s,.
 
 1 
 
 \
 
 AMERICAN REPUBLIC: 
 
 CONSTITUTION, TENDENCIES, AND DESTINY 
 
 .. 
 
 B7 
 
 O. A. l^ROWNSON, LL.D, 
 
 Students Library 
 
 Santa Barbara, California 
 
 EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 P . ' S H E A , 45 WARREN" STREET.
 
 Cntored according to Act of Congress, In the year 1888, 
 
 BT P. O'SHEA, 
 
 lm tb Clerk'* Office of the District Court of the United States for t* 
 Sonthern District of New York. 
 
 
 \
 
 10 THE 
 
 HON. GEORGE BANCROFT, 
 
 THE EUTJDITE, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND ELOQUEHT 
 
 Historian of tfct (SnitciJ .StaitB, 
 
 JHI8 FEEBLE ATTEMPT TO SET FORTH THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERN- 
 MENT, AND TO EXPLAIN AXD DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 
 IN MEMORY OF OLD FRIENDSHIP, AND AS A 
 SLIGHT HOMAGE TO GENIUS, ABILITY 
 PATRIOTISM, PRIVATE WORTH, 
 AND PUBLIC SERVICE, 
 
 BY THE AUTJBOB.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PA<1 , 
 
 INTRODUCTION. .< 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GOVERNMENT..... 15 
 
 CHAPTER 'III. 
 
 -ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT 2 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT Continued 43 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT Continued Tl 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT Concluded... . 10 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT.... . 188
 
 ri CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT Connlwbd 16 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES 1W 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 21 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION Continued 244 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 SECESSION. in 
 
 CHAPTER Xm. 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 809 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES MS 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS... . ttft
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Lsr the volume which, with much diffidence, is 
 here offered to the public, I have given, as far as 
 I have considered it worth giving, my whole 
 thought in a connected form on the nature, ne- 
 cessity, extent, authority, origin, ground, and 
 constitution of government, and the unity, na- 
 tionality, constitution, tendencies, and destiny 
 of the American Republic. Many of the points 
 treated have been from time to time discussed or 
 touched upon, and many of the views have been 
 presented, in my previous writings ; but this 
 work is newly and independently written from 
 beginning to end, and is as complete on the 
 topics treated as I have been able to make it. 
 
 I have taken nothing bodily from my previous 
 essays, but I have used their thoughts as far as 
 I have judged them sound and they came within 
 the scope of my present work. I have not felt 
 myself bound to adhere to my own past thoughts 
 or expressions any farther than they coincide 
 with my present convictions, and I have written 
 as freely and as independently as if I had never
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 written or published any thing before. I have 
 never been the slave of my own past, and truth 
 has always been dearer to me than my own opin- 
 ions. This work is not only my latest, but will 
 be my last on politics or government, and must 
 be taken as the authentic, a ad the only authentic 
 statement of my political views and convictions, 
 and whatever in any of my previous writings 
 conflicts with the principles defended in its pages, 
 must be regarded as retracted, and rejected. 
 
 The work now produced is based on scientific 
 principles ; but it is an essay rather than a scien- 
 tific treatise, and even good-natured critics will, 
 no doubt, pronounce it an article or a series of 
 articles designed for a review, rather than a book. 
 It is hard to overcome the habits of a lifetime. I 
 have taken some pains to exchange the reviewer 
 for the author, but am fully conscious that I 
 have not succeeded. My work can lay claim to 
 very little artistic merit. It is full of repetitions ; 
 the same thought is frequently recurring, the re- 
 sult, to some extent, no doubt, of carelessness 
 and the want of artistic skill ; but to a greater ex- 
 tent, I fear, of "malice aforethought." In com- 
 posing my work I have followed, rather than di- 
 rected, the course of my thought, and, having very 
 little confidence in the memory or industry of 
 readers, I. have preferred, when the completeness
 
 PBEFACE. IX 
 
 of the argument required it, to repeat myself to 
 encumbering my pages with perpetual references 
 to what has gone before. 
 
 That I attach some value to this work is evi- 
 dent from my consenting to its publication ; but 
 how much or how little of it is really mine, I am 
 quite unable to say. I have, from my youth up, 
 been reading, observing, thinking, reflecting, 
 talking, I had almost said writing, at least by fits 
 and starts, on political subjects, especially in 
 their connection with philosophy, theology, his- 
 tory, a ad social progress, and have assimilated 
 to my own mind what it would assimilate, with- 
 out keeping any notes of the sources whence the 
 materials assimilated were derived. I have writ- 
 ten freely from my own mind as I find it now 
 formed ; but how it has been so formed, or 
 whence I have borrowed, my readers know as well 
 as I. All that is valuable in the thoughts set forth, 
 it is safe to assume has been appropriated from 
 others. Where I have been distinctly conscious 
 of borrowing what has not become common 
 property, I have given credit, or, at least, men- 
 tioned the author's name, with three important 
 exceptions which I wish to note more formally. 
 
