the 
 heroic examples of their fathers ; lose the in 
 spiriting traditions of an earlier greatness and 
 grandeur of conduct ; and virtually, if not 
 actually, sink into slaves. Then, schemers of 
 wrong riot in the impunity of licence, and 
 projects of wickedness are broached, which, 
 a few years before, would have caused a 
 shiver of indignation to run through the whole 
 land. 
 
 The Pro-Slavery Party, sometimes called the 
 
30 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Southern Party, we are unwilling to speak of 
 by this name, because we carefully distinguish 
 between its southern members, who are the 
 propagandists of slavery, and those gentlemen 
 of the South who simply wish their peculiar 
 domestic system to be let alone ; while we do 
 not distinguish between them and their north 
 ern coadjutors dough-faces are they hight 
 who are their superserviceable instruments. The 
 first distinction we make, because we know 
 that there are large numbers of intelligent and 
 conscientious people at the South who do not 
 oelieve that slavery is a good or a finality : on 
 the contrary, who feel that it is a burden at 
 best a sad and dreadful inheritance : who are 
 anxious to manage it wisely, with a view to its 
 ultimate extinction ; and, consequently, would 
 dread to see it strengthened or extended, 
 looking with hope and Christian prayer to the 
 day when the combined influences of modern 
 Industrialism, and Democracy, and Christianity, 
 shall have relieved them of their painful weight 
 of responsibility. But we do not make the 
 second distinction, because the most efficient, 
 and by far the most despicable branch of the 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 31 
 
 Pro-Slavery Party is that which, educated at 
 the North, under all the genial inspirations 
 of a free condition of existence, still volun 
 tarily casts itself at the feet of Slavery, 
 to eat the dirt of its footmarks, and lick the 
 sores on its limbs. For the first class of slave 
 holders, we cherish not only a profound 
 sympathy, but a genuine esteem ; we have 
 friends among them whose excellences of 
 character are themes for meditation and grati 
 tude ; and to the propagators of the system, 
 even, we can attribute an entire honesty of 
 purpose, though a mistaken one ; but for its 
 cringing northern sycophants we have no feel 
 ing but one of unmitigated pity and con 
 tempt. 
 
 This Pro-Slavery Party, which grew mainly 
 out of the old republican or democratic party, 
 and which has never even taken a distinct name, 
 has been the successful party of our history. 
 It has achieved a more signal ascendency 
 than any other party, and it has done so, 
 not by superior ability nor a more illustrious 
 virtue, but by dint of its tact, and a compact 
 and persistent determination. Its leaders, per- 
 
32 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ceiving at an early day that they should play 
 a losing game, if they attempted to stand alone, 
 trusting to the ordinary means of success to 
 the natural supremacy of talent, to the growth 
 of numbers, and to the rectitude of their cause 
 hit upon the expedient of identifying them 
 selves with the popular party of the North, 
 Having accomplished that, they gradually di 
 rected that party to the defense and spread of 
 their peculiar doctrines. Not satisfied with 
 the concession, which every intelligent and 
 judicious northerner was then glad to make, 
 that slavery was a system exclusively with 
 in the control of the States, they first insinu 
 ated and then insisted that slavery was not to 
 be discussed at all at the North, because a 
 moral interference was quite as intolerable 
 as a direct political interference. This preten 
 sion, which was just the same as if Russia or 
 Turkey should insist that the principles of ab 
 solutism should not be discussed in the United 
 States, because Russia and Turkey had com 
 mercial treaties with the United States, found 
 merchants sordid enough to instigate mobs 
 against those who questioned it, and poli- 
 
OUE PAKTIES AND POLITICS. 33 
 
 ticians wicked enough to entrench it behind the 
 laws. Yet the taboo of sanctity did not stop 
 there, but was drawn around regions in which 
 all the States were clearly and equally inter 
 ested such as the district of Columbia and the 
 public lands while the Post Office, common to 
 all, was forbidden to carry " incendiary docu 
 ments," as every argument or appeal against 
 the system was called, and petitions to Con 
 gress referring in the remotest manner to it, 
 were treated with contumely and disdain. 
 
 This point once reached, it was easy to take a 
 bolder stand, and to clamor, with all the vehe 
 mence of partisan heat, for the introduction of 
 slavery into those new and virgin territories 
 which Providence had opened on our Western 
 borders, as we had fondly hoped, for the recep 
 tion of the outcast republicans of Europe, and 
 for a new and grander display of the beneficent 
 influence of republicanism. And this impudent 
 claim a claim which had no validity in law 
 nor sanction in humanity the pretense that 
 a local institution, existing entirely by munici 
 pal usage, and without an iota of validity be 
 yond that should override all considerations 
 2* 
 
34 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of justice and policy under a threat of civil 
 war, in case of its disallowance was not 
 too much for the forbearance of the North, 
 in its ardent devotion to peace and the 
 Union ! Ah ! how one submission begets an 
 other, until the chains of a servitude are 
 riveted around the necks of the victim ! The 
 southern party, thus triumphing in the ter 
 ritories, demanded in the next place, that the 
 free States should be made a hunting-ground 
 for slaves, that every man of the North should 
 be compelled by law to do what no gentleman 
 of the South would do for himself, or could 
 be, under any circumstances, forced to do for 
 others, i. e., put himself on a level with blood 
 hounds, and become a slave-catcher ; and the 
 law was passed! Wresting the power from 
 the States, that it might be exercised by Con 
 gress, which was not authorized to exercise it, 
 it was passed ; creating tribunals of justice 
 which Congress was not authorized to create ; 
 rejecting from its provisions the most sacred 
 rights of trial by jury and habeas corpus, this 
 law was passed ; imposing unusual and offen 
 sive penalties upon all who should refuse to 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 35 
 
 take part in its execution, and bribing the offi 
 cers appointed to administer it by offers of higher 
 wages in the case of a decision adverse to the 
 poor fugitive : this odious and disgraceful law 
 was recorded on the statute books of the 
 " Model Republic," in the central, the culmi 
 nating year of the nineteenth century. Its 
 passage, however, was not the worst feature of 
 the transaction ; the craven acceptance vouch 
 safed it by the pulpits and the commercial cir 
 cles ; the pliant ease with which the North 
 bent to the insult, was the significant fact in 
 the proceeding, which more than all others 
 covered many an honest face with shame. 
 
 It is proper to say that one consideration 
 prevailed in inducing this ready humiliation : 
 the hope of removing the question from the 
 sphere of political agitation. We are bound 
 to believe, in justice to human nature, that 
 the many who welcomed the compromises of 
 1850, did so in the sincerest conviction that 
 they would put an end to the difficulties be 
 tween the North and South ; and we must 
 also confess that it seemed, for a time, as if 
 that result were about to be effected. The na- 
 
36 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tional conventions of both the great parties ac 
 quiesced in the settlement ; a President was 
 chosen whose inaugural address was little more 
 than a long proclamation of intended fidelity 
 to it ; and Congress came together and acted 
 in a more fraternal spirit than had been mani 
 fested for years. Alas ! the uncertainty of mor 
 tal expectations ! In the midst of this apparent 
 quietude, a bill, all bristling with outrages and 
 dangers, is sprung upon the country. We 
 mean, of course, the bill for the organization of 
 Nebraska and Kansas territories, whose sole 
 object was to repeal the solemn prohibition, 
 erected thirty years ago, against the spread of 
 slavery into those regions. At a time when 
 there was not a citizen legitimately within those 
 territories when no part of the nation, save a 
 few intriguers, was dreaming of such a measure ; 
 when not a single State, nay, not a single in 
 dividual, had called for it in the face of the 
 most strenuous opposition from North and 
 West, this bill was suddenly presented to a Con 
 gress not elected in reference to it, and forced 
 to a passage by all the tyrannical arts known 
 to legislation, and all the sinister influences 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 37 
 
 within the reach of an unscrupulous Executive. 
 A grosser violation of all the requirements of 
 honor of all the safeguards and guarantees of 
 republicanism was seldom perpetrated. 
 
 This we shall show : and in the first place, 
 let us remark, that the pretense by which the 
 act was carried was fraudulent, a falsehood on 
 the face of it, and designed only as a popular 
 catch for the unreflecting. It purported to 
 to give the right of self-government to the peo 
 ple of the territories ; but it did no such thing. 
 It denied that right in the most important par 
 ticulars, and mystified it so in others as to ren 
 der it worthless. Nominally conceding the 
 " non-intervention" of Congress in the local 
 affairs of the territories, it yet intervenes in 
 every form in which intervention is possible. 
 It imposes the Governor and all other officers 
 upon them ; it prescribes unheard of oaths 
 to the people ; it restricts the suffrage ; 
 it places in the hands of the President and 
 his agents, the power to mould the future 
 character of the community ; and it author 
 izes no legislation which is not subject, di 
 rectly or indirectly, to the control of the fede- 
 
38 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ral government. The only non-intervention 
 which it establishes, is the permission to intro 
 duce slavery into a district where it was before 
 forbidden, and the transfer of legislative control, 
 hitherto exercised by the representatives of the 
 whole people, to a body of judges appointed by 
 the Executive. 
 
 Secondly, this claim of absolute sovereignty 
 for the people of the territories, is at war with 
 our whole policy from the beginning, as well 
 as with the most vital principles of just gov 
 ernment. It was never contemplated by the 
 framers of the Constitution, nor by the people 
 of the States who ratified it, that the terri 
 tories acquired under it should be placed upon 
 a level with the original States. On the con 
 trary, they were to be held in a state of pupil 
 age, if we may so express it, under the con 
 trol of Congress, until they should have ac 
 quired population and stability enough to man 
 age their affairs for themselves. The idea of 
 " squatter sovereignty," that a few accidental 
 first-comers should determine the institutions 
 of the future State, for all time, was one of the 
 most offensive that could be uttered, and was 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 39 
 
 unanimously condemned by the great states 
 men of both the North and South. They 
 held, that if the whole people paid the expense 
 of territorial acquisitions whether by money or 
 blood if they were taxed for the support of 
 their provisional governments ; if they were 
 liable for their defense against the aggressions 
 of the bordering savages then the whole 
 people had also a right to a voice in their 
 management. Taxation and representation 
 must go together, said the Democracy ; and 
 this principle, we attest, is an older and bet 
 ter one than the miserable subterfuge of " non 
 intervention," by which the demagogues of 
 Congress hope to supplant it. " Non-inter 
 vention !" forsooth, which means that the peo 
 ple of the States shall bear all the burdens of the 
 territories, but have no power to protect them 
 from the passage of injurious and infamous 
 laws. It means that the parent must be re 
 sponsible for all the debts and deeds of his 
 child, and yet be divested of all the authority 
 of a parent. It means, in short, that the per 
 petrators of the iniquity wanted some delu 
 sive pretext, and that " non-intervention," 
 
40 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 with all its absurdities, was the best they could 
 find. 
 
 Again : this bill in the method of its passage, 
 nullified another fundamental principle of rep 
 resentative government, namely, that a repre 
 sentative is but the mouth-piece and organ of 
 his constituents. Does anybody believe that, 
 if the proposal to repeal the Missouri Compro 
 mise had been submitted to a direct vote of 
 the people, that it would have commanded 
 anywhere, north of Mason s and Dixon s line, a 
 single majority in any district or township in 
 any State ? Was there a solitary petition for 
 it sent in from either North or South ? Was a 
 single member of Congress, who voted for it, 
 elected, with a view to such a question ? Were 
 not the tables of both Senate and House 
 laden with remonstrances against it, forward 
 ed not by politicians, nor enthusiasts, but 
 by the most sober and conservative citizens ? 
 Did its friends, when challenged to do so, dare 
 to postpone action upon it, for another year, 
 until the people should be allowed to pass up 
 on it ? Was it suffered to take its regu 
 lar course in the progress of legislation ? No ! 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 41 
 
 no ! no ! And yet we are told that ours 
 is a representative government ! A number 
 of men, delegated for particular purposes to 
 Washington, possessing not a particle of au 
 thority beyond that conferred upon them by 
 the people, neglect the objects for which they 
 were chosen, and proceed to accomplish other 
 objects, which are not only not wished by their 
 constituents, but are an outrage upon their sin- 
 cerest and deepest convictions. Can we call them 
 representatives ? or, are they not rather usurp 
 ers, recreants, oligarchs, despots ? What use 
 is there in popular elections, when the per 
 sons chosen fancy themselves exempted from 
 all responsibility, and go on to act in the 
 most independent and arbitrary manner ? It is 
 true, they may be dismissed afterwards for their 
 criminal breach of trust, as the barn-door may 
 be locked after the horse is stolen ; but then 
 the mischief is already done. We may dis 
 charge a clerk who robs the till ; but will that 
 restore us our money? We may punish a se 
 ducer when he is caught; but is that a recom 
 pense to our violated honor ? Not at all. 
 What we want in legislation, as in other trusts, 
 
42 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 are honest fiduciaries: men who will perform 
 their duties according to our wishes, and not 
 in pursuance of their own selfish objects ; men 
 who do not require -to be watched at every 
 step, and whose fidelity does not depend alone 
 upon our ulterior privilege of breaking them 
 when they have done wrong. A Congress of 
 such men would be little better than an assem 
 blage of cheats, and, for our parts, we should 
 greatly prefer the rule of Nicholas, or Louis 
 Napoleon, to their heterogeneous frauds and 
 oppressions. 
 
 An open disregard of the will of the con 
 stituency is always a grave offense in a popular 
 government, but how flagrant and unpardon 
 able is it, when it is committed in furtherance 
 of measures which look to the overthrow of 
 popular liberty ? Had the Nebraska bill been 
 comparatively unexceptionable, had it contem 
 plated some great and useful improvement or 
 reform, there would even then have existed no 
 excuse for the haste, the violence, and the 
 audacity with which it was pressed to a vote ; 
 but when we reflect that its principal object 
 was, to repeal a salutary ordinance against 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 43 
 
 the diffusion of a lamentable evil, we 
 search in vain for words to express our 
 feeling of the magnitude and malignity of 
 the wrong. For nearly half a century those 
 fertile regions of the West had rejoiced 
 in their prospective exemption from the 
 outrages of slavery. The American, and 
 the foreigner, even, who rode over them, felt 
 his heart dilate as he beheld in their rich 
 fields the future home of an advancing and 
 splendid civilization. He could already hear, 
 in the rustle of the grasses, the hum of a pros 
 perous industry ; he saw magnificent cities rise 
 on the borders of the streams, and pleasant 
 villages dot the hills, and a flourishing com 
 merce whiten the ripples of the lakes ; the 
 laugh of happy children came up to him from 
 the corn-fields, and as the glow of the evening 
 sun tinged the distant plains, a radiant and 
 kindling vision floated upon its beams, of myri 
 ads of men, escaped from the tyrannies of the 
 Old World, and gathered there in worshiping 
 circles, to pour out their grateful hearts to 
 God, for a redeemed and teeming earth. But, 
 woe unto us now, this beautiful region, com- 
 
44 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 pared with which the largest principalities of 
 Europe are but pin-folds, nay, compared with 
 which the most powerful existing empires are 
 of trivial extent, is opened to the blight, the 
 hopelessness, the desolation of a form of socie 
 ty which can never advance beyond a semi- 
 barbarism, or whose highest achievement is a 
 purchase of the wealth and freedom of one 
 race, by the eternal subjection of another. 
 Our vision of peaceful groups of free laborers 
 is changed into the contemplation of black 
 gangs of slaves. A single act of legislation, 
 like Satan, when he entered Paradise, has re 
 versed the destinies of a world. The fields 
 seem to wither at its approach ; the waters dry 
 up ; threatening clouds obscure the sky ; and 
 
 " Nature, through all her works, gives signs of woe, 
 That all is lost." 
 
 It has been esteemed the special privilege 
 and glory of this young republic that her future 
 was in her own hands. Born to no inheritance 
 of wrong and sorrow, like the nations of the 
 older continent, and with an existence as fresh 
 and unsullied as the fame of a ripening maid- 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 45 
 
 en, it was supposed that she might see the 
 states, which were soon to become the chil 
 dren of her family, growing up about her in 
 prosperity, love, and vigor. She could watch 
 over their cradles and keep them from harm ; 
 she could nourish them into manly strength ; 
 she could form them, by her wise and tender so 
 licitude, to a career of exalted worth and great 
 ness. A new page in the history of mankind 
 appeared to be opened a page unblotted by 
 the blood-stains of tyranny, which mark the 
 rubrics of the past, and destined to be written 
 over only by the records of an ever-maturing 
 nobleness and grandeur. This was the am 
 bition of her fathers of those who laid the 
 beams of her habitation deep in the principles 
 of virtuous freedom, and bequeathed to her the 
 heroic precedent of single-hearted devotion to 
 justice and right. But, alas, how are their 
 hopes prostrated ! Ere the first half century 
 of her youth is passed, she finds herself not en 
 gaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for the pre 
 servation of her paternal acres, her unshorn 
 and boundless prairies, from slavery, but yield 
 ing them, almost without reluctance, to the 
 
46 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 fatal blight. When Niobe saw her fair sons and 
 daughters falling under the swift darts of the 
 angry gods, she wept herself to stone ; but the 
 genius of America whom it is the pride of her 
 sculptors to represent as wearing the Phrygian 
 cap of liberty on her brow, and trampling upon 
 broken chains with her feet, and bearing aloft 
 the aegis of eternal justice surrenders her 
 children, without remorse, to death. She be 
 lies her symbols, she suppresses her inspira 
 tions ; she opens the gates of the coming cen 
 turies to the advent of a remediless bondage 
 
 We are aware, it is often said, that slavery 
 cannot be carried into the territories recently 
 organized that their soil and climate are not 
 adapted to its support, and that the sole aim, in 
 removing the restriction of the Missouri compro 
 mise, is to erase a distinction which the South 
 regards as dishonoring, and unjust. It has, 
 however, been sufficiently answered to this, 
 that slavery thrives in Missouri, which is be 
 tween nearly the same parallels of latitude, 
 that Illinois, similarly situated, was only saved 
 from it by a protracted and earnest struggle, 
 and Indiana only by the immortal ordinance of 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 47 
 
 1787. But it is useless to adduce precedents 
 and analogies in the face of current facts. The 
 moment in which we write witnesses the pro 
 ceedings of assemblages convened to keep free- 
 emigration out of these territories by force of 
 arms, if need be. Already slaveholders are 
 on their way to establish themselves and their 
 "institution" there, nay, they are already in 
 possession of some of the choicest parts of the 
 soil, and are resolved to maintain it, against all 
 comers. Away, then, with the flimsy pretext 
 that slavery is banned by what Mr. Webster 
 called " the laws of God ;" by natural position 
 and circumstances ! These, we admit, have 
 much to do with the prevalence and strength 
 of the system, but they are not omnipotent 
 nor final they are only accessory, either for 
 it or against it ; and the will of man his de 
 termination to abide by the perennial princi 
 ples of right, or to surrender them to a tempo 
 rary and short-sighted spirit of gain is what 
 gives character, in this respect, to society. 
 Nebraska and Kansas will be slave states if 
 slaveholders go there, and they will be free 
 states if freemen go there, and this is the long 
 
48 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and short of the matter, let the soil woo and 
 the climate smile encouragement upon whom it 
 pleases. If the American people do not now, 
 on the instant, rescue those lands to freedom, 
 it is in vain that they will hereafter look to 
 nature or any other influences for their salva 
 tion. 
 
 We are, indeed, so far from being persuaded 
 that it is not meant to take slavery into our 
 new territories, that we begin to entertain the 
 conviction, that the propagandists of the South 
 will not stop even with the territories. It is 
 imputed to them by authorities entitled to re 
 spect, that they cherish a policy which aims, 
 not merely at its establishment within the lim 
 its of all the new states, but at the consolidation 
 of it, by foreign conquests. We know that a 
 movement has long been on foot in California 
 for its legalization there ; we know that Texas is 
 considered as the nucleus of three or four slave- 
 holding sovereignties ; we know that schemes, 
 open and secret, are prosecuted for the acqui 
 sition of Cuba, before Cuba shall have eman 
 cipated her blacks, as it is alleged she intends 
 to do ; we know that eager, grasping eyes are 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 49 
 
 set on Mexico ; we know that a Senator has 
 called for the withdrawal of our naval squad 
 ron from the coast of Africa, that the slave- 
 trade may be pursued in greater safety ; we 
 know that another Senator has broached the 
 recognition of the Dominican Republic, with an 
 ulterior view to its annexation ; and we are 
 told, that overtures have been made to Brazil, 
 for cooperation in the ultimate establishment 
 of a vast slaveholding confederacy to the 
 South. Of course, some of these designs are 
 still in the bud ; they are not participated 
 in by the judicious men of any section; but 
 the remote conception of them should be moni 
 tory and waken us to vigilance. It is one of 
 the dangers as well as glories of this 1 nation, 
 that its plans are executed with the rapidity of 
 magnetism. A thought is scarcely a thought 
 before it becomes a deed. We scorn delays ; 
 we strike and parley afterwards ; we actualize 
 the dreams of the old philosophers, and impart 
 to our abstract ideas an instant creative ener 
 gy. The fact, then, that such comprehensive 
 schemes of pro-slavery expansion gain admit 
 tance into active minds, nay, that they are said 
 3 
 
50 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 to burrow in those of men of eminent station, 
 should beget a timely and jealous watchfulness 
 against their least beginnings. 
 
 It is one of the arrangements of Providence, 
 by which it tests the reality of our virtue, and 
 punishes the want of it, that we should be so 
 insensible to joint or- corporate responsibilities, 
 and yet so intimately connected with the tre 
 mendous good or evil consequences of their 
 infringement. We are apt to suppose that the 
 offenses of nations, against the laws of integrity 
 and right, can be laid to no man s charge, 
 or, rather, that the criminality of them is dis 
 sipated, through the multitude of the offend 
 ers, and we do not feel, in consenting or con 
 tributing to the commission of them, that we 
 contract any degree of personal guilt. On 
 the contrary, we undervalue them as offenses, 
 and even laugh at the thought of national 
 sins, as if they were chimeras, or the bodiless 
 and impalpable acts of one, who, as the 
 adage expresses it, has neither a body to be 
 kicked nor a soul to damn. But, measured by 
 their actual effects, by the awful reach and 
 deathless vitality of their workings, these 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 51 
 
 national iniquities are they which are most to 
 be struggled against, deprecated, dreaded. The 
 evil done by a private individual spreads 
 through a narrow circle only, and does not 
 always live after him ; the contagion of its virus 
 may be speedily counteracted, and the worst 
 results of it often are no more than the debase 
 ment of a few other individuals. But the evil 
 done by the public man, which is sanctioned, 
 by a corporate authority, which gets embodied 
 into a wicked law, and to that extent be 
 comes the deed of many, is augmented and mul 
 tiplied, both in its criminality and consequences, 
 by the number of wills which may be supposed 
 to have concurred in its commission. Its 
 powers of mischief are infinitely increased ; the 
 potent enginery of the state is made its instru 
 ment ; its blasting influences spread, not only 
 through a single community, but over vast 
 races, and travel downward to the remotest 
 time. It may arrest the movements of nations, 
 paralyze the very fertility of the earth, and stun 
 the heart of humanity for ages. The vices of sin 
 gle men are the diseases by which they themselves 
 suffer and are broken, or at most by which they 
 
52 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 communicate disease to those who come in con 
 tact with them ; but the vices of states are a 
 malaria which blisters in the air and festers in 
 the soil, and sweeps away millions to the tomb. 
 Oh ! how much of good may be done, or of 
 evil prevented, by a little timely legislation. 
 When Tiberius Gracchus, traveling through 
 Italy, to join the army in Spain, saw how the 
 multitude of his countrymen were impoverished 
 and their fields laid desolate by the existence 
 of slavery, he proposed to terminate its evils, 
 and scatter the clouds of disaster that had 
 already begun to gather and brood over the 
 destinies of the Roman commonwealth, by a 
 simple, just, and practicable law which should 
 build up, in the midst of the luxurious Roman 
 nobles and their debased slaves, an independent 
 Roman yeomanry. He perceived that the pub 
 lic domain, long usurped by the Patricians, if 
 appropriated to the people, would prevent the 
 concentration of wealth, and stimulate the pride 
 and industrial energies of the almost hopeless 
 people ; and, had his project been carried, he 
 would have arrested the downward career of 
 his country, and perpetuated for centuries, 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 53 
 
 doubtless, the early Roman virtue, which still 
 seems marvelous to us in its dignity and force. 
 But the designs of Gracchus were defeated by 
 his murder ; the Patricians triumphed ; the 
 people grew poorer and corrupter, till they 
 were at last fed like paupers from the public 
 granaries ; alternate insurrections of slaves 
 swept the state like a whirlwind ; despots like 
 Sylla, and demagogues like Marius, convulsed 
 society by civil wars ; and, finally, the tyrant 
 Caesar arose to reap the harvest of previous dis 
 tractions, and, as the only salvation from pro- 
 founder miseries, to erect on the ruins of the 
 Republic an irresponsible monarchy.* 
 
 We have dwelt upon the proceedings of the 
 pro-slavery party so long, that we have left 
 ourselves little space for urging upon other 
 parties their duties in the crisis. But we will not 
 speak to them as parties. We will say to them 
 as Americans, as freemen, as Christians, that 
 
 * This historical allusion, suggested to the writer by a 
 perusal of Michelet a Roman Republic, has occurred also to 
 Mr. Bancroft in his splendid essay on Slavery as the cause 
 of the downfall of the Roman Republic. See Bancroft s 
 Miscellanies, page 280, " On the Decline of the Roman 
 People." 
 
54 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the time has arrived when all divisions and 
 animosities should be laid aside, in order to 
 to rescue this great, this beautiful, this glorious 
 land from a hateful domination. As it now is, 
 no man who expresses, however moderately, a 
 free opinion of the slave-system of the South, 
 is allowed to hold any office of profit or trust 
 under the General Government. No man can 
 be President, no man a foreign minister, no 
 man a tide-waiter, even, or the meanest scul 
 lion in the federal kitchen, who has riot first 
 bowed down and eaten the dirt of adherence to 
 slavery. Oh ! shameless debasement that under 
 a Union formed for the establishment of liberty 
 and justice under a Union born of the agonies 
 and cemented by the blood of our parents a 
 Union whose mission it was to set an example 
 of republican freedom, and commend it to the 
 panting nations of the world we freemen of 
 the United States should be suffocated by poli 
 ticians into a silent aquiescence with despotism ! 
 That we should not dare to utter the words or 
 breathe the aspirations of our fathers, or pro 
 pagate their principles, on pain of ostracism 
 and political death ! Just Heaven ! into 
 
OUR PARTIES AND POLITICS. 55 
 
 what depths of infamy and insensibility have 
 we fallen ! 
 
 We repeat, that until the sentiment of slavery 
 is driven back to its original bounds, to the 
 states to which it legitimately belongs, the peo 
 ple of the North are vassals. Yet their emanci 
 pation is practicable, if not easy. They have 
 only to evince a determination to be free, and 
 they are free. They are to discard all past 
 alliances, to put aside all present fears, to dread 
 no future coalitions, in the single hope of car 
 rying to speedy victory a banner inscribed with 
 these devices : THE REPEAL, OF THE FUGITIVE 
 SLAVE LAW THE RESTORATION OF THE MIS 
 SOURI COMPROMISE No MORE SLAVE STATES 
 No MORE SLAVE TERRITORIES THE HOME 
 STEAD FOR FREE MEN ox THE PUBLICLANDS. 
 SEPTEMBER, 1854. 
 
 It is proper to add, to render the views of 
 this article complete, that the multiplied out 
 rages and aggressions of the Slavery Party, have 
 compelled a fusion of the more honest and con 
 scientious adherents of the old parties, into a 
 new party called the Republican, which has not 
 
56 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 adopted the standard of principles we have re 
 commended in the last paragraph, but satisfied 
 itself with the simple device of no more Slave 
 Territories and no more Slave States. That is 
 sufficient and the standard-bearer who has 
 been selected to conduct its fortunes, during the 
 next presidential campaign, is Fremont, the ad 
 venturous Pathfinder of the Kocky Mountains, 
 and the gallant conqueror and liberator of Cali 
 fornia. 
 JULY, 1856. 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM * 
 
 WE remember, in crossing the British Chan 
 nel once, that we had taken with us an odd 
 number of Punch, to while away the tedious- 
 ness of the passage. On landing at Boulogne, 
 it was crammed into a side pocket for safety, 
 but the gendarme, who inspected travelers 
 luggage, seeing the paper, tore it into a thou 
 sand pieces before our face, looking as fierce as 
 a pandoor all the time, and repeating, " 11 est 
 dcfendu, monsieur /" It seemed that Punch had 
 been in the habit of drawing a small man with 
 a big nose, which Louis Napoleon took for him 
 self this was before he and Victoria shook 
 hands and kissed and he avenged the indig 
 nity by excluding Punch from the republic. 
 Again, subsequently, on entering Vienna, we 
 had a London Morning Chronicle sequestered in 
 
 * It is proper to remark, in order to explain some allu 
 sions at the close, that this article was suggested by the 
 violent abuse which followed upon the publication of the 
 foregoing article, in Putnam s Magazine. 
 3* 
 
58 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the same manner because it contained some 
 account of the progress of Kossuth in the Uni 
 ted States ; and a friend of ours, not long after, 
 crossing the Po, from Austrian Italy into the 
 Estates of the Church, had his Bible taken 
 away, though copies of Voltaire s naughty 
 Candide, and Byron s naughtier Don Juan, 
 were left untouched in his carpet-bag. 
 
 These were specimens of European despot 
 ism, and we thanked God that no such petty 
 interferences with the rights of men were per 
 mitted in our own dear land beyond the sea. 
 A man, we said to ourselves proudly, may read 
 what he pleases there, never saying, " by your 
 leave," to any emperor, priest, or catchpoll of 
 them all. The press is free, opinion is free, lo 
 comotion is free ; and the wayfarer, though a 
 stranger, may think his own thoughts, say his 
 own say, and be happy or miserable, as he 
 likes, without let or molestation from his neigh 
 bors or the government. Hail Columbia ! we 
 exclaimed, in a fit of patriotic enthusiasm; 
 home of the exile, asylum of the oppressed, re 
 fuge of the gagged and persecuted, etc., etc., 
 etc. " Where the free spirit of mankind, at 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 59 
 
 length, throws its last fetters off;" where a 
 boundless field is open for every seed of truth 
 to germinate; where an unlimited career is 
 proffered to the excursions of the mind ; \vhere 
 no tyrant, no creed, no church lays its heavy 
 interdict upon the growth of human thought ; 
 Hail, thou latest born of time ; mighty in thy 
 youth ; chainless and unchained ; " gleaming 
 in the blaze of sunrise when earth is wrapped 
 in gloom." Oh, mayest thou long be proud 
 and worthy of thy glorious dower ! 
 
 But calmer reflection taught us to inquire, 
 after a time, whether our patriotism, taking 
 the bit in its mouth, had not been running 
 away with our reason. Is it true, we asked, that 
 there is no despotism in America? Have we 
 no authorities, which take the control of opin 
 ion, and assume to be infallible ? Are there no 
 institutions, no tribunals, no self-constituted 
 judges, which impose injurious restraints upon 
 the freedom of thought ? Have we extinguish 
 ed the spirit and habit of persecution along 
 with its outward symbols the rack, the stake, 
 the dungeon and the prison-house? We an 
 swered ourselves in this wise : We do not, it 
 
60 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 must be confessed, resort to the same compul 
 sory methods against the human understanding 
 as obtained in former ages, and still obtain, 
 in some countries. We do not stretch the 
 limbs of men on instruments of torture, be 
 cause they refuse to conform to this or that 
 standard of incomprehensible dogmas ; we do 
 not pillory our poor De Foes, for the crime 
 of writing candidly on public affairs, nor im 
 prison our humble Bunyans for proclaiming 
 the gospel in the streets ; we do not bury our 
 statesmen under the sea as they do in Naples ; 
 we do not banish our most illustrious artists 
 and poets, because they are liberals, to the wild 
 swamps of Cayenne, as they do in France : all 
 this must be confessed, and it must be con 
 fessed, too, that these are noble advantages to 
 have achieved over the spirit of intolerance. 
 No one can over-estimate their worth and glory. 
 They are priceless victories won from the old 
 empire of darkness. They lift us into a secu 
 rity and elevation which baffle for ever the 
 malice of a whole infernal brood of serpents, 
 who may now hiss about the rock of our re 
 treat, but cannot sting us to death. 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 61 
 
 Yet it appears upon minuter consideration, that 
 if the advanced civilization of our country rejects 
 the grosser applications of force by which opin 
 ion was wont to be controlled, there are others 
 which are not entirely discontinued. A less 
 barbarous, a more refined tyranny is compatible 
 with this general sense of propriety and justice. 
 There are chains which men forge for their fel 
 lows, that fret and cut their souls, if they do 
 not canker their bodies. There are inquisitions 
 of obloquy and hatred which may succeed to 
 inquisitions of the fagot and flame. There is 
 a moral Coventry almost as humiliating and op 
 pressive as the stern solitude of the dungeon. 
 The spirit of bigotry may survive the destruc 
 tion of its carnal weapons ; despotism may re 
 tain its instincts, and give vigorous signs of 
 vitality, long after the sword shall have been 
 wrenched from its grasp ; and the fires of hell 
 may burn in the eyes of bigotry when they have 
 already ceased to burn upon its altars. For 
 what is the essential and distinctive characteris 
 tic of despotism ? Not its outward instruments, 
 its Bastiles, its gibbets, its bayonets, its 
 knouts, and its thumb-screws but its animat- 
 
62 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ing purpose. It is the disposition to suppress 
 the free formation and publication of opinion, 
 by other means than those by which the mind 
 is logically moved by other influences than 
 motives addressed to the understanding, the 
 reason, and the better feelings of the heart. 
 Wherever a man s bread is taken away because 
 he votes with this party or that, wherever he 
 is denounced to public odium because of the 
 heterodoxy of his honest sentiments, wherever 
 moral turpitude is imputed to him on account 
 of his speculative errors, wherever he is in ter 
 ror of the mob on any account, wherever the 
 inveteracy of public prejudice compels him to 
 remain silent altogether, or to live a life of per 
 petual hypocrisy, wherever his sincere convic 
 tions can not be disclosed and promulged foi\ 
 fear of personal discomfiture and annoyance, 
 wherever even a limit is fixed to the progress 
 of research, there despotism flourishes, with 
 more or less strength, and only needs the con 
 currence of circumstances to be nursed into 
 muscular violence and fury. 
 
 Now, as we have said, it seems to us that, 
 tried by this test, we have despotisms in the 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 63 
 
 United States, just as they have elsewhere, and, 
 that with all our advances in liberality of which 
 we justly boast, w r e come short in practice of 
 the brilliant ideal of our institutions. We have 
 not attained to a genuine and universal liberty 
 (we will not say tolerance, because that word 
 is borrowed from an age when freedom was sup 
 posed to be a boon and not a right) and we 
 fail not in one or two, but in many respects. 
 In the Church, in the State, in the popular 
 meeting, and in the more private relations of 
 society, we often surround ourselves with need 
 less barriers, we build walls of separation be 
 tween ourselves and the great realms of intelli 
 gence yet unexplored, and we paralyze those 
 intellectual energies which are our only instru 
 ments for exploring them, the only tools for 
 working the golden mines of truth. 
 
 In the first place, we cannot but consider a 
 large number of our ecclesiastical organizations 
 as so many restraints upon the freedom of the 
 mind. Founded upon creeds which admit of 
 no possibility of truth beyond their own for 
 mulas, they discourage inquiry in the largest 
 and most important domains of thought. Kant, 
 
64 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the great German philosopher, in one of his 
 valuable minor writings, discussing the ques 
 tion whether any association is justified in bind 
 ing itself to certain immutable articles of faith, 
 in order to exercise a perpetual and supreme 
 guardianship over its members, and indirectly 
 through them over the people, contends that a 
 compact of this kind, entered into, not as a sim 
 ple bond of union for the interchange of com 
 mon sentiments, but with a view to conclude 
 the human race from further enlightenment, is a 
 crime against humanity, whose highest destina 
 tion consists emphatically in intellectual pro 
 gress. " A combination," says he, " to main 
 tain an unalterable religious system, which no 
 man is permitted to call in doubt, would, even 
 for the term of one man s life, be wholly intoler 
 able. It would be, as it were, to blot out 
 one generation in the progress of the human 
 species towards a better condition ; to render 
 it barren and hence noxious to posterity." This 
 conduct, in the religious world, proceeds upon 
 the assumption that our knowledge of divine 
 things cannot advance like our knowledge of 
 natural things ; that the first investigators of 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 65 
 
 the Scriptures exhausted their contents, and 
 that nothing is left for those that come after 
 them, but, as Johnson says of the followers of 
 Shakespeare, to new-name their characters and 
 repeat their phrases. But does this view do 
 justice to the sacred word ? Granting that its 
 leading principles may be easily discerned a 
 thing difficult to grant in the face of two hun 
 dred conflicting sects, each of which finds its 
 support and nutriment in the same pages ; for, 
 as Sir William Hamilton is fond of quoting, 
 
 " This is the book where each his dogma seeks, 
 And this the book where each his dogma finds," * 
 
 we must still suppose, that a revelation from 
 the Infinite will contain infinite resources of 
 truth. Neither its alleged origin, which is from 
 the perfect God, nor its alleged destiny, \vhich 
 is the final redemption of mankind from error, 
 will allow us for a moment to treat it as an or 
 dinary message, soon told, and as speedily com 
 prehended. It must conceal inexhaustible 
 riches, or not be what it purports ; while to 
 suppose it to be what it purports, and yet to 
 
 * " Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque, 
 Invenit, et pariter dogmata quisque sua." 
 
66 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 attempt to inclose its treasures in the frail and 
 ricketty caskets of words which men devise, is 
 an enterprise for pouring the ocean into a 
 quart-pot, or for bottling the air of the whole 
 heavens in one s private cellar. Nor is the at 
 tempt less pernicious than it is absurd : for it 
 erects each little consistory into a separate 
 popedom, issuing its infallible decrees and de 
 nouncing its interdicts with all the arrogance 
 of its Roman prototype. As an inevitable con 
 sequence, two things result ; firstly, that the 
 supreme control of the religious sentiment of 
 nations falls into the hands of the priesthood, 
 who are conservative by position and training, 
 and, secondly, that the energies of the 
 churches are absorbed in controversy or secta 
 rian propagation, at the expense of a free and 
 earnest inquiry after new truth, and the culture 
 of the more genial and hopeful feelings. The 
 history of our American sects, for instance, is 
 an almost unbroken record of fierce and bigoted 
 disputes. New England has been a kind of 
 theological Golgotha, and the fields are covered 
 with battered skulls. The clergy have been 
 the ruling powers there, and the people have 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 67 
 
 dared to laugh only with the consent of the 
 deacons. We are aware that this aspect of 
 things has materially changed of late years; 
 we know, also, what inappreciable services the 
 churches have otherwise rendered to society ; 
 but we must not forget, in the midst of our 
 ready gratitude for these, how many of them, 
 by means of their creeds, and the terrors of 
 their forms and excommunications, still hang 
 as an incubus upon the minds and consciences 
 of their adherents. Nor upon them alone, but 
 upon many others even upon those who do 
 not professedly wear their colors. They too 
 often terrify the ardent reformer, whose bright 
 hopes they change by the magic of fear into 
 dread spectres ; they too often arrest the up 
 lifted arm of science when it would strike from 
 the rock, or open out from the bowels of the 
 earth, some precious fountain of use ; and they 
 too often array themselves on the side of effete 
 traditions and mouldy abuses, when they should 
 be pressing forward under the ever-living in 
 spirations of hope and freedom. 
 
 It is said that Justinian, when he had 
 completed the compilation of his Institutes, 
 
68 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 issued a decree that no comment should be 
 written upon them, which aimed at more 
 than a sketch of their contents, or a tran 
 scription of their titles ; and it is true of 
 most sects that they try to copy this im 
 perial and arbitrary example. They impose 
 on others, as exclusively right and authori 
 tative, their own slender selections out of the 
 vast complexity of truths the few pearls they 
 have fished out of the measureless sea fancying 
 that they have banished error, when they have 
 only extinguished the independence of thought. 
 Indeed, it is scarcely too much to attest, ap 
 propriating the figure of Mirabeau, where he 
 compares truth to the statue of Isis covered by 
 many veils, that they teach their followers to 
 lift a single one, whilst they fling their clubs 
 and battleaxes at the heads of all who would 
 remove the others. " Procul, oh ! procul, csti 
 profani!" rings the chorus, and the poor auda 
 cious "infidel" as every dissentient is sure to 
 be called is handed over to an everlasting 
 contempt. Now, what chance truth has in 
 such a hubbub it is needless to inquire. 
 
