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THE SHADOW OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE CHEISTIAN STATE, 
 
 A TREATISE FOR THE TIMES, 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF THE APOCATA8TA8IS. 
 
 Stultum est imperare caeteris qui nescit sibi." 
 
 gw f 0*fe : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HUEDv& HOUGHTON,, 
 Boston ; E. P. BUTTON & Co. 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following treatise was written in the Winter and Spring 
 of 1862-3, occasioned by a request for contributions to the politi- 
 cal department of a religious newspaper. But running obstinate- 
 ly into form and dimensions not suited to that purpose, it was 
 laid aside with much other spoiled foolscap, where perhaps it 
 should have been left 
 
 The state of the country which suggested the subject and 
 method of its treatment no longer exists. But the principles and 
 facts and arguments of the treatise have little peculiar relation to 
 any one time or one country. Allusions to events as present 
 which were passing two years ago, and illustrations by condi- 
 tions and relations of things which have become historical, have 
 not, therefore, been altered. 
 
 The subject is trite to thinking American minds. Perhaps 
 the method of treating it, and some of the aspects and illustra- 
 tions of it thereby presented, are not so. Certainly it is one which 
 has sufficient need of being urged in everyway which can be 
 made effective, upon the consideration of both thinking and un- 
 thinking men, and especially of those who aim to be leaders in 
 politics and statesmanship, men who are not by any means the 
 most profoundly thoughtful class in the community. 
 
 If the treatise shall serve to increase, in the minds of any 
 such, or of others, a feeling of the desirableness and of the neces- 
 sity of the influence of Christianity in the State, and the confi- 
 dence of any in its power to mould the State more and more into 
 
its true form ; if it shall aid, in however small measure, to ex- 
 tend the application of the principles of Christianity wider and 
 deeper to the political, industrial and business relations of men, 
 it will accomplish, so far, what should be the highest aim of 
 every Christian man and woman the extension of the Kingdom 
 of God on earth. 
 
 Our Christianity has just been subjected to one of the seve- 
 rest trials to which the religion of a nation was ever exposed. 
 One short year ago we ourselves and the friends of true Chris- 
 tianity in all the world trembled lest it should prove unequal to 
 the occasion. By God's grace it stood the test. Let us, there- 
 fore, thank God and take courage. If, however, we may justly 
 be encouraged from the past, we have less reason for self-com- 
 placency at what has been done than for shame at what is not 
 done. For to what a small part of the whole field of the rela- 
 tions of men, as citizens of the State, relations which ought to be 
 under the control of the principles of Christianity, have they yet 
 been applied ! Still, therefore, there is need to sow beside all 
 waters, and since God's coulter has now well broken the field, let 
 us scatter wide the good seed while the furrows are fresh. 
 
THE SHADOW OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 " I will give my laws into their understanding, and upon their 
 heart will I write them." SEPTUAGINT. 
 
 " If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed. ' ' J. C. 
 
 Christianity attains its earthly realization in those 
 persons in whom there is such a mutual relation be- 
 tween spiritual truths and the faculties receptive of 
 them that they " receive the love of the truth" at 
 the same time with the knowledge of it, and as the 
 condition of the true knowledge of it. They have 
 not only an intellectual relation of assent to the 
 truth, but that moral correlativeness to the charac- 
 ter of the truth which makes them capable of recog- 
 nizing, willingly receiving, and knowing the truth, 
 that it is truth. It is written on their heart as well 
 as admitted into their understanding. It is plain 
 that the relation of such persons to truth as LAW, 
 or in the form of commands (which is always the 
 form of spiritual truth) to be obeyed, is the relation 
 of willing obedience, of free conformity to the law. 
 
6 THE CHU R CH. 
 
 They know the truth, and the truth has made them 
 free. They are free from the relation of slaves to 
 the false, the base, the sinful, and from that of un- 
 willing or counterwilling to the true and good. 
 
 Spiritual truth always demands that it be believed 
 and obeyed, and inasmuch as it is addressed to the 
 spiritual faculties of which the will is the presiding 
 organ, it demands that it be cordially believed, and 
 willingly obeyed, freely, that is, without compul- 
 sion cr even moral constraint. It demands the obe- 
 dience of the free, willing spirit ; in short it demands 
 spiritual obedience. Any other obedience in spiri- 
 tual relations is absurd, contradictory to the idea, and 
 so ceases to be obedience, so that where the moral 
 correlation to the truth, and to God the source of it, 
 is wanting, obedience is impossible. There can con- 
 sequently be no place for coercion in regard to spiri- 
 tual obedience. Many truths are impossible to be 
 known or believed, recognized as true by spiritual 
 perception, or even admitted into the understanding 
 in the absence of the requisite moral conditions ; 
 they must first be "written on the heart." For 
 how can the proud man come to the knowledge of 
 that, to know which implies humility? How can the 
 pharisee make the prayer of the publican ? recognize, 
 or admit the duty of making such a prayer ? And 
 so in general, since the true knowledge of the pecu- 
 liar and most important doctrines of Christianity im- 
 plies a spiritual preconformity to them, and willing 
 reception of them, where the moral quality is hetero- 
 geneous, and the will is averse, such knowledge is im- 
 possible. It is certain, then, that there must be great 
 and unreconcilable differences of opinion between 
 those who hold the relation to spiritual truth which 
 
THE CHURCH. 7 
 
 is the condition of knowledge and obedience, and those 
 who do not. This difference of relation to truth and 
 consequent duty, is in fact an essential difference and 
 the most important difference among men. 
 
 A community of persons, having such relation to 
 spiritual truth that they recognize, willingly believe, 
 and freely obey it as fast and as far as it is pre- 
 sented to them, associated and organized in order 
 more and more to know, become conformed to, and 
 make known religious truth, is a CHURCH. It is 
 obvious that the Church if constituted according to 
 the Christian idea, and so as to be truly a COMMUNI- 
 TY, must consist exclusively of persons having the 
 relation to religious truth just spoken of. For this 
 is the essential element of their unity, this is u the 
 communion of saints," in which, and by which they 
 are associated and become of the same kind, so that, 
 of necessity, nothing heterogeneous, in this respect, 
 can properly be of the community, but must be for- 
 eign and outward in relation to it. 
 
 That which is common to all the members of a 
 properly constituted church is their moral relation 
 to the truth when fully presented to the appropriate 
 faculties. There is not in all respects a common 
 knowledge, or a common and same amount of know- 
 ledge. The purpose of the community in regard to 
 itself is to increase in all its members the knowledge 
 of the truth, and the performance of the religious 
 and moral duties always demanded by it. Religious 
 truths, like other knowledge, are successively acquir- 
 ed, and in order to the true and full apprehension of 
 them, there may be necessary both instruction and 
 exhortation. The church, therefore, needs, in order 
 to its true ends, certain functions to be performed 
 
8 THE CHURCH. 
 
 within it ; and besides the mutual communications 
 and assistance of its members, the true life, know- 
 ledge, and duties of the church are best promoted by 
 certain officers or organs specially devoted to these 
 ends. The church has also a most important rela- 
 tion to those not of its own community, to those 
 without, namely, to proclaim the truth to them ; 
 for which it must have appropriate organs. It is 
 manifest that these organs of the church both for in- 
 ternal and external use, must partake of the common 
 relation to the truth. They must therefore be evol- 
 ved from within the church itself; that is, the church, 
 like all true organisms, is ^self-organized . But the 
 organific principle, as in the natural world, is the 
 creative act of God. 
 
 The church needs to be instructed, guided, govern- 
 ed, and the proper officers of the church may teach, 
 reprove, rebuke, with all authority. But it is plain 
 that it must be spiritual authority, to be manifested, 
 and exercised, and legitimated, by so rightly divid- 
 ing and skillfully presenting religious truth to minds 
 pre-adapted to its recognition and reception, that the 
 obligation to believe and obey it shall, by such 
 minds, be felt and acknowledged. The church by its 
 peculiar endowment is thus of necessity made the 
 judge whether its officers do exercise spiritual autho- 
 rity, and, in general, of their qualifications, as well 
 as of those of persons asking admission as new mem- 
 bers to their community, for only those who have 
 the requisite relation to spiritual truth can determine 
 whether others partake of the same. 
 
 Another fact is obvious here, namely, that the 
 obedience rendered to the authority exercised in the 
 church must be spiritual obedience, free, spontan- 
 
TH E CHURCH . 9 
 
 ecus, willing obedience, obedience of the will, since 
 no other obedience is recognized, or satisfies the de- 
 mand, in spiritual relations but compulsion of the 
 will is impossible. There can, therefore, be no ef- 
 fective coercion of spiritual obedience. Certain out- 
 ward acts may be compelled, but that which was es- 
 sential to the required obedience is wanting, the act 
 becomes instantly something else. If any member 
 of the church carelessly admitted is found not to re- 
 cognize the truth, nor to admit its claims to his be- 
 lief and obedience, does not govern himself by the 
 law written on his heart, the church is powerless to 
 exact obedience, it can only ask him to leave a com- 
 munity in which he does not belong. 
 
 Thus it appears that the whole constitution and 
 organization of the church are determined by its pe- 
 culiar relation to religious truth, a relation every- 
 where in the New Testament asserted as a fact, and 
 confirmed by the experience ol all those who partake 
 of it. From this it results that the church is self- 
 organizing, the form being but the manifestation of 
 the idea, as in all other true organisms. Any inter- 
 ference from without could, evidently, only produce 
 deformity or monstrosity. All its organs must be 
 homogeneous with it, and as the church is ultimate 
 judge of that fact they must be the evolution of its 
 own life and under its own control. For the autho- 
 rity of the officers of the church is spiritual authori- 
 ty, that is, the authority of the truth, but to the 
 church belongs the endowment of recognizing the 
 truth, while in any individual member, even per- 
 haps in the Teacher himself, this endowment might 
 be found wanting. 
 
 The church is also self -legislating. N ot in the 
 
10 THE CHURCH. 
 
 sense that it enacts for law its own will this no true 
 legislature ever does hut its relation to Christian 
 truth makes it a criterion and interpreter of the laws 
 of Christ's kingdom, so that it becomes as it were an 
 Assessor Christi ; and because no earthly power 
 outside of the church itself may rightfully legislate 
 for it. 
 
 The church is, moreover, self-governing. Not 
 merely because it is self-legislating, but also because 
 free obedience to spiritual authority which is the 
 only authority and the only obedience that can have 
 place in the church is the most perfect form of 
 self-government. And this is common to all the true 
 members of the community, being implied in that 
 which constitutes them a community. This is also 
 the most perfect form of freedom. This it is " to be 
 free indeed," since compulsion is contradictory and 
 antagonistic to the very idea of the relation. 
 
 The church, then, defined according to its idea, is 
 a self-organizing, self-legislating, self-governing, free 
 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Such, it is plain, must be, and remain, the form 
 of the church, if the embody ment truly expresses 
 the living idea within it, and if the church never for- 
 gets the true ends of its organization, namely, to 
 know by moral conformity to it, and to make known, 
 spiritual truth, even up to that highest height, the 
 " knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ which is 
 eternal life." 
 
 Eut Christian men, and members of the church 
 community, even if they are properly such, are only 
 becoming, and are not yet fully, the new creation 
 which is to be the end of their progress. 
 If, therefore, as there is always danger, the spiritual 
 
THECHURCH. 11 
 
 in the church, through un watchfulness, and unfaith- 
 fulness in regard to the conditions of true knowing, 
 fails to direct and control the conduct of the church, 
 fails to legislate in the church, two methods of aber- 
 ration from the true form, and from the true ends 
 of the church are not only possible, but alas ! how 
 often have they been actual in all the ages of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 I. The first danger arises from the admission of 
 unspiritual members to the church, those who have 
 no spiritual relation to the truth. On this point the 
 very piety of the church is a source of danger to it ; 
 for nothing is more natural or more proper than that 
 Christians should rejoice at what they constantly pray 
 for additions to their number. Their best feelings 
 here may disturb their judgment, and make them 
 liable to fall into the common error of believing 
 what they earnestly desire to find true, rather than 
 to insist on rigid evidence. Such errors of judg- 
 ment a few times repeated introduce into the church 
 a foreign and unassimilated element. This element, 
 for obvious reasons, tends, always, to increase itself. 
 The church is no longer a community, it is hetero- 
 geneous. There is no longer unity but duality. 
 The church is divided into parties. Soon there will 
 be a demand that the doctrines of the church be mo- 
 dified, that the rules for the admission of members 
 be relaxed that the preacher be exchanged for a 
 more popular one in order to "build up the church" 
 Such cases, unhappily, are not extremely rare, so 
 that we know their results. The unspiritual element, 
 if not too large, may after infinite trouble be ex- 
 pelled ; or, which is more usual, the spiritual ele- 
 ment, weary of contention, which is not to its taste, 
 
12 THECHURCH. 
 
 withdraws, going forth empty of all but the truth, 
 the only possession accumulated by them not desired 
 by their successors. 
 
 II. The second and most disastrous form of aber- 
 ration is where the church gives up, or is deprived 
 of its self-legislating power ; for which is substituted 
 the usurped legislation of its officers, with vary- 
 ing prerogatives in regard to prescribing their own 
 functions and appointing their successors. Such a 
 relation between the church and its officers may be- 
 come gradually established through the natural hu- 
 mility and self-diffidence of spiritual men paying 
 undue deference to the presumed superior qualifica- 
 tions of others, and especially by imposing upon fa- 
 vorite teachers functions the exercise of which will 
 afterwards be claimed as a right by those of a diffe- 
 rent character. But however this relation may ori- 
 ginate it not only destroys the unity of the church 
 but becomes sooner or later a deadly and fatal du- 
 ality. The church is no longer a community. It 
 has ceased to be self-organizing for it is no longer 
 an organism. It is not self-legislating. It is not 
 self-governed. It is not free. For the clergy by 
 assuming a position over against, and above the 
 church, as its governors, instead of being its organs, 
 thereby claim a peculiar endowment of which the 
 church does not partake, and thus show themselves 
 ignorant of the true nature of spiritual authority. 
 They may, therefore, and will shortly, enact laws 
 and prescribe doctrines for the church to which no 
 spiritual obedience can be rendered. The further 
 natural results of this relation can be easily foretold 
 were it not that so many historical exhibitions of 
 them render it unnecessary. It is not essential to 
 
TH E CH UR CH . 1& 
 
 my purpose in this introductory chapter to follow 
 the retrograde development and transformation of 
 the Christian ministry into a priesthood, and of the 
 priesthood into a hierarchy ; to point out how the 
 Christian church becomes a hierarchical State in which 
 the priests are the governing class and the spiritual 
 body the subjects ; in which laws } ordinances, dog- 
 mas, customs, ceremonies are like the legislation of 
 other aristocratic governments prescribed primarily 
 for the profit of the governors, but are nevertheless 
 to be obeyed, if not with spiritual and free obedience 
 then by persuasion of fire and sword. And other 
 teachings are not to be tolerated under the same 
 penalty ; for heresy here is equivalent to treason in 
 other States. 
 
 Thus "God's heritage" becomes the heritage and 
 inheritance of usurpers who dare to call themselves 
 God's vicegerents, a heritage so skilfully farmed that 
 it distributes worldly rank, honors, dignities, emolu- 
 ments and wealth to its earthly possessors, who 
 make most profitable merchandise of God's people, 
 while to the people themselves in proportion as they 
 have demanded the rights of spiritual men, they have 
 awarded tyranny, poverty, slavery, dungeons, gib- 
 bets and stakes. All these results have happened 
 not by accident, but will always happen in the ab- 
 sence of strong counteracting causes, as the natural 
 development of the consequences of the false relation 
 of the spiritual body to an unspiritual head. Even in 
 the least developed, and in the most restrained and 
 coerced forms of this relation, and where there may 
 be much spiritual life in the head as well as in the 
 body, the perverting and emasculating influence of 
 the relation is exhibited not rarely all the way from 
 
14 THE CHURCH. 
 
 the pretended Epistles of Ignatius down to the last 
 episcopal convention. 
 
 It is a remarkable proof of the divine energy and 
 persistence of the spiritual life in the church, 
 and of the truth of the promises for its protection, 
 that under the government of Apostolic successors ? 
 who kept armed retainers of their own, besides con- 
 troling the whole civil power for the enforcement of 
 their spiritual authority ! "teaching for doctrine 
 the commandments of men"; under every form and 
 degree of oppression ; under however thick incrusta- 
 tions of superstition ; it has often shaken and lifted 
 the incumbent masses, and in spite of all repression 
 has at length come forth, asserting its divine origin 
 and God-given prerogatives, until it has put its hie- 
 rarchical enemies with their secular allies everywhere 
 on the defensive, and at many points has resumed its 
 full, legitimate, self-legislating, and self-governing 
 power. 
 
 The church, then, rightly constituted, and duly 
 organized, consists of persons, whether teachers or 
 taught, governors or governed, who are ready to 
 yield spiritual obedience to all spiritual truth, and 
 not only to all spiritual authority and laws of the 
 church, but also to all civil authority and true laws 
 of the State, in short to the laws of all their earthly 
 relations so far as they know or have the means of 
 knowing them. They are persons in whom are be- 
 coming realized the highest ends possible for them 
 as men. In them is attained the true purpose of 
 God in their creation. The Church is the earthly 
 SUBSTANCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 " Certes a shadowe hath likenesse of the thing of which it is 
 shadowed, but shadowe is not the same thing of which it is 
 shadowed. ' ' CHAUCER. 
 
 " That at the least the shadow of Peter passing by night over- 
 shadow some of them." Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 The church is a community in order to spiritual 
 ends, for the development of the spiritual life in 
 men ; , but there is another community indispensable 
 to the well-being of the natural life of men, the 
 State. The conditions of this well-being are just 
 relations relations directed and controlled by the 
 law of justice of all the members of the communi- 
 ty, that is, of all the citizens of the State to each 
 other; and relations of justice, and safety of the 
 whole Nation, towards all other Nations. Whatever 
 may be the form of government it is plain that the 
 ends of the existence of the State as a State imply 
 that the laws, by whomsoever enacted, must be IN 
 ORDER TO JUSTICE. Laws therefore cannot originate 
 in the will and good pleasure of the legislators, be- 
 cause they existed before the State, ready to demand 
 
16 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 obedience whenever and wherever men come into 
 civil and political relations to each other, just as the 
 laws of chemistry are always ready to act even in 
 combinations which never before happened. But the 
 emblem of justice is the balance, and justice is equal 
 justice, so that the laws should give, not equal well- 
 being, but equal opportunities of earthly well-being 
 to all the citizens of the State, equal rights, p?ivi- 
 leges, and immunities, in order that each citizen in 
 proportion to his industry in ihQJust use of the fa- 
 culties which God has given him, and of the oppor- 
 tunities which the laws give him, may realize the 
 ends for which he is a citizen. To diminish or take 
 wholly away the good of one for the sake of adding 
 to that of another under the pretence that the good 
 of the whole is thereby increased, though the prin- 
 ciple on which some societies are based, is not an ar- 
 rangement which justice ever prescribes. For to 
 make a man a mere instrument for the good of ano- 
 ther, a good of which he is also capable and of which 
 he is thereby deprived, is not simple injustice, but is 
 of the very essence of crime, a crime none the less 
 for its being legal ; for though all LAW, that is, 
 God's laws are of divine right, the DeviJ's are not of 
 divine right. This, however, does not anect the 
 duty of each to make his proportion of sacrifices for 
 the common welfare. Justice is the essential princi- 
 ple of order, and of organic health in the State. If 
 the self-will of the legislators is substituted for LAW, 
 and elements of injustice are admitted among the 
 permanent principles of the government, they will 
 show themselves sooner or later as a leaven of dis- 
 ease in the body politic ; and however they may have 
 become intertwined and incorporated with the good , 
 
TUB COMMONWEALTH. 17 
 
 and however blind conservatism conservatism of 
 evil is always blind may cry out, and give plau- 
 sible reasons for their preservation, extirpation is the 
 only possible remedy, the indispensable condition of 
 attaining the true ends, and even of preserving the 
 life of the State. 
 
 It is plain that the Heal State would be where 
 the whole people should be. capable of recognizing, 
 of enacting by appropriate organs, and of willingly 
 obeying right laws, laws just to all, and at the same 
 time favoring wise division, and wise mutual rela- 
 tions of employments, as also just, prudent, and safe 
 relations to foreign States. But an ideal State is 
 impossible. For a just State cannot, like the Church, 
 select for its citizens exclusively such persons as have 
 the right moral relation to the laws, but must in- 
 clude all born within its territory, and it would be 
 quite too much, considering the natural gravitation 
 of men towards wrong, to expect every one to be 
 willingly obedient to the right. Yet every citizen 
 is bound to obey the laws. This is the condition of 
 the well-being the State aims at, not only for him 
 but for all others. A community of benefits and 
 duties is what constitutes the State a COMMON- 
 WEALTH. It is the communion of the State. At 
 this point there is another essential difference between 
 the church and the State. For while the church de- 
 mands and desires only free spiritual obedience and 
 can therefore never use any form of coercion, the 
 State, on the contrary, demands only actual obe- 
 dience, without regard to motives ; but obedience it 
 insists on under penalty, and may justly use any ne- 
 cessary degree of compulsion to enforce it. But al- 
 though civil justice is satisfied when the laws arc 
 
18 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 actually obeyed if even under fear, or infliction, of 
 penalty, yet the State must ever rejoice in loyalty 
 and free obedience since so only can its ends be fully 
 realized. For it is obvious that in proportion as co- 
 ercion is required, or the power necessary to enforce 
 obedience must be maintained, not only will the ex- 
 penses of government, and so the burden of taxes be 
 increased, but the aims of the law will be often 
 thwarted, or at best the results will be very imper- 
 fect in comparison with those of willing and ready 
 obedience. 
 
 It is plain that in proportion as the citizens of 
 a State hold the relation of intelligent and free obe- 
 dience to just and equal laws, such a State is a free 
 State. If moreover the proportion of citizens hold- 
 ing or ready to hold this relation to such laws is 
 sufficiently large, the State is, or is capable of be- 
 coming a Democracy, or what can be the only form 
 of a Democracy in a large State, a representative 
 Republic. For the central and essential condition 
 of a true Democracy is present, that is, the power of 
 self-government in the sense that, in regard to the 
 great body of citizens, each is capable of governing 
 himself, not by making his own will the law, but by 
 making the law the measure of his will. Such a 
 people is also capable of asserting its entire freedom, 
 and right of self-government, whether against an 
 equal power from without, if it be colonial or pro- 
 vincial or from within, if it is under any form or 
 degree of aristocracy. It is an adult community and 
 has no longer need to be under tutors and governors. 
 It will also desire and constantly aim at self-govern- 
 ment because it ought not to be under any other. 
 It is the right of such a people to be free, since, the 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH. 19 
 
 conditions of the proper use of freedom being pre- 
 sent, so, demonstrably, can the true ends of govern- 
 ment be best realized ; for it is plain that no earthly 
 power without or above them could understand and 
 provide for their proper interests as a community as 
 well as they themselves. Just as the individual, in 
 proportion to his intelligence, resents the interference 
 of others to direct him in his business as absurd as 
 well as impertinent so an intelligent people are the 
 best judges and managers of their own affairs. It is, 
 moreover, the duty of such a people to be free, since 
 any power over them might, at any time, and indeed 
 would at all times, as such governments always 
 have done more or less, interfere to forbid that 
 which they ought to do, or to require that which 
 they ought not to do ; and to prevent directly or in- 
 directly, at least for some of the people, the attain- 
 ment, and the opportunity of attainment, of some or 
 all of the ends at which all men and all States are 
 bound to aim. These results are plainly inseparable 
 from the very nature of the relation of the governors 
 to the governed, unless the governors were angels 
 and not men. And history gives no encouragement 
 to expect celestial rulers, for "Hero worship" has 
 proved little other than Devil worship. The highest 
 rights of a people or of a State are also its highest 
 duties. 
 
 But, it must be remembered that the character of 
 the people is an indispensable condition of the acqui- 
 sition and permanent possession of freedom, self-gov- 
 ernment, and equal laws. For though an oppressed 
 people, however intellectually or morally degraded, 
 may in blind rage and fury rise upon, and crush 
 their oppressors, and proclaim themselves free, yet 
 
20 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 by the very law of social gravity they will fall again 
 shortly under the same or some other form of despot- 
 ism. Tn order to the successful assertion and main- 
 tenance of freedom it is evident not only that the 
 physical force of the people must be superior to that 
 of the aristocracy, but also that there must be in- 
 telligence enough to combine and wield that force 
 efficiently. It is, moreover, evident that in order to 
 successful self-government there must be in the 
 people an intelligence capable of recognizing and 
 enacting the laws of justice as the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of the government. The true ends of a State 
 must be not only apprehended, but comprehended 
 in all its legislation. For only the laws of order in- 
 sure permanence, and justice is the only order. In- 
 justice is always essentially chaotic and disorganiz- 
 ing. The common well-being must be ever kept in 
 sight, and the laws must constitute the State a COM- 
 MONWEALTH. 
 
 Besides the intelligence necessary to a successful 
 Democracy, there must be, it is obvious, such a mo- 
 ral relation to the laws that there shall be paid to 
 them free, voluntary obedience ; for self-government 
 by coercion is a contradiction. This, however, is not 
 to be hoped for from every citizen, nor is it necessary. 
 But there must be an efficient majority ready both 
 to obey the laws, and to insist on and enforce obe- 
 dience to them. This moral relation to the laws, at 
 least in a large proportion of those who hold it, must 
 be more than a mere calculation of self-interest, for 
 this may often seem to be wanting. There must 
 therefore be a true feeling of the obligations of Duty, 
 for it is certain that the bare knowledge of the right 
 is not sufficient to indu^e men to obey it. This cha- 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH. 21 
 
 racteristic of the self-governing citizen is in some re- 
 spects much more important than that of intelli- 
 gence. For it cannot but happen, considering men's 
 present intellectual and moral imperfection, that the 
 consequences of some false elementary principles in 
 the State will appear in the form of more or less 
 practical wrong and organic derangement, in which 
 case duty will always be found more ready to recog- 
 nize the evil, and much less conservative of it under 
 the persuasions of self-interest, than any mere know- 
 ledge of the wrong, however perfect it may be, or 
 might be. In fact, evils which pay well and involve 
 the interest of many parties never disappear simply 
 because their existence is acknowledged, but yield 
 only to vigorous and repeated attacks of duty, duty 
 which bows to the supreme authority of right, and 
 is for the State the only reliable principle of true 
 progress, since knowledge in the hands of self-inter- 
 est and present convenience is fond of compromises 
 and the application of expediency even to organic 
 laws ; a deadly conservatism ! for expediency and 
 a choice of methods belong only to the way in which 
 the fundamental laws are to be carried out, to rules 
 and statutes derived from these laws, but have no 
 
 ?lace in regard to the fundamental laws themselves, 
 n the ten thousand varying relations of material in- 
 terests there is ample room for the exercise of judg- 
 ment and intelligent discretion in order to determine 
 the best methods of realizing the great ends of the 
 State, but in regard to these ends themselves there is 
 no room for discretion. Mere intelligence could never 
 discover these, neither can it preserve them. 
 
 It is undeniable that the greater the number of 
 truly Christian men among the citizens of the State 
 
22 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 the larger will be the infusion in it of the essential 
 element of Duty. For the relation of these men to 
 truth and right, that is, to LAW, is always that of 
 free obedience. They are, therefore, capable of true 
 self-government, and are the most valuable consti- 
 tuents of the State. Because a self-governing Dem- 
 ocracy is not an aggregation of individuals every one 
 of whom is a law to himself and a different law from 
 that of his neighbor, as aristocrats pretend to believe, 
 but a community, as a whole, obedient, and exacting 
 obedience to the law of the common good. Truly 
 Christian men are also sensitive of wrong, and in pro- 
 portion to their numbers tend to eliminate it from 
 all laws, relations and customs. But besides the 
 more direct effects of Christianity by means of those 
 in whom its own highest ends are being realized, its 
 incidental influences, where it is truly taught, are 
 very great, even over those who deny the authority 
 of the power that more or less constantly guides and 
 restrains them. It is, according to the promise of its 
 Author, both light and salt, and pervading like the 
 atmosphere, and everywhere diffused through the 
 community, an ever present overshadowing influence 
 incessantly demanding in the deepest consciousness 
 of men and so tending, however slowly, to produce, 
 in all human relations, conformity to its principles. 
 It awakens a true reverence for man as man, and a 
 deeper sense of duty both to God and to men than 
 ever existed without it. It demands, therefore, worthy 
 aims and forms of well-being for man, and for all 
 men, both for body and mind. It represents that 
 which is common to all men as so infinitely greater 
 than that in which they differ, that the differences 
 disappear, and in the presence of Christianity " all 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH. 23 
 
 men are equal." Hence it claims for all men and 
 makes its claims felt in a Christian community how- 
 ever they may be resisted rights, privileges, op- 
 portunities and conditions of well-being befitting 
 creatures made in the image of God and capa- 
 ble of being restored to it. Under such influences 
 the common intellect is stimulated, demands and re- 
 ceives education, the common conscience is quickened, 
 and that moral sense of duty and responsibility which 
 has its roots in Christian teaching becomes the most 
 reliable of all the conditions of free self-governing 
 obedience to the laws of the State. 
 
 A community so interpenetrated by the light and 
 salt of Christianity that it is capable of organizing it- 
 self into a State for the true ends of a State ; of 
 evolving its own legislative organs competent and 
 willing to enact just and equal laws for all, laws 
 which can never conflict with the " Higher Law," 
 because they are one with it ; ready by an efficient 
 majority to render willing obedience to such laws, 
 and at all times to uphold their executive organs in 
 enforcing obedience to them ; desiring only just and 
 honorable foreign relations ; providing the conditions 
 of Earthly well-being for MEN, that is, for intellec- 
 tual as well as material wants ; protecting its central 
 life, its self-governing power, by providing for and 
 requiring universal education, and a wise encourage- 
 ment of true Christian influences ; such a community 
 is THE SHADOW OF CHRISTIANITY. It is the coun- 
 terpart and " likcnesse" of the true Church, though 
 but a shadowy and far off likenesse, for " shadowe 
 is not the same thing of which it is shadowed." It 
 is also a true though imperfect Democratic State. It 
 is a true Unity, for the government and governed 
 
24 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 are one. It is a true COMMONWEALTH, for the good 
 it realizes is offered equally to all. 
 
 Such a self-organizing, self-governing and free 
 State, though it may still contain much unassimilat- 
 ed and crude material, is yet, if faithful to itself, a 
 true, self-realizing idea, tending always towards, but 
 never attaining to complete realization of itself until 
 the promise of God is fulfilled that His Laws shall 
 be written on the heart of all men. 
 
 A community, however, somewhat less qualified 
 than that just described may prove to be a true and 
 successful Democracy if only the true moral element 
 in the character of its people is present. It may 
 contain much unfit material, its statutes or customs 
 may not preserve the just balance of interests, and 
 even some of its organic laws may be the latent seeds 
 of corruption and disorder. But a Democracy is by 
 the very nature of its organization self -educating. 
 It is constantly under the teaching of its own expe- 
 rience. It soon finds that part of its population which 
 is ignorant or vicious an annoyance, an impediment 
 and an instrument of evil in the hands of evil men. 
 It will therefore seek -to diminish this incompatible 
 element by providing instruction for all its citizens. 
 It will use all efficient influences to remove both the 
 ignorance and the vice. Here is its first danger, 
 that through lack of watchfulness it will permit the 
 crude and the false materials within it to increase ; 
 viz., blind but strong ignorance at one extreme, and 
 unprincipled intellect at the other ; for these are the 
 constituents of despotism. The State will escape this 
 danger, however, so long as the great central body 
 of the people are fit constituents of it. 
 