 I am principally indebted for the view of 
 American nationality and the Federal Constitu- 
 tion I present, to hints and suggestions furnished
 
 X PBEF ACE 
 
 by the remarkable work of John C. Hurd, Esq.>. 
 on The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the 
 United States, a work of rare learning and pro- 
 found philosophic views. I could not have 
 written my work without the aid derived from 
 its suggestions, any more than I could without Pla- 
 to, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Suarez, 
 Pierre Leroux, and the Abbate Gioberti. To- 
 these two last-named authors, one a humanita- 
 rian sophist, the other a Catholic priest, and cer- 
 tainly one of the profoundest philosophical wri- 
 ters of this century, I am much indebted, though. 
 I have followed the political system of neither. 
 I have taken from Leroux the germs of the- 
 doctrine I set fortk on the solidarity of the race,, 
 and from Gioberti the doctrine I defend in rela- 
 tion to the creative act, which is, after all, simply 
 that of the Credo and the first verse of Genesis. 
 
 In treating the several questions which the pre- 
 paration of this volume has brought up, in their 
 connection, and in the light of first principles, I 
 have changed or modified, on more than one im- 
 portant point, the views 1 had expressed in my 
 previous writings, especially on the distinction 
 between civilized and barbaric nations, the real 
 basis of civilization itself, and the value to the 
 world of the Grseco- Roman civilization. I have- 
 ranked feudalism under the head of barbarism,
 
 PREFACE XU- 
 
 rejected every species of political aristocracy,, 
 and represented the English constitution as es- 
 sentially antagonistic to the American, not as it 
 type. I have accepted universal suffrage in. 
 principle, and defended American democracy,, 
 which I define to be territorial democracy ? and 
 carefully distinguish from pure individualism on* 
 the one hand, and from pure socialism or human- 
 itarianism on the other. 
 
 I reject the doctrine of State sovereignty, which. 
 I held and defended from 1828 to 1861, but still 
 maintain that the sovereignty of the American 
 Republic vests in the States, though in the States- 
 collectively, or united, not severally, and thus- 
 escape alike consolidation and disintegration. I 
 find, with Mr. Madison, our most philosophic 
 statesman, the originality of the American sys- 
 tem in the division of powers between a General 
 government having sole charge of the foreign 
 and general, and particular or State governments; 
 'having, within their respective territories, sole- 
 charge of the particular relations and interests of 
 the American people ; but I do not accept his= 
 concession that this division is of conventional 
 origin, and maintain that it enters into the origi- 
 nal Providential constitution of the American- 
 state, as I have done in my Review for October,. 
 1863, and January and October, 1864.
 
 Xll. P B E F A C E . 
 
 I maintain, after Mr. Senator Sumner, one of 
 the most philosophic and accomplished living 
 American statesmen, that " State secession is 
 State suicide," but modify the opinion I too hast- 
 ily expressed that the political death of a State 
 dissolves civil society within its territory and ab- 
 rogates all rights held under it, and accept the 
 doctrine that the laws in force at the time of seces- 
 sion remain in force till superseded or abrogated 
 by competent authority, and also that, till the State 
 is revived and restored as a State in the Union, 
 the only authority, under the American system, 
 competent to supersede or abrogate them is the 
 United States, not Congress, far less the Execu- 
 tive. The error of the Government is not in re- 
 cognizing the territorial laws as surviving seces- 
 sion, but in counting a State that has seceded as 
 still a State in the Union, with the right to be 
 counted as one of the United States in amending 
 the Constitution. Such State goes out of the 
 Union, but comes under it. 
 
 I have endeavored throughout to refer my par- 
 ticular political views to their general principles, 
 and to show that the general principles asserted, 
 have their origin and ground in the great, univer- 
 sal, and unchanging principles of the universe it- 
 self. Hence, I have labored to show the scientific 
 relations of .political to theological principles, the
 
 PREFACE. XUU 
 
 real principles of all science, as of all reality 
 An atheist, I have said, may be a politician"; but 
 if there were no God, there could be no politics. 
 This may offend the sciolists of the age, but I 
 must follow science where it leads, and cannot 
 be arrested by those who mistake their darkness 
 for light. 
 