 We recognize, secondly, an oppressive exer- 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 69 
 
 else of despotic power, in the conduct of 
 political parties, both in respect to the 
 violence, and bitterness of their hatreds, and 
 the relentless proscriptions which crown their 
 victories. The former are, perhaps, not to be 
 avoided in the present imperfect state of en 
 lightenment and Christianity; but the second 
 are wholly indefensible anywhere, and especially 
 in a republican society. The primary, essen 
 tial, distinctive right of man, in a free state, 
 which rests upon popular choice, is the right 
 of election, and to assail that right, by direct or 
 indirect means, by force of arms or by the ab 
 straction from one of his subsistence, is treason 
 against the fundamental principles of demo 
 cracy it is a Use-majeste done to the people. 
 Yet, all our political parties justify themselves 
 in a wholesale political slaughter of their op 
 ponents, whenever they come into power. Like 
 those tribes in Africa, which sacrifice a hundred 
 or two of men every time a new prince ascends 
 the throne, though they confine the immola 
 tion to the leaders only of their enemies, our 
 whigs and democrats, on the occasion of their 
 advents to power, butcher all the opposing 
 
70 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 chiefs, and all the subordinate functionaries, 
 down to the drill-sergeant and the sutler. And, 
 like William the Norman, when, he conquered 
 England, they distribute all the lands and mes 
 suages of the vanquished to their own set. A 
 regular Domesday-book is opened, and the fiefs 
 and holdings are parceled out with a coolness 
 of effrontery, which almost persuades us that 
 the perpetrators of the outrage are unconscious 
 of its monstrous meanness. 
 
 This is an injustice which, however, works the 
 usual effects of despotism. It degrades the char 
 acter of all who are concerned in it; reducing 
 political life into the sheerest scramble for 
 spoils, and bringing the suspicion of mercenari- 
 ness upon every man who takes office. In 
 either aspect, the practice is signally disastrous. 
 By debasing the standard of official eligibility, 
 it places in high position men of corrupting 
 and pernicious example, and, by relaxing the 
 tone of public controversy, it saps and under 
 mines the integrity of the people. No service 
 which government renders to society is more 
 important than its influence in preserving a 
 sense of the general good as superior to in- 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 71 
 
 dividual interests. .Indeed, this may be re 
 garded as one of its finest functions the educa 
 tion of the masses into a perception of the 
 supremacy of the general over particular ends. 
 Our natural impulses, our family ties, our 
 necessities of business, tend towards the de 
 velopment of a comparatively selfish egotism, 
 which our participation in public affairs tends 
 to counteract. But, if that participation, in 
 stead of being animated by a sense of devotion 
 to the public good, is converted into an intense/ 
 struggle for the accomplishment of individual 
 purposes, we lose one of the most salutary 
 restraints, one of the noblest inspirations of 
 the civilized state. We resolve society into 
 what Hobbs contended was its original con 
 dition a state of war. We confirm the mul 
 titude in their narrow and low ambitions ; and 
 we restrict their actions to the petty circle of 
 their own private and individual concerns. 
 
 Again ; the examples of really great states 
 men are among the most precious and inde 
 structible inheritances of a nation. No matter 
 how great their services in averting dangers 
 from the commonwealth, or in achieving ad- 
 
72 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 vantages for it, by the direct exercise of their 
 faculties, these cannot be compared with their 
 indirect utility, in presenting to the people a 
 high, manly, dignified, and heroic ideal of de 
 votion to the public weal. Their life-long ab 
 negation of self, their cautious wisdom, their 
 moderation of temper, the spectacle of their 
 constant preference of a broad and ultimate good 
 to local expedients and temporary triumphs, 
 habituate the general mind to the contemplation 
 of lofty ends and models of excellence in con 
 duct. Who can doubt that the characters of 
 Washington, of Franklin, of Marshall, of 
 Madison, etc., have been infinitely more valu 
 able to us Americans than any battles they may 
 have won in the field, or the forum ( They 
 have been so, because they have filled 
 our histories with pictures of a disinter 
 ested virtue. But such characters are not 
 possible in public life, when that life is no 
 longer a contest of great minds for great ends, 
 but a pot-house squabble when the despotism 
 of party machinery excludes from public ser 
 vice every man who is not sufficiently base to 
 stoop to its arts, and to roll in its ordure. Do 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 73 
 
 we not, by our party intolerance, then by the 
 proscriptions which tread upon the heels of 
 every success, rob the community of a twofold 
 guaranty of its progress, of the services of its 
 best men, and of a high moral tone of public 
 sentiment? 
 
 But this leads us to the third species of des 
 potism which we think it important to note, 
 and which, instigated by the bad example* of 
 both church and state, may be described as that 
 of popular opinion. We do not agree with 
 those foreign writers who represent the tyranny 
 of the majority in this country as absolutely 
 terrific : they have exaggerated its effects ; yet 
 their criticisms are not without a tincture of 
 truth. Compared with the older nations, there 
 is a larger freedom of opinion on most subjects 
 in this country, than anywhere else on the 
 globe ; but, compared with our own standards, 
 or the ideals of our institutions, we are on mani 
 fold subjects lamentably deficient. It is natural, 
 in a society whose stability depends as much 
 upon opinion as upon law, and more upon 
 opinion than force, that opinion, like other 
 
 powers, should occasionally play the despot. 
 4 
 
74 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 What we complain of, however, is not the 
 habitual watchfulness of the public mind over 
 public interests, and its chronic tendency to 
 rectify abuses, or to avert evil by an instant 
 insurrection, but the excessive resentment of 
 it when provoked. It is that unwillingness to 
 be corrected which makes its thought rather a 
 prejudice than an ppinion that tenacity with 
 which it clings to its customary formulas 
 and the severity with which it often resists even 
 the slightest departures -from them. We com 
 plain of it because it erects the majority into 
 an idol, a monarch, a tyrant, and begets a defer 
 ence to it which is almost as bad as any savage 
 superstition or loyal sycophancy. It weakens 
 the very springs of character in men, and then 
 lords it over their weakness with an irresponsi 
 ble violence and outrage. Take, for instance, 
 the pro-slavery sentiment of this country, as it 
 prevailed a few years ago how arbitrary, 
 ferocious, and overwhelming it was ! Not 
 merely in the South, where the vast interests 
 involved, and the peace and security of society 
 itself justify an extraordinary sensitiveness 
 towards all impertinent interference, bul; 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 75 
 
 throughout the nation, where no such exigen 
 cies of danger can be alleged. In the most 
 secluded districts of New England, even, where 
 a black slave was never seen, and thousands of 
 miles away from where they are, the expression 
 of anti-slavery views has been almost a courting 
 of martyrdom. The feeling dominated the 
 church, the senate, the popular assembly, and 
 the private saloon. Let a preacher plead the 
 cause of the negroes, and his salary was stop 
 ped ; let a newspaper attempt the discussion of 
 the subject, and it lost its subscribers ; let a 
 representative broach it in Congress, and he 
 was gagged and excluded fron the Committees, 
 or politely invited to fight a duel. Public 
 meetings called to consider it were dispersed by 
 the mob ; petitions to the Federal Legislature 
 against it were indignantly trampled under foot ; 
 the United States mails were feloniously in 
 vaded in its behalf while the agents of anti- 
 slavery societies were coated with tar and 
 feathers, or mutilated, or hung upon a tree. It 
 is true that all this has been since changed, but 
 by means of what sufferings, what struggles, 
 what strenuous and long-continued combats ! 
 
76 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Even at this time, the pro-slavery sentiment is 
 so largely in the ascendant, that no man of the 
 most moderate anti-slavery convictions can hold 
 office under the Federal Government though 
 that government represents, or ought to repre 
 sent, not a faction or a locality, but the whole 
 people. 
 
 De Tocqueville makes it an accusation against 
 democratic societies, that they substitute a 
 many-headed tyranny for that of a single man 
 or of a single class, and the history of the anti- 
 slavery controversy in this country, to our shame 
 be it said, forces us to confess that, in this re 
 spect at least, his remarks are well grounded. 
 Fetters and headsmen," he exclaims, "were 
 the coarse instruments which tyranny formerly 
 employed ; but the civilization of our age has 
 refined the arts of despotism, which seemed, 
 however, to be sufficiently protected before ; 
 the excesses of monarchical power have devised 
 a variety of physical means of oppression ; the 
 democratic republics of the present day have 
 rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as 
 that will which it is intended to coerce. Under 
 the absolute sway of an individual despot, the 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 77 
 
 body was attacked in order to subdue the soul ; 
 and the soul escaped the blows which \vere 
 directed against it, and rose superior to the at 
 tempt ; but such is not the course adopted by 
 the tyranny in democratic republics ; there the 
 body is left free and the soul is enslaved. The 
 sovereign can no longer say, " You shall think 
 as I do on pain of death," but he says, "You 
 are free to think differently from me and retain 
 your life, your property, and all that you pos 
 sess ; but if such be your determination, you 
 are henceforth an alien amongst your people : 
 you may retain your civil rights, but they will 
 be useless to you, for you will never be chosen 
 by your fellow-citizens, if you solicit their suf 
 frages ; and they will affect to scorn you, if 
 you solicit their esteem. You will remain 
 among men, but you will be deprived of the 
 rights of mankind. Your fellow-citizens will 
 shun you like an impure being ; and those who 
 are most persuaded of your innocence will 
 abandon you, too, lest they should be shunned 
 in their turn. Go in peace ! I have given you 
 your life, but it is an existence incomparably 
 worse than death." There are, however, two fal- 
 
78 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 lacies in this first, in supposing that the social 
 proscription alluded to could subsist without 
 passing over into muscular violence ; and, sec 
 ond, in the implication that the soul is less 
 likely to rise superior to moral than to physical 
 persecutions. The experience of this country 
 has proved the contrary of both. It has shown 
 how the virulence of prejudice soon runs into 
 lynchings and mob-law, whence its peculiar 
 dangers ; and it has shown, at the same time, 
 by the reactions of the last few years, how ef 
 fectively the most overbearing majorities may 
 be resisted. Yet, as we have already acknow 
 ledged, there is a basis of truth in De Tocque- 
 ville s animated charges, as might be amply de 
 monstrated from the long, arrogant, insulting, 
 and rancorous preponderance of the pro-slavery 
 sentiment. 
 
 But this sentiment has grown out of the 
 existence of slavery itself, the last kind of des 
 potism to which we shall allude. It is need 
 less to remark upon its character as such, 
 beyond the statement of ttye simple fact that 
 four millions of human beings are held as pro 
 perty, which settles that point with an em- 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 79 
 
 phasis. From its very nature, it is a despotism 
 of force, of law, and of opinion combined 
 partially mitigated in practice by humane per 
 sonal considerations, but in theory absolute. 
 It is administered, for the most part, by the 
 whip ; it is sanctioned by legislation ; and it 
 admits of no scrutiny or discussion. The 
 master and the slave, therefore, are alike do 
 minated by the system. All that can be said 
 of it, in the regions where it prevails, even by 
 those most deeply interested in its results, 
 must be said in its favor, on pain of peremptory 
 banishment or assassination. Indeed the illu 
 sions as to its benefits and the sensitiveness as 
 to its dangers, are both so extreme, that many 
 a slaveholder allows himself to read no book 
 nor to hea^r any conversation in which his posi 
 tive, unqualified, eternal right is disputed. 
 What a pitiable and insane extravagance ! 
 And, if he were consistent, to what a total in 
 tellectual solitude would he be reduced, in the 
 present state of the civilized world. He would 
 cut himself off from all the literature, and 
 science, and politics of mankind. He could 
 read no magazines, foreign or domestic ; the 
 
80 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 best works of genius would be closed to him ; 
 the investigations of science grow infectious ; 
 and the debates of Congress intolerable. In 
 fact there would be no resource for the class 
 who institute this moral quarantine, but to 
 imitate the habits of the chigo, as it is described 
 by Sydney Smith, where he says that each one 
 sets up its separate ulcer, and has his own pri 
 vate portion of pus. 
 
 One would suppose that under the tremend 
 ous responsibilities of its condition, and the 
 embarrassing perplexity of the problem it is 
 called to solve, it would welcome every honest 
 suggestion likely to throw light upon the case, 
 and even court that collision of opinion out of 
 which the truth is gradually struck. But it 
 does no such thing ; it repels every approach 
 as an insolence and an invasion of its rights: 
 
 O 
 
 and blindly surrenders itself to the darkness of 
 fate. It is fortunate that all slaveholders are 
 not of the same temper, that there are men 
 among them too liberal and intelligent to fall 
 into such unreasoning bigotry, who, on the 
 contrary, study with an intense solrcitude the 
 bearings of their social structure, and eagerly 
 
THE VESTIGES OP DESPOTISM. 81 
 
 seize upon every view of it which may afford 
 them hope for the future. It is to them that 
 we look for the wise management of their fear 
 ful trusts, and the eventual extinction of what 
 they must confess to be a most undesirable re 
 lation. They are as yet sadly overborne by 
 the pressure of opinions instigated by interest, 
 but will soon acquire a strength which will 
 place the control of events in their hands. 
 
 Now, in respect to the several forms of des 
 potism which we have briefly enumerated, we 
 shall not dwell upon their radical inconsistency 
 with the life and spirit of our entire polity; for 
 this consideration is too obvious to require 
 pressing. Nor is there any occasion, now, to 
 show the inherent weakness of any cause, or 
 position, which shrinks from the fullest and 
 fairest examination. But we cannot forbear 
 remarking upon the deep and abiding injury 
 which every man, who is unwilling to bring 
 his actions or his sentiments to the test of 
 scrutiny, does to himself, and the rest of man 
 kind. He shuts himself and society out from 
 the only means of correcting error and at 
 taining knowledge. We know of no method 
 4* 
 
82 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of arriving at the true relations of a subject, 
 but the frank and candid discussion of it in 
 every aspect. The time is past for believing in 
 the existence of any infallible authority, whe 
 ther pope or king, whose decrees are to be con 
 sidered the final arbitrament of truth. There 
 is no class or rank of men to whom we may 
 Jook for a fixed and irrevocable standard of 
 what it is right to think or proper to do. Our 
 individual judgments are contracted, uncertain, 
 warped by prejudices; and the more profound 
 ly we have penetrated into the complex prob 
 lems of life which solicit solution, the more 
 familiar we become with the vast extent and 
 variety of human error, the more distrustful 
 we grow of the authenticity and correctness 
 of our own decisions. Yet, in the midsfc of 
 the almost overwhelming multiplicity of crude 
 and preposterous speculations, in the wild 
 chaos of conflicting beliefs which storm around 
 us, we do discover that the general mind is 
 slowly eliminating one truth after another ; the 
 immense laboratory of seething and fermenting 
 thought is ever turning up some valuable and 
 brilliant product ; and keen research and grap- 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 83 
 
 pling argument secure us substantial conquests 
 from the realms of ancient night. Discussion 
 free, open, manly, patient discussion is the 
 key which opens the treasure-chambers of na 
 ture and revelation, and the deep human soul. 
 Like the cradles of the Califbrnians, it sifts the 
 golden metal from the common filth and dust. 
 Summoning every variety of intellectual instru 
 ments to its aid, contemplating things in all 
 their aspects, exposing falsehoods, detecting 
 fraud, baffling selfishness, overwhelming igno 
 rance, and rectifying hallucination, it opens the 
 way for the slow but majestic and beneficent 
 march of the human intellect towards the mas 
 tery of the world. 
 
 No sensible man will now dispute the gigan 
 tic advances which the civilized races have 
 made in the various departments of mathemat 
 ical and physical science, since they were com 
 mitted to the hands of free inquirers, nor wish 
 to revert to those political institutions and re 
 ligious scruples by which their progress was so 
 long fettered. Would it be less absurd to de 
 spair of the speedy success of the moral and 
 political science, if they were once emancipat- 
 
84 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ed from the despotisms by which they are 
 checked? The very triumphs of the former 
 sciences are a ground of hope for the rapid 
 and extensive improvement of the latter, when 
 these shall have adopted the methods and be 
 prosecuted in the spirit of those. " The prac 
 tice of rejecting mere gratuitous hypotheses," 
 says the able author of " The Letters of an 
 Egyptian Kafir," "of demanding facts, of re 
 quiring every step of reasoning to be clearly 
 exhibited, of looking with perfect precision to 
 the use of terms, of discarding rhetorical illu 
 sions, and mere phrases, of scouting preten 
 sions to infallibility, or exemption from rigor 
 ous scrutiny, are all required as indispensable 
 in physical research, but cannot possibly be 
 confined to the department of material philo 
 sophy. They will necessarily be extended to 
 moral inquiries ; and, supposing that, in conse 
 quence of social proscription, or priestly or 
 political tyranny, these latter subjects were 
 totally abandoned, received no direct examina 
 tion, were exposed to no discussion for even a 
 long period, were withheld (if we can conceive 
 it possible) from the very thoughts of men, 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 85 
 
 for half a century, yet the influence of physic 
 al investigation upon them could not, in the 
 end, be prevented. All the correct principles 
 of reasoning, all the improved methods of re 
 search, all the habits of comparison and dis 
 crimination, all the love of truth, which the 
 pursuit of any science has a tendency to estab 
 lish or engender, all the impatience of vague 
 ness, and obscurity, and assumption, which the 
 prosecution of inquiry superinduces in the 
 spirit of men, would gather round the prohibit 
 ed subjects, ready, like hungry lions, to rush 
 on what they had been withheld from, by the 
 bars and chains and bolts of social or political 
 despotism." 
 
 With the admonitions of that paragraph, 
 which we commend to all in the United States, 
 who wish to obstruct the advances of opinion, 
 on any subject, we dismiss our theme. 
 
 Before quitting it entirely, however, let us 
 add that we have been drawn to it by criti 
 cisms that we have seen, from time to time, 
 passed upon the conduct of this magazine. A 
 feeling of surprise has sometimes been express 
 ed that we should mingle with our lighter en- 
 
86 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tertainments grave and thoughtful considera 
 tions of the leading political, social, scientific, 
 and religious topics of the day. But, surely 
 they who express that feeling can neither have 
 studied our course from the beginning, nor 
 have thoroughly digested in their own minds 
 the proper aims and duties of a first-class peri 
 odical. It was never our intention to issue a 
 monthly exclusively for the milliners ; we had 
 no ambition to institute a monoply manufac 
 ture of love-tales and sing-song verses ; and, 
 if we had, we should have despaired of success 
 amid the brilliant successes already achieved 
 in that line. No ! we had other conceptions 
 of the variety, the importance, the dignity, 
 and the destiny of literature. Our thought, 
 in establishing this enterprise, was, and it still 
 is, that literature is the full and free expression 
 of the nation s mind, not in belles-lettres alone, 
 nor in art alone, nor in science alone, but in all 
 these, combined with politics and religion. It 
 seemed to us, that the cultivated men, the lite 
 rary men of a nation, are among its best in 
 structors, and that they feebly discharge their 
 function, if they are not free to utter their 
 
THE VESTIGES OF DESPOTISM. 87 
 
 wisest thoughts, their most beautiful inspira 
 tions, on every subject which concerns the in 
 terests, the sensibilities, and the hopes of our 
 humanity. Whether they pour forth their 
 sense of beauty, grace, and gentleness in strains 
 of poetry, or enlarge our knowledge of man in 
 sketches of travel, or bring nearer to us the 
 countless charms of our landscapes by natural 
 descriptions, or help us to a clearer conception 
 of great characters in biographic notices, or 
 lift the disposition into cheerfulness and buoy 
 ancy by outgushings of humor, or refine our 
 views of life and happiness by ideal portrai 
 tures, or expose pretension, arrogance, and 
 folly, by caustic satire, or unfold the magnifi 
 cent vistas of science, or canvass the move 
 ments of parties and the measures of govern 
 ment in the light of great general principles, 
 they still belong to that higher priesthood, 
 whose ministrations emancipate us from the 
 care and littleness of daily life, who enkindle 
 in us the love of the loveliest things, who re 
 veal the depths of our spirits, and " whose 
 voices come down from the kingdom of God." 
 But in order to the true manifestations of this 
 
88 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 exalted character, a free scope must be given 
 to the action of their genius ; and such we 
 trust they will ever find in the pages of this 
 Monthly. 
 
 Figaro says that he once conceived the pro 
 ject of setting up a journal, and that when he 
 applied to the government for the necessary 
 permit, they accepted his scheme with the 
 warmest applause. "It will be a capital, ex 
 cellent thing," said they ; " and provided you 
 never touch upon religion, nor politics, nor 
 private society, nor the affairs of the opera, and 
 submit each article to the decision of three cen 
 sors, it shall receive our heartiest concurrence !" 
 
 "Whereupon," adds Figaro, "finding that the 
 best name for it would be Lc Journal Inutile, 
 I concluded to drop the enterprise." As for 
 ourselves, we have no desire to publish a " use 
 less journal," and if we cannot "say our say" 
 of what is passing, or, if we must cultivate the 
 wonderful art by which politicians talk for a 
 month without saying anything, we shall imi 
 tate the discretion of Figaro, and hasten to 
 other fields of labor. 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1854. 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND 
 POLICY, 
 
 THERE are fifty thousand villages, more 
 or less, in the United States, in each of 
 which an oration is delivered on the 4th 
 of July, and the orator who delivers it, 
 when he comes to exhort his fellow-citizens on 
 the greatness of their responsibilities, says, in 
 variably and solemnly, " the eyes of the world 
 are upon us!" It would seem to be a pretty 
 general conviction among orators, at least 
 that the people of the universe have very little 
 else to do than to watch the movements of 
 Brother Jonathan. 
 
 The same thought is implied in the frequent 
 remark, which we hear, that it is our duty, as 
 a nation, to teach mankind the way of repub 
 lican righteousness, by the beneficent influence 
 of our example. When a late distinguished 
 senator, who, with all his genius and virtue, 
 
90 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 was somewhat given to commonplace, elo 
 quently admonished Kossuth on the wicked 
 ness of his designs against our national virtue, 
 he observed, with manifest seriousness and 
 sincerity, that there was no need of our in 
 terfering in European affairs, because Europe 
 could be better reached by " the silent in 
 fluence of our great republican example." 
 
 Now, it is unpleasant at any time to take 
 the conceit out of a man, and to show that he 
 is by no means so stupendous a creature as he 
 fondly imagines. Nor is it any more agreeable 
 to run counter to the self-complacency of a na 
 tion, or to feel obliged to say to it, in all honesty 
 and truth, that it is not so magnificent a swell 
 as its fancy paints it, or its flatterers represent ; 
 yet, as we do not share the conviction of many 
 of our countrymen as to the tremendous and 
 egregious figure they cut in the eyes of man 
 kind, we are forced to tell them as much, and, 
 without wishing to abate one jot of the just 
 estimate they may have formed of their grow 
 ing power and greatness, to explain frankly the 
 grounds of our unpatriotic heresy. 
 
 We do not wish to deny the almost miracu- 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 91. 
 
 lous growth of the people of the United States, 
 in all the elements of national strength and 
 grandeur. On the contrary, we are as proud 
 as any Fourth of July orator can be, of those 
 beneficent free institutions, which have raised 
 us, in the course of half a century, from com 
 parative nothingness, into the first rank of 
 nations. We glory in our success, not simply 
 because it is success, nor because it flatters our 
 patriotic instincts, but because it demonstrates, 
 for the benefit of mankind, as well as of our 
 selves, the truth and benevolent efficacy of the 
 democratic theory of government. But the 
 question before us is not what we are in our 
 selves, nor what we have proved to ourselves, 
 but what we have accomplished abroad, the 
 interest the world takes in us, or more par 
 ticularly, the opinion they entertain of us in 
 Europe. 
 
 The United States are variously estimated 
 in Europe by different classes of men. States 
 men, by the necessities of their profession, have 
 a more or less familiar acquaintance with the 
 workings of our governments, or with the 
 statistics of our physical development. They 
 
92 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 know the number of our people, and the spirit 
 that animates them ; they know the general 
 character and ability of our rulers ; they know 
 our popular ambitions ; but, with all this, they 
 know little of our real, solid strength. They 
 under-estimate our integrity as a nation. Many 
 of them momentarily expect that the Union 
 will fall to pieces, or that, in a few years, our 
 society will be plunged into the horrors of a 
 servile and civil war. Others allege that we 
 are immersed in the pursuit of gain, without 
 inherent unity and elevation of spirit, and too 
 essentially weak to stand the shocks of adver 
 sity and war. While others, again, suppose 
 that the insane avidity of conquest, which they 
 say is an inseparable characteristic of demo 
 cratic states, will impel us to one foreign ag 
 gression after another, until our territory shall 
 have become too unwieldy for management. 
 Thus, the statesmen of Europe, with incon 
 siderable exceptions, trained in monarchical 
 theories, distrustful of the people, beholding in 
 democratic extension only a lust for empire, 
 and not a peaceful progress, surround the fu 
 ture of the young republic with dangers, and 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 93 
 
 shut their eyes to the real significance of her 
 history. Can they, then, be said to know the 
 actual condition of our affairs ? 
 
 Unfortunately, the persons we send abroad, 
 as representatives, our ministers and charges, 
 who, in virtue of their office, come in contact 
 with the political classes, do nothing to enlarge 
 the opinions held of us abroad, when inadequate, 
 and nothing to correct them, when erroneous. 
 Selected less on account of their fitness for 
 their places, than because of the partisan ser 
 vices they may have rendered, they are, for the 
 most part, men conspicuously unfit for their 
 positions ignorant of the language of courts ; 
 ignorant of the laws of good manners ; ignorant 
 of the history of diplomacy ; ignorant of the 
 commercial relations of nations, and, of course, 
 ignorant of their own country. Or, if they be 
 not so fatally deficient of capacity or character as 
 we have described, they carry abroad with them 
 the vilest spirit of the tuft-hunter and the syco 
 phant. All their ambition seems to be to cir 
 culate in good society ; to dine with distin 
 guished ministers, and to hob-nob with princes 
 and dukes. A favor from a king quite upsets 
 
94 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 their understanding. We remember to have 
 met once, in Italy, not a thousand years ago, 
 an American ambassador, whose whole talk re 
 lated to the eminent virtue and wisdom of the 
 present weak and perjured king of Prussia, 
 whom he extolled as a pattern of every do 
 mestic excellence, and a model among rulers. 
 No court lacquey, with a red embroidered coat 
 on his back, could have cherished a profounder 
 regard for that monarch, or expressed his ad 
 miration in more unmeasured praises. Yet this 
 eulogist of royalty was, perhaps, better than a 
 predecessor of his, who had befouled his lega 
 tion with the vices of the debauchee and the 
 drunkard. He was an exception, it is true, 
 and regarded by a majority of his colleagues us 
 a disgrace to the nation ; but one such exam 
 ple of an American diplomatist, in the course 
 of twenty years, spreads more prejudice against 
 us, and against the cause of republicanism, than 
 fifty years of " the silent influence of example" 
 can neutralize. 
 
 Next to statesmen, the readers of the more 
 intelligent books about the United States, like 
 those of Do Tocqueville, Chevalier, Van Reau- 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 95 
 
 mer, and Miss Martineau, acquire some know 
 ledge of us, and our concerns, but not on the 
 whole an accurate or complete knowledge. 
 The writers of those works we believe to have 
 been honest, they conducted their inquiries 
 with a desire to discover the truth, have stated 
 the results fairly, and in many respects have 
 presented faithful, as well as important views, 
 either of our manners or policy. De Tocque- 
 ville s work, in particular, is characterized by 
 a patient study of facts, and fine philosophical 
 generalizations, but it is, after all, superficial, 
 abounding in political as well as politico-eco 
 nomical mistakes, and inspiring a distrust of 
 democracy, in the midst of all its apparent 
 eulogies. But, if these were more satisfactory, 
 they could do little towards informing public 
 opinion, against the host of others, of inferior 
 calibre the Trollopes, Marryatts, and Dickens- 
 es, whose narratives of travel are little better 
 than caricatures. Where one copy of the more 
 dignified and stately work of De Tocqueville 
 is read, thousands of Dickens s " Notes" are 
 circulated to counteract it ; or, where the latter 
 do not penetrate, the newspapers, published ia 
 
96 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the interests of despotism, carry their slander 
 ous witticisms and lies. For the press, it 
 should be remembered, as well as the pulpit, 
 and all the other instrumentalities by which 
 public opinion is formed, is under the control 
 of the governments, and foster an unceasing 
 and an unmitigated hostility to whatever 
 makes in favor of liberalism. Everybody has 
 observed how vehemently abusive the leading 
 English journals were towards America and 
 Americans, until an increasing commercial in 
 tercourse had softened the asperities of the two 
 nations, and made it the interest of both to 
 cultivate more friendly feelings, which heaven 
 strengthen and expand ! But there has been 
 no such relenting on the continent, where the 
 gazettes, that are allowed to speak of us at all, 
 still maintain the old tone of banter, ridicule, 
 and abuse. There is one of them in particular, 
 that vile panderer to aristocratic assumption 
 and pride, GallgnanVs Messenger, of Paris, 
 which purposely misrepresents every incident 
 of our affairs, and every trait of our character. 
 A European, who should form his opinion of 
 us from the meagre and distorted accounts of 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 97 
 
 this source, must look upon our society as in a 
 chaotic and savage condition, destitute of all 
 the higher elements of civilization, and quite 
 given over to the blackleg and the cut-throat. 
 Long columns of murders and outrages, such 
 as may be gathered, by considerable industry, 
 from the records of our extreme western bor 
 ders, are paraded as incidents of our daily life, 
 alternated with the fantasies of Mormonism, or 
 the terrors of servile insurrection. 
 
 What can the "silent influence of example 1 
 do against this systematic and obstinate per 
 version of the truth ? What can societies, 
 which know little of us, and that little con 
 veyed to them through discolored mediums, 
 know of the practical workings of democracy 
 in this country ? Nor is there much, in the 
 conduct and character of Americans who tra 
 vel abroad, to improve the prevailing miscon 
 ceptions in Europe. A large number of our 
 citizens make the world acquainted with their 
 persons, not always to our advantage. Many 
 of them, we are happy to say, do no discredit 
 to their origin. Our young artists, and literary 
 
 men, especially some of our clergymen, and 
 o 
 
98 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 here and there a merchant, by their intelli 
 gence and unobtrusive modesty, produce the 
 most favorable impressions. They circulate 
 quietly in the best families, and by the infor 
 mation they diffuse as well as by their man 
 ners, commend their country no less than them 
 selves to a kind regard. But by far the larger 
 proportion of our nomadic tribes commercial 
 men, generally, who, having scraped up a rapid 
 fortune, conceive it necessary to achieve a tour 
 of Europe without education, or refinement, 
 or clear or earnest republican convictions by 
 their ridiculous aping of the extravagances of 
 foreign fashion, and their loud, blatant, vulgar 
 parade of wealth, utterly repel and disgust, 
 not only the people of standing, but the 
 common people, who often have as nice a dis 
 cernment of what is true and becoming as the 
 more cultivated classes. They are also almost 
 universally conservatives, who deride or affect 
 to deride the government of their country, pro 
 fessing great admiration of the methods and 
 doings of the monarchies, while, in every dis 
 cussion of the vital principles that distinguish 
 between despotism and democracy, their syin- 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 99 
 
 pathies lean, if not avowedly, at least impli 
 citly, to the side of power. Oh, how bitterly 
 have we heard the leaders of the great eman 
 cipating movement of Europe complain of this 
 base treason of the Americans, to whom they 
 naturally looked for support, but only found a 
 mean and detestable affectation of aristocracy. 
 The poor fellows had read our constitutions 
 and laws, had heard of our prosperity, had 
 caught the echoes of those public rejoicings in 
 which we boast so much of the glories of re 
 publican freedom, and they expected to en 
 counter in every native, born to the inheritance 
 of such noble institutions, the friend of uni 
 versal liberty. Alas, a moment s conversa 
 tion has filled them with astonishment and 
 dismay ! None of us forget, we presume, the 
 high hopes with which that exalted and accom 
 plished man, Kossuth, came to our shores, 
 expecting to meet in every man a soldier of 
 the democracy, by which he had been redeem 
 ed ? But can we recall some of the incidents 
 of his tour without a blush, deeper than the 
 crimson of yon decaying maple ? Can we for 
 get the low abuse, the cold contempt, the 
 
100 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 shallow compliments with which he, the exile, 
 the patriot, the hero after being feted and 
 extolled, as no foreigner ever was before was 
 allowed to return? What, though he loved 
 his country too well and sought too eagerly to 
 enlist the active sympathy of others in her 
 cause what, though, in his burning sense of 
 the degradation and suffering of the European 
 masses, he would have raised a crusade of free 
 dom against the despots of the world could 
 we not, on a calm consideration of our foreign 
 relations, have respectfully declined his invita 
 tions, or discreetly postponed the acceptance 
 of them to a more fitting time, should a more 
 fitting time ever come without joining in the 
 hue-and-cry of the oppressors against him, 
 heaping him with invectives, ridicule, and 
 taunts ? Did he not bring to us as vouchers 
 of his sincerity, and as appeals to our regard, 
 a long life of patient, noble, and magnanimous 
 struggle against wrong an eloquence that 
 eclipsed all ancient and modern fame attain 
 ments in language and history that seemed 
 exhaustless in their variety and grace and, 
 more than all, the sad, but honorable fact of his 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 101 
 
 exclusion from every land but oar own and 
 England ? Yet, in the face of these immortal 
 titles to regard, these claims upon our gener 
 ous indulgence and ardent love, there were 
 some Americans who could take part in his 
 systematic revilement and misconstruction ! 
 Need we wonder, then, that a similar class 
 abroad pursue a career, and profess senti 
 ments, which bring us into lasting and wide 
 dishonor ? 
 
 But, worse than the general want of infor 
 mation about us in Europe, worse than the 
 latent or blatant infidelity to their principles of 
 Americans, official or otherwise, worse than 
 the calumnies of Dickens, Galignani, or the 
 Times, are the uses which the upholders of 
 despotism make of the existence of slavery in 
 the southern portions of this confederacy. Its 
 apparent inconsistency with our leading politi 
 cal principles, and the exaggerations which 
 prevail in regard to its practical evils, enable 
 them to depict us, one and all, as slave-drivers 
 and oppressors, bent only on the pursuit of 
 gain, to which we sacrifice alike the dictates 
 of justice, the restraints of self-respect and 
 
102 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the promptings of patriotism. Unwilling or 
 unable to apprehend the peculiar structure of 
 our government, they confound all the inhabit 
 ants of the States into one mass of miscreants, 
 who war at will upon humanity, kidnapping, 
 torturing, outraging, and slaying their poor 
 victims, with all the lust and none of the re 
 morse of tigers. Behold, they exclaim, the 
 model republic, behold democracy in prac 
 tice, behold the boasted freedom of America, 
 three millions of human beings in the 
 dust, while their free and independent task 
 masters 
 
 " Chain them and task them, and exact their sweat !" 
 
 It is in vain that the leaders of the liberal 
 movements try to explain away this imputed 
 disgrace ; in vain they show the origin of sla 
 very, in vain they state its intricate connection 
 with the vital interests of society, in vain they 
 allege the fewness of those who are implicated 
 in it, in vain they describe it as an exception 
 and an anomaly, while they point out the be 
 neficent and glorious effects w 7 hich freedom 
 has wrought for us, in the face of this alleged 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 103 
 
 weakness a story of negro oppression, well- 
 told, will scatter their declamations to the 
 winds, and damage our repute, through large 
 circles of influence, and over long periods of 
 time. 
 
 There are, however, one or two checks to 
 these disparaging views, which operate with 
 some force in Europe. A considerable number 
 of the common people acquire no small, though 
 perhaps a vague, knowledge of the United 
 States, from the correspondence of their friends 
 who have emigrated hither, and who write 
 back to their impoverished relatives of their 
 easy success in the life of the New World. In 
 crossing the Atlantic on one occasion, for in 
 stance, we saw a shabby-looking German on 
 board the vessel, who had been ill nearly all 
 the voyage, and only as we neared port had 
 been able to crawl on deck to snuff the fresh 
 air. Entering into conversation with him, we 
 learned that, some six years before, he had left 
 his fatherland, to settle in the west ; he had 
 contrived by his labor to purchase a farm, and 
 to stock it ; a railroad was opened near his 
 house, and now he was returning to his native 
 
104 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 village, with ten thousand dollars in bank, to 
 persuade his father, and as many of his neigh 
 bors as he could, to remove to the land which 
 had been a Golconda to him. " But why will 
 you not remain in Germany," we asked, " now 
 that you have the means to live ?" His reply 
 was, that " the freedom of America was more 
 to him than its opportunities of fortune. He 
 had left his home in a condition not better than 
 that of a slave ; he returned to it the citizen 
 of a great and noble nation, where he was 
 eligible to the highest distinctions, and the 
 equal of all his fellows, universally respected 
 as such. Could he remain in a rotten despotism, 
 where the alternative of his personal and poli 
 tical subjection was civil war ?" Now, that 
 man was a missionary of republicanism, spread 
 ing the aspiration, if not the knowledge of 
 freedom, and. with his compeers of the same 
 stamp, working silent revolutions of states, 
 which in the form of emigration move whole 
 townships to their exodus. 
 
 It is evident, at the same time, that such 
 men rather kindle hope, than impart knowledge. 
 They create a private impatience of the re- 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 105 
 
 straints of despotism, without communicating 
 precise intelligence as to the nature of repub 
 licanism. They cannot be said, therefore, to 
 instruct or form public opinion ; and the same 
 thing might be remarked of the professed re 
 volutionists, who, though they have read our 
 history, and caught inspirations from the great 
 deeds of our forefathers, and informed them 
 selves of our subsequent triumphs, yet inocu 
 late their followers rather with spirit than with 
 knowledge. One is often surprised, in convers 
 ing with the liberals of Europe, even with 
 distinguished men among them, to discover 
 how little they really know of the genuine 
 principles of republicanism, how much of their 
 liberal enthusiasm is a recoil from oppression, 
 mingled with wild hopes of liberty, and what 
 a chasm there is between their notions of what 
 government should be, practically, and our 
 own calm, firm, easy-working, and just, scien 
 tific, political system. One does not, however, 
 infer from these, the unfitness of the European 
 liberals for freedom (seeing that it demon 
 strates their unfitness for every other political 
 
 state but that of freedom for how can such 
 5* 
 
106 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 men abide absolutism ?) but simply the vague 
 ness of their conceptions, and particularly their 
 want of an intimate acquaintance with our in 
 stitutions. Had they studied the American 
 example more, they would entertain more con 
 sistent and enlightened political theories. They 
 would have been saved from many of the 
 vagaries of socialism, retaining only its scien 
 tific elements, and their practical attempts at 
 the realization of freedom would not have 
 miscarried with such signal disaster. 
 
 Four splendid exceptional events, however, 
 in our foreign intercourse have stamped them 
 selves upon the memories and hearts of many 
 in Europe. When the noble frigate the Mace 
 donian, a war ship no more, 
 
 " Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark," 
 
 but a messenger of love, was freighted with the 
 generous contributions of the American people, 
 to the starving people of Ireland, a thrill of 
 electric joy, passing through the frames of the 
 sufferers, was caught and carried round the 
 globe, as far as the deed was heard. When, 
 too, the inevitable Jackson extorted from lin- 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 107 
 
 gering France, the just dues of our citizens, on 
 the single condition of "Pay or we ll make 
 you," the old diplomats of Europe, accustomed 
 only to protocolling, intriguing and postponing, 
 raised their drowsy heads, to ask with some 
 astonishment, "Who is this impertinent young 
 genius that dares to talk to a venerable monarchy 
 in this strain?" So also the able reply of Mr. 
 Webster to the impertinences of Hulseman, fell 
 with a crash among the mouldy archives of 
 Vienna. But no event, we suspect, has been of 
 more efficiency in awakening the Old World to a 
 consciousness of our existence, than the prompt, 
 decided, and glorious act of Captain Ingraham, 
 when, in the face of the Austrian fleet, he 
 threw the national aegis over the prostrate form 
 of a poor Hungarian exile, and pointed to his 
 guns. The shout of Vice la Republique, which 
 circled around the hiys of Smyrna, was echoed 
 from the hearts, if not the voices of millions 
 of men. 
 
 In spite of these occasional impressions, we 
 cannot but think, in respect to the mark we 
 make in Europe, that the majority there 
 really knows little about us ; that, among the 
 
108 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 conservative classes, we are grossly and will 
 fully misjudged; that, among the liberal and 
 popular classes, we are estimated through ex 
 aggerating mediums rather than by any correct 
 standard, while our political influence is only 
 indirect and casual, and by no means commen 
 surate to our power and station. Those patri 
 ots of the Fourth of July stamp, who go about 
 like peacocks, admiring their own prodigious 
 tails, are hardly justified in their vanity by the 
 actual facts; for while they are contemplating 
 themselves through a glass of compound mag 
 nifying power, the world is looking at them, 
 when it looks at all, through an inverted tele 
 scope. 
 
 It is a matter of small concern to a man 
 what the world may think of him if the su 
 preme object of life be to take care of the main 
 chance, letting the universe wag as it may. 
 But a man whose life is guided by great prin 
 ciples, who cherishes exalted convictions of 
 duty, who is solicitous for the welfare of his 
 fellows, who conceives that he is the possessor 
 of truths of vital significance and moment, is 
 anxious that his name should be respected, and 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 109 
 
 his influence felt. For the same reasons a na 
 tion, of high aims and honorable ambition, and 
 especially a nation that holds itself to be in 
 some sort the representative and responsible 
 director of a vast and beneficent movement, 
 desires to receive a due consideration and def 
 erence. The historical nations which have 
 moulded the destinies of humanity Greece, 
 Rome, France, England, Russia are the na 
 tions that have asserted their own titles to 
 respect, not in empty boasting, but by actual 
 deeds while .the nations which have lingered 
 in the race, impressing no character on ad 
 vancing civilization, and leaving no footsteps, 
 even in the desert China, Japan, Turkey, 
 Portugal, Spain are those which have shut 
 themselves up in their own exclusive circles, 
 and pursued no broad, generous, world-em 
 bracing policy. 
 