 The equilibrium of employments and interests will 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH. 25 
 
 commonly maintain itself without serious collisions, 
 except that the seductions of foreign commerce, liable 
 to interfere with true independence by preventing 
 development and production of what may at any 
 time become indispensable to the safety of the State ; 
 and the stimulus of foreign but uncertain markets 
 liable to produce excess and so derangement of ma- 
 nufactures, must be carefully guarded against. For 
 danger or great inconvenience and injury are more 
 likely to arise from foreign commercial than politi- 
 cal relations. 
 
 But the severest trial of the Democracy will be 
 where some false principles have failed to be exclud- 
 ed, or some true ones have failed to be inserted, in 
 the enactment of fundamental laws. For the natural, 
 and ultimately the inevitable consequence will be the 
 existence of wide spread and deeply interwoven self- 
 interests inconsistent with the common interest, in- 
 consistent with justice, and so with order and per- 
 manent harmony. There will be, ultimately, not a 
 mere diversity but an antagonism of interests which 
 cannot fail to come into collision. But the assertion 
 of ancient, legal, or customary, but unjust claims in 
 which many have come to have an interest backed 
 with wealth accumulated by the injustice, this con- 
 test against the right is, of all possible influences in 
 a community, the most demoralizing. Nothing but 
 the sternest and most self-denying patriotism and 
 loyalty to right will be found sufficient to resist and 
 to remove the evil, and eradicate the causes of it. 
 
 Thus a particular democratic experiment may 
 
 fail through misorganization in the beginning, or lack 
 
 of moral element in the end. But DEMOCRACY has 
 
 not thereby failed. If in any case, through ignorance 
 
 3 . 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH 
 
 or moral imperfection the causes of disease were not 
 avoided, or the self-recuperative power proved insuf- 
 ficient, the next Democracy will have the benefit of 
 the experience of its predecessor. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NATURAL STATE. THE DUALITY. 
 
 " Now this in thenature of it is nothing but aliud extraaliud t 
 and therefore perfect alterity and disunity." 
 
 " They judge of things according to their own private appe- 
 tites, and selfish passions, and not with a free uncaptivated uni- 
 versality of mind, and an impartial regard to the good of the 
 whole. '* 
 
 The true, permanently successful Democracy, the 
 Unity of government and governed, the truly self- 
 governing, self-realizing State, the true Common- 
 wealth, can exist only as an incident of Christianity, 
 only when profoundly penetrated with both the lignt 
 and the salt of Christianity. 
 
 The natural relation of barbarian men to each 
 other is like that of animals the strong dominate 
 over the weak. This they do, not primarily from 
 the mere love of domination, as animals do not, but 
 in order to some material benefit to themselves. 
 They covet something in possession of the weaker 
 which their superior strength enables them to de- 
 prive him of. The moving power here is the pur- 
 pose of having without personal obedience to the na- 
 tural laws of acquisition. It is more agreeable to 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 make others their instruments to this end. Although 
 an obscure instinct of justice sometimes appears in 
 such relations, it exercises no restraint, might is 
 practically acknowledged to give right, successful 
 robbery and piracy are reckoned honorable, and the 
 plunderer is held in much higher estimation than the 
 plundered. The social instincts and affections have 
 no control over this natural combination of laziness 
 and acquisitiveness when in possession of superior 
 strength, hence the women of barbarians are the me- 
 nials, the labor-saving tools of the men. This very 
 important method of acquisition is applied not only 
 to the women but to the weak and dependent men of 
 the barbarian tribe, at least in those above the hun- 
 ter stage. Thus there are two sources of material 
 possessions for the strong to plunder from those 
 who have anything to be deprived of, and to coerce 
 the muscles of those who have not. But in every 
 stage of society advanced beyond the merest chaotic 
 elements this greater strength will be found to rest 
 on superior intelligence not the wise intelligence 
 which aims rationally at right ends, but that more 
 developed animal craft which seeks successfully the 
 ends which instinct prescribes. This intelligent 
 strength combined with the wealth it has accumu- 
 lated is Power. Whoever investigates carefully the 
 necessary conditions of the accumulation of material 
 wealth, that is, of available wealth in forms adapted 
 to immediate use, and considers its relations to hu- 
 man muscular labor, and the fact that the muscular 
 labor of the individual can produce very little more 
 than enough to supply his own necessities, will find 
 that the human instruments of large accumulations 
 of wealth must be greatly more numerous than the 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 29 
 
 possessors. It will appear that poverty is the na- 
 tural correlative of wealth, the indispensable condi- 
 tion of it. The power, therefore, or might of the 
 barbarian or semi-barbarian into which wealth enters 
 as so large an element is derived from the many who 
 are both the source and the subjects of it. 
 
 Here, then, we have the elements, and the natural 
 origin of aristocratic power. We may say its neces- 
 sary origin, since, the causes and conditions being 
 given, the result could be nothing else. According- 
 ly we find that the earliest stationary societies of 
 men uniformly consist of chieftains surrounded by a 
 few armed retainers, and many slaves, or laborers 
 equally dependent, because the chiefs have monopo- 
 lized the sources of food and raiment, and can take 
 such proportion of the products of their labor as they 
 choose. Here too we have the origin of a natural 
 and necessary DUALITY, for there is an evolution of 
 the society into two parties whose interests are an- 
 tagonistic to each other. 
 
 If we suppose one of these chieftains to conquer, 
 or to make tributary to him several others, to as- 
 sume supremacy under the name of King and so to 
 constitute a Nation, which has been commonly the 
 next step, all the relations of the parts will remain 
 essentially the same, except that the higher the su- 
 perstructure the heavier the weight which rests upon 
 the foundation. 
 
 With such estimation of humanity, such self-esti- 
 mation as men have, and with such practical sense of 
 justice as exists in the absence of Christianity this re- 
 lation of the extremes of society would seem to be r 
 necessarily, a permanent one. There is nowhere any 
 tendency to its termination. For either the lower 
 
30 THE PAG AN STATE. 
 
 extreme must spontaneously elevate itself by acquir- 
 ing so much intelligence as will enable it to combine 
 and wield its physical force successfully against the 
 aristocracy, and to constitute itself a society which 
 would not again fall into the same relations ; or else 
 the governing class must, of mere philanthropy, be- 
 stow upon it rights and privileges which would de- 
 prive themselves of the most cherished of their own. 
 But the lowest stratum in a pagan State, for the 
 most part field laborers, workers in mines, manufactur- 
 ing operatives, are hardly one remove from the 
 brutes, most like caged animals, themselves in fact 
 often chained together, chained to their employment, 
 made to serve the purpose of water power in the 
 tread-mill, or sailors chained to the oar. Sunk in 
 the most hopeless mental and moral apathy, with no 
 conscious worth, or consciousness of rights as men, 
 they can only sometimes break forth with a sort of 
 animal rage and blind fury against their keepers and 
 oppressors, destructive enough, it may be, for a time, 
 but without any ultimate aim, or any ultimate result 
 for their benefit. If they could succeed in wholly 
 extirpating the antagonist aristocracy, they would, 
 again, after a longer or shorter period of anarchy, 
 fall into the same natural and necessary duality. 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that, if this duality is to ter- 
 minate, it must be by influences from above and not 
 from below, from the governing and not from the 
 subject class. But to the governing class the relation 
 is every way advantageous. It furnishes for them 
 wealth and power, the means of ease, pride, luxury, 
 distinction, glory, possessions which most men gladly 
 acquire, but few willingly deprive themselves of. 
 There are but two motives supposable which could 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 31 
 
 induce the upper class to share either their wealth or 
 their power with the producers of them so as to make 
 the State in any sense a Corawio/i-wealth. 
 
 I. Fear might do it. But this implies an intelli- 
 gent, more and more imperative demand from below 
 backed by the show of an organizable force superior ' 
 to their own conditions which it has been shown 
 can never exist in the case supposed. 
 
 II. A profound sense of justice, a true estimate of 
 the worth of man as man, a strong practical convic- 
 tion that the power imposes the obligation to furnish 
 for men the conditions of well-being and self-realiza- 
 tion according to the design of the Creator this 
 state of mind in a pngan aristocracy would in due 
 time transform the duality into a Community. To 
 one in the least acquainted with the uniform moral 
 character and spirit of heathen power could anything 
 be imagined more ridiculous than such a supposi- 
 tion? The highest moral attainment even of the 
 philosophers is expressed in the confession " video 
 meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" (I see and ap- 
 prove the right, and practice the wrong.) They ack- 
 nowledge that the temptations to abuse power and 
 "Wealth are stronger than human nature can resist 
 an opinion which the conduct of heathen possessors 
 of them have always most effectually confirmed. 
 What hope could there be of political justice where 
 the private and social morality of the highest ranks 
 and of all ranks was such as no Christian ears can 
 tolerate the description of, such that the existence of 
 it would be incredible were it not everywhere allud- 
 ed to as a matter of course, and without disapproval, 
 in pagan literature. It is certain, then, that no 
 moral causes could change the relation of the gov- 
 
32 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 eminent to the governed, neither consciousness of 
 rights from below, nor conscious obligation from 
 above. 
 
 But a high degree of intellectual development, 
 and of aesthetic cultivation may exist without Chris- 
 tianity. May not these gradually pervade all classes, 
 and by producing intellectual community diminish 
 and finally destroy political inequality ? There is no 
 tendency towards such intellectual community. For, 
 on the one hand, the intellect of ignorant men does 
 not move spontaneously except under circumstances 
 of physical comfort and hope, and in the absence of 
 other compulsory or necessary exhausting activities. 
 Under the depression of excessive muscular labor, 
 and hopeless deprivations, nothing but strong moral 
 impulses can excite it to activity. But here the ig- 
 norance is more profound than can be conceived by 
 a Christian mind, the oppression of the physical powers 
 the most grinding, and the absence of moral stimulus 
 total. It is true that the practice of enslaving pri- 
 soners of war in ancient times brought some intelli- 
 gent and educated men into the subject class. But 
 these immediately became valuable house-servants, 
 had no connection with, and did not at all affect the 
 character of the great mass of productive laborers. 
 There cannot, therefore, be for the lower class any 
 intellectual se//-elevation and approach towards 
 equality with the higher ; for the indispensable con- 
 dition of this is the previous absence of the very re- 
 lation which the intellectual development is supposed 
 capable of removing. 
 
 On the other hand, there can be none but moral 
 motives which should induce the upper class to ex- 
 tend their own cultivation downwards, and these have 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 33 
 
 been shown not to exist. If there were any danger 
 of a natural gravitation of intelligence, their most 
 important interests, as well as vanity and pride of 
 caste would urge them to prevent it, for there is al- 
 ways, in dual States, a most sensitive distinction be- 
 tween things liberal and things servile, or, where 
 legal slavery is wanting, between things noble and 
 things base and mechanical. But learning and the 
 arts are everywere liberal. There was, however, 
 no necessity for ancient aristocracies to forbid the 
 descent of liberal acquirements as there is in some 
 Christian States. There was never any danger felt 
 that the servile class would for themselves take to 
 learning ; they were hardly thought capable of being 
 taught. That such danger would have been care- 
 fully guarded against is shown by the fact that such 
 concert as the most animal-like savages are capable of 
 often caused great trouble and destruction, insomuch 
 that it was advised to place slaves of different lan- 
 guages together in order to increase the difficulty of 
 their combination. There would seem, therefore, to 
 be no possible way in which the requisite common 
 intelligence, supposed sufficient to terminate the dual 
 relation, could be realized. 
 
 But did not both the Greek and Roman people 
 acquire intelligence sufficient to enable them to com- 
 bine successfully against their kings and tyrants, and 
 assert their own freedom and self-government ? The 
 Greek and Roman PEOPLE belonged to the aristo- 
 cratic side of the Duality. They were the armed re- 
 tainers, and free companions of the original chief- 
 tains, the instrument of their power. They were 
 few in comparison with the great subject mass of 
 servi, coloni, oikefce, penestce, helotce, and other 
 
34 THE PAG AN STATE. 
 
 producing and servile classes under whatever names. 
 Their success was but the success of a band of rob- 
 bers quarreling as usual over the division of their 
 common plunder. They were not at all less disposed 
 to the abuse of power than the more condensed form 
 of aristocracy. Indeed those who had the best means 
 of estimating the characters of the two, that is, by 
 experience of them, represent the "TYRANNY" as 
 a beast with one head, and the " DEMOCRACY" as a 
 many headed and much more dreadful beast than 
 the other. There was here no approach to the idea 
 of a Community, a Commonwealth, an organism in 
 which all should partake of a common life, and of a 
 common nourishment and well-being. Even the 
 philosophers, who in their (Jespair of existing govern- 
 ments indulged in day-dreams of ideal States, never 
 conceived of a political UNITY. Their highest Ideal 
 was a small superstructure of more or less democratic 
 aristocracy resting upon a wide foundation of menial 
 and subject classes. So total was the ignorance and 
 the depravity of the many, and so profound was the 
 ignorance of the few in regard to the true estimate of 
 MAN, that they would no sooner have thought of ad- 
 mitting men, as such, than animals, to political 
 rights. To prepare them for such admission would, 
 from their point of view, have been as absurd as for 
 the farmer to make his horses judges of the amount 
 of labor they should perform for him. Notwith- 
 standing the words virtue, justice, right, were often 
 in their mouths, so deep was the often unconscious 
 conviction that right is based upon power, so total in 
 them the principle of seZ/'-interest, that they felt no 
 more hesitation and no more compunction in making 
 MEN mere instruments to their ends, than in using 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 35 
 
 any other tools within their reach and adapted to 
 their purpose. 
 
 But would not a greater amount of intelligence, 
 a scientific knowledge of the laws of Nature and of 
 true political economy, such as we possess, and per- 
 haps a little more, have enabled them to see that 
 "self-love and social are the same" ; and to be con- 
 vinced that their true self-interest required them to 
 share the good that the State can be made to pro- 
 cure with all its people ? If this were true in re- 
 gard to earthly well-being considered exclusively, 
 and by itself, which it is not, then a community of 
 men of pure intellect, and perfectly developed by a 
 knowledge of all the laws of their relations to nature 
 and to each other, but passionless, so as never to 
 desire other than their true earthly good such a 
 community might operate like a community of ani- 
 mals governed by instinct, or, so far as the result is 
 concerned, like a manufacturing machine in which 
 all the parts are in order and exactly adapted to the 
 required end. But if we consider, for example, the 
 origin of material wealth, and the uses which make 
 its possession desirable for a being of combined intel- 
 lect and passion, would it be better for the ^(/"-inte- 
 rest of every man, in relation to this world alone, 
 never to misappropriate to himself what justly be- 
 longs to another ? Or, if it were so, could every 
 man be practically convinced of it except by taking 
 the element of passion and pride out of him ? Men, 
 therefore, such as men are, could never, by any de- 
 gree of mere intellectual knowledge possible to be ac- 
 quired in relation to their earthly self-interest form 
 a permanent community. For it would be for the 
 actual and true earthly self-interest of some to be 
 
36 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 rich by making others poor, of some to be learned by 
 keeping others in ignorance, of some to acquire un- 
 just power and to use it unjustly, and so of other 
 things. Intelligent mere earthly self-interest, with 
 the necessary inequality of intellect among actual 
 men, must lead inevitably to duality and not to uni- 
 ty in the State. But in regard to the future life too 
 little is known in the absence of Christianity to per- 
 mit the existence of any intelligent self-interest in 
 relation to the whole of human existence; or of any 
 motives derived from the consideration of it which 
 should practically influence men in regard to their 
 character and conduct in this life. No kind or de- 
 gree, then, of mere intellectual development, and in- 
 telligent self-interest could ever have transformed the 
 Athenian Democracy, or any other pagan duality into 
 a true self-governing, self-realizing COMMONWEALTH. 
 But there is still another method, to some men 
 perhaps hopeful, of attempting to realize the true 
 State. Might not a far advance in physical science, 
 increasing man's control over the powers of Nature, 
 and his facilities for acquiring material wealth, by 
 giving him a knowledge of law, order and method, 
 added to a high degree of aesthetic cultivation, a 
 contemplation and admiration of beauty, harmony 
 and fitness in Nature and Art might not these and 
 other such like influences resulting from the full in- 
 tellectual and aesthetic developement of men awaken 
 in them a love of moral beauty, harmony and fit- 
 ness, that is, of righteousness and justice, and so sti- 
 mulate the sense of duty and moral obligation which 
 is latent in all men that moral impulses would in- 
 duce them to attempt and accomplish what no con- 
 siderations of present or ultimate self-interest how- 
 
 
THIS PAGAN STATE. 37 
 
 ever enlightened would be found sufficient for ? These 
 influences are much trusted in some quarters, by many 
 reckoned superior to those of Christianity. 
 
 As to the effect of scientific knowledge there 
 would seem to be no necessary connection between 
 the knowledge of a law of physical Nature and a dis- 
 position to be just in one's dealings with his fellow- 
 men. They are apparently things different in kind 
 without sympathy or natural relation. Why should 
 the merchant whose knowledge of astronomy, sea 
 currents, and mete orology enable him to sail all seas 
 with greater safety and more speed than others be 
 less crafty and over-reaching in his contracts, or less 
 fond of unfair profits than they ? Is the man who 
 can make the lightnings his messengers in negotiat- 
 ing less likely to be of grasping and gambling char- 
 acter than he who does his business by the mail- 
 coach ? The manufacturer whose control of the 
 powers of nature enables him to perform the labor of 
 thousands of men does he never oppress those whom 
 he still finds it necessary to employ ? And so in 
 general is it found that the greater the knowledge 
 and efficient control of Nature, the greater, in those 
 who possess this knowledge and power, the develop- 
 ment of moral integrity and the sense of justice? 
 Or, rather, does not this knowledge often degenerate 
 into a true sacrilegious MAGIC, a coercion of the 
 powers of Nature, which are of themselves spontane- 
 ously obedient to the will of God, to become instru- 
 ments of unjust and wicked purposes ; and men, like 
 the Titans of old, turn rebellious against Heaven in- 
 stead of becoming more benevolent to men. The 
 greater powers available for the production of wealth 
 expand in the same proportion with the desire of acquisi- 
 
38 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 tion. and there is the same temptation as before to 
 unjust gain, to seize by the stronger hand or stronger 
 brain the product of the labor of others. 
 
 But the study and appreciation of the ideal, the 
 fine arts, it is said, are civilizing, humanizing, refin- 
 ing. What may be the amount and the worth of the 
 instruction and influence to be derived from these 
 arts in the hands of those whose moral character is 
 already such as it is assumed that they always tend 
 to produce is not here the question. But this, what 
 is the moral power of such ideals as are the produc- 
 tion of men in the absence of Christianity, and the 
 standard of whose own morality is the heathen 
 standard ? Would the exhibition of ideal Strength 
 naturally increase the moral strength of the behold- 
 er ? or would it simply make him critical in regard 
 to the "points" of a prize-fighter, and awaken the 
 desire to see an exhibition of his muscles. Ideal 
 manly Beauty would it stimulate pagan minds to 
 attempt the realization of a moral ideal in which 
 there should be left no blot of private wrong, or pub- 
 lic injustice ? Female ideal Beauty, The Venus 
 would the study of it excite such deep admiration of 
 immaculate purity that men would be ready, almost, 
 to vow eternal virginity ? Could Music so attune 
 the entire man to harmony that henceforth he would 
 tolerate in himself no moral discord ? Doubtless 
 these arts are capable of giving a high degree of en- 
 joyment, pleasure, both innocent and depraved, and 
 what use was made of them anciently for the latter 
 purpose, Pompei bears witness. If they could be 
 restrained to their better purpose they would furnish 
 to their cultivators elegant enjoyment, most agree- 
 able self-indulgence. But what generic connection 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 39 
 
 exists between this or any other self-indulgence or 
 elegant pleasure, and the self-denials often inele- 
 gant, painful, and severe, which duty never hesitates 
 to prescribe as often as they are necessary to the 
 ends of Right. In the case under consideration, the 
 transformation of a dual State into a Common- 
 wealth, would the moral influence of Esthetics be 
 sufficient to make an imperative demand, a demand 
 not to be resisted, that the possessors of the wealth, 
 power, and rank in the State, should share them with 
 their inferiors, and deprive themselves forever of the 
 means of re-acquiring them ? An influence which 
 should make proud, luxurious heathen masters will- 
 ing to submit to long self-denials in order to instruct, 
 elevate and fit for self-government their very slaves, 
 knowing at the same time that their own exclusive 
 power and profit must as a consequence cease? 
 These were " fine arts" indeed ! ! magical, miracu- 
 lous ! Did they, in Athens, where a full and com- 
 plete experiment of them was made, produce any 
 such effects ? A sufficient answer may be found in 
 the decrees more unjust than any single headed 
 tyranny could conceive of the Athenian Assem- 
 blies, every member of which could pass critical 
 judgment upon the last work of Art, or rebuke the 
 rhetoric of Demosthenes. Not only were the ancient 
 fine arts powerless for moral good, but such as they 
 are and always must be in the absence of Christiani- 
 ty they are among the most efficient instruments of 
 moral depravity. 
 
 We may conclude, therefore, confidently, that 
 there are no causes in existence in the pagan or na- 
 tural State, moral, gesthetical, intellectual, or from 
 the combination of all these, which could ever trans- 
 
40 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 form it from its natural and necessary duality into a 
 truly self-governing Community. 
 
 But, further, a Community consisting exclusive- 
 ly of the aristocratic moiety, without the servile 
 basis of the pagan State, and of the best aristocratic 
 material which paganism is capable of producing, to 
 which might be added a knowledge of modern phy- 
 sical science, organized after any ancient actual or 
 ideal model, any modern, or any other model, would 
 be incapable of permanent existence as a self-govern- 
 ing Community. In the absence of the servile basis 
 two causes of disintegration would immediately begin 
 to operate. First The necessity which always ex- 
 ists in a dual State, of close union among all the 
 elements of the aristocratic class in order to self-de- 
 fence against danger from the greatly superior phy- 
 sical force below them, would be taken away. The 
 distinct organic powers of the State, whatever their 
 functions, would be so many separate organisms each 
 having its own self-seeking life. And, however 
 skillfully they might have been originally balanced, 
 in the absence of the bond of fear from below, and of 
 that of duty from above, in the absence of a common 
 moral life such as Christianity alone can give, their 
 equilibrium could not be preserved. The question 
 must first be solved, to which no pagan people could 
 ever find an answer, c l quis custodiet ipsos custo- 
 des ?" Who shall watch the sentinels ? The philo- 
 sophers asserted that morality must be the guardian 
 of the State, but acknowledged at the same time 
 that it was beyond the strength of men under the 
 temptations of wealth and power to obey its laws. 
 Such possessors of power, surrounded by depraved 
 men, would inevitably find means to retain it for 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 41 
 
 their own ends instead of those of the Community, 
 and the larger power would as certainly control the 
 smaller as the heavier weight disturbs the equili- 
 brium of the balance. 
 
 But another and still greater danger to the Unity 
 of the State would arise from the absence of the ser- 
 vile class. The relations of all the citizens to the 
 first necessaries of life, and to wealth as the means 
 of many gratifications, would be changed. They 
 would be their own producers. Instead of extorting 
 the means to realize their most cherished aims from 
 the muscles of a dependent caste, the contest must 
 now be between themselves. The desire of large 
 wealth and the ends for which it is sought would be 
 the same as before, and the strong wills and the 
 strong brains would certainly succeed in acquiring it. 
 But wealth necessarily implies poverty, for the la- 
 bor of an individual, as said before, is equal to little 
 more than the supply of his daily necessities. If there- 
 fore one has more than the product of his own labor 
 some other or others must have less, if much more, 
 many others must have less, if there is a large accu- 
 mulation of wealth great numbers must have thus 
 contributed to it. Thus, as wealth became accumu- 
 lated in the hands of the comparatively few, soon the 
 natural sources of wealth, in the absence of moral re- 
 straint, would be monopolized in spite of legal prohi- 
 bitions ; for in such circumstances wealth controls 
 law, and power and wealth as naturally flow togeth- 
 er as two drops of water run into each other. By 
 means of this alliance and monopoly and the contin- 
 ued competition for wealth the excluded many would 
 be deprived of larger and larger proportions of the 
 product of their labor. Then comes excessive pover- 
 
42 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 ty and consequent ignorance ; on one side an aristo- 
 cracy of wealth and power; on the other a large de- 
 pendent producing class, and the Community has 
 disappeared, the Duality is restored as before. 
 
 None of the results exhibited in this chapter are 
 accidental, but natural and necessary developments 
 from the character and mutual relations of the act- 
 ors. Accordingly they have been essentially uni- 
 form in all pagan States. Always the same despot- 
 ism of the comparatively few deriving wealth and 
 power from, and exercising its oppressions upon the 
 subject and servile masses on which it rests. Whe- 
 ther it be a single despot and millions of slaves, or 
 a two-headed, or many-headed beast of the same 
 species, everywhere it enacts the same inexorable 
 fundamental law the limit of right is power. 
 Whether the power is to be exercised over subject 
 towns, provinces, kingdoms, or dependent men of 
 whatever names, the end is always the self-interest 
 of the governors, the good of the governed never. 
 So far from there being in these heathen aristocra- 
 cies any tendency towards self-amelioration and 
 adaptation to the true end of the State, the common 
 good, on the contrary their inherent vice, and seeds 
 of disintegration are ultimately destructive of their 
 own. Their first developement is towards wealth 
 and power, and in consequence of these, or rather 
 by means of these, in the absence of all efficient 
 moral restraint, towards luxury, vice, indolence, 
 effiminacy, cowardice, vanity, ostentation, until the 
 ever increasing demand, and competition for wealth 
 presses intolerably upon the masses below which are 
 the source of it, they react with destructive fury 
 upon their now degenerate masters, or they become 
 
THE PAGAN STATE. 43 
 
 an easy prey to less degenerate neighbors. In either 
 case there is but a new arrangement of elements, to 
 assume gradually the same form, and to repeat es- 
 sentially the same process. From barbarism to self- 
 destructive civilization ; and from civilization back to 
 barbarism. This is the natural, inevitable, and end- 
 less cycle of pagan development always returning in- 
 to itself. 
 
 If Art, Literature, Science, have been incidents 
 of the development, they, mostly, in their spirit and 
 uses, do not give, but take the character of their 
 period, and so become, on the whole, promotive of 
 corruption and decay rather than preventive of them. 
 For what are these when not originating in, and 
 subservient to " The Good," but instruments of in- 
 justice, darkness and depravity ? 
 
 Thus in every possible aspect of a pagan State its 
 power to realize the true ends of a State is found to 
 be absolutely wanting, its character in this respect is 
 utterly helpless and hopeless. 
 
 It is plain that the essential and fatal defect in the 
 character of the pagan State, is the absence of a 
 comprehensive and efficient morality. The heathen 
 morality was but a feeble light in the conscience, but 
 rarely admitted into the will. It shone upon the 
 darkness, which however desired not to receive, but 
 to exclude it. It was too weak to control relations 
 where its right to do so was acknowledged, and innu- 
 merable relations which it ought to have governed 
 were hardly, or not at all, suspected to come within 
 its province. No kind or degree of knowledge of 
 physical laws could remove, or tend to remove this 
 defect in regard to moral laws. For what physical 
 law is that the knowledge of which would convince 
 
44 THE PAGAN STATE. 
 
 a man, for example, of the injustice of slavery, or 
 imperatively command him not to practice it ? It 
 was not more or better Taste that was wanting. For 
 what appreciation of artistic and literary beauty 
 could successfully urge its admirers, at the cost of 
 any necessary self-denial, to instruct the ignorant, 
 to reform the vicious, and to cease from all profitable 
 wrongs by restoring their rights to those whom they 
 had deprived of them ? The utter imbecility or per- 
 version of the sense of relative justice in its contest 
 with selfishness was a deadly disease in the very life- 
 blood of the pagan State. Everywhere, in all social, 
 civil, political and business relations, besides direct 
 lawless or legal oppressions, justice was ignored or 
 habitually failed through fraud, the power of the 
 wrong doer, the defects of the law, or the venality of 
 those who administered it. To which if there be ad- 
 ded the frightful depravity of private life among all 
 classes we may see how far such a State was from 
 being capable of realizing the true ends of a State ; 
 and shall have, at the same time, a measure of the 
 light and salt of Christianity which must permeate 
 the whole corrupted mass in order to transform it in- 
 to a successful self-governing Unity and true Com- 
 monwealth. The more we examine the subject in 
 its principles, and in all their illustrations in history 
 the more we shall be convinced that the true State 
 can exist only as an incident of Christianity ; and on- 
 ly by a deeply pervading influence of its purifying, 
 quickening and controling power. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 Magnus ab integro ssecloruin nascitur ordo. 
 lam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto, 
 
 * * * * quo ferrea primum 
 Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea rnundo. 
 Aspice venture loetantur ut omnia saeclo ! 
 
 Another period- conies, new order reigns, 
 
 A gentler power from Heaven on Earth descends, 
 
 Oppression's iron hand shall cease its sway, 
 
 And Justice raise aloft her golden scales. 
 
 See, all things gladden at the coming change ! 
 
 Christianity, always, and in every country in 
 which it exists, indirectly aims, and tends constant- 
 ly to remove the natural duality of the State, and to 
 mould it into the form of the true self-governing 
 Democracy, or representative Republic; and will 
 ultimately realize this aim in all States. 
 
 These are very lofty pretensions, and it may be 
 demanded of Christianity as it was once demanded 
 of the Author of it in the exercise of the like " By 
 what authority doest thou these things, and who gave 
 thee this authority?" By spiritual authority, a 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 living, active, ever aggressive and progressive power 
 not "a stationary agent," a dead morality bor- 
 rowed from paganism, as its enemies assert. An 
 authority, a power which cannot be better denned 
 than it was by Him who is the source of it, as 
 " leaven" pervading the whole mass in which it is 
 placed ; a seed, small at first, but by its inherent life 
 to become a great tree ; a Divine Power conducting 
 men to a knowledge of " the whole truth/' and able 
 to convict and convince them, with imperative au- 
 thority, in regard to " sin," in regard to "right- 
 eousness," and in regard to a "judgment to come," 
 and thus making the Intellect also the servant of 
 Duty and quickening it in the direction of all true 
 science. This is no pagan ideal, fair, but lifeless 
 and powerless : but both a living power and an em- 
 powering life, a self-executing Law, by willing obe- 
 dience in those who gladly acknowledge its authori- 
 ty, and by restraints of shame and fear in those who 
 are resolved that it shall not rule over them. Here 
 are living principles capable, like those of science, of 
 indefinite application. Already they have reached 
 innumerable relations which heathen morality never 
 pretended to control, and are still far who knows 
 how far ? from the limits of their righful dominion. 
 u A stationary agent?" learned, but verbose, 
 and shallow Mr. Buckle and Buckliculus Draper ! 
 Let us, then, look at a short catalogue which 
 might easily be made a very long one of the appli- 
 cations of these principles beyond where paganism 
 ever thought of going ; applications not made all at 
 once, and becoming stationary there, but successive- 
 ly and aggressively aggressions often resisted by 
 iire and sword and all other weapons known in the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 ^^*7*' L/l_ 
 
 ^^^^ :%' 
 
 nether armory, but hitherto only with temporary 
 success true, in many cases the contest is not yet 
 ended but the past is sufficiently indicative of the 
 future. 
 