 I write throughout as a Christian, because I 
 am a Christian ; as a Catholic, because all Chris- 
 tian principles, nay, all real principles are cath 
 olic, and there is nothing sectarian either in na- 
 ture or revelation. I am a Catholic by God's 
 grace and great goodness, and must write as 1 
 am. I could not write otherwise if I would, and 
 would not if I could. I have not obtruded my 
 religion, and have referred to it only where my 
 argument demanded it ; but I have had neither 
 the weakness nor the bad taste to seek to con- 
 ceal or disguise it. I could never have writ- 
 ten my book without the knowledge I have, as a 
 Catholic, of Catholic theology, and my acquaint- 
 ance, slight as it is, with the great fathers and 
 doctors of the church, the great masters of all 
 that is solid or permanent in modern thought, 
 either with Catholics or non-Catholics. 
 
 Moreover, though I write for all Americana, 
 without distinction of sect or party, I have had 
 more especiallv in view the people of my own
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 religious communion. It is no discredit to a 
 man "in the United States at the present day to 
 be a firm, sincere, and devout Catholic. The 
 old sectarian prejudice may remain with a few, 
 "whose eyes," as Emerson says, "are in their 
 hind-head, not in their fore-head;" but the 
 American people are not at heart sectarian, and 
 the nothingarianism so prevalent among them 
 only marks their state of transition from secta- 
 rian opinions to positive Catholic faith. At 
 any rate, it can no longer be denied that Catho- 
 lics are an integral, living, and growing element 
 in the American population, quite too numerous, 
 3oo wealthy, and too influential to be ignored. 
 They have played too conspicuous a part in the 
 late troubles of the country, and poured out too 
 freely and too much of their richest and noblest 
 blood in defence of the unity of the nation and 
 the integrity of its domain, for that. Catholics 
 henceforth must be treated as standing, in all 
 respects, on a footing of equality with any other 
 class of American citizens, and their views of 
 political science, or of any other science, be 
 counted of equal importance, and listened to 
 with equal attention. 
 
 I have no fears that my book will be neg- 
 lected because avowedly by a Catholic author, 
 from a Catholic publishing house. They
 
 PR:EPACE XV 
 
 who are not Catholics ' will read it, and it will 
 enter into the current of American literature, if it 
 is one they must read in order to be up with the 
 living and growing thought of the age. If it is 
 not a bpok of that sort, it is not worth reading 
 by any one. 
 
 Furthermore, I am ambitious, even in my old 
 age, and I wish to exert an influence on the 
 future of my country, for which I have made, 
 or, rather, my family have made, some sacrifices, 
 and which I tenderly love. Now, I believe that 
 <he who can exert the most influence on our Cath- 
 olic population, especially in giving tone and di- 
 rection to our Catholic youth, will exert the most 
 -influence in forming the character and shaping 
 the future destiny of the American Republic. 
 Ambition and patriotism alike, as well as my 
 own Catholic faith and sympathies, induce me 
 to address myself primarily to Catholics. I quar- 
 rel with none of the sects ; I honor virtue wher- 
 ever I see it, and accept truth wherever I find it ; 
 bat, in my belief, no sect is destined to a long life, 
 or a permanent possession. I engage in no con- 
 troversy with any one not of my religion, for, if 
 the positive, affirmative truth is brought out and 
 placed in a clear light before the public, what- 
 ever is sectarian in any of the s^cts will disap- 
 pear as the morning mists before the rising sun.
 
 XVI PKE FA CE. 
 
 I expect the most intelligent and satisfactory 
 appreciation of my book from the thinking and 
 educated classes among Catholics ; but I speak 
 to my countrymen at large." I could not person- 
 ally serve my country in the field : my habits as 
 well as my infirmities prevented, to say nothing 
 of my age ; but I have endeavored in this hum- 
 ble work to add my contribution, small though 
 it may t>e, to political science, and to discharge, 
 as far as I am able, my debt of loyalty and patri- 
 otism. I would the book were more of a book, 
 more worthy of my countrymen, and a more 
 weighty proof of the love I bear them, and 
 with which I have written it. All I can say is, 
 that it is an honest book, a sincere book, and 
 contains my best thoughts on the subjects 
 treated. If well received, I shall be grateful ; if 
 neglected, I shall endeavor to practise resigna- 
 tion, as I have so often done. 
 
