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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN 
 AT LOS ANGELES

 
 A GLANCE AT 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 SHORT ESSAYS ON 
 
 THE RISE AND BASIS OF GOVERNMENT, 
 
 THE STUDY OF POLITICS, THE UNITY 
 
 OF SOVEREIGNTY, AND THE 
 
 SAVING PRINCIPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 CICERO W. HARRIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "a (fORTHCOMINg) HISTORY OF THE 
 SECTIONAL struggle" 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 1896 
 
 » O » J IS ' 
 
 » « » * » • 
 
 • C' ' 
 
 ■ « « >
 
 Copyright, 1896, 
 
 BY 
 
 Cicero W. Harris.
 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH THE 
 
 PROFOUND RESPECT OF THE AUTHOR, 
 
 TO HIS FRIEND 
 
 B. J. SAGE, Esq., 
 
 AUTHOR or " THE REPUBLIC OF REPUBLICS," 
 
 SINCEREST OF AMERICAN POLITICAL THINKERS. 
 
 G2G771
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The first two divisions of this " Fragment 
 
 of Government'' * treat of government in 
 
 general ; the last three, of government in 
 
 the United States. The whole is simply 
 
 what its title imports, — " A Glance at 
 
 Government." 
 
 Cicero W. Harris. 
 
 Washington, February, 1896. 
 * Bentham.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 The Rise of Government 9 
 
 The Basis of Government 26 
 
 The Study of Politics 32 
 
 The Unity of Sovereignty 38 
 
 The Saving Principle 45
 
 THE 
 
 RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 No statement of the origin of civilization 
 and pfovernment is reasonable which does 
 not take into consideration the condition 
 of the world as it is revealed by research 
 into prehistoric manners and customs. In 
 other words, the world of to-day is not the 
 world of yesterday in important particulars. 
 Sir John Lubbock, with the instinct of the 
 naturalist, seeks in the present life and 
 usages among savages the key to the mys- 
 teries of the archaic past. He thinks he 
 finds in the endogamy and exogamy of the 
 Polynesians and Southern Africans, in the 
 brute-like solitude of the Dyaks of Borneo, 
 and in various other traits' of barbarous 
 peoples in the existing world a sufificient 
 explanation of what lay beyond the ken 
 of the oldest students in the early ages of 
 
 9
 
 lO A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Etruria, and 
 " almighty Rome." On the other hand, 
 such historical investigators into law and 
 government as Sir Henry Maine, men of 
 supreme fidelity to the critical method and 
 of comprehensive and luminous intellects, 
 have not availed themselves of all the 
 knowledge within their reach, — knowledge 
 which would have modified their views on 
 some topics and extended their outlook in 
 all directions. Perhaps, after all, the truest 
 view of the origin of civilization has been 
 taken by those French and German sci- 
 entists who are free from scepticism, on 
 the one hand, and from the transcendental 
 notions of modern philosophy on the 
 other. The critical method has ascertained 
 during this century at least these cardinal 
 points bearing on our subject : The true 
 philology, without which any study of 
 early institutions would be impossible ; 
 through that the foundation of Aryan civ- 
 ilization in the wonderful Sanscrit texts ; 
 the knowledge of early Roman law in the 
 discovery by Niebuhr at Rome of the 
 treatise by the great jurisconsult, Gains;
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. II 
 
 the "finds" in Behistun, Nineveh, Rosetta, 
 and on the upper Nile, the revelations 
 (vague as they are) of the Moabitish 
 mountain cities, the very latest unearthings 
 of Troy, Tiryns, and Mykaenae by Schlie- 
 mann. The age has been prolific of the 
 most brilliant and the most profound 
 scholarship. To mention the mere names 
 of the investigators would take the space 
 of an article of more than average length, 
 and then — such is human infirmity — some 
 of the very greatest would inevitably be 
 omitted. 
 
 Early man, — what was he, absolutely 
 and relatively? Far down in the bowels 
 of Southwestern France, in ancient Ger- 
 many, in the kitchen-middens of Denmark, 
 in the mounds of North America, remains 
 of an extinct civilization have recently 
 been exhumed. With the buried races 
 of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, at least, 
 savans have remarked the presence of the 
 implements of civilization far different from 
 any known to exist among the races of 
 man which have flourished in the geolog- 
 ical period in which we live. Crude but
 
 12 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 distinct drawings on bone far in advance 
 of the execution of the lowest savages of 
 our ao-e have been recovered. It has been 
 seen that the polar bear, the mammoth, 
 the reindeer of a huge now non-existent 
 species, stalked the plains and primeval 
 forests of Gaul and the Netherlands. 
 Trees that no lonrer live in such latitudes 
 
 o 
 
 have been found in the peat bogs of Scan- 
 dinavia. Philology has come to the aid 
 of palaeontology and archaeology, and 
 words have been unravelled and roots have 
 been traced through a dozen languages up 
 to their primitive source or sources. In- 
 stead of the verbal culture which simplified 
 the speech of early man, as heretofore 
 imagined, we see that he spoke in poly- 
 syllables w^ords of learned length and 
 thundering sound. Indeed, all of our 
 forefathers' ideas with respect to primitive 
 culture have been revolutionized. Science 
 has blown its breath on them, and they 
 have perished. 
 