 One of the earliest aggressions of Christianity af- 
 fecting the civil and political relations of men was 
 upon the practice of enslaving captives taken in war. 
 At the same time it raised its voice against slavery 
 itself, the early churches spending large sums in re- 
 deeming slaves and in purchasing captives that they 
 might not be reduced to slavery. After long, deep, 
 and ever more and more controling. leaven-like in- 
 fluences in the conscience and moral being of men it 
 has put an end to both these universal practices of 
 the ante-christian world, with the exception of the 
 last remnant of slavery, under the ban of Christiani- 
 ty and of Christendom, driven to its lair, and now 
 contending desperately for its doomed life. That 
 this has been the effect of the moral power of Christ- 
 ianity we have as it were the evidence of our senses, 
 for we can see, in the records and confessions of the 
 past, the very process of fermentation of the divine 
 leaven by which it gradually invaded this realm of 
 selfishness. And what is the meaning of the indig- 
 nation of universal Christendom at American slave- 
 holding but a terrible protest of Christianity itself 
 against the injustice of slavery, and an imperative 
 demand that it be made to cease ? Or is this 
 a mere protest of English philanthropic " intellect'' 
 against the error of southern slaveholders in so mis- 
 taking their own best interest as men of business ? 
 
 What a step this towards bridging the impassable 
 gulf of duality in the pagan State. 
 
 But a still greater miracle began at once, on the 
 
48 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 advent of Christianity, to manifest itself in the lower 
 stratum itself of the State. That great human 
 scarcely human mass, otherwise hopelessly dead 
 and corrupt, heard the voice of the Son of God and 
 began to live. No longer mere animals, having only 
 an animal life, "live tools," as their owners and em- 
 ployers called them, they felt awakening within 
 them the consciousness that they also were men, 
 with the hopes, the rights . and the duties of men. 
 The slave could say, as he firmly refused obedience 
 even to imperial commands which required the vio- 
 lation of duty, ' ' I too am a Christian." To the 
 poor the Gospel was preached. The most stimulat- 
 ing and efficient of all knowledge, quickening the 
 very centre of life, now gravitated downwards. 
 In spite of all after attempts to prevent it, it still 
 found its way downwards. More than that, the 
 living germs became rooted and developed them- 
 selves there beyond all the means of watchtul and 
 jealous power to eradicate them. Strange thoughts 
 were stirred in that lowest region of mind did not 
 Christ die for us also ? are not we more than brutes ? 
 have not we some human worth ? Henceforth this 
 poor dumb humanity found voice, and in its upris- 
 ings against oppression it was not stimulated wholly 
 by blind rage, but Rights ! give us our rights ! for 
 we also are men. The moral man was first aroused, 
 for religious truth was addressed directly to the mo- 
 ral ; hopes, aspirations, daily stimulated the intellect ; 
 in some degree, and to some extent a better and 
 more intelligent life prevailed; concert was more 
 successful; alliances, organization became possible; 
 rights were demanded, granted, annulled ; privileges 
 purchased, exemptions bestowed, especially by dy- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 49' 
 
 ing oppressors, "for the good of their souls;" and 
 thus slowly, after long and weary contests with 
 the various orders of aristocracy, after many vicis- 
 situdes, arose, from the lower, the great middle class- 
 of Europe the methods varying more or less in dif- 
 ferent States, but the result always the effect of the* 
 same causes, the awakened consciousness of rights 
 from below, and the awakened conscience from above. 
 Here too the deep religious influences at work in 
 the minds and hearts of the oppressed are every- 
 where manifest. In all their struggles and discour- 
 agements their appeal was to Christ and the Saints. 
 Their confidence in them seems never to have 
 failed though they sometimes complained of their de- 
 lay. How like the religious trust of our own op- 
 pressed class ! In the Legends of the Saints which 
 were their nursery tales and everywhere their solace 
 and amusement, the Saints were always represented 
 as humble themselves and condescending to the poor, 
 the especial protectors and defenders of the rights of 
 the poor. The depth and sincerity of their religious 
 belief may be seen in the terrible effect upon them- 
 of a papal interdict. We may call this superstition 
 if we please, and truly enough in one aspect of it,. 
 but it indicates a power which mere physical force 
 backed by science does not often resist. Tn this 
 contest between the oppressors and the oppressed if 
 both parties were net equally pious they were equal- 
 ly superstitious, and while the one trusted confident- 
 ly in the Saints, the other knew well that God and 
 the Saints were against them. Hence if their love 
 of right prompted them to grant little, fear extorted 
 much, and their hope to bribe heaven at death was 
 often of greatest benefit to those whom they had on-^ 
 
 5 
 
50 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 ly wronged during life. On neither side was there 
 perhaps sometimes much true religion, nevertheless 
 the true principles of religion made both instrumen- 
 tal to their own realization, for they know, how to 
 exercise their power both in the will and against the 
 will. Thus the power of Christianity to mould the 
 State, though obstructed and retarded, was not de- 
 feated by the perverseness of the material. It both 
 guided and controled, as it still does, not only those 
 whom it had made enlightened and obedient, but al- 
 so both the blind and the rebellious. 
 
 But besides the strong incidental stimulus given 
 to the intellect by a knowledge of religious truth, 
 Christianity first taught and demanded that the in- 
 tellect of all men should be directly cultivated and 
 developed. This is one of the applications of its 
 principles, this is among the commands of the New 
 Testament. Here, as in the changes effected in the 
 civil and political relations of men, Christianity ex- 
 ercised its influence both from above and from be- 
 low. Men of the higher classes, as well as of the 
 lower, and great numbers of them, from the Apostles 
 to the present time, have spent their lives with great 
 self-denial in preaching the Gospel to slaves, and 
 other lowest and most degraded men. Where the 
 facts, the hopes, the duties of Christianity are con- 
 stantly made known, besides the result in the moral 
 character of those thus instructed, can the effect upon 
 their intellect be slight ? And although Christiani- 
 ty has been slow in convincing men that it requires 
 the full realization of all their powers, and that the 
 possession of a faculty implies both the right and 
 the duty of its exercise, vet it has always led them 
 in this direction. The same men who have most 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 51 
 
 contributed to spiritual enlightenment have also first 
 advocated, and assisted to give education of the in- 
 tellect in the lowest classes. Not only are all the 
 older and higher Institutions of learning in Christen- 
 dom of 'religious origin, but the very idea of educa- 
 tion as well as gospel for the poor, of universal 
 education, could never have originated but in Christ- 
 ianity. 
 
 A very small seed this at first and of slowest 
 growth, but at length this also has "become a great 
 tree" of which many millions have gathered and are 
 gathering the fruit. The vast sums of public and 
 private charity now annually expended in Christen- 
 dom and out of Christendom for the education of those 
 who would not otherwise be at all educated is one of 
 the grandest results of the application of Christian 
 principles, and one of the most efficient under the 
 control of higher religious teaching towards the re- 
 alization of the true State. 
 
 But the whole influence for the education of the 
 otherwise ignorant has not come from above. The 
 lowest, in proportion as they have been spiritually 
 enlightened, have sought education for themselves 
 and for their children. It was this influence from 
 below which produced the first translations of the 
 Bible into the living languages of Europe, and was 
 of great value to the self-elevating class in their 
 contests with their superiors, at the same time giv- 
 ing much trouble to men who had directed toe divine 
 leaven not to overflow, in its fermentation, the dish 
 in which they had placed it. 
 
 Another application of the principles of Christi- 
 anity, instituting entirely new relations between the 
 higher and lower classes of men, and interesting for 
 
52 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 the many examples it has furnished of the power of 
 duty over selfishness that condition sine 
 qua non, and very life-blood of a true State is 
 found in the very extensive provision made for the 
 sick and insane poor, and for their children ; and 
 even for the vicious, abandoned and guilty poor. 
 This provision began to be made in the very earliest 
 periods of Christianity, has been constantly increas- 
 ing, and becoming constantly more efficient in re- 
 alizing the ends proposed by it. This, doubtless, as 
 all good things may be, has sometimes been abused 
 through the unfitness of its administrators. But, 
 even so, what is the animus towards the source of 
 this and other permanent good results of Christiani- 
 ty, manifested by, and how can fitly be character- 
 ized, the assertion, made almost in sight of Hospi- 
 tals centuries old, that " the effects of the most ac- 
 tive philanthropy rarely survive the generation which 
 witnessed their commencement ; and that, when they 
 take the more durable form of of founding great pub- 
 lic charities, such institutions invariably fall, first 
 into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are ei- 
 ther destroyed, or perverted from their original in- 
 tention." Let the author of this and many such- 
 like falsehoods be treated leniently. He could not 
 avoid uttering them, for he was building a showy 
 structure the corner-stone of which was labeled 
 '*' Morality is a stationary agent/'' He might with 
 more consistency have asserted that there is no mo- 
 rality, for morality necessarily implies personal, free, 
 responsible beings, which, by his philosophy, can have 
 no existence. 
 
 This kindly influence of Christianity has mani- 
 fested itself not only in " the form of founding great 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 5& 
 
 public charities," and other condensed and localized- 
 products of Christian duty for Christianity demands 
 charity as of moral obligation, and does not reckon t 
 it a mere gratuitous bestowment but this same in- 
 fluence has gradually become diffused universally.. 
 All the relations of men have been more or less soft- 
 ened by it. That of man to woman what a differ- 
 ence between the present and that of barbarism, or 
 that of pagan civilization ! The relation of the pow- 
 erful to the weak, and of the rich to the poor 
 how much less of abjectness and cringing servility,, 
 how much more self-appreciation and manhood on 
 the one side ; and on the other how much less con- 
 temptuous insolence, and purse-proud disdain, how 
 much more respect for man as man, and acknow- 
 ledgement of rights not based on power ! What a- 
 change in pecuniary relations since the 'time when 
 the debtor could be sold into slavery or doomed to- 
 perpetual imprisonment ! How justice has softened 
 its rights towards ordinary criminals, and how ex- 
 ceedingly rare the execution of prisoners of State ! 
 Persecutions of so called heretics have almost en- 
 tirely ceased ; not, as is falsely claimed, by reason, 
 of greater intellectual progress, but by a further and 
 truer moral development. Religious persecutions, 
 that is, by Christians, have originated in two motives, 
 and in both cases have been the effect of straight-for- 
 ward obvious logical conclusions. In the one case, 
 ecclesiastical power cannot tolerate heresy for the 
 same reason that the State cannot tolerate rebellion. 
 It would be demonstrably by the simplest possible 
 reasoning suicidal, and power rarely lacks intellect 
 in self-defence. If the moral had been as much cul- 
 tivated and as vigorous as the intellectual in cede-. 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 siastical Power it never would have been a persecut- 
 ing Power. 
 
 In the other case, religious persecutions have ori- 
 ginated in a sincere conviction of duty based upon 
 the plain logic that religious truth is better for men 
 than error, and that therefore the one is to be by all 
 means propagated, and the other by all means des- 
 troyed. The logic was good, the intellect did its 
 part, but there was a flaw in the moral perception. 
 The relation of these persecutors to Christianity was 
 too intellectual. A more spiritual relation to it 
 would have made them feel that as religion it re- 
 quires and desires and can accept only a willing and 
 glad reception of truth and rejection of error, and 
 that, therefore, as Christ had announced in the be- 
 ginning, compulsion could have no place in his reli- 
 gion. 
 
 In regard to war, what a difference between the 
 present, bad as it is, and the time when not only all 
 the treasures and private wealth of a captured city, 
 but also the persons of all its inhabitants were the 
 booty of the captors ! 
 
 This milder type of relations public and private, 
 where there is more mutual respect, more kindness 
 and more justice, is bringing men constantly nearer 
 together, giving them more things in common, and 
 so making them more and more capable of forming, 
 bye and bye, a true Commonwealth. 
 
 But another most important and successful result 
 of the influence of Christianity is manifested in the 
 progressive elevation of the standard of private and 
 social morality. Let us acknowledge that in some 
 Christian countries private morality 'is of exceedingly 
 low type, and that in some localities in all Christian 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 55 
 
 countries it might more fitly be denominated heathen 
 than Christian morality. Yet, on the whole, if we 
 compare it with the morality of the best heathen ci- 
 vilizations, or with that of the middle ages of Eu- 
 rope, the difference is immense ; and if, instead of 
 taking the whole of Christendom, we look only at 
 those parts of it where Christianity is not the mere 
 performance of dead ceremonies, and is not addressed 
 exclusively to prudence and the intellect, but to the 
 moral and spiritual nature of man, and in consequence 
 exerts its true and peculiar influences, there we shall 
 find the difference between heathendom and Christ- 
 endom, in this respect, all but total. Where Christian 
 manners are at the worst they exhibit the first symp- 
 tom of approaching virtue, or at least of respect for 
 virtue, viz., hypocrisy. They have the grace of 
 shame, which is progress in the right direction. 
 Vices are denied, and indulged in secretly, which 
 were formerly open and shameless. 
 
 A very good test and measure of the development 
 of a practical and efficient moral sense in Christen- 
 dom may be found by examining, for different pe- 
 riods, the manners of the highest classes, especially 
 those of the courts of kings and princes. Power and 
 wealth tend always to affect the character of their 
 possessors in the same manner, that is, in the ab- 
 sence of moral restraints, to generate habits of in- 
 justice towards others, and of self-indulgence and 
 vice in themselves. Restraints may exist in the per- 
 sonal character of those to be restrained, in the cha- 
 racter of those around 'them, or in the character of 
 public opinion, the character of the standard mora- 
 lity of the period. In looking over the history of 
 Europe two facts are quite noticeable, first, that the 
 
56 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 existence of an efficient public opinion is of pretty 
 recent date, and, whatever might have been, before, 
 the average morality of a people, courts and courtiers 
 were entirely above its influence ; second, that, be- 
 fore the existence of a more or less controling public 
 opinion, the manners of courts of all ranks though 
 on the whole making some advance since the tenth 
 century were, with scarcely a single exception, a 
 disgrace to the Christian name. Not that Christiani- 
 ty lacks power to restrain men in such circumstances 
 though we are all told that such shall hardly be 
 saved but they had the power and the disposition 
 to exclude all direct and true influences of Christian- 
 ity, and felt no restraint from any other source. But 
 there is now a public opinion, a universally diffused 
 Christian morality, or, at least, sense of the demands 
 of Christian morality, which cries shame, and that 
 too in a voice which has to be heard on prince, or 
 king, or kaisar whose manners are such as were not 
 very long since practiced without shame or rebuke. 
 Would Russia now tolerate the manners of Catherine 
 II ? Would any German State abide the beastly 
 princes that once ruled over them ? Would France, 
 or even Paris, now permit the existence of a '' Pare 
 aux Cerfs?" Not to go back to the early Norman 
 times, would the people of England now tolerate the 
 manners of Henry VIII, the court of Charles II, or 
 even those of the Georges ? 
 
 It is the exceedingly shallow opinion of some very 
 intellectual people that Christianity is the reasser- 
 tion of some pretty old rules ot heathen morality, 
 the same always and everywhere, and having the 
 same power always and everywhere, that is, a " sta- 
 tionary agent." It follows, then, inevitably, either 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 57 
 
 that there is no greater amount of obedience to the 
 law of duty now in Christendom than there was or is 
 in heathendom, or that all the difference is due to 
 the progress of intellect, and so cannot be referred to 
 Christianity at all whose direct aim is to restore and 
 control the moral and spiritual relations of men. But 
 is there now any more or more earnest obedience 
 than before Christianity to those laws which should 
 prescribe men's ethical character and relations, and 
 govern all relations where right and wrong are in- 
 volved ? Or to take the catalogue of rules which we 
 are told includes all possible morality. 1st " To do 
 good to others." Is there more good done to others 
 by Christian men than was the habit of heathen men ? 
 2d, " To sacrifice for others' benefit your own 
 wishes." Have Christian men made any more of 
 self-sacrifice, or have more Christian men made it, 
 and in a greater variety of ways than heathen men ? 
 3d, " To love your neighbour as yourself" Is there 
 any more of this love than formerly, or is the defini- 
 tion of neighbour more comprehensive than former- 
 ly? 4th, " To forgive your enemies." Are ene- 
 mies, whether public or private, treated any more 
 mildly than formerly ? 5th, " To restrain your 
 passions." Has there been any advance anywhere 
 in Christendom, or in Christendom on the whole, in 
 private and social morals and selt-control ? 6th, 
 " To honor your parents." Has there been any ad- 
 vance in obedience to this precept? 7th, "To re- 
 spect those who are set over you." 
 
 I suppose that no one will deny that these old 
 rules, which anciently were as dead as any other 
 heathen ideals, have, within the last thousand years, 
 been somehow getting themselves, on the whole, 
 
58 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 more and more obeyed, that they have become living 
 and controling principles of conduct in the lives of 
 vast numbers of men , that they extend to very many 
 relations which they did not pretend to reach for- 
 merly, and that they pervade as guide and restraint 
 with varying energy the entire mass of Christendom. 
 Whence then this life which seems to have been in- 
 fused into them ? Is it a divine empowering from 
 Christianity according to its promises, ct the life from 
 God entered unto them ?" Or is it a stimulus from 
 the human intellect? 
 
 What is the relation of the scientific intellect to 
 the moral disposition and character of men ? Is it 
 a relation of cause and effect such that the intellect, 
 in proportion to its development and acquisitions, 
 produces or increases the willingness to obey the 
 laws of duty, of right, and of ethical propriety ? The 
 natural relations of the intellect are to all physical 
 and physiological facts and relations ; to the sciences 
 of the inorganic and of the organic ; to a knowledge 
 of the mutual relations of the organic and inorganic : 
 to pure science ; to political science ; to the science 
 of itself to the science of intellect. Thus in pro- 
 portion to its acquisitions it determines what is or 
 can be within its own* sphere, but it has no relation 
 to what ought to be. To determine this is the func- 
 tion of other faculties. Every moral relation im- 
 plies the obligation of duty, obedience to the law of 
 the relation. The moral faculty, the will, as the mo- 
 ral executive, is capable of two relations to this law, 
 that of co- willing and that of counter-willing, that 
 of obedience and that of disobedience. Now which 
 of the knowledges from all the realms of science ne- 
 cessarily determines the will towards obedience to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 59 
 
 the law of duty ? It is true they may furnish to the 
 moral faculty new means of realizing the ends of 
 duty ; but they also furnish it with new means and 
 new temptations to refuse to seek, and to defeat the 
 ends of duty. That is, the moral faculty when 
 brought into relation to the intellect, and to any or 
 all of its acquisitions, will act exactly according to 
 its disposition and character ; to the good they will 
 be a means of good ; to the bad a means of evil. If 
 they have any tendency to change either character 
 it would seem to be for the worse, for it is found 
 throughout history that the higher and more intel- 
 ligent classes are morally worse than those below 
 them. But this is probably only a seeming effect. 
 It is not perhaps the direct effect of the knowledge 
 but of the wealth and power it is the means of ac- 
 quiring, for when not accompanied by these inci- 
 dents such effect is not always produced. We may 
 say then that the relation of the intellect to the char- 
 acter of the moral faculty is that of indifference. It 
 is neither better nor worse for the intellect ; it is 
 neither more nor less efficient for good or for evil in 
 proportion to its means. Or if there is any differ- 
 ence the arrogance pride and selfishness of the scien- 
 tific is increased. Modern intellect has not discov- 
 ered any new principles of morality, for these all of 
 them which are possible, we are told, have been 
 known from time immemorial, and it is not the 
 function of intellect to discover or apply principles 
 of morality. If then, there is in Christendom a 
 very much higher tone of morality, a very much 
 wider application of its principles, and more general 
 obedience to its laws than ever existed in heathen- 
 dom, whatever may be the cause, it is not because 
 
60 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 intellect is the " only progressive agent." If, how- 
 ever, any one asserts that morality and religion are 
 only a wiser selfishness enlightened by intellect let 
 him rejoice in that opinion. 
 
 But if the intellect has no power to stimulate the 
 moral faculty, what, on the other hand, is the rela- 
 tion of the moral faculty to the intellect in this re- 
 spect ? Just in proportion to the sincerity and ener- 
 gy of the moral executive in obedience to duty will 
 be the desire to find means to realize the ends of 
 duty. When the moral faculty is itself truly quick- 
 ened it becomes the true quickening power of all the 
 other faculties of the man. The intellect is at once 
 called upon as the organ of ways and means, and 
 though powerless as a cause of morality, as an effect 
 and instrument of it most valuable and efficient. 
 That such is the true relation of the moral to the in- 
 tellectual, and such the effect of it, is not only a mat- 
 ter of constant observation in cases of individual 
 men, or associations of men, but often whole nations 
 are aroused to an intellectual energy and accom- 
 plishment which no other influence could have effect- 
 ed. For conscientious men the cultivation of the 
 intellect is among their prune duties. It is u talent 
 which to hide in a napkin is a most heinous offence 
 against Him from whom whom they received it. 
 
 It is certain, then, that the morality of Christen- 
 dom, in whatever it is superior to pagan morality, 
 owes the difference to the effect of the divine leaven 
 of Christianity. It is not under the patronage of its 
 servant intellect, nor has it its roots in that soil where 
 of all others there is the least " deepness of earth," 
 the aesthetic beauty of virtue, but in the Christian 
 KELIGIOX. It is moreover, a reliable conclusion 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 61 
 
 which may be drawn from a comparison of the pre- 
 sent however still imperfect with the past, that 
 Christianity is capable of bringing all the laws, cus- 
 toms, and institutions of men into conformity with 
 its principles. Where such laws are, as indeed they 
 are already in some communities, if not wholly, at 
 least in great part, willingly obeyed, there will be 
 realized another of the conditions preparatory to the 
 existence of the true State. This is the condition 
 of all other conditions, the indispensable Christian 
 salt, without which, and hi greater quantity, I 
 fear, than is yet to be found in any whole country 
 the permanent existence of a self-governing State 
 is impossible. 
 
 It is plain, however, from this short and incom- 
 plete catalogue of results, from these undeniable ef- 
 fects of Christianity already realized, that the con- 
 stituent halves of the aboriginal, natural Duality 
 are, and have been, from the beginning of Christia- 
 nity, constantly approaching each other ; and, if 
 they are not yet fused together and become homo- 
 geneous, they are fairly in contact, or at least the 
 space between them is well bridged, the intercourse 
 between them is free and constant, and in some parts 
 there is mutual interpenetration, and combination all 
 but complete from the highest top to the lowest bot- 
 tom. 
 
 But has the power of Christianity reached in all 
 directions its limits ? Or are there limits, this side 
 of a degree of influence necessary to the existence of 
 the true State, beyond which it cannot extend ? The 
 divine leaven has manifested already mighty power, 
 is it not equal to leavening the whole lump ? Per- 
 haps we shall be the better prepared to answer these 
 
 G 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 questions correctly if we examine more directly the 
 methods of Christianity, and its actual workings as 
 illustrated and exhibited in its history, and why it 
 is that Christian civilization does not, and will not. 
 like pagan civilizations, revert again to barbarism, 
 but its progress, if not always in a straight line is 
 never apocatastatic but always further and further 
 from its starting point. 
 
 Christianity, from its very beginning, became not 
 only a new life in the morality of the world but a 
 new element in the politics of the world. By its 
 moral power, by awakening, we may say creating, 
 an efficient consciousness of DUTY, it preached, suc- 
 cessfully, " deliverance to the captives," and pro- 
 claimed from heaven " good will to men." On the 
 other hand, by awakening more and more in all men 
 the consciousness of RIGHTS for all men, with invi- 
 tation of appeal to God in their assertion and de- 
 fence, it indicated its latent power to "break in 
 pieces and subdue;" it proclaimed "a sword" for 
 all things and men incorrigibly incompatible with 
 civil and political JUSTICE, whatever laws, customs, 
 institutions, kingdoms, empires, or other powers to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. As Religion it re- 
 stores the true spiritual relations of men, which in 
 their inmost nature are willing relations, so that co- 
 ercion in regard to them is contradictory to their 
 very idea they are realized in the Church. But 
 relations of practical morality, of mutual justice, of 
 civil and religious freedom, of equality of privilege 
 and opportunity, all that pertains to the common 
 earthly well-being of associated men, Christianity 
 assigns to the State. ' These relations Christianity, 
 by its principles, proclaims to be the rights of the 
 

 THE CHRISTIAN STATE 63 
 
 citizens, and to maintain them is the duty of the 
 State, not only by enactment and exhortation but by 
 compulsion ot those who refuse obedience. Coercion, 
 when necessary, is implied in the very idea of the 
 State, because it is the State and not the Church. 
 But the duty and the right of coercion are on condi- 
 tion of a right end for which it is used. The Gov- 
 ernment may not say, " I am the State," unless it 
 exists for the ends of the State. Ultimately the 
 People is the State by the first law of nature, that 
 of self-preservation. Christianity requires obedience 
 to powers ordained of God, but not to those ordained 
 of the Devil. It announces the right in all possible 
 relations, and demands obedience to it, but it contains 
 no principle of suicide, of obedience to wrong which 
 would annihilate itself. As Religion is not only 
 without (outside of ) the State, but it is above the 
 State, and from the very first claimed for men the 
 right, and the paramount duty of obedience to a 
 " Higher Law" than that even of Caesar. Here was 
 the first practical collision between Christianity and 
 Power as force, in distinction or separation from 
 right. Long, obstinate, and terrible has been the 
 contest, but Christianity has all but everywhere 
 triumphed, not, as is pretended, because Power is 
 wiser, but because it is relatively weaker than for- 
 merly. 
 
 But aristocratic Power, though often very indig- 
 nant at the Christian higher law, has also its own 
 higher law, best expressed in the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of Asiatic despotism, that the king de facto 
 by whatever means his power was acquired, and for 
 whatever purposes it may be employed is also de 
 jure, and of divine right, to be obeyed. This doc- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 trine once universal in Christendom is now every- 
 where renounced, or if not, latent, or rarely ex- 
 pressed, and never practically asserted ; for there is 
 in Christian States a widely diffused leaven known by 
 experience to be sometimes dangerously explosive in 
 its fermentation. Thus unjust power acknowledges 
 itself, restrained by two imperative commands dir- 
 ectly from below, but indirectly from above Thou 
 shalt not forbid what Christian duty enjoins, or en- 
 join what it forbids : Thou shalt not withold from 
 men what Christian principles declare to be their 
 rights as men ; and because necessary to the perfor- 
 mance of their duties. It is true that to a great ex- 
 tent these commands are still unwillingly, and there- 
 fore, imperfectly obeyed. These principles are far 
 from being fully carried out, but it is felt on both 
 sides that they must henceforth control more and 
 more the relations of government and governed. 
 DUTIES ! RIGHTS ! rights in relation to duties 
 words without meaning in pagan politics, but, uttered 
 by the mouth of Christianity, words of power to re- 
 volutionize all Christian States. What a difference 
 since when the vast majority of all the inhabitants 
 of the State were contemptuously called '-live 
 tools ;" and when a free Christian people makes its 
 government aware that the State is for them and not 
 they for the State, except it be in order to the true 
 ends of the State. 
 
 This remarkable transformation of the State, mar- 
 velous if we consider it this mutual transposition 
 of the parts of the original duality such that the 
 former slaves have become, or are rapidly becoming 
 in effect the masters, while the ancient masters are 
 little more than the Agents of those who were once 
 
TUE CHRISTIAN STATE. 65 
 
 their " tools" or perhaps in some cases a little longer 
 lords by courtesy ; a transformation by which what 
 was once an inert mass, an unassiniilated appendage 
 outside of the political organism has come to be the 
 seat of the central and true life of the State all 
 this is the natural and necessary result of the very 
 METHOD of Christianity. 
 
 There are many intimations in the New Testa- 
 ment that the Gospel is intended especially for the 
 poor. Christ gives it as one evidence of his Messiah- 
 ship, that the poor have the Gospel preached to 
 them. He blesses the poor. He pronounces a woe 
 upon the rich. He asserts that the rich shall hardly 
 enter the kingdom of heaven, and only because all 
 things are possible with God. God hath chosen the 
 poor of this world, says an Apostle. We know, ac- 
 cordingly, that Christianity had its first success al- 
 most exclusively among slaves and in the lower 
 classes of the State. Not many rich, not many 
 mighty were called. God has chosen the weak to 
 confound the mighty in more senses than one. What 
 then ! is God partial, and is not the Gospel ad- 
 dressed to all men alike ? God is no respecter of 
 persons, and the Gospel is intended equally for all 
 classes. 
 
 An obvious and easy explanation of the language 
 of the New Testament, and the difference in the re- 
 ception of the gospel between the rich and the pow- 
 erful on the one side, and the enslaved and the poor 
 on the other side, is found in the character, require- 
 ments and promises of the Gospel itself. Dives was 
 receiving good things in this life, and was much less 
 likely than Lazarus to be aroused by hope for the 
 future. Power then claimed to hold divided empire 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 with Jupiter, and in proportion to the degree and 
 rank of it would be less inclined to put faith in the 
 promise of a Divine Protector than the weak and op- 
 pressed. Christianity by all its principles and pre- 
 cepts demands righteousness, which includes though 
 this is a secret not generally known doing right. 
 It demands justice between man and man in all rela- 
 tions. u Also, He that ruleth must be just, ruling 
 in the fear of God." It is plain that these promises 
 and principles and precepts were gospel to those who 
 had no hope in this world, to those who suffered 
 wrong, who were the victims of endless oppressions 
 and godless despotism, in quite another sense than 
 to those lapped in present ease and luxury, who pro- 
 fited by doing wrong, grew rich by oppressions, and 
 great by the exercise of unjust power. What a to- 
 tally different and contrary aspect and practical re- 
 lation must the new religion have had to the oppo- 
 site sides of the dual State ! To the one side full of 
 hope, encouragement, an awakening to the conscious- 
 ness of manhood, life from the dead ; to the other 
 side if they had believed it full of reproof, and of 
 demands for self-denials, self-humiliations and self- 
 abnegations of all sorts where injustice had served 
 the ends of selfishness. Would not even those in- 
 clined to good, were it not to cost so much, go away 
 sorrowful ? 
 
 Thus Christianity, the divine seed, " takes 
 root downwards, and bears fruit upwards." 
 This is its METHOD ; this is the law of it. This is 
 the key to its whole history and results in relation 
 to the State. This is the reason why Christian States, 
 Christian civilization, are, and are to be, permanent- 
 ly progressive , while that of paganism was necessari- 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 67 
 
 ly circular. From the first, the common people 
 heard the gospel gladly, and it pervaded with consi- 
 derable rapidity the lower stratum of the State ; 
 while, from the first, the aristocratic class rejected it 
 with contempt, or perhaps with instinctive percep- 
 tion of its consequences to themselves ; next they at- 
 tempted to destroy it, and failing in this, true to 
 their character, they sought to modify, pervert, and 
 make it subservient to their own purposes, then, and 
 always since, not without success. This is the stand- 
 ing type of the relation, varying within very nar- 
 row limits, between aristocracy and Christianity. 
 Yet the primitive inert mass transformed into a peo- 
 ple, as it becomes leavened more and more with the 
 consciousness of Duty and Right, the Salt and 
 Light of Christianity, is ever encroaching from be- 
 low in spite of aristocratic power or perversion, whe- 
 ther civil or ecclesiastical. These allied powers, 
 though they may sometimes be reached, and more or 
 less restrained by the leaven of duty from above al- 
 so, yet while they exist, and to the extent that they 
 exist as such, retain always essentially the same 
 character. 
 