 The slight impression, therefore, that the 
 United States has yet made on the nations of 
 the globe is to be deplored. Both \ve our 
 selves and the world have been losers by the 
 default. Our internal advancement has been 
 unparalleled ; but we have achieved no corre- 
 
110 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 spending external influence. We have an all- 
 sufficient consciousness of our own strength, 
 but Christendom has failed to recognize it ; is, 
 in fact, only beginning to feel it remotely, 
 putting us aside in all the great controversies 
 of the nations, as bearded men thrust aside an 
 ungrown boy, or rather overlooking our ex 
 istence as though we were not. Who has 
 thought, for instance, in the arrangements of 
 " the Eastern question," which have now agi 
 tated Europe for a year, that the United States 
 had anything to do with the matter? Has it 
 been so much as consulted in a single move 
 ment? Is it ever reckoned in these or any 
 other of the vast distributions of human in 
 terests and human happiness, as one of the 
 parties to be advised with? Not at all; we 
 are not enumerated among the Great Pow 
 ers are indeed left out of the calculation, as 
 the crippled, the blind, the diseased, or the old 
 women are omitted in a council of war. But 
 is this a position for a great people? It is 
 true, that it may not have been, and may not 
 yet be, for our interest, to take part in Euro 
 pean troubles but, then, it is for us, and not 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. Ill 
 
 for others, to determine how far and when we 
 shall act or not act. We must be the masters 
 of our own destinies, and not mere ciphers in 
 the world, like the savage tribes of our western 
 wilderness, or the remote, feeble, degraded, 
 despised islanders of the Pacific. If we are 
 one of the nations of the earth sovereign, inde 
 pendent, and powerful let it be so distinctly 
 understood ; but if we be not, let us stop our 
 fatuous boastings, and sink quietly down, like 
 an oyster, in its complacent mud, satisfied with 
 whatever of succulence the chance waves waft 
 to our shells. 
 
 The course of our argument has brought us, 
 it will be seen, to a consideration of the proper 
 foreign policy of the government, which is now 
 beginning to occupy the field of American poli 
 tics. Thus far we cannot be said to have had 
 a foreign policy. Our attention has been so 
 absorbed by urgent domestic necessities, that it 
 has left us neither time nor capacity to engage 
 in the complicated debates of the external 
 world. Can this be so any longer? With 
 commerce weaving a network for us over every 
 sea with traveling and trading citizens in 
 
112 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 every country with an expanding territory, 
 that, while it looks back to Europe, is also 
 looking over to Asia with a whole continent 
 and its adjacent islands to the south, imploring 
 either exploration, or protection, or annexation 
 with new channels of adventure opening on 
 every side with friendly nations struggling in 
 the grasp of contending despotisms, and be 
 seeching us for sympathy and aid with one 
 neighbor of insatiate maw striving to monopo 
 lize the opulent markets of the East with 
 another imitating the ambition of Charlemagne 
 or Napoleon, for universal empire in short, 
 with a thousand varying impulses and seduc 
 tions, driving and soliciting our mercurial and 
 fearless people, it is inevitable that we shall 
 get involved, whether we will it or not, in the 
 great political, industrial, and social movements 
 of mankind. We are, in fact, already em 
 barked on the wide, wide sea we have quitted 
 the petty streams of our inland, and the timid 
 harbors of our coast, and there is no course 
 left for us but to guide the gallant vessel of 
 state, cleaving the outer tides, with all a sea 
 man s prudence and a seaman s tact, and yet 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 113 
 
 with all a seaman s daring, and a seaman s 
 dauntless energy. 
 
 " There lies the port ; the vessel puffs her sails, 
 There gloom the dark, broad seas." 
 
 The problem for us, then, is not whether we 
 shall have a foreign policy, for that, as we con 
 tend, is already decided by events, but what 
 that policy shall be. How shall we deport 
 ourselves towards the other nations of the 
 earth ? What position shall we assume in their 
 controversies ? What character and course do 
 we mean to assert for ourselves? these are 
 the imminent and clamorous questions of the 
 time. They are questions which, in one as 
 pect, bristle with difficulties, but which, in 
 another aspect, are of the readiest solution. 
 If we mean to launch forth upon the troubled 
 waters of existing diplomacy if we design 
 to conduct our affairs according to the tra 
 ditional laws of intrigue and deceit, which 
 are the accepted methods of courts and bureaus 
 we shall be plunged at once into endless 
 embarrassments; but, if we desire simply to 
 adhere to our own convictions of right and 
 
114 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 duty, avoiding all entangling alliances, and 
 disdaining all complicated and juggling ma 
 noeuvres, but asserting our own principles at 
 all hazards, the way for us is clear not wholly 
 free from embarrassments, but fn*e from dis 
 honor and disgrace. 
 
 Tell us what an upright, sympathetic, fear 
 less man a man of unequivocal, unswerving 
 principles would do in the society of his 
 equals and fellows ; tell us what aims he would 
 cherish, what deportment he would maintain, 
 what prudent and wise, but unfailing maxims 
 he would lay at the fountain-head of all his 
 being ; and we will tell you what ought to be 
 the foreign as well as the domestic deportment 
 of a great nation ! For nations are but larger 
 men, governed by the same rules of jus 
 tice and Christian sympathy and principle. 
 Prove that it is best for a man to be con 
 trolled only by the probabilities of his com 
 mercial success prove that the circle of his 
 interest and that of his immediate family ought 
 to be the horizon of his endeavors and hopes 
 prove that he has no vital connection with, or 
 joint responsibility for his race and then we 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 115 
 
 pledge ourselves to prove the same low theory 
 of existence as the true policy of that man s 
 nation! But admit, on the other hand, that 
 Christianity, and its heir and legatee, demo 
 cracy, have revealed a higher and nobler ideal 
 of life, and then you admit that nations are 
 moral beings, bound to a rigid obedience to, 
 and an active prosecution of, all the laws of 
 human duty, according to their condition. 
 
 Now, the United States, in reference to the 
 other nations of the earth, are placed in this 
 relation. They are young, fresh, and vigorous, 
 abounding in wealth, exulting in strength, and 
 eager for action. They come of a race, the 
 Anglo-Saxon, seemingly endowed with a death 
 less spring and vitality a race which crushed 
 old Rome, when Rome oppressed the world 
 which reared the stupendous structure of 
 British enterprise which impelled the armies 
 of the Reformation which planted in the New 
 World the hardiest of its colonists and which 
 now, commanding the citadel as well as the 
 outposts of civilization, wields the destinies of 
 all the tribes. They have been reserved by 
 Providence, moreover, for the exemplification of 
 
116 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the most beneficent theory of government that 
 was ever vouchsafed to man. Great heavens! 
 how can we, then, how can any American, 
 hesitate as to the great part his country ought, 
 and is clearly called, to play in the rapidly- 
 developing drama of the nineteenth century ? 
 
 What ! exclaims some tremulous Aspen, who 
 has money in the funds, Would you have 
 America, like an opium-crazed Chinese, 
 
 " Kun a muck, and tilt at all he meets ?" 
 
 Must it, the Anacharsis Clootz of nations, pro 
 claim itself the " orator of the human race," or, 
 like a Don Quixote of democracy, go searching 
 the world for forlorn damsels to protect ? 
 
 For his sake, we will be a little more explicit. 
 The United States, we have said, must have a 
 foreign policy good or bad, wise or foolish, 
 self-advancing or self-debasing. It must have 
 it ; for it cannot escape, if it would, the posi 
 tion forced upon it by its relations to the world. 
 It cannot cut the web of trade which it lias 
 thrown round the globe ; it cannot seclude 
 itself from all contact with other nations; it 
 cannot fly from the contagion of sympathy ; it 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 117 
 
 cannot leap the bounds of knowledge, nor avoid 
 the dominion of morals and religion. Yet, 
 trade, contact, sympathy, knowledge, religion, 
 all compel it to a decision of the mode in which 
 it will bear itself in its international inter 
 course. 
 
 It seems to us that our true policy may be 
 expressed, under its several heads, as follows . 
 1st, a rigid fidelity, both at home and abroad, 
 to the great democratic principle, which is the 
 essence of our national life ; 2nd, a prompt and 
 full protection of every citizen, guiltless of 
 wrong, wherever he may be, and whoever he 
 may be ; 3rd, an exact fulfillment, to the very 
 letter, of the obligation of treaties, at every 
 cost ; 4th, the instant arrest of all schemes of 
 
 foreign aggression, coupled with a willingness 
 
 
 
 to receive into the Union new nations, that are 
 thoroughly republican in their government and 
 their societies; and, finally, an avowed and un 
 reserved sympathy with people struggling for 
 their emancipation, the earliest recognition of 
 their independence, and a guaranty of that inde 
 pendence, when once established, against the 
 forceful or wanton interference of other nations, 
 
118 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and in support of the uniform and acknowledged 
 public law of the civilized world. 
 
 The majority of these points, we are sure, 
 will meet approval in this community. No 
 American can wish that our republic should 
 be other, in any of its bearings, than a demo 
 cratic republic ; no American can be reasonably 
 opposed to the pacific extension of commerce ; 
 no American, out of Sing Sing, or the lunatic 
 asylum, would wish to deny the sanctity of 
 treaties. As to the protection of all citizens, 
 the recent demonstrations on the Koszta affair 
 have settled that ; and so, the only reservations 
 or controversies our schedule suggests, must 
 relate to the form in which it has presented the 
 subjects of annexation and intervention. 
 
 No one can be more profoundly convinced 
 than we are, that the best interests of the 
 American people look to a concentration, rather 
 than a dispersion of their power. We have 
 land enough more than can be occupied and 
 cultivated for two hundred years ; we enjoy 
 already every variety of climate and every 
 character of soil ; we have no formidable neigh 
 bors to threaten our progress in any direction ; 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUS^ T CE AND POLICY. 119 
 
 and we have no need of conquests, either to 
 insure our future expansion or to fortify our 
 present tenures. The projects of colonial ag 
 grandizement, which some put forth, are as 
 uncalled for as they are unprincipled. If they 
 were undertaken, they could but distract our en 
 ergies, waste our resources, retard the increase 
 of manufactures and the arts, excite sectional 
 animosities, provoke foreign wars, and, suppos 
 ing them successful, add nothing essential to our 
 internal strength. No nation that ever existed 
 had less to expect from violent aggressions than 
 ours ; to none is the example of barbarous, old, 
 all-conquering Rome, which has been conspicu 
 ously cited to inspire us, less applicable ; for to 
 none is the arbitrary genius of military enter 
 prise more repugnant, or the gentle arts of 
 peace more congenial. Away, then, with the 
 mad schemes of plunder and bloodshed, with 
 which the lust of adventure strives to impreg 
 nate the restless excitability of our people ! 
 
 But, though we oppose the frenzy of terri 
 torial acquisition, let us not oppose the gradual 
 and legitimate growth of the nation! The 
 concentration of our capital and industry on the 
 
120 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 opportunities we already possess, the careful 
 yet rapid development of our internal resources, 
 the energetic pursuit of present advantages, 
 the advancement and perfecting of the civilizing 
 tendencies now at work these must be our 
 prime objects : but a Chinese exclusiveness, an 
 iron- ringed and churlish repulsion of foreign 
 accretions, must never be thought of. If there 
 are nations about us Canada or Mexico 
 eager to participate in the benefits of our 
 federal union if they are poor, dependent, dis 
 tracted alone, while they would become rich, 
 vigorous, and happy united, let us not forbid 
 the banns of marriage, but welcome them to 
 our arms with a bridegroom s embrace. 
 
 The federal relation is the true relation for 
 all people, 
 
 " The unity and married cairn of states," 
 
 bearing the richest fruit, sanctifying and sweet 
 ening intercourse with delicious friendships, 
 while the old treaty relation is a cold, casual, 
 and licentious cohabitation a bondage of fear 
 and feebleness, and exposed to perpetual strifes. 
 The latter is uncertain and willful ; the former 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 121 
 
 constitutional and permanent. The one de 
 pends on the caprice of monarchs and majorities 
 the other is fixed by eternal, ever-strengthen 
 ing law. The one is a mere alliance, as fragile 
 as the whims of those who are parties to it ; 
 but the other is a union, steel-clasped and ce 
 mented, yet fluent with freedom. Thus, while 
 the older nations of Europe exhibit the specta 
 cle of hostile camps, which enjoy peace during 
 temporary truces only, these thirty nations of 
 the New World are joined in a perpetual amity, 
 each free, yet as a whole harmonious. The 
 principle of federal union, in short, is the high 
 est principle of political connection known to 
 man ; and wherever it is permitted to extend, 
 will carry with it the blessings of peace, indus 
 try, wealth, and popular enlightenment, even 
 until the world shall be embraced in that 
 
 " Immortal league of love, which brings 
 Our free, broad empire, state with state." 
 
 As to what our screed of doctrine asserts in 
 regard to intervention, it is nothing more than 
 a declaration that we ought to uphold the 
 
 recognized international law of the world, 
 6 
 
122 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 against all wanton violations of it ; or, in the 
 words of Mr. Webster, that we are prepared 
 l to protect neutrality, to defend neutrality, 
 and, if need be, to take up arms for neutrality." 
 It brings us, we admit, into direct conflict with 
 the policy proclaimed by certain European 
 sovereigns, at the congresses held successively 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laybach, Verona, 
 and Vienna, and which substituted their own ar 
 bitrary will for the long-settled and clearly-rec 
 ognized international law of Christendom. It 
 will be remembered that the maxims announced 
 during those colossal plots against the rights of 
 man and the dignity of nations were : 1st, that 
 all popular and constitutional rights were held 
 only as grants from the crown, or, in their own 
 language, "that useful and necessary changes 
 in legislation and in the administration of states 
 ought only to emanate from the free will and 
 well-weighed conviction of those whom God has 
 intrusted with power while all that deviates from 
 this line necessarily leads to disorder, commo 
 tions, and evils far more insufferable than those 
 they pretend to remedy ;" which was an un 
 blushing allegation of the divine right of kings ; 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 123 
 
 and 2nd, the right of the sovereigns to interfere 
 in the affairs of other nations or, to use their 
 own words again, " their undoubted right to 
 take a hostile attitude in regard to those states 
 in which the overthrow of the government 
 may operate as an example ;" which means 
 their right to suppress attempts at popular en 
 franchisement, wherever they might be made. 
 
 Now, against the first of these atrocious doc 
 trines, our very existence as a nation is an open, 
 direct, and standing protest ; for, if it be true, 
 then our very existence as a free people is an 
 act of rebellion, a state of anarchy, a daring re 
 sistance of the will of God ! But the second 
 of them is no less flagrant an outrage on public 
 law and national rights. Both reign supreme 
 over the continent of Europe, and have been, 
 time and time again, forcefully asserted. When 
 Spain restored the liberal constitution of 1812 
 when Naples revolted against the tyranni 
 cal Ferdinand when Sardinia rose for its con 
 stitutional rights when Poland, with a cry 
 of agony, sprang from under the foot of the 
 trampling Russ when Germany rang with the 
 patriotic cry of German unity when Hungary, 
 
124 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 by a series of gallant and glorious battles, had 
 repelled the Austrian invader from her soil, 
 and, in the eloquent, touching tones of her 
 great leader, proclaimed her original independ 
 ence when Rome, catching from the noble 
 spirit of Mazzini some of her ancient virtue, and 
 her ancient valor, expelled her oppressors the 
 banded despots of that infamous league, called 
 the Holy Alliance, stood by to extinguish the 
 rising sentiments of liberty. The whole history 
 of Europe, indeed, for the last thirty years, has 
 been one continuous scene of monstrous and 
 brutal outrage, inflicted by the parties to this 
 pact of despotism, on people over whom they 
 had no legitimate control, against the estab 
 lished law of nations, and against all justice, 
 and all humanity. 
 
 Now, we say, that it is the bounden duty, the 
 only wise, and, in fact, safe policy, for the 
 United States, as a free and Christian nation 
 as a nation rejecting utterly, and with loathing, 
 the infernal system of the monarchs, to protest 
 against it, tods viribiis, on every occasion, and at 
 any risk. We say, that whenever any of these 
 unhappy mediatized nations shall rise, to cast 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 125 
 
 off foreign oppression, our sympathies should 
 be allowed to rush forth to iffcs encouragement 
 and aid ; and that, when it shall have expelled 
 the intruder, we should at once, and gladly, 
 recognize its independence, and guaranty it, 
 if need be, against the pillage of the imperial 
 robbers. All that such a guaranty implies 
 is an earnest and decided protest, in the name 
 of violated law and outraged humanity, against 
 a gigantic usurpation and fraud. Coming from 
 the fresh young Kepublic of the West, and 
 echoing from the hillsides of the Alps and the 
 Apennines, along the valleys of the Rhine and 
 the Danube, such a protest would be heard 
 among the tottering dynasties like the roar of 
 advancing thunder. It would be wafted, on 
 its passage, by the ascending sighs of the na 
 tions ; it would gather into one the voices of 
 good men everywhere, and fall upon the startled 
 ears of the conspirators like a blast from the last 
 trumpet, calling them to judgrrux., 
 
 We have not the slightest apprehension that 
 such a course would result in war. In the 
 hazard of provoking a universal rising of the 
 European populations, we do not believe that 
 
126 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 any despot would be found bold enough to en 
 gage in a contest with an active and powerful 
 foreign antagonist, against the known public 
 law of the civilized world. That law, accord 
 ing to the dictates of justice, according to 
 the established usage, according to received 
 
 O O 
 
 writers, is the complete, sovereign, exclusive 
 independence of each nation, so long as it 
 trespasses on no other nation. All nations, 
 therefore, are interested in maintaining it, as 
 much as individuals are interested in maintain 
 ing the laws of the society to which they be 
 long. But, if it is to be thrown aside by the 
 supporters of absolutism whenever it pleases 
 them, then it must be disregarded by the sap- 
 porters of freedom whenever it pleases free 
 men. There cannot be, in reason or equity, a 
 right of intervention for one, and no right of 
 intervention for the other a right of systematic 
 and persistent combination for the despots, but 
 no right of combination for the democrats. If 
 the monarchs engage in a Holy Alliance, the 
 people must counteract them by another Holy 
 Alliance, in the spirit of Beranger s well-known 
 and beautiful poem. 
 
OUR FOREIGN INFLUENCE AND POLICY. 127 
 
 Should a war, however, spring out of it, in 
 what more just or magnanimous battle could 
 a great people engage? Unlike the contests 
 which have so often desolated our poor earth, 
 it would not be a strife for territory, nor for a 
 line of succession, nor for the subjection of 
 weak dependents, but a glorious struggle for 
 liberty, justice, and humanity for the stricken 
 rights of nations, for the violated majesty of 
 law, for enlarged human intercourse, and for 
 the golden rule of Christian civilization. 
 
 OCTOBER, 1853. 
 
ANNEXATION, 
 
 How many and loud are the objurgations 
 with which that pattern father of a family, Mr. 
 Bull, visits the marauding propensities of his 
 disinherited son, Jonathan? " The graceless 
 urchin," the old gentleman is constantly repeat 
 ing, " who has already grown so large that his 
 feet stick out far beyond his trowsers, is as 
 greedy as one of his own turkey-buzzards, and 
 as sharp and unconscionable as one of his own 
 peddlers. He has, during the very short time 
 that he has lived, cheated the poor Indians out 
 of twenty or thirty States ; has flogged Mexico 
 into the relinquishment of half a dozen more, 
 is bullying Spain for the surrender of Cuba, 
 has hoodwinked Kamehameha I., until he 
 scarcely knows whether the Sandwich Islands 
 are his own or not, and is deliberately survey 
 ing Japan with a view to some future landing ! 
 Was there ever a more unprincipled, insatiable, 
 
ANNEXATION. 129 
 
 rapacious, gormandizing Filibuster than that 
 same Jonathan, who fancies that the whole 
 world was made for use, and his use, too, and 
 has no more scruple about laying his hands upon 
 any part of it, than a fox has in satisfying his 
 hunger in a goose-pen !" 
 
 Having said this, Bull rolls up his eyes in the 
 most moral manner, heaves a lugubrious sigh, 
 and sits down to a perusal of the Times, which 
 contains several long colums of dispatches from 
 India, and a general account of the colonies 
 from Australia and the Cape, to the most north 
 ern iceberg on which Capt. Maclure has recent 
 ly hoisted the " meteor-flag." 
 
 He is somewhat consoled by the perusal, and 
 especially by the comments of the editor on the 
 inappeasable ambition of republics. They en 
 courage him into a sound appetite for his rolls 
 and coffee, after which he smilingly turns to 
 Punch, whose jokes upon yankee-doodledom 
 are very mirthful, causing John to split his fat 
 sides almost, over cunning exposures of Ameri 
 can hypocrisy, boastfulness, negro-driving, and 
 land-stealing. Meantime, the entertaining vol 
 umes of some traveler in " the States" are laid 
 6* 
 
130 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 upon his table, hot from the press, and brilliant 
 with the keenest sarcasms provoked by our vul 
 garity, which the facetious Cockney (who, if he 
 were called upon to read aloud what he had 
 written, could not pronounce his own mother 
 tongue,) shows up in a variety of the most 
 amusing lights. 
 
 Well, touching a great deal of this, which 
 gives John a good laugh, we shall have nothing 
 to say ; many of us enjoy it quite as much as 
 he can, and for bettter reasons ; but on the 
 subject of annexation, or the imputed zeal of 
 republics to grasp all they can get, we mean to 
 put in an apology, using that word in its anci 
 ent sense, as both a denial and a justification, 
 on the part of nations to take the property 
 We mean to prove, firstly, that a willingness 
 of their neighbors is no new thing under the 
 sun, so that if the United States had been 
 guilty of it, they would have been acting only 
 in a line of decided precedents. And we mean 
 to prove, secondly, that we have not been guilty 
 of it at all, in any injurious sense, while our 
 entire national action and diplomacy have been 
 more liberal, just, candid, and forbearing, than 
 
ANNEXATION. 131 
 
 those of any other nation. Yes ; you facetious 
 and vituperative Bulls ! we have been the first 
 among nations to set the example of an open, 
 generous, equitable international policy, and 
 whatever advances modern statesmen may have 
 made toward the substitution of highminded 
 negotiations for over-reaching intrigue and se 
 cret diplomacy, they have in nothing surpassed 
 us much calumniated republicans ! 
 
 Many of the foreign tourists and editors, who 
 chatter of American annexation, really seem to 
 suppose that annexation has never before been 
 heard of in the history of mankind. " Did you 
 ever !" they exclaim in tones of offended virtue, 
 like an old lady, who has just been told some 
 precious piece of scandal, forgetting, in the ex 
 cess of her indignation and surprise, the small 
 indiscretions of her own youth. " Did you ever? 
 These republicans must be actually insane in 
 their avidity for more lands ! Not satisfied 
 with the immense slice of the western conti 
 nent they now possess, they warn us Europeans 
 oft the rest of it, and are consumed with fiery 
 desires for the islands of the sea. Like the re 
 publics of old, like the republics of Italy, this 
 
IdZ POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 modern republic gives token of the character 
 istic weakness of its kind ; it must live by con 
 quest, and, like all its forerunners, swell until 
 it bursts." 
 
 Oh ! Crapaud and Bull, how can you utter 
 such nonsense ? Annexation is no new thing, 
 nor is it peculiarly republican ! Every page 
 of history is full of it, from the time of the ear 
 liest vagabond and fugitive, Cain, who built a 
 city in the land of Nod, which was not his, un 
 til the latest English war in Burmah ! It is the 
 one subject, indeed, the burden of human an 
 nals. The first command given to Noah, after the 
 flood, was to be fruitful, and multiply, and re 
 plenish the earth, or, as it may be translated, take 
 possession of the earth, and ever since, that divine 
 injunction, if no other, has been faithfully obey 
 ed by his descendants. Do we not all remem 
 ber, that the condition of the magnificent bless 
 ings which the Lord promised to Abram, was, 
 that he should begin a long process of annexa 
 tion, by " getting out of his own country, and 
 his own kindred, and his father s house," and 
 settling in another land ? What was the Exo 
 dus of the children of Israel, tinder Moses, but 
 
ANNEXATION. 133 
 
 a preparatory step to the seizure of Canaan, 
 which was no sooner taken than it was divided 
 by lot, among the* nine and a half tribes, the 
 other two and a half having already pocketed 
 their allowance on this side the Jordan ? And 
 what the whole subsequent career of the He 
 brews under Joshua, but a series of skirmishes 
 with their amiable neighbors, the Amorites, the 
 Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, etc., whose 
 country they had invaded, annexing " all the 
 land, the hills, the south country, the valley 
 and the plain, and the mountain of Israel and 
 the valley of the same ;" appropriating the cat 
 tle, despoiling the cities, smiting the kings, and 
 utterly routing and rooting out the people, so 
 that, as we are told, " not any one was left to 
 breathe !" Nor was this wholesale and slaugh 
 terous policy much changed under the judges 
 and the kings, in spite of the reverses experi 
 enced at the hands of the Moabites, the Midian- 
 ites, and the Philistines ; for, scarcely had they 
 recovered their power under Saul and David, 
 before they struck out again to the right and 
 left, burning cities, levying bond- service, and 
 converting everybody s territory to their own 
 
134 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 use. Jerusalem, their great city, fell a prey 
 at last to the same spirit, manifested by their 
 Roman neighbors ; yet, on* the heels of this 
 overwhelming disaster, the last vaticination of 
 the apostle of Patmos, as his prophetic eyes 
 swept down the tracks of time, was, that good 
 Christians every where should " inherit the land." 
 The fact is, that none of these Orientals were 
 ever over particular as to seizing the territories 
 of a friend. If they wanted what he possessed, 
 they took it, and gave him a drubbing if he ob 
 jected. As far back as we can penetrate in 
 their annals, even to those remote periods when 
 the twilight of tradition itself merges in the 
 primeval darkness, we find that their kings and 
 leaders were adepts in the annexing business, 
 carrying it on on a prodigious scale, and quite 
 regardless of the huge rivers of blood which 
 they often had to wade through, in the accom 
 plishment of their purposes. Some of them, 
 indeed, have left no other name behind them, 
 for the admiration of posterity, than that ac 
 quired in expeditions undertaken with the 
 laudable design of stripping a neighbor of his 
 possessions. We know little of Sesostris 
 
ANNEXATION. 135 
 
 and Semiramis ; but that little is enough to 
 justify Edmund Burke, in setting over against 
 the conquests of the former, about one million 
 of lives, and agakist those of the latter, about 
 three millions. " All expired," he exclaimed, " in 
 quarrels in which the sufferers had not the least 
 rational concern." Old Nebuchadnezzar, too, 
 who flourished in Babylon, according to the 
 Bible, what a thriving fellow he was in this line ! 
 The little state of Judea was scarcely a flea-bite 
 for him ; and though he despoiled Egypt, and 
 demolished Tyre, he was quite uncomfortable 
 until Phoenicia, Palestine, Syria, Media, Persia, 
 and the greater part of India, were added to 
 his already considerable farm. Nor, was he, 
 after all, to be compared to that series of mag 
 nificent Persian monarchs, who thought no more 
 of razing hundred-gated cities to the earth, and 
 laying hold of vast empires, than Barnum s 
 anaconda does of bolting a rabbit ? There was 
 first, Cyrus, a most prosperous gentleman, as 
 the good Xenophon relates, who overran pretty 
 much the whole of Asia ; and next, his promis 
 ing son, Cambyses, who took Tyre, Cyprus, 
 Egypt, Macedonia, Thrace, etc. ; and then his 
 
136 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 son again, Xerxes, "a chip of the old block," 
 and finally his descendants once more, Artaxerx- 
 es, first, second, and third all " chips of the old 
 block" what a way they had of sacrificing mil 
 lions upon millions of people in their little ter 
 ritorial disputes ? It was well, indeed, that the 
 Greeks, at Marathon, put a stop to the ravages, 
 or there is no telling to what extent they might 
 have carried their sanguinary sports perhaps 
 as far as Alexander of Macedon, who, begin 
 ning with a small strip in the south of Europe, 
 annexed patch after patch, until he became, be 
 yond all question, the largest landed proprietor 
 in the known world. A bird flying for several 
 days together in a straight line, could scarcely 
 have passed from the western to the eastern 
 boundaries of his dominions. A splendid an- 
 nexationist, truly, was the great Alexander ! 
 
 There was one of the ancient nations, more 
 modest than the rest, which we ought to except 
 from this career of conquest and spoliation ; for 
 during the greater part of its existence it was 
 content with its own moderate limits, and the 
 production of Iliads, Prometheus Vinctuses, Par- 
 thenons, and Orations de Corona. We refer to 
 
ANNEXATION. 137 
 
 Greece, which, being more republican than the 
 rest of the world, ought to have been, accord 
 ing to the modern theory, more omnivorous 
 than the rest. But Greece was poor-spirited 
 in comparison. She had become so enamored 
 with her own glorious skies and hills, was so 
 delighted with her own fair climate, and so be 
 sotted with a certain dreamy notion of beauty 
 and self-perfection, that, like a woman as she 
 was, she seldom passed beyond her own thresh 
 old. Not that she was afraid of fighting, either, 
 as certain places named Thermopylae and Sala- 
 mis bear witness ; but that she was quite des 
 titute of that grandeur of soul which led Belus, 
 Sesostris, and the other illustrious individuals 
 to whom we have referred, to cut their way to 
 glory, by cutting the throats of so many of 
 their fellow-humans. 
 
 We shall have to dismiss republican Greece, 
 then, as rather an untoward case, and turn to 
 imperial Rome. Ah ! how her records blaze 
 with exam pies of a thorough spirit of annexation ! 
 Suckled by a wolf in the beginning, Rome never 
 lost her original vulpine nature, but, to the 
 day of her dissolution, went prowling about the 
 
138 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 world, wherever there was a sheep-fold to break 
 into or an innocent lamb to be eaten. Look into 
 the index of any popular history of her triumphs, 
 and mark how it is composed of one unbroken 
 series of annexations ! Thus it reads : B. c. 283, 
 the Gauls and Etrurians subdued ; B. c. 278, 
 Sicily conquered ; B. c. 266, Rome mistress of all 
 Italy ; B. c. 264, the first Punic War ; B. c. 231, 
 Sardinia and Corsica conquered ; B. c. 224, the 
 Romans first cross the Po ; B. c. 223, colonies 
 of Placentia and Cremona established ; B. c. 
 222, Insularia (Milan) and Liguria (Genoa) 
 taken ; B. c. 213, the Second Punic War ; 
 B. c. 212, Syracuse and Sicily conquered ; B. c. 
 210, Scipio takes New Carthage; B. c. 204, 
 Scipio carries the war into Africa ; B. c. 195, 
 war made upon Spain ; B. c. 188, Syria reduced 
 to a Roman province ; B. c. 168, Macedon be 
 comes a Roman province ; B. c. 149, Third Pu 
 nic War and conquest of Corinth; B. c. 146, 
 Greece becomes a Roman province ; B. c. 135, 
 Spain a Roman province ; B. c. 133, Perga- 
 us a Roman province; B. c. 118, Dalmatia a 
 Roman province ; B. c. 105, Numidia becomes 
 a Roman province ; B. c. 99, Lusitania becomes 
 
ANNEXATION. 139 
 
 a Roman province ; B. c. SO, Julius Caesar s 
 first campaign and after that the reduction of 
 the world, from the hot sands of the desert, 
 south, to the fogs of Britain in the north, and 
 from the Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, in 
 the other direction. The veni, vidi, vici. in short, 
 was not an individual saying, but a universal 
 Roman maxim. 
 
 We might refer, too, now that we are on the 
 train of historical locomotion, to those extraor 
 dinary migrations of the German races, who 
 seem to have had no other object in life than 
 to overrun the territories of others, and who, 
 in the end, coming on like whirling sand-storms 
 of the desert, paid Rome in her own coin ; or 
 to those exciting episodes of the Middle Ages, 
 when myriads of pious and blood-thirsty cru 
 saders flung themselves upon Asia, to recover 
 the Holy Land ; or to the impartial ferocity 
 of the Spanish and Portuguese in their excur 
 sions over South America ; or to the lively 
 annals of treachery, freebooting, and assassina 
 tion by which the many great and royal houses 
 of Europe built up their power such as the 
 house of Bourbon, which gradually enlarged its 
 
140 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 right to a few acres, to a right coextensive with 
 France or to the house of Hapsburg, a small 
 German dukedom at the start, but now a 
 mighty empire in which a dozen kingdoms are 
 absorbed or to the house of Bonaparte, which 
 began without a sous to bless its stars with, 
 but which speedily enlarged its phylacteries, 
 and got itself warm on nearly all the thrones 
 of the Continent : or, in brief, to a hundred 
 other instances of enormous adventure and gi 
 gantic brigandage. But the truth is, that this 
 kind of thing is the staple and uniform of all 
 annals. 
 
 Kabelais, in his famous outline of conquest, 
 which the gallant statesmen of Pichricole pre 
 sented to that chivalric monarch, though he 
 has caught the spirit of this national Rob-Roy- 
 ism, combining its own largeness of view with 
 the easy effrontery of the swell-mob, hardly 
 equals veritable history. " You will divide 
 your army," said the Duke of Smalltrash, the 
 Earl of Swashbuckler, and Captain Durtaille, 
 who were Pichricole s advisers, " into two parts. 
 One shall fall upon Grangouzier and his forces ; 
 and the other shall draw towards Onys, Xain- 
 
ANNEXATION. 
 
 toigne, Angoumois, and Gascony. Then march 
 to Perigourt, Medos, and Elanes, taking, wher 
 ever you come, without resistance, towns, cas 
 tles, and forts ; afterwards to Bayonne, St. 
 John de Luz, to Fuentarabia, where you shall 
 seize upon all the ships, and, coasting along 
 Gallicia and Portugal, shall pillage all the mara- 
 time places even to Lisbon, where you shall be 
 supplied with all necessaries befitting a con 
 queror. By Copsodie, Spain will yield ; for 
 they are but a race of boobies ! Then are you 
 to pass by the Straits of Gibraltar, where you 
 shall erect two pillars more stately than those 
 of Hercules, to the perpetual memory of your 
 goodness, and the narrow entrance there shall 
 be called the Pichricolinal Sea. Having passed 
 the Pichricoliual Sea, behold Barbarossa yields 
 him your slave ! And you shall conquer the 
 kingdoms of Tunis, of Hippo, Argia, Bomine, 
 Corone, yea, all Barbary. Furthermore, you 
 shall take into your hands Majorca, Minorca, 
 Sardinia, Corsica, with the other islands of the 
 Ligustic and Balearian seas. Going along on 
 the left hand, you shall rule all Gallia, Narbonen- 
 sis, Provence, the Allobrogrians, Genoa, Flor- 
 
142 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ence, Lucca ; and then God be wi ye Rome ! 
 Italy being thus taken, behold Naples, Calabria, 
 Apulia, and Sicily, all ransacked, and Malta, 
 too ! Thence we will sail eastward, and take 
 Canadia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclade 
 Islands, and set upon the Morea. It is ours, 
 by St. Irenaeus ! and the Lord preserve Jerusa 
 lem !" With the enumeration of Lesser Asia 
 and the entire east of Europe, the imagination 
 of the monarch was excited, and he shouted, 
 " On, on, make haste my lads, and let him that 
 loves me, follow me !" 
 
 No! the fertile fancy of Rabelais, in the 
 broadest play of its fun, does not equal the 
 serious doings of some even of our modern 
 nations. " A century ago," says the latest 
 Blackwood, " Russia, still in the infancy of 
 civilization, was scarcely counted in the great 
 European family. Gigantic, indeed, have been 
 the forward strides she has since made, in 
 power, influence, and territory. On every side 
 she has extended herself; Sweden, Poland, Tur 
 key, Persia, have all in turn been despoiled or 
 partially robbed by her. North and south she 
 has seized upon some of the mnsl productive 
 
ANNEXATION. 143 
 
 districts of Europe; the Baltic provinces on 
 the one hand, Bessarabia and the Crimea on 
 the other." 
 
 Be it observed, however, in justice to critic 
 and criticized alike, that Russia is bashful, self- 
 denying, almost ascetic in her lust of annexa 
 tion, compared with another power, which we 
 shall not name, lest we should shock its deli 
 cate sensibilities. But we could tell, "an we 
 would," of a certain little island of the North 
 Atlantic, in itself scarcely bigger than a bed 
 spread, yet boasting of an empire on which the 
 sun never sets. It has annexed to its slender 
 chalk-cliffs, from year to year, one country 
 after another, until now it exclaims, in the 
 pride and plenitude of its dominion 
 
 " Quse regio in terris, nostra non plena laboris ? 
 
 which, in its own vernacular, means, " on what 
 part of the earth have we not gained a foot 
 hold?" In Europe, there are Scotland, Ireland, 
 the Orkneys, Gibraltar, Malta, Heligoland, and 
 the Ionian Isles ; in America, there are Upper 
 and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, 
 New Brunswick, Prince Edward s Island, New- 
 
144 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 foundland, and the Bermudas ; in the West 
 Indies, there are Jamaica, Barbadoes, St. Vin 
 cent, Tobago, Trinidad, Antigua, Dominica, 
 the Bahamas, Guiana, and a dozen more ; in 
 Africa, there are Good Hope, Mauritius, Sierra 
 Leone, Gambia, and St. Helena ; in Australia, 
 there are New South Wales, Western Austra 
 lia, Southern Australia, and Van Dieman s 
 Land ; and in Asia, there are, most monstrous 
 of all, Ceylon and India, with its dependencies. 
 Enough, one would say, in all conscience for a 
 reasonable ambition ; but it is not enough for 
 the people of that little island that model of 
 all the national proprieties which omits no 
 opportunity now for extending its possessions, 
 and almost with every steamer sends us word 
 of new acquisitions in the East ! 
 
 Alas ! we must repeat it, annexation is not 
 a new thing, not a peculiarity of republicans, 
 and of late American republicans, in particu 
 lar; not in any sense a novel iniquity over 
 which we are just called to moralize! It is a 
 practice as old as our race and as broad as our 
 race ; known to every people and every age ; 
 and as invariable, in its occurrence, as a natural 
 
ANNEXATION. 145 
 
 law. Wherever there have been weak nations 
 to pillage, and strong nations to pillage them ; 
 wherever there have been men, like those 
 splendid robbers of antiquity, willing to offer 
 hecatombs of lives to their insane w r ill to rule ; 
 wherever there have been chances opened to 
 military genius, to rapacious selfishness, to the 
 love of a row, to the hope of plunder, to the 
 appetite for distinction and blood, to the mere 
 vague, restless feeling for movement and change 
 there annexation has flourished. But, God 
 in heaven ! what a phantasmagoria of wrong, 
 outrage, and despotism, its career unfolds ! 
 What spoliations, ravages, wars, subjugations, 
 and miseries have marked its course ! What 
 crimson pictures it has painted on every page 
 of almost every history ! How the whole past, 
 as we look at it, comes rushing down upon our 
 vision, like a vast, multitudinous, many-w T inged 
 army ; with savage yells, with wild piercing 
 whoops, with ringing war-cries, with sackbuts, 
 arid cymbals, and trumpets, and gongs, and the 
 drowning roar of cannon ; naked heroes, shaggy 
 sheep-skinned warriors, glittering troops, pha 
 lanxes and serried legions, colossal cavalries ; 
 
146 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 now sweeping like frost-winds across the plains 
 now hanging like tempests on the mountains 
 now breaking in torrents through rocky de 
 files and now roaring like seas around the 
 walls of cities onward and downward they 
 come, irresistible, stormy, overwhelming : the 
 mighty host, the stupendous vanguard of never- 
 ending annexationists ! 
 
 Note, also, that it is not in conquest alone 
 that this spirit of aggrandizement has been ex 
 hibited; for, next to the history of conquest, 
 the most terrible book that could be written 
 would be a narrative of national colonization, 
 or of the peaceful attempts of nations to create 
 auxiliaries on distant shores. It would be a 
 second Book of Martyrs, eclipsing in atrocities 
 the rubric of Fox. It would show us innumer 
 able homes, in all lands, made vacant by forced, 
 or, quite as dreadful, voluntary exiles : the 
 pathways across the lonely seas, lined, like the 
 accursed middle passage of the slave-trade, 
 with the bones of victims cast down to watery 
 deaths ; the inoffensive natives of many a conti 
 nent and island driven mercilessly, by intrud 
 ers, to the jungles, or the swamps, or to the 
 
ANNEXATION. 147 
 
 solitary fastnesses of the mountains; weary 
 years of struggle on the part of the intruders 
 themselves against disease, against poverty, 
 against capricious and persecuting climates and 
 intractable soils, and against the cruel extor 
 tions and oppressions of remote administrations ; 
 and, as the end of all, failure, in its worst 
 forms, of industrial bankruptcy and social ruin. 
 Now, compared with the Brobdignagian 
 scoundrelism of the older nations, both in the 
 way of conquest and colonization, what have 
 we poor republican Americans done? Why 
 are we stigmatized, as offenders above all 
 others, or as the special representatives of that 
 national avidus alienum, which confesses neither 
 limit nor principle ? We have, since the com 
 mencement of our political existence, perfected 
 three things : we have entered the lands of the 
 Indians ; we have acquired Louisiana, Florida, 
 and Texas ; and we have beaten Mexico out of 
 California and a few other morsels of earth ; to 
 which let us add, that a few wild fellows of us 
 meditate some time or other getting possession 
 of Cuba, and, perhaps, of the Sandwich Islands. 
 That is positively the front and substance of all 
 
148 POLITIC AI ESSAYS. 
 
 our trespasses ! But in what manner have they 
 been committed ? 
 