 The first man was timorous. He trem- 
 bled, as Montesquieu says, at the fall of 
 a leaf. But wdien other men came, and
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 1 3 
 
 association was formed, we had the first 
 society. It came about in mutual need 
 and knowledge. Men, like some animals, 
 must have company. The first movement 
 was probably friendly, the second hostile; 
 some men, not satisfied with what they had 
 by occupation or combination, made war 
 for conquest or imagined self-protection on 
 others. Hence associations for govern- 
 ment and wars of conquest and aggran- 
 dizement. 
 
 Before diversity of race arose there was 
 civilization and government. Before na- 
 tions there were tribes. Before tribes 
 there were communities. Before com- 
 munities there were families. The first 
 governor of men was the patriarch, the 
 first rule that of patria potcstas, as the 
 civil lawyers phrase it. Out of the need 
 of society sprang the rule of the one. 
 But it was not perhaps in the beginning a 
 despotic rule, as of an absolute master 
 over life and property, but representative, 
 the father first, then the father's direct de- 
 scendants, then his fictitious representa- 
 tives, and last of all a collateral descend-
 
 14 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ant. The patriarch among Chaldeans, 
 Hebrews, and Hindoos was head of the 
 family in religious usage as well as 
 material concerns. He offered the earliest 
 sacrifices as pontifex maximus by right of 
 his position. The very earliest worship 
 was that of a Supreme Being — it may 
 have been anthropomorphic or otherwise. 
 The Hebrew and Semitic God was a per- 
 sonal deity. But the Aryan Dyaus-pitar 
 (Heaven-father) seems to have been a 
 Divine Reason embodied, if embodied, in 
 the errand element that was imminent in 
 thought and potency at the moment. If 
 lightning, it was Indra ; if earthly creature, 
 Agni ; and so forth. The earliest religious 
 culture was simple but very pure. Error 
 crept in apace as wealth was acquired and 
 the conquering arms brought under newer 
 and lower races. It is not necessary to 
 accept all the philosophers say as to the 
 oricrin of religion. Suffice it to claim as 
 probably true that all races, all nations 
 that have appeared on the earth, have 
 been worshippers in some guise of super- 
 natural power. Among most of the an-
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 1 5 
 
 cients this power or these powers were a 
 part of the visible world or universe. The 
 modern notion of abstraction of deity 
 seems to have been but dimly grasped by 
 a few of the more elevated minds among 
 the ancients. In India, religion continued 
 to be the basis of society and government. 
 The Brahmans superseded the Vedic hym- 
 nologists, and laid heavy burdens on the 
 conscience. At first there was no caste. 
 Then the Brahman claimed an intellectual 
 and spiritual primacy. He did not arro- 
 gate material pomp and dignity, but left, 
 as a general thing, the administration of 
 the reeal eovernment to the two other 
 high-caste elements, the Kshatriya and 
 Vaisyha. But he was priest, lawyer, and 
 teacher. Failing other heirs, and some- 
 times even if there were other heirs, he 
 succeeded to his pupils' estate. 
 
 The world was probably peopled from 
 Armenia or the table-lands of Pamir, in 
 the northwest of India and northeast of 
 Afghanistan, south of Central Asia.* But 
 
 * Latham gives Germany as the birthplace of the 
 Aryan nations.
 
 l6 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 there is respectable authority among phil- 
 ologists and ethnologists for the statement 
 that the original home of the Aryan or 
 Indo-European family of nations was in 
 Germany. Geiger quotes on this head 
 the Englishman Latham with entire ap- 
 probation, but without any convincing 
 argument. It is certain that only a small 
 part of the great human species belongs 
 to this progressive race. The larger por- 
 tion springs from other sources, and has 
 remained, if not stationary, at least at a 
 comparatively low state of development 
 within the knowledge of civilized peoples. 
 But it is a mistake to rate such races as 
 the Finns, the Arabs, the Chinese, as un- 
 deserving of the notice of historians and 
 anthropologists. Possibly the theory of 
 the Frenchman Quatrefages, a very con- 
 servative investigator, is the correct one : 
 they arrived at a period of development 
 commensurate with their physical and 
 mental powers, and while their skulls in- 
 dicate the ability to make enlargement of 
 faculties, the disposition has been wanting, 
 due probably, as another authority states,
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 1/ 
 