 The Roman Empire furnishes no exhibition of the 
 full working, and outworking of these antagonist 
 forces in relation to each other. The lower class, to 
 a great extent calling themselves Christian, under 
 the incredible luxury and extravagance of their mas- 
 ters in the now decaying Roman World, were under 
 more grinding and irresistible oppressions than ever. 
 They were not yet sufficiently elevated by the influ- 
 ences of Christianity to enable them to throw off the 
 crushing weight that rested upon them, or to con- 
 stitute for themselves a better State if they could 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN STA.TB. 
 
 have done so. Although there had been much pas- 
 sive resistance, and a strong vital reaction against 
 some of the forms of unjust power, there was yet 
 very little if any restraining or conservative influ- 
 ence from below. On the other side, though nomi- 
 nal Christianity, such as court bishops would be 
 likely to preach it, had reached the imperial throne, 
 and of course the court and many of the governing 
 class, yet the whole upper stratum of the State was 
 so totally and irretrievably debased and corrupt, so 
 rotten to the core, that its preservation was impossi- 
 ble, or at least, God did not choose to make it pos- 
 sible. The Roman heathen civilization was essen- 
 tially heathen to the end, and followed the heathen 
 law. The Empire only perished a little sooner than 
 it otherwise would because there happened to be out- 
 side barbarians to give it the coup de grace. 
 
 At the end of the Roman Empire, and in the poli- 
 tical chaos which followed, Christianity may be said 
 to have had a new beginning, at least in regard to 
 its modifying influence upon the State, for the old 
 pagan duality was everywhere in the new States re- 
 tained. How much of the true leaven was left 
 among the remnant of the wretched victims of servile 
 oppression, civil wars, and barbarian slaughter who 
 were to mingle with the heathen hordes that recruit- 
 ed their numbers, it is impossible to tell. Unfortu- 
 nately for them the church duality, as well as that 
 of the State, was retained, or rather, the Church 
 aristocracy had become essentially one with that of 
 State. The original constitution of the church as a 
 visible community was such as the idea necessarily 
 determined it to be. It naturally assumed the form 
 of a self-organizing, self-governing democracy. No 
 

 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 69 
 
 power could be exercised in it, or by it, but spiri- 
 tual power. It had no authority but spiritual au- 
 thority ; and those best fitted, by their own spiritual 
 character, to exercise it as the organs of the Church 
 were to be designated by the spiritual body itself. 
 But by a gradual perversion easy to understand 
 of these offices in the church to other than spiritual 
 ends, they became desirable for other than spiritual 
 men. Hence, as power other than spiritual, and 
 wealth came to be appendages of these places in the 
 church, the persons occupying them often proved to 
 be more worldly than heavenly -minded. Not, how- 
 ever, as has been asserted, because Christian princi- 
 ple has not power to resist such seductions, but be- 
 cause where the carcase is there the birds of prey 
 are most likely to be found. That worldly men, 
 wise in their generation, might more certainly se- 
 cure these places for themselves they soon effected a 
 change in the mode of election of bishops by which 
 they were nominated from without, and for form's 
 sake there was to be an approval, or pretended ap- 
 proval, by the people ; and finally they came to be 
 appointed without any reference whatever to the 
 people they were to govern. Bishoprics were at 
 length among the richest spoils of power, given, 
 taken away, bought, and sold ; and the first appeal 
 to the people was when they were called upon to pay 
 the price they themselves had brought in market. 
 Even long before the miserable end of the Empire, 
 instead of the spiritual communities instituted by the 
 Apostles, each selecting its holiest men, " elders" in 
 the spiritual life, to be its own teachers, and to pro- 
 claim the gospel to the unconverted world, there was 
 built up an immense hierarchy rank above rank of 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 Christian " DIGNITARIES," vieing in wealth and dis- 
 play, in pride and luxury, and in unprincipled in- 
 trigue and ambition, with senatorial and equestrian 
 nobles. 
 
 Two most unfortunate consequences of this misde- 
 velopment fell directly upon the great producing 
 lower class already overburthened with the weight 
 of imperial extravagance. In order to support this 
 new establishment competing with that of the secu- 
 lar aristocracy, vast sums additional to those neces- 
 sary for the government and for the old aristocracy 
 had to be extorted from the Christian people. This 
 was the clerical way of enforcing obedience to the 
 Apostolic direction " bear ye one another's bur- 
 dens." But this was the least of the two re- 
 sulting evils. Would the bishops and other high 
 clergy, whose personal character was no better than 
 that of their pagan contemporaries of equal rank and 
 wealth, continue long to preach in its purity a reli- 
 gion every precept of which was a sentence of con- 
 demnation against themselves? No ! they would not, 
 and did not. But as a class though of course with 
 many individual exceptions where by chance truly 
 Christian men had come to be bishops as a class . 
 <c instead of endeavoring to cherish and promote se- 
 rious, vital Christianity, they did everything in 
 their power to suppress it, because it presented 
 such a strong and to them vexatious contrast to their 
 own mode of life. Serious and piously disposed lay- 
 men were persecuted by such clergymen as danger- 
 ous censors of their conduct. Often they were ex- 
 communicated from the church, or they separated of 
 their own accord from such spiritual guides, because 
 they could not believe it possible that men so pol- . 
 

 tr; 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. ^ TI 
 
 luted with every vice should serve as instrin 
 for the work of the Holy Spirit." (Neander.) It' 
 was much more to the taste and for the interest of 
 such men to let down Christianity into paganism, 
 than to bring up paganism to Christianity. 
 
 We find, then, on the breaking up of the Western 
 Koman Empire, each of its fragments assuming essen- 
 tially the same form as that of the whole. On the one 
 side of the Duality the secular governing aristocracy 
 of the State, and in alliance with it the ecclesiastical 
 aristocracy of the Church ; on the other side what 
 remained of the lower Christian population, with a 
 large infusion of fresh paganism. 
 
 One arrangement derived from that of the primi- 
 tive Apostolic communities, and of great ultimate 
 advantage to the lower class, was retained, or soon 
 everywhere restored the whole State was divided 
 into parishes, each having its own local priest, whose 
 duty it was to see that all the inhabitants should 
 attend mass on Sundays and feast days, not excluding 
 the serfs of the fields and forests. Such constant 
 meeting together of the same parish people could 
 not fail to make them more and more capable of 
 concerted action whenever it should be necessary. 
 And however rude and ignorant the priest might be 
 as he often was and though Christianity was 
 presented to them for the most part under sensuous 
 forms, yet some spiritual truth would find its way 
 to many hearts, and the intellect of all would be 
 more or less excited. If we add the effect of the 
 legends of the saints constantly repeated, the occa- 
 sional or frequent preaching of more earnest, more 
 pious, and intelligent monks, and the religious dis- 
 putes among their superiors often going on in their 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 hearing, and discussed more or less among them- 
 selves, with here and there the influence of a truly 
 pious Bishop, it is plain that, in the most corrupt 
 times of the hierarchy, even the lowest rural com- 
 munities were under educational influences both 
 moral and intellectual which must raise them very 
 high above the condition of corresponding pagan 
 populations. Already, instead of the " live tools" 
 of paganism there is coming to be though still ig- 
 norant and in great part enslaved a PEOPLE. 
 
 It is a singular proof of the divine power and per- 
 vading energy of the Christian leaven that even 
 from such a people there arose frequent protests not 
 only against the vices of the clergy but also against 
 their corruptions of doctrine and pollutions of the 
 pure morality of the Gospel. It was in self-de- 
 fence that the priesthood took away the source of 
 pure doctrine by forbidding the use of the Bible to the 
 laity. But besides the protests of the no doubt 
 often obscure Christian consciousness and duty from 
 below there was another cause of protest. For a long 
 time, such a people, most of them, would not ob- 
 ject to the metamorphosis, in itself, of an inward and 
 spiritual religion into outward, showy, and exciting 
 formalities ; to the exchange of the worship of God 
 in spirit andin truth for the worship of images and 
 relics, pilgrimages to shrines and holy wells. But, 
 unluckily for the people, even in regard to this 
 world, every one of the innumerable ceremonies and 
 observances of this unspiritual religion put money 
 into the pockets of the ecclesiastical aristocracy by 
 taking it from their own. Add to this the pecuniary 
 oppressions of the lay lords and of the government ; 
 and the compulsory labor exacted by both the secu- 
 

 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 73 
 
 lar and ecclesiastical powers, and there were reasons 
 enough why protests of right against robbery and 
 extortion should be both frequent and more and more 
 imperative. Here, then, we have the two parts of 
 the ethnico-Christian Duality brought face to face, 
 their forces marshaled for the "irrepressible con- 
 flict;" on the one side by direct or incidental Chris^ 
 tian influences, on the other by the principles of 
 pagan government ; on the one side the demands of 
 duty and right, on the other the denials of aristo- 
 cratic power both secular and ecclesiastical. The re- 
 sult of the battle so far, for we are yet only midway 
 of the fight, is the Christendom of to-day compared 
 with that of the ninth century. Let us take cour- 
 age, therefore, which we shall the more if we look 
 at the methods and some examples of the manoeuver- 
 ing of the contending forces. 
 
 The double aristocracy, though often contending 
 with kingly and priestly pride as to which half 
 should take rank and precedence of the other, and 
 as to which should have priority of extortion, has al- 
 ways been, in relation to the people, one power. 
 The pagan power first despised Christianity ; then 
 sought to destroy it ; then to use it. Precisely so 
 the post-pagan, but not anti-pagan, alliance of Church 
 and State first despised the rising, emergent Christian 
 people ; then attempted to destroy it as such, and 
 by keeping it in the position of the heathen lower class, 
 to make it wholly subservent to its own ends. In 
 all Christian reactions from below, of conscious duty 
 against vice or false doctrine, which are sufficient to 
 alarm the ecclesiastical aristocracy, and which it could 
 not negotiate with, it has called upon its ally the 
 State to put down the " heretics ;" and, in order to 
 7 
 
74 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 prevent the like it not only took away the Bible, but 
 invented new arts and institutions of darkness and 
 demoralization. Where consciousness of right has 
 reacted against oppression and extortion, if wide- 
 spread enough to deserve notice, the State, besides 
 its diplomatic watchword " divide and conquer," has 
 freely and cruelly used its material power, and called 
 upon its willing ally to preach non-resistance, pass- 
 ive obedience, and the divine right of kings. I 
 speak of the method and measures of this double 
 power only as a whole. Many individuals in each 
 moiety of it have been reached by the true Christian 
 leaven and have counteracted to the extent of their 
 ability and sometimes at the expense of their lives, 
 what Christianity disapproves. But this power itself, 
 and neither moiety of it as is plain from recent 
 manifestations of its essential and unchangeable na- 
 ture, though it has sometimes prudently assumed a 
 very mild type of late years has ever yielded any- 
 thing to the people except through force or fear, 
 fear from below, or fear from above ; for superstition 
 has been of great benefit as well as injury to the 
 people, and death-bed repentances of kings and 
 smaller oppressors have yielded to them many rights 
 which they must otherwise have taken, and would 
 in due time have taken by the strong arm. The 
 creed of aristocracy is the shortest known " POW- 
 ER is RIGHT." Its choice of means is therefore 
 unlimited. According to circumstances it can use 
 force, fraud, flattery, bribery, assassination. Begin- 
 ing with the claim of being God's Anointed, it has 
 come down to ask to be legitimated by the people. 
 Just now, however, it is in high hopes of recovering 
 this important lost position, so as no longer to be 
 
I 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 75 
 
 obliged to say to the people u by your leave ;" plot- 
 ting deeply where it dares not use force, and using 
 force where it hopes to overcome resistance ; its an- 
 cient arts of lying, slandering, dividing, bribery and 
 corruption everywhere revived ; its hired tools every- 
 where scattered ; it means to weaken by demoraliza- 
 tion what it could not otherwise conquer. These are 
 the methods and means by which the two headed 
 power has ever aimed to keep in menial relation to it- 
 self, in moral and intellectual degradation, and so 
 under abject control, the people it governs. 
 
 Long, painfully weary and slow, has been for the 
 people the process of ascent from the double slavery 
 of soul and body to its present elevation. And let 
 no sneering pretended believers , lay or clerical, in 
 the impossibility of the peoples' dispensing with their 
 guardianship, and of their becoming capable of self- 
 government, still flatter themselves that this is a 
 movement to be arrested. They will find it a vital 
 development, a slow, unequal, but sure uprising of 
 growth, and building up of an organism compact and 
 vigorous, the more energetic the more it has to act 
 on the defensive, as the thousand storms that try the 
 strength of the oak at the same time do but increase 
 it. The reaction of the moral, or rather, of the rel- 
 igious consciousness of men from below upwards 
 against vice and false doctrine, the persistent, ob- 
 stinate, and rebellious appeal to the Law of Dutj 
 as highest, are remarkable, we may say unnatural 
 factspeculiar to Christian times and Christian men. The 
 reaction of conscious Right against injustice, at least, 
 a perserving, more and more intelligent, efficient and 
 successful reaction, is also peculiar to the same times. 
 Tt is observable, moreover, that the religious reaction, 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 certainly at all the chief stages and great crises of the 
 contest, has constantly preceded the political ; but 
 also that this has constantly followed the other like 
 its shadow. This is not an accidental relation of 
 these two vital forces ; for religious duty demands 
 civil freedom, rights, as the condition of obedience 
 to its own laws ; and the mere reaction of suffering 
 against oppression, as the worm turns, without the 
 vitalizing infusion of duty, has never proved success- 
 ful. If sometimes, righteous indignation against 
 oppression, has taken the form of terrible and des- 
 tructive wrath against the oppressors, it was more 
 than passion which enabled it to succeed. Another 
 great fact. These religious and political reactions 
 from below, whether against immorality, or against 
 injustice, whether against religious or political 
 wrengs, as far as they have attained to successive 
 limitations of the wrong, have, with comparatively 
 Blight oscillations, held their ground. Each new 
 advance against the enemy has been from the vant- 
 age-ground of previous points gained. These living 
 ferments invade and repress successively, all customs, 
 manners, laws, institutions inheriting or adopting 
 pagan wrongs and corruptions. The new wine bursts, 
 one after another, all the old bottles in which it is 
 attempted to confine it. That this gradual invasion 
 and permanent occupation by the people of what 
 were once the undisputed domains of the double 
 aristocracy, restraining their vices, restraining in- 
 justice, limiting power, demanding better manners, 
 better religion, better politics, is a fact, and the 
 great fact of modern history ; and that this has been 
 the effect of the divine leaven, of the empowering 
 life of Christianity working from below upwards, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 77' 
 
 the result of the gospel preached to the poor, an al- 
 lusion to only a few of the steps of the process will 
 make undeniable. 
 
 From the very earliest times began the protests of 
 duty against arbitrary power, and of the spiritual 
 life against the formalizing pretenders to it. Christ 
 himself described to the letter the contest into which 
 Christianity was about to enter, and foretold the re- 
 sult of it. " You shall stand before governors and 
 kings ; you shall be as lambs in the midst of wolves ; 
 yet, fear not, it is the Father's good pleasure to give 
 you the kingdom," a kingdom that " shall break in 
 pieces and subdue all other kingdoms." Whether 
 this promise will be fulfilled or how far fulfilled, in 
 the realization of the true self-governing State is not 
 material to the present purpose, it certainly includes 
 this as an incidental result. 
 
 The two forms of reaction of Christianity against 
 the forces and influences that would restrain or cor- 
 rupt it in its free development, against what would 
 forbid the realization of its primary spiritual pur- 
 pose, and against what opposes its incidental results) 
 may be distinguished but cannot always be easily 
 separated. Reaction towards religious ends, if it 
 does not always include, at least originates reaction 
 towards political well-being. Always and every- 
 where Christianity has manifested itself, and pro- 
 gressively more and more, by protest of duty against 
 prohibition to obey God rather than man ; of awak- 
 ened moral sense against vices of superiors ; of spiri- 
 tual life and knowledge against formality and false 
 doctrine ; of intellect against dogmatic tyranny ; 
 of conscious manhood against being reckoned and 
 treated as " live tools : " of civil and political rights 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 a gainst the unjust deprivations and extortions of 
 power. Whether these reactions have been, all of 
 them, according to the true spirit of Christianity is 
 not here the question ; but whether, if any of them 
 have not been so, they were, nevertheless, the natural 
 and necessary incidents of its presence. Christian- 
 ity, as a spiritual religion, excludes every form of 
 coercion as contradictory to its very idea, both in the 
 propagation of truth, and in resistance to error ; a 
 doctrine contrary to the conclusions of the under- 
 standing, and acknowledged only in the deepest reli- 
 gious consciousness ; a doctrine which arbitary power 
 and dogmatic prescription have always rejected in- 
 stinctively as not suited to their ends, and in regard 
 to which, at least as to restraining error, many good 
 men have been the dupes of their logic. Dreadful 
 have been the consequences of this error, whether 
 originating in malice or mistake. For the great body 
 of Christians has held to only spiritual or passive re- 
 sistance to prohibitions and prescriptions of arbit- 
 rary power in violation of conscience. 
 
 But the citizens of the Kingdom of God are also 
 citizens of the State, and, as such, they have no 
 duties, rights, or relations, different from those of 
 other citizens. Most unhappy have been the conse- 
 quence of confounding these two relations, of the no- 
 tion that, because, as Christians, men can only use 
 spiritual weapons, they must, therefore, suffer them- 
 selves to be deprived of their natural rights as men, 
 and of those common to other citizens of the same 
 State with themselves. It is not, however, necessa- 
 ry to enter into the casuistries which lie between 
 Church and State. It is sufficient for the argument 
 that true Christianity, as in the Church it tends to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE 79 
 
 give predominance to the spiritual over the formal, 
 so in the State it transfers the old reverence, obedi- 
 ence and loyalty of men from personal visible Maj- 
 
 esty found so often by bloody experience to cover, 
 not God's vicegerent, but demons to the truly di- 
 vine majesty of God's Justice; ever less and less 
 Rex, ever more and more Lex. 
 
 The first, one of the longest and deadliest ot the 
 collisions of Christianity with Power, and one which 
 perhaps more than any other has exhibited the irre- 
 pressible energy of the divine leaven, has come of 
 the reaction of duty and conscience against prohibi- 
 tion. " Did we not straightly command you that 
 ye should not teach in this $"ame ?" said the Jew- 
 ish Priesthood. We shall obey God, however, said 
 the Apostles. This religion shall have no place in 
 the Roman Empire, said Csesar and thousands and 
 tens of thousands of martyrs found that it was no 
 idle threat. But shortly the doomed religion found 
 place and kept place, even in the imperial palaces, 
 and in the throne itself. You shall not preach her- 
 esy, said the Pope to the Waldenses, and gave com- 
 mand to fire and sword to exterminate them ; but 
 to-day Waldensian missionaries preach safely under 
 the very shadow of St. Peter's. You shall not have 
 the Bible, said the ecclesiastical aristocracy to the la- 
 ity of all Christendom, and shortly everywhere blaz- 
 ed bonfires of Bibles and of those -who read them ; 
 but in how much of Christendom is the Bible now 
 not read freely ? You shall not, said Leo. I shall, 
 said Luther, and a million voices echoed, we shall ; 
 and a Protestant Germany, almost a Protestant Eu- 
 rope was the filling out of the response. Prohibitions to 
 the Flemings by two men whose names stink in the 
 
SO THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 nostrils of history, backed by characteristic penalties, 
 mercifully softened, however, for women who should 
 recant, by burying them alive instead of burning ; 
 a few hundred thousand heretics destroyed and 
 free Netherlands and prohibitions extinct. "The 
 Reformed " shall not live in France, but die, said 
 the Pope, the Cardinals, the Guises, and Philip. 
 So said Louis XIV and the Jesuits. But neither 
 St. Bartholomew nor the Dragoons could accomplish 
 the threat, and the burning bush of '-'The Religion" 
 in France, far from bring consumed, is more flourish- 
 ing than ever. You shall not worship God accord- 
 ing to the dictates of your consciences, but of ours, 
 said king Charles, and pope Laud The Common- 
 wealth and New England were the answer. You 
 shall not have a Kirk but a Church, said Charles II 
 and the Bishops to the Scots ; but the Kirk lives and 
 was never in better health. You shall not tax your- 
 selves but be taxed at my pleasure, said king George 
 to the puritans of New England. The American Re- 
 public was their reply. 
 
 Several things are to be observed in regard to the 
 rebellious (so called) reactions of duty against pro- 
 hibitory power, of which the above are alluded to as 
 a few examples out of many. First they are reac- 
 tions from below upwards not, however, simply of 
 the governed against the government (a fact neces- 
 sarily implied) but of the people, of the popular con- 
 science ; for the purest religious truth like gold 
 among sand is the heaviest and tends downwards. 
 It is true that many individuals of the higher class- 
 es have joined in these movements and sometimes 
 have originated them, but always it is the people 
 which have given them momentum, and by whose en- 
 
TUB CUUISTIAN STATE. 81 
 
 durance and fortitude, whether in passive or active 
 resistance, the opposing power has been limited. It 
 is among them that the leaven most efficiently as- 
 similates the lump. It is among them that the 
 blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church. 
 It is they who have rarely retreated from a point 
 once gained, or if repressed for a time by overwhelm- 
 ing force or betrayed by false or incompetent lead- 
 ers, it has been but as the retreating wave which 
 gathers strength for an advance beyond its former 
 limits. 
 
 Second, These reactions have been, successively, 
 more and more wide-spread, more general, either in 
 particular States, or in several, or many States, or 
 in the form of a common opinion or demand of Chris- 
 tian men which power has not thought it prudent to 
 refuse. 
 
 Third, The demands of conscience for freedom 
 have been, progressively, wider and wider in their 
 extent. Since the time when ecclesiastical and se- 
 cular corruptions and tyranny, in spite of much 
 mostly unavailing protest, reached their lowest point, 
 there has been a gradual, and to a great extent, 
 successful reclamations in regard to all the ritual, 
 doctrines, and organization of the Church, a revin- 
 dication, and to a considerable degree, in some coun- 
 tries, a practical restoration of primitive and pure 
 Christianity to all its rights and duties, and where 
 this has not been attained there is yet a hopeful 
 tendency in the same direction. Conscience has 
 successfully asserted its freedom ; and disarmed 
 Power professes repentance for innumerable mur- 
 ders because it has no longer the means to repeat 
 them. That its sorrow is for the loss of its prero- 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 gatives and not for the abuse of them is plain 
 enough from its movements wherever there is the least 
 hope of regaining them. 
 
 The reactions of the awakened Moral Sense were 
 and are peculiarly Christian, notwithstanding the 
 opinion of "progressive intellect" that Christianity 
 is only a re-enactment of pagan morality. The pa- 
 gan moral sense was dead " past feeling " as St. 
 Paul says. Immediately on the early misorganiza- 
 tion of the Church, but more especially after Chris- 
 tianity became the religion of the State, many men 
 not only wordly and unspiritual, but who were essen- 
 tially pagan in character, found their way for 
 the reasons already given into the places of honor 
 and emolument in the church. These men took of- 
 fice over Christian communities already established 
 and instituted by better men than themselves, com- 
 munities which had, moreover, read or heard read, 
 and reverenced the writings of the Apostles. It is 
 easy to understand, therefore, how the manners 
 of the rich, half-pagan higher clergy gradually 
 came to offend the moral sense of the Christian 
 people. Accordingly we find many of the early 
 heresies as the Bishops their historians very natur- 
 ally called them accompanied by most offensive (to 
 the Bishops) protests against the vices of the clergy. 
 Whether they contained any other errors of doctrine 
 is not often easy to determine, since our knowledge 
 of them is chiefly derived from their enemies. It is, 
 however, quite supposable that they contained some 
 incorrect opinions ; for, if the lives of the clergy 
 were the true fruit of '"orthodoxy," it was time 
 that Christianity should mean something else. In 
 fact, all the way down to the great protest and her- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 83 
 
 esy of the sixteenth century, the immorality and se- 
 cularity of the priesthood of the dominant church 
 drove from it immense numbers of men in the form 
 of so called and often truly so called heretical 
 sects, which, whatever their errors of doctrine, insist- 
 ed upon the strictest morality of the IS e\v Testament, 
 were frequently reactions of genuine spiritual life 
 against dead formalism, and always of a moral sense 
 against episcopal ethics. How far these may have 
 contributed to produce or to preserve a better mor- 
 ality among the people especially when aided by the 
 bloody persecutions of the ecclesiastical aristocracy 
 by which most of them were suppressed or driven 
 into concealment, it is impossible to determine. 
 
 Asceticism in its various forms, another reaction 
 against worldliness though not peculiar to Christia- 
 nity, though often not originating, even among chris- 
 tians, in a truly Christian spirit, and at the best in a 
 very imperfect idea of Christianity, a reaction from 
 one extreme to the other, was yet, on the whole, at 
 least for many centuries, a salt of very considerable 
 conservative power in the lower classes against the 
 demoralizing influences from above. For though an- 
 chorites and monks, disgusted with the vices around 
 them, and especially with those of their religious su- 
 periors, fled, in what would now be called cowardice, 
 from the world, and, as we perhaps unjustly accuse 
 them, with an exclusive and selfish concern for their 
 own salvation yet such was not the estimate of their 
 conduct by their contemporaries, and their influence 
 upon the world they had deserted was far from being 
 merely negative. On the contrary, their marvellous 
 self-denials and zeal for the honor of God, as they 
 were reckoned, in contrast with the conduct of the 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 clergy, filled the minds of the people with unbounded 
 admiration. Their prayers, their religious counsel, 
 their blessing were eagerly sought by thousands and 
 millions, counsel kindly and often wisely given. All 
 this could not be without moral influence upon the 
 character of their admirers. The history of monastic 
 institutions shows this influence to have been very 
 great. Their wealth, for the most part a spontaneous 
 tribute to their supposed virtues, is proof if not the 
 measure of this influence. It was by the earlier 
 monks especially that slavery was condemned, and in 
 later periods, after they became ecclesiastics, it was 
 from among the monks that came the most spiritual, 
 truly Christian and efficient preachers at home, and 
 missionaries to the pagans. It is true that these in- 
 stitutions, as they became rich, became also corrupt, 
 or corrupt men naturally found their way into them, 
 and that, when the fat offices of abbot-or prior came 
 to be filled from outside of the communities, and 
 were bought and sold like bishoprics, bad men were 
 found in the one for the same reasons that they were 
 in the other. But the institutions themselves were 
 not therefore discarded by public opinion. New re- 
 actions were successively springing up from lessons 
 which the teachers themselves had forgotten, and fresh 
 ascetics with severer rules were ever ready to enter 
 upon the holy warfare, sooner or later, however 
 though sometimes after worthy service to fall into 
 the same disastrous defeat, and from the same causes 
 as their predecessors. The monasteries not only 
 preserved learning, and produced many learned and 
 many truly pious men, but they were institutions of 
 education for persons not belonging to their commu- 
 nities, for children, and to orphan children instruction 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE 85 
 
 was given gratuitously. All the way across the 
 dreary darkness of ecclesiastical corruptions and im- 
 moralities we find from among the monks, the lower 
 clergy and the lower laity, a succession of spiritual- 
 minded men reproving and protesting to those above 
 them, and preaching truer doctrines and better mor- 
 ality to the people, often with so much annoyance 
 and shame to the aristocratic clergy that they inflicted 
 upon them every degree of penalty from command to 
 be silent to cutting out the tongue and burning at 
 the stake. Notwithstanding that many of the monks 
 were the willing and most efficient tools of ecclesias- 
 tical despotism, spies, informers, traducers and oper- 
 ators of the inquisition; and although in order to 
 prevent both danger and annoyance, the attempt to 
 extinguish truth was persevering, and the effort to 
 demoralize all the sources of instruction were suffi- 
 ciently successful, yet the very excesses of cruelty 
 and vice, instead of awakening the fear of the one, 
 and sympathy with the other, only aroused in the 
 minds of the people indignation, and that most dan- 
 gerous of all the enemies of power, contempt. If we 
 look at the upper stratum of European civilization at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century, at the un- 
 speakable manners of the Courts, especially at those 
 of the court of Rome, whose orgies outheathened the 
 most heathenish enormities ever exhibited by the 
 pagan city; at the ways and means for this impious 
 debauchery derived from the open and public sale, 
 in all the markets of Christendom, of crimes and 
 vices, with a regular tariff of prices, from that of mur- 
 der downward ; a little later, at a Most Christian 
 Majesty deriving the largest item of his revenue from 
 the sale of tickets of permission to eat good dinners 
 
 8 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 in lent ; at one half the property of Europe in pos- 
 session of lazy ecclesiastics in the open practice, 
 most of them, of every vice that enormous wealth 
 enabled them to indulge in, and fire and fagot for all 
 gainsayers if we look at all this, should we not say 
 that Christianity is utterly extinct, and that human 
 society must inevitably fall to pieces from very rot- 
 tenness. 
 
 But truth, though fallen in the streets, had not 
 been destroyed ; rejected by the rich and noble it had 
 as usual turned to the poor ; the good seed which 
 had all along been scattered by the wayside, though 
 sought after with very devilish inquisition, was not 
 wholly devoured up ; some, though mixed with tares , 
 had fallen into good ground and was about to bring 
 forth fruit an hundred fold. The gospel, which the 
 people had long since procured for themselves in their 
 own languages, and of which they had been robbed, 
 was yet here and there concealed, and, as always, 
 manifested its power to open the eyes of the blind. 
 The hidden leaven was fermenting silent and deep, 
 and all the more energetically for the weight of pro- 
 hibitions which vainly sought to crush out, or to 
 circumscribe and confine it. Hence it was, that, when 
 a just anathema against shameless vice, and spiritual 
 wickedness in high places, was uttered by a simple 
 monk, unholy power defied with appeal to God, and 
 a true word of gospel proclaimed in the Name of 
 Christ and not of the saints, in every part of Europe 
 the popular response was as if by a preconcerted 
 signal ; and that innumerable hearts, as if already 
 prepared, rose up to meet and welcome the truth. 
 This was eminently an uprising of the people, for in 
 regard to those of the aristocracy who joined in it, in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 87 
 
 how few cases was it not the seed among thorns, 
 choked and unfruitful. Glorious Coligny "qui me- 
 ritait d'etre du peuple," and William the Silent, a 
 few heroic German Princes, and here and there a 
 very small number besides of individuals of noble 
 birth, accepted, or were ready to receive the crown of 
 martyrdom, while, with the rest of the class, that 
 religion was the best which was most subservient to 
 their own ends, or at best their suffering for it ceased 
 a good way short of the stake. While they, for the 
 most part, were calculating how the new religion 
 would affect their worldly interests, among the people 
 it was spreading from heart to heart by mutual in- 
 struction and exhortation, and with a sincerity that 
 defied danger and death. Hundreds of thousands 
 of martyrdoms could not overcome their perseverance 
 or prevent their final triumph. The reproclauiation 
 of the primitive doctrines of Christianity, the reaction 
 of the spiritual against the formal, was accompanied 
 by, was, in fact, primarily, a reaction of the moral 
 not only against the incredible vices of the time in 
 high places, but against the shameless and impious 
 public traffic in vice and crime as the principal source 
 of the Church's revenue. 
 
 It was to be expected, therefore, that there would 
 be here a natural meeting of extremes, and that the 
 reformed clergy should sometimes extend their ethical 
 rules to things indifferent. But if the French pro- 
 testants were suspicious of fardingales and wide 
 sleeves, of lascivious curls, dancing, and gay apparel ; 
 if John Knox was sour to the taste of queen Mary ; 
 if the manners of the roundheads were not agreeable 
 to the chevaliers and were ridiculous to the sybarites 
 of Charles II. ; and if the American puritans also 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 enacted blue laws ; let shallow, progressive intellect 
 be amused therefore, and pretend that what it laughs 
 at was the religion of those whom it ridicules. It 
 remains, however, none the less true, that ? from the 
 time of these men. and by the influence of the doc- 
 trines and manners of these men and their successors, 
 more than by any other or all other causes, the stand- 
 ard of practical morality in Christendom has been 
 steadily and progressively elevated, until by the 
 spread of its principles upwards, or by the effect of 
 shame, and fear of public opinion, it has greatly ame- 
 liorated the manners of the highest and most dissolute 
 regions of aristocracy. That these influences are still 
 active and increasingly active ; and that they have 
 their roots in the same only fruitful soil of religious 
 principle is proved by the many agencies, often in- 
 volving great self denial, more numerous and varied 
 than at any former period, now in operation for com- 
 batting vice both in high and t low regions, and by 
 what until recently has never been undertaken, an 
 extensively organized, expensive, and otherwise self- 
 sacrificing attempt of Christian men to preserve the 
 morality of armies in the field, as witnessed in the 
 Crimean war, and more largely in our own present 
 war against the slaveholders' rebellion. The Refor- 
 mation of the sixteenth century, the seeds of which 
 had long before been scattered in every part of Eu- 
 rope, was both doctrinal and ethical, or rather ethical 
 by its doctrines, a morality having its roots in reli- 
 gion, without which it is but pagan morality, beautiful 
 and dead. 
 