 No one, we suppose, will question the pro 
 priety of our mode of acquiring Florida and 
 Louisiana, which were purchased honorably in 
 the open market ; therefore we will begin with 
 the poor Indians. We have robbed them of 
 their lands, it is said. But it is not so ; not a 
 rood of their land have we which has not been 
 honestly paid for, and more than paid for, as 
 land goes, and a thousand times paid for in 
 superior returns! De Tocqueville made this 
 charge in his book, and led Mr. Benton, who 
 was then in the Senate of the United States, to 
 call for a full " numerical and chronological 
 official statement of all our dealings with the 
 Indians, from the origin of the federal govern 
 ment in 1789 to his day, 1840," which he pro 
 cured from the department, making a full and 
 accurate list of every acre that we had ever 
 taken from any Indian tribe or individual. 
 What is the result ? Why, it appears from the 
 document, that the United States had paid to 
 the Indians eighty-five millions of dollars for 
 land purchases up to the year 1840, to which 
 
ANNEXATION. 149 
 
 five or six millions may be added for purchases 
 since say ninety millions. This is near six 
 times as much as the United States gave Na 
 poleon for Louisiana, the whole of it, soil and 
 jurisdiction, and nearly three times as much 
 as all three of the great foreign purchases 
 Louisiana, Florida, and California cost us ! 
 and that for soil alone, and for so much as 
 would only be a fragment of Louisiana or Cali 
 fornia. " Impressive," says the distinguished 
 statesman, to whom we are indebted for this 
 exposition of an Indian policy, " as this state 
 ment is in the gross, it becomes more so in 
 the detail, and when applied to the particular 
 tribes whose imputed sufferings have drawn so 
 mournful a picture from Mons. de Tocque- 
 ville." Fifty-six millions went to the four 
 large tribes, the"* Creeks, the Cherokees, the 
 Choctaws, and the Chickasaws, leaving thirty- 
 six millions to go to the small tribes whose 
 names are unknown to history, and which it is 
 probable the writer on American democracy 
 had never heard of when sketching the picture 
 of their fancied oppressions. Mr. Benton adds, 
 in respect of these small remote tribes, that, 
 
150 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 besides their proportion of the remaining thirty- 
 six millions of dollars, they received a kind of 
 compensation suited to their condition, and in 
 tended to induct them into the comforts of 
 civilized life. He gives one example of this 
 drawn from a treaty with the Osages in 1839, 
 which was only in addition to similar benefits 
 to the same tribe in previous treaties, and 
 which were extended to all the tribes which 
 were in the hunting-state. These benefits were, 
 "two blacksmith-shops, with four blacksmiths, 
 five hundred pounds of iron, and sixty pounds 
 of steel annually ; a grist and a saw-mill, with 
 millers for the same; 1,000 cows and calves; 
 2,000 breeding swine; 1,000 ploughs; 1,000 
 sets of horse-gear ; 1,000 axes; 1,000 hoes; a 
 house each for ten chiefs, costing two hundred 
 dollars a piece ; with six good wagons, sixteen 
 carts, twenty-eight yokes of oxen, with yokes 
 and log-chains for each chief; besides agreeing 
 to pay all claims for injuries committed by the 
 tribe on the white people, or on other Indians, 
 to the amount of thirty thousand dollars ; to 
 purchase their reserved lands at two dollars per 
 acre; and to give them six thousand dollars 
 
ANNEXATION. 151 
 
 more for certain old annuities. In previous 
 treaties had been given seed grains and seed 
 vegetables, with fruit seed and fruit trees, 
 domestic fowls, laborers to plough up their 
 ground and to make their fences, to raise crops 
 and save them, and teach the Indians how to 
 farm ; with spinning, weaving, and sewing im 
 plements, and persons to show their use." Now 
 all this, observes our authority, was in one 
 single treaty, with an inconsiderable tribe, 
 which had been largely provided for in the 
 same way in six different previous treaties! 
 But all the rude tribes those in the hunting- 
 state, or just emerging from it were provided 
 for with equal solicitude and liberality, the 
 object of the United States being to train them 
 to agriculture and pasturage, to conduct them 
 from the hunting to the pastoral and the agri 
 cultural state. Not confining its care, however, 
 to this, and in addition to all other benefits, the 
 United States have undertaken the support of 
 schools, the encouragement of missionaries, and 
 a small annual contribution to religious socie 
 ties who take charge of their civilization. More 
 over, the government keeps up a large estab- 
 
152 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 lishment for the special care of the Indians, 
 and the management of their affairs ; a special 
 bureau, presided over by a commissioner at 
 Washington City; superintendents in different 
 districts ; agents, sub-agents, and interpreters, 
 resident with the tribe ; and all charged with 
 seeing to their rights and interests seeing that 
 the laws are observed towards them; that no 
 injuries are done them by the whites ; that 
 none but licensed traders go among them; that 
 nothing shall be bought from them which is 
 necessary for their comfort, nor anything sold 
 to them which may be to their detriment. Had 
 the republic been actuated, in its intercourse, 
 by any of that selfish and infernal spirit which 
 animates the old monarchies, it would have 
 swindled or beaten the Indians out of their 
 possessions at once, and, in case of resistance, 
 put the whole race to the sword. 
 
 But it will be answered, " You have carried 
 them by force, from their ancient homes, from 
 the graves of their sires, and planted them in 
 new and distant regions !" We reply, that we 
 have done so, in the case of a few tribes, or, 
 rather, remnants of tribes, as a matter of abso- 
 
ANNEXATION. 153 
 
 lute necessity, and not in any grasping or un 
 kind spirit. A small, but savage and intractable 
 race suddenly surrounded by a powerful and 
 civilized people, whose laws and customs it 
 cannot or will not accept, but whose vices are 
 readily spread among them, has no other des 
 tiny but to die of its corruptions, to perish in 
 arms, or to be removed by gentle methods to 
 some more remote and untroubled hunting- 
 grounds. It was at the option of the United 
 States to choose either of these courses, and its 
 choice, on the advice of Jefferson, whose noble 
 fortune it has been to initiate so much of our 
 most wise and beneficent policy, fell upon the 
 most humane, peaceful, and considerate of the 
 three. Indeed, the language in which this plan 
 was urged, in the second inaugural address of 
 the eminent democrat we have just named, 
 may be used also as the language of the history 
 which records its execution? " The aborigines 
 of these countries," said he, " I have regarded 
 with the consideration their position inspires. 
 Endowed with the faculties and the rights of 
 men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and 
 independence, and occupying a country which 
 
154 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 left them no desire but to be undisturbed, the 
 streams of overflowing population from other 
 regions directed itself on these shores. With 
 out power to divert, or habits to contend 
 against it, they have been overwhelmed by the 
 current, or driven before it. Now reduced 
 within limits too narrow for the hunter-state, 
 humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture 
 and the domestic arts to encourage them to 
 that industry which alone can enable them to 
 maintain their place in existence, and to pre 
 pare them in time for that state of society 
 which, to bodily comforts, adds the improve 
 ment of the mind and morals." We have, 
 therefore, liberally furnished them with the 
 implements of husbandry and householding ; 
 we have placed instructors amongst them in 
 the arts of first necessity ; and they are covered 
 with the aegis of the law against agressors from 
 among ourselves. A few stubborn individuals, 
 misled by prejudice or ambition, and carrying 
 with them fragments of their tribes, have re 
 sisted the inevitable fate of their race, and have 
 compelled our authorities to subdue them by 
 arms ; but the greater part of the tribes have 
 
ANNEXATION. 155 
 
 gone to their new homes beyond the Missis 
 sippi cheerfully, and in peace. Some, like 
 the Cherokees, have been raised to a higher 
 civilization; and all are in a condition superior 
 to that in which they were found by our 
 people. 
 
 The annexation of Texas, secondly, it is 
 needless to dwell upon, because it was an 
 event so inevitable as a historical development, 
 and so clear in all its principles, that it requires 
 no justification. A bordering people, in the 
 natural increase of population and trade, settle 
 in a foreign state, where they acquire property 
 and rear families ; they gradually become citi 
 zens, and look upon the place as their home ; 
 but they are oppressed by the government, and 
 rise in revolt ; they carry on a successful revo 
 lution ; they organize and maintain a free and 
 stable government ; they are acknowledged as 
 independent by all the leading powers of Chris 
 tendom ; and then, to secure themselves from 
 external assault, and to acquire additional in 
 ternal strength led, too, by old and natural 
 affinities they seek a constitutional alliance 
 with the people to whom they formerly be- 
 
156 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 longed, and are still cordially attached. That 
 is the whole history of Texas ; and we see 
 nothing, in our yielding to her request for ad 
 mission to the rights and protection of the 
 Federal Union, that is in the least extraordi 
 nary, or atrocious, or greedy. As a question 
 of domestic policy, the annexation may have 
 properly divided opinion ; but as a question of 
 international relations, nothing could have been 
 more simply and obviously just. 
 
 Again : in respect to conquests, we have but 
 one to answer for that of Mexico ; and there 
 is nothing in either the commencement, the 
 course, or the end of that if even it may be 
 called a conquest for which the lover of his 
 country or humanity needs to blush. It was 
 a regular war, begun in vindication of the 
 clearest national rights, which had been out 
 raged ; carried on with vigor, but with the 
 strictest regard, also, to the most just and hon 
 orable principles ; and closed by a deliberate 
 treaty, in which, though it was in our power to 
 confiscate the whole nation, by reducing it to 
 the state of a dependent province, we refrained 
 from all arbitrary or exorbitant demands, and 
 
ANNEXATION. 157 
 
 agreed to pay generously for every acre of land 
 that we retained, and for every iota of loss we 
 had occasioned. It is true that the territories 
 thus acquired, proved, subsequently, through 
 their unexampled mineral deposits, to be of 
 priceless worth ; but this peculiar source of 
 value was unsuspected at the time, while it is 
 probable that, if they had remained in the same 
 hands, they might have been unknown to this 
 day. 
 
 Compare, then, the "annexation" of the 
 United States, for which it is so largely ridi 
 culed, or so roundly abused, with the same 
 process as it has been conducted by other na 
 tions ! Not w r ith those predatory expeditions 
 of the magnificent bandits of the East; not 
 with the Roman conquests, which were inces 
 sant scenes of violence and tyranny ; not with 
 the irruptions of the northern hordes, whose 
 boast it was that no grass grew where they had 
 trod ; not with the merciless and gory marches 
 of Pizarro or Cortes, because those were the 
 deeds of rude and brutal ages ; nor yet, even 
 with the stormy anabasis and katabasis, as De 
 Quincy somewhere calls it, when 
 
158 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 " The Emperor Nap. he did set off 
 On a pleasant excursion to Moscow ;" 
 
 but compare it with the more modern, and 
 therefore, we may suppose, the more just and 
 humane management of their external relations, 
 by any of the most advanced nations of Europe ! 
 With the treatment of Algiers by the French, 
 for instance ; or of Poland by Russia ; or of 
 Hungary and Italy by Austria ; or of Ireland 
 and India by England! We shall see the latter 
 subduing, plundering, depopulating, wherever 
 they spread ; maintaining their supremacy only 
 by armies of functionaries and soldiers, who 
 consume the substance and blast the industry 
 of their dependents ; and shaping their entire 
 policy with a single eye to their own interests. 
 We shall see, also, that they are hated and 
 cursed, with unrelenting bitterness, by their 
 victims. On the other side, WE own no sub 
 ject nations, no colonial victims, no trembling 
 provinces and we never desire to own them ; 
 we waste no fields, we ruin no cities, we ex 
 haust no distant settlements : the weak Indian 
 tribes among us, we have striven to redeem 
 and civilize ; the weak Mexican and Spanish 
 
ANNEXATION. 159 
 
 races about us, a prey to anarchy and misrule, 
 we offer the advantages of stable government, 
 of equal laws, of a flourishing and refined social 
 life ; and we aim at no alliances which are not 
 founded on the broadest principles of reciprocal 
 justice and goodwill. Away, then, with the 
 base calumnies which hold us up to the world 
 as a nation of reckless filibusters ! Away with 
 the European cant of the invading tendencies 
 of republicanism ! 
 
 "Our past, at least," as Webster said, "is 
 secure." It brings no crimson to our cheeks : 
 not, however, that our people are any better 
 in themselves than other people human nature, 
 we suppose, being much the same everywhere 
 but because our free and open institutions, 
 through which the convictions of men, and not 
 the interests of monarchs or families, are ex 
 pressed, incite no sinister and iniquitous pro 
 ceedings. The glory of Kepublicanism is, that 
 it is above-board, reflecting solely the extant 
 wisdom and justice of the aggregate of its 
 supporters.* 
 
 * It is honorable, in one sense, and yet humiliating, in 
 another, to confess that the greatest achievement of the United 
 
160 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Thus far, we have only disposed of the in 
 vectives of foreigners, showing what gratuitous 
 and unfounded malice they are ; but we have 
 yet to consider our subject in its most import 
 ant aspect its bearings upon the external 
 policy of the state. The annexation of con 
 tiguous territories, in one shape or another, is 
 a question that must constantly arise in the 
 course of our progress, and it is well for us to 
 know the true principles on which it should be 
 managed. 
 
 From the time that Adam was sent out of 
 the sunset gate of Eden, down to the exodus 
 of the Pilgrims, and the hegira from all lands 
 into the golden reservoirs of California, there 
 appears to have been a decided movement 
 southward and westward, of the populations of 
 the world. It was never constant and con 
 tinuous, and yet, contemplated in large epochs, 
 it was always discernible. By natural growth, 
 by the multiplying ties of trade, by warlike 
 excursions, by voluntary migrations, by revolu 
 tions, and by colonizations, the superior races 
 
 States yet, in the way of extinguishing a foreign people, was 
 the celebrated bombardment of Grey town. 
 
ANNEXATION. 161 
 
 of the great central cradles of Western Asia 
 have spread, pursuing the paths of the sun, 
 until they now quite circle the globe. Nor is 
 there any reason for believing that this diffusive 
 connatus will be stopped, while there remains a 
 remotest island, or secluded western nook, to 
 be reduced to the reception of Christianity and 
 European arts. An instinct in the human soul, 
 deeper than the wisdom of politics, more 
 powerful than the sceptres of states, impels 
 the people on, to the accomplishment of that 
 high destiny which Providence has plainly re 
 served for our race. 
 
 Annexation thus being an inevitable fact, it 
 would be in vain for the American people to 
 resist the impulses which are bearing all na 
 tions onward, to a closer union. Nor, when 
 we consider the attitude in which we are placed 
 towards other nations of the earth, is it desirable 
 for us, or them, that this influence should be 
 resisted. As the inheritors of whatever is best 
 in modern civilization ; possessed of a political 
 and social polity which we deem superior to 
 every other ; carrying with us, wherever we 
 go, the living seeds of freedom, of intelligence, 
 
162 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of religion ; our advent everywhere, but par 
 ticularly among the savage and stationary tribes 
 who are nearest to us, must be a redemption 
 and a blessing. South America and the islands 
 of the sea ought to rise up to meet us at our 
 coming, and the desert and the solitary places 
 be glad that the hour for breaking their fatal 
 enchantments, the hour of their emancipation, 
 had arrived. 
 
 If the Canadas, or the provinces of South or 
 Central America, were gathered into our Union, 
 by this gradual and natural absorption, by this 
 species of national endosmosis, they would at 
 once spring into new life. In respect to the 
 former, the contrasts presented by the river St. 
 Lawrence, which Lord Durham described, and 
 which are not yet effaced, would speedily dis 
 appear. " On the American side," he says, 
 " all is activity and bustle. The forests have 
 been widely cleared ; every year numerous 
 settlements are formed, and thousands of farms 
 are created out of the waste ; the country is 
 intersected by roads. On the British side, with 
 the exception of a few favored spots, where 
 some approach to American prosperity is ap- 
 
ANNEXATION. 163 
 
 parent, all seems waste and desolate. . . The 
 ancient city of Montreal, which is naturally the 
 capital of Canada, will not bear the least com 
 parison in any respect with Buffalo, which is a 
 creation of yesterday. But it is not in the 
 difference between the larger towns on the two 
 sides that we shall find the best evidence of 
 our inferiority. That painful but undeniable 
 truth is most manifest in the country districts, 
 through which the line of national separation 
 passes for a thousand miles. There on the side 
 of both the Canadas, and also of New Bruns 
 wick and Nova Scotia, a widely scattered po 
 pulation, poor, and apparently unenterprising, 
 though hardy and industrious, separated by 
 tracts of intervening forests, without town or 
 markets, almost without roads, living in mean 
 houses, drawing little more than a rude subsist 
 ence from ill-cultivated land, and seemingly 
 incapable of improving their condition, present 
 the most instructive contrast to their enterpris 
 ing and thriving neighbors on the American 
 side." 
 
 The Canadas have rapidly improved since 
 Durham wrote, galvanized into action chiefly 
 
164 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 by American example and energy, and the 
 larger freedom they now enjoy ; but what 
 might not their development be if wholly 
 emancipated and republicanized ? Or, still 
 more, in respect to the silent and barren regi 
 ons of the southern continent, what magical 
 transformations a change of political relations 
 would evoke ! The rich wastes given over to 
 the vulture and the serpent where the sun 
 shine and air of the most delicious climate fall 
 upon a desolation would blossom and put 
 forth like the golden-fruited Hesperides, open 
 ing a glorious asylum to the over-crowded 
 labor of southern Europe ; the immense rivers, 
 which now hear no sound, save their own com 
 plaining moan as they woo in vain the churlish 
 banks that spurn their offers of service, would 
 then laugh with ships, and go rejoicing to the 
 sea ; the palsy-smitten villages, broken into 
 pieces before they are built, would teem like 
 hives with " singing-masons building golden 
 eaves ;" and the scarcely human societies, lep 
 rous with indolence, or alternately benumbed 
 by despotism, or convulsed by wild, anarchical 
 throes, would file harmoniously into order, and, 
 
ANNEXATION. 165 
 
 like enchanted armies, when the spells of the 
 sorcerers are gone, take up a march of tri 
 umph : 
 
 " Such power there is in heavenly polity." 
 
 Nor would the incorporation of these foreign 
 ingredients into our body we mean by regular 
 and pacific methods, by a normal and organic 
 assimilation, and not by any extraneous force 
 or fraud swell us out to an unmanageable and 
 plethoric size. It is the distinctive beauty of 
 our political structure, rightly interpreted, that 
 it admits of an almost indefinite extension of 
 the parts without detriment to the whole. In 
 the older nations, where the governments as 
 sume to do everything, an increase of dimen 
 sions is always accompanied by an increase of 
 danger the head is unable to control the ex 
 tremities, which fly off into a St. Vitus s dance 
 of revolution, or the extremities are paralyzed, 
 through a congestion of despotic power in the 
 head. But with us there is no such liability : 
 the political power, dispersed and localized, the 
 currents of influence pass reciprocally from the 
 centre to the circumference, and from the cir- 
 
166 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 cumference to the centre, as in the circulation 
 of the blood ; and whether the number of 
 members in the system be more or less, the re 
 lations of strength between them and the head 
 remain pretty much the same ; or, rather, as 
 our federal force is the net result and quotient 
 of the contributions of the separate states, it 
 is rather strengthened than weakened by the 
 addition of new elements. Our circle of thirty- 
 one integers works as harmoniously as it did 
 when it was composed of only thirteen, while 
 the probability of rupture is lessened, from the 
 greater number which are interested in the 
 Union. A powerful community, like New York 
 or Ohio, might have its own way opposed to 
 a mere handful of smaller communities ; but 
 opposed to a vast network of communities, 
 though never so small in themselves, it would 
 be compelled to listen to reason. Indeed, the 
 dangers likely to arise in the practical workings 
 of our system will result from an excessive 
 centripetal, rather than centrifugal, tendency, 
 and the annexation of new states is, therefore, 
 one of the best correctives of the vice. 
 
 But be that as it may, it is clear that we 
 
ANNEXATION. 167 
 
 must maintain some relations to the other na 
 tions of the world, either under the existing 
 international law, or by treaty, or else by regu 
 lar constitutional agreement. Now, which of 
 the three is the best? International law, as 
 we all know, is the merest figment in practice, 
 proverbially uncertain in its principles, without 
 sanctions or penalties, and wholly ineffective 
 when it conflicts with the will of powerful 
 states, of which fact the whole continent of 
 Europe is witness. Treaties of amity and com 
 merce are often only temporary, and may be 
 abrogated at the option of the parties to them, 
 or openly violated, when one of the parties is 
 strong and unscrupulous, But a constitutional 
 union, an eternal and brotherly league of inde 
 pendent and equal sovereignties, is the most 
 permanent, peaceful, and unoppressive in which 
 states can be joined the wisest, strongest, and 
 happiest relation that can be instituted among 
 civilized nations. 
 
 The fears, therefore, that some express at 
 our assumed velocity and breadth of expansion, 
 are ill-founded, unmanly, and un-American. 
 If we ever had swept, or were likely to sweep 
 
168 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 over the earth, sirocco-wise, drinking the dews, 
 withering the grass, blearing the eyes of men, 
 or blistering their bodies, there would then be 
 some excuse for such apprehensions ; if we 
 proposed, as a few insane propagandists do, to 
 carry the slavery of the southern states abroad, 
 to blight, by its pestilent influences, the golden 
 tropics ; or, if in the might and intensity of the 
 centrifugal impulse there were danger of dislo 
 cating our own system, whirling the fragments 
 off into measureless space, it would become the 
 character of every patriot to shout a halt. But 
 Caucasians as we are, carrying the best blood 
 of time in our veins Anglo-Saxons, the inherit 
 ors of the richest and profoundest civiliza 
 tions : Puritans, whose religion is their most 
 imperishable conviction : native Yankees of in 
 domitable enterprise, and a capacity for govern 
 ment and self-government, which masters every 
 element the effeminacy of climate, the mad 
 ness of gold-hunting, the spite and rage of seas 
 and winds we go forth as a beneficent, not a 
 destructive agency ; as the bearers of life, not 
 death, to the prostrate nations to the over 
 ripe or the under-ripe alike to all who lie on 
 
ANNEXATION. 169 
 
 the margins of Bethesda, waiting for the good 
 strong arm to thrust them in the invigorating 
 pool. 
 
 Precisely, however, because this tendency to 
 the assimilation of foreign ingredients, or to 
 the putting forth of new members, is an inevi 
 table incident of our growth because, too, of 
 the manifest advantages to all concerned there 
 is no need that it should be specially fostered 
 or stimulated. It w r ill thrive of itself: it will 
 supply the fuel of its own fires ; and all that it 
 requires is only a wise direction. A masterly 
 inactivity is here emphatically the rule ; for it 
 will better secure us the desired result than 
 the noisy, proselytizing, buccaneering zeal of 
 over-hasty demagogues. The fruit will fall 
 into our hands when it is ripe, without an offi 
 cious shaking of the tree. Cuba will be ours, 
 and Canada and Mexico, too if we want them 
 in due season, and without the wicked imper 
 tinence of a war. Industry, commerce, silent 
 migrations, the winning example of high pros 
 perity, and of a freedom which sports like the 
 winds around an Order which is as firm as the 
 
 Pyramids, are grappling them by unseen ties, 
 
 8 
 
170 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and drawing them closer each day, and binding 
 them in a unity of intercourse, of interest and 
 of friendship, from which they will soon find it 
 impossible to break, if they would, and from 
 which, also, very soon, they would not break 
 if they could. Let us, then, await patiently the 
 dowries of time, whose promises are so com 
 placent and decided, 
 
 " Nor weave with bloody hands the tissue of our line." 
 
 It should be, moreover, always borne in 
 mind, as the truth most certain of all the truths 
 that have been demonstrated by the experience 
 of nations, that their home policy, their do 
 mestic relations, their internal development, the 
 concentration, not the dispersion, of their 
 energies, are the objects to which they should 
 devote their first and last, most earnest and 
 best regards. It is the most miserable and 
 ruinous of all ambitions which leads nations 
 into dreams of external domination and power. 
 The wars they engender, deadly as they 
 may be, are comparatively nothing to the 
 sapping drains and sluices they open in 
 the whole body, and every limb and mem- 
 
ANNEXATION. 171 
 
 ber of the state. " Ships, colonies, and com 
 merce," has been the cry of the Old World 
 cabinets, and the effects are seen in bankrupt 
 cies, in Pelions-upon-Ossas of debt, in rotten 
 courts, in degraded and impoverished peoples, 
 and in oppressed and decaying neighbor- 
 nations. 
 
 France, for instance, instead of giving a 
 chance to her thirty-six millions of lively and 
 industrious people, to recover and enrich their 
 soils, to open roads, to make navigable their 
 streams, and to build themselves up in know 
 ledge and virtue, has ever been smitten with an 
 insane love of foreign influence ; but might 
 rather have been smitten with the plague. She 
 has overrun and ruined Lombardy ; she has 
 overrun and paralyzed, if not ruined, the Ne 
 therlands and Holland ; she has overrun and 
 arrested the civilization of Catalonia ; she has 
 overrun and deeply wounded Belgium ; she has 
 been the perpetual enemy of the free cities of 
 Germany, stirring up thirty years war, and as 
 sisting Austria in infamous schemes of destruc 
 tion ; she has invaded Genoa, Sieily, Venice, 
 Corsica, Rome, suppressing them time and 
 
172 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 again with her armies ; she hangs like a night 
 mare upon Algeria ; she maintains penal colo 
 nies at Guiana and all with what gain to 
 herself? With what gain ? Look at the semi- 
 barbarism of her almost feudal rural popula 
 tion ; at the ignorance, licentiousness, and 
 crime of her cities ; at her vast agricultural 
 resources, not only not developed, but laden 
 with taxes and debt ; at her unstable govern 
 ments, shifting like the forms of a kaleidoscope ; 
 at her Jacqueries, her St. Bartholomews, her 
 dragonades, her Coups d Etat; her fusiladed 
 legislators, and her exiled men of science, and 
 her poets ! France, under a true decentralized 
 freedom, with the amazing talents of her quick 
 witted and amiable people, left to the construc 
 tion of their own fortunes, might now have 
 been a century in advance of where she is ; but 
 she followed the ignis fatmis of glory, of power 
 abroad instead of industry and peace at home ! 
 England, too, in spite of her noble qualities 
 and gigantic industry, has depopulated Ireland, 
 starved India, ruined her West India islands, 
 and half hamstrung the Canadas, in order to 
 make distant markets for her trade, and yet, her 
 
ANNEXATION. 173 
 
 poor at home are imbruted, half-starved, earn 
 ing only one-tenth of what they might for her, 
 while younger and freer nations are enticing 
 away the commerce of the very dependencies 
 which it has taken whole generations of wrong, 
 torture, and bloodshed to create ! 
 
 On the other hand, the United States, re 
 fraining from the spoliation of her neighbors, 
 devoting herself steadily to the tasks of indus 
 try set before her, welcoming the people of all 
 nations, poor and rich, restricting government 
 to its simplest duties, securing every man by 
 equal laws, and giving to every citizen oppor 
 tunities of honor, fortune, self-culture has, in 
 a short fifty years, overtaken the most advanced 
 nations, has left the others far in the rear, and, 
 in less than ten years from the date at which 
 we write, will take her stand as the first nation 
 of the earth without a rival without a peer, 
 as we hope without an enemy but, whether 
 with or without enemies, able, single-handed, 
 to dictate her terms, on any question, to a leash 
 of the self-seeking and decrepit monarchies of 
 Europe. By not aiming at foreign aggrandize 
 ment, of which she is so often recklessly ac- 
 
174 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 cused, she has reached a position which puts 
 it easily in her power. Her strength has been 
 in her weakness ; her ability to cope with the 
 world has grown out of her unwillingness to 
 make the attempt ; and behold her now a mag 
 nificent example of the good effects of peace, 
 justice, and hard work. God grant that she 
 may never find occasion to walk in the devious 
 paths of intrigue, or to raise the battle-cry of 
 invasion ; and God grant, too we ask it with 
 a double earnestness that she may not, in her 
 prosperity, forget those that are in adversity ; 
 that she may never take part with the oppres 
 sor, but give her free hand of sympathy to the 
 oppressed, whenever and wherever they shall 
 undertake the struggle for their rights ! 
 FEBRUARY, 1854. 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS," 
 
 AN individual, masked under the vulgar 
 name of SAM, furnishes just now a good deal 
 more than half the pabulum wherewith certain 
 legislators and journalists are fed. Whether he 
 is a mythical or real personage a magus or a 
 monkey nobody seems to know ; but we are 
 inclined to regard him as real, because of his 
 general acceptance among Dalgetty politicians, 
 and because of the irresistible merriment his 
 occasional " coming down" on something or 
 other affords the newspapers. We saw a 
 paunchy old gentleman the other day, with a 
 face like the sun, only more red and blue and 
 spotty, and a dismally-wheezy voice, who came 
 near being carried off with a ponderous apo 
 plectic chuckle, which seized him when some 
 body casually observed that " Sam was pitching 
 into the police," and he was only relieved from 
 the fatal consequences by a series of desperate 
 
176 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 movements which resembled those of a seventy- 
 four getting under-way again after the sudden 
 stroke of a typhoon. Now, if Sam was not 
 unquestionably a real personage, and this old 
 gentleman unquestionably a real disciple of his, 
 we are at a loss to account for the reality of the 
 phenomena thus exhibited. 
 
 But whether real or mythical, it has been 
 impossible for us to raise our admiration of Sam 
 to the popular pitch. After due and diligent 
 inquiry, we have arrived at only a moderate 
 estimate of his qualities. In fact, considering 
 the mystery in which he shrouds his ways, we 
 are disposed to believe that he is more of a 
 Jerry Sneak than a hero. The assumption of 
 secresy on the part of any one, naturally starts 
 our suspicions. We cannot see \vhy he should 
 resort to it, if he harbors only just or generous 
 designs. We associate darkness and night with 
 things that are foul, and we admire the saying, 
 that twilight even, though a favorite with 
 lovers, is also favorable to thieves. Schemes 
 which shrink from the day, which skulk behind 
 corners, and wrieule themselves into obscure 
 
 7 oO 
 
 and crooked places, are not the schemes we 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 177 
 
 
 love at a venture. And all the veiled prophets, 
 
 we apprehend, are very much like that one we 
 read of in the palace of Merou, who hid his face, 
 as he pretended to his admirers, because its 
 brightness would strike them dead, but in 
 reality because it was of an ugliness so mon 
 strous that no one could look upon it and 
 live. 
 
 There is an utterance, however, imputed to 
 this impervious and oracular Sam, which we 
 cordially accept. He is said to have said that 
 " America belongs to Americans" -just as his 
 immortal namesake, Sam Patch, said that 
 " some things could be done as well as others" 
 and we thank him for the concession. It is 
 good, very good, very excellent good as the 
 logical Touchstone would have exclaimed pro 
 vided you put a proper meaning to it. 
 
 What is America, and who are Americans ? 
 It all depends upon that, and, accordingly as 
 you answer, will the phrase appear very wise 
 or very foolish. If you are determined to con 
 sider America as nothing more than the two or 
 three million square miles of dirt, included be 
 tween the Granite Hills and the Pacific, and 
 
178 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Americans as those men exclusively whose 
 bodies happened to be fashioned from it, we 
 fear that you have riot penetrated to the real 
 beauty and significance of the terms. The soul 
 of a muck-worm may very naturally be con 
 tented with identifying itself with the mould 
 from which it is bred, and into which it will 
 soon be resolved; but the soul of a man, unless 
 we are hugely misinformed, claims a loftier 
 origin, and looks forward to a nobler destiny. 
 
 America, in our sense of the word, embraces 
 a complex idea. It means not simply the soil, 
 with its coal, cotton, and corn, but the nation 
 ality by which that soil is occupied, and the 
 political system in which such occupants are 
 organized. The soil existed long before Ves 
 pucci gave it a name as long back, it may be, 
 as when " the morning stars sang together" 
 but the true America, a mere chicken still, dates 
 from the last few years of the eighteenth cen 
 tury. It picked its shell for the first time amid 
 the cannon-volleys of Bunker Hill, and gave its 
 first peep when the old State House bell at 
 Philadelphia rang out "liberty to all the land." 
 Before that period, the straggling and depend- 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 179 
 
 ent colonies which were here were the mere 
 spawn of the older nations the eggs and em 
 bryos of America, but not the fully-fledged bird. 
 It was not until the political constitution of 
 S9 had been accepted by the people that 
 America attained a complete and distinctive 
 existence, or that she was able continuing the 
 figure with which we began to spread her 
 " sheeny vans," and shout a cock-a-doodle to 
 the sun. 
 
 It would be needless, at this day, to state 
 w r hat are the distinguishing principles of that 
 political existence. They have been pro 
 nounced ten thousand times, and resumed as 
 often in the simple formula which every school 
 boy knows the government of the whole peo 
 ple by themselves and for themselves. In other 
 words, America is the democratic republic not 
 the government of the people by a despot, nor 
 by an oligarchy, nor by any class, such as the 
 red-haired part of the inhabitants, or the blue- 
 eyed part ; nor yet a government for any other 
 end than the good of the entire nation but the 
 democratic republic, pure and simple. This is 
 the political organism which individualizes us, 
 
180 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 or separates us as a living unity from all the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 All this, of course, would be too elementary 
 to be recounted in any mature discussion, if re 
 cent events had not made it necessary to an 
 adequate answer of our second question who, 
 then, are Americans? Who constitute the 
 people in whose hands the destinies of America 
 are to be deposited? 
 
 The fashionable answer in these times is, 
 " the natives of this Continent, to be sure !" 
 But let us ask again, in that case, whether our 
 old friends Uncas and Chingachgook, and Kag- 
 ne-ga-bow-wow whether Walk-in-the-water, 
 and Talking-snake, and Big-yellow-thunder, 
 are to be considered Americans par-excellence ? 
 Alas, no ! for they, poor fellows ! are all trudg 
 ing towards the setting sun, and soon their red 
 and dusky figures will have faded in the darker 
 shadows of the night. Is it, then, the second 
 generation of natives they who are driving 
 them away w 7 ho compose exclusively the 
 American family ? You say, yes ; but we say, 
 no ! Because if America be, as we have shown, 
 more than the soil of America, we do not see 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 181 
 
 how a mere cloddy derivation from it entitles 
 one to the name of American. Clearly, that 
 title cannot enure to us from the mere argilla 
 ceous or silicious compounds of our bodies 
 clearly, it descends from no vegetable ancestry 
 clearly, it must disdain to trace itself to that 
 simple relationship to physical nature which 
 we chance to enjo}^ in common with the skunk, 
 the rattlesnake, and the catamount. All these 
 are only the natural productions of America 
 excellent, no doubt, in their several ways but 
 the American man is something more than a 
 natural product boasting a moral or spiritual 
 genesis, and referring his birth-right to the 
 immortal thoughts, which are the soul of his 
 institutions, and to the divine affections, which 
 lift his politics out of the slime of state-craft, 
 into the air of great humanitary purposes. 
 
 The real American, then, is he no matter 
 whether his corporeal chemistry was first ig 
 nited in Kamschatka or the moon who, aban 
 doning every other country, and forswearing 
 every other allegiance, gives his mind and heart 
 to the grand constituent ideas of the republic 
 to the impulses and ends in which and by which 
 
182 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 alone it subsists. If he have arrived at years 
 of discretion if he produces evidence of a ca 
 pacity to understand the relations he undertakes 
 if he has resided in the atmosphere of free 
 dom long enough to catch its genuine spirit 
 then is he an American, in the true and best 
 sense of the term. 
 
 Or, if not an American, pray what is he ? An 
 Englishman, a German, an Irishman, he can no 
 longer be ; he has cast off the slough of his old 
 political relations forever ; he has asserted his 
 sacred right of expatriation (which the United 
 States was the first of nations to sanction), or 
 been expatriated by his too ardent love of the 
 cause which the United States represents ; and 
 he can never return to the ancient fold. It 
 would spurn him more incontinently than pow 
 der spurns the fire. He must become, then, 
 either a wanderer and a nondescript on the face 
 of the earth, or be received into our generous 
 republican arms. It is our habit to say that we 
 know of no race nor creed, but the race of man 
 and the creed of democracy, and if he appeals 
 to us as a man and a democrat, there is no al 
 ternative in the premises. We must either 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 183 
 
 deny his claims altogether deny that he is a 
 son of God and our brother or else we must 
 incorporate him, in due season, into the house 
 hold. It is not enough that we offer him shel 
 ter from the rain not enough that we mend 
 his looped and windowed ragged ness not 
 enough that we replenish his wasted midriff 
 with bacon and hominy, and open to his palsied 
 hands an opportunity to toil. These are com 
 mendable charities, but they are such charities 
 as any one, not himself a brute, would willingly 
 extend to a horse found astray on the common. 
 Shall we do no more for our fellows ? Have 
 we discharged our whole duty, as men to men, 
 when we have avouched the sympathies we 
 would freely render to a cat ? Do we, in truth, 
 recognize their claims at all, when we refuse to 
 confess that higher nature in them, whereby 
 alone they are men, and not stocks or animals ? 
 More than that : do we not, by refusing to con 
 fess a man s manhood, in reality heap him with 
 the heaviest injury it is in our power to inflict, 
 and wound him with the bitterest insult his 
 spirit can receive ? 
 
 We can easily conceive the justness with 
 
184 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which an alien, escaping to our shores from the 
 oppressions of his own country, or voluntarily 
 abandoning it for the sake of a better life, 
 might reply to those who receive him hospita 
 bly, but deny him political association : " For 
 your good-will, I thank you for the privilege 
 of toiling against the grim inclemencies of my 
 outcast and natural condition, which yo.u offer, 
 I thank you for the safeguard of your noble- 
 public laws, I thank you ; but the blessed God 
 having made me a man, as well as you when 
 you refuse me, like the semi-barbarians of 
 Sparta, all civil life when, with Jewish ex- 
 clusiveness, you thrust me out of the holy 
 temple, as a mere proselyte of the gate your 
 intended kindnesses scum over into malignity, 
 and the genial wine-cup you proffer brims 
 with wormwood and gall." 
 
 We are well aware of the kind of outcry 
 with which such reasoning is usually met. We 
 know in what a variety of tones from the 
 vulgar growl of the pot-house pugilist to the 
 minatory shriek of the polemic, frenzied with 
 fear of the Scarlet Lady it is proclaimed that 
 all foreign infusions into our life are venomous, 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 185 
 
 and ought to be vehemently resisted. Nor do 
 we mean to deny the right of every communi 
 ty to protect itself from hurt, even to the forci 
 ble extrusion, if necessary, of the ingredients 
 which threaten its damage. But that necessi 
 ty must be most distinctly proved. The case 
 must be one so clear as to leave no doubt of it, 
 as an absolute case of self-defense. Now, 
 there is no such overruling necessity with us, 
 as to compel either the exclusion, or the ex 
 trusion, of our alien residents. They are not 
 such a violent interpolation, as when grains of 
 sand, to use Coleridge s figure, have got be 
 tween the shell and the flesh of the snail 
 that they will kill us if we do not put them 
 out and keep them out. A prodigious hue and 
 cry against them wakes the echoes of the 
 vicinage just now, such as is raised when a 
 pack of hungry foxes stray into the honest 
 hen-roost, but the clamor is quite dispropor 
 tionate to the occasion. The foxes are by no 
 means so numerous or predacious as they are 
 imagined to be, and there is no such danger of 
 them for the future that we need to be trans 
 fixed with fright, or scamper away in a stam- 
 
186 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 pede of panic terror. The evils which our 
 past experience of Naturalization has made 
 known to us for there are some are not un 
 manageable evils, requiring a sudden and spas 
 modic remedy, and menacing a disastrous over 
 throw unless they are instantly tackled. The 
 most of them are like the other evils of our 
 social condition mere incidents of an infantile 
 or transitional state of a life not yet arrived 
 at full maturity and will be worked off in the 
 regular course of things. At any rate, they 
 solicit no headstrong, desperate assault ; only 
 a consciousness of what and where our real 
 strength is, and patient self-control. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a fixed conviction 
 of ours, in respect to this whole subject of 
 aliens that there is much less danger in ac 
 cepting them as citizens, under almost any cir 
 cumstances, than there would be in attempting 
 to keep them out. In the latter case, by separat 
 ing them from the common life of the commu 
 nity making them amenable to laws for which 
 they are yet not responsible taxing them for 
 the support of a government in which they are 
 not represented calling upon them for pur- 
 
" AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 187 
 
 poses of defense when they have no real coun 
 try to defend we should in effect erect them 
 into a distinct and subordinate class, on which 
 we had fastened a very positive stigma, or 
 degradation. How lamentable and inevitable 
 the consequences of such a social contrast ! 
 