 to the morbid character of their ancestor 
 worship. However that may be, and we 
 know that religion is one of the most im- 
 portant bases of national character, — how- 
 ever, we say, that may be, the master race 
 of history has been the Aryan, taking any 
 considerable stretch of time in which to 
 judge. But, as might easily be shown, it 
 is not the great Aryan race which first 
 built cities and established empires, which 
 founded the science of astronomy, which 
 invented letters ; but that people of lingual 
 affinity with the Turks and Finns, the 
 Accadians, or ancient Chaldeans.* Both 
 Assyria and Egypt were probably in ex- 
 istence before the earliest invasion of what 
 is now known as Hindostan. The Aryans 
 were first a hunting then a pastoral race, 
 long before they knew what commerce 
 was or had a name for ship or ocean. 
 
 We have not discussed the unity or 
 variety of mankind, but have rather as- 
 
 * The very latest investigators seem to throv^f some 
 doubt on this, but I have kept the text unaltered as in- 
 dicating the probable view. 
 
 2*
 
 1 8 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 sumed the former. It is a demonstrable 
 theory, aside from Scriptural revelation. 
 But space is wanting for proofs. Some of 
 the more recent scientists have shown that 
 both Darwin and Agassiz were mistaken 
 in the assumption of various origins of 
 the human species. 
 
 In this essay the physical method has 
 been relied upon in part and the lingual in 
 part ; for science is one, and the basis of 
 civilization is neither exclusively mental 
 nor entirely moral, however much the 
 ethical and philosophical elements may 
 enter into the statement. 
 
 Before defining what we mean by gov- 
 ernment and liberty, let us sum up the 
 particulars of elementary man. i. We 
 have a creature at the head of creation, 
 endowed with reason and free agency. 2. 
 His relations are with, first, a supreme 
 Creator and Governor ; second, his fellow- 
 men ; third, his own future. These rela- 
 tions determine his whole status and fix 
 him in the scale of being. They are 
 necessary to his continued rational exist- 
 ence. Without the idea of God he is
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 1 9 
 
 Spiritually hopeless. Without civil rela- 
 tions he is a cave-dweller, adrift on the 
 wilderness, at the mercy of the strongest 
 and fiercest, having no comfort, no real 
 pleasures, no mental exhilaration, no def- 
 inite aims of existence, no care for any- 
 thing higher or better than simple food, 
 scant raiment, crude lodging, and content 
 with these and physical safety from the 
 storm and ravening beast or insidious rep- 
 tile. Whatever man may have been in the 
 beginning, he had desires above these, we 
 believe on evidence : he was endowed with 
 at least gesture if not simple speech, and he 
 looked beyond the present life, it may have 
 been faintly, gropingly, imagining death an 
 extended sleep with dreams of things he 
 knew in the life of the present. We con- 
 ceive of primitive man as a rational creat- 
 ure, and as such possessed of faculties 
 above those of mere imitation and brute 
 necessity. We conceive of him as a moral 
 creature, recognizing God through that 
 spark from the Divine Spirit, his immortal 
 soul. We conceive of him, last of all, as 
 a social being compelled by the instincts
 
 20 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 and aspirations of his order to make society 
 and established government for his own 
 welfare and pleasure. 
 
 The first government was patriarchal. 
 As the wants of men and the number of 
 men increased families became village 
 communities or septs, and these in turn 
 formed by association, clans, tribes, and 
 nations. At first, all of the members of 
 the little state were bound by close con- 
 sanguineous ties. Then, as the common- 
 wealth grew, the family (this was in India, 
 but something like it was seen in other 
 early nations) became a sort of fiction and 
 was incorporated by the name of Joint 
 Undivided Family. The patria potestas 
 was extended to the nearest of kin in the 
 direct line, presently to be supplied in de- 
 fault of heirs by various substitutes and 
 the collateral kindred. The principle of 
 representation is not once lost, but is kept 
 alive even after the joint family has passed 
 (not by absorption, however) into the tribe 
 and the father or father's representative 
 has become the chieftain. In this primi- 
 tive state, some of the philosophers and
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 21 
 
 savans represent, the wives as well as the 
 lands and flocks were communal. Religion 
 in the far East, at least, degenerated into 
 ancestor worship or the cult of the pitris. 
 The more Eastern nations reached early 
 a stage of considerable cultivation and 
 stopped developing, perhaps not suddenly, 
 perhaps not altogether at all, but only by 
 comparison with the Western robust 
 nations of modern times. The highest 
 culture ever obtained was that of Athens, 
 the highest jurisprudence that of Rome. 
 There is nothing in the art and law of India 
 and China comparable with the ideas of the 
 Periclean, Augustan, and Justinian ages. 
 