 To Christianity is due not only the awakening of 
 the common intellect, and the almost universal diffu- 
 sion of education, as already explained, but it is to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 9, 
 
 the same living energy of religious principle which 
 asserted and defended the reformed doctrines that is 
 due intellectual freedom, and the possibility of the 
 triumphs of modern science. Intellect itself would 
 never have asserted its own freedom against eccle- 
 siastical ignorance and tyranny. It not only would 
 have lacked numbers, but the requisite self-sacrificing 
 enthusiasm if numbers, had not been wanting. Not 
 that scientific men lack enthusiasm in their studies, 
 nor does science lack its martyrs by voluntary expo- 
 sure to danger. But, few merely intellectual men 
 would embrace the stake for an opinion. History 
 has fno record of martyrdoms of that sort. With- 
 out Luther how many Erasmuses would have been 
 necessary to defend intellectual freedom against the 
 Pope ? just as many as it would take Edward 
 Everetts to defend freedom of speech against the 
 slaveholders. 
 
 Having considered and described some of the re- 
 actions of Christianity, as it has manifested itself in 
 the lower moiety of the dual State, against the pro- 
 hibitions, corruptions, and vices of the double aristo- 
 cracy that oppressed it, reactions towards religious, 
 moral, and intellectual ends, towards the realization 
 of man as a spiritual being ; let us look at some of 
 the effects of Christianity incidental to this its main 
 design, incidental effects, not accidental. " The first 
 principles of the gospel of Christ," the most element- " 
 ary teachings of Christianity are calculated to awaken, 
 and do awaken even in the lowest, most oppressed 
 and dehumanized classes of men, a new consciousness 
 of manhood, of worth, and of right in relation to other 
 men. The fundamental position of the pagan State 
 that the producing and servile classes are but "live 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 tools," is met by the fundamental principle of Christ- 
 ianity, that, to deprive a man made in the image of 
 God, and for whom Christ died, of his rights and du- 
 ties as a man, by making him a mere imstrument for 
 the ends of another, is the most impious form of sac- 
 rilege. This truth, in the form of feeling much 
 sooner than it became a common opinion, silently 
 pervaded all Christian minds. Although the aristo- 
 cracy, practically taking the pagan position, have 
 yielded slow, unwilling, and for the most part, com- 
 pulsory obedience to the Christian principle, their 
 death-bed confessions, manumissions, charters of ex- 
 emption and privilege, " for the good of their souls," 
 prove that they had only resisted hitherto the uni- 
 versal feeling. The doctrine of the rights of man 
 as man, in relation to his fellow men, of the essential 
 equality of men before God, first distinctly proclaimed 
 and made a power in the world by Christianity 
 though not always kept under its control has been 
 most prolific of political results. The reaction towards 
 civil freedom has always gone hand in hand with that 
 towards religious freedom. Side by side with reli- 
 gious heresies, that demand for freedom of soul, 
 sprang up polititical heresies, the demand for freedom 
 of body, and exemption from unlimited extortions. 
 In order to these not only a consciousness of right, 
 but concert, organization, and some degree of mental 
 activity and intelligence were necessary. These were 
 suggested, and to some extent furnished by Christia- 
 nity to the very lowest classes. The new States ori- 
 ginating out of the fragments of the Western empire 
 were wholly after the pagan type, and the great mass 
 of the population were called, even by the laws of 
 the period, " bestes en park,poissons en viviers, et 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 91 
 
 oiseaux en cage" But the division of the country 
 into parishes, where the same individuals were as- 
 sembled weekly or oftener, where they heard the an- 
 nouncement of great truths which could not fail to 
 move some minds, where they received some instruc- 
 tion however rude, and where they were taught to 
 have faith in God and the saints ; the original consti- 
 tution of Church Communities not wholly lost sight 
 of here were the natural germs and birth-place of 
 the CommuneSj Guilds and Free Cities of the Middle 
 Ages. These associations sqmetimes purchased their 
 Charters, and sometimes extorted them by force from 
 their overlords whether lay or ecclesiastical, and, how- 
 ever they had obtained them, they were always zeal- 
 ous in their defence and in adding to their privileges. 
 What some of these privileges were, and what the 
 aristocracy thought of them may be seen by an ex- 
 tract or two from the writings of the time. " Com- 
 mune ! it is a word new and detestable, for see what 
 it means the taxable people pay dues to their lord 
 only once a year ; (they were before taillables a vo- 
 lonte, taxable at pleasure) if they commit any offence 
 it is atoned for by a fixed (not arbitrary, as before) 
 fine ; and as for the serfs, on whom it was the cus- 
 tom to lay contributions of money, they are entirely 
 exempt from them." 
 
 " What a freedom is that of Cambray ! neither 
 the Bishop nor the Emperor can tax it ; no tribute 
 can be imposed upon it ; the militia cannot be called 
 out except for the defence of the city, and then only 
 on condition that they may return home the same 
 day." 
 
 The same leaven was at work in the fields as well 
 as in the towns and cities. Hence the frequent 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 jaqueries in France, and the uprising of the villeins 
 in England and Germany. They had got the hete- 
 rodox notion that they ought not to be bestes en park, 
 . and that if they labored they ought to have wages. 
 They made the very significant inquiry : 
 
 " When Adam delv'd and Eve span 
 Where was then the gentleman?" 
 
 But they were not yet sufficiently intelligent for or- 
 ganization on a large scale, and successful resistance 
 to their well trained and mail-clad masters, and the 
 saints were not found reliable. In France the reac- 
 tion towards civil freedom was extremely slow. Serf- 
 dom was not extinct even at the revolution ; and the 
 nominally free peasantry had suffered equally with 
 them up to that time by a most frivolous, proud and 
 unfeeling aristocracy, lay and ecclesiastical, and from 
 an always needy government, every form and de- 
 gree of exaction of laborious services, of extortion 
 of money, and of waste of property which heartless 
 tyranney could invent ; together, all that human life 
 could endure, and more, for thousands perished of 
 starvation. Even the Communes, the free towns 
 and cities, gradually lost their privileges, and under 
 Louis XIV were almost wholly deprived of them. 
 This part of the nation had, however, thereby, by no 
 means lost its real power. While the aristocracy, 
 under the operation of the general law, were becom- 
 ing, politically, intellectually and morally, degener- 
 ate, corrupt, and weak, the great middle class was ad- 
 vancing, and in all these respects becoming relative- 
 ly stronger. They, with the peasantry, constituted 
 the " Third Estate" or, as it might more properly 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 93 
 
 be said, they were the third, and the peasantry the 
 fourth Estate. The " Third Estate," constituting 
 more than ninety-five per cent, of the population, 
 and, though possessing but a small proportion of the 
 real property of the nation, paying almost the whole 
 of the taxes imposed by government, furnishing by 
 its labor all the income of the Church and the aris- 
 tocracy, and yet having almost no legal status or in- 
 fluence, might well ask, at length, and answer its 
 own questions ; "What is the third Estate*! 
 All. What has it been politically hitherto ? Noth- 
 ing. What ought it to be! Something/' And 
 forthwith it proved itself to be something by abolish- 
 ing both king and nobility. The " bcstes en park" 
 too, the most numerous part of the third Estate, 
 which the aristocracy had kept well enclosed but 
 took no pains to tame except by hunger and stripes, 
 wild, savage beasts, furious as if with the compressed 
 wrath of centuries of oppression, and with a terri- 
 able instinct of right, proved themselves to be " some- 
 thing," namely, the instrument of God's justice, 
 which demanded of a single generation the penalty 
 of all the vices and crimes (a horrid catalogue ! ) of 
 the double French aristocracy from Clovis to Louis 
 XVI. 
 
 But it is not among the French people that we 
 should look for the earliest and fullest effects of 
 Christianity in relation to the State. They make 
 excellent Christians when they are truly such. But 
 they are naturally an intelligent and esthetic peo- 
 ple, more spirituels than spiritual. These charac- 
 teristics, however, are not, alone, whatever their de- 
 gree of development, a reliable basis for a free 
 State. This opinion has already been insisted on, 
 
94 TilE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 and its correctness is confirmed by repeated exper- 
 iences of this very people. They have intelligence, 
 they have virtues, morality, though not yet of very 
 puritanic type, but as Guizot has assured them, they 
 lack religion. There must be a true religious loy- 
 alty to duty, which obeys, and insists on obedience 
 in others to the law of the common good, against 
 whatever temptation of personal or party advantage. 
 France as is plain, if we compare the present with 
 the not very distant past, is tending in this direction, 
 and may by and by excite the emulation instead of the 
 fears of Europe. She has gained immensely by the 
 revolution and in consequence of the revolution, in 
 regard to religious and civil freedom, general educa- 
 tion, pecuniary extortions, and the administration 
 of justice ; thus giving to the third estate positions 
 of advantage against the aristocracy of which they 
 are not likely to be deprived. Not only France but 
 the whole of Europe has been greatly benefitted by 
 the French revolution. It was a severe, but most 
 necessary and healthful purgation of aristocracy which 
 has since been, everywhere with few exceptions, less 
 shameless in vices and more prudent in its oppres- 
 sions. 
 
 In France the causes of the revolution and conse- 
 quent advance towards civil liberty and the true con- 
 stitution of the State had been slowly operating for 
 centuries. They had produced that great middle 
 class (bourgeoisie) which at length demanded to be 
 " something j" demanded rights long witheld, and 
 relations to the other classes befitting a Christian 
 not a pagan State. The immediate occasion, how- 
 ever, of the revolution was the natural and just indig- 
 nation and rightous anger of men frantic with innum- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 95 
 
 erable and intolerable tyrannies, degradations and in- 
 sults. In other States of Europe, where revolution- 
 ary movements towards freedom were made earlier, 
 and some of them farther and more successfully than 
 in France though their causes were essentially the 
 same, namely, such as has created a Christian peo- 
 ple, their occasions were rather religious than politi- 
 cal. Civil freedom was demanded as the only reli- 
 able condition of religious freedom. They were not 
 accomplished by a sudden and irresistible outburst 
 of passion as in Prance, but by long years of con- 
 flict, of martyrdom, and every lesser form of suffer- 
 ing and self-denial, sustained not only by patriotism, 
 but also and more effectually by the energy of christ- 
 ian principles. 
 
 How much the result of such movements depends 
 upon the absence or presence of the religious motive 
 is well seen in the revolt of the Low Countries 
 against Spain. All resolved to defend their charter- 
 ed rights, but how soon the Walloon Provinces, where 
 the question of religion was scarcely at all involved, 
 became reconciled to the tyrant ; while, on the con- 
 trary, where in the history of the world, has been 
 exhibited such heroic perseverance as in the Nether- 
 lands? a war of almost a hundred years duration com- 
 bined with organized murder and assassination, sus- 
 tained by a handful of people against the strongest 
 Power of Europe, and resulting in the attainment of 
 the ends for which it was undertaken, a permanent 
 political and religious autocracy. 
 
 It is instructive here, to compare, or rather to 
 contrast the character of the people with that of the 
 aristocracy the aristocracy as a class, for there 
 were splendid exceptions all the more glorious for be- 
 
96 TIIE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 ing so few. While the aristocracy, who had risen 
 with the people against the civil and religious tyranny 
 of the king, most of them, were ready to sacrifice 
 both patriotism and religion to safety and self-inter- 
 est, (had their price), it was the people, on whom 
 chiefly fell the hundred thousand and more martyr- 
 doms, the pecuniary and other burdens and suffer- 
 ings of the war, that persevered to the end. The 
 Dutch revolt was a politico- religious reaction of the 
 people against the despotism of both body and soul, 
 a movement in which, as the religious end was reck- 
 oned the highest, so the religious motive was the 
 strongest and most enduring. 
 
 The English rebellion was a movement of the same 
 kind as that in Holland and owing to similar causes. 
 These causes existed earlier in England than in Hol- 
 land and of course had been much longer in opera- 
 ation. The people consequently were, in larger pro- 
 portion, under their influence. There had been pro- 
 gress made in a hundred years. The people had be- 
 come more jealous and sensitive, so that less provo- 
 cation than in Holland excited resistance, and much 
 less than would have moved the English people in 
 queen Mary's reign. This is properly reckoned a 
 secular movement. Yet it is plain from some of its 
 immediate causes, the points in dispute, the char- 
 acter of the actors on the side of the people, the re- 
 sults aimed at, and all the other phases of it, that, 
 while it was political in form and method, the leaven 
 which pervaded it, the vital power and energy of it 
 were much more religious than political, and that its 
 tendency was, from the beginning, towards politico-re- 
 ligious ends a better State in order to a better 
 Church. This was also pre-eminently a popular 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 97 
 
 movement, for though some of the aristocracy joined 
 in it at first from religious motives, they were found 
 less reliable than even the Flemish nobles. Indeed 
 this trait of unreliability may be said to be charac- 
 teristic of the class even in matters of conscience. 
 So it was not only in Holland and England, but in 
 Scotland in the religious revolution of the sixteenth 
 century, in France in the religious disputes of that 
 and the following century, and in regard to the 
 ecclesiastical aristocracy in the English Revolution. 
 Here, as in the rebellion, it was the people, those 
 same puritans and their descendants the dissenters, 
 who insisted on the change of government. 
 
 These examples, to which many more might be 
 added, from more ancient and more recent times, are 
 sufficient to illustrate the methods by which the low- 
 er moiety of the originally dual State has gradually 
 encroached upon the aristocracy both secular and 
 ecclesiastical ; to show how the duality has been verg- 
 ing towards unity ; to show how the third estate which 
 began by being u Nothing," has demanded more 
 and more to be " Something," and is rapidly tend- 
 ing to become "All." The Christian aristocracy is 
 the same in kind as the pagan, and under the same 
 laws of development, laws controlled in regard to 
 some individuals, but in regard to the class, hardly at 
 all modified directly by the influence of Christiani- 
 ty. This development is in all respects productive 
 and conservative of the most complete duality in the 
 State. The secular power, whether government, or 
 nobility, aims incessantly at increase of power, in- 
 crease of rank, increase of splendor, gratifications of 
 pride, luxurious enjoyrrfent ; these are their ends 
 money, money, money is their means. Hence, mon- 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 opoly more and more of the sources of wealth, in- 
 crease of taxes, increase of services, increase of rents, 
 ever newly invented methods of extortion. The ten- 
 dency of ecclesiastical aristocracy is in the same di- 
 rection ; exchange of spiritual power for temporal 
 power and possessions ; perversion of spiritual religion 
 into a merchantable commodity divisible into portions 
 of varying qualities, to be offered, with a tariff of 
 prices, in market, or peddled to country customers ; 
 competition in all respects with the secular aristocra- 
 cy; the same ends, and the same means in part different- 
 ly acquired, a decidedly more cunning skill at extor- 
 tion money, money, money. The servile class, 
 " Canaille," " live tools," " bestes en pare," con- 
 sequently, more and more plundered and oppressed, 
 remain, as far as aristocratic influence goes, ignor- 
 ant, helpless, passive, hopeless, and of course vicious, 
 notwithstanding plenty of pious exhortations to be 
 " content with the condition in which God has placed 
 them." The development of the aristocracy is com- 
 pleted, or tends to completion, in increasing vice, 
 degeneracy of body and mind, cowardice, effeminacy, 
 anarchy, and return of the State to barbarism. Such 
 is the law of the development, such is the tendency 
 and direction of it everywhere, such has been the 
 result of it in all pagan States. That such has not 
 been the result in Christian States is due to the Gos- 
 pel preached to the poor s and the consequent trans- 
 formation of the dead and helpless mass of heathen 
 men into a Christian people, a people no longer pas- 
 sive, but antagonistic to both branches of the aris- 
 tocracy, reacting against them at all points, against 
 their oppressions, against their extortions, against 
 their monopolies, against their exemptions, against 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 99 
 
 their false doctrines, against their commands, against 
 their prohibitions, against their persecutions, against 
 their vices ; reactions towards freedom from slavery, 
 towards political freedom, towards religious freedom, 
 towards intellectual freedom ; reacting by suffering, 
 by resistance, by public opinion ; a people constantly 
 becoming relatively stronger than the aristocracy 
 physically, intellectually, morally, religiously. These 
 reactions are more or less periodical from point to 
 point, sometimes failing for the time, to reach the 
 point aimed at, sometimes receding for a moment 
 from the point attained, but on the whole always ad- 
 vancing, always more and more circumscribing, re- 
 pressing, limiting aristocratic power and character in 
 all directions. More and more rapidly is fulfilling 
 the ancient voice of one crying in the wilderness ; 
 " Every valley (chasm, social fen) shall be filled 
 (leveled up), and every mountain and hill (despotic 
 power) shall be brought low (humbled), and the crook- 
 ed (methods of business) shall be made straight, and 
 the rough ways (of oppression) shall be made smooth, 
 and all flesh (even down to slaves) shall see the sal- 
 vation of God." 
 
 Such is the popular development under the influ- 
 ence of Christianity, and in proportion to the true, 
 influence of Christianity as a detail of the effect of 
 different doctrines would show antagonistic to the 
 aristocratic development, and so for a time conserva- 
 tive of it, by diminishing its injustices and its vices, 
 and thus rendering it more tolerable and more re- 
 spectable. To what extent different in different 
 nations this conquest of the people over the aris- 
 tocracy, of Christian over pagan principles in the 
 organization of the State, has reached, the argument 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 does not require to be stated. It is plain, however, 
 from our consideration of the causes and the method 
 of it, that it cannot be arrested until it reaches eve- 
 rywhere, as far as where it now reaches, farthest ; 
 until it reaches every remnant of unjust power, 
 prerogative, privilege, unequal laws and partial leg- 
 islation ; until, consequently, it reaches the abolish- 
 ment of the aristocratic class, as malum in se, as in 
 its very mildest form an unnecessary burden, and 
 unjust monopoly, since for practical purposes experi- 
 ence proves the aristocracy of character to be superior 
 to that of birth. 
 
 That aristocracy is not a light burden upon the 
 State which supports it appears from a single item of 
 expense as estimated by M. Legoyt, chief of the sta- 
 tistical bureau of Agriculture in France for 1864.- 
 The armies of Europe, in time of peace, "number 
 three millions nine hundred thousand men (3,- 
 900,000) at an annual cost of seyen hundred millions 
 of dollars ($700,000,000). 
 
 These same men at labor, he estimates, would pro- 
 duce an annual value of two thousand, three hundred 
 and forty millions ($2,340,000,000). Europe, then, 
 with a population of two hundred and sixty-two 
 millions (262,000,000) is the poorer for her armies by 
 the annual sum of three thousand and forty millions 
 of dollars ($3,040,000,000). 
 
 The army of the United States, in time of peace, 
 was sixteen thousand men. By a similar estimate 
 as for European armies the United States, with a 
 population of thirty millions (30,000,000), would 
 be the poorer for its army by the annual sum of a 
 little* less than twelve millions and a half ($12,- 
 500,000). If the population of the United States 
 
THB CHRISTIAN STATS. 1C1 
 
 were equal to that of Europe, with army in same 
 proportion to population, that is, 16,000 men to- 
 30,000,000 of people, the annual cost would be, 
 in round numbers, one hundred and nine millions 
 ($109,000,000). 
 
 The result of the comparison, then, is as follows : 
 
 Annual cost of armies in Europe for a population 
 of 262 millions, 3,040 millions of dollars, - $3,040,000,000 
 
 Cost of army for equal population in the United 
 States, $109,000,000 
 
 Difference, equal one item of annual cost of sup- 
 porting aristocracy, $2,931,000,000 
 
 I say the ' 'cost of supporting the aristocracy." And 
 this is true, for although the governments pretend 
 that armies are for keeping the balance of power, it 
 is~ plain that if they were all reduced in the same 
 proportion the balance could be equally well kept. 
 But armies in proportion to that of the United 
 States could not protect the aristocracy against the 
 people. 
 
 Three thousand millions is a handsome annual sum 
 to pay for the means and privilege of being compell- 
 ed to pay other and much larger sums, all for the 
 common purpose of preserving, " conserving" the 
 pagan dualism of both Church and State, to the 
 exclusion of a Commonwealth. 
 
 Aristocracy is very expensive. Its example also 
 is exceedingly pernicious, Its self indulgence and 
 rices, alike in both its political and ecclesiastical 
 branches, when unrestrained by public opinion, vices 
 which it would often be slanderous of animals to call 
 beastly, as well as its heartless and unjust extortions 
 and oppressions of those in its power, exhibit such aa 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 entire lack of self-control, such absence of the power 
 of self-government, that, if it is folly to commit the 
 government of others to those who cannot govern 
 themselves, whore better than in aristocratic govern- 
 ments can be illustrated the truth of the adage, 
 
 Stultum est imperare ceteris qui nescit sibi. 
 
 It ought not, however, to be forgotten, as has 
 already been insisted on, for at all times there is a 
 tendency to forget that progress towards the realiz- 
 ation of the truly self-governing, or Christian state 
 for the terms ought to be considered synonymous 
 can be successful and permanent only in proportion 
 to the right development of the people, a develop- 
 ment not intellectual merely bat also moral and 
 religious ; an awakening not only of the conscious- 
 ness of rights, but also of the consciousness of duties, 
 a preparation of character that shall make voluntary 
 obedience to just laws more certain than any com- 
 pulsory obedience to those which are unjust. It is 
 idle to extemporize a free government for a people 
 who are not yet capable of freedom ; although in 
 some cases the best and only way in which they can 
 fit themselves for it is by attempting it, even when 
 sure to fail. As, at the French Revolution, the indis- 
 pensable condition for the agricultural population, 
 " bestes en pare" of becoming fit for freedom, was 
 deliverance, at whatever cost of temporary anarchy, 
 from the intolerable and brutalizing oppressions which 
 prevented all development but that of the just and 
 terrible wrath which destroyed their oppressors. 
 And so in general, the condition of becoming capable 
 of true freedom is emancipation from slavery, and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 103 
 
 where the masters will not permit it to be gradual, 
 it is better that it should be sudden than not to be at 
 all. But if such convulsions are sometimes the con- 
 dition, or the indication of progress in the right 
 direction, the conclusion already arrived at is not 
 thereby affected, that only an intelligent and Chris- 
 tian people, and that too a people much more than 
 nominally Christian, is capable of self-government, 
 and so fit, to govern the State. A people immoral 
 without ignorance ; or one ignorant without immoral- 
 ity ; and especially one both immoral and ignorant, 
 would each illustrate the folly of committing the 
 government of the State to men not competent to 
 govern themselves. The result of entrusting the 
 government of a community to a democratic majority 
 of ignorance and vice is beautifully exhibited in the 
 city of New York, and has often been, in other places, 
 before. If government by a vicious but intelligent 
 aristocracy is stultum, that by such a democracy is, 
 if possible, stultius. 
 
 The fault of the aristocratic government is not that 
 it governs the people, but that it misgoverns them; 
 that being, in theory, an institution in order to jus- 
 tice, it is in practice in order to injustice. The crime 
 of aristocracy is that it always gives the people a 
 worse government than they are capable of; is that 
 it tends and aims to make them incapable of self- 
 government. It always tends to the worse and not 
 to the better. All better has to be demanded imper- 
 atively, and often to be extorted by the people. All 
 true government is for the people, but the aristo- 
 cratic government, in proportion to its power to do 
 so, makes the people subservient to its own ends, or 
 rather to the ends of the individuals on the aristo- 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 cratic side of the duality. The relation of the 
 parties is essentially and always, so long as it exists, 
 antagonistic ; were it not so, were the government 
 aiming only at the true ends of government, there 
 would be a spontaneous and willing progress of it 
 towards greater freedom with less expense as fast as 
 the people became capable of it, with constant efforts 
 to make them more capable of it. That this is not 
 so the facts of all history and the proverbs of all lan- 
 guages sufficiently prove. That the animus of the 
 caste remains always the same so long as it retains a 
 breath of life is demonstrated by what is going on in 
 our own country. There never was, in its origin 
 and character, so contemptible an aristocracy as that 
 of our Southern States, nor one so monstrous and 
 shameless in its avowed purposes ; yet as soon as 
 the slaveholders proclaimed the true orthodox doctrine 
 of the whole fraternity ancient and modern, the gen- 
 uine pagan duality, slavery the corner stone of the 
 State, the aristocracy of Europe, though most of them, 
 for some time past, have " purged and lived cleanly, 
 as noblemen should," and though they have been 
 filled with pious horror at the toleration of slavery 
 by republicans, suddenly became by " tellow feeling 
 wond'rous kind " and sympathetic towards their new- 
 ly found brethren, especially as they are in rebellion 
 against the natural enemy of the caste a republican 
 government. That their late decency was due to the 
 coercion of public opinion, and was only skin-deep, is 
 plain from their extravagant joy at the prospect of 
 putting an end to popular encroachments by the de- 
 Itruction of the American government. What a 
 Godsend were it that they should be able to say : 
 See ! Republics, even under the most favorable cir- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATE 105 
 
 cumstances, are a failure, and will never again be 
 tried. This failure is their dearest hope, and in 
 order to accomplish it they resort freely to the char- 
 acteristic means of hatred and cowardice slander ; 
 for never, since pandemonium was opened, has there 
 come forth from it so foul a group of liars as are the 
 leaders of English aristocratic opinion. It is a pity 
 to spoil such delightful expectations, but they ought 
 to reflect that, if we fail, fail, however, we shall 
 not through failure to have expelled all the poison 
 of aristocratic leaven at the beginning, the next re- 
 publics will probably thereby be wiser. In the mean 
 time whether we succeed or fail, through failure to 
 comply with some of the conditions of success, is it 
 likely that the movement which has been gathering 
 strength for a thousand years will therefore be ar- 
 rested, or even retarded ? 
 
 " He measured a thousand cubits, and he brought 
 me through the waters ; the waters were up to the 
 ancles. Again he measured a thousand, and brought 
 me through the waters ; the waters were to the 
 knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought 
 me through ; the waters were to the loins. After- 
 ward he measured a thousand ; and it was a river 
 that I could not pass over : for the waters were 
 risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be 
 passed over." This is the Divine Stream whose 
 waters are risen, and are rising, cleansing waters, 
 washing away both falshood and injustice, life-giving 
 waters, for <c everything shall live whither the river 
 cometh ;" and what obstructions mightier than those 
 already removed by it can now impede its flow that 
 it should not reach all nations? " And by the river 
 upon the bank thereof, on this side., and on that side, 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN STATE. 
 
 shall grow all trees, and the fruit thereof shall be for 
 meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine." 
 
 The prophet has most accurately described the 
 process and the results of the realization of the two 
 Christian ideas of Church and State. Slowly and 
 gradually from point to point swell and rise the 
 Christian wafers until they become a mighty river 
 which cannot be passed over, breasted, resisted by 
 human power; and on this side, and on that side, of 
 the all-quickening and fertilizing stream, spring up 
 countless blessings ; on this side, spiritual, on that 
 side, temporal, a full supply for all the true wants, 
 and a remedy for all the diseases of humanity. 
 
 Thatj in many Christian nations, these results are 
 hitherto most imperfectly attained ; in a small num- 
 ber, still quite partially ; in the most advanced, very 
 incompletely, need not be denied. But this, in the 
 mind of one who has carefully studied the past, and 
 comprehends the method of Christian principles, will 
 not at all weaken his confidence that the progress and 
 conquests of Christianity, its power of modifying 
 political relations, are not to cease until there is re- 
 alized in all Christian nations a successfully self gov- 
 erning Commonwealth as the ultimate form of the 
 State, a State whose aim shall be not national 
 wealth without regard to its distribution, but national 
 independence, and provision, for all its citizens , 
 of the conditions and opportunities of well-being, 
 physical, intellectual, spiritual, befitting a creature 
 made in the image of God. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 "That is properly said to be the chief end or happiness of a thing 
 which doth raise its nature to the utmost perfection of which it is 
 capable, according to its rank and kind." 
 
 "It is the business of art first to choose some determinate end 
 and purpose, and to select those parts of nature, (those means) 
 and those only, which conduce to that end, avoiding, with most 
 religious exactness, the intermixture of anything which would 
 contradict it. ' ' 
 
 The founders of the American Republic proposed 
 to themselves a determinate end, namely, to realize a 
 true State, and to raise its nature to the utmost per- 
 fection of -which a State is capable. They also 
 adopted the indispensable form of a perfect State, a 
 self-governing commonwealth. As statesmen they 
 aimed at the very highest end. But did they select 
 those means, all the means which conduce to that 
 end ; or did they avoid with religious exactness the 
 intermixture of anything which would contradict it ? 
 They did neither. 
 
 Whether the true ends of a State are to be realized 
 or not realized depends upon two things; first its 
 CONSTITUTION, which, in this country, means the 
 organization, or distribution of the powers, of the 
 GOVERNMENT, and the fundamental laws which are 
 
108 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to control its legislation; second, the character , 
 intellectual, moral, religious, of the people to be 
 governed. 
 
 It seems to have been the opinion of the founders 
 of the Republic that the constitution of the govern- 
 ment itself is the essential thing, and indeed more 
 than that, that the right organization of the govern- 
 ment is the all-sufficient thing ; that its several 
 powers may be such, and so skilfully balanced, that 
 no one or more of them can ever predominate over 
 the others so as to disturb the equilibrium. Perhaps 
 the influence of no one individual was so great in de- 
 termining the " balance of powers " in the constitu- 
 tion of the United States and in those of the sever- 
 al States for they are nearly all after the same 
 type in this respect as that of John Adams. How 
 highly he estimated the importance of the proper 
 distribution of powers ("an independent executive 
 pow er, three independent branches in the legislature, 
 and an independent judicial department") may be seen 
 in his u History of Republics ;" in which the opinion 
 is everywhere implied, and often expressed, that any 
 of the ancient Republics, and of those of the middle 
 ages, might have been successful and permanent on 
 the single condition of the proper arrangement of 
 independent powers in the government so as to " form 
 an equilibrium between the one, the few, and the 
 many." He even intimated that on this condition a 
 Republic might exist among highwaymen. He 
 thought that the character of the people depends 
 upon this constitution of government, that, in the 
 struggle to keep the equilibrium, knaves themselves 
 might in time be made honest men ! ! According 
 to this view of the subject a government may be so 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 109 
 
 constructed as to be a self-moving and self-adjusting 
 machine the product of whose operation shall be just 
 laws and good men ! ! ! 
 