 The reader, doubtless, has often seen a 
 wretched oak by the way-side, whose trunk is 
 all gnarled and twisted into knots ; or he may 
 have passed through the wards of a hospital, 
 where beautiful human bodies are eaten with 
 ulcers and sores ; or he may have read of 
 the Pariahs of India, those vile and verminous 
 outcasts, who live in hovels away from the 
 cities, and prey on property like rats and wea 
 sels ; or, again, chance may have led him 
 through the Jews quarters, the horrid ghettos 
 of the old continental towns, where squalor 
 accompanies ineffable crime ; or, finally, his 
 inquiries may have made him familiar with the 
 free blacks of his own country, with their hope 
 less degradations and miseries ! Well, if these 
 experiences have been his, he has discerned in 
 them the exponents in some, the symbols, and 
 in others, the actual effects of the terrible 
 
188 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 spirit of exclusion, when it is worked out in 
 society. For, it is a universal truth, that 
 whatever thing enjoys but a partial participa 
 tion of the life to which it generically belongs, 
 gets, to the extent of the deprivation, diseased. 
 It is also as universal a truth, that the spread 
 of that disease will, sooner or later, affect the 
 more living members. Make any class of men, 
 for instance, an exception in society ; set them 
 apart in a way which shall exclude them from 
 the more vital circulations of that society ; 
 place them in relations which shall breed in 
 them a sense of alienation and of degradation 
 at the same time and they must become 
 either blotches or parasites, which corrupt it ; 
 or else a band of conspirators, more or less ac 
 tive, making war upon its integrity. Let us 
 suppose that some ruler, a Louis Napoleon, or 
 Dr. Francia, should decree that all the inhabit 
 ants of a certain country, of oblique or defect 
 ive vision, should be rigidly confined to one 
 of the lower mechanical occupations; would 
 not all the squint-eyed and short-sighted peo 
 ple be immediately degraded in the estimation 
 of the rest of the community ? Would not 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 189 
 
 the feeling of that debasement act as a perpet 
 ual irritant to their malice lead them to hate 
 the rest, and to prey upon them and so feed 
 an incessant feud open or sinister, as the in 
 jured party might be strong or weak between 
 the strabismic families and those of a more 
 legitimate ocularity ? In the same way, but 
 with even more certainty and virulence of ef 
 fect, any legal distinctions among a people, 
 founded upon differences of birth or race, must 
 generate unpleasant and pernicious relations, 
 which, in the end, could only be maintained by 
 force. Say to the quarter million of foreigners 
 who annually arrive on our shores, that like 
 the metoikoi and perioikoi of the Greeks, they 
 may subsist here, but nothing more ; that the 
 privileges of the inside of the city, suffrage, 
 office, equality, ambition, are closed to them ; 
 that they may sport for our amusement in the 
 arenas, look on at our courts, do our severer la 
 bors for us, and reverently admire our great 
 ness ; but that they shall have no part nor lot 
 in that political life which is the central and 
 distinguishing life of the nation ; and, so far 
 forth, you convert them, infallibly, into ene- 
 
190 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 mies into the worst kind of enemies, too 
 because internal enemies, who have already ef 
 fected a lodgment in the midst of your citadel. 
 Coming as an invading army these thousands 
 with avowed unfriendly purposes they 
 might easily be driven back by our swords : 
 but coming here to settle and be transmuted 
 into a caste into political lepers and vaga 
 bonds they would degenerate into a moral 
 plague, which no human weapon could turn 
 away. Proscribed from the most important 
 functions of the society in which they lived, 
 they would cherish an interest separate from 
 the general interest, and, as they grew stronger, 
 form themselves into an organized and irritable 
 clanship. Their just resentments, or their in 
 creasing arrogance, would sooner or later pro 
 voke some rival faction into conflict ; and then 
 the deep-seated, fatal animosities of race and 
 religion, exasperated by the remembrance of 
 injuries given and taken, would rage over so 
 ciety like the winds over the sea. 
 
 History is full of warnings to us on this 
 head. No causes were more potent, in sunder 
 ing the social ties of the ancient nations, than 
 
191 
 
 the fierce civil wars which grew out of the 
 narrow policy of restricting citizenship to the 
 indigenous races. No blight has fallen with 
 more fearful severity on Europe than the blight 
 of class domination, which, for centuries, has 
 wasted the energies and the virtues, the happi 
 ness and the hopes, of the masses. Nor is 
 there any danger that threatens our own coun 
 try now scarcely excepting slavery more 
 subtile or formidable than the danger which 
 lurks in those ill-suppressed hatreds of race and 
 religion, which some persons seem eager to 
 foment into open quarrel. Already the future 
 is walking in to-day. The recent disgraceful 
 exhibitions in this city the armed and hostile 
 bands which are known to be organized the 
 bitter taunts and encounters of their leaders 
 the low criminations of the Senate-house the 
 pugilistic melee, ending in death the instant 
 and universal excitement the elevation of a 
 bully of the bar-room into the hero of a cause 
 the imposing funeral honors, rivaling in pa 
 geantry and depth of emotion the most solemn 
 obsequies that a nation could decree its noblest 
 benefactor all these are marks of a soreness 
 
192 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which needs only to be irritated to suppurate 
 in social war. 
 
 Our statesmen at Washington are justly sens 
 ible of the dangers of sectional divisions ; but 
 no sectional divisions which it is possible to 
 arouse are half so much to be dreaded as an in 
 flamed and protracted contest between natives 
 and aliens, or Catholics and Protestants. The 
 divisions which spring from territorial interests 
 appeal to few of the deeper passions of the 
 soul ; but the divisions of race and religion 
 touch a chord in the human heart which vi 
 brates to the intensest malignity of hell. Ac 
 cordingly, the pen of the historian registers 
 many brutal antagonisms, many lasting and 
 terrible wars ; but the most brutal of all those 
 antagonisms, the most lasting and terrible of 
 all those wars, are the antagonisms of race, and 
 the wars of religion. 
 
 It will be replied to what we have hitherto 
 urged, that our argument proceeds upon the 
 imputation, that aliens are to be totally ex 
 cluded from political life ; whereas, nobody 
 proposes such a thing, but only a longer pre 
 paratory residence. 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 193 
 
 We rejoin, that the persons and parties who 
 are now agitating the general question, because 
 they propose the exclusion of adopted citizens 
 from office, do, in effect, propose a total politi 
 cal disqualification of foreigners. All their in 
 vectives, all their speeches, all their secret 
 assemblages, have this end and no other. They 
 agree to ostracize politically every man who is 
 not born on our soil ; they conspire not to 
 nominate, to any preferment, not to vote for, 
 any candidate who is born abroad ; and these 
 agreements and conspiracies are a present dis- 
 franchisement, so far as they are effective, of 
 every adopted citizen, and a future anathema 
 of every alien. Whether the aim be accom 
 plished by public opinion, by secret conclave, 
 or by law, the consequences are the same ; and 
 the general objections we have alleged, to the 
 division of society into castes, apply with equal 
 force. 
 
 We rejoin again in respect to the distinc 
 tion made between a total exclusion of foreign 
 ers, and a change in the naturalization laws 
 that it is a distinction which really amounts to 
 nothing. For, firstly, if the probation be ex- 
 
 9 
 
194 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tended to a long period, say twenty-one years 
 as some recommend, it would be equivalent to 
 a total exclusion; and, secondly, if a shorter 
 period, say ten years, be adopted, the change 
 would be unimportant, because no valid objec 
 tion against the present term of five years 
 would thereby be obviated. Let us see, for a 
 moment. 
 
 Firstly, as to a term of twenty-one years : 
 we say that, inasmuch as the majority of for 
 eigners who arrive on our shores are twenty- 
 five years of age and over, when they arrive, if 
 we impose a quarantine of twenty-one years 
 more, they will not be admitted as citizens un 
 til they shall have reached an age when the 
 tardy boon will be of little value to them, and 
 when their faculties and their interests in hu 
 man affairs will have begun to decline. Whether 
 they will care to solicit their right at that pe 
 riod is doubtful, and, if they do, they can re 
 gard it as scarcely more than a mockery. How 
 many of them will live to be over forty-five 
 or fifty years of age, if we leave them in the 
 interval to loiter in the grog-shops, and amid 
 scenes of vice, as they are more likely to do if 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 195 
 
 not absorbed into the mass of citizens ? How 
 many, having passed twenty-one years of po 
 litical ban, and even of ignominy for it would 
 come to that would be thereby better pre 
 pared for adoption? The younger ranks of the 
 emigrants might possibly benefit by the hope 
 of one day becoming citizens, and look forward 
 to it with some degree of interest ; but to all 
 the restit would be a fata morgana, and the 
 protracted test virtually an interdiction. 
 
 Secondly, as to any shorter novitiate, say ten 
 or twelve years, it would not be more effective, 
 in the way of qualifying the pupil, than the 
 existing term. As the laws now stand, an alien, 
 giving three years notice of intention, must 
 have been five years consecutively a resident 
 of the United States, and one year a resident 
 of the State and County in which he applies 
 must be of good moral character must be at 
 tached to our constitution and laws must ab 
 jure all foreign powers, particularly that he 
 was subject to and must swear faithful alle 
 giance to the government of his adoptive coun 
 try before he can be admitted a member of 
 the State. What more could be exacted of 
 
196 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 him, at the end of ten years, or twenty? If 
 unfit for acceptance according to these re 
 quirements at the end of five years, would 
 he be more likely to be fit at the end of ten ? 
 In short, is there a single disqualification, 
 which zealous nativists are apt to allege against 
 foreigners such as their ignorance, their clan- 
 nishness, their attachment to foreign govern 
 ments, and their subjection to the Roman 
 Catholic Church which would be probably 
 alleviated by means of a more protracted em 
 bargo ? None ; on the contrary, as we have 
 intimated in another place, all their worse 
 qualities would be aggravated by the exclusive 
 association among themselves for so many years 
 longer, in which they would be kept while 
 they would lose, as we shall show more fully 
 hereafter, the best means of fitting themselves 
 for good citizenship, in losing the educational 
 influences of our actual political life. 
 
 It is true, in respect to the present laws of 
 naturalization, that our courts have shown a 
 baneful laxity in enforcing their conditions, and 
 that our leading parties, corrupt everywhere, 
 are nowhere more corrupt than in their modes 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 197 
 
 of naturalizing foreigners ; but there is no rea 
 son to expect that either courts or parties will 
 grow more severe under more stringent laws. 
 They will have the same motives, and be just 
 as eager, to license fraudulent voters then as 
 they are now ; and the few days before a great 
 Presidential election will exhibit the same dis 
 graceful scenes of venality and falsehood. No 
 simple change in the time of the law, at any 
 rate, can work any improvement. Nor will such 
 a change render it any more difficult for the 
 dishonest alien to procure the franchise. He 
 can just as easily swear to a long residence as 
 a short one ; while it will happen, that the 
 rarer we make the privilege, the more we in 
 crease the difficulties of access to it, the longer 
 we postpone the minority, the greater will be 
 his inducements to evade the law. In propor 
 tion as a prize becomes more valuable, the 
 temptations to a surreptitious seizure of it in 
 crease ; but where an end is easily achieved, 
 the trouble of waiting till it be obtained in the 
 regular way is preferred to the hazards of a 
 clandestine or criminal attempt to carry it 
 off. 
 
198 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Besides, it is a puerile piece of injustice to 
 wards the alien, to inflict him with a disability 
 because of our own laches. We have failed to 
 administer our laws as they should be, and, ex 
 periencing some injury in consequence, we turn 
 round to abuse the foreigner, like a foolish and 
 petulant boy who kicks the stone over which 
 he stumbled. The more magnanimous as well 
 as sensible course would be, to amend our own 
 faults. Let us make the five years of proba 
 tion what the courts may easily make them, by 
 rigidly exacting the criterions of the law an 
 interval of real preparation for citizenship 
 and the present term will be found long enough. 
 But whether long enough or not, the question 
 of time, that is, whether it shall be five years 
 or ten, is a simple question of internal police, 
 not of lasting principles, to be determined by 
 the facts of experience, and by no means justi 
 fying the virulent and wholesale denunciations 
 of foreigners it is the fashion with some to ful 
 minate. 
 
 In fact, the entire logic of the nativists is 
 vitiated by its indiscriminating character. Be 
 cause a large number of the Irish, and a con- 
 
199 
 
 siderable number of the Germans, have been 
 reduced, by the long years of abuse which they 
 have suffered at home, to an inferior manhood, 
 it is argued, that all the rest of the Germans 
 and the Irish, and all the Swiss, English, French, 
 Scotch, Swedes, and Italians, must be made to 
 suffer for it ; but what a grievous error ! The 
 poor exiles and refugees, many of them, are, no 
 doubt, sufficiently debased some, even, exces 
 sively insolent, too but among them are 
 others who are not so among them, are thou 
 sands upon thousands of men, of hardy virtues 
 and clear intelligence, whose industry contri 
 butes vastly to the wealth, as their integrity 
 does to the good order, of our society. Labor 
 ing like slaves for us, they have built our cities 
 and railroads ; piercing the western wilds, they 
 have caused them to blossom into gardens; 
 taking part in our commerce and manufactures, 
 they have helped to carry the triumphs of our 
 arts to the remotest corners of the globe. It 
 was from their ranks that our statesmanship re 
 cruited Gallatin, Morris, and Hamilton that 
 the Law acquired Rutledge, Wilson, and Em 
 met that the Army won its Gates, its Mer- 
 
200 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 eer, and its Montgomery the Navy its Jones, 
 Blakeley, and Barry the Arts their Sully, and 
 Cole Science, its Agassiz, and Guyot Phi 
 lanthropy, its Eliot, and Benezet, and Religion 
 its Witherspoon, its White, its Whitfield, and 
 its Cheverus. 
 
 The adopted citizen, no doubt, preserves a 
 keen remembrance of his native land ; but 
 " lives there on earth a soul so dead" as not to 
 sympathize in that feeling? Let us ask you, 
 oh patriotic Weissnicht, all fresh as you are 
 from the vociferations of the lodge, whether 
 you do at heart think the less of a man because 
 he cannot wholly forget the play-place of his 
 infancy the friends and companions of his boy 
 hood the old cabin in which he was reared - 
 and the grave in which the bones of his honor 
 ed mother repose ? Have you never seen two 
 long-separated friends, from the Old World, meet 
 again in the New, and clasp each other in a 
 warm embrace, while their conversation blos 
 somed up, from a vein of commom memory, in 
 
 * Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth ; 
 
 and did you not love them the more, in that 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 201 
 
 their eyes grew liquid with the dear old themes ? 
 Or is there, in the whole circle of your large 
 and respectable private acquaintance, a single 
 Scotchman to whom you refuse your hand be 
 cause his affections melt under the " Auld lang 
 syne" of Burns, or because his sides shake like 
 a falling house when "Halloween" or "Tarn 
 O Shanter" is read ? Can you blame even the 
 poor Frenchman if his eyes light up into a kind of 
 deathless glow, when the " Marseillaise," twist 
 ed from some wandering hurdy-gurdy, has yet 
 power to recall the glorious days in which his 
 fathers and brothers danced for liberty s sake 
 and with gay audacity, towards the guillotine ? 
 We venture to say for you, no ! and we believe, 
 if the truth were told, that often, on the lonely 
 western plains, you have dreamed over again 
 with the German his sweet dream of the resur 
 rection and unity of the Fatherland. We have 
 ourselves seen you at the St. George dinners, 
 oh Weissnicht, swell with a very evident pride, 
 when some flagrant Englishman, recounting, 
 not the battles which his ancestors for ten cen 
 turies had won on every field of Europe, but 
 
 the better trophies gained by Shakespeare, Mil- 
 9* 
 
202 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ton, Bacon, or Cromwell, told you that a little 
 of that same blood coursed in your veins ! The 
 tell-tale blood, as it tingled through your body 
 and suffused your cheeks, confessed the fact, if 
 your words did not ! How, then, can you, who 
 gaze at Bunker Hill with tears in your eyes, 
 arid fling up your hat of a Fourth of July with 
 a jerk that almost dislocates the shoulder, retire 
 to your secret conclave, and chalk it up behind 
 the door, against the foreigner, that he has a 
 lingering love for his native country ? Why, he 
 ought to be despised if he had not, if he could 
 forget his heritages of old renown ; for it is this 
 traditional tenderness, these genial memories of 
 the immortal words, and deeds, and places, that 
 constitute his patronymic glories, which show 
 that he has a human heart still under his jacket, 
 and is all the more likely, on account of it, to 
 become a worthy American. Do not delude 
 yourself, however, into the shallow belief that 
 the aliens, because of these sentimental attach 
 ments, will be led into the love of their native 
 governments, which, having plundered them 
 and their class, for years, at last expelled 
 them to our shores. Ah ! no poor devils 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 203 
 
 they have not been so chucked under the chin, 
 and fondled, and caressed, and talked pretty 
 to, and fed with sweet-cakes, and humored in 
 all sorts of self-indulgences, by the old despot 
 isms as to have fallen in love with them, forever 
 and ever. On the contrary, if the reports are 
 true, quite other endearments were showered 
 upon them such as cuffs and kicks with a 
 distinct intimation, besides, as Mr. Richard 
 Swiveller said to Mr. Quilp, after pounding him 
 thoroughly, that " there were plenty more in the 
 same shop a large and extensive assortment 
 always on hand and every order executed with 
 promptitude and dispatch." Now, these are 
 experiences that are apt to make republicans 
 of men, and to fill them with other feelings 
 than those of overweening attachment to their 
 oppressors ! 
 
 But this is a slight digression, and we return 
 to the main current of our argument, to say 
 what we esteem quite fatal to all schemes for 
 excommunicating foreigners, or even greatly 
 extending their minority that the best way, 
 on the whole, for making them good citizens, 
 is to make them citizens. The evils of making 
 
204 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 them a class by themselves, we have already al 
 luded to, and we now speak, on the other hand, 
 of the benefits which must accrue to them and 
 to us from their absorption into the general life 
 of the community. It is universally conceded 
 by the liberal writers on government and socie 
 ty, that the signal and beneficent advantage of 
 republican institutions (by which we mean an 
 organized series of local self-governments) is, 
 that their practical influences are so strongly 
 educational. They train their subjects constantly 
 into an increasing capacity for their enjoyment. 
 In the old despotic nations as we are all aware 
 where the State is one thing and the people 
 another the State is, in reality, a mere ma 
 chine of police, even in its educational and re 
 ligious provisions maintaining a rigid order, 
 but acting only externally on the people, whom 
 it treats either as slaves or children. It 
 does not directly develop the sense of responsi 
 bility in them, nor accustom them to self-con 
 trol and the exercise of their faculties. But in 
 free commonwealths which abhor this exces 
 sive centralizing tendency, and which distrib 
 ute power through subordinate municipalities, 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 205 
 
 leaving the individual as much discretion as 
 possible the people are the state, and grow in 
 to each other as a kind of living unity. Thrown 
 upon their own resources, they acquire quick 
 ness, skill, energy, and self-poise ; yet, made re 
 sponsible for the general interests, they learn 
 to deliberate, to exercise judgment, to weigh 
 the bearings of public questions, and to act in 
 reference to the public welfare. At the same 
 time, the lists of preferment being open to them, 
 they cultivate the virtues and talents which 
 will secure the confidence of their neighbors. 
 Every motive of ambition and honor is address 
 ed to them, to improve their condition, and to 
 perfect their endowments ; while a conscious 
 ness of their connection with the state, imparts 
 a sense of personal worth and dignity. In prac 
 tice, of course, some show themselves insensi 
 ble to these considerations, but a majority do 
 not. The consequence is, that the commonalty 
 of the republic are vastly superior to the same 
 classes abroad. Compare the farmers of our 
 prairies to the boors of the Russian steppes, or 
 to the peasants of the French valleys ! Or com 
 pare the great body of the working men in 
 
206 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 England with those of the United States ! Now, 
 the American is not of a better nature than the 
 European for he is often of the same stock 
 nor is there any charm in our soil and climate 
 unknown to the soil and climate of the other 
 hemisphere ; but there is a difference in insti 
 tutions. Institutions, with us, are made for 
 men, and not men for the institutions. It is 
 the jury, the ballot-box, the free public assem 
 blage, the local committee, the legislative as 
 sembly, the place of trust, and, as a result of 
 these, the school and the newspaper, which 
 give such a spur to our activities, and endow 
 us with such political competence. The actual 
 responsibilities of civil life are our support 
 and nutriment, and the wings wherewith we 
 
 % 
 
 If, consequently, you desire the foreigner to 
 grow into a good citizen, you must subject him 
 to the influences by which good citizens are 
 made. Train him as you are yourselves trained, 
 under the effective tutelage of the regular rou 
 tine and responsibility of politics. He will 
 never learn to swim by being kept out of the 
 water, any more than a slave can become a 
 
" AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 207 
 
 freeman in slavery. He gets used to independ 
 ence by the practice of it, as the child gets 
 used to walking by walking. It is exercise 
 alone which brings out and improves all sorts 
 of fitnesses social as well as physical and the 
 living of any life alone teaches us how it is to be 
 best lived. Nor will any one work for an end in 
 which he and his have no part. They only act 
 for the community who are of the community. 
 Outsiders are always riders. They stand or sit 
 aloof. They have no special call to promote the 
 internal thrift and order, which may get on as it 
 can, for all them. But incorporate them into it, 
 and it is as dear as the apple of their eye. Choose 
 a person selectman of the village, and he con 
 ceives a paternal regard for it instantly, and 
 makes himself wondrously familiar with its af 
 fairs, and their practical management. Show a 
 rude fellow the possibility of a place in the po 
 lice, and he begins to think how important the 
 execution of the law is. Hang the awful dig 
 nity of a seat on the justice s bench before the 
 ambition of the country squire, and straight 
 way he looks as wise as Lord Eldon, and will 
 strive to become so, rather than otherwise. 
 
208 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 How the prospect, too, of a winter at Albany 
 or Washington stimulates all the local nota 
 bles into a capacity for it, as well as a desire. 
 Thus, our whole political experience is an in 
 cessant instruction, and should no more be with 
 drawn from any class in society than the at 
 mosphere. It is prettily told, in that book of 
 Eastern fables which delights our youth and 
 enriches our manhood, that the father of Alad 
 din Abushamat, lest he should be hurt by the 
 world, kept him under a trap-door, where he 
 was visited only by two faithful slaves. But, 
 pining and weary, the young man one day stole 
 from his retreat, and running to his father, who 
 was syndic of the merchants, said : "Oh, my 
 father, how shall I be able to manage the great 
 wealth thou hast gained for me, if thou keepest 
 me here in prison, and takest me not to the 
 markets, where I may open a shop, and sit 
 among the merchandise, buying and selling, and 
 taking and giving ?" The father thought for 
 awhile, and said: " True, my son ; the will of 
 God be done ; I will take thee to the market- 
 street and the shops," and we are told that Alad 
 din Abushamat became, though not without 
 
"AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS." 20b 
 
 some slips, a very rich man, as well as the right 
 hand of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid, 
 Prince of the Faithful, whose name be ever ex 
 alted ! 
 
 MAY, 1855. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 
 ONE cause of the current movement against 
 
 O 
 
 foreigners is, the hereditary aversion of Protest 
 ants to the Roman Church. It is alleged, that 
 the doctrines of that Church assert the right of 
 the Pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of 
 kingdoms and states, while they demand for 
 him the exclusive allegiance of its members ; 
 and the inference is, that no one professing those 
 doctrines can yield an honest allegiance to any 
 other power. 
 
 We propose to inquire how far these posi 
 tions are true ; and, if true, to what extent 
 and in what way we ought to resist their dan 
 gers. 
 
 Before doing so, it may be proper to premise, 
 that we have not been educated to any over 
 weening estimate of the claims of the Catholic 
 Church. On the contrary, all our studies and 
 observations, as well as our general habits of 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 211 
 
 thought, have led us into convictions utterly 
 hostile to its theories of government and its 
 creeds. It seems to us a^ singular mixture of 
 fanaticism, tyranny, cunning, and religion. Nor 
 are we insensible of its many means of influ 
 ence, and of the vast prestige with which it 
 addresses itself both to the imagination and rea 
 son of men. Its venerable age, connecting it 
 with the most ancient and splendid civilizations, 
 Oriental, Grecian, Roman, and feudal, and sur 
 viving them all its marvelous organization, 
 combining the solidest strength with the most 
 flexile activity, conciliating the wildest fanatical 
 zeal with the coolest intellectual cunning, adapt 
 ing it to every age, nation, and exigency, and 
 enabling it to pursue its designs with continu 
 ous and varied forces its imposing ceremonies 
 and pantomimes, which seem like mummery to 
 the stranger, but to the initiated are signs of 
 the mighty conquests it has achieved over the 
 mythologies, the rites, and the persecutions 
 of antiquity, as well as promises of the consol 
 ing grace which will again sustain it, should the 
 hand of the enemy drive it once more into the 
 catacombs and the caves its luxurious patron- 
 
212 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 age of art, which has preserved to us so much 
 of all that is best in the touching music, the 
 lovely paintings, and the sublime cathedrals of 
 the middle age and, above all, the unques 
 tionable ability of its priests, with the long line 
 of noble and beautiful spirits Abelards, Pas 
 cals, and Fenelons who have illustrated his 
 tory by their culture, their piety, and their 
 genius these are elements of greatness and 
 power, which it would be folly as well as blind 
 ness in any one to overlook or deride. But, as 
 we are convinced, also, that there are influences 
 stronger than these the influences of truth 
 of the soul of man of the spirit of the age of 
 the providence of God, which has established a 
 moral order in history, we are not dismayed by 
 the amount of its ecclesiastical pretension, nor 
 disheartened by any seeming facility or splendor 
 in its temporary successes. 
 
 Least of all, shall we allow ourselves to be 
 betrayed, by the chronic terrors of Protestants, 
 into an unjust judgment of Catholics, and the 
 consequent perpetration of political wrong. We 
 are too familiar with the history of religious con 
 troversy, to be hurried away by the furious zeal 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 213 
 
 of agitators, who regard it as their special mis 
 sion to arouse the world to a proper dread of 
 the abuses of Popery. They are sincere, we 
 have no doubt ; but it is the sincerity of parti 
 sans, not of judges. They have worked their 
 impatience of error up to that inflammatory 
 pitch, where conviction becomes passion. Of 
 tolerable self-complacency and quietude, in 
 other respects, they are apt to be shaken out of 
 their shoes when the subject of the " Scarlet 
 Woman" is broached. It has all the effect upon 
 them we say it with reverence of the red rag 
 upon some imperious turkey, who, straightway, 
 loses his solemn port and dignity, and rushes 
 wildly to the battle. 
 
 Even the more temperate polemics, on the 
 Protestant side of this controversy, do not al 
 ways restrain their ardor at judgment-heat. 
 Having convinced themselves that Rome not 
 ecclesiasticisni in general, but the particular 
 branch of it called Rome is the great Anti- 
 Christ of Scripture, they incontinently belabor 
 her with every variety of scriptural reproba 
 tion. All the monstrous types of apocalyptic 
 zoology, the beasts with seven heads and ten 
 
214 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 horns, the red and black horses, the eagles, the 
 calves, and the fiery flying serpents, are made 
 to find in her their living resemblance, while 
 she is loudly proclaimed to be the man of per 
 dition, the mother of harlots, the mystic Baby 
 lon, who makes the nations " drunk with the 
 wine of the wrath of her fornications."* 
 
 It happens, unfortunately for the Church, 
 that it is not difficult to give plausibility to 
 these views, and, to some extent, a justification 
 of such reactionary hatreds, from the records 
 of history. Ecclesiastical annals (and the same 
 is true, perhaps, of all other annals), tried by 
 the standard of existing opinions, are so full of 
 whatever is insolent in assumption, corrupt in 
 morals, cunning and treacherous in fraud, and 
 detestable in tyranny, that a mere tyro, with a 
 case to make out, might draw pictures from 
 them that would frighten a college of cardinals, 
 and much more a conclave of credulous zealots. 
 Dip into these annals anywhere, but especially 
 
 * In this application, however, of the great symbols of the 
 Apocalypse to actual events, instead of spiritual truths, they 
 have the illustrious precedent of Dante, Petrarch, Machia- 
 velli, and some, even, who lived in the previous century. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 215 
 
 into what relates to the doings from the ninth 
 to the fifteenth centuries, and how much wick 
 edness of every kind you meet ! What au 
 dacity, licentiousness, superstition, ignorance, 
 fraud, uproar, and cruel ferocity of persecu 
 tion ! The dread power of the Papacy seems 
 to bestride those ages like a gigantic spectre 
 of the Brocken. It rises before us as some 
 thing awful, mysterious, and desolating. Re 
 moved, as we are by many generations, from 
 the scenes of its action, we still see the flash 
 of its lightnings, and still hear the roar of its 
 thunders, as the bolts fall swiftly and terribly 
 about the heads of emperors and kings. The 
 air is sultry with a- fee ling of oppression ; and the 
 soul, in its recoil from the gloom and sorrow 
 that darkens and sobs around it, loses all sense 
 of the true proportions of things, and fancies that 
 everything was evil then, and nothing good. 
 
 But, take up any party or principle, in an 
 unfriendly spirit, to trace its affinities among 
 the parties and principles of former times, and 
 you may place it in similarly disreputable com 
 pany. Thus, you may illustrate monarchy by 
 the excesses of the Oriental kings, or the Ro- 
 
216 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 man Caesars ; you may make aristocracy re 
 sponsible for the nobles of the middle ages ; and 
 democracy for the peasant-wars and French 
 revolutions of a later day. A person opposed 
 to the Church of England, might say that it is 
 still an unrepealed canon with her that papists 
 and dissenters may be choked to death for their 
 errors.* Another, opposed to Calvinism, would 
 show Calvin, Beza, and Melancthon urging the 
 incremation of Servetus. A third would tell us 
 of the Huguenots roasting papal priests, while 
 they were themselves singed with the fires of 
 St. Bartholomew ; or of the Scotch parliament, 
 with eight thousand Scotchmen dead at the 
 hands of the Stuarts, decreeing death against 
 the profession of Episcopacy ; or, of the good 
 Puritans, flying to the wilderness to escape and 
 to establish spiritual despotism. In short, no 
 sect or party can look with entire complacency 
 upon the deeds of its ancestors, and no sect or 
 party has a right to interpret the great lessons 
 of history in a narrow, sectarian spirit. 
 
 Now, it seems to us, that the Catholics are 
 
 * See Arnold s Miscellaneous "Works, page 188, Apple- 
 ton s edition. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 217 
 
 criticised too entirely in this one-sided way. 
 Their opponents, drawing a drag-net through 
 the impure streams of the middle-ages, bespat 
 ter them with all the rubbish that the cast 
 brings up. It is forgotten that those ages were 
 ages, in many respects, of the grossest barbarism 
 and blindness ; that anarchy and outrage reigned 
 everywhere ; that opinion was unformed, and 
 authorities at war ; and that if the conduct of 
 the hierarchy, stretching across such long pe 
 riods of general violence, exhibits much that is 
 rapacious, cruel, and malignant, it was often 
 redeeemed by the valuable services which the 
 same hierarchy rendered to the cause of learn 
 ing, art, social discipline, popular progress, and 
 European unity. 
 
 The representations, therefore, which dwell 
 upon the evils of those times exclusively, are 
 violent daubs or grotesque caricatures, and not 
 historical pictures. They remind us of certain 
 galleries in Italy, where the walls teem with 
 fagots, stakes, gridirons, broiling martyrs, and 
 a horrible array of distorted human anatomy, 
 unrelieved by one sweet face, or a single smil 
 ing landscape. 
 10 
 
218 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We have DO disposition to palliate the horrid 
 deeds of ancient churchmen, nor to disguise the 
 lessons of history ; but we think that, at this 
 late day, ecclesiastical battles might be fought 
 with other weapons than those the illustrious 
 Molly Seagrim used, when she drove her neigh 
 bors out of the sacred enclosure with thigh 
 bones, skulls, and bits of old tomb-stone. 
 History is only instructive when it is read in 
 the light of philosophy. Its events cannot be 
 properly used as isolated facts, nor the charac 
 ters it presents us judged of by the standards 
 of modern opinion. Every age and nation must 
 be viewed in its peculiar relations. Every age 
 and nation has its own methods and its own 
 ideas. The boy is not the man ; the man of 
 the ninth century is not the man of the nine 
 teenth ; and the etiquette of the court of Queen 
 Victoria cannot be applied to the court of 
 Queen Pomare. That which might have been 
 good government, in one time and place, would 
 be very bad government in another time and 
 place ; and a course of conduct which seems 
 simply impudent and senile in Gregory XVI., 
 may have beeeu exalted and beneficial in 
 Gregory VII. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 219 
 
 These remarks, commonplace as they are, 
 have an important bearing upon the particular 
 question before us the temporal power of the 
 Popes which is commonly treated as if the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries could be revived, 
 and old Hildebrand true son of fire, as he was 
 named start again from the grave where he 
 has rested nearly a thousand years. They for 
 get that that power is no longer a present ter 
 ror, but a simple historical phenomenon. It 
 had its origin in the inevitable circumstances 
 and necessities of society, at a particular stage 
 of its progress, and, having served its ends, 
 sometimes salutary, and sometimes quite other 
 wise, it has been dismissed by a kind Provi 
 dence to the limbo of things not wanted on 
 earth. 
 
 In illustration, let us refer to a few promi 
 nent historical facts, as to the origin and cul 
 mination of the papal power : 
 
 1. The foundation of every temporal or spir 
 itual enormity, into which the Church was 
 destined to run, was laid in the opinion, which 
 early obtained, that Christ had founded an ex 
 ternal institution, to be the medium of the new 
 
220 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and divine life. It was not only an unavoida 
 ble inference from this, in logic, that such a 
 body should be supreme in its moral authority, 
 but it was also an unavoidable practical deduc 
 tion that the administrators of its ordinances 
 should become among the most wealthy and 
 powerful personages in secular society. 
 
 2. The conversion of Constantine added pro 
 digiously to the temporalities of the Church, 
 but, most of all, by conferring judicial and civil 
 jurisdiction upon the bishops. His successors 
 pursued the same policy, with some exceptions, 
 and anybody who will read the Theodosian and 
 Justinian codes, will see that the clergy, long 
 before the fifth century, were in the possession 
 of large patrimonies, were joined in the civil 
 and financial administration of the provinces, 
 were judges in the courts allowed to decree 
 temporal penalties, and often took part in the 
 imperial councils. 
 
 3. In the distribution of ecclesiastical rank, 
 following generally the political divisions of 
 the Empire, the preeminence fell, of course, to 
 the See of the imperial city the foremost city 
 of the world. Its local position, fortified by 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 221 
 
 old renown, and the traditions of St. Peter s 
 special favor, made it a centre of attraction and 
 reverence to the faithful everywhere, but par 
 ticularly to the churches among the barbarians, 
 which its zeal had planted, and which were 
 ever eager to testify their respect and submis 
 sion to the venerable mother. 
 
 4. When the Empire was transferred to the 
 East an event that ought to have diminished 
 the importance of the Roman Church it hap 
 pened that the distractions of the times turned 
 that event into an occasion of its increasing 
 power. The emperors, absorbed in their east 
 ern troubles, left the Church almost the only 
 authority in the western provinces. Their rep 
 resentatives, the miserable exarchs, for the most 
 part plunderers and despots, could not rival the 
 priests in the affections of the people. As the 
 imperial authority grew weaker, therefore, the 
 authority of the Roman Bishop grew stronger. 
 The senate, as well as the populace, came to 
 regard him as their true head ; so that the Em 
 peror, no longer able to control his affairs, and 
 glad of the assistance of so eminent and influ 
 ential a lieutenant, readily confirmed the pow- 
 
222 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ers which necessity, no less than general con 
 sent, had conferred. 
 
 5. When, finally, the Popes threw off the 
 reins of the Emperors, and invited the King 
 of the Franks to protect them from the savage 
 incursions of the Lombards, it was clear that 
 the Emperors were too weak to defend and 
 retain the Italian provinces, and the exigency 
 absolutely required an extraordinary interven 
 tion. The policy of Stephen II. and Adrian I., 
 then, which gave great extension to the tem 
 poral sovereignty of the Popes, was quite in 
 evitable under the circumstances. They stepped 
 in to save society at a time when there was 
 nobody else in a position, or having the will, to 
 do so ; and Pepin and Charlemagne, as the 
 actual conquerors of the Lombards, when they 
 confirmed, by solemn grants, the possessions of 
 St. Peter, gave the only constitutional sanction, 
 known to the laws of the epoch, to what was 
 held by the more legitimate title of ability, 
 virtue, service, and the tacit consent of the 
 people. 
 
 6. In the midst of the turbulent and almost 
 anarchical feudal society, the Pope appeared, 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 223 
 
 not only as a prince among princes, but as a 
 prince superior to all princes, by virtue of his 
 peculiar ecclesiastical eminence. He was natu 
 rally resorted to as an umpire in the settlement 
 of disputes, and large fiefs were added to his 
 jurisdiction, either to propitiate his favor or as 
 a reward for distinguished services. As the 
 laws of the Roman empire, moreover, had been 
 principally retained in the monarchies which 
 succeeded it, all the immunities and privileges 
 of the clergy were preserved, and even extend 
 ed, and their intimate association with the 
 temporal power enlarged. 
 
 7. The Holy See, at once the centre of re 
 ligion and learning, was also the only authority 
 of any kind universally acknowledged. The 
 princes, at war perpetually amongst them 
 selves, each in turn invoked its aid against the 
 encroachments of his neighbors. They were 
 all equally solicitous to secure its favor, even 
 to the extent of consenting to do homage for 
 their kingdoms, as if they were held from the 
 Pope. Nor were the Popes, whose conduct 
 exhibited a singular mixture of zealous piety 
 and worldly ambition, backward in accepting a 
 
224 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 vassalage tendered alike from motives of inter 
 est and devotion. In proof of the state of feel 
 ing, we may mention that, when the crusades 
 came on, sovereigns and soldiers alike, regard 
 ing the Popes as the natural leaders of the 
 great religious wars, often placed their persons 
 and properties under their protection. Politi 
 cal affairs were arranged in the Pope s presence, 
 treaties concluded, routes of inarch selected, 
 and questions of precedence decided. 
 
 8. The right to depose princes, however, 
 grew more directly out of the power of excom 
 munication, which the Church had asserted 
 from the earliest times. At first, this ban 
 worked only a forfeiture of ecclesiastical rights, 
 but after the sovereigns took the Church in 
 hand, civil disabilities were attached to its 
 infliction. The unhappy person who incurred 
 it, was not only shut out of the assemblies of 
 the faithfiii, and banished their society, but he 
 was declared civilly dead, and his dignities, 
 rights, and possessions, fell away from him, 
 like leaves from a tree smitten by the light 
 ning. All the legislation of the princes con 
 curred in giving validity to ecclesiastical laws, 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 225 
 
 and in confirming the jurisdiction of bishops 
 by civic penalties. When the Popes, there 
 fore, insisting upon the impartiality of God s 
 judgments, which could make no distinction 
 between peasant and prince, applied the same 
 ban to sovereigns which they applied to serfs, 
 they exercised a power to which the sovereigns 
 themselves had consented, and whose legiti 
 macy they never questioned as to its general 
 grounds, and only as to the justice of its appli 
 cation in the particular case. 
 
 Thus, innumerable circumstances in the po 
 litical relations, the external events, and the 
 moral opinions of the time, prepared the way 
 for those tremendous assertions of supreme 
 temporal sovereignty, which were begun by 
 Gregory VII., in his deposition of Henry, and 
 continued with vigor, for two or three centu 
 ries, by his successors. They are circumstances 
 which do not wholly acquit the Popes of the 
 charge of usurpation, but which yet show that 
 their conduct was not, as it is often represented 
 to have been, utterly indefensible. There was 
 
 a color of law even for their most high-handed 
 10* 
 
226 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 interferences, sanctioned as they were by the 
 political constitution of the age, no less than 
 by its prevailing religious convictions. 
 
 On the other hand, as this system of conjoint 
 spiritual and temporal authority had its rise in 
 the circumstances of the time, so it found its 
 fall in its own inherent weakness. Viewed 
 absolutely, it was a violation of both reason 
 and religion, and was only provisionally a good. 
 At the height of its prevalence, it was already 
 dissolving. Firstly, it could not escape re 
 flecting minds, that every resort to force, direct 
 or indirect, by a body professing a spiritual 
 origin and genesis, was fundamentally incon 
 sistent with its nature and end, and these 
 minds were more or less openly at war with 
 the policy of the Church. In the second place, 
 the enormous wealth which flowed into its 
 treasury, in consequence of its vast temporal 
 sway, corrupted the clergy, and lost them the 
 respect of the more severe and pure of their 
 own order as well as that of the laics. And 
 then, again, the possession of a great and al 
 most uncontrolled power degenerates inevit 
 ably into a two-fold source of abuses ; firstly, 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE ? 227 
 
 in that it becomes a lure to all kinds of selfish 
 and reckless ambition, and secondly, in that it 
 gets impatient of resistance, and persecutes 
 instead of persuading. 
 