 This essay is too short for a review of 
 the influence of religion and culture upon 
 law and government. We know that some 
 nations who achieved a noble development 
 in art and literature had low ideals in re- 
 ligion and defective principles of govern- 
 ment. But it is probably safe to say that 
 no permanent and high civilization in the 
 completest sense is possible where there is 
 no just conception of the relation between 
 these branches of civilization. Certainly
 
 22 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the remark is true of some ancient nations 
 whose civihzation is buried and lost. Egyp- 
 tian beast and river worship, the external 
 form of an internal religion, — that of the 
 priests, — may not at first glance consort 
 with the grand, massive art of Luxor and 
 the splendors of Memphis. But the ser- 
 vile people, who obeyed their own natures 
 in bowing down to the crocodile and the 
 will of a tyrant in placing great stones one 
 upon the other, through centuries, fell at 
 last into such degradation as has over- 
 taken only those nations who have imitated 
 their example or, without having it before 
 their eyes, have adopted its spirit. The 
 high Aryan conqueror, springing from the 
 cradle of nations and waving his scimitar 
 as his warrant of authority, may not in 
 the earlier days of his power have had 
 " the wisdom of the Egyptians," but he 
 had what was far better, a clearer idea of 
 his place among men and his responsi- 
 bility to the Supernal Power. 
 
 Man is great by inheritance and effort. 
 The German, Celtic, and Slavonian races 
 are the foremost because they have not
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 23 
 
 sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. 
 Not the first to leave their ancestral seats 
 among the high table-lands of Asia, back- 
 ward it may be said in building empires, 
 these Indo-Europeans going westward and 
 southward, never eastward, have hewn out 
 at last a gigantic civilization of ideas and 
 freedom which is fast overspreading the 
 earth with its power and beneficence. It 
 has been fashionable to obscure the re- 
 ligious side of our Aryan ancestors, and 
 to .speak of those ideas as coming alto- 
 gether from an alien and inferior race, the 
 Semitic. Not so do we read the book of 
 their history as seen in the study of lan- 
 guage, in the remains of rude art and in 
 the fragments of Greek, Roman, and Hin- 
 doo literature, to say nothing of tradition, 
 folk lore, existing laws, customs, and man- 
 ners. Max Miiller's translations have 
 made the present generation familiar with 
 the religion of the first Hindoos. It was 
 not a crude pagan worship of stocks, 
 stones, and reptiles, but the adoration of 
 the grand powers of Nature as t}'pifying 
 the One Power ineffable in hea\-en far
 
 24 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 away. Let us never lose sight of this great 
 fact. The gods of Northman and Teu- 
 ton, although harsher in their vindictive 
 aspect than Aditi and the seven supreme 
 gods of the Vedas, were not the fierce 
 spirits of darkness to propitiate whose ma- 
 lign power the Shaman prays and shakes 
 his rattle. No god of Kaffir or Australian 
 in our advanced age rivals Balder. What 
 a distance in conception of human and 
 divine relations is there between the Poly- 
 nesian and the most primitive Aryan ! 
 
 We reach another stage of thought here. 
 Has civilization always progressed, or has 
 it sometimes receded through ages in 
 certain nations and races ? This is the 
 philosopher's crux. We hold, against a 
 powerful school, that there has not been 
 uniform, nor any thing approaching uniform, 
 progression, as there has certainly not been 
 uniform retrogression. The world is wiser 
 in the extent of its information, prouder 
 in the grandeur of its aims, purer in the 
 increasing beneficence of its institutions ; 
 the world is richer in mental, moral, and 
 material means to the ends of a just and
 
 THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT. 2 5 
 
 ideal civilization. Progress has been grad- 
 ual, steady, nearly uniform, but there have 
 been great wastes where scarce an oasis 
 was to be discerned by the solitary inves- 
 tigator. It will not do to say that these 
 were periods of real recuperation hidden 
 behind the appearance of devastation and 
 decay, for that is merely begging the ques- 
 tion, which is one of absolute and not com- 
 parative decadence. The fall of Carthage 
 and the long subsequent dissolution of 
 Roman dominion left all North Africa in 
 a state of semi-barbarism, from which even 
 the sway of the enlightened Saracen did 
 not relieve it. No successor arose to this 
 Saracen in his original home, and to this 
 day the seats of the Arabians, the Syrians, 
 the Assyrians' empire, are occupied by the 
 detested and degenerate Turk. Nothing 
 can be alleged of the fall of the Romans 
 in their eternal city and the countries of 
 its conquests, because the civilization of 
 the Romans, plus the mental, moral, and 
 other characteristics of the Goths, forms 
 the grandest type of racial and national 
 character the world has ever recognized.
 