 O. A. BKOWNSON. 
 
 ELIZABETH, \. J., September 16, 1865.
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE ancients summed up the whole of human 
 wisdom in the maxim, Know Thyself, and cer- 
 tainly there is for an individual no more impor- 
 tant as there is no more difficult knowledge, 
 than knowledge of himself, whence he comes, 
 whither he goes, what he is, what he is for, 
 what he can do, what he ought to do, and 
 what are his means of doing it. 
 
 Nations are only individuals on a larger scale. 
 They have a life, an individuality, a reason, a 
 conscience, and instincts of their own, and have 
 the same general laws of development and 
 growth, and, perhaps, of decay, as the individ- 
 ual man. Equally important, and no less diffi- 
 cult than for the individual, is it for a nation 
 to know itself, understand its own exist- 
 ence, its own powers and faculties, rights and 
 duties, constitution, instincts, tendencies, and 
 2
 
 2 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 destiny. A nation lias a spiritual as well as a 
 material, a moral as well as a physical existence, 
 and is subjected to internal as well as external 
 conditions of health and virtue, greatness and 
 grandeur, which it must in some measure un- 
 derstand and observe, or become weak and 
 infirm, stunted in its growth, and end in pre- 
 mature decay and death. 
 
 Among nations, no one has more need of full 
 knowledge of itself than the United States, and 
 no one has hitherto had less. It has hardly 
 had a distinct consciousness of its own national 
 existence, and has lived the irreflective life of 
 the child, with no severe trial, till the recent 
 rebellion, to throw it back on itself and compel 
 it to reflect on its own constitution, its own 
 separate existence, individuality, tendencies, 
 and end. The defection of the slaveholding 
 States, and the fearful struggle that has fol- 
 lowed for national unity and integrity, have 
 brought it at once to a distinct recognition 
 of itself, and forced it to pass from thought- 
 less, careless, heedless, reckless adolescence to 
 grave and reflecting manhood. The nation has 
 been suddenly compelled to study itself, and 
 henceforth must act from reflection, understand- 
 ing, science, statesmanship, not from instinct, 
 impulse, passion, or caprice, knowing well what
 
 NTKODUCTION. 3 
 
 it does, and wherefore it does it. The change 
 which four year* </ civil war have wrought in 
 the nation is gra , and is sure to give it the 
 seriousness, the g avity, the dignity, the man- 
 liness it has heretofore lacked. 
 
 Though the nation has been brought to a 
 consciousness of its own existence, it has not 
 even yet, attained to a full and clear under- 
 standing of its own national constitution. Its 
 vision is still obscured by the floating mists 
 of its earlier morning, and its judgment ren- 
 dered indistinct and indecisive by the wild 
 theories and fancies of its childhood. The na- 
 tional mind has been quickened, the national 
 heart has been opened, the national disposition 
 prepared, but there remains the important work 
 of dissipating the mists that still linger, of 
 brushing away these wild theories and fancies, 
 and of enabling it to form a clear and intelligent 
 judgment of itself, and a true and just appre 
 ciation of its own constitution, tendencies, and 
 destiny ; or, in other words, of enabling the 
 nation to understand its own idea, and the 
 means of its actualization in space and time. 
 
 Every living nation has an idea given it by 
 Providence to realize, and whose realization is 
 its special work, mission, or destiny. Every 
 nation is, in some sense, a chosen people of
 
 4 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 God. The Jews were the chosen people of 
 God, through whom the primitive traditions 
 were to be preserved in their purity and integ 
 rity, and the Messiah was to come The Greeks 
 were the chosen people of God, for the develop 
 ment and realization of the beautiful or the 
 divine splendor in art, and of the true in science 
 and philosophy ; and the Romans, for the do 
 velopment of the state, law, and jurisprudence 
 The great despotic nations of Asia were neve) 
 properly nations ; or if they were nations with 
 a mission, they proved false to it, and count foi 
 nothing in the progressive development of the 
 human race. History has not recorded then 
 mission, and as far as they are known they 
 have contributed only to the abnormal develop 
 ment or corruption of religion and civilization 
 Despotism is barbaric and abnormal 
 
 The United States, or the American Repub 
 lie, has a mission, and is chosen of God for thf 
 realization of a great idea. It has been chosen 
 not only to continue the work assigned to 
 Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater 
 work than was assigned to either. In art, it will 
 prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece ; 
 and in science and philosophy, if it do not sur 
 pass it. In the state, in law, in jurisprudence 
 it must continue and surpass Rome Eta ides
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 is liberty, indeed, but liberty with law, and law 
 with liberty. Yet its mission is not so much 
 the realization of liberty as the realization of 
 the true idea of the state, which secures at once 
 the authority of the public and the freedom of 
 the individual the sovereignty