 That other statesmen of the period coincided in 
 opinion with Mr. Adams on this point may be infer- 
 red from the great care bestowed upon the machin- 
 ery of government in all the Constitutions of the 
 time both State and national ; and from the compar- 
 ative lack of care in the same Constitutions in re- 
 gard to the fundamental principles, organic laws, 
 which are to direct and control the legislation of the 
 governments. Their error. was not in attaching too 
 much, but too exclusive importance to the balance 
 of powers, u the equilibrium of the one, the few and 
 the many." Let us suppose that this part of the 
 Constitution which they labored so carefully is the 
 best possible, yet it is plain that it could not consti- 
 tute a permanently successful government without 
 regard to the character of the people to be governed, 
 and that of the men performing the functions of gov- 
 ernment. To suppose that several antagonist inter- 
 ests purely selfish can be so nicely balanced against 
 each other as to remain permanently in equilibrium 
 is as absurd in politics as a perpetual motion in 
 mechanics. If the faith of our fathers in equilibrium 
 did not quite reach to this point, yet it is evident 
 that their confidence in it made them less careful in 
 regard to the other department of the Constitutions 
 both as to admitting into them principles which 
 ought to have been excluded, and in failing to in- 
 clude those which ought to have been inserted. 
 
 What is, more definitely, the purpose of a written 
 Constitution? The purpose is plainly two-fold as al- 
 ready intimated. First, To determine what may be 
 
 10 
 
110 THE AMERICAS REPUBLIC. 
 
 called the mechanism of the government ; and 
 second, to limit and direct the action of the govern- 
 ment. The constitution in its legislative depart- 
 ment should be both prohibitory and mandatory, and 
 such seems to have been its twofold aim in all our 
 American Constitutions. But the " determinate 
 ends " both of the prohibitory and mandatory claus- 
 es were indistinctly and partially conceived. There 
 is an attempt to realize some of the ends of the 
 State but apparently without the question ever hav- 
 ing been asked what are the true ends and all the 
 ends for which the State is instituted ? or rather the 
 question what is THE END of the State ? There 
 is in all our Constitutions an evident looking back at 
 the imperfections of other and older nations, and an 
 attempt to avoid as many of them as were seen to be 
 imperfections. That is, the METHOD is by exclu- 
 sion and avoidance of evil rather than one which aims 
 to realize a positive and complete idea 
 
 All good possible for man, is comprised under the 
 forms of spiritual, intellectual, social and physical 
 well-being. The first is by means of religion, of 
 which the Christian Church is the administrator. 
 The true relation of the Church to the State is that 
 of an independent ally, which, while it seeks exclu- 
 sively its own spiritual ends, does, incidentally, pro- 
 mote and that most efficiently the ends of the State. 
 It is, in fact, as already shown, the indispensable 
 condition for the State, of the realization of its 
 highest ends, yet so that the State must neither con- 
 trol nor subsidise it but only invite its influence. 
 This condition of success for the State is, however, 
 always within its reach since the Church is always 
 ready to enter upon the alliance. All the Ameri- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Ill 
 
 can Constitutions recognize this true relation of 
 Church and State and are so far right. The pur- 
 pose of the State, then, in distinction or separation 
 from that of the Church a purpose which includes 
 all that the true State can propose to itself is to 
 provide for all its citizens the conditions of the three 
 other forms of human well-being. 
 
 It is plain that the cultivation, the realization of 
 his intellect is a high end for man, that it is the right 
 and the duty of all men, and desirable for all men, 
 and not for the few exclusively in order to the guid- 
 ance and control of the many, according to the doc- 
 trine of aristocratic States ; not the division of men 
 into two castes, the one to use only its brain, the 
 other only its muscles. . It does not, however, be- 
 long to the present subject to eulogize education as 
 the condition of intellectual well-being for the indi- 
 vidual. This form of well-being the true State 
 would aim to place within the reach of all its citi- 
 zens. But education, to some extent, and a cer- 
 tain amount, a pretty large amount, of intelligence, 
 in at least the great majority of the people, is plainly 
 the condition sine qua non of a successful democra- 
 cy in the American sense of the word. Even the 
 requisite moral character universally present in a 
 large ignorant class would not of itself protect the 
 State, since ignorance is none the less easily duped 
 for being honest. Both ignorance and vice, and es- 
 pecially a combination of the two are infallible hot- 
 beds of demagogueism ; for where these exist Sey- 
 mours and Woods make their appearance as inevit- 
 ably as buzzards find out carrion or toadstools the 
 dung-heap. Since such allies of Satan can never 
 be wholly extinguished in a Republic, the only poa- 
 
112 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 sible way by which a free State can avoid a return to 
 some form of aristocratic duality is by such a diffu- 
 sion of intelligence, morality and Christianity, as 
 shall deprive demagogues of the only means by which 
 they could seriously endanger, or pervert the true 
 ends of the government. 
 
 Next after the true influence of Christianity, in- 
 telligence is, then, plainly, the fundamental condition 
 of the free State. It is the absence of this in the 
 great body of the people, permitting the combination 
 of intelligence and wealth in the hands of a few, in 
 which the dual State originates, a form which it 
 will always retain, or towards which it will always 
 gravitate, so long as this character of the people ex- 
 ists. The statesmen of our revolutionary period 
 seem to have had a general notion or feeling that 
 an intelligent people was necessary to the success of the 
 governments they were instituting, yet their opinion 
 on this point, if opinion it can be called, was vague 
 and indefinite. They were by no means wholly free 
 of an aristocratic leaven which led them to suppose 
 that the poorer and more ignorant must be under a 
 sort of controling patronage and influence of the 
 wealthy and enlightened. The comparatively gener- 
 al and high intelligence of the New England Colon- 
 ies originated mainly in religions considerations. 
 It was intended as a defence rather against ecclesias- 
 tical than political despotism. But the early consti- 
 tutions were the work of statesmen, who were think- 
 ing more of the mechanism of the government than 
 of the character of the people to be self-governed. 
 These Constitutions, accordingly, provide very im- 
 perfectly against the dangers of popular ignorance. 
 In the Constitution of the United States there is no 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 113 
 
 provision whatever, and no demand for the general 
 diffusion of intelligence. Congress is permitted to 
 i: promote the progress of science and useful arts " 
 by copy-rights , and patent-rights methods which 
 may produce some good machinery, and many very 
 poor books, but which are powerless against the dan- 
 gers of an ignorant populace. It may be said that 
 this was the more appropriate duty of the States. 
 That may be true in regard to the details of popular 
 education. But what if the constitution, which was 
 made for the people, and aims u to promote the gen- 
 eral wellfare, and secure the blessings of liberty," 
 both for the present and for the future, had said, for 
 instance, that a condition of voting for electors of 
 President should be the ability to read and write 
 what a stimulus this would have been to all parties 
 in all the States to have all their friends educated at 
 least up to that point instead of promoting ignorance 
 and propagating darkness as the material by which, 
 and the medium in which, demagogues can most suc- 
 cessfully accomplish their purposes. 
 
 Or, if Congress had been required, instead of per- 
 mitted, " to establish uniform rules of naturalization" 
 with such conditions as would have excluded the 
 putrid masses of foreign ignorance and vice from the 
 polls what disgrace and dangers of the present time 
 should we have escaped, dangers which may yet, if 
 not guarded against, prove fatal to the Republic. 
 
 So in the State Constitutions the articles relating 
 to education are in many of them either a general 
 declaration that it is a good thing and ought to be 
 encouraged, or little more than a permission or ex- 
 hortation to the legislature to provide for it. They, 
 most of them, fail in not requiring definite and effi- 
 
114 TUB AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 cient legislation for the instruction of all the children 
 of the State. They also fail greatly in not making 
 it obligatory upon every child, under heavy penalty 
 to be imposed upon the parent or guardian, to re- 
 ceive the instruction provided for him for a free 
 State has the same right and duty to forbid ignorance 
 that it has to forbid crime, and must forbid it or 
 exclude it from political relations under the most 
 imperative law of self preservation ; and it is plain 
 that this self-defence is still more necessary for the 
 United States than for any particular State. Each 
 State is under the protection of the United States, 
 which is bound to guarantee to it a republican form 
 of government ; but if the lowest products of Euro- 
 pean despotisms, and the contents of their general 
 jail deliveries are to be courted by our political par- 
 ties, and hold the balance of power between them 
 the cesspool of demagogueism, corrupt and corrupting 
 all that comes in contact with it who shall guaran- 
 tee to the United States itself a Republican form of 
 government, or what shall preserve it from disinte- 
 gration when the bond of intelligent patriotism which 
 makes it E pluribus unum no longer exists ? The 
 Constitution and Laws of the United States are 
 altogether inefficient against this insidious, and so 
 long as our naturalization laws remain as at present 
 ever increasing danger ; and the State laws, even in 
 most of the free States, are very imperfect. The 
 execution of the laws is still more imperfect than the 
 legislation. In the free States, however, public 
 opinion on this subject is becoming more awake and 
 more correct, and the laws are supplemented largely 
 and liberally by the action of Christian and patriotic 
 individuals. Let us hope that even with politicians, 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 115 
 
 and in legislatures, the time is coming when the fun- 
 damental interests, the honor and safety of the 
 Republic, will take precedence of party successes. 
 
 In the slave States, where, whatever may be their 
 written constitutions and the pretentious Declarations 
 of Rights annexed to them, the governments are 
 aristocracies, dualisms after the pagan type, it is 
 the great masses of ignorant, and therefore easily 
 duped and excited, " white trash," which are the 
 condition, the means, the very pabulum of the re- 
 bellion, the "live tools" fit and efficient for the 
 ambitious schemes of the slaveholders. Such " tools" 
 northern demagogues, politicians by trade, and or- 
 ganized liars by profession, are preparing, to the extent 
 of their power, aided by European aristocrats, and 
 the unwatchfulness of hpnost men, for the accom- 
 plishment of their schemes. This most pestiferous 
 spawn of pandemonium can never be got rid of except 
 by removing the dunghill in which it is hatched. So 
 long as the balance of power at the polls is held by 
 mere voting tools controlled not only by liars and 
 money, but by important offices promised to their 
 favorites by contending parties, and, in consequence, 
 the wickedest and meanest of men are both makers 
 and interpreters of the laws, can anything be more 
 absurd than to expect the true ends of a free govern- 
 ment to be realized ? The unassimilated masses must 
 be made to partake of the proper life of the State or 
 else be excluded from the political body. But ex- 
 clusion except as a probation and stimulus to self- 
 qualification is contradictory to the idea of the 
 self-governing State, and might in the end prove 
 more dangerous than the evil it was intended to 
 remedy, as the South may find hereafter if it shall 
 
116 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 attempt to exclude the now emancipated negroes from 
 political rights. Fortunately the interests of all 
 except the demagogues themselves are one with 
 the true ends of the State : and the proportion of 
 American-born citizens and of intelligent foreigners 
 who are no longer led blindly by party names and 
 countersigns, and the dictation of party leaders in 
 order to personal advantage to themselves of which 
 the fewest of their followers can partake, is evidently 
 on the increase. The number of those who can be 
 successfully duped by organized systems of lying, 
 were it not for constant new importations of ignor- 
 ance, is becoming annually less. The Church, the 
 clergy with the exception of a few aristocratic 
 conservatives in the free States, are diffusing a 
 truer light, and more of a salt which has not lost its 
 savor. Let all Christian and patriotic men, both 
 governors and governed, aim to increase the number 
 of those who truly partake of the intelligent and mor- 
 al life of the self-governing State, that our Republic 
 may manifest itself as an organized and organific 
 unity in contrast with all lifeless dual structures, 
 filling with fear if not with shame the malevolent and 
 lying aristocrats who are watching and working 
 eagerly for our failure. 
 
 These are, doubtless, very trite and obvious con- 
 siderations and exhortations, but that there is still 
 abundant occasion for them, that our Constitutions 
 and Laws are very imperfect and inefficient in regard 
 to this fundamental condition of a successful self-gov- 
 erning State, AN INTELLIGENT PEOPLE, is apparent 
 from the fact that after almost a hundred years of 
 self-government, in nearly every State, and of course 
 in all national elections, the balance of power at the 
 
THE AMERICAN RERUBLIC. 117 
 
 polls is held by men, who, though they have no 
 interest in being deceived, are through sheer igno- 
 rance, the mere tools of demagogues. Add to this 
 mass of honest dupes the openly bribed brutish 
 horde which in the cities and large towns the dema- 
 gogues have managed to make citizens, and we can 
 understand how it is, that there are found in all our 
 legislatures, from the Senate of the United States 
 down, so many men whose natural places, both in 
 point of intelligence and moral character, are village 
 bar-rooms and city hells, from which, in fact, they 
 have been transplanted. Alas ! how far are we 
 still from realizing the idea of our representative 
 Republics, according to which the ballot is to evolve 
 the highest practical intelligence and morality, the 
 most developed reason of the communities in which 
 it is used ! In how few communities is this end 
 aimed at, or even thought of, or indeed any other end 
 by large numbers of voters except the success of 
 ''our party." Notwithstanding incessant talk and 
 endless declamation, and some legislation, on the 
 subject, there never has been anywhere an efficient 
 plan, a determined purpose to require, to insist on, 
 and therefore to make intelligent voters. Let us 
 hope that, if we do not, in the present contest, perish 
 through lack of having protected this vital point, 
 we shall be found capable at least of learning by 
 experience. 
 
 But let us not trust wholly to intelligence. The 
 other vital point, the requisite moral and religious 
 character, also still needs most strenuous defence ; 
 and this the more, because, besides the natural gravi- 
 tation of men towards the worse, there are, even in 
 this country, men of learning and influence willing 
 
118 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to entrust everything to mere godless intellect : men 
 who believe only in science ; who " find no provision 
 in the nervous system for the improvement of the 
 moral! save indirectly through the intellectual." 
 The scientific anatomist does not find Christianity 
 anywhere in the nervous system, even the skilfulest 
 chemistry cannot detect it there how unfortunate ! 
 hence the inevitable conclusion that intellect is the 
 only " progressive agent." That many in Europe, 
 in the pride of intellect, arrogant from their success 
 as men of science, and forming their opinions of 
 Christianity by what they have observed of the ef- 
 fect of State Religions, especially upon the adminis- 
 trators of them, should doubt its power to aid the 
 progress of society in the right direction is a fact not 
 difficult to account for. That Christianity is dishon- 
 ored in this country also, at least in many parts of 
 it, by men bearing its narnej is past disputing. It is, 
 however, none the less true, and undeniably so, that 
 practical morality has, always, and everywhere, been 
 in proportion to the presence of true Christianity : 
 in proportion to progressive intellect never, any- 
 where, in the absence of Christianity. It is none 
 the less true that the ends of the State have been 
 realized in proportion as its citizens have believed in 
 and obeyed the laws of Christianity. It may be un- 
 lucky that no " provision for the improvement of 
 the moral " was put into the nervous system, but, 
 in the absence of that forgotten or lost organ, Chris- 
 tianity is plainly the only efficient substitute for it. 
 Universal intelligence is not needed in the free State 
 in order " indirectly " to promote morality, but to 
 enable the people to defend themselves against the 
 sophistries and organized lying of immoral, well- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 119 
 
 progressed and in the same degree wicked intellect. 
 
 In regard to social well-being as determined by 
 civil and political rights and relations, on condition of 
 their proper use, there is perhaps some reason for 
 the stereotype boast of declaimers that we have the 
 " best government under heaven." This boast is 
 true practically, however, only of the governments 
 of some of the free States, or if of all of them it is 
 so only because all other governments are exceeding- 
 ly bad. The governments of the slave States, on 
 the other hand, have been the worst under heaven , 
 producing, as their natural and necessary result, 
 three classes of men of great political inequality, but 
 morally about equally worthless, a small purse-proud, 
 vulgar, semibarbarous aristocracy ; large masses of 
 ignorant and vicious "poor whites ;" and slaves, the 
 possession of one of the two other classes, and the curse 
 of both. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States, by recog- 
 nizing and defending the legal character and claims 
 of slavery, made itself parliceps crimmis with the 
 South, a crime for which, with the Declaration of In- 
 dependence still in the mouths of its authors there 
 never can be made an apology. The only extenua- 
 tion is in their belief that slavery was soon to die a 
 natural death. How great a crime it was against 
 the victims of it, and against the State, to deprive 
 millions of men of their humanity blotting out 
 the brain of the slave as well as robbing his muscles 
 - both in those who insisted on committing it, and 
 in those who consented with them, we are likely to 
 learn by the legitimate and just consequences of it, 
 in part already inflicted by a retributive Providence 
 upon both parties, and " His Hand is stretched out 
 
120 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 still." Never has the displeasure of God at viola- 
 tion of the laws of rightousness been more plainly 
 manifested, or His justice more signally vindicated, 
 since the most terrible maledictions of the old 
 prophets were executed upon rebellious Jews. So 
 fearful a thing is a false principl e, a leaven of injus- 
 tice in the organic laws of the State, the substitution 
 of human self-will for the eternal law of right, one 
 with the will of God. 
 
 Will politicians learn by such experience ? Alas ! 
 no, they never rise above the belief that God is on the 
 side of the heaviest cannon and the most skilful 
 managers of elections. Southern politicians used 
 their finest craft to make Mr. Lincoln President 
 they had their purpose. God intended they should 
 succeed He had his purpose. Do they begin to 
 find His purpose different from their own ? not at 
 all, only at present they lack the heaviest cannon. 
 So Northern politicians are preparing their deepest 
 strategy to conserve and restore slavery to the ex- 
 tent, rank and influence it had before the rebellion. 
 What hope then remains but in the wider diffusion 
 and infusion of the light and salt of Christianity in 
 order to a true " Uprising" of the people to an intel- 
 lectual and moral level above the sphere of the pest- 
 ilent influences Jrorn beloiv which so many of them 
 have hitherto obeyed. Surely unless God intends 
 not our reformation but our destruction, the occasion 
 will evolve wise statesmen to take the place of the 
 bastard tribe of politicians who have so long ruled 
 over us, Christian and patriotic men will awake to 
 their duties, and no future coalition between Northern 
 demagogues and Southern Slaveholders if such 
 can ever again be formed, which God forbid ! will 
 
TIIE AMERICAN It K PUBLIC. 121 
 
 find either voting tools or preaching tools wherewith 
 to accomplish its accursed purposes. Let us thank 
 God, and one true statesman at least for the progress 
 already made in the right direction, and hope and 
 work that one false and fatal principle may be wholly 
 and forever eliminated from our politics and so a re- 
 petition of the consequences of its presence be 
 avoided. 
 
 Civil freedom, the absence of legal slavery, and 
 political equality, are good under all circumstances 
 in oo far as they give the consciousness of manhood, 
 and self-respect, which are among the conditions of 
 becoming truly a man, but they may exist under 
 circumstances which render them of very little other 
 value to some of their possessors. The organic laws, 
 or the legislation of the State, may be such, positive- 
 ly or negatively, thr t, while in appearance and form 
 and intent^ they are just and equal for all, and aim 
 at a true unity and commonwealth, they may be very 
 unjust to some, very unequal, and tend inevitably, 
 though it may be slowly and insidiously, to a dan- 
 gerous or fatal duality. In the Declarations of 
 Rights prefixed to raost of our State Constitutions, 
 and in the Declaration of Independence it is asserted 
 that all men are " created," or " born" equal, that 
 is, naturally entitled to equal social rights and im- 
 munities ; but it is also implied in most subsequent 
 legislation, that men are equal in moral and intellec- 
 tual character and endowments. Since, however, 
 this is not so, equal laws for unequal subjects tend 
 to great inequalities. How all this may be so, and 
 how far our republican governments are faulty in 
 these respects may appear by considering the physi- 
 cal well-being of its citizens as one of the ends of the 
 11 
 
122 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 State, and the natural consequences of its failure to 
 realize it. 
 
 Provision to a certain extent for the primary 
 wants of the physical life, food, raiment, shelter, are 
 of course indispensable to living at all. But being 
 and well-being may be very wide asunder. Physi- 
 cal well-being implies and demands such physical 
 provision, conditions and relations as permit the full 
 healthful performance of the functions of all the or- 
 gans of the body. They must not be such as require 
 excessive and exclusive muscular labor in order to. 
 live, and thereby become incompatible with the true 
 human ends of life. Some men will be mere ani- 
 mals in the midst, and in spite of all opportunities 
 to be more ; but the true State will, however, put in 
 the power of all its citizens, and defend them in the 
 right to become men by the full self-realization of 
 both body and mind. Throughout all nature the 
 lower is the condition of the higher. So physical 
 well-being, which is common to men and animals, is 
 the condition of the development and proper posses- 
 sion of that by which men are more than animals. 
 
 Here we come to, perhaps, the most difficult prob- 
 lem with which the statesman has to deal the 
 legitimate production and just distribution of material 
 wealth -just distribution, and legitimate production. 
 Just distribution is not necessarily equal distribu- 
 tion ; but he who studies the genesis of wealth, that 
 is, of large accumulations of property in the posses- 
 sion of individuals, will find injustice not an occasional 
 and accidental, but a constant and necessary element 
 of such wealth. Somewhere in the process injustice 
 has entered as an ingredient without which the ac- 
 cumulation could not have been made injustice, 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 123 
 
 however, in the Christian, not always in the legal 
 sense. There maj be imagined, and there may exist 
 exceptional cases, but I speak of ordinary " business 
 transactions." 
 
 I am aware of the feeling with which this assertion 
 would be received in any business community, but 
 this, perhaps, instead of disproving its truth, only 
 shows how far business relations are from being con- 
 trolled by the principles of Christianity. Are the 
 ordinary and almost constantly observed effects of 
 great wealth upon the character of the possessors, 
 both in pagan and Christian times, especially upon 
 the heirs of those who acquired it, and the fact that 
 the rich man shall so hardly be saved, retributive 
 consequences of the injustice which is a necessary 
 ingredient of it ? 
 
 A competency, that is, enough to furnish the con- 
 ditions of a true human life, with accumulation 
 sufficient for the education of children and for other 
 proper private arid public demands, is within the 
 reach of all not deprived of or neglecting natural op- 
 portunities, and that without excessive or exclusive 
 muscular labor. It is to such men of moderate 
 means that appeals can always be most successfully 
 made to assist in promoting the great ends of educa- 
 tion and religion and other worthy public objects, 
 their contributions being more ready and larger in 
 proportion to pecuniary ability than those of rich 
 men, with fewest exceptions. The more equally 
 wealth is distributed or at least in the absence of 
 extreme differences the more readily available it is 
 for all the high and true ends of it whether private 
 or public. The number of families possessing a quiet 
 competence with personal industry has been and is 
 
124 TUB AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 increasing under the influence of Christianity ; but 
 to how many are the natural opportunities necessary 
 to its acquisition still entirely beyond their reach; 
 for how many do the products of their labor belong 
 much more to others than to themselves ! 
 
 Legitimate production is that of products which, 
 whether in material or form, subserve the true ends 
 of material wealth. Those products of labor which 
 enrich some only in proportion as they injure others, 
 even if it is by their own consent, products producing 
 poverty vice and crime, are surely illegitimate in the 
 true State, and will be discouraged and forbidden by a 
 truly self-governing people. That our governments 
 are imperfect on this point both in their Constitutions 
 and laws, and that there is here room and necessity 
 for a higher statesmanship, and a wider and a deeper 
 infusion and application of Christian principles, is not 
 to be denied. Here, however, at least in regard to 
 some of these products, there is progress both in pub- 
 lic opinion and in consequent legislation. 
 
 In regard to the distribution of wealth, the natur- 
 al tendency under the effects of what are called 
 equal laws, is towards great inequality ; not simply 
 a healthful difference, but such that, while some 
 have more than the true ends of wealth require, in 
 others deficiency may defeat all but the very lowest 
 of those ends ; for the tendency is not only to ine- 
 quality but more and more to the very extremes of 
 inequality. This is easily understood from the na- 
 tural differences of men : to provide against the con- 
 sequences of which is one of the primary duties of 
 the State. If a certain quantity of food, enough to 
 give one sufficient meal to a large number of hungry 
 men, were offered to them under the " equal law " 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 125 
 
 that each should have so much as his strength en- 
 abled him to seize, it is certain that some would 
 have much more than they could eat at one meal, 
 and that others must still remain hungry. If it 
 were announced at the same time that this food must 
 serve for a number, an uncertain number, of meals, 
 the inequality of the distribution would be much 
 greater still. This is exactly the natural condition 
 of men in relation to food, in respect of muscular 
 strength, and the uncertainty of provision for the 
 future. But Society forbids, and, except in its pri- 
 mary or retrograde stages, prevents the robbery of the 
 weaker by the stronger muscles. The claim of 
 right to appropriate the product of another man's la- 
 bor, (if of the same Society) founded on mere mus- 
 cular superiority, is nowhere allowed even by the 
 lowest civilization above slavery. If, however, the 
 weaker party be of another tribe or nation, or be an- 
 other tribe or nation, how high must be the civiliza- 
 tion, how deep the infusion of the Christian element 
 before this claim of the rights of superior strength 
 will cease to be practically asserted ? Alas ! higher 
 and deeper than any hitherto attained. 
 
 If. in the case of food just supposed, the distribu- 
 tion were to take place under the equal law that each 
 man should have what he could acquire by strength 
 of brain instead of muscles, in competition with the 
 brains of all the others, so that the quantity of food 
 acquired by each should be in proportion to the en- 
 dowment, development and activity of his intellect, 
 and his defect of moral sense, it is plain that the ine- 
 quality of the distribution would be still greater than 
 before, since the intellectual and moral differences 
 of men are much greater than the muscular. Now this 
 
126 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 is, nearly, in our communities, the relation of men 
 to material wealth. Its acquisition is essentially a 
 contest of intellect. But while the State protects 
 the weaker muscles against the stronger, it protects 
 very inefficiently, or not at all, both brains and mus- 
 cles against the stronger brain. Material wealth, 
 though the immediate product of muscular labor, 
 does not, however, belong, in society, to those whose 
 muscles produced it, but is to be distributed in pro- 
 portion to the intellect of those who contend for it. 
 Whatever part of it can be acquired by bargain, 
 either before or after its production, whether justly, 
 or unjustly by taking advantage of the ignorance 
 the lack of judgment, the lack of self-control, or of 
 the necessities of the producers, that, practically, the 
 law allows and the court awards. And, as in the old 
 piratical times, the plunderer is honored and the 
 plundered despised. The inevitable consequence is, 
 under these equal laws, that wealth tends constant- 
 ly to accumulate, with an ever self-increasing power, 
 in the hands of some, beyond the legitimate purpose 
 for which it is needed. On the other hand, inas- 
 much as many are wholly exempt from labor, and 
 the muscular labor of the individual can produce little 
 more than enough to supply the necessities of him- 
 iself and family, it follows, that, in proportion as some, 
 n the distribution of wealth, acquire an excessive 
 share, others must receive less than the true ends of 
 physical well-being require. As the inequality tends 
 both to perpetuate itself and to increase more and 
 more, there will be constantly forming a large and 
 larger class whose poverty restricts them to a low 
 and imperfect and mere animal life ; whose discour- 
 agements tend to make them vicious ; whose ignor- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 127 
 
 ance, lack of self-control and physical necessities 
 render them the easy dupes and victims of unscru- 
 pulous "wealth, or unscrupulous intellect, and the 
 ready instruments of lying demagogues. These ten- 
 dencies to duality may l^e realized in varying forms 
 and in various degrees. We may find half of the 
 population, more or less, legal slaves of the rest, as 
 in ancient States and in our Southern States ; or the 
 same proportion practically slaves of capital, as in 
 modern European States, under the operation of the 
 laws of what is ironically called the " Science of 
 Political Economy," that is, without irony, under 
 the laws of unrestricted intellect in its natural rela- 
 tions to ignorance ; and of unrightous and unfeeling 
 wealth in its relations to poverty. Or we may find 
 these same tendencies in their earlier stages, as in 
 New England and other frte States. But always 
 and everywhere the final result, unless vigilantly 
 counteracted, will be, not only a duality of capital 
 and labor, but ultimately a political aristocracy which 
 will make the many subservient to the pleasure and 
 profit of the few. 
 
 What then is the remedy ? First of all a clear con- 
 ception of the highest end of the State. Which is 
 not, as would seem to be the opinion of professed 
 statesmen and political economists, the increase of 
 national wealth with very little regard to its distri- 
 bution. It is not the highest feat of statesmanship 
 to negotiate a new commercial treaty, to compel 
 trade with an unwilling people at the cannon's mouth, 
 to "open avenues to enterprise" so as to ''give em- 
 ployment to the laboring classes/'' to increase the 
 amount of labor by sending to the other side of the 
 planet, or of the continent, for what might be pro- 
 
128 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 duced rt the doors of the consumers, to permit labor 
 to be wasted upon products injurious to both consum- 
 ers and producers, and in general to act on the as- 
 sumption that labor is good per se, and is to be m 
 every way increased. 
 
 On the contrary the true statesman would endeav- 
 or, by encouraging home, and local productions, by 
 incre?sing the facilities and diminishing the need of 
 transportation, by preventing hurtful and useless 
 production, by aiming to increase the efficiency and the 
 use of labor-saving machinery, by abating and coir pel- 
 ling to honest labor the innumerable loafers and para- 
 sites of society, by taxing all luxury and extravagance 
 by these and suchlike means he would endeavor not 
 to increase but to diminish the sum total of human 
 muscular labor necessary for an ample supply of all 
 the legitimate products of such labor, and so, to dim- 
 inish the daily labor of each individual and give time 
 for all to share in intellectual occupations and enjoy- 
 ments; that is, he would aim not at the largest sum to- 
 tal of wealth, but to promote the highest degree and 
 widest diffusion of human well-being to provide for 
 all the citizens of the State, and to preserve for them, 
 not only against the encroachments of others, but 
 often against themselves, the conditions of a complete 
 and worthy earthly life. It is obvious that, in order 
 to this, the principles of Christianity must be appli- 
 ed in detail, much more than hitherto they have been, 
 to all the legal relations of men, besides the infusion 
 of its spirit in the organic laws of the State. It is 
 still the pagan fashion to " approve the better and 
 follow the worse." We " declare" all men endowed 
 by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, to which 
 we immediately add, practically provided neverthe- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 129 
 
 less that many of them may, by unequal, or equal 
 laws, be deprived of these rights. But even Christ- 
 ian laws attempting to control an unchristian people 
 must of necessity to a great extent fail. Christian- 
 ity is essentially self-government, the law written on 
 the heart, for which coercion is always an imperfect 
 and often an impossible substitute. In the absence, 
 or in the delay of a pewading influence of Christ- 
 ianity thoughout the community, what laws can best 
 obviate the consequences of the natural differences of 
 men, can best protect all against the injustice of any 
 this is the problem of problems, this is for the 
 wisdom of the wise to determine. 
 
 It may not, perhaps, however, be beyond the reach 
 of ordinary discernment to make some suggestions, 
 to indicate some fundamental laws, and, in general, 
 the kind of policy by which the free State, at least 
 our own Republic, may so far counteract the tenden- 
 cies to inequality of wealth and intelligence, as cer- 
 tainly to avoid a fatal duality and consequent return 
 to aristocracy or despotism. First The Sources of 
 material wealth, Land, Mines, Fisheiies, all natural 
 productive agents, or, conditions of production, ought 
 to be carefully distinguished in their legal treatment, 
 from that wealth which is the product and embody- 
 ment of labor. The management of the domain of 
 tlie State is the truest test of statemanship. It is 
 certain from all history (or with fewest exceptions of 
 small commercial States) that with the possession of 
 the land goes the possession ot political power. 
 This is the very corner-stone of aristocracy. A free 
 State, therefore, should guard against the ever strong 
 tendency to this most dangerous monopoly by the 
 limitation of the right of property in land. The 
 
130 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 limit may properly be different in different States, 
 and in the same State at different periods. In new 
 countries where land is plenty the freedom of pur- 
 chase may be less restricted, provided the purchase 
 'is made for cultivation and not for speculation, which 
 ought to be wholly prohibited. As population, wealth, 
 and the inequalities of wealth increase there is a con- 
 stant tendency to accumulations of the land, the large 
 farms absorbing on every side the smaller ones. This 
 is especially the case, for obvious reasons, in slave- 
 holding States. 
 