 THE 
 
 BASIS OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 What is government? what rational 
 liberty ? 
 
 On the answers to these questions de- 
 pend the happiness and welfare of any 
 people. Should we say with the learned 
 and eloquent author of the " Spirit of 
 Laws," that that is the best government 
 which best suits the genius of a people 
 and which is also the best administered ? 
 Or, with more modern ideas, borrowed 
 probably from some of the Greeks, must 
 we hold that that government is the model 
 which is most consonant with popular de- 
 sires ? After all, the view of Montesquieu 
 and the view of the republican are not in- 
 compatible. The people, sooner or later, 
 will adopt a democratic government if not 
 restrained or kept in a state of gross ig- 
 norance and servility. Restraints are un- 
 26
 
 THE BASIS OF GOVERNMENT. 2/ 
 
 successful after a people have had a 
 glimpse of liberty. Now let us not be 
 hidebound. There is liberty under other 
 forms of government than the republican. 
 Some constitutional monarchies are mon- 
 archies only in name. Some republics 
 have been very despotisms for at least 
 short periods. Athens was under Cleon. 
 Rome, under Scylla, was a confessed tyr- 
 anny. The present governments of Eng- 
 land and Sweden-Norway are very liberal, 
 and, if there were no friction between 
 church and state, Italy would be regarded 
 alm.ost universally as a model of a state 
 havine free institutions. In fact, the ten- 
 dency of modern thought has been steadily 
 to freedom, with occasional lapses' for 
 short periods and notable exceptions for 
 longer ones. The free Gothic spirit of old 
 Spain is again breaking forth in the " Ever 
 Faithful Isle," and Teutonic liberty in Fa- 
 therland has not always slept since the days 
 of Hermann, and is not now slumbering. 
 
 On the setting up of our experiment, it 
 was seen that ideals of statesmen and 
 philosophers were possible of realization.
 
 28 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Indeed, no ideal had ever been formed quite 
 equal to the state of facts exhibited in the 
 United States. Whether we borrowed of 
 the Greek or the Italian republics, of the 
 United Netherlands, of Switzerland, of the 
 Hanseatic League, of Rousseau's concep- 
 tion of a Social Compact, or fused all these 
 with existing remains of our colonial 
 dependency, — the models we took from 
 Britain, — the result was something unique 
 and world-pervading. This is no place in 
 which to consider separate models of 
 government or deal philosophically with 
 government in the abstract. We certainly 
 cling to no threefold division of govern- 
 ments, such as those of Tacitus and Mon- 
 tesquieu, usually adopted by writers. To 
 us it suffices that governments seem to be 
 as to their spirit free and despotic, with 
 shades between. May we not be permitted 
 to state compendiously that all enlightened 
 government is either democratic or aristo- 
 cratic, seeing that in absolute monarchies 
 on the modern plan the noble class, or a 
 part of it, controls the sovereign as an 
 imperiuni in iniperio ?
 
 THE BASIS OF GOVERNMENT. 29 
 
 The great fact in government is the 
 administration. As the people in hberal 
 governments appreciate this fact, there will 
 be improvement in their condition. All 
 through history we see the law of action 
 and reaction between rulers and ruled. 
 At last we have reached the period of full 
 representation which precludes the use of 
 such words : the people rule themselves, 
 — in theory, at least. 
 
 This is a most wonderful step forward. 
 The brilliant Athenian thought he had 
 taken it when his Eupatrid order ceased 
 to control the affairs of state. But, alas ! 
 he legislated merely for the day : impatient 
 to grasp everything at once, he did not lay 
 very deep and secure the foundations of 
 social order and popular freedom. The 
 Italian republics, modelled on those of an- 
 tiquity, and adapted to the purposes of 
 mediaeval trade, fell far short of perfection. 
 Faction became the curse of all, and on 
 the ruins of democracy arose a number of 
 ducal and princely houses. The law of 
 liberty has been the law of progress, but, 
 as in culture and civilization generally, 
 
 3*
 
 30 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 there have not been wanting evidences of 
 sad decline. We take heart from what we 
 see and feel about us in contrast with what 
 we know is behind. Whether government, 
 as has been insisted by Rousseau and 
 Jefferson, is based altogether in its original 
 on contract or consent, or, as held by 
 writers of the adverse school, on power, is 
 neither worth our while to consider as a 
 practical question nor to reject altogether 
 as having no interest for the political stu- 
 dent. What we know is that at some 
 stage in human development the idea of 
 consent was adopted. It is our basis now, 
 possibly by slow evolution, with occasional 
 set backs, from a primitive state in which 
 the patriarch ruled his family, son, and 
 servant, with a measure of absolute au- 
 thority as the representative head. In the 
 second stage we have the principle of 
 representation carried further : the near- 
 est kinsman rules. The third stage brings 
 on the elected chieftain. Always there is 
 progress from power to liberty. 
 