 Accordingly, we see many examples of the 
 operation of all these principles, before the 
 opening of the fourteenth century, and which, 
 indeed, kept pace with the growing domination 
 of the hierarchy. Internal corruption and ex 
 ternal outrage bred resistance, both within and 
 without. When Boniface VIII. entered upon 
 his contest with Philip le Bel, of France, he ap 
 peared to himself and to his friends to advance 
 with all the strength of the great Gregory, 
 while, in reality, the moral and popular sup 
 port, which had been the strength of Gregory, 
 had already collapsed. In the south of France, 
 the infamous crusade against the Albigenses 
 had detached a numerous and powerful body; 
 similar disaffections had estranged the whole 
 of Flanders ; the thoughts which shortly after 
 found vent in the immortal poem of Dante, the 
 great father of Protestantism and the modern 
 era, were fermenting in Italy ; distant England 
 was heaving with the birth of Wickliffe ; -and 
 
228 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the cultivators of ancient learning, even, had, 
 in the silence of the monasteries, begun to 
 manifest an abated respect for a clergy whose 
 vices were as conspicuous as they were dis 
 graceful. Boniface was, therefore, virtually 
 defeated, and, in his defeat, the system itself 
 received a fatal blow. Like one who came 
 after him, he might have exclaimed that both 
 he and his system had ventured too far upon 
 the sea of glory, and were left 
 
 tl Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
 Of a rude stream, that must forever hide them." 
 
 That stream was the awakening life of Chris 
 tendom, inside and outside of the Church, 
 which, dissolving the Papacy into the great and 
 damaging " western schism," gathered strength 
 from the revival of literature, from the growth 
 of the universities, from the republican experi 
 ments in Italy, from the Hussite rebellion, 
 from the pragmatic sanctions of France, from 
 the quickening activity of commerce, from the 
 progress of maritime discovery, and the dis 
 closures and inventions of science, until, finally, 
 it broke over Europe, in a broad, full tide, as 
 the Lutheran Reformation. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? ^ 229 
 
 The Temporal Arm made, ever and anon, 
 during the interval, spasmodic efforts to re 
 cover its ancient energy; but they were like 
 the efforts of a serpent to strike, when its back 
 is broken. For five centuries, now, its au 
 thority has steadily declined nor will it ever 
 be revived. We should as soon think of seeing 
 Europe invaded again by the Arabs, or ths 
 Christian nations joined once more in a crusade 
 to Jerusalem, or the philosophers of the world 
 returning to the study of alchemy as of be 
 holding the rejuvenescence of the middle-age 
 constitution of society, and of its foster-brother, 
 the old Roman court. Even the religious in 
 fluence of the Church, by which alone its tem 
 poral pretensions can be sustained, will never 
 become again what it was before the Reforma 
 tion. 
 
 It is true, as Mr. Macaulay, in his brilliant 
 essay on Ranke s History of the Popes, has re 
 marked, that the territorial division of Europe, 
 between the Catholics and the Protestants, is 
 the same now as it was towards the close of 
 the sixteenth century ; that the nations which 
 were Catholic then chiefly the Southern or 
 
230 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Romanic are Catholic still ; and those which 
 were Protestants then chiefly the Northern or 
 Teutonic nations are Protestants still ; while 
 neither Catholic nor Protestant has mad any 
 substantial gains in the large debatable ground 
 in the middle of Europe. But this is true 
 only geographically, as Macaulay himself more 
 than intimates ; for while the physical frontiers 
 of either camp have not advanced, their moral 
 and intellectual advances respectively have 
 been widely different. The leading Catholic 
 nations, at the close of the sixteenth century, 
 were Spain and Italy, and these have fallen 
 into decay, whereas the leading Protestant na 
 tions, such as England and North Germany, 
 have shot up prodigiously in every element 
 of vigor. The nations which, before Luther, 
 commanded the civilization of the world, were 
 nations under the control of Rome ; but the 
 nations which now occupy that exalted posi 
 tion, pursue their ends without a thought of 
 the Church. England, North Germany, and 
 the United States, are openly Protestant ; Rus 
 sia, as the inheritor of Greek catholicity, is 
 anti-Roman ; while France, though nominally 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 231 
 
 Catholic, is rather scientific than religious in 
 her development, and is precisely the nation, 
 under her renowned Gallic liberties, which 
 most strenuously resists the papal predomin 
 ance. Now, it is this superiority of the Pro 
 testant nations, in intelligence, activity, wealth, 
 and freedom, which secures them forever from 
 conquest, and which will, sooner or later, com 
 pel the Catholic nations to follow in their 
 track. It is Protestantism which controls 
 civilization and the future destiny of the 
 world. 
 
 " But," exclaim a thousand dissentient voices, 
 in the face of this reasoning and all these facts, 
 " Romanism, by its own showing, remains for 
 ever unchangeable and unchanged. Its pre 
 lates and its official organs adhere as tenacious 
 ly to the temporal supremacy of the Pope 
 now as they did in the days of the Hohen- 
 stauffen and John Lackland ; and, whenever, 
 and wherever they can, will hasten to enforce 
 its claims." 
 
 "We deny the truth of this position, and we 
 scout the inferences which are attached to it, 
 to frighten us out of our seven senses. 
 
232 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 And, in the first place, we remark that this 
 doctrine is not an established doctrine of the 
 Catholic Church. It is simply a scntentia in 
 ccclcsia an unadjudicated question, without 
 positive authority, and incumbent upon no 
 one s faith. A Catholic may believe what he 
 pleases on that subject, and yet be a good 
 Catholic ; he may utterly deny all manner of 
 temporal allegiance to the Pope, and yet be a 
 good Catholic ; in short, the only allegiance 
 expected of him, by the laws of the Church, 
 is a belief of its dogmas, and a submission to 
 its moral discipline. 
 
 In regard to the ground and extent of the 
 temporal power of the Pope, two parties 
 exist, and have long existed, in the Church. 
 The first, the Ultramontane or theological 
 party, contend that the Pope and Church have 
 received, immediately from God, full power to 
 govern the world, both in spirituals and tem 
 porals.* In its naked form, however, this 
 theory, started by John of Salisbury, in the 
 twelfth century, found but few advocates. 
 
 * Gosselin, on the Power of the Popes, vol. i., p. 360. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 233 
 
 About the close of the sixteenth, therefore, 
 Bellarmin, and other systematic writers, were 
 obliged to modify it into this shape : That the 
 Church has received from God, directly and 
 immediately, no power over temporals, but 
 over spirituals solely ; and that this power in 
 cludes, indirectly, the power of governing tem 
 porals when the good of religion requires it, or 
 in certain extraordinary cases, wiien it is ren 
 dered necessary for the salvation of souls. 
 This is the sense in which the doctrine is held 
 by most of the Ul tramontanes, though some 
 of them modify it still more, so as to restrict 
 the right of the Church to a single right to de 
 clare the cases in which a sovereign has forfeit 
 ed his authority, and subjects are absolved from 
 their allegiance as cases of conscience. But 
 the Pope can use no direct means for enforcing 
 this declaration, which can only be put in exe 
 cution by the temporal order. Mr. Brownson, 
 who is more obstreperous than anybody else 
 in vindicating extreme opinions, denies that 
 the Pope can interfere generally in the civil 
 affairs of states, or resort directly to the strong 
 arm. For that he must appeal to the civil 
 
234 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 authority. "The Pope," he says, "does not 
 make the law under which the prince holds, 
 and can declare him deposed only when he has 
 forfeited his rights by the law under which lie 
 still holds. The act of deposition is judicial, 
 not legislative." 
 
 It is this indirect Ultramontanism which is 
 in the ascendant among the higher clergy and 
 official organs of the Church. The Popes in 
 cline to it, because it extends their preroga 
 tives ; the college of cardinals favors it, be 
 cause every cardinal expects some time or other 
 to be Pope ; the Jesuits, we believe, swear to 
 it, and a majority of other religious orders re 
 ceive it, together with many of the Spanish 
 and Italian bishops, some of the German and 
 French, and the leading journals such as the 
 Civiltd Cattolicd, at Rome, the Historische Poll- 
 tische Blatter, of Germany, the Univers in Paris, 
 the Dublin Tablet, and Brownson s Quarterly. 
 
 The second party, on the other hand, the 
 Gallic or legist party, hold that the spiritual 
 and temporal powers are equally sovereign in 
 their respective spheres, and independent of 
 each other ; and that the Popes and Councils 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 235 
 
 which have interfered in the temporal affairs 
 of states have done so, either under the hu 
 man and constitutional laws of former epochs, 
 or from an erroneous view of their duty. The 
 Catholic clergy of France, in 16S2, in the 
 famous Declarations, which are the basis of the 
 Cisalpine doctrine, said : " Kings and sovereigns 
 are not subjected to any ecclesiastical power, 
 by the order of God, in temporal things ; and 
 their subjects cannot be released from their 
 obedience, nor absolved from their oath of alle 
 giance." These declarations were eloquently 
 defended by Bossuet. The six Catholic Uni 
 versities, consulted by Pitt, in 1789 three 
 Spanish, and three French took this view, 
 and earnestly declared that " neither the Car 
 dinals, the Pope, nor even the Church herself, 
 has any jurisdiction or power, by divine right, 
 over the temporals of kings, sovereigns, or 
 subjects," etc. The Irish committee, of 1792, 
 made a similar deposition, in behalf of all the 
 Catholics of Ireland, which was repeated be 
 fore the House of Commons by all the Irish 
 bishops in 1826. All the old Catholic families 
 of England take this view, with a large num- 
 
236 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ber of the German and French bishops, and 
 nearly all of those in the United States. As 
 to the laity of the Church, they do not bother 
 their brains much about the dispute ; the more 
 ignorant of them clinging to the Church be 
 cause it has been their fathers church, and the 
 nursing-mother of their superstitions ; and the 
 more enlightened, because they find, in its doc 
 trines and ceremonies, a genuine solace for their 
 religious feelings. 
 
 We may regard the controversy, on the 
 whole, then, as a kind of drawn battle some 
 times one party is in the ascendant and some 
 times the other the Ultramontanes seeming 
 to carry the victory always in numbers, and 
 the Gallicans always in argument ; but, whe 
 ther the one or the other prevail, it need be 
 no cause to us either of extravagant alarm or 
 extravagant joy. 
 
 For, in the second place, we remark, that, 
 whatever may be the state of opinion among 
 Catholics, the claim of the Popes to temporal 
 power is not at all formidable, in the present 
 condition of the world. Churchmen may con 
 ceit what they please about the unchangeable 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 237 
 
 nature of the Church, but the testimony of 
 reason and history is that it does change, with 
 its changes of place, and the advancing aspects 
 of society. It is no more now, what it w r as 
 when the monk of Clugni caused the poor 
 German Emperor to wait his insolent leisure 
 three days in the cold, than the Knights Tem 
 plar are now what they were then. It is one 
 thing at Berlin and London, and another at 
 Valladolid or Bologna. The catechism which 
 it circulates in France is not the catechism 
 which it circulates in Portugal. Nor is this 
 owing to policy alone. The force of circum 
 stances, and the existing tone of manners and 
 opinions, circumscribe and transform it, just 
 as every other institution is modified by the 
 medium in which it subsists. What the Papa 
 cy would be, then, if it could, is a question of 
 no practical moment. What would any sect 
 or party be, if unrestrained by adverse parties 
 or sects ? Sydney Smith well says : " One 
 does not know the order or description of men 
 in whom he would like to confide, if they 
 could do as they would; our security consisting 
 in the fact that the rest of the world won t let 
 
238 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 J em." Now, the rest of the world will not 
 allow the Pope, nor anybody else, to do as he 
 pleases, let him want to ever so badly ; and, 
 until the Pope, particularly, has reconverted the 
 world to Catholicism, which will be a consid 
 erable undertaking, he may have as much will to 
 thunder as he likes, but he will thunder in vain. 
 Consider the history of the papal attempts to 
 exert even a limited temporal authority, during 
 the last three centuries. The Pope rattled 
 away, like a good fellow, against Louis XIV. ; 
 but Louis was hardly civil to him. kissing his 
 feet, as Voltaire says, but tying up his hands. 
 He was dreadfully angry, again, with Philip V 
 of Spain ; but he could not hinder Philip from 
 going his own gait, nor prevent the Cortes, 
 subsequently, from destroying the monastic 
 institutions, and confiscating the Church pro 
 perty. He tried his power on Portugal, and 
 was repulsed from Portugal, just as if it had 
 been Protestant ; on Venice, and the Senate 
 disdained his legate ; on Austria, whither he 
 went personally, but was complacently bowed 
 home again ; and on Napoleon, who laughed at 
 him, and used him afterwards. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 239 
 
 At the very moment, indeed, in which we 
 pen this paragraph, the morning paper, fresh 
 with foreign news, informs us that Spain Ca 
 tholic Spain, as she is called, by way of emi 
 nence as she has been called these thousand 
 years ; where the Koman Church is the only 
 church that has ever been recognized by the 
 state, where a numerous and influential clergy 
 are paid from the treasury of the State, where 
 they enjoy the highest rank and consideration, 
 where the entire people, in fact, are proud to 
 hail their monarchs as Most Catholic Majesties 
 Spain, we say, has just passed a law, releasing 
 property in mortmain, or, in other words, turn 
 ing into money the consecrated lands and 
 dwellings of the clergy and the religious orders, 
 in the very teeth, too, of the Pope, and all his 
 wire-workers and adherents. 
 
 Indeed, since the Restoration, when the allies 
 complimented him with devout pretenses and 
 apparent obsequiousness, but betrayed him to 
 the State at the same time, not a government 
 on earth, Catholic or Protestant, has treated 
 his temporal holiness with a whit more decorum 
 than is due to an illustrious prince one among 
 
240 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the powers of Europe. They respect his im 
 portant ecclesiastical position, and the venerable 
 associations by which his See is surrounded, 
 and, as far as their subjects are Catholic, are 
 more or less tender of giving offense ; but they 
 do not succumb one tittle to any right or claim 
 of his to meddle with their civil interests. On 
 the contrary, they resent it with a kind of por 
 cupine irritability. One of the most recent 
 Ultramontane writers, lamenting the desuetude 
 into which the temporal arm has fallen, says, 
 that the worst enemies which the Church has 
 had to contend with, the last two hundred 
 years, have not been either Protestants or 
 Turks, but the professedly Catholic govern 
 ments of Europe. " These nominal Catholic 
 sovereigns." he says lugubriously, " professing 
 themselves to be sons of the Church, contribut 
 ing, it may be, to the maintenance of the clergy, 
 and to the pomp and splendor of worship ; per 
 haps, like Louis XIV., going so far as to tolerate 
 no worship but the Catholic, and using their 
 military force to suppress hostile sects, yet 
 constantly encroaching on the ecclesiastical 
 authority ; demanding concession after conces- 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 241 
 
 sion, and threatening universal spoliation and 
 schism, if the Church does not accede to their 
 peremptory demands, backed by the whole 
 physical force of the kingdom, are really more 
 injurious to the cause of religion, more hostile 
 to the influences of the Church, than open and 
 avowed persecutors, even the most cruel. We 
 cannot name a single professedly Catholic State 
 that has afforded, for these three hundred years, 
 more than a momentary consolation to the Holy 
 Father, whose bitterest enemies have been of 
 his own household ; while "the only sovereigns 
 in the eighteenth, and the first half of the nine 
 teenth centuries, that treated him with respect, 
 were sovereigns separated from his communion." 
 This is true : yet not the whole truth ; for it 
 conceals the worst feature of the papal degra 
 dation that it is the willing tool and vassal of 
 the kings. If it had been subjected simply by 
 the superior force of its pseudo friends, there 
 would have been reason for it to complain ; but 
 it cheerfully accepts the slavery. It is, at this 
 moment, linked in with every despotism of the 
 continent, lending itself to their most nefarious 
 schemes; blessing the triumphs of their arms 
 
242 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 over popular hopes, and proffering a servile 
 submission to them in order to divide the ill- 
 gotten gains wrung from the weakness, the 
 ignorance, and the miseries of the people. Yes ; 
 the power, which of old sat in judgment upon 
 the rulers of the earth, and, in its fierce contests 
 with them, became a symbol of the aspirations 
 and faith of the multitude, is now, divested of 
 its ideal and representative character, and fallen 
 from its own high schemes of superiority and 
 jurisdiction, the passive partner of the secular 
 princes ; protesting, when it does protest, not 
 against the political absolutism of the oppres 
 sor, but against the cries and struggles of the 
 oppressed. It prefers the friendship of the 
 Czar, even, with his foreign religion, to the po 
 litical emancipation and religious regeneration 
 of the nations ; and is greatly more to be feared 
 for the doctrines of abject submission to kings 
 which it teaches, than for its imputed self- 
 assertion. 
 
 But, if this be the condition of things in 
 nations avowedly Catholic, how preposterous 
 the alarm which is sounded as to the temporal 
 aggressions of Popery in countries which are 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE ? 243 
 
 wholly emancipated. Let us suppose, for in 
 stance what is absurd in itself that Pio Nono 
 should take it into his head to hurl a bull at 
 Queen Victoria, or General Pierce, for some 
 gross heretical malfeasance, or for an insult to 
 Cardinal Wiseman, or the legate Bedini, what 
 would be the effect ? A few of the more de 
 vout Catholics would be thrown into a flutter, 
 others \vould mildly hint that the good Father 
 had mistaken his business, while the world in 
 general would explode in fits of derision. His 
 torians might, perhaps, recall the time when 
 such missives closed the churches, extinguished 
 the sacrifice on the altar, suspended christenings 
 and marriages, covered the images of the saints 
 in mourning, silenced the bells in the towers, 
 left the dead unburied, and dressed whole na 
 tions in sackcloth and ashes ; but they would 
 recall it as a striking homily on the mutability 
 of human affairs while the great body of the 
 people would go about their pursuits, eating 
 and drinking, and marrying and giving in mar 
 riage, as utterly unconscious that anything had 
 occurred, as a deaf man is of the snapping of a 
 pistol behind his back. 
 
244 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Of all the nations of the earth, ours is the 
 last in which the temporal pretensions of the 
 Pontiff, supposing them to be still cherished, 
 will make any headway. The democratic prin 
 ciple, of the right of the people to manage their 
 own affairs, is so thoroughly ingrained in our 
 whole political life, that fire will not burn, nor 
 water drown, it out of us. We should a great 
 deal rather attempt to take Sebastopol with 
 pop-guns, than to convert this nation to an ac 
 quiescence in the old monarchical and religious 
 tyrannies. Individuals of recusant sympathies 
 will, of course, now and then take shelter under 
 the wings of the Pope ; Catholicism, as a reli 
 gion, will gain converts from time to time ; 
 but, as a political power, it will find the cur 
 rent ever setting more strongly the other way. 
 Rome is far more likely to become American, 
 under the influences at work here, than America 
 Roman. Not a single trait of American cha 
 racter, as it has been thus far developed, har 
 monizes with the genius of that court not a 
 habit of thought, or mode of action, peculiar to 
 our people, is cast in its moulds and there is 
 no point or feature of our civil procedure coin- 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 245 
 
 cident with the structure of its government or 
 the aims of its polity. We are drifting further 
 and further away, with the current of the years, 
 not onl* r from Rome, but from every vestige of 
 ecclesiasticism. Our religion is less ritual, day 
 by day, and more and more civic and personal. 
 Our literature, our practical enterprise, our 
 actual -political tendencies, in short, all the 
 agencies of our civil and moral life, turn towards 
 a practical humanity, as the flower and fruit of 
 Christ s blessed redemption of us, and will not 
 return. The immense Irish emigration, which 
 was once supposed to threaten, though it never 
 actually molested, our safety, has reached its 
 height, and now begins to slacken. Already 
 the preponderance of numbers among the emi 
 grants has passed over to the Germans, among 
 whom Popery sits lightly upon those who re 
 ceive it, and is more than neutralized by 
 the desperate rationalistic bias of the rest. 
 Strauss and Feuerbach, we suspect, are the 
 saints of the Germans, who will give our 
 Puritan theologians more trouble than all the 
 saints of the Romish calendar ; and the creed 
 of no-creedism will seduce a larger number 
 
246 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of professors than the creed of spiritual sub 
 mission. 
 
 We shall not dwell upon the inexpressible 
 meanness of excluding all foreigners from poli 
 tical life, because a number of them happen to 
 be Catholics Catholics from religious associa 
 tion and conviction, and not in the interests of 
 a political propagandism but we shall urge 
 one simple thought : that, supposing foreigners 
 to be all Romanists, the way to rescue them 
 from their error is, not to inclose them, by an 
 outward pressure or proscription, into a narrow 
 circle of their own, but to tempt them out of 
 the fatal ring, into a freer air. If their com 
 munion be haunted by foul superstitions and 
 fanaticisms, as sometimes an old decaying struc 
 ture is haunted by bats and owls, you will not 
 purify it by closing the shutters and keeping 
 them in darkness. It is in darkness, precisely, 
 that owls and bats live. But let in the light of 
 heaven upon them, let the brisk wind drink up 
 the clammy damps, let the fresh, warm sun 
 quicken the benumbed and torpid limbs, and 
 the bats and owls will fly away ; for the place 
 will be no longer congenial to their habits. 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 247 
 
 It is a great fact of experience, that, where 
 Protestants and Catholics are brought openly 
 together, Catholicism is softened and liberalized 
 as in all the frontier districts of Europe while 
 it retains whatever of evil it may possess, in the 
 most unmitigated forms, in the most secluded 
 districts. Nay, both parties are improved by the 
 association. How much, in England, France, 
 and Germany, have the old hostilities been 
 tempered by the common medium in which 
 they are diffused ! while in Sweden, Protestant 
 ism, and in Portugal, Spain, and parts of Italy, 
 Catholicism, still exhibit the same hard features 
 which they wore a hundred years ago. Just in 
 proportion as Catholics are permitted to share 
 in the civil life of Protestant nations, they have 
 thrown off the old prejudices of creed, and begun 
 to identify themselves with the general feelings 
 and tendencies of the rest of the people. 
 
 In our own country, particularly, the benefi 
 cent and beautiful operation of democracy is 
 seen, in the silent and gentle influences by 
 which it removes the old enmities of sect and 
 race. The slough of a thousand errors, which 
 once Kissed like so many serpents in the bosom 
 
248 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of society, has been cast, we scarcely know 
 how ; deep hatreds, which still burn in Europe 
 with intensest zeal, dividing classes irreparably, 
 are extinguished here as if by the falling dews; 
 and a genial glow of common sentiments and 
 feelings, warms into a higher, nobler humanity 
 the hearts of men, no longer curdled into petty 
 spites or rancorous animosities by hostile divi 
 sions of privilege and interest. Let us beware, 
 then, that we do not arrest or thwart this 
 glorious development ! Let us be worthy of 
 the lofty destiny to which we have been called ! 
 If we think the dogmas of the Roman Church 
 grievous errors ; if we think its policy unfriendly 
 to intellectual freedom and to republican go 
 vernment; if we should be sorry to see it more 
 generally accepted ; let us be sure that its cor 
 ruptions, whatever they may be, are to be met 
 by argument and the force of opinion only, and 
 not by legislation. Our fathers, with a wisdom 
 as divine as was ever vouchsafed to any conclave 
 or synod, decreed an eternal separation of 
 Church and State. They forbade the use of 
 religious tests, in the decision of civil rights, 
 and that prohibition is sound in spirit as well 
 
SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? 249 
 
 as letter. We hope that the American people 
 will never depart from it ; we hope that they 
 will continue to exhibit to the world an exalted 
 example of true charity; and we are assured 
 that, so long as they refuse to allow transient 
 prejudices and local irritations to provoke them 
 from its kindly dictates, the heavenly Father, 
 whose essence is goodness, will richly endow 
 them with every needed blessing. 
 JUNE, 1855. 
 11* 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION, 
 
 IN the year 1850, it was decreed by con 
 ventions of the Whig and Democratic parties, 
 representing three-fifths, at least, of the people 
 who concern themselves with politics, that the 
 compromise measures were a final settlement, 
 " in principle and in substance," of the ques 
 tion of slavery. Mr. Webster, who had con 
 tributed so much talent and reputation to their 
 success, as he drew near his death, congratu 
 lated himself, and the country, that there was 
 then no part of the territory of the United 
 States in which this subject had not been dis 
 posed of by positive law. The President of 
 the nation, even, in his first message, was im 
 pelled to speak of those measures as having 
 " given renewed vigor to our institutions, and 
 restored a sense of repose and security to the 
 public mind throughout the confederacy ;" and 
 he promised that this " repose should suffer no 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 251 
 
 shock if he had power to avert it, during his ad 
 ministration." 
 
 Yet, those measures had scarcely been pro- 
 mulged, their great advocate of Massachu 
 setts was hardly cold in his grave, the Presi 
 dent himself was but warm in his chair, when 
 the agitation of the slavery question broke forth 
 anew, with a universality and earnestness of 
 feeling never before equaled. Slavery became at 
 once the real and vital question of the day. It 
 vibrated in every heart, and burned on every 
 tongue. Older issues were dropped in the in 
 tense excitement it occasioned ; the ancient 
 rallying cries, once so potent in marshaling the 
 electoral lieges around the standards of their 
 leaders, grew as charmless as the blasts of fish- 
 horns, and the freshest of political frenzies, 
 the Know-nothing excitement, which, a year 
 before, swept over the land like a torrent, was 
 arrested and broken into foam by the opposing 
 waves of this greater agitation. The hopes of 
 a long era of political quiet, engendered by the 
 reconciling action of Congress and the conven 
 tions, were dashed to the ground, and the flames 
 of former feud, extinguished for a brief time, 
 
252 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 were kindled once more into a livelier energy 
 and glow. 
 
 But there is a peculiarity in the revived com 
 motion, which it is impossible not to remark. 
 During the earlier periods of anti-slavery ex 
 citement, it was mainly confined to men of ar 
 dent temperaments and extreme opinion, to 
 abolitionists, strictly so-called; but, as things 
 are now, it is shared by men of tempered and 
 conservative disposition. The cautious and the 
 wise heads silvered over with age, and hearts 
 which experience has taught to beat in meas 
 ured pulses are joined with more enthusiastic 
 spirits in a common cause. It is, indeed, no 
 exaggeration to describe the feeling at the North 
 as general. If we except the small joint-stock 
 association which draws the udders of the fede 
 ral government, and a score or two of effete 
 politicians, who, like the elder Bourbons, forget 
 nothing and learn nothing, there is not a think 
 ing man among us who is not absorbed in this 
 topic of the domination and spread of slavery. 
 
 Whence this change ? Why are the halcyon 
 expectations, which gathered about the com 
 promises as a halo, dispersed ? Why are minds, 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 253 
 
 the least quick to catch the impulses of the 
 times, carried away by a prevailing sentiment ? 
 Why are they compelled into coalition with those 
 for whom, a little while ago, they felt no sym 
 pathy, and whose plans of policy they disap 
 proved ? Is it that the hereditary anti-slavery 
 sentiment of the North has received some new 
 and mysterious access of violence, like a fever 
 which recurs in a more malignant type ? Is 
 it that the people of the North have been sud 
 denly seized with some irrational annimosity 
 towards their brethren of the South, and rush 
 forward, blindly, to the perpetration of an un 
 provoked injustice ? Not at all. There is 
 nothing thoughtless or unkind in the recent 
 movement. It is a legitimate fruit of circum 
 stances a natural and normal development of 
 events, which any sagacious student of cause 
 and effect might have predicted, and which, 
 indeed, was predicted by many in the deepest 
 lull of 1850. 
 
 In the first place, there can be no finality in 
 politics, except in the establishment of justice 
 and truth. Where society is divided on a prin 
 ciple, and that principle involves, besides its 
 
254 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 moral issues, vast practical interests, no parlia 
 mentary device or legislative expedient can put 
 a stop to the discussion of it no compromis 
 ing adjustment of it can settle it forever. The 
 very attempt to settle it, in this way, though 
 it may succeed in quelling an existing vehe 
 mence of agitation, will, in the end, provoke a 
 more vehement reaction. For the mind of man 
 is, in its nature, vital and irrepressible ; you may 
 force it down but you cannot keep it there ; its 
 inherent elasticity will cause it to spring back, 
 and in that spring, perhaps, it will tear into 
 shreds the cords by which it was bound. 
 When the compromisers of 1850, therefore, un 
 dertook to suppress the discussion of slavery, 
 they undertook what was plainly impossible ; 
 and much of the exacerbation which has since 
 arisen must be referred to a natural revolt 
 against that impracticable enterprise. 
 
 But, in the second place, there is to. be re 
 marked a special cause for the late outbreak of 
 anti-slavery feeling, and particularly for its ap 
 pearance among those classes which have not 
 heretofore manifested a strong tendency in that 
 direction. It is this : that a gigantic fraud 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 255 
 
 has been committed in the name of slavery, 
 which has aroused a keen sense of wrong, and 
 filled the dullest understandings with appre 
 hensions for the security of our future liberties. 
 The Kansas-Nebraska bill -which repealed the 
 Missouri Compromise, sprung like a trap, as it 
 was, upon a Congress not chosen in reference 
 to it ; hurried through the forms of legislation, 
 under whip and spur, by a temporary majority ; 
 alleging a falsehood in its very terms, and hav 
 ing the seizure of a vast province, secured to 
 freedom by thirty years of plighted faith, as its 
 motive was the fatal signal which, after as 
 tounding the nation by its audacity, rallied it 
 to battle. 
 
 A few months before this repeal was perpe 
 trated, the very abettors of the transaction had 
 pronounced it impossible. The committee of 
 the Senate which reported it, had pronounced 
 it impossible. Not a man in the Union but 
 would, at that time, have pronounced it equal 
 ly impossible, had his opinion been asked ; yet 
 it was repealed by the simple declaration, which 
 all the world knew to be untrue, that it had 
 been rendered inoperative by the legislation of 
 
256 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 1850 ! Marvelous assurance, but still more 
 marvelous success ! 
 
 We shall not inquire here whether the Mis 
 souri Compromise was originally proper or not ; 
 averse as we are to compromises in general, we 
 are not sure that it would riot have been better 
 for all sides to have settled the dispute at that 
 time on a basis of principle, and at all hazards ; 
 but, inasmuch as the South had reaped its share 
 of the benefit proposed by the bargain inas 
 much as its continuance involved, to a consid 
 erable extent, the good faith of the South, we 
 are clear that the disturbance of it by the South 
 was neither honorable nor wise. In accepting 
 the responsibility of the deed, it has both lost 
 an opportunity and committed a fault. Had it 
 spurned the offer of the territories, when it was 
 made, it would have achieved a moral triumph 
 far more valuable to it than any other immedi 
 ate success can be. But the virtue of its rep 
 resentatives was not equal to the occasion the 
 spirit of Henry, Wythe, Macon, Jefferson, was 
 not theirs. Or had it, after the act was con 
 summated in Congress, withheld its approval, 
 and manifested a willingness to allow the North 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 257 
 
 a fair chance in the appropriation of land, so 
 long consecrated to freedom by its own consent, 
 there would have been a color of equity in its 
 proceedings, which w T ould have gone far in 
 tempering the horror and reprobation which the 
 original offense provoked. But here again the 
 South proved unworthy of its opportunities. 
 It has sustained and abetted the lawless inva 
 sion of Kansas, by the armed marauders of Mis 
 souri. It has sent thither its agents, or allowed 
 them to go which is the same thing in order 
 to subjugate the peaceful settlers, and to im 
 pose a peculiar social system upon them against 
 their will. The Kansas Legislature, acting in 
 the name of the South, is a usurping body. 
 The people of Kansas, overruled by violence at 
 the elections, are not its constituents. It re 
 flects no popular sovereignty, only the sw T ay of 
 the mob ; and they who support its cause sup 
 port the ascendancy of the bowie-knife and the 
 rifle over the ballot-box and the law. 
 
 Under this condition of facts and events, it 
 was very natural that public opinion at the 
 North should be stung into a keen and vivid 
 resentment. Averse as it may have been to 
 
258 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 any interference with the internal relations of 
 the South ; willing, as it has shown itself, to 
 accept any settlement of difficulties which did 
 not involve an actual approval of the Southern 
 system ; hoping that, under a geographical de 
 marcation of the respective regions of slavery 
 and freedom, the causes of dispute would be 
 gradually supplanted by the advancing enter 
 prise, if not by the Christianity and democracy, 
 of the nation or be reduced, at least, to the 
 smallest possible surface of contact it has 
 yet been able to discover in that repeal, and in 
 the conduct by which it has been followed up, 
 nothing less than a rooted determination to ex 
 tend the peculiar social usages of the South 
 over the whole West, in the face of contracts 
 and laws, and to the exclusion of freedom. 
 How then, in the name of humanity, could the 
 North listen to the avow r al, or witness the in 
 cipient steps in the execution of such a scheme, 
 without loudly protesting against it, and re 
 solving to resist it to the end ? 
 
 The repeal of the Compromise was the prac 
 tical triumph of a party which is the worst in 
 its principles, and the most dangerous in its 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 259 
 
 designs, of any party that ever arose in the Re 
 public. We refer to the propagandists of 
 slavery, whose unquestionable purpose it is to 
 rule the Union, if they can, and if they cannot, 
 to set up a southern slave confederacy for 
 themselves. They are few in numbers as yet, 
 though great in influence ; but they have of 
 late grown rapidly in both, and will be pro 
 digiously strengthened by success in Kansas. 
 
 Let us sketch the rise and progress of cer 
 tain sentiments, briefly, in order to show the 
 bearing of their schemes. 
 
 When the Constitution of the United States 
 was formed, slavery existed in nearly all the 
 States; but it existed as an acknowledged evil, 
 which, it was hoped, the progress of events 
 would, in the course of a few years, extinguish. 
 With the exception of South Carolina, there 
 was not a State in which some decided efforts 
 had not been made towards its alleviation and 
 ultimate removal. It was this feeling, that it 
 was an evil, and that it would soon be abated, 
 which excluded all mention of slavery by name 
 from the Constitution, and which led to the 
 adoption of such a phraseology, in the parts refer- 
 
260 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ring to the subject, that they do not necessarily 
 imply its existence. The Constitution was 
 made for all time, while the makers of it sup 
 posed slavery to be but a transient fact, and 
 the terms of it consequently were adapted to 
 the larger purpose, and not to the temporary 
 exigency. A jurist from the interior of China, 
 who knew nothing of the actual condition of 
 our country, or Justinian, could he arise from 
 the dead, would never learn, from the mere 
 reading of that instrument, of the existence of 
 slavery. He would read of " persons held to 
 service," and of certain " other persons," who 
 were to be counted only as three-fifths in the 
 distribution of representative population ; but 
 he would never imagine them, unless expressly 
 told, a species of property. The general senti 
 ment was averse to slavery, and the men of 
 the Revolution were unwilling to recognize it, 
 except in an indirect and roundabout way, and 
 then only, as they expected, for a limitqd 
 period. 
 
 For many years subsequent to the Ee volu 
 tion, a similar feeling prevailed throughout the 
 South as well as at the North. The most in- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 261 
 
 tense expressions of disapproval that have ever 
 been uttered against the system, may be quoted 
 from the writings of those who were born and 
 brought up under it : and whenever it was 
 defended, it was defended on the ground, not 
 that it was right, or even desirable, but that it 
 was inevitable. " It is fastened upon us," said 
 the South, "and we must do the best with it 
 that we can. We are like men in a morass, 
 who cannot spring at once to the firm land, 
 but who must work their way thither, gradually, 
 as they are able. We trust that Providence 
 has some good end in thus afflicting us what 
 it is we do not see we discover certain inci 
 dental goods in our strange relations ; but we 
 must look to God to justify his own dealings 
 to us in this wretched business." This was the 
 pervading tone ; few regarded slavery as any 
 thing less than a curse, and none held it to be a 
 permanent condition. As for the domestic 
 trade in slaves, it was generally execrated. 
 John Randolph, as late as 1S16, denounced it, 
 on the floor of Congress, as "heinous and 
 abominable," " inhuman and illegal," and Gov. 
 Williams, of South Carolina, spoke of it in one 
 
262 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of his messages as " a remorseless and merciless 
 traffic," the result of " insatiable avarice," con 
 demned " by enlightened humanity, wise policy, 
 and the prayers of the just." 
 
 But the rapid extension given to the cotton 
 trade, by the contrivance of the gin, and by the 
 manufacturing industry of Great Britain, pro 
 duced a vast change in the opinions of the 
 country. As the slave system spread, and the 
 hopes of its ultimate extinction diminished, it 
 was found necessary by the slaveholders, in 
 order to justify to their own consciences their 
 adherence to it, and to shelter their conduct 
 from the indignant censure of the world, to in 
 vent some plea which should be plausible at 
 least, if not well-founded. In pursuance of this 
 need, they resorted to the Bible to show that 
 slavery was divinely allowed, and could not 
 be, therefore, in itself, wrong. They ransacked 
 physiological science, to establish the inferiority 
 of the black race, and the consequent duty of 
 protecting it, and educating it to labor. They 
 began to interpret the designs of Heaven, con 
 tending that slavery was to be made an instru 
 ment in raising the enslaved Africans to a know- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 263 
 
 ledge of the industrial arts and Christianity, 
 and in the subsequent civilization, through 
 them, of the vast continent from which they 
 were originally taken. 
 
 All this reasoning, however, implied no more 
 than a temporary state of slavery, making it 
 probationary or propaedeutic, and not justifying 
 it as a final or permanent condition. The 
 motives assigned in apology for it, looked to 
 the future redemption of the slave, to his im 
 provement in the methods of civilized life, and 
 of course to his restoration to a condition in 
 which those methods would avail himself and 
 his race. 
 
 A sterner logic was required to meet the 
 difficulties of the problem, which was nothing 
 less than the reconciliation of a selfish interest 
 to universal conscience at all times a most 
 embarrassing affair. If slavery were right be 
 cause only of its probable and ultimate benefits 
 to the slave caste, the inference could not be 
 avoided that the time must come when that 
 caste, or the superior portions of it, at least, 
 might be emancipated. The opponents of the 
 slaveholders might justly taunt them, on their 
 
264 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 own premises, for continuing the system be- 
 yond the period requisite for the fulfillment of 
 its alleged purposes. They might reasonably 
 demand that some definite term be put to the 
 time of this educationary discipline ; that the 
 system, in fact, should be resolved into a spe 
 cies of apprenticeship; and that the lot of its 
 enforced beneficiaries should be illuminated by 
 some hope or prospect, however distant, of 
 final release. For of what use to the slave, or 
 to his race, would be an education protracted 
 to the hour of his death? Education is a means 
 to some end, and where the end is withheld, the 
 means is worthless. How were negroes, taught 
 the social arts here, to benefit their fellows in 
 Africa, if they were to be held here in perpetual 
 bondage ? Why teach them knowledge, which, 
 in raising them individually above their original 
 savageness, could only render them more keenly 
 sensible that their out-look embraced no 
 future ? 
 
 It was hard for the slaveholders to reply, 
 and so the bolder among them shifted their 
 grounds. They began to aver that slavery 
 was a good in itself that it was the natu- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 265 
 
 ral relation of the two races that negroes 
 could never be anything more, by the fiat 
 of God, than the servants of the white man ; 
 and that a society, constructed upon this ar 
 rangement, in which the inferior should do all 
 the work, and the superior exercise the pro 
 tection and guidance (beside enjoying the best 
 fruits), was the truest and happiest society that 
 could be conceived. It was a heaven-ordained 
 socialism thoroughly articulated and organ 
 ized, effective and economical as an industrial 
 machine benevolent as a provision for the 
 poorer classes, so woefully overlooked in other 
 societies, ample in its furniture of motives and 
 means for the ripest culture in the higher 
 classes, and rendering the interchanges of life 
 between different ranks, whose interests are 
 radically united, a perpetual reciprocation of 
 gratitude, affection, and care. 
 
 With this change in opinion, from despairing 
 lament or feeble apology to positive vindication, 
 came a corresponding change in practice, from 
 defense to aggression. While the greater part 
 of the slaveholders accepted the glorifying view 
 of their system merely as a politic reaction 
 
266 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 against the bitter reproaches of the civilized 
 world, or as a plesant couleur de rose dream-land, 
 into which imagination might escape from the 
 too painful reality, there were others, more 
 daring spirits, with whom argument was ac 
 tion, and of whom it might be said 
 
 " Straightforward goes 
 
 The lightning s path, and straight the fearful path 
 Of the cannon-ball." 
 