 Now, it is plain, that just in proprortion to the 
 largeness of these accumulations, this monopoly of the 
 source? of food, raiment, fuel and shelter, will be the 
 number of mere agricultural laborers : and that the 
 tendency will be to their reception of a smaller and 
 smaller proportion of the products of their labor, un- 
 til, as in England, they receive an inadequate supply 
 of the first necessaries of animal life ; or, as in our 
 cotton States, there is formed a class of landless, la- 
 borless, worthless "poor whites." Such are the 
 tendencies to be counteracted going directly towards 
 both social and political aristocracy. It will certain- 
 ly be the policy of a free State, a State for men, 
 whose aim is not national wealth but national well- 
 being, to have among its people the smallest possible 
 number of men wholly and permanently dependent 
 upon labor, who have no property but in the muscles 
 of their own bodies. A. class of such men in a free 
 State will inevitably be the victims of unscrupulous 
 capital, and the tools of uncrupulous politicians. 
 
 It is very damaging proof of how far we still are 
 from comprehending the meaning the word right- 
 ousness. in the New Testament sense, that in all the 
 
THE AMERICAN RERUBLIC. ,181 
 
 States of Christendom, there is still a large population 
 not much better off than the old, " besfes en pare," 
 now called "the laboring classes, "not because they lab- 
 or, but because their only possession is the faculty to 
 labor, and that these classes, whose muscles are the 
 condition and fountain of wealth are also often appro- 
 priately called " the laboring poor ;" that they are 
 often dependent for permission to labor, dependent 
 for condescending patronage, protection, and not un- 
 frequently much needed charity \ dependent even 
 for the privilege to come, anywhere, in contact with 
 their mother Earth, upon the good pleasure of those 
 whom the products of their labor have made rich. 
 In an aristocratic State this may be said to be the 
 natural relation of the producers of wealth to 
 the possessors of it. But in a self-organizing, self- 
 governing, and wise State estimating the production 
 of MEN higher than that of wealth, so dependent a 
 class, if it exists at all, ought to consist only of the 
 incorrigibly indolent and vicious. If, with us, at 
 least in the free States, this class is comparatively 
 small, whether in agriculture or other industries, let 
 us be careful to counteract the causes which here 
 also tend constantly to increase it. 
 
 In our own country the capabilities of the national 
 domain an so rich, various, and complete, as to ren- 
 der us, if we choose, for all the true ends of a State, 
 wholly independent of all other nations. The num- 
 ber of persons engaged in agriculture might, there- 
 fore, be in the natural proportion to those of the 
 other two great industrial employments, the mechan- 
 ical and the mercantile a number, probably, great- 
 er than that of both the others, or not far from half 
 of the whole population. This, with a judicious provi- 
 
132 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 sion against accumulations of the land, would give, 
 not homeless laborers, not oppressed tenantry, peasan- 
 try, ryotry, or slaves, but a body of independent 
 and intelligent proprietors above the patronage ard 
 seductions of demagogues, who, in the exercise of 
 the most ordinary prudence and simple self-defence 
 of their own permanent interests, would defend the 
 State against all danger of domestic despotism ; and, 
 trained to the use of arms, could laugh at all foreign 
 enemies. This, it may be objected, is not the meth- 
 od by which the land could be made to yield *he 
 greatest amount of material wealth. Whether the 
 objection asserts the truth or not it can be valid only 
 for those who estimate higher the production of corn 
 and cotton than of men, 
 
 Second In order to still farther protection of the 
 less shrewd and energetic in this department of in- 
 dustry, a fundamental law of the State should re- 
 serve to every farmer, free from liability for debt or 
 mortgage except for the purchase money, a home- 
 stead, not of a certain value, but a certain quantity 
 of land (with its products) varying according to the 
 quality, with the farm buildings upon it if any, and 
 sufficient, under careful cultuvation, for the support 
 of a family. Such homestead should also be preserv- 
 ed entire, tRe proprietor not being permitted to sell 
 any part of it unless he sells the whole, that is the 
 law should protect him against himself as well as 
 against others. For it is among the duties of the 
 State to protect and govern those who are not cap- 
 able of self-protection and self-government. It is an 
 encouraging evidence of progress already commenc- 
 ed, of the existence of a public instinct in. the right 
 direction, that, while not long since the debtor was 
 
TUB AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 133 
 
 stripped of all personal property, and his body im- 
 prisoned for a few dollars anciently even the dead 
 body of the debtor could be held from burial until 
 his debts were paid now, his body, his furniture, 
 the instruments of his occupation are free from seiz- 
 ure ; homesteads, are, in several States, begining to 
 be granted ; and, at least in regard to United States 
 land, unlimited purchase is forbidden. 
 
 Third To defend those engaged in mechanical 
 employments against the oppressions of capital, and 
 the injustices of superior intellect, is much more dif- 
 ficult. Every practical mechanic of whatever kind 
 should be entitled to the exemption of his house and 
 at least one acre of land ; the hours of daily labor 
 ought not to exceed eight, leaving time for mental 
 cultivation. The natural division of daily time and 
 occupations seems to be into three equal parts, eight 
 hours for muscular labor, eight for intellectual, and 
 eight for rest ; for a careful study of man's natural 
 relations to the sources of food and other things 
 needful for the animal life shows, that, with a just 
 distribution of muscular labor, and a just division of 
 its products, eight hours labor is sufficient for the 
 ample supply of all his physical necessities. If some- 
 men would not become any more intelligent by di- 
 minishing their hours of labor, this does not affect 
 the duty of the State to give all the opportunity ; 
 and in order to do this, besides instruction provided, 
 the accursed parasites who furnish temptations to 
 useless and hurtful expenditure of money and waste of 
 time ought to be exterminated with the most relent- 
 less severity. A wise State would aim also to 
 preserve the natural proportion of mechanics to those 
 in other employments by a judicious regulation of 
 
134 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 manufactures so as to prevent excess and consequent 
 injurious competition of laborers, and, as far as pos- 
 sible, uncertainties and fluctuations of market. 
 
 True national independence requires the home 
 production and home manufacture, as far as the nat- 
 ural resources of the country permit, of everything 
 necessary to national well-being and self defence. 
 Our own country is happily competent to furnish 
 everything whatever desirable for these ends ; and 
 should therefore, be, and remain, in the fullest sense 
 of the word, independent. Certainly to this extent 
 of entire self-reliance and self-sufficiency should pro- 
 duction of material and manufactures be protected 
 against foreign competition ; to this extent they 
 should be established and have the monopoly of the 
 home market, notwithstanding any necessary but 
 temporary increase of prices. Thus provided, a great 
 nation is essentially invulnerable from without. The 
 blockade of their ports would be a matter of entire 
 indifference. The lack of preparation, making war 
 in the absence of the means of self-reliance, was the 
 fatal mistake of the Confederate States. If permitted 
 to preserve slavery they will be better provided next 
 time. The State, then, should manufacture every- 
 thing necessary for its own defence, and for the supply 
 of its home markets, developing its own resources 
 and its own skill. 
 
 Should the free State manufacture for foreign 
 markets? It should not, since it would be contra- 
 dictory to the true policy of the free State by 
 throwing into that department of industry an unnat- 
 ural proportion of laborers who would be liable at 
 any time to become a class of dependent and helpless 
 operatives ; for foreign markets are not only fluctu- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 135 
 
 ating but may at any moment through commercial or 
 political disturbances fail altogether. Manufacturers 
 on the contrary, having command of the home mar- 
 ket, would soon bring their profits to the average of 
 those of other employments ; and having a compara- 
 tively certain and reliable market, would be unlikely 
 to create an unfortunate surplus of manufacturing 
 labor. The danger from depending upon foreign 
 markets and foreign material is well illustrated by 
 the present condition of some European manufac- 
 tures. Our country, complete in itself, may be, 
 and ought to be, indifferent to the commercial policy 
 of other nations. Whether the two antagonist classes 
 of employers and operatives, so liable to produce ex- 
 tremes, both disastrous, of wealth and poverty, may 
 not be dispensed with, by practical mechanics associ- 
 ating and furnishing each both capital and labor, and 
 dividing the income, is a question which they seem 
 about to consider. Such a class of manufacturers, 
 soon becoming intelligent and independent, would 
 furnish no tools for demagogues, and confining them- 
 selves to home markets, would be for the free State 
 among the most reliable of its citizens. 
 
 Of the three great industrial departments of the 
 State, and sources of material wealth, the three great 
 organs of supply for man's physical necessities which 
 ought to be carefully restrained each to its appropri- 
 ate function, Commerce, foreign commerce, is far 
 the most likely to be active out of due proportion, to 
 be in excess. Especially is this the case in this 
 country from the great extent of its maritime border. 
 This "Interest" is extremely liable to become a 
 Self-interest, and to forget that it is only an organ of 
 the Commonwealth. Statesmen, of the near-sight- 
 
136 THB AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ed species, whose highest end is Ct national wealth/' 
 are always patrons of commerce, and seek and make 
 treaties with special reference to it. The people, too, 
 are delighted with the ever ready declamations of 
 " our sails whitening every sea," and " our flag dis- 
 played in every port." The consequence is, that, 
 soon, Commerce becomes a domineering imperium 
 in imperio, sacrificing the common wealth to the 
 commercial interest. For this interest forbids, or 
 may forbid, the proportionate, the natural develop- 
 ment of agriculture, mining and manufactures, that 
 is, of those natural resources of the country which 
 are the only sources of true national independence 
 and safety. The power of the Class is maintained by 
 the influence of the vulgar Political Economy of 
 " free trade," good, it may be, for small, insular, 
 shop-keeping States like England, provided she can 
 succeed in controlling the markets of the world ; and 
 if the largest sum total of accumulated wealth is the 
 highest end of the State and by the taking and effi- 
 cient sophistry that protection of home-manufactures, 
 and of home-production of raw material, would cer- 
 tainly very much increase cost to consumers. Thus 
 by the terror of high prices, which would be but mo- 
 mentary, their monopolies and their own prices are 
 preserved. The true interest of the Commonwealth, 
 on the contrary, requires that foreign Commerce 
 should be but the complement <& the other industrial 
 activities, supplying such useful things as the coun- 
 try itself cannot produce, such luxuries not necessary 
 to physical well-being, as a wise State would admit, 
 and exporting the surplus of agricultural products. 
 The spirit of Commerce has been always and every- 
 where one of injustice and oppression towards the 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 137 
 
 weak abroad, and, of course, of selfishness and mo- 
 nopoly at home. In a State where commerce is not 
 restrained within its proper sphere, the spirit of 
 trade, stimulated by frequent instances of the rapid 
 acquisition of wealth ; not very rarely of immense 
 wealth, giving splendor and title to " merchant 
 princes ;" exciting great numbers by the hope of 
 similar good fortune this spirit of speculation, and 
 impatience of quiet industry pervade all the business 
 of society, and instead of choosing a life-long employ- 
 ment as the necessary means for the animal life, and 
 the condition of that without which our life is of no 
 more worth than that of animals, intellectual and 
 spiritual good, men give themselves body and soul to 
 the one end of making haste to be rich, richer, rich- 
 est. This same spirit even invades agriculture. The 
 farmer, instead of seeking to make for himself a 
 delightful home, to restore, as he only can, so much 
 as remains possible of the lost paradise, gratifying 
 his affections and his taste by every beautiful and 
 beautified aspect of the spot of earth he calls his own, 
 making it both means and end for the humanity 
 within him instead of these human feelings and 
 rational aims he looks upon his potential Eden as 
 mere land, which he regards only as the instrument 
 of gain, impatient of a culture in which he might 
 make his daily labor a series of scientific experiments, 
 and restless to find the most immediately profitable 
 crops, in the very spirit of traffic, he makes haste to 
 be rich. Commerce, moreover, produces what is 
 especially to be avoided in a free State, extremes of 
 wealth and poverty. Employing great numbers of 
 laborers, mere operatives of the lowest kind, it cre- 
 ates a mass of unassimilated and unassimilable ma- 
 
138 TUB AMERICAN .REPUBLIC. 
 
 terial in the vitals of the body politic to be a nuisance, 
 a disease and a danger to the life of the State. 
 Hence large commercial cities are the hot-beds of 
 luxury, vice, crime, demagogueism, and of worse 
 than Athenian democracy, a reproach, and to out- 
 side observers, a despair of the Republican State. 
 
 Besides the essential normal organs of the State, 
 there are certain instruments more or less made use 
 of by most governments, convenient for some purpos- 
 es, but often of doubtful expediency, and which, if 
 used at all, ought to be kept as generally they are 
 not most rigidly under control. The government 
 has no right to bestow upon others the privilege to 
 do, practically upon their own terms, what its own 
 duty requires it to do upon the best possible terms 
 for the public good. The fewer the intermediate 
 agents, the more direct and effective the accountability 
 to the principal. If the immediate personal agents 
 of the government are found to be corrupt they are 
 immediately responsible to the government, and the 
 government, if it does not punish them, to the peo- 
 ple ; but chartered instruments contrive to evade 
 indefinitely responsibility to either. As to such 
 corporate monopolies, those daughters of the horse- 
 leech, it is to be hoped that a little more experience 
 of them may prove sufficient. It is fortunate that 
 they are ultimately in the power of those upon whose 
 blood they are fattening, and it were well that they 
 be dealt with after the manner of treating others of 
 the leech tribe stripped. 
 
 Every dollar of the vast sums with which certain 
 Railroad and other Corporations control, to a great 
 extent, the elections, the legislation and the courts of 
 the States from which they receive their charters, 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 139 
 
 besides being the product of labor for which no 
 equivalent was given, is a contribution by the com- 
 munity to a corruption-fund for its own demoraliza- 
 tion. Every dollar of the millions with which the 
 gamblers of Wall Street and of other Streets de- 
 range business, embarrass the government, degrade 
 and disgrace the commercial character of the country, 
 and finally devour one another would that they 
 could be treated as the bees treat the drones of their 
 society all these vast sums, the product of labor, 
 have been taken from the producers by contract or 
 by force and contracts may be equally compulsory 
 with slavery itself in such proportion, in the great 
 majority of cases, that the laborer received only 
 sufficient for the lowest animal life, and to enable 
 him to continue the use if not the enjoyment of his 
 only possession, the muscles of his own body. These 
 muscles may have belonged to the sailor and along- 
 shore man ; to the sewing girl who makes shirts at 
 six cents apiece ; to the slave in the rice swamp or 
 cotton field ; to the English operative, or the Irish 
 tenant ; to the cultivator of coffee under Dutch op- 
 pressions in Java ; to the producer of pepper on 
 compulsion in Sumatra, or his who for the same 
 reason delivers to the English landlord so many 
 pounds of opium to the acre in India to be forced up- 
 on the Chinese in order to the civilization which we 
 are told commerce always carries along with it. An 
 autobiography by each dollar of a millionaire's heap 
 would be instructive reading ; and if stolen property 
 never loses its character by transfer, on due claim by 
 the rightful owners, how much of the million would 
 be left on which no taint of injustice could be found ? 
 These views, doubtless, would be pronounced 
 
140 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 heterodox by statesmen of the popular laisscz 
 faire, free trade school, whose doctrine is that all 
 individual men, all Interests, and all Nations are to 
 he left to unlimited and unrestrained competition, 
 each, in relation to others, to he entitled to whatever 
 any relative advantage may give, and to whatever 
 may he acquired hy bargain or treaty, no matter un- 
 der what conditions of comparative strength or 
 weakness of brain, under what compulsion of necessi- 
 ty, lack of self-control, or other coercion short of 
 highway robbery. Indeed, in regard to nations they 
 may, it seems, demand commercial treaties, and com- 
 pel the fulfilment of them at the cannon's mouth ; 
 which is, however, no more efficient or unjust coercion 
 than is often practiced by individuals, and Interests 
 of the same nation towards each other. ' 
 
 But THE STATE is more than an aggregation of 
 individuals, each by himself and for himself, unre- 
 strained in relation to others except by a general 
 rule forbidding assault and battory ; it is more than 
 an aggregation of Interests each of which may aim 
 exclusively at self-interest. The State is an OR- 
 GANISM, in which each organ has its appropriate and 
 natural function, not only in relation to itself, but to 
 each of the other organs, and to the well-being of the 
 whole body politic. In other organisms, excess or 
 deficiency or perversion of the function, whether of 
 one or of several organs, is disease, and this de- 
 rangement, if considerable and continued, is fatal 
 disease. In the human body, when each or any of 
 the lower organs claims to be the best judge of its 
 own interests, and in disobedience to that to which 
 supremacy belongs, and in insurrection against the 
 common good of the organism, seeks only its own 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 141 
 
 self-indulgence, all the organs soon perish together. 
 This is more than a metaphorical illustration of the 
 relations of the great industrial and educational In- 
 terests of the State to each other, to the government 
 which should wisely preside over them, and to the 
 common well-being ; for the State is not less an or- 
 ganism than is each of the bodies of its citizens, and 
 essentially the same organic laws are ordained for 
 both, with the same consequences of their violation. 
 In irrational organisms all the organs co-operate in- 
 stinctively, without mutual antagonism, under a 
 divine guidance, towards the true ends of the organ- 
 ism. But in the human body, much more in the 
 political organism, this spontaneous divine harmony 
 does not exist, and upon the man, and the govern- 
 ment, is thrown the difficult and often neglected or 
 abused prerogative and responsibility of maintaining 
 it. Laisscz faircj in both cases, is not merely fail- 
 ure of the true end, but derangement, disease and 
 death. An overgrown commercial Interest may not 
 only interfere to prevent the development of manu- 
 factures, of the agricultural, mining and other natu- 
 ral resources of the country necessary to its true 
 independence, but it may continue and render per- 
 manent this one sided and unsafe development, either 
 through public opinion, by subsidizing the press to 
 propagate the sophistries of free trade, by the em- 
 ployment of demagogues to manipulate elections, or 
 through the direct control of the government itself 
 by means too often with all governments effective. 
 
 So the excessive development of manufactures, 
 that is, manufactures working for, and dependent 
 upon foreign markets, may not only disturb the do- 
 mestic health of the State in the way already spoken 
 
142 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of, but may seduce the government into treaties and 
 even wars for the supposed benefit of the manufac- 
 turing interest though hostile to the true interests of 
 the Commonwealth. Thus the " Manufacturing In- 
 terest" also may become an aggressive and domineer- 
 ing power, aiming at the conquest of the markets of 
 the world. The methods of acquiring and retaining 
 such conquests exhibit often the most selfish' and very 
 basest qualities of humanity, and, like those of other 
 aristocracies, they are not only frequently unjust and 
 oppressive towards the conquered, but are sure to 
 result ultimately in disaster to their own country. 
 Certainly a wise State will not permit a large pro- 
 portion of its population to become exposed to the 
 danger at any time, we may say to the certainty, by 
 and by, of being deprived of their daily bread by any 
 of the proverbially fluctuating conditions of universal 
 trade, or the vicissitudes of universal politics. In 
 which case hundreds of thousands of men, as now in 
 England, may have to be fed by what is facetiously 
 called "charity;" that is, to have the product of 
 their own labor doled out to them to the great credit 
 of the philanthrophy of those who have been enriched 
 by it ; or else the State must go to war, as perhaps 
 England will, for the purpose of recovering what the 
 manufacturing interest may have lost. 
 
 There never was a country so complete in itself 
 as the American Republic, so wholly free from all 
 necessary dependence upon foreign nations. Its nat- 
 ural resources are ample for the supply of everything 
 which can be desired in order to the protection, the 
 material wealth, and the physical well-being of the 
 State. There needs, in order to a more than hither- 
 to ever anywhere attained national felicity, only that 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 143 
 
 the people and the government seek wisely, not na- 
 tional wealth, but, in the high and Christian sense, 
 national well-being. There needs, not a pagan and 
 "stationary" morality, but the application of Chris- 
 tian principles to all the relations of man to man, of 
 Interest to Interest, of State to State, and of the 
 nation to all other nations. Whether a false and 
 unrightous principle can be safely left among the or- 
 ganic laws of the State to work out its natural re- 
 sult under the expectation that by and by it will 
 die out our present war can answer. Slavery im- 
 plies the fatal pagan duality, which is. of necessity, 
 if left to itself, ultimately destructive of both its ex- 
 tremes. The effects of slavery are to subject its vic- 
 tims to failure of all the ends of the earthly human 
 life, and to degrade, demoralize and paganize the mas- 
 ters, a retributive consequence to one party involved 
 in their injustice towards the other. But the basis 
 of slavery is deeper than the legal enactment 
 that A. B. C. etc. may be held and treated as the 
 chattels ot D. or whoever shall purchase them. The 
 same principles controling or permitting the rela- 
 tions of man to man, which, in some modern States 
 as they aid in all ancient ones have resulted in 
 legal slavery these same principles still everywhere 
 unextinguished, and more or less operative in all 
 States, always, in proportion to their activity, tend 
 towards a duality subversive of the ends of the true 
 Commonwealth, and if unrestrained, must result, by 
 a natural law, in aristocracy, slavery, or some other 
 form of despotism. So long and so far as the natur- 
 al and acquired mental and moral differences of men 
 are disregarded in legislation and there is permitted 
 free competition of all in regard to the acquisition of 
 
144 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 material wealth, and even of the very sources of 
 wealth, unrestrained in its methods except as to the 
 use of physical force, while at the same time the many 
 are left to their natural indolence in regard to intel- 
 lectual acquisitions, what ever has been, and what 
 ever can be until men have become angels the 
 result but a monopoly of the land and other primary 
 sources of wealth, the unequal and unjust division 
 of the products of muscular labor, the secondary 
 great source of material property, great accumula- 
 tions of wealth and developed intellect in posession 
 of the comparatively few, and correlatively great 
 poverty and ignorance in possession of the many ? 
 But this is ARISTOCRACY, social, intellectual, and 
 political, not less and not better where there is still 
 retained the formality of universal suffrage and 
 nominal freedom which, however, will not be long 
 retained under such circumstances than where the 
 government is in the hands of an hereditary oligar- 
 chy backed by standing armies. The mother vice 
 here, prolific of all these consequences fatal to the 
 free State, is the admission into, or rather the failure 
 to exclude from the legislation of the State, principles 
 which necessarily result, not in the unequal merely, 
 but the unjust distribution of the natural sources of 
 wealth and of the products of labor ; for from this 
 all the rest follows logically and inevitably. As in 
 the old pagan world physical superiority, through 
 robbery, piracy, war, appropriated the product of 
 other men's labor and made the weaker the legal 
 slaves of the stronger ; so in modern civilization in- 
 tellectual superiority inscribed with the same old 
 motto " might makes right," is permitted, by paral- 
 lel means, under other names, to work towards es- 
 sentially similar results. 
 
THE AMERICAN KEFUBLIC. 145 
 
 Have then our governments State and Kational 
 done nothing to counteract this inherent tendency of all 
 human States towards a natural and essentially pa- 
 gan dualism ? much, most of them, by Declara- 
 tion] by legislation, much, some of them, others 
 nothing. Examples of the different results are seen 
 in Massachusetts and South Carolina. But even in 
 the best States this tendency is only more or less 
 counteracted. The principle which always develops 
 itself in this direction is still left everywhere active. 
 It is to some extent instinctively Jelt, it seems to be 
 nowhere distinctly perceived, that, laissez faire is 
 not less false or less unjust when applied to brain 
 than when applied to muscles, in regard to which it 
 was long ago at least as between individuals and 
 guilds discarded. Christianity has been, indeed 
 as already shown and is, everywhere, except in 
 some parts proh pudor ! of the United States, 
 counteracting and modifying the legitimate results of 
 this principle, but if we, some of us, seem to have 
 resisted them more successfully than other nations, 
 let us thank God for a fertile and wide country, 
 which has hitherto prevented monopoly of land and 
 a crowded population, so that the great problem of 
 capital and labor, far from being practically solved 
 by us of the North, has hardly yet began to press 
 upon us for solution. Hitherto, among all nations, 
 the claim of capital that its power is the proper meas- 
 ure of its right have I not a right to do what I can 
 with mine own? has been practically admitted. If 
 there have been protests against the abuse of this power 
 and attempts of legislation to control it they have met 
 with small success. It is a power of all others most un- 
 scrupulous, and most difficult, it may be said impos- 
 13 
 
146 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Bible wholly to restrain, and yet a power whose con- 
 trol is indispensable to the safety and well-being of 
 the free State. The usual stereotype answer to this 
 view of the subject is easy to be repeated, with ridi- 
 cule of the author's ignorance of "The Science of 
 Political Economy." It is easy to assert that the re- 
 lations of capital and labor are those of mutual de- 
 pendence and mutual advantage. This is very true, 
 for the reason that capital must use the muscles of 
 others because it has none of its own, and muscles 
 are indispensable to the production of wealth ; and 
 for the reason that labor cannot use its own muscles 
 without asking leave of capital. And this is so by 
 reason not only of the unequal but the unjust dis- 
 tribution of wealth ; and of the monopoly by wealth 
 of the "natural agents " which are the condition of 
 productive muscular labor, the sources, in combination 
 with labor, of food and of all material on which la- 
 bor is expended. Since the muscles of the individual, 
 even in his natural relations to his mother Earth, 
 can produce little more than enough for his own nec- 
 essary consumption, it follows that accumulation of 
 wealth must be by appropriating the products of other 
 muscles than those of the owners of such wealth ; and 
 that all large accumulations of wealth imply correla- 
 tive poverty. The greater the accumulated wealth 
 and the law of wealth is increase in a geometri- 
 cal ratio the greater the poverty, and the greater the 
 number of those whose only possession is their own 
 muscles, and consequently the greater the competition 
 for the privilege of employment of such muscles. 
 The habit of accumulated capital to retire from the 
 labor-market greatly increases this competition. The 
 result and consummation of the operation of these 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 147 
 
 causes, accumulation and monopoly, is well seen in 
 the condition of English agricultural laborers and ot 
 manufacturing, mining and mercantile operatives, and 
 in the million and more of English paupers, who are 
 wholly excluded from the privilege of competition for 
 labor, not even permitted to sweep their own rooms, 
 or to wash their own rags, because this labor is de- 
 manded by those who are still outside, and struggling 
 to keep outside of the poor-house. 
 
 England offers good illustrations of the effects ot 
 obedience to the laws of Political Economy. In forty- 
 five years, from 1770 to 1815, the number of pro- 
 prietors in England and Wales diminished from 
 250,000 to 32,000. What has been going on since 
 may be learned from recent English authorities. 
 ' ' Fifty years ago, farms were very much smaller, 
 and much more numerous than at present. Besides 
 this, there were many small farms in every county 
 of England and Wales, which belonged to the farmers 
 themselves. But all this class of yeomanry farmers 
 have disappeared." 
 
 " The greater proprietors are buying up all the 
 land they can get hold of. Whenever one of the 
 small estates is put up for sale, the great proprietors 
 outbid the peasants and purchase it at all costs. The 
 consequence is, that the number of small estates has 
 been rapidly diminishing in all parts of the country. 
 In a short time none of them will remain." As this 
 kind of accumulation has been going on since 1815, 
 when the proprietors were only 32,000, we may sup- 
 pose that they are now not far from 20,000. 
 
 In the mean time the English peasant, become al- 
 together a u hind," or day-laborer, finds himself at 
 the bottom of a long series of middle-men between 
 
148 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 himself and iny lord, the proprietor, whose rent, not 
 only, but the profits of all the intermediate operators 
 are to come out of his muscles. How much of the 
 product of his labor is left for himself, and what is 
 his condition physically and mentally, one may con- 
 jecture, but 1 doubt whether any imagination can 
 come up to the reality of its horrors without the aid 
 of description, for which, see Colman's "Agricultural 
 Reports,' 7 and " The Social Condition of the English 
 People", Kay. 
 
 These descriptions remind one of the condition of 
 the French peasantry, "bestes en pare," just before 
 the Revolution See Arthur Young's "Travels in the 
 Kingdom of France." 
 
 The social disease, there, called for and received 
 "heroic treatment." Does the English aristocracy 
 mean to wait for similar remedies ? Perhaps retri- 
 butive justice may require them to do so. 
 
 But, it might be well for us of the American Re- 
 public who have had already some experience of re- 
 tributive justice to remem'ber that these and other 
 such like results of the right of unlimited property 
 in land are all in strict obedience to the laws of science, 
 The Science, of Political Economy, that these laws 
 are in operation here also, and that in all the older 
 States they are tending in the same direction towards 
 similar consequences. 
 
 The natural effect of a monopoly of the land, and 
 of aristocratic landlordism is also admirably exhibit- 
 ed in Ireland, as described by the Rev. Mr. Colman 
 in his Agricultural Reports. 
 
 ' c I never saw a more beautiful country. * * * * 
 But the wretchedness of the great mass of the popu- 
 lation is utterly beyond all description. I have been 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 into cabins dug out of the bog, with no walls but 
 the peat mud in which they have been excavated, 
 with the roof covered with turf and straw, and the 
 water standing in puddles on the outside, without 
 chimney, window, door, floor, bed, chair, table, knife 
 or fork ; the whole furniture consisting of some straw 
 to lie down upon, a pot to boil the potatoes in, a tin 
 cup to drink out of, and a wicker basket to take up 
 the potatoes in after they are boiled, which is set 
 down in the middle of the floor, and parents and 
 children squat down, like Hottentots, on the ground, 
 and eat their food with their fingers, sometimes with 
 salt and often without ; and this is literally the 
 whole of their living, day after day, and year after 
 year, excepting that on Christmas day they contrive 
 to get a little piece of meat and a bit of bread. You 
 will be curious to know if I have seen many living 
 so yes, hundreds hundreds ? yes, thousands 
 thousands ? yes, a million. I would hardly credit 
 my own senses until I went into the cabins, and felt 
 my way in the smoke ahd darkness, and actually 
 put my hand upon the turf sides. Here they all lie 
 down, parents, children, brothers and sisters, on the 
 straw at night, huddled together, literally naked be- 
 cause, the Irish . coachman said if they s wore 
 their shirts they were afraid they would be stol- 
 en." 
 
 But English hinds and Irish tenants are not the 
 only victims of British "national wealth." Large 
 accumulations cf capital, the separation of capital 
 and labor, and of brain and muscles, that is the mo- 
 nopoly of wealth and of intelligence, have, in Eng- 
 land, an effect upon the condition of the operatives in 
 the other great industries similar to that of the mono- 
 
150 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 poly of the land upon the agricultural laborers. In 
 some respects the manufacturing and mercantile 
 operatives and the unutterable dregs of the great 
 commercial towns are worse off than the laborers in 
 the field. At least they are more affected by fluctua- 
 tions of trade. Should we of the free States be will- 
 ing to see, here, a population like that of England 
 and Wales, one-halt of which can neither read nor 
 write, one-eighth of which are paupers, and half as 
 many more are half-paupers ? "VVe have only to 
 yield loyal obedience, for a little while, to the laws 
 of laissez faire political economy until they produce 
 similar monopoly of the land, and similar accumula- 
 tions of wealth when we shall have similar correla- 
 tive pauperism, similar consequent ignorance and sim- 
 ilar dregs in the great towns, as witness New York 
 tenement-houses already it is the rich, the accumu- 
 lators of land and of capital, who object to paying 
 their proportion of school-taxes, who, having, as they 
 think, made sure of their own, are very indifferent 
 to the public welfare. If there are many exceptions 
 here to the general character of the class, as there are 
 also in the political aristocracy, this does not affect 
 the general fact that successful acquisitiveness still 
 grows by what it feeds on and renders its victim 
 grasping, selfish and narrow-minded. With excess- 
 ive wealth and consequent excessive poverty and ig- 
 norance comes, of course, excess of the "working 
 classes," and what does Political Economy propose 
 to do with these, its legitimate offspring ? 
 