 Is this view less flattering to human 
 vanity or less tenable upon investigation
 
 THE BASIS OF GOVERNMENT. 3 1 
 
 than tliat in which man now recovers what 
 was his in the beginning without hmitation, 
 but which he through weakness yielded ? 
 Is all our safety in revolution, and is there 
 no security in the essential dignity of hu- 
 man nature and in the flexible but un- 
 erring law of progress ?
 
 THE 
 
 STUDY OF POLITICS. 
 
 In these days, when " Confound your 
 politics" is a popular refrain, it is fitting 
 that the study of government should be 
 carried on more scientifically than at any 
 previous era of the world's history. And 
 yet there is great danger that what is 
 gained in knowledge of details and nicety 
 of methods may be lost in accuracy of 
 scholarship and comprehensiveness of 
 principles. As science itself becomes a 
 matter of specialization very largely, so 
 political science, a segment of the circle, 
 is apt to become unduly specialized. It 
 can afford, least of all sciences, to submit 
 to this narrowing process. Taught in 
 school and college, without recourse to the 
 elemental principles of human nature and 
 too much as a thing apart, with only 
 32
 
 THE STUDY OF POLITICS. 33 
 
 slight reference to the fundamental ordi- 
 nary facts of life, and devoid frequently of 
 those illustrations drawn from the parlia- 
 mentary annals and the originals of his- 
 tor}% it is the mere husk of information, a 
 showy sham and mocking pretence. As to 
 those parts of comparative politics bearing 
 directly on representative institutions and 
 the development of republican govern- 
 ment, we have plenty of learned disquisi- 
 tion on the classic states, the mediaeval 
 republics, and on the concrete idea of the 
 state itself, — the modern state, with its 
 autonomous functions and international 
 obligations. But of the reason of being of 
 our own particular form of government, 
 as shown by the facts of its formation and 
 preservation, the teaching of the day is 
 absurdly meagre and strangely mislead- 
 ing. The vast wealth of historical ac- 
 cumulation mined within the past four or 
 five decades should have made this other- 
 wise. The great stores of information 
 brought forth by German and English 
 and American antiquarians and historians 
 ought long since to have been absorbed
 
 34 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 into the popular manuals, and thus gone 
 into general knowledge. The fact is that 
 as to the fundamental features of our own 
 institutions the early generations were 
 better informed, except as to a very few 
 things, than the later ; there has been dis- 
 tinct and woful degeneracy on a matter 
 of vital consequence to American citizen- 
 ship. Whether, when all the passions of 
 a period of feverish national unrest shall 
 have subsided, the political ground lost 
 shall have been recovered in time to pre- 
 vent grave detriment to our society, can- 
 not be predicted, but the fear of some 
 wise men is that even the salvation of the 
 union is not itself, great a fact as it is by 
 all admitted to be, sufficient recompense 
 for the retrogradation in the essential here 
 described. No people ought ever to for- 
 get its organic character, even for a short 
 period. Perhaps no people ever do en- 
 tirely. And this doubt that it does relieves 
 the philosophic mind from much of the 
 uncertainty on this head. 
 
 The study of institutions is the pro- 
 foundest and most engaging of all secular
 
 THE STUDY OF POLITICS. 35 
 
 studies. It is of wider human interest 
 than any other, and has most of all to do 
 with human affairs, so far as they shape 
 themselves with reference to merely tran- 
 sitory ends. And even in the contempla- 
 tion of the permanent order that exists 
 for us beyond the present life, the science 
 of government is of transcendent utility 
 and surpassing fascination. At least, it is 
 so for all broadly-based intellects. There 
 is only the shadow of a truth in the pes- 
 simistic remark of Thomas Paine that 
 " government is a necessary evil." We 
 must recognize the sharp limitations of 
 human virtue, and thus see that restraint 
 is a part of the economy of existence. 
 Therefore government is a necessary good, 
 not evil. The evil in society is the evil in 
 each human being, plus the evil in hu- 
 manity, minus the good in each human 
 being, plus the good in humanity. The 
 study of politics, therefore, is the study 
 of the best good for society, and if it re- 
 sult otherwise, it is because the end is per- 
 verted, and not because it is not a true end. 
 This leads to my formula : Politics is
 