 Without caring a whit for the right or wrong, 
 the good or evil of slavery, or of anything else, 
 and animated mainly by an insatiable thirst for 
 power and gain, they found it exceedingly 
 convenient to adopt the philanthropic theory. 
 They eagerly embraced the premises, and more 
 eagerly shot to the conclusion. Slavery is a 
 good thing, a desirable thing, a benefaction and 
 heaven s blessing to all concerned, and ergo, 
 ought not to be restricted, but diffused ! There 
 was the whole question ! Why limit so excel 
 lent a social institution to the few States that 
 are now basking in its genial beams? Why 
 not spread the benefits of it over the North ? 
 Why be so cruel as to withhold it from the 
 poor benighted Territories, or from languish- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 267 
 
 ing Mexico, or from the wilderness shores of 
 the Amazon ? Or why shut off its natural sup 
 plies from the teeming founts of Congo and 
 the Gold Coast ? 
 
 They were consecutive reasoners, you see, 
 these fellows, and practical men, besides ; and 
 accordingly, they set to work to remodel both 
 the principles and practices of the South. Ex 
 ploding the old democratic creed, that man had 
 inherent and inviolable rights, which had been 
 the inspiring faith of the glorious days of the 
 Revolution, and trampling down the once cher 
 ished conviction of the sovereign supremacy 
 of the States, within their own jurisdiction, 
 they proclaimed that only a particular race of 
 men had rights, that the States were nothing 
 more than departments, that slavery was the 
 one supreme and universal interest and that it 
 might go everywhere and determine every 
 question. Brave propagandists ! It was to 
 you we owed the breaking down of all old and 
 sacred distinctions, to you we owed our wars 
 for the acquisition of new land to you the 
 spirit of encroachment and aggrandizement 
 which is abroad to you the filibustering ex- 
 
268 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 peditions which disgrace our name to you the 
 fugitive slave law, which would convert free 
 men into bloodhounds to you the incessant 
 agitation of slavery, and an insolence which 
 hangs the fate of the Union on a constant sub 
 servience to its behests ! and now, as the latest 
 step in this career of conquest, as the very 
 coup de grace to our national freedom and the 
 independence of the States, comes this erasure 
 of an ancient landmark, which had stood for 
 thirty years, like a long line of coast, against 
 which the black billows dashed themselves 
 only to be broken ! Grant this triumph and 
 where will you stop ? On what remote bound 
 ary of our possible empire, in what era of un 
 known time will your god Terminus erect his 
 altar ? Whither shall we fly to escape your 
 frowns, where look for a rescue from your ab 
 horrent domination ? 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that this 
 small but desperate and determined knot of 
 propagandists would never have achieved the 
 influence they have, if the political parties of 
 the country had maintained their primitive rec 
 titude and honor. Had they continued to fight 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 269 
 
 as Washington and Franklin fought, as Jeffer 
 son and Adams and Madison fought, for princi 
 ples and not small expediencies, there is no 
 local faction that could have made head against 
 them for any length of time. But with suc 
 cess conies relaxation ; with victory, indulgence ; 
 with prosperity and power, corruption. Our 
 parties, once having tasted the luscious spoils 
 of office, made them the end of their life. They 
 lost the stringency and sternness of conviction, 
 the nobleness and purity of purpose, in which 
 they began. They were debauched ; they fell 
 into the hands of men of small ambitions and 
 cold hearts ; their creeds became the merest 
 hodge-podge of contradictory maxims, and their 
 conduct a series of contemptible shifts, and 
 doublings, and prostitutions. 
 
 A late foreign writer, observing from an im 
 partial stand-point the aspect of our affairs, 
 says that " Few things have more surprised the 
 world than the deterioration of the political 
 men of America. When the United States 
 were a mere aggregate of scantily-peopled colo 
 nies, when their principal citizens were plant 
 ers, shop-keepers, and traders, trained up in 
 
270 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the narrowness, and prejudices, and petty em 
 ployments of provincial life, they produced 
 statesmen and negotiators, and administrators 
 and legislators whose names will be forever 
 illustrious in history. Now that they form a 
 great empire, that they possess a large class 
 of men born in opulence, to whom all the 
 schools and universities of each hemisphere are 
 open, who have leisure to pursue the studies 
 and to acquire the habits of political life, few 
 of their public men would pass in Europe for 
 tolerable second-rates." What other conclu 
 sion could he draw, when the chair of Wash 
 ington and Jefferson has come to be occupied 
 by a Tyler and a Pierce, and the diplomacy of 
 a Franklin and an Adams is represented by that 
 of a Soule and a Borland ? Yet the decay of 
 leaders would be nothing, were there no evi 
 dences of a similar degeneracy in the spirit of 
 society, which unfortunately happens to be the 
 case. Our civil life exhibits an almost univer 
 sal demoralization ; there is scarcely a party 
 among us which holds to any consistent theory 
 of government or law, or which can enunciate 
 two principles that are not utterly incompati- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 271 
 
 ble while political presses, public documents, 
 speeches in Congress, and even the discourses 
 of the pulpit, are filled with arguments, appeals, 
 and denunciations, which show an utter aban 
 donment of the foundation-principle of our 
 nation. . A gross materialism, the success of 
 trade, the progress of gain, an external expe 
 diency, is preferred to lofty ideal aspirations and 
 spiritual truth. The grand and beautiful theory 
 which lies at the centre of our institutions, their 
 noble humanitarianism, their just and magnani 
 mous recognition of the worth of every human 
 being, their utter disdain of the spirit of caste, 
 of exclusion, of selfish aggrandizement no 
 longer touch our hearts, and kindle them into 
 a fine enthusiasm. Great deeds are not done 
 among us. The atmosphere around us is cold, 
 and ungenial. We speculate how to get rich ; 
 we build railroads and ships, to increase our 
 stores; we spy out the neighboring lands which 
 promise us luxurious harvests hereafter ; we re 
 turn the panting fugitive to his life-long doom ; 
 but the heroic virtues, the chivalric sentiments, 
 the sweet, and tender, and self-forgetful im 
 pulses, which constitute the true and only glo- 
 
272 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ries of manhood, we lay aside, forgetting them, 
 even in our prayers. "Oh! reverence," says 
 the poet, "the dreams of thy youth!" but the 
 fair dreams of our youth we despise. The dream 
 that this young land, fresh from the hands of 
 its Creator, unpolluted by the stains of time, 
 should be the home of freedom and a race of 
 men so manly that they \vould lift the earth by 
 the whole breadth of its orbit nearer heaven, 
 that it should be a light to the struggling na 
 tions, holding on high, forever, the standard of 
 justice and humanity, and supplanting the 
 despotism under which mankind had withered, 
 by a rich, and noble, and free republican civili 
 zation, has passed away from the most of us as 
 nothing but a dream. We yield ourselves, in 
 stead, to calculation, money-making, and moral 
 indifference. The prophet of the Lord might 
 again cry in our streets, " How is the gold be 
 come dim, how is the most fine gold changed !" 
 It is a dark view of things we have taken ; 
 not darker than circumstances warrant, and 
 yet not altogether hopeless. Behind the foul 
 and earth-born mists overspreading the lower 
 skies, glimpses are to be had of a fairer heaven. 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 273 
 
 Behind the mean and sordid life of politics, 
 shutting out the sunshine for a time, there is a 
 great, true life, which may yet redeem this 
 people. At the South there are many noble, 
 Christian souls, who have not been withered 
 by the. blight of slavery, and to whose generous 
 impulses the creed of the vulgar propagandists 
 is as repugnant as the creed of the pirate. They 
 have thought too long and earnestly of the evil 
 they suffer, to disguise its character, and they 
 are too kind and just in sentiment, to wish to 
 impose it on others. In their prayers and 
 struggles against it, lies the hope of a better 
 issue to the awful question than is contained in 
 the violent solution of the more active men by 
 whom they are, for the present, silenced and 
 overborne. It is to their wisdom and piety 
 that we look for a brighter future. Nor at the 
 North are we wholly given up to the idolatry 
 of " Timour-Mammon." Scattered over the 
 broad inland are thousands upon thousands of 
 cheerful homes, which nurture a race to whom 
 the heavenly law, and not the earthly greed, is 
 the rule of duty. They retain the simple hon 
 esty, the masculine vigor, the love of liberty 
 12* 
 
274 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and of God, which came to them from the stern 
 old republican stock of England, from those 
 who fought with Cromwell, and read John Mil 
 ton. Indeed, in no nation of the world do we 
 believe that more intelligent, upright, self-sac 
 rificing and energetic men and women are to 
 be found than in this where the best culture 
 of Europe is so widely diffused, where religion 
 is so free and so active, and where the sweet 
 influences of woman are so heartily accepted. 
 But the misery is, that these virtuous and re 
 deeming classes have been elbowed by the poli 
 ticians, and their rude herd, into obscurity. 
 Shrinking from the clamor, and meanness, and 
 ribaldry of political exertion, they have retired 
 with disgust into their cottages and fields, into 
 their stores and workshops, into their parlors 
 and libraries, and they have thus left the arena 
 free for the gladiators and the wild beasts, who, 
 having mauled and torn each other, turn at last 
 to rend the innocent citizen, and to desolate the 
 peaceful home. 
 
 We conceive that in pointing out the two 
 evils to which we have referred, namely, the 
 aggressions of slavery and the corruption of 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 275 
 
 parties, we have struck upon the very mother 
 sins of our career. They are the sources to 
 which may be traced every error and iniquity 
 that we have fallen into : not only external of 
 fenses against honor and justice, such as Texan 
 forays, and Cuban freebooting, but the deeper 
 inward debasement the decay and meanness 
 of spirit, which could submit to fugitive slave 
 laws, and other outrages, the most insulting 
 ever inflicted upon a free people ; and it will 
 be impossible to retrieve the past until the 
 mighty stream of influences which, they pour 
 forth is stopped. Unless there is integrity, 
 self-respect, and decision enough in our society 
 to arrest these gangrenes, they will spread un 
 til they have corroded the whole body. Unless 
 there is moral vitality in our heart sufficient to 
 assert itself against the powerful poisons already 
 in the blood, we may be sure that the circu 
 lation will carry them soon to every member, 
 till there shall be no health nor life in us. 
 
 But these two evils are in reality one or 
 are, at least, reciprocally cause and effect of 
 each other, inasmuch as they have both the 
 same origin the departure of the nation, in 
 
276 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 feeling and practice, from the idea in which it 
 was founded. Nations, like man himself, have 
 certain ends or ideals of existence, which con 
 stitute the inmost ground or essence of their 
 being, and when they depart from these, they 
 either degrade themselves into some lower 
 form, or grow into monsters. Men who cease 
 to be men, become either animals or fiends. 
 Nations, which lose their constituent principles, 
 fall into barbarism, or rush into some diabolic 
 fury. Their salvation lies alone in their ad 
 herence to the great thought which gave them 
 their original organic unity. 
 
 Now, the great thought, the fundamental 
 idea, the constituent principle of our nation 
 ality, was the liberty of all men, secured by 
 equal laws, and defended from invasion, either 
 on the part of the state or of individuals, by the 
 whole power of the state. The peculiarity of 
 organization by which this liberty was made 
 sure, was that distribution of power whereby 
 every mature locality was rendered free and 
 supreme in whatever concerned itself solely, 
 yet cooperative in more general spheres, so that 
 there was a perfect equilibrium in the centripe- 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 277 
 
 tal and centrifugal forces of government, as in 
 the solar system. The great object of the ar 
 rangement was the security, the elevation, the 
 freedom of the individual, who, regarded as the 
 child of God, as the joint heir with others of 
 the earth, as an immortal spirit, capable of an 
 infinite growth in love, and truth, and beauty, 
 was too sacred riot to be hedged round by 
 every defense, and helped forward by every 
 kind nurture and care. He was the Prince of 
 the Great King, for whom all the granaries 
 were to be filled, and all the treasures dis 
 played, and all the bells to ring out a joyous 
 w r elcome. 
 
 We must return to our fundamental princi 
 ples, to our primitive spirit, to the noble and 
 manly moral tone, which made us giants in our 
 youth, if we would not dwindle into dwarfs. 
 No single measure of improvement, nor series 
 of measures, can help us, if we do not recover, 
 along with them, the old inward health and 
 soundness. A restoration of the Missouri Pro 
 hibition, for instance, at which so many aim, 
 though important as a sign of repentance, and as 
 a restitution for wrong done, would be, in itself, 
 
278 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 but a first step towards the infinitely greater end, 
 the regeneration of the mind of the people on 
 the subject of slavery. There will be no peace, 
 nor purity, nor noble vigor, until, as a federa 
 tion, we shall have discharged ourselves of all 
 responsibility for a system vitally at war with 
 its objects. The separate states have a larger 
 and more difficult task, and they must stand or 
 fall by their fidelity to its duties ; they must 
 struggle with their own burdens ; we cannot 
 help or relieve them, except by their own con 
 sent ; but the confederacy has but one single, 
 plain, and inevitable course. It must be free ! 
 how wildly soever interested factions may rage 
 against the attempt to recover the ground that 
 has been lost, deep and wide as are the delu 
 sions which are to be scattered, painful as may 
 be the process of healing, even to the dividing 
 asunder of the joints and marrow, the Repubic 
 must be free ! The dearest memories of the 
 past, the saddening aspects of the present, the 
 hopes of the future, alike proclaim it as the im 
 perative law of duty for us of the present day, 
 that the Republic must be free. As in days of 
 yore 
 
THE GREAT QUESTION. 279 
 
 " Hills flung that cry to hills around, 
 
 And ocean-mart replied to mart, 
 And streams, whose springs were yet uufound, 
 Pealed far away the startling sound. 
 
 Into the forest s heart." 
 
 So let it be again flung abroad till every stain 
 is wiped from our soil, and the recreancy of our 
 hearts retrieved. 
 
 There is a time in the history of nations, as 
 there is in the life of the individual, and as 
 there was in the life of Christ, when the Devil 
 carries them up into a high mountain, and 
 offers them all the kingdoms of the earth if 
 they will but worship him. At such a time 
 have we arrived in our national career. The 
 spirit of evil points us to the vast outlying re 
 gions of the globe, and he promises that all 
 these shall be ours, with riches, and power, and 
 glory, if we will but covet them, and take 
 them, and think no more of the other spirit, 
 which only whispers in sadness to our inmost 
 soul, that goodness is better than wealth, that 
 truth is greater than power, and that the beau 
 ty of a humane and benignant life is the bright 
 est glory of man. Let us beware how we 
 choose ! 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 
 
 THE recent exciting and protracted contest, 
 as to the organization of Congress, was signifi 
 cant, in more respects than one. It was a topic 
 al symptom of a general state, showing a large 
 amount of derangement, and yet a tendency to 
 recuperation. 
 
 We saw the representatives of the people 
 brought to a complete deadlock by the anta 
 gonism of parties, each pulling a different way, 
 with no one strong enough to prevail, and no 
 two, seemingly, ready to coalesce. For two 
 months, nearly, the usual course of legislation 
 was suspended on the settlement of a prelim 
 inary dispute as to the Speakership. 
 
 Yet the House of Representatives was never 
 more truly representative than in this tempor 
 ary paralysis of its functions ; for the \vhole 
 nation is in pretty nearly the same predica 
 ment. Its politics are decussated, if we may 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 281 
 
 use the expression, not by well-defined par 
 ties, but by numerous opposing factions. Their 
 conflicts, but for the seriousness of the subjects 
 involved, would exhibit as droll a spectacle as 
 Marryatt describes in his triangular duel. The 
 Republicans, taking a pistol in either hand, 
 fire away at the Democrats and the Americans ; 
 the Americans, doing the same, fire at the Re 
 publicans and the Democrats ; while the Demo 
 crats, again, discharge their pieces at the 
 Americans and the Republicans. Everybody 
 shoots at everybody else ; and everybody, let 
 him aim in whatever direction he will, is sure 
 to aim at an enemy, who is also aiming at him, 
 thus rendering the exposure equal, and the 
 chances of sudden disaster somewhat even. 
 
 It was evident, however, during the struggle 
 in the House, in spite of the seeming and su 
 perficial diiferences of opinion among the seve 
 ral factions, that there was, radically, but a 
 single issue. Each member felt, as he gave 
 his vote for this or that candidate, though he 
 was not always ready to avow it, that the 
 turning-point of all was, the question of 
 slavery. All the other questions, which may 
 
282 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 have operated in forming little knots of voters, 
 were incidental, or aside, like the small eddies 
 which whirl about in the very current of the 
 principal vortex. Banks and Aiken were the 
 leaders of the hosts between which the real 
 battle was fought, while they who shouted for 
 Fuller, ZollikofFer, and what not, were only 
 deserters from the main ranks, or camp-follow 
 ers and marplots. 
 
 Nor were leaders ever chosen with more in 
 stinctive wisdom, considering the peculiarity 
 of their relations to this predominant issue. 
 Mr. Banks was a man of the people, who had 
 risen by his own efforts from an humble me 
 chanical occupation to a high political office ; 
 while Mr. Aiken was a slaveholder, one of the 
 wealthiest of his class, endowed with all the 
 better qualities of that class, and as sincere as 
 he was strong in his geographical convictions. 
 Mr. Banks represented the State of Massachu 
 setts itself the best example of a free condi 
 tion of society to be found on the face of the 
 earth ; while Mr. Aiken represented South 
 Carolina long distinguished as the ablest ex 
 ponent of both the opinions and the influences 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 283 
 
 of the slave-civilization. In these champions, 
 the two social systems of the North and South 
 were pitted against each other, and, for the 
 first time so openly and directly, in the history 
 of our national existence. 
 
 In the same way, the nation, in the midst of 
 the parties and agitations by which it is dis 
 tracted, recognizes the fundamental and vital 
 question to be that of slavery. Wink it out 
 of sight as we may, or complicate it as we 
 may, it cannot be disguised, that slavery is the 
 single real element of party divisions. Openly 
 or secretly, it controls the action of all par 
 ties. They come together, as in the case of 
 the Americans, for other ostensible purposes ; 
 but before they separate, are fiercely at logger 
 heads about this matter. Every ancient party 
 organization has been sundered by it, and their 
 members, in forming new party ties, are almost 
 exclusively controlled by it. The first condi 
 tion they exact, before joining anybody is, that 
 it should think thus and so of the slavery 
 question. 
 
 But what is the slavery question ? What is 
 the real issue at the bottom of the excitement 
 
284 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which gathers about this word slavery, as a 
 nucleus ? Let us answer, in the outset, that 
 it is not a question as to the merits of slavery 
 in itself, or rather in its adaptation to those 
 communities in which it already exists. With 
 the exception of a certain class of philanthro 
 pists, who conceive it their duty to wage war 
 against every form of injustice everywhere, we 
 know of no class in this country who wish to 
 interfere with those communities. At least, 
 there is no distinct or formidable political 
 party professing such an object. Agreat many 
 individuals at the North, not indifferent to the 
 cause of humanity, claim the right to consider 
 and criticize Southern society, just as they do 
 the various societies of Europe and Asia. But 
 the great body of the people have never 
 evinced any aggressive disposition beyond that, 
 and are willing to leave the practical treatment 
 of slavery in the states to those who know 
 its evils, and are to be presumed best able to 
 devise a remedy. What concerns them solely 
 and exclusively is, the relation of slavery to 
 their own interests and responsibilities. It 
 might be conceded that the peculiar socialism 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 285 
 
 of the South is the best for it, under the cir 
 cumstances, that human wisdom can conceive; 
 or, that it has the divine sanction being 
 equally beneficial to the white and black races 
 without touching the marrow of our public 
 dispute. 
 
 The real question turns upon the struggle of 
 two incompatible orders of civilization for the 
 mastery of a common field. It has fallen to 
 the lot of this country to make the attempt to 
 confederate a series of states, separated by two 
 distinct social systems ; and, though the at 
 tempt is not impracticable in itself, nor was it 
 impracticable under the original conditions, 
 nor is yet impracticable, could these conditions 
 be adhered to the actual working of the ex 
 periment has developed a broad and serious 
 antagonism. The evidences of a latent differ 
 ence have casually appeared, from the begin 
 ning; but they were adjusted as they appear 
 ed, on the principle of peaceful compromise. 
 In a late fatal and perfidious hour, however, 
 that principle was flung to the winds, and the 
 elements of discord left to the chance of a 
 hand-to-hand encounter. 
 
286 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The controversy, between what may be 
 termed our Northern and Southern civiliza 
 tions, presents two aspects : first, whether the 
 influences of the one or the other shall pre 
 dominate in the federal government ; and, sec 
 ondly, whether the one or the other of these 
 influences shall prevail in the organization of 
 new territories. Virtually, these questions 
 are one ; for whichever side succeeds in re 
 gard to the first point, will be sure to succeed 
 in regard to the second, and vice versa. 
 
 As to the first aspect of it, we are all aware 
 what the facts of the case have been hitherto ; 
 we are all aware, that for many years the in 
 terests of slavery have carried the day, in 
 nearly every department of the national gov 
 ernment. The executive has always inclined 
 to that side, and so has the judiciary, and, 
 with occasional exceptions, both branches of 
 the legislature. It came to such a pass, in 
 deed, at last, that no man, whatever his capaci 
 ties or claims, who was in the least adverse to 
 that interest, was allowed to hold the lowest 
 office of profit or honor under the general gov 
 ernment, and much less to achieve any of its 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 287 
 
 higher places. It is true, at this hour, that 
 the most illustrious poet of his country, that 
 its most illustrious historian, that its most 
 illustrious philosopher, that its most illustri 
 ous novelist (were she a man) could not be 
 made a gate-keeper of the public grounds at 
 Washington, if he desired to be ; and all for 
 the simple reason, that having formed a differ 
 ent theory of social life from the one which 
 obtains at the South, he has been honest 
 enough to express it. Even the most eminent 
 statesmen of former days our Jeffersons, our 
 Franklins, our Jays, and our Adamses could 
 they arise from their graves, and write what 
 they once wrote, would be excluded forever 
 from political employment. The men of the 
 North, who are born to freedom, who are cra 
 dled to rest by the songs of its surges as they 
 roll in from the lakes and oceans, who inhale 
 it with every breath blown from their eternal 
 hills, and who, should they fail to extol it, 
 would be recreant to the earliest and deepest 
 inspirations of their lives, are begirt by an in 
 tolerance more exclusive than the ostracism of 
 the Athenian demos, or the interdicts of the 
 
288 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 mediaeval papacy. The men of New England 
 and New York, of Ohio and Wisconsin, are 
 yet called upon to adopt the peculiar senti 
 ments of men of Georgia and Texas, or at 
 least to hold their tongues from the temerity 
 of criticism or disapproval, on pain of political 
 banishment. Let them but once whisper 
 abroad any disparagement of slavery, though 
 it were in the friendliest tone, with the sin- 
 cerest convictions, under an earnest and con 
 scientious sense of its important, bearings, and 
 straightway they are marked men. 
 
 Now, against this they contend and protest ; 
 it is a dictation so arrogant, that to submit to 
 it would be to deserve it ; and every impulse 
 of self-respect, honor, and liberty prompts them 
 to avoid that humiliation. 
 
 The more immediate and pressing aspect of 
 the great controversy, however, is that which 
 relates to the future destiny of the territories. 
 It presents this simple alternative whether, 
 contrasting the effects of the free condition of 
 society with those of the slave, we ought to 
 abandon our virgin soils to the occupation of 
 the one, or solemnly consecrate them to the 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 289 
 
 use of the other? As a nation, we have had a 
 broad and ample experience of the influences 
 of both systems on the prosperity of states, 
 and we are summoned to a decision between 
 them. In this view, the question is one, we 
 repeat, not of races, nor of abstract theories of 
 rights, nor even of religious convictions (al 
 though all these will influence the decision), 
 but of actual facts. Demonstrated before us, 
 lie the results of two social experiments, and 
 we are asked, in the light of those demonstra 
 tions, to determine which it is best to apply, in 
 the formation of our young and inchoate com 
 munities. A brood of such communities is 
 growing up under our fostering wings; our 
 duty is, to launch them in the world, as a good 
 parent would send forth his sons, furnished 
 with the best appliances for a healthful, sober, 
 manly, and generous career; and the choice 
 lies in this whether that furniture shall come 
 from the pens and plantations of slavery, or 
 from the factories and free-schools of freedom. 
 
 There could be no better illustration of the 
 proper solution of this problem, than the expe 
 riences of the two states, which lately ap- 
 13 
 
290 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 peared, through their representatives, in the 
 congressional arena, as the standard-bearers of 
 either party. Massachusetts and South Caro 
 lina are both old, and both sea-board states, 
 which took a conspicuous part in our revolu 
 tionary war ; which were present at the forma 
 tion of the Constitution ; which have since 
 grown, side by side, under their characteristic 
 systems ; which cling, with great tenacity, to 
 the principles of these, and which are remarka 
 ble for the vigor with which they represent 
 their effects. At the outset, South Carolina 
 was about four times as large Massachusetts, 
 territorially, and is still ; but this advantage is 
 partly compensated by the fact, that Massa 
 chusetts began with about one-third more to 
 tal population. Massachusetts, however, was 
 democratically organized into a system of sepa 
 rate, and almost independent townships, each 
 a centre of government in itself, while South 
 Carolina, from the necessity of the case, was 
 centrally organized into parishes, having little 
 or no local authority, and, for the most part, 
 dependent on the principal, or state govern 
 ment. The people of Massachusetts have re- 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 291 
 
 tained that organization, and with it, the most 
 entire freedom of every inhabitant ; while the 
 people of South Carolina have also, with slight 
 modifications, retained their system, and with 
 it, the servitude of nearly the whole laboring 
 class. Now, what have been the effects, on 
 the prosperity of each, of these two contrasted 
 constitutions? 
 
 The elements of national greatness, in their 
 three-fold material, intellectual and moral forms, 
 are universally summed up under the heads of 
 population, productive industry, the diffusion 
 of wealth, internal improvement, popular edu 
 cation, and social order. But who, that has 
 ever traveled over the two states we are con 
 sidering, or taken the pains to compare their 
 statistics, as given in the usual authorities, can 
 have failed to remark their broad and striking 
 differences, in all these respects? Supposing 
 their social systems equally well adapted to 
 their respective localities and the genius of 
 their people, how notable the disparity in the 
 practical results ! 
 
 On the one part, we behold a considerable 
 progress ; but on that of the other, a prodigious 
 
292 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 one. On the one side, we behold a large and 
 fertile soil, under a delicious climate, thinly 
 peopled and poorly cultivated ; and, on the 
 other, a barren soil, under inclement skies, 
 teeming with towns and cities, and cultivated 
 to the extreme. On the one side, the industry, 
 though productive, is, in many respects, care 
 less, thriftless, improvident, and confined to a 
 few branches which increase slowly; while, on 
 the other, the productiveness of the industry 
 exceeds that of any part of the globe, except 
 ing a few sugar and coffee estates of the torrid 
 zone, and is richly varied, and advancing. On 
 the one side is a slender commerce ; and, on 
 the other, a commerce which sweeps the seas. 
 On the one side are bad roads, and few of 
 them ; while, on the other, is a chevaux dc 
 frise of railroads. On the one side is a puny 
 and unprolific intellectual activity ; and, on the 
 other, an intellectual activity which leaves no 
 child untaught, and scarcely a man unlettered. 
 On the one side is a society irrevocably divided 
 into castes, where a debased and inferior race 
 grows in numbers and strength, to the increas 
 ing embarrassment of the superior race, and 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 
 
 293 
 
 amidst the derision of the civilized world ; 
 while, on the other, is a homogeneous society, 
 where every man enjoys the means of the high 
 est culture and the securest happiness, and the 
 future expands and brightens with new pros 
 pects of social achievement.* Every year is 
 
 * The following table is compiled from the last Census, 
 with the exception of the " Agricultural Products," which 
 is Mr. Tucker s estimate for 1840 : 
 
 
 MASSACHU S. 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 Population, .... 
 Real and personal estate, 
 Acres improved, 
 Acres unimproved, . ; .. . f 
 Cash value of farms, . ; \ $ 
 Agricultural products, . 
 Manufacture and mining, 
 
 994,514 
 
 $573,342,286 
 2,133,436 
 1.222,576 
 $109,076.347 
 $16,100,000 
 $151,137,145 
 $41,367,956 
 
 668.507 
 $288,267,694 
 4,072,651 
 12,145,049 
 $82,431,684 
 $21,550.000 
 $7,063^513 
 $1.808,517 
 
 Exports, 
 
 $16.895,304 
 32,715,327 
 
 $15,400,408 
 2.081,312 
 
 Rail-road costs. .... 
 Value produced to each person, 
 Free-schools 
 Private schools, . " 
 Scholars in all, 
 Papers and periodicals, 
 Illiterate white natives, . 
 Libraries, 
 Churches, .... 
 Church property, 
 
 $55,602.687 
 $106 
 3,679 
 403 
 190,924 
 64,820,564 
 1.861 
 684 015 
 1,477 
 $10,206,184 
 
 $11,287,093 
 $50 
 724 
 202 
 26,025 
 7,145,930 copies 
 16,460 
 107,472 vols. 
 1,182 
 $2,172,246 
 
 As to the crime and pauperism of the two states, no ma 
 terials exist for an accurate comparison ; but if we may 
 trust the statement of Governor Hammond, in his address to 
 the South Carolina Institute, there are no less than 50,000 
 whites (one-sixth of the white population), "whose industry 
 is not adequate to their support. They obtain a precarious 
 subsistence by hunting, fishing, plundering fields and folds, 
 and trading with slaves." For further facts in regard to 
 
294 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 plunging South Carolina into deeper troubles 
 and dangers, from which her most sagacious 
 and even hopeful minds see no escape but civil 
 war ; while every year is lifting Massachusetts 
 toward a more secure and benignant eminence 
 of Christian civilization. 
 
 Our argument does not mean to assert that 
 South Carolina ought to adopt the institutions 
 of Massachusetts, because we have no occasion 
 to go into such an inquiry here ; but what it 
 does assert is this, that if a high degree of pros 
 perity be desirable to a nation, if a thriving 
 population, if universal industry, if the rapid 
 increase and equitable diffusion of wealth, if 
 general improvement, if education and religion, 
 in short, if a harmonious growth and widening 
 prospects for the future, be the tests of that 
 prosperity, then the institutions of Massachu 
 setts are vastly better in themselves, and in 
 respect to all communities in which they are 
 practicable, than the institutions of South Caro 
 lina. We say, that the experience of these 
 
 the physical and moral abasement of South Carolina, see 
 Mr. Olmsted s interesting and masterly book, called " The 
 Seaboard Slave States." Xew York, 1856. 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 295 
 
 states has shown, incontestably, the superiority 
 of the free condition of society, and that we, as 
 honest patriots and Christian men, are bound, 
 by all human wisdom, and all divine law, to 
 prefer those institutions, where either may be 
 adopted, as in our new territories. We are 
 bound to secure, to our friends and descendants 
 in those regions, to which, under our guardian 
 ship, they have removed, every highest guar 
 anty and facility of future well-being. 
 
 But the superiority of free society, so sig 
 nally exhibited in the contrasts of the two 
 great and powerful states we have named, is 
 confirmed by the experience of all the states. 
 The relative position of the free states, com 
 pared with the slave states, is accurately de 
 noted by the relations of Massachusetts and 
 South Carolina. Free society is always on the 
 lead ; and one of the established principles of 
 political economy is, that it must be so that 
 it cannot be otherwise ; that God would be 
 forgetful of the laws he has implanted in the 
 human constitution, and in the universe, if he 
 did not render freedom the most benignant of 
 all conditions. Mr. Henry C. Carey, in a most 
 
29G POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 valuable book of his,* has shown, by a rigid 
 induction from the statistics of four nations 
 India, France, England, and the United States 
 that in everything which involves the suc 
 cess, the happiness, and the moral elevation of 
 their people, their eminence is in a precise 
 ratio to their political freedom. He proves, 
 specifically, and beyond a doubt, that, in re 
 spect to the security of person and property ; 
 in respect to quantity and quality of work ; in 
 respect to the profits of capital, and the wages 
 of labor ; in respect to the equable distribution 
 of wealth, and exemption from taxes ; in re 
 spect to the soundness and extension of credit; 
 in respect to facility of intercourse, and habits 
 of industry; in respect to purity of marriage 
 and growth of population ; in respect to the 
 absence of crime, and even of disease ; and, 
 finally, in respect to literary and religious in 
 struction, the condition of nations is measured 
 by their freedom. It is such an overwhelming 
 demonstration, as no defender of despotism, in 
 any of its shapes, has ever undertaken to re 
 fute, or even cared to notice. Yet a similar 
 * Principles of Political Economy, 3 vols. 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 297 
 
 demonstration is possible, in regard to the free 
 and slave states of this Union. It can be 
 shown that a clear line of distinction separates 
 the two, in all these elements of high civiliza 
 tion. And how could it be otherwise? The 
 condition of slavery, confining its laborious 
 classes, for the most part, to simple agricultu 
 ral labor, does not stimulate, and scarcely 
 admits of that variety and magnificence of pro 
 duct, which is the mark of high physical de 
 velopment, whilst it is still more deficient in 
 the means of intellectual and moral progress. 
 Its superior class often attains the most ele 
 vated point, both of character and culture, but 
 its masses, with here and there an indi 
 vidual exception, cannot rise above the lowest 
 level. 
 
 All this, however, needs no protracted dis 
 cussion. Do not the nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine men, out of every thousand, at the North, 
 honestly believe, that a free society is, in every 
 sense, preferable to a slave society? Are there 
 not thousands upon thousands at the south, 
 who believe the same thing, who openly con 
 fess the superiority of the former, and justify 
 13* 
 
298 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the continuation of the latter solely upon the 
 ground, that it was an unavoidable inheritance, 
 of which it is now difficult, if not impossible, 
 to get relieved ? 
 
 The only exceptions that we know to this 
 almost universal conviction, are the opinions 
 held by a few southern speculators, who, fol 
 lowing the lead of Mr. Calhoun, have discov 
 ered the most alarming weaknesses in free 
 society. They see in it a thousand elements 
 of evil in its relations of labor and capital, a 
 future war between the rich and poor in its 
 excitability, the seeds of a desolating fanati 
 cism, and in its party violences, a most speedy 
 anarchy. Poor fellows ! They seem to be af 
 flicted with a judicial blindness! 
 
 No observant man is, of course, insensible 
 to the many lingering defects and evils of our 
 free society. If he have studied it minutely, 
 he will not regard it as by any means perfect 
 or final: yet, on the comparison of it with 
 other societies, and after every abatement, he 
 will come to a quite positive conclusion, that 
 it contains facilities for reaching every imagin 
 able social excellence, greater than any other 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 299 
 
 that now exists. Taken as to the general re 
 sult, he will see, that the civilization of our 
 free states is not only considerably in advance 
 of that of any other part of the globe, but is 
 of such a structure and spirit that it will con 
 tinue, for many years yet, to keep in advance. 
 What civilization can be named its superior? 
 That of Turkey, Russia, Italy, Austria, Spain 
 the simple suggestion is ludicrous! Outside 
 of England, France, and the north of Germany, 
 which surpass us in certain special aspects, 
 there are no nations to be named on the same 
 day with New England, the northern middle 
 states, and the settled parts of the West. We 
 do not mean that these have actually achieved 
 all the finer results of European life ; but that, 
 apart from their own peculiar attainments, 
 they are in a condition to appropriate the high 
 est existing social culture. Without sacrificing 
 their characteristic virtues, they are rapidly 
 adopting the best refinements of others. No 
 where else do literature and art spread so 
 widely among the people ; and nowhere else is 
 domestic life so readily blending the genialities 
 and graces of intercourse (before impossible to 
 
300 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 its newness arid rawness) with that purity 
 which it always had and still retains. 
 
 The forms of our free society, being alike 
 flexible and fixed, preserve the security of law, 
 while they give ample scope to the movements 
 of progress. That dissolution, especially, which 
 the aforesaid speculators fondly predict for it, 
 in consequence of its fanaticisms and turbu 
 lences, is an event the most remote ; for its 
 very freedom is its defense, and the errors 
 which arise in it, like the vapors of the night, are 
 dissipated in the morning by the light of free 
 discussion. AVhen the mind is exempted from 
 compressive restraints, its natural activity is 
 displayed in novel schemes of thought as well 
 as in mechanical contrivance ; projects of re 
 form of all kinds are as inseparable from it as 
 business enterprise ; and like a rich soil which 
 produces the best fruits, it also abounds in 
 plentiful crops of weeds. All the excitements 
 of it, however, all its isms and vagaries, are 
 scarcely felt as evils. Beyond the temporary 
 ferment they occasion, no one is the worse for 
 them, while these ferments may be themselves 
 regarded as the outlets of irritation that might 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 301 
 
 otherwise be deep and dangerous. It is the 
 forced suppression of social energies, and not 
 the ventilation of them, which leads to perni 
 cious revolts. For this reason, therefore, we 
 have no fear of the imputed lawlessness of free 
 society a danger to which, in its peculiar con 
 stitution, slave-society seems to us far more 
 exposed. Dr. Arnold somewhere remarks with 
 profound wisdom, that "the age of chivalry, 
 whose departure Burke so much regretted, was 
 the natural parent of that age of Jacobinism 
 which he so much abhorred." He meant that 
 both breathe a spirit of hostility to order, en 
 couraging men to look upon themselves as in 
 dependent of their fellows, and cultivating a 
 proud and selfish idolatry of what belongs to 
 themselves individually, whether it be personal 
 honor or personal glory, as in the one form of 
 the disease, or personal liberty and equity, as in 
 the other. Both lead to what Bacon calls bo- 
 num sultatis to the neglect of the good of the 
 general body. True as this is of a genuine 
 chivalry, it is still more true of that spurious 
 sort which springs out of slavery, and which 
 breeds a haughty, insolent, and irritable self- 
 
302 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 conceit intractable to law, and disdaining so 
 cial subordination. It is in southern society 
 that personal and mobocratic violence is rifest 
 it is there that schemes of filibusterism are 
 principally engendered and there that the 
 threat of taking up arms against the Union is a 
 favorite method of discussion. 
 
 In the elements of stability as well as of 
 prosperity, then, the social organization of the 
 North enjoys an unquestionable superiority 
 over that of the South ; and we do not see 
 how any rational or humane man can hesitate 
 as to which is the most desirable for a new re 
 gion. If the question concerned a community 
 already settled, in which the habits had been 
 formed, and large amounts of property were 
 invested in a definite condition of things, the 
 determination of it might be more embarrass 
 ing ; but our western territories are a primi 
 tive, untrodden ground no vested interests ex 
 ist there to be disturbed no ancient prejudices 
 to be aroused and no hoary abuses to be 
 overthrown. All is fresh, and new, and unper- 
 verted ; nothing stands between the judgment 
 of what is best for them, the actual truths of 
 
NOKTHEUX Oil SOUTHERN, WHICH? 303 
 
 experience and reason, and the instant applica 
 tion of them. Now, in such circumstances, to 
 doom them, for years to come, to an inferior 
 social system, full of confessed weaknesses, full 
 of hopeless evils, full of disastrous liabilities 
 and perils, would be treating them with a 
 cruelty which a brute would be ashamed of 
 towards its young. 
 
 But, unfortunately, the politicians, ever dis 
 inclined to contemplate political movements in 
 their larger and humaner aspects, always con 
 trive to complicate them with divergent or 
 collateral issues. They will not look at them in 
 the light of a sound political and social philoso 
 phy, as matters which may control the happi 
 ness and stamp the character of unborn millions, 
 and to the decision of which a man should bring, 
 nothis selfish cunning, but his maturest wisdom, 
 and his most generous sympathies ; but they 
 look at them, almost exclusively, as they bear 
 on the distributions of power and their own 
 prospects of advancement. It has fallen to 
 this question of the organization of our ter 
 ritories to be decided quite on these grounds. 
 Among the politicians of the South, it has be- 
 
304 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 come a desperate struggle for the retention of 
 their ascendancy, and among those of the North, 
 a desperate gamble for success ; and between 
 the two, the people of the United States have 
 been cheated out of their rightful control of 
 their dependencies ; and the people of the 
 territories themselves subjected to a series of 
 the most atrocious outrages. 
 
 In the whole history of our legislation, there 
 is not another so barefaced, flagitious, and reck 
 less a course of proceeding as that which ini 
 tiated, accompanied, and has followed the repeal 
 of the Missouri compromise. We doubt, indeed, 
 whether any legislation of any civilized coun 
 try, this side of the French revolution, has been 
 marked by such an utter want of principle, 
 and at the same time been so pregnant with 
 dangerous consequences. Wresting from the 
 representatives of the people, under false pre 
 tenses, and on the ground of a mere abstrac 
 tion, their long-settled right of legislating for 
 the territories, to confer it upon chance-comers, 
 the authors and abettors of squatter sovereign 
 ty no sooner saw it in exercise than they 
 hastened to suppress it by fire and sword. 
 
NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN, WHICH? 305 
 
 Flinging out the prize of a splendid empire, to 
 be won by a scramble between the two parts 
 of the Union, already inflamed and hostile, they 
 have brought us to the verge of a fratricidal 
 war. Inviting the settlement and organization 
 of the territories by the people of all the states, 
 they have let loose the wild hordes of the bor 
 der upon a particular class of them, and de 
 nounced the penalties of treason against their 
 action as freemen. Beginning in fraud, they 
 have ended in force. 
 