 The Malthusian remedy is prescribed in England 
 for the plethoric condition of labor, but the patient 
 declines to take it. A popular American treatise on 
 Political Economy also assures laborers that the re- 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 151 
 
 medy for competition and low wages is in their own 
 hands they have only to cease propagating, or to 
 propagate " prudently," so as to keep the number of 
 laborers well under the demand of capital. This 
 plan, with a careful statistician in the employ of the 
 laborers, would, doubtless, work admirably were it 
 not for the unlucky fact that increasing monopoly 
 and accumulating capital beget laborers much faster 
 than the laborers themselves can do it, even without 
 11 prudence." 
 
 Even the pious Chalmers asserts "that there is no 
 other method by which wages can be kept permanent- 
 ly high than by the moral preventive check among 
 the working classes of society." That is, the laborer 
 must keep so posted in regard to the population of 
 his class as to be able, at all time?, to determine 
 whether it would be prudent to invite more laborers 
 into this crowded world to compete, by and by, with 
 himself and then his prudence must never be off 
 guard ! 
 
 But, lest the landlords and capitalists should ob- 
 ject to this prudent information offered to the " work- 
 ing classes," Mr. Chalmers assures them that "such 
 is the strength of the principle of population that 
 there is no danger but wages will be kept sufficient- 
 ly low." It seems, then, that the " moral preventive 
 check," and k the strength of the principle" of pop- 
 ulation are so to counterbalance each other as to sat- 
 isfy both laborers and landlords. This is the protec- 
 tion which Political Economy offers to labor against 
 capital, or rather to muscles against brain.* 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 
152 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 But, as this plan has failed hitherto, what other re- 
 ihedy remains than that towards which Christianity 
 silently tends and at which legislation ought constant- 
 ly to aim, which is, not merely to control the power 
 of capital but to diminish it. The power of capital 
 for evil is either in the character of it, as where it 
 monopolizes the land or other sources of wealth as 
 in England ; or in large accumulations of it by which 
 it causes and controls a vast amount of labor, render- 
 ing the laborers progressively more and more exclu- 
 sively dependent upon it, reducing them to mere op- 
 eratives subject to the consequences of all the fluctu- 
 ations of trade, commerce and politics, as in English 
 manufactures, and by which it may even control 
 public opinion and government itself; or in its per- 
 version to purposes at the same time injurious to the 
 interest, health and morals of the commnnity, as in 
 the conversion of bread-corn into alcoholic drinks ; 
 or in combinations or other methods to control prices ; 
 and, in general, in the disjunction, separation of cap- 
 ital and labor, so that they become antagonist inter- 
 ests : while, at the same time, it increases in all me- 
 chanical employments, the proportion, of mere labor- 
 ers. Here are the elements of a dualism whose ex- 
 tremes tend ever wider asunder and which naturally 
 by producing excess of labor extends itself to 
 all kinds of business. It is plain, as has been before 
 shown, that the consequences of this tendency unre- 
 stricted must be ultimately fatal to the free State. 
 
 Just as in the political dualism the effect of Chris- 
 tianity is to elevate the lower extreme, and to dimin- 
 ish more and more the power of the aristocracy, until 
 the extremes meet, in the true Republic, in a political 
 unity, so the power of the dominant and tyrannous 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 153 
 
 extreme in the business duality must be diminished, 
 and the extremes made to approach each other imtii 
 they meet in the fusion and unity of capital aud la- 
 bor. As the business-aristocracy is but a lesser de- 
 gree of political aristocracy, in which, if left to it- 
 self it ultimately ends, so the same causes which 
 limit the power of the one limit that of the other 
 also. But as the aristocracy of capital is first in 
 the order of time, so, for obvious reasons, it will ever 
 be the last to be deprived of its power. Yet the 
 principles of Christianity applied progressively more 
 and more in detail to the business relations of men ; 
 a deeper sense of relative justice and of the meaning 
 of the command " thou shalt not steal;" a larger and 
 wider diffusion of intelligence and of moral influences 
 among laborers : wiser statesmen and wiser public 
 opinion in regard to the true ends of the State ; the 
 prohibition of accumulations of land ; le^al protec- 
 tion of homesteads ; the preservation of due propor- 
 tion among the great industrial organs of the State 
 these measures and others of the same tendency, each 
 of which Christianity demands and will ultimately in- 
 sist upon cannot fail to result in a more and more just 
 distribution of wealth, that is, a larger and larger pro- 
 portion of it to those whose labor has produced it; thus 
 at the same time preventing large accumulations of 
 capital in the hands of a few, and dividing it widely 
 among the many, so that whatever amount of capital 
 may be required for any legitimate business can be fur-, 
 nished by the laborers themselves, and in all the great 
 industries of the State the separate classes of employ- 
 ers and employes cease to exist. Thus , while the 
 power of capital for evil, where it has been most ab- 
 used, both in regard to individuals and to the State, 
 
154 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 will be taken away, its power for good will be vastly 
 increased. So, in Christ's Name, may there be in- 
 terpreted another chapter of His gospel to the poor, 
 and the problem of capital and labor be resolved. 
 Towards this consummation devoutly to be wished, if 
 our Constitutions, and our legislation hitherto have 
 done little directly, there is now at least an embryo 
 public opinion, and beginnings of legislation, though 
 crude, with a looking of laborers in the right direc- 
 tion, which give assurance that when the end is dis- 
 tinctly seen the means will not be wanting. 
 
 The aristocratic side of this duality does not, 
 however, yield its long, unbroken and all but un- 
 questioned sway without a struggle. It is even more 
 tenacious of power than political and ecclesiastical 
 aristocracies . In most countries the people have gone 
 further in limiting the tyranny of Church and State 
 despotisms than " the working classes' in restraining 
 the power of capital. If the French people had, be- 
 fore the Revolution, gained something in respect to 
 life and liberty, since the tenth century ; if political 
 aristocracy had been deprived of some of its power; 
 the aristocracy of wealth, the monopoly of land, with 
 the prescriptive droits of the Seigneurs and of the 
 Church rendered the physical condition of the pea- 
 santry little less deplorable and hopeless than that of 
 serfdom. So the English people have gained im- 
 mensely, in the same period, in their civil and politi- 
 cal relations to the government and aristocracy, and 
 especially in their relations to the church, yet surely, 
 the villeins of the old Normans must all have per- 
 ished if they had been physically worse off than 
 their descendants the present villeins of capital and 
 monopoly. 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 155 
 
 However variously modified, and adapted, the 
 power of capital, essentially the same, has always 
 been retained. Or if it has seemed to yield in 
 one direction it has been to be more aggressive in 
 another. Now, and here, in our own country, it 
 has undertaken to resume all, in form and sub- 
 stance, and principle, of what it claims to be its an- 
 cient, natural and divine rights. Hence comes irre- 
 pressible and bloody conflict. The South, backed by 
 the sympathies and material aid of all the old politi- 
 cal, ecclesiastical, commerical, manufacturing and 
 landed aristocracries, proclaims, in the name of Satan 
 and paganism: CAPITAL SHALL OWN LABOR. The 
 North, by its princples, in its feelings, and more 
 and more in its conscious purpose and its legislation, 
 with the sympathy of every people, and the prayers 
 of all Christians and believers in rightousness, says 
 no ! but in the name of God and of Christianity : 
 LET LABOR OWN CAPITAL. Here are a pair of an- 
 tagonist principles the most antagonstic of all antag- 
 onisms. They have come in conflict not now for the 
 first time nor will this be the last. This is in fact 
 the conflict of all ages and of all States. In the 
 triumphs of the first of these principles, of which 
 slavery is only one of the protean forms, are the 
 sources and strength of all other aristocracies and 
 despotisms. The triumph of the second will be, in 
 relation to the State, the ultimate and crowning 
 triumph of Christianity, and the complete realization 
 of the true Republic, the true Commonwealth. 
 
 If, in this brief review of the Organic Laws and 
 the legislation of The American Republic, it appears 
 but as a poor and thin " Shadow of Christianity," 
 which has not yet availed to heal all our diseases, a 
 
156 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 very imperfect realization of the principles of Chris- 
 tianity applied to the State ; if our early statesmen 
 did not yet see clearly all that Christianity requires 
 of the State, yet it is, and will be, glory enough for 
 them, the pioneers of the Republic, to have uttered 
 the principles of the Declaration of Independence, 
 the true interpretation, so far, of Christianity ap- 
 plied to politics ; and what a leaven, next after the 
 divine leaven of Christianity itself, not only in the 
 politics of the Republic, but in the hearts and hopes 
 of the people of all nations. If the Republic has not 
 yet realized even the principles of the Declaration, 
 which are little more than prohibitive, and far short 
 of the positive demands of Christianity, yet that their 
 leaven has not been idle, witness, in regard to almost 
 the only legal violation of them, their ever more and 
 more irrepressible, and more and more victorious 
 conflict with slavery. If there are still, even in the 
 free States, principles not yet wholly discarded, 
 which always result in practical injustice and tend to 
 political inequality, it is much, very much, to have 
 got rid of all hereditary political aristocracy, mostly 
 of prelatic domination, and especially of the combi- 
 nation and conspiracy of the two, that fountain of 
 the corruption and perversion of Christianity and of 
 the practical enslavement of the bodies end souls of 
 the people ; and much more is it to have arrived at 
 earnest discussion ot the method, and at the deter- 
 mination to find the method, by which to put an end 
 to the tyranny of capital over labor. If occupations 
 are still permitted in some States which are fountains 
 of poverty and vice and cr'me,it is something that pub- 
 lic opinion has declared war against them, and that, 
 though backed, some of them, by unrighteously 
 
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 157 
 
 acquired wealth, their abatement is only a question 
 of time. If there is still, even in New England, 
 some ignorance in regard to the most elementary 
 learning, this is almost wholly the product of Euro- 
 pean aristocracies, and it is something that the means 
 of education are provided, as in all the other non- 
 glaveholding States, and offered freely to every 
 child. Let us hope that it will soon be the duty of 
 somebody, under penalty, to see that these provisions 
 are, in every case, made efficient. In general, if, in 
 many respects, the Republic has failed hitherto to 
 realize fully the true idea of a Commonwealth, it is 
 much, that, while the consequences of imperfect leg- 
 islation are provided for, or at least alleviated, by 
 private liberality, public opinion demands more and 
 more that the sources also of evil be attacked. And; 
 herein is a great advantage of the self-governing, 
 Belt-educating State, that the good and the wise may 
 follow the method of Christianity, lay the axe to the 
 root of the tree ; while, in aristocracies, they can 
 only dip at the streams of evil of which misorganiza- 
 tion and misgovernment are the ever-flowing foun- 
 tains If the Republic is still far from its ideal, it is 
 something that it is moving in that direction, and 
 that, in its practical results. for slavery is but an 
 incubus inherited from Aristocracy, foreign to the 
 Republic, and being rapidly thrown off it is far IB 
 advance of all other nations. 
 
 If there must be a wider and deeper infusion of 
 the salt of Christianity, it is something, that, besides 
 the increasing practical piety of Christian men and 
 women, and besides a more general and more sincere 
 recognition and awe of God's hand controling the af- 
 fairs of men when, before, were political meetings 
 H 
 
158 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 opened with prayer, and closed with the Doxology ? 
 besides this the clergy, universally, even that class 
 which like other aristocracies has hitherto inclined to 
 be ''conservative" of evil, even they, with the 
 exception of now and then a paganized bishop, are 
 preaching more and more fully and earnestly the 
 true principles and doctrines of the New Testament. 
 Have we, therefore, occasion for discouragement ? or 
 have we not rather for hope, that, taught, by our own 
 present experience, the just consequences of admit- 
 ting an unrighteous principle into our fundamental 
 laws, we shall eliminate from them, not only that 
 which is the cause of our present disaster and dishon- 
 or, but all others of like character, and be on our 
 guard hereafter that no more such be admitted. So, 
 if we are capable of learning by experience, may 
 our present punishment be greatly to our future 
 amendment. 
 
 Let us hope, then, and pray and labor, and be 
 confident, that, notwithstanding our own imperfec- 
 tions, and in spite of the malevolence of those who 
 hate because they envy and tear us, even with the 
 filthy stream ever inevitably flowing in upon us from 
 the aristocratic fountains of Europe, let us not doubt 
 that the American Republic shall yet apprehend 
 clearly, and realize, fully as the perverseness of man 
 permits, the true ends of the human State, and so 
 attain to " the utmost perfection of which it is capa- 
 ble according to its rank and kind." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 While these sheets are going through the pros-.s, I have pro- 
 cured a copy of the latest edition of John Stuart Mill's " Princi- 
 ples of Political Economy," and am happy to find that, on several 
 important points, especially in their " Applications to Social 
 Philosophy," his principles nearly or quite coincide with, and 
 sustain by his great authority, the opinions indicated in tho 
 chapter of this treatise on "The American ;.u'puHic." 
 
 He advocates free trade in land. Vet his principles imply li- 
 mitation of quantity in both directions. For he thinks an un- 
 expected opinion in an Englishman that production is increased 
 by small farms, and also a much more important point that 
 the intellectual, moral and social character of small proprietors, 
 as well as their physical well-being, is superior to that of agri- 
 cultural laborers. If there is tendency to division of land for 
 agriculture of which he thinks there is little danger beyond 
 a quantity sufficient for the support of a family, he advises legal 
 restraint. Indeed he would place the land wholly in the power 
 of the State without regard to private ownership. "When the 
 * sacredness of property' is talked of, it is to be remembered, 
 that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to 
 landed property. No man made the lam). It is the original in- 
 heritance of the whole species. The appropriation is wholly a 
 question of expediency. The claim of the landowners to the land 
 is altogether subord nate to the general policy of the State. The 
 principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a 
 right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the 
 land it may be the policy of the State to deprive them of." 
 
 This is certainly sufficiently radical treatment of the land, and 
 gives the State power to limit ownership in all directions. That 
 it should be limited in the direction of too much is as desirable as 
 it is that it should be cultivated by many proprietors instead of 
 hordes of mere agricultural laborers. That there is a tendency 
 to hurtful accumulations of the land, and therefore need of limi- 
 tation by the State, is proved by the history of its distribution 
 among all nations. We have only to call to mind the relation of 
 
160 APPENDIX. 
 
 the cultivators to the land in Asia, the " latifu\dia' * of the Ro- 
 man Senators, half the land of Europe th% property of the church 
 in the middle ages, ownership in England, &c. Or, if it be said 
 that these are results of obsolete civilizations, we may see the 
 same tendency in this country in spite of perfectly free trade in 
 land and equal division among heirs, where, not only in the late 
 slave States, but in the free, and even in New England the pro- 
 portion of laborers to proprietors is on the increase. There is a 
 gratification to the pride of wealth in being lord of the soil be- 
 sides the social and political influence whi h goes along with it. 
 Even the vulgar rich like to sport their parks and drives, not be- 
 cause they know how to enjoy them, but because they fancy that 
 they confer a patrician air upon their possessors. 
 
 In regard to accumulations of wealth, his doctrines, though 
 eminently just, would be reckoned over-radical even in Massa- 
 chusetts. He sees " no reason why collateral inheritance should 
 exist at all." The property in case of intestacy " should escheat 
 to the State." The interests of children, he thinks, would be bet- 
 ter consulted by a moderate than by a large provision. This, 
 therefore, is all that is due to them from the parent, or from the 
 State in case the parent dies intestate. Even the power of be- 
 'quest should be subject to limitation. 
 
 His plan of " raising a class of small proprietors" by dividing 
 "".common land" "into sections of five acres each or there- 
 abouts, to be conferred in absolute property on individuals of the 
 laboring class who would reclaim and bring them into cultiva- 
 tion by their own labor" ; and to make these small estates if ne- 
 cessary " indivisible by law" this plan is a very near approach 
 to the true idea of a homestead 
 
 He does not join tne Bishops in exhorting slaves and other 
 *' laboring poor" to " be content with the condition in which 
 God has placed them," and then, on the approach of starvation, 
 dole out to them in charity a minute proportion of the products 
 of their own labor. He does not believe such relations to be of 
 God's appointment, and therefore permanent. " When I speak, 
 either in this place or elsewhere, of " the labouring classes," or 
 of labourers as a " class," I use those phrases in compliance with 
 eastern, and as descriptive of an existing, but by no means a ne- 
 cessary or permanent, state of social relations. I do not recog- 
 nize as either just or salutary, a state of society in which there is 
 any ** class" which is not laboring ; any human beings exempt 
 from bearing their share of the necessary labors of human life, 
 except those unable to labor, or who have fairly earned rest by 
 previous toil. So long, however, as the great social evil exists 
 '<of a no n -laboring class, laborers also constitute a class, and 
 
APPENDIX. 1GI 
 
 may be spoken of, though only provisionally, in that character." 
 The time has gone by when the "rich should be in loco parentfs 
 to the poor, guiding and restraining them like children." AEH! 
 when they are thankfully to receive such wages, such proportion 
 of the products of their own labor, as their employers please t 
 offer them. " The working classes have taken their interests into 
 their own hands, and are perpetually showing that they think tbe 
 interests of their employers not identical with their own, but op- 
 posite to them." This is welcome language from an Englishman, 
 and member of the British Parliament. 
 
 His great hope, in regard to "the future of the labouring 
 classes," is in their proper education, and in the combination 1" 
 labour and capital not the union of mere labour with mere ca- 
 p'tal, when, even where labour, besides wages, receives a certain 
 percentage, just to make it more faithful and efficient, capital 
 gets the lion's .share; but the association of individuals each of 
 whom furnishes both capital and labour, so that in all industrial 
 employments cvipital shall no longer own labcur, either legally or 
 actually, but labour .shall own capital. I find that in Europe- 
 much in-ill - !, \> already boon done in that direction than I had 
 opposed. 
 
 He is decidedly in favor of free trade commercially, us all 
 Englishmen are bound to be, .mi to all unnecessary in- 
 
 termeddling of government with individual freedom in business 
 matters. Yet he would limit laissez fairc in many important 
 respects. Government should not only provide the means of edu- 
 cation for all the people, but " require i'mm all the people that 
 they shall possess instruction in certain things," if not at the 
 public expense then at their own. Government should interfere* 
 with the free control of parents over their children to prevent 
 their being abused, murdered, (burial clubs?) over-worked, or- 
 uneducated. 
 
 He would make the practical maxim of leaving contracts free 
 subject to many limitations, and after contracts are made govern- 
 ment should decide whether they are fit to be enforced. 
 
 In regard to roads, canals, railways, gas, and water works, 
 which are, for the most part, practically, chartered monopolies, 
 he thinks they should either be under direct government man- 
 agement, or that government should "subject the business to 
 reasonable conditions for the general advantage, or retain such 
 power over it, that the profits of the monopoly may at least be ob- 
 tained for the public." 
 
 This, like his advice in regard to inheritances, is better than 
 nothing, though a very imperfect remedy, inasmuch as, by this 
 method, the extortionous gains reach only in very small propor- 
 
162 APPENDIX . 
 
 tion the muscles which produced them. The aim should be to 
 prevent accumulations which the public good requires to be con- 
 fiscated. Great wealth is the correlative of poverty, and the ele- 
 ment of injustice which has somewhere entered into it cannot be 
 eliminated by any after methods of restoration to the rightful 
 owners. 
 
 It is alto to be considered whether the law may not sometimes 
 interfere to give validity to concert among individuals in regard 
 to matters affecting their common interest, as where laborers 
 agree that a certain number of hours shall be reckoned a day's 
 work. 
 
 lie would relax his antiprotectionist doctrines in favor of " the 
 interests of national defence." But what article is there, almost, 
 the home production of which may not at some time, at any 
 time, lie necessary for the national defence, and whose production 
 might not for a time need protection, or if very important for na- 
 tional defence, ought it not to have, if necessary, permanent pro- 
 tection? 
 
 He admits too that, " on mere principles of political economy, 
 protecting duties may be defensible where they are imposed 
 temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation) in hopes of 
 naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the 
 circumstances of the country." 
 
 There is applicable here a remark which he makes in another 
 connection. "Much has been said of the good economy of im- 
 porting commodities from the place where they can be bought 
 cheapest ; while the good economy of producing them where they 
 can be produced cheapest, is comparatively little thought of." 
 
 When a commodity can be, after temporary protection, pro- 
 duced as cheap at home as abroad, it is cheaper produced at home 
 by the cost of freight from abroad. When by the naturalization 
 of all such foreign industries the natural resources of the State 
 have been developed, and all those important to national defence 
 have been established, for how many industries would protection 
 be needed or asked for ? Certainly nobody would ask protection 
 for the production of rice in Massachusetts, or of cotton in Eng- 
 land, or, in general, for that of any commodity which, through 
 defect of soil, climate, or any other permanent condition must 
 cost more at home than from abroad. In all such cases com- 
 merce, plainly, should be the complement of other industries, un- 
 leas the home-production of the article is indispensable to national 
 defence. But if iron, when the manufacture should be established, 
 could be produced as cheap in Pennsylvania as in Sweden, or in 
 England, should the cost of freight be added to the price, and the 
 profits of the manufacturers abroad, of the carriers and import- 
 
APPENDIX. I0o 
 
 ers, be protected by refusing protection ? How often is free trade 
 free to monopolize the market, and, by conspiracies of old and 
 rich establishments, to break down and prevent any foreign ris- 
 ing competition, and so to dictate its own extortionous prices, and 
 transform free trade into free stealing! Or the home " commer- 
 cial interest" might prove itself a self-interest by preventing for 
 its own profit a home manufacture required by the common in- 
 terest. 
 
 There can be no objection, however, to Mr. Mill's free trade, 
 eince he allows protection to all industries which can be success- 
 fully naturalized, and to all which are necessary to national de- 
 fence. 
 
 Free trade, however, unlimited foreign commerce, Ins rela- 
 tions and bearings, moral, social, and political, much higher 
 than those of mere Political Economy. 
 
 In regard to Mr. Mill's eulogy of foreign commerce as the 
 great civilizer of barbarians, as the source of important inf- 
 tual and moral good influence among civilized nations, as first 
 teaching " nations to see with good willthc wealth and prosperi- 
 ty of one another," &c. it is perhaps indicathe of ill temper 
 not to be pleased with M> fair a picture, but, houever disp.-sed to 
 admire it, it is difficult to avoid that it .shouM >ujxa>t the recol- 
 lection o( some facts in the history of oommerc i'oth 
 those of ancient and of modern times. Let us forget that com- 
 merce originated in piracy that was a long time ago. But how 
 did the early commercial States of the Mediterranean, Tyre, 
 Athens, Carthage, civilize the barbarians upon its borders? By 
 conquest, oppressive tribute, "slavery and the whip." Which 
 are also reckoned good method* for barbarians by some modern 
 commercial people. 
 
 The Venetians also, in the middle ages, illustrated the comity 
 of the commercial character, especially by exporting from Europe 
 children, mule as well as female, both for the harems of their 
 Eastern friends the Mihornedans. 
 
 In modern times, the treatment of the natives of South Ameri- 
 ca and of the West Indies by Spain is an example of the commer- 
 cial civilization of barbarians. The treatment of Africa by all the 
 commercial people of Europe, especially by England, who nego- 
 tiated a monopoly of the slave-trade, is another good example. 
 Indeed, it is claimed, and that too by Bishops, that the commer- 
 cial method of civilization, by exportation and sale, is, for Afri- 
 cans, superior even to that of Christianity. 
 
 For the " good will" of " merchant princes" towards nations 
 incapable of self-defence, see the history of the East India Com- 
 pany, and particularly the survey of certain provinces by Bucha- 
 
164 A I' P K S DI X . 
 
 nan, published by Martin also the *' opium war," the compul- 
 sory production of opium in India to be thrust upon the Chinese, 
 for their civilization, at the point of the bayonet- also the com- 
 mercial method of " opening the ports'* of China, Japan, Siam, 
 &c. The history of the Dutch in Java and the Phillipines also il- 
 lustrates the "good will" of the commercial character. 
 
 It would, perhaps, not be fair to mention the wars of modern 
 Europe originating in commercial jealousy. Mr. Mill might say 
 they were owing to false and obsolete doctrines of Political Eco- 
 nomy. Would this excuse in seme degree their cruelty and sel- 
 fishness ? 
 
 What, then, shall we say to a recent case not arising under 
 obsolete doctrines a remarkable practical commentary upon the 
 fact that, * commerce teaches nations to see with gocd will the 
 wealth and prosperity of one another" a case where the insur- 
 gents of a friendly people were, vpon a mere declaration of their 
 hostile intentions, given, to their great advantage, the rights of 
 belligerents ; and the whole mercantile Interest of a certain State 
 engaged eagerly in almost open piracy and plunder of the com- 
 merce of a rival nation, and, in the most exulting and insulting- 
 language, expressed its joy at the probable ruin of " the wealth 
 and prosperity" of a kindred State ! 
 
 These facts are, I think, a sufficient defence of what I have said 
 of the natural character, and tendency to excess, of commerce ; 
 to which if there is added the consideration of the immense masses 
 of mere operatives of the lowest grade which it employs, and the 
 character for sharp dealing of almost all grades of shopkeepers in 
 large commercial cities, it must be acknowledged that the "moral 
 influence" of commerce is yrcat, but that it is yood is not at all 
 obvious. 
 
 The great importance, and often the necessity of foreign com- 
 merce, especially for small States having little variety of climate, 
 and of agricultural and mining products, is not to be denied. The 
 co mvarative cost of production, in two distant countries, both of 
 which are capable of producing two given commodities may also 
 render an interchange of present mutual advantage notwithstand- 
 ing the labor expended in the double freight. 
 
 It may, for example, be for the present mutual advantage of 
 the parties that Illinois should send wheat to England, and re- 
 ceive English cloths in return But, surely, unless it is desirable 
 to increase the sum total of human labor, on the principle of fur- 
 nishing employment for the working classes, there, is here an im- 
 mense waste of labor, and however it might be for the English 
 manufacturers I cannot help thinking that it would be for the in- 
 terest of the Illinois farmers if the consumers of their wheat were 
 at Chicago instead of Manchester. 
 
APPENDIX . 165 
 
 It cannot be made to appear from such instances of temporary 
 or permanent mutual benefit by interchange of commodities that 
 the common interest of each nation will be best secured by leav- 
 ing each particular Interest to seek unrestrained its own self- 
 interest ; nor that the common good of all commercial nations is 
 best promoted where each great Interest and each nation seeks 
 wholly its own uncontrolled except by the " good will" that Mr. 
 Mill speaks of. But such is unlimited free trade, more appro- 
 priately named free fight, in which, as in all other free fights, tho 
 weaker goes to the wall. 
 
 The conclusions of Political Economy, so far as it has any 
 claim to the character of a science, imply that the human agent* 
 who execute its laws are as impassive and passionless as the 
 wheels of a spinning jenny, while, in fact, the practical results of 
 the play of the real forces are, for the most part, such as chance 
 advantage among equals, or unprincipled power in relation to 
 weakness, or unfeeling wealth in relation to poverty, or selfish in- 
 tellect in relation to ignorance may choose to determine. 
 
 Mr. Mill seems to have transferred his own amiable character 
 to his ideal of foreign commerce, and to look upon all nations as 
 members of one great family, each by free commercial intercoureg 
 promoting and rejoicing in its own prosperity and that of all tho 
 others, although he is far enough from attributing such " good 
 will" to individuals and interests in the same nation, and is se- 
 vere on the relations of the higher classes to the lower, the rich 
 to the poor, and the antagonism of capital and labor. He seemi 
 not to have conceived of a single State as a complete organic 
 whole performing all its own functions and maintaining all iUl 
 natural organs in their due measure and just relations to each 
 other, or, if any legitimate organ is deficient, making foreign 
 commerce only the complement of its own fully developed re- 
 sources. But this surely is the only true and safe policy for eve- 
 ry State, in proportion to its natural ability to realize it, until 
 the good will of nations towards each other shall actually become 
 such as Mr. Mill speaks of. 
 
 Considering Mr. Mill's opinions in regard to the just distribu- 
 tion of wealth, and the probability of its not distant accomplish- 
 ment, I am surprised to find that he agrees violently with Mal- 
 thus and Chalmers in regard to the necessity of the "moral, 
 preventive check" upon population as the indispensable remedy 
 for low wages and that he believes it can be made an efficient 
 remedy. First, in regard to the efficiency oi this remedy what 
 is the probability of the "laboring classes" being elevated to tho 
 requisite grade of intelligence and prudence, until the remedy for 
 low wages is otherwise first found, and continued long enough to 
 
166 APPENDIX. 
 
 confirm the laborer in habits of comfort, and to give him a res- 
 pectability and self-respect, to preserve which, he will be ready 
 to control the strongest instincts and affections of his nature. 
 Will laborers as a class be, thus, or in any other way, at all times 
 ready to forego a present indulgence through prudent foresight of 
 a possible but uncertain inconvenience twenty years hence ? Or, 
 is it likely that public opinion and private conscience will ever be 
 brought to demand so imperatively as to control "the strength of 
 the principle of population" to the degree that it shall be ac- 
 counted a vice and a crime for a married pair traders lampada 
 vita to more than a single pair of offspring to take their own 
 places ? If this were possible at what a cost of much more immo- 
 ral and dangerous practices would it be attained. 
 
 Second, in regard to the necessity of this remedy. To us, in 
 this country , where we both produce and import population ad 
 libitum, we cannot appreciate the necessity. The Malthusian me- 
 thod strikes an American as ridiculously inefficient and abortive. 
 Doubtless it would be a convenient method of diminishing the 
 competition for labor, if the laborers should choose to adopt it, 
 morally much less objectionable than that by " burial clubs." 
 Cut that any government not a mere faineant should admit its 
 necessity, or that there can exist any necessity requiring such a 
 remedy within any definite number of millenniums is quite incre- 
 dible. "Why, the land of the planet can feed thirty thousand 
 millions of men, and the waters probably ^alf as many more, and 
 it has at present little more than one thousand millions. 
 
 Undoubtedly, as Mr. Mill says, " there is not much satisfaction 
 in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous 
 activity of nature ; every flowery waste or natural pasture 
 ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated 
 for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow 
 or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a 
 wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a 
 weed in the name of improved agriculture. ' ' 
 
 Who would not wish that all such wild ruralities may not be- 
 colne extinct in his time? But, at the rate of increase of popu- 
 lation for the last five or six thousand years, it will require not 
 far from two hundred thousand years, before the Earth will ar- 
 rive at the unhappy condition of surface deprecated by Mr Mill. 
 Surely we may, without selfishness, neglect to look out for the es- 
 thetic enjoyment of our posterity beyond that period. 
 
 If then, we can attain to a just distribution of the products of 
 labor, and of labor itself, an abatement of the drones of society, 
 when the law of Christianity shall be executed " if any man will 
 network neither shall he eat" when men shall no longer be di- 
 
APPENDIX. 107 
 
 vided into great but unequal castes, one to perform exclusively 
 the function of the brain, another that of the muscles, and a 
 third fruyes consumer e nati, but the existence of a voluntary 
 organ shall carry with it the right and the duty ol its legitimate 
 exercise ; when governments shall adopt the natural and obvious 
 remedy for over-population, always instinctively known and 
 practiced by animals, COLONIZATION, as exemplified by Mr. Mill 
 himself; when men shall thus follow Mr. Mill's own excellent 
 teaching, and obey God's second great command to "subdue the 
 Earth," may they not, then, also obey the first, " be fruitful," 
 and pass " the torch of life," not with niggard and selfish pre- 
 caution and fear of being encroached upon, but freely and merri- 
 ly, so it be normally, from hand to hand. 
 
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