 36 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the application of the good that is possi- 
 ble to the existing status. This formula 
 does not exclude ideals. Ideals become 
 reals when the conditions for reality ex- 
 ist. The philosopher cherishes ideals, the 
 statesman adapts them to circumstances. 
 The ideal is Goethe's " ever-womanly," 
 drawing us on to infinite heights after 
 almost infinite suffering. The great 
 tragedy of " Faust" is life's tragedy with 
 a miracle at the beginning and at the end. 
 Human government is the most com- 
 plex of humanly-created things. It de- 
 mands for its exercise the best powers of 
 the human character. The government 
 of the United States is the most complex 
 of all governments in history. Its safety 
 consists in its being always what it was 
 intended to be by those who formed it — 
 a government of the peoples of the sev- 
 eral States, forming what Washington and 
 Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, Jay 
 and Jefferson styled in the well accepted 
 phrase of their day " a confederacy." 
 With the spirit of representative democ- 
 racy and the form of a confederated re-
 
 THE STUDY OF POLITICS. 3/ 
 
 public, its name describing itself better 
 than any formal description could, the 
 republic of the United States stands as 
 the heir of Teutonic primaeval institutions 
 and the free spirit of the Aryan race in 
 all its branches. 
 
 a2(y??i
 
 THE 
 UNITY OF SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 Sovereignty in a state is that which is 
 over all, governing all. There is no con- 
 flict of opinion as to what is sovereign in 
 Great Britain or Russia. The government 
 in each nation is master, absolute and, ex- 
 cept as to the claims of Nihilists and other 
 cranks, unchallenged master. These gov- 
 ernments differ, and so the sovereign is not 
 the same in both. One is free, the other 
 despotic. But in both instances it is the 
 government, and not the people, who con- 
 stitute the sovereignty. It is true that, in 
 the former, a large portion of the public is 
 directly interested in choosing the House 
 of Commons, which is the virtual governor 
 of the kingdom, but the sovereignty is 
 vested, after all, in the government, and 
 38
 
 THE UNITY OF SOVEREIGNTY. 39 
 
 not, as with us, in the persons who elect 
 the government. The difference, in brief, 
 between the United States and the United 
 Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is 
 this : — The republic has never clothed its 
 agents with sovereignty, the monarchy- 
 has. Under the unwritten constitution of 
 " Our Old Home" absolute sovereignty 
 vests — no matter whether originally by 
 public consent, as contended for by Free- 
 man the historian, or not — in the House 
 of Commons, which uses fictions implying 
 sovereignty in the King or Queen. The 
 Parliament has gradually acquired sover- 
 eignty, and the House of Commons has 
 more and more acquired single control 
 over everything. The cabinet comes and 
 goes as the House changes its will. The 
 nominal sovereign still addresses her 
 " Lords and Gentlemen," but in truth they, 
 or rather the latter, are her masters. 
 
 The people of the United States retained 
 sovereignty in the beginning. They could 
 not part with it without loss of autonomy. 
 They cannot part with it now without such 
 loss. All the writers on public law affirm
 
 40 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the truth of this philosophical negative. 
 It is, in fact, self-evident. 
 
 If, as has been defined, sovereignty is 
 that which is over all, which governs or 
 controls all in an unqualified sense, we 
 may easily see that while the King in an 
 absolute monarchy, the King and legisla- 
 ture in some, and the legislature with " the 
 government" in other constitutional mon- 
 archies is sovereign, the people only in a 
 republic are sovereign. Therefore, here 
 the people of the United States possess 
 the sovereignty. A fallacious idea has 
 occasionally been expressed, that the Con- 
 stitution of the Union is the sovereign. 
 That could not be because it is the simple 
 expression of the will of the true sovereigns 
 on certain points. At other times the fallacy 
 has even been more ludicrous, namely, that 
 each individual, suffrage-endowed citizen 
 is a sovereign, and that there are as many 
 sovereigns in the United States as there 
 are citizens entitled to vote. This refutes 
 itself, because these citizens are such by the 
 will of the State. Again, the exigencies of 
 argument have driven many late writers
 
 THE UNITY OF SOVEREIGNTY. 4 1 
 
 on public law to declare without reason, 
 except the physical one of a restored 
 Union after a bloody war, that the people 
 of the United States are one people, — 
 whether at the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence or the adoption of the present Con- 
 stitution they do not agree. The old State 
 rights school still holds to the sovereignty 
 of the States as States, and not in a con- 
 federacy.* 
 
 *" Confederacy" is the word used by Washington, 
 Madison, Hamilton, and others among the founders of 
 the government. 
 