 It is in the power of the Congress, however, 
 to pass the crisis, by a ready recognition of the 
 claims of Kansas, as a free state. Her action, 
 like that of Arkansas, Michigan, and California, 
 which furnish appropriate precedents, has been 
 somewhat irregular, but in no respect treason 
 able. Her people, provoked by every incite 
 ment to extremities, have deported themselves 
 with temper and discretion. They are not com 
 pelled even to ask, that " something should be 
 pardoned to the spirit of liberty ;" but are amply 
 justified in resting their case on its naked 
 merits. Let it be treated with a manly and 
 truthful independence, and let those, whose 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 duty it is to dispose of it, or to act in the mat 
 ter in any way, remember the profound saying 
 of Emerson : " Never, my friend, never strike 
 sail to a fear. Come into port grandly, or sail 
 with God the seas." 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE, 
 
 No man, who is not an enemy of this coun 
 try, can look upon its present political strug 
 gle with other feelings than those of shame, in 
 dignation, and alarm; of shame, because we pre 
 sent to the civilized world the spectacle of a 
 great, free republic, almost rent asunder by a 
 contest on the subject of human slavery ; of 
 indignation, because our men in power have 
 committed, and are committing, a series of the 
 very grossest outrages against the dictates of 
 prudence, as well as of justice and freedom ; 
 and of alarm, because there seems to be no 
 probable issue to the conflict but in civil war. 
 
 For nearly seventy years now, the delicate 
 experiment of self-government, instituted on 
 this western continent, has more than justified 
 the hopes of its authors. It has been, in every 
 sense, a most successful experiment. Every 
 object which it is possible or desirable for a 
 
308 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 good government to attain, has been attained 
 by our federation of republics. Peace, security, 
 content, wealth, happiness, have followed its 
 operations, with an amplitude and fullness of 
 fruition that were never before witnessed. 
 Neither Sparta, nor Athens, nor Rome, nor the 
 British Empire, nor Russia, nor any other na 
 tion, noted in the annals of mankind for early 
 maturity, has exhibited such an astonishing 
 growth, in all the elements of national great 
 ness, as has been exhibited by the United 
 States of North America. Other states have 
 taken centuries to consolidate their power, and 
 even to secure their existence, while we have 
 sprung at once, as if by miracle, into the most 
 flourishing vigor. Our territory, within the 
 short period of our independence, has quadru 
 pled in extent ; our population has expanded 
 tenfold ; our commerce equals that of the mis 
 tress of the seas ; and our attainments in intelli 
 gence and virtue compare favorably with those 
 of the most civilized of the European nations. 
 
 During this time of unexampled advance and 
 felicity, but one question has arisen among us, 
 likely, from the nature of it, to interrupt the 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 309 
 
 harmonious continuance of this happy condi 
 tion. There have been many severe and earn 
 est conflicts in the proceedings of our political 
 parties much excitement, much acrimonious 
 feeling, and some dangerous revolts but the 
 question of slavery alone has become a touch 
 stone of our vitality. Great and intense as 
 may have been the commotions caused by 
 other matters of difference, they have been 
 easily settled, either by a clear preponderance 
 of opinion on one side or the other, or by sea 
 sonable compromise. No one of them has ever 
 been deemed of sufficient importance, to fcazard 
 the peace of the Union upon any particular de 
 termination of it. When it had been thorough 
 ly discussed, when parties had divided upon it, 
 when the usual bitterness of party warfare had 
 exhausted itself in intrigue and denunciation 
 the vote was taken and the people acquiesced 
 in the result. Once clearly decided, there was 
 an end to the debate. Hostilities were sus 
 pended, and the country went on its way in 
 peace, until some new conjuncture of affairs 
 presented the opportunity for new combina 
 tions and new conflicts. Thus, the question 
 
310 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 between federalism and state rights distracted 
 us for a time, but gradually passed away. 
 Thus, the internal improvement question, and 
 the tariff question, and the national bank ques 
 tion, and the Texas question, have led to heat 
 ed controversies, and subsided. And thus, it 
 was supposed that by the compromises of 1820, 
 and 1850, the deeper question of slavery, after 
 embroiling us for years, had been peacefully 
 adjusted. 
 
 But, in this respect, a terrible mistake was 
 committed. All the events of the day show 
 that the slavery question has not been adjusted. 
 The contest in regard to it rages with more ve 
 hemence than ever. Every part of the nation 
 is excited, aroused, maddened by it ; is, indeed, 
 almost up in arms. Persons, who have hither 
 to, on account of their professions, or from 
 indifference, kept aloof from politics, are deeply 
 engaged in it ; our pulpits resound with it ; 
 our literature is filled with it ; the extremes of 
 feeling have passed over into violence and 
 bloodshed ; and the boldest, as well as the 
 most timid minds, begin to ask, What is to be 
 the end ? 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 311 
 
 It is of some moment, then, to inquire into 
 the causes of this ferment and anxiety. Why 
 is the agitation of this question more pervading 
 and active than that of any other ? Why are 
 the debates of Congress fuller of exasperation 
 than ever before? Why are the newspapers 
 so vituperative and truculent ? Why are the 
 villages of Kansas ablaze at midnight from the 
 torch of the incendiary, and why is a senator 
 smitten down from his very seat in our highest 
 hall of legislation? 
 
 Our first reply is, that slavery is a system of 
 such peculiar nature, that it scarcely allows 
 of rational discussion. When it is discussed at 
 all, either in the way of attack or defense, it 
 inevitably leads to a distempered expression of 
 feelings. Among those by whom it is opposed, 
 it is regarded as a practice at once too mean 
 and criminal to admit of extenuation. Touch 
 ing their profoundest religious sensibilities by 
 what is esteemed its flagrant violation of the 
 very idea of manhood, and appealing to the 
 tenderest sentiments of natural compassion by 
 the sufferings ascribed to its victims, their con 
 victions against it easily inflame into passion- 
 
312 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ate hostility. They cannot conceive how free 
 men and. above all, Christian men, who ought 
 to see a brother in every human being can 
 consent to doom the least of their fellows to a 
 remediless bondage, a bondage which shuts him 
 out forever, not only from the means, but from 
 the hope, of all progressive civilization. They 
 are incensed by the thought. The ordinary in 
 justices of society they can excuse, because 
 they are always partial in tlier extent, and 
 never final in their effects; but this master- 
 wrong, embracing an entire race in its evils, 
 and looking forward to no probable ameliora 
 tion, swells into an enormity of offense which 
 it is impossible for their charity to pardon. 
 As aggravations of this general sense of the 
 turpitude of the thing, occasional instances of 
 abuse arise ; some refractory subject is tortur 
 ed at the stake, or some panting fugitive is torn 
 by blood-hounds, and then the primitive feeling 
 is kindled into a fiery indignation. The vials 
 of an unmeasured wrath are opened upon the 
 slaveholder; no terms of reproach seem too 
 severe for him ; his conduct is arraigned as of 
 a piece with that of the Thug, the vampire, or 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 313 
 
 the pirate ; and lie is morally gibbeted before 
 the world as the proper object of hatred and 
 scorn. As long, then, as slavery continues to 
 exist, and human sympathies remain what they 
 are, it will continue to be opposed. It will 
 be, also, violently opposed. Men of philosophic 
 temper, who have learned from history how 
 much every social institution is to be judged 
 relatively, or according to circumstances, may 
 be disposed to qualify their opinions ; they may 
 lament the savage and intolerant spirit in which 
 those who are mingled up with it are assailed, 
 but the many make no such distinctions or al 
 lowances. They judge of all things on broad 
 and absolute principles. They perceive in 
 slavery a manifest wrong done to our common 
 humanity, and they denounce that wrong ex 
 plicitly, without niceness of phrase and with 
 out meal in the mouth. Ever since the two 
 great influences of Christianity and Democra 
 cy have been practically received in society 
 the one proclaiming the right of all men to 
 spiritual, and the other the right of all men to 
 temporal, liberty there has been a growing 
 
 revolt against it a revolt which, in stern or 
 14 
 
314 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 excitable natures, deepens into the interisest 
 animosity. 
 
 On the other side, these assaults are met in 
 a spirit of resentful and arrogant defiance. 
 The excited slaveholder, conceiving his rights 
 to be attacked fearing, too, the dangerous 
 consequences of any tampering with them 
 repulses even more fiercely than he is attacked. 
 Could the vast pecuniary interests the incal 
 culable social liabilities which, in his belief, de 
 pend upon the continuance of his authority 
 suffer him to be moderate, the habits of domin 
 ion in which he is trained would not. It is 
 one of the necessities of his position that 
 he should be quick to resent. Accustomed 
 to an unquestioning obedience, he is easily 
 aroused by any show of opposition. But let 
 that opposition spread widely, and take a some 
 what angry and vindictive shape, he is obliged 
 to rage against it rather than to reason. " A 
 despot," says Aristotle, " whenever he ascends 
 the throne, takes a wild beast with him ;" and 
 the slaveholder is a despot in a small way. 
 He possesses an unlimited power of control 
 over a number of his fellow-beings ; and it is 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 315 
 
 the universal testimony of history, that where 
 such a power is exercised, while in rare cases 
 it develops a kindly condescension and an af 
 fectionate and gentle discipline, it betrays 
 most men into an impatient self-will and petu 
 lance. " The whole commerce between master 
 and slave," says Jefferson, " is a perpetual ex 
 ercise of the most boisterous passions." As 
 slavery originates in violence, as the poor Afri 
 can is torn from his home by violence, is trans 
 ported across the seas by violence, and is sent 
 to this land or that by violence, so he can be 
 retained in his subjection only by violence. 
 The master is compelled to assert his authority 
 by force, in one shape or another, and the habit 
 of asserting it passes more or less into his 
 whole conduct. Because he may not make 
 concessions to his slave with safety to his sys 
 tem, he cannot make concessions to those who 
 would plead the cause of the slave. Every in 
 terference, even of the law or of opinion, 
 becomes an impertinence. He must reign 
 supreme over these, as he does over the plant 
 ation, or quit the grounds of his power. As 
 serting a right of property in his servant, he 
 
316 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 claims that almost absolute disposal of it which 
 pertains to the idea of property. Yet he can 
 not trust it to the ordinary safeguards of prop 
 erty ; for it is a peculiar species, inflammable, 
 locomotive, furtive, and, sometimes, given to 
 strike. It must be protected, therefore, by 
 provisions that would elsewhere seem fanatical 
 in their severity. When other property is as 
 sailed, society contents itself with the lenient 
 punishment of the offender ; but when this pe 
 culiar species is assailed, even by word, the 
 offense swells into the gigantic proportions of 
 a capital crime, and the offender is placed on a 
 level with the incendiary and the murderer. 
 Other kinds of property may be debated by the 
 publicist or the editor, its abuses exposed, and 
 the legitimacy of it even called in question, 
 but this kind asserts for itself an inviolable 
 sanctity. It must not be touched at the peril 
 of life. Even public opinion, wherever it pre 
 vails, is benumbed by it into silent acquies 
 cence ; and a surveillance, as subtle and swift 
 as that of any of the Roman Caesars, watches 
 over its safety, and smites the remotest malcon 
 tent with paralysis. 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 317 
 
 Now, a controversy between the anti-slave 
 ry feeling, such as we have described it, and 
 a body of men placed and educated as slave 
 holders are, will not be confined to a pleasant 
 exchange of words. On the one side are radi 
 cal, religious, and social convictions, inflamed 
 to a pitch of fanaticism ; and, on the other, vari 
 ous impulses of interest, prejudice, fear, and ha 
 bitual domination concentrated into an aggres 
 sive resentment. How can the encounter of 
 the two fail to be a fierce and internecine war, 
 animated by the most vehement passions, and 
 looking forward to no close but the moral con 
 quest of one or the other ? Were the question 
 simply abstract, like a theological tenet, or a 
 scientific hypothesis, this diversity of sentiment 
 would lead to conflict ; but it happens in this 
 country that the antagonism is related to the 
 deepest practical considerations. The slavery 
 question is one of political power as well as 
 of interest it is one of conflicting civilizations 
 as well as of conflicting opinion one in which 
 not only the present character, but the future 
 destiny of the whole country is involved. 
 
 The peculiarity of our political structure, 
 
318 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 therefore, may be assigned as a second cause 
 of the vivacity and vital import of the pre 
 vailing contest. Our constitution has coupled 
 together into a kind of wedlock two different 
 orders of society the one ancient and patri 
 archal, the other hoyden and capricious com 
 posed essentially of the same races yet differ 
 ing widely in institutions, tendencies, and aims. 
 While they were actuated by the original im 
 pulse of their union which was the achieve 
 ment of a national independence, and the 
 establishment of national power they main 
 tained a delightful harmony. They caressed 
 and fondled each other with all the ardor of 
 young lovers. They relieved each other s bur 
 dens, encouraged each other s virtues, and look 
 ed forward complacently to years of increasing 
 happiness, and a long line of descendants. 
 But these early fervors could not disguise the 
 secret existence of serious distemperatures. 
 In the progress of the domestic management, 
 there occurred little bickerings and tiffs, which 
 disclosed a somewhat deep-seated incompati 
 bility. It began to be felt, more and more, 
 that, between a social life founded upon free- 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 319 
 
 dom, and one founded upon slavery, there 
 must arise, unless prevented by an almost mi 
 raculous self-restraint on the part of both, in 
 cessant causes of discord. It began to be 
 seen, that the control of the federal power, and 
 by means of that of the character of the ter 
 ritories, would constitute a splendid prize for 
 the contentious adjutancy of the two parts. 
 Those vast and lucrative trusts, inseparable 
 from the central head, and the power to be 
 wielded in a thousand forms, through its many 
 functions, were temptations of too extraordi 
 nary a nature to be resisted by the average po 
 litical virtue of the best people. Accordingly, 
 they have become the rock on which, if any, 
 we shall split. It is universally acknowledged, 
 that they must be administered in the interests 
 and for the ends of slavery, or in the interests 
 and for the ends of freedom. Slavery and 
 freedom cannot both be national. The spirit, 
 the impulse, the aspirations of one or the 
 other must prevail. If slavery is not a local 
 thing, peculiar to some of the states, then free 
 dom is local and peculiar, and must withdraw 
 more and more from the dispensation of office 
 
320 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and the control of legislation. No nation can 
 serve two masters, if the policy of slavery 
 gets the ascendant, the public demeanor must 
 be different from what it would be if the poli 
 cy of freedom preponderated. Without im 
 puting to either side any wanton inclination to 
 molest the rights of the other, it is clear, from 
 the inherent necessities of the two systems of 
 society, that they must operate in quite differ 
 ent directions. Slavery, at the best, is the 
 government of a dominant and privileged class, 
 and cannot fully sympathize with the broader 
 life of a whole people. Free society, on the 
 contrary, is buoyant with every pulse of popu 
 lar feeling. It is built upon the original idea 
 of our Revolution the idea of free and equal 
 rights. It is pervaded by the democratic senti 
 ment, which, towards the close of the eight 
 eenth century, spread over the civilized world, 
 and created a new epoch in the history of man 
 kind. But the other system, for the most part, 
 has wandered from these primitive aspirations. 
 Under the leadership of Mr. Calhoun and his 
 school, it has substituted a dogma about the 
 natural superiority of certain races for the old 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 321 
 
 doctrine of democratic equality. It concerns 
 itself less with humanity, and more with phy 
 siology. It has learned to defend the subju 
 gation of labor as a just and normal condition ; 
 and its proclivities tend to the perpetuation, 
 not the amelioration, of the anomalies of its 
 social existence. 
 
 Thus, we find our confederacy divided into 
 two parts fifteen members of it, with a white 
 population of about six millions, on the one 
 hand and sixteen members, with a white 
 population of thirteen millions, on the other 
 face to face with each other, in a severe strug 
 gle for the mastery. With the one is the weight 
 of numbers, wealth, enterprise, intelligence, 
 and exemption from domestic dangers, but the 
 other enjoys a superiority in the possession of 
 the organized forces of government, in direct 
 ness of purpose, and in compactness and energy 
 of action. The prestige of past successes is 
 with the South the supine and cautious con 
 servatism of the nation is with it ; the restless, 
 excitable avidity of foreign conquests, by a 
 strange juxtaposition, is also with it; but the 
 
 conscience of the nation is against it ; the 
 
 14* 
 
322 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 literature is against it ; the probabilities of the 
 future, founded upon the natural increase of 
 numbers and the growth of opinion, are against 
 it ; and, on this last account, it feels through 
 all its joints that it must conquer now or 
 never. Indeed, it is obvious to both parties, 
 that the great conflict is drawing to a head, 
 and that the coming presidential election will 
 precipitate a decision. That event, at all times 
 bristling with excitements, is invested with a 
 new and tremendous import, by its bearing 
 upon deeper ulterior issues. It is marshaling 
 the two orders of civilization to a final en 
 counter ; already the sullen clouds of the storm 
 are flashing their menaces, and discharging their 
 bolts along the remote western horizon com 
 paratively harmless as yet, but filling the air 
 with a vague and restless foreboding of evil. 
 
 But this allusion leads us to remark, that 
 while the slavery dispute is so irritable and 
 petulant in itself, and is bound up with such 
 profound collateral issues, there is a third and 
 special cause for the existing aggravations in 
 the flagitious course which the politicians have 
 pursued towards Kansas. That rich and beau- 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 323 
 
 tiful territory, larger than the kingdom of 
 Great Britain, and equal in area to the Aus 
 trian and French empires, the geographical 
 centre of the western continent, is also the 
 pivot of its most vital and determinative con 
 troversy. It is no extravagance to say, that 
 what the plains of Iran were to western Asia 
 what France is to Europe this region of 
 Kansas will be to the great Valley of the West. 
 It holds the key to the entire and gigantic 
 civilization which shall soon fill up those soli 
 tudes. There lie the granaries of the New 
 World ; and thence shall spring the seats of 
 future empire. For years to come, it will be 
 the goal of that stupendous migration flowing 
 from the exhausted East, and for years again, 
 from its capacious womb shall proceed the 
 busy millions destined to redeem or to disgrace 
 the extensive fields beyond. Like a great in 
 land lake which receives the many streams 
 of the mountains, and pours them forth again 
 in mighty rivers Kansas will color both what 
 it takes and what it gives, and become the 
 source of a beneficent fertility, or a remediless 
 blight. 
 
324 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 For nearly half a century this pregnant cen 
 tre was consecrated in perpetuity, by a solemn 
 act of legislation, to freedom an act which, as 
 Mr. Douglas said in his Springfield speech of 
 1849, " received the sanction of all parties in 
 every section of the Union." " It had its ori 
 gin," he continues, "in the hearts of all pa 
 triotic men who desired to preserve and per 
 petuate the blessings of our glorious Union 
 an origin akin to that of the constitution of 
 the United States, conceived in the same spirit 
 of fraternal affection, and calculated to remove 
 forever the only danger which seemed to threat 
 en, at some distant day, to sever the social bond 
 of union. All the evidences of public opinion 
 at that day seemed to indicate that this com 
 promise had become canonized in the hearts 
 of the American people as a sacred thing, 
 which no ruthless hand would be ever reckless 
 enough to disturb." But, in 1854, that " ruth 
 less hand" was raised. Although it was not 
 demanded by any exigency of state, uncalled 
 for by a single voice among the people, it was 
 recklessly raised by Mr. Douglas himself, in the 
 lowest spirit of demagogery. 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 325 
 
 The bulwarks, which had beaten back the 
 billows of a lifetime, were thrown down on the 
 pretense of the abstract right of each locality 
 to the sovereign disposal of its own affairs a 
 pretense which, if it had been well founded, 
 was then purely gratuitous. The effect was, 
 to fling away this magnificent domain to a rab 
 ble of competitors. As the Roman empire, in 
 the days of its degeneracy, was sold to the 
 highest bidder, so this empire of the future 
 experienced the more degrading fate of aban 
 donment to the mob. All the riff-raff of the bor 
 ders men of rude and violent natures, regard 
 less of principles, and avid of plunder were in 
 vited, along with soberer citizens, to a pell-mell 
 scramble for the prize. The world saw, with 
 astonishment, a great republic surrendering its 
 right to the control of its dependencies, sur 
 rendering its noble prerogative of fixing the 
 character of inchoate and unsettled communi 
 ties, to the precarious arbitrament of a miscel 
 laneous herd of first comers. It saw the few 
 honest and legitimate settlers, who, taking 
 their fortune in their hands, had gone thither 
 with an exalted purpose of founding a state 
 
326 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 worthy of the most advanced modern civiliza 
 tion, overwhelmed, in their very first attempts 
 at organization, not by the red savages of the 
 wilds, but by the white savages of the border. 
 If there is anything made clear by the united 
 testimony of private letters and public inves 
 tigation, by the almost unanimous concurrence 
 of the emigrants, by the confessions of their 
 adversaries, and by the faithful scrutiny of the 
 Committee of Congress, it is, that the first 
 election for the legislative constitution of the 
 territory was not an election but an invasion. 
 An election is the free choice of their rulers by 
 a people who have a right, under the laws, to 
 such a choice. But this election was turned 
 into a military occupation. A foreign army, 
 somewhat irregular as to its discipline, but 
 with all the equipage and appliances of a be 
 sieging host, marched into the polling places, 
 as the French army, in 1848, filed through the 
 streets of Rome, or as the English are in the 
 habit of taking possession of some Indian zillah. 
 It came in detachments, with drums beating 
 and colors flying with arms and ammunition, 
 and baggage-wagons and pitched its tents and 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 327 
 
 posted sentries, and, driving the inhabitants 
 from the ballot-boxes, voted. - If the judges of 
 the election were docile, it made the most ad 
 mirable effort to preserve the peace ; but, if 
 they were refractory, others were put up in 
 their stead. Having accomplished its purpose, 
 not without a number of incidental outrages, 
 this valiant band returned to its Missouri home. 
 In every assembly district, it appears from 
 the evidence before the Congressional com 
 mission, these frauds were perpetrated. Of 
 course, the legislature, which resulted from 
 them, was a seditious and usurping body. It 
 had no more authority to act than the maraud 
 ing troop by which it was appointed. In no 
 sense was it a representation of the people. 
 The pretext that the certificate of " due elec 
 tion" given by Governor Keeder to two-thirds 
 of the members, in the absence of objections 
 to the returns, conferred upon them a legal 
 character, might have been true, if he had been 
 a judicial instead of a mere ministerial agent. 
 But his act was only declaratory of a subsisting 
 fact, and not decisive of an actual right. It 
 was formal, not final. It were monstrous to 
 
328 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 suppose that the liberties of a whole nation 
 could be suspended upon a mere clerical func 
 tion. Imagine that Governor Reeder had set 
 aside all the returns, and given his certificates 
 to friends of his own, would that have consti 
 tuted them a valid legislature ? Could not the 
 people, in that case, either in their primary 
 capacity, or through an appeal to Congress, 
 vacate his act ? Assuredly they could ; for 
 there is no maxim or principle of law more 
 firmly established, than that fraud in any pro 
 ceeding vitiates it from the beginning. Be 
 sides, if we admit that Governor Reeder was 
 the proper and exclusive judge of the legality 
 of the legislature, it follows that his primary 
 recognition of it was nullified by his subse 
 quent refusal to recognize it, after it had re 
 moved, contrary to the organic act, the place 
 of its assemblage. The same law which em 
 powered him to certify the election-returns, 
 empowered him to fix the place of legislation, 
 and if his action was binding upon the people 
 in one case, it was no less binding in the other. 
 That this pretended legislature knew itself to 
 be illegally constituted, is evidenced by the 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 329 
 
 whole course of its proceedings. They were 
 the proceedings of conspirators, and not of a 
 deliberative assembly. More tyrannical, atro 
 cious, and malignant acts, were scarcely ever 
 decreed by an eastern satrap against a subject 
 province, than were passed by these men, in 
 the name of law, against their own assumed 
 constituents. From the earliest ages, among 
 every people making the slightest pretensions 
 to freedom, the right of free speech, the puri 
 ty of suffrage, the independence of the press, 
 the exemption of the citizen from arbitrary 
 arrests, from vindictive penalties, and from 
 unusual oaths, have been cardinal and sacred 
 objects. In those darker days of monarchical 
 despotism, when our forefathers of England 
 laid the foundation of that glorious polity 
 which sheds a lustre upon the Anglo-Saxon 
 name, these were the guiding stars of all their 
 struggles. At this day, on the continent of 
 Europe, the heaviest grievance of the oppress 
 ed multitude s, for the removal of which they 
 have often undertaken desperate and sanguina 
 ry revolutions, is their deprivation of the rights 
 of free opinion and utterance in regard to the 
 
330 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 action of government, and the institutions of 
 society. Yet, these legislators of Kansas in 
 view of these holy and imprescriptible rights 
 rights which are the very essence of a free 
 commonwealth with the hot haste of pirates, 
 eager for the life of their victims struck them 
 out of existence. Those precious defenses of 
 the citizen speech, the press, the bar, the jury 
 were alike invaded with inquisitorial zeal. 
 It was enacted, 1st, that any person who should 
 print, write, or speak anything " against the 
 right to hold slaves in the territory," should 
 be deemed guilty of a felony : 2nd, that no 
 person should exercise the elective franchise, 
 or be allowed to practice in the courts, with 
 out first swearing to support the fugitive slave 
 law : 3rd, that any person speaking or writing 
 anything calculated "to promote a disorderly, 
 dangerous, or rebellious disaffection among 
 slaves," should be punishable with imprison 
 ment at hard labor for five years ; 4th, that 
 any person aiding a slave to escape, or assisting 
 at an insurrection, should suffer death ; and 
 5th, that no person opposed to slavery could 
 sit on a jury in which offenses against these 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 331 
 
 acts were brought in question ! and, finally, as 
 if these provisions themselves were not enough, 
 the future elections of the territory were so 
 arranged, that persons opposed to slavery were 
 disfranchised, and everybody else, whether an 
 actual citizen or not, on the payment of a 
 nominal tax, was suffered to vote. The entire 
 scheme, it will be seen, had nothing in it of 
 legislation for a community of mingled opin 
 ions, but was throughout a proscription and 
 persecution of a particular class. Everything 
 was to be prostituted to slavery, as in the 
 darker ages of the world everything was pros 
 tituted to a form of religion. Slavery was the 
 state, the church, the all the one thing to 
 be sustained at all hazards. No man can read 
 the clauses of these enactments, as they stand on 
 the statute-book, without deriving the pro- 
 foundest conviction that the authors of them 
 were* playing a desperate game, in which no 
 consideration of principle or honor entered, but 
 the whole was fraud. 
 
 Cheated of all legitimate government, there 
 remained two courses for the actual settlers to 
 pursue to appeal to the federal authority to 
 
332 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 maintain the law, grossly violated, and to un 
 dertake to institute a government for them 
 selves, and both these courses were pursued. 
 Unfortunately, and by a single forgetfulness of 
 duty, to use no harsher term, the federal au 
 thority had already committed itself to the 
 cause of the ruffians. Whether it was imbe 
 cility, or roguery, or sheer tyranny, or all these 
 combined, which constrained him, does not ap 
 pear; but the President, who in Massachusetts 
 had used the army of the United States to cap 
 ture a runaway negro, could find no occasion 
 for his interference in the armed resistance of a 
 mob to an ordinance of Congress. On the 
 other hand, he did whatever he could, indirect 
 ly, to encourage the sedition. He patronized 
 its agents he instructed his own agents to 
 assist and abet them and at last, when a di 
 rect blow in behalf of slavery would be most 
 effective, he found the right, so long heW in 
 abeyance, to order an army into the territory. 
 Meanwhile, the settlers had adopted the 
 second alternative, of framing a government 
 for themselves. In technical strictness, the 
 authority for this proceeding ought to have 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 333 
 
 come through Congress ; but as the popular 
 doctrine, as the doctrine on which the territory 
 itself was organized, was that of " squatter 
 sovereignty," and as precedents existed in the 
 cases of Michigan, Arkansas, and California 
 in which states had been formed without the 
 aid of Congress they concluded, with Madi 
 son, that in such emergencies " forms ought to 
 give way to substance."* With all due pub 
 licity, and in the most perfect order, a new 
 government was formed, its officers appointed, 
 and application for admission into the Union 
 made. 
 
 But in the way of the execution of this de 
 sign, harmless as it appears, there stood two 
 formidable lions. In the first place, the 
 wretches, who had, at the outset, plundered 
 them of their rights, gathering strength and 
 number from the encouragement of the pro- 
 slavery party everywhere, were again ready to 
 pounce upon them ; and, in the second place, 
 the United States authorities judges, juries, 
 marshals, colonels, sergeants, and dragoons un- 
 
 * Federalist, No, 40. 
 
334 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 der new definitions of treason, and the most 
 audacious stretches of law, and to the utter 
 disregard of justice, were sent to assist at the 
 cremation. Between the two, the friends of 
 the Free State cause were crushed to the earth, 
 their leaders were arrested, their property pil 
 laged, their houses burnt, and their families dis 
 persed. The details of the infamous rout still 
 fill the journals. A systematic suppression of 
 freedom, begun by the outlaws of the frontier, 
 has been conducted to a bloody end by the ad 
 ministration. It would seem as if freedom in 
 Kansas had become an irritation and a nuisance 
 to men in power, just as the simple worship 
 of the Albigeois was to the fierce zeal of the 
 Dominicans, or as the trade, the wealth, and 
 the independence of the Netherlands became 
 to Philip the Second. Its presence there dis 
 turbs and rebukes them, as the presence of 
 Mordecai at the gate of the king did Haman. 
 
 Doubtless, there has been considerable ex 
 aggeration in the reports of the trials and suf 
 ferings to which the settlers have been exposed ; 
 doubtless, there have been excesses, both of 
 word or deed; committed by themselves ; for* 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 335 
 
 in times of high excitement, a uniform temper 
 ance is not to be expected ; but the single fact 
 which glares upon us through all the turmoil, 
 and all the conflicting rumors, is, that a peace 
 ful and honest movement in behalf of freedom 
 has been extinguished by force. Disguise it as 
 we may, palliate or justify it as we may, this 
 is still the fact ; and it falls upon the heart 
 with a frightful, almost stunning effect. In 
 the middle of the nineteenth century, in a 
 land preeminent for its pretensions to liber 
 ty, an effort to save the future key of the 
 continent, from the universally acknowledged 
 evils of human bondage, has been precipitate 
 ly, wantonly, disastrously, arrested, if not for 
 ever baffled. It- is a fact which compels us to 
 inquire, whether our pride in the supposed su 
 periority of our age and nation, in the spirit 
 of justice, and in the love of rational liberty, 
 may not prove, after all, but a pleasing self- 
 deception. 
 
 These are the public or general causes of 
 that erethism of politics which marks a fever 
 ish access ; but, to increase its energy, there 
 came upon the top of the deplorable events in 
 
336 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Kansas, an event of a personal nature, which 
 possessed also a national significance. We 
 refer to the disgraceful attack upon Mr. Sum- 
 ner, in the Senate of the United States. That 
 any man, were he the most despicable member 
 of that body, should b*e stricken to the floor by 
 the hands of a member of the other House, 
 for the just exercise of his constitutional rights, 
 and for the faithful expression of the senti 
 ments of his constituents, is an offense which 
 ought to excite a universal reprobation. But 
 when that man is one of its most accomplish 
 ed members a gentleman by habit and educa 
 tion, a scholar, a profound jurist, an eloquent 
 speaker, an upright citizen, as remarkable 
 for the amiableness as he is. for the dignity 
 of his deportment, and whose fame has pene 
 trated both hemispheres the offense grows 
 into an enormity beyond the reach of lan 
 guage to describe. We share in the feeling 
 of earnest indignation with which it has been 
 almost everywhere rebuked at the North, but 
 this feeling is not unmingled with a deeper one 
 of humiliation and alarm. We are humiliated by 
 the thought that the manliness, the honor, the 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 337 
 
 good sense of the republic should have so far 
 degenerated in any quarter, as to admit, and 
 what is worse, to approve a brutality so gross. 
 And we are alarmed lest, in the reaction of the 
 public mind against the outrage, it should be 
 led to nurse its exasperated feelings into a set 
 tled purpose of revenge. The best of men 
 often retain so much of the animal in their 
 composition that they are moved beyond them 
 selves at the sight of blood 
 
 " si torrida parvus 
 
 Yenit in ora cruor, rediunt rabiesque, furorque" 
 
 and how much more apt are the multitude to 
 be carried to an excess of rage ? There was 
 malice and uncharitableness enough in public 
 sentiment before, without adding this fuel to 
 the flame. There was violence enough in the 
 tone of public discussion, without extending 
 it to actual blows. That game once begun, 
 where is it to end ? The people of the free 
 states, fortunately, are, by their religious edu 
 cation, and by their habits of industry, inclined 
 to peace ; they are docile, patient, and forbear 
 ing qualities which men of violence are apt 
 15 
 
338 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 to despise but, once aroused, and, our word 
 for it, that the energy, which has enabled 
 them to conquer themselves, to conquer the 
 inclemencies of nature, to conquer by their 
 enterprise every rebellious sea and every de 
 fying mountain, will be carried into the pur 
 suits of strife. It is a most dangerous and for 
 midable demon which the slave states invoke, 
 when they conjure up the spirit of physical 
 force. Like the Afrite of the eastern tale, it 
 may seem to them only a bottle of smoke in 
 the beginning, but that smoke, once let loose 
 upon the air, will raise its head into clouds, and 
 its hands will become like winnowing forks, 
 and its- nostrils trumpets, and its eyes a con 
 suming fire. The one great lesson taught of 
 human history, written in crimson letters on a 
 thousand pages, is, that " he who takes the 
 sword shall perish by the sword." Unless the 
 journalists and the public men, who have ap 
 plauded this murderous deed, are prepared for 
 the worst extremities, they will recall their 
 insane and passionate approval. We cannot 
 conceive a folly more suicidal for them than 
 that which would appeal to the arbitrament 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 339 
 
 by combat. If they dread free discussion, if 
 they distrust the decisions of the ballot-box, 
 they have still less to hope from a resort to 
 arms. 
 
 It will be seen, that it is not a consolatory 
 view we have been compelled to take of our 
 public affairs, and yet they are not altogether 
 hopeless. If the ruffianism of Washington and 
 the borders should have the effect of awaken 
 ing opinion to the real issues before the coun 
 try, it will compensate for much of its evil. 
 Under the existing organization of the govern 
 ment, and with the prevalent usages of parties, 
 which have thrown them almost entirely into 
 the hands of corrupt managers, nothing is to 
 be expected from those sources. A regenerate 
 and united public sentiment is alone equal to 
 the task of retrieving our unhappy decline. 
 The time has come when every honest man, 
 whatever his party politics, who deems the Re 
 public worthy of his care, should determine to 
 arrest the downward tendency of things. He 
 is solemnly called upon, by every exigency of 
 the times, to decide whether the materialism, 
 the barbarism, the worst and lowest impulses of 
 
340 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the social state, or the higher and better influ 
 ences of our democratic civilization, are to pre 
 vail. Shall the generous and manly confidence 
 of our fathers in the doctrine of human rights 
 continue to be ours, or shall we surrender it 
 to the narrow and base lusts of an oligarchy ? 
 Shall the magnificent empires growing up on 
 the western shores of the Mississippi become 
 the homes of an industrious, peaceful, benefi 
 cent freedom, or shall they be given over to the 
 chain-gang and sterility? These are the ques 
 tions of the day, and the trial questions of our 
 destiny. If the wicked scheme for the perpet 
 uation and extension of slavery of which the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill was the first clause is 
 to be carried into complete effect if the noble 
 yearning for freedom, which is the inspiration 
 and life of the North, is to be suppressed at 
 Washington, and excluded from the territories 
 by force let Ichabod be written upon the 
 doors of our temples, for the glory will be de 
 parted. It is impossible that slavery and a 
 vital, genuine republicanism should thrive and 
 spread together ; it is impossible that bond la 
 bor and free labor should work cheek-by-jowl 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 341 
 
 on the same soil ; it is impossible that a spe 
 cial class should rule the people, and the peo 
 ple still retain their supremacy and power. In 
 a nation otherwise free, slavery may prolong a 
 subordinate existence for years, but when it 
 leaps into the ascendant, the -spring of the na 
 tional life is broken. A disease may linger 
 long on the extremities of a system, which 
 would be fatal to it the moment it touches the 
 great central organs. Confined to its original 
 localities, the slave-system of the United States 
 was pernicious only, or chiefly, within the 
 limits of those localities ; but when the spirit 
 and the power of it invaded the general gov 
 ernment, and sought a diffusion over the terri 
 tories, it became a universal evil an evil 
 which, unless arrested, and again confined to 
 its primitive range, w T ill dry up the sources of 
 the most noble and glorious progress. 
 
 As we read the chronicle s of the nations, 
 from the dim traditions of the early eastern 
 dynasties, through the splendid annals of 
 Greece and Rome, down to the latest record 
 of our own era, we are struck by the uniformi 
 ty with which, after a longer or shorter career, 
 
342 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 they have all succumbed to the influences of 
 foreign conquest or of civil war. We see them 
 grow for a time with marvelous rapidity, they 
 attain to a broad and stately dominion, their 
 storehouses swell with abundance, and their 
 arts shed lustre on the age ; but soon they sink 
 as rapidly as they rose, arid are left like ruins 
 upon the desert desolate and pitiable the 
 wolf howling from their deserted chambers, 
 and the bitterns crying from their broken 
 pools. The writers of history describe the 
 mournful experience, and, wisely or unwisely, 
 speculate upon its causes. They seek for a so 
 lution of the problem in fanaticism, in bad 
 morals, in luxury, in the degeneracy of race, 
 and in the inscrutable decrees of Providence 
 and read us many a lesson out of the conclu 
 sions at which they arrive. But the prevalence 
 of a cause, as universal as the effect, and as 
 deep and powerful as the selfishness of man, 
 they have not always signalized. It is that 
 separating and corrosive spirit, which denies 
 the equal claims of all humanity. " Whether 
 we regard," says one, " the caste-systems 
 of Egypt and India, the martial despotism of 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 343 
 
 Persia, the rule of wealth and craft in Phoeni 
 cia, or the class-divisions of Greece, and Home, 
 and Judea, one obvious characteristic will be 
 found pervading the ancient nations ; every 
 where the social fabric was built upon the 
 assumption of the natural inequality of man, 
 upon the necessary, because divinely appoint 
 ed, inferiority of certain races. Not in the su 
 perstitious tenets and observances of heathen 
 theology, nor in the absence of a law of right 
 and wrong, nor in any want of the higher 
 powers of humanity, nor in the fatal uncon 
 sciousness of their weakness, nor in any diffi 
 culties, from which we now have exemption, 
 thrown in the way of a wider benevolence, nor 
 in the lack of such advantages as we are li 
 censed to reap from the discovery of printing, 
 etc. but in the universal dogma of human ine 
 quality, we find the sufficing reason for the im 
 perfect freedom and the inevitable decline of 
 the greatest empires of antiquity." And, while 
 it is the peculiarity of Christianity that it did 
 proclaim the divine brotherhood of man, not 
 on the ground of any expediency or conve 
 nience, but upon the broad foundation of the 
 
344 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 common fatherhood of God, and the common 
 redemption by Christ it is also true of all the 
 Christian nations, that they have risen or fallen, 
 according to their fidelity to this eternal stand 
 ard. It was the departure from this, by the 
 dissolute emperors, which rendered the Western 
 Empire an easy prey to the barbarians, and, 
 after a protracted but ineffectual struggle, gave 
 the Eastern Empire to the Turks ; it was ad 
 herence to this which lifted the Papacy into 
 European dominion, and the abandonment of it 
 which toppled it from its throne ; it was the 
 popular sympathies of the Italian republics 
 which made them, for nearly two centuries, the 
 mothers of all industry, learning, and art, and 
 the growth of aristocracy which consumed 
 their strength : it was the bigotry, and far- 
 reaching despotism of Philip which prostrated 
 the grand Spanish monarchy to a degradation 
 and feebleness from which there has been no 
 resurrection ; and it was the heartless tyran 
 ny of the Louises which kindled the train 
 of the world-exploding French revolution. If 
 the Romanic nations were once like Lucifer, 
 the sons of the morning, and have since fallen 
 
KANSAS MUST BE FREE. 345 
 
 like Lucifer, it was because they admitted to 
 their souls Lucifer s infernal ambition. If the 
 Teutonic nations, and especially the Anglo- 
 Saxon branch, have carried the principles of 
 religion, of literature, of stable government, 
 of progressive civilization over the world, it is 
 because they, less than others, have accepted 
 the downward, and backward, and paralyzing 
 spirit of caste. Humanity is one, it is indisso 
 luble, it is sacred ; who lays his lightest finger 
 upon it to do it harm, seals his own doom ; he 
 degrades and weakens himself in others ; he 
 touches the ark of God, in which he has de 
 posited his most precious treasures. 
 
 When our country ceases to cherish a love 
 for the rights of man, she will have parted 
 with the secret of her strength. "When she 
 takes to her heart any other worship than that 
 of humanity, justice, truth, she will have ad 
 mitted the serpent into her Eden. Whatever 
 may be the policy and the course of individual 
 states, there is for the nation but one policy 
 and one course. Our birthright of freedom is 
 our only and eternal safeguard. 
 15* 
 
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