 Right here I will observe that even the wise old 
 fathers did not always carry in their minds the distinc- 
 tion between the sovereign State and the legislature of 
 a State, — a distinction sometimes lost sight of com- 
 pletely in more recent times. The sovereignty of a 
 State resides only in its people. It is expressed in its 
 final absolute fonn in the State's adoption of an organic 
 law either for itself or the confederation of which it is 
 a part. 
 
 Mr. Kurd's concept of a Union-State always sover- 
 eign, with power to coerce North Carolina and Rhode 
 Island when they chose for a time to remain out of the 
 Union of States under the new Constitution, is not his- 
 torical, whatever else it is. It is not in line with the 
 facts he uses so powerfully to demolish the arguments 
 of the consolidation school. 
 
 4*
 
 42 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The great writers concur with Vattel,* 
 who says, " every sovereignty, properly so 
 called, is, in its own nature, one and indi- 
 visible." Montesquieu, Locke, Puffendorf, 
 Burlamaqui, Liebig, and others, all speak 
 of the indivisibility of sovereignty. 
 
 The mistake has arisen either from the 
 necessity for making it or honestly from a 
 confusion of ideas. It is not remembered 
 that the sovereign is the possessor, and 
 the powers are the things possessed. The 
 old theory of our federal government was 
 that it was a simple agency of the people 
 of the several States. It would seem that 
 few in strictness hold that theory now. 
 And yet there would appear to be no 
 reason for abandoning it in view of the 
 history of the two constitutions the coun- 
 try has lived under. If, as the Supreme 
 
 Discussions as to the fundamental character of our 
 government are always in order, and, while I make no 
 apology for adhering to the State rights school, I utterly 
 disclaim any purpose to unsettle anything which may 
 ever have been definitively settled. 
 
 * Book I., Sec. 65, cited by Sage, " Republic of 
 Republics," p. 306, Fifth edition.
 
 THE UNITY OF SOVEREIGNTY, 43 
 
 Court of the United States held in the 
 slaughter-house cases, there has been no 
 fundamental changes in the structure of 
 our cfovernment as a result of the Civil 
 War, there is nothing to induce the 
 thoughtful citizen to alter or modify the 
 former view of the nature of our institu- 
 tions, — the view of the Federalists as well 
 as of the Republicans, of Hamilton as well 
 as of Madison.* After all, there is not 
 much danger that the holding of such 
 
 * The second of the Articles of Confederation and 
 Perpetual Union between the States declares that 
 "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and in- 
 dependence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, 
 which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated 
 to the United States, in Congress assembled." Here 
 is a precise delimitation, clearly showing the distinc- 
 tion between sovereignty and powers. Hon. John 
 Randolph Tucker, a professor of law in Washington 
 and Lee University, and one of the ablest constitutional 
 lawyers of this generation, tells me that he illustrates 
 the matter thus: Sovereignty is the dynamo; powers 
 are its capabilities. 
 
 Nothing that occurred in the formation, adoption, 
 and ratification of the present Constitution, with its 
 various amendments, has in the slightest degree inter- 
 fered with the distinction drawn in the above Article II.
 
 44 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 opinions will break up the confederacy. 
 The tendency of holding it would rather 
 be to cement it. And an honest view, any 
 way, one consonant with the facts, is in- 
 finitely preferable to a dishonest one.
 
 THE 
 
 SAVING PRINCIPLE. 
 
 A CIVIC virtue unspotted and unsleeping ; 
 a citizenhood both conserving and progres- 
 sive ; a respect everywhere for private 
 riehts, and a sense in all breasts of the 
 dignity of human nature and the reflected 
 dignity of human government in a free 
 land ; then, as the inevitable result of do- 
 mestic integrity, a policy of justice to for- 
 eign powers and of insistence upon justice 
 from them, a clear adherence to the Amer- 
 ican doctrine that America yields nothing 
 to pressure from without and herself exerts 
 no pressure to secure purposes external to 
 her true and traditional policy. These are 
 the moral forces of a great people separated 
 by two oceans from most other powers of 
 the earth and by spirit and structure of 
 government from nearly every one of them. 
 
 45
 
 46 A GLANCE AT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 With a keen eye to home interests, with 
 thorough education for the masses sup- 
 planting half-ideas, — a foe infinitely worse, 
 if permanent, than meek ignorance, — with 
 a profound respect for law so long as it 
 is law, and an intelligent choice of law- 
 makers and administrators, the civic virtue 
 above described is bound to remain forever 
 as the characteristic of the highest devel- 
 opment of the greatest race in the world's 
 history. As it has lived in Norway and 
 Switzerland and Great Britain from early 
 times, so it will endure in this younger 
 branch of a great family, — its saving 
 principle.
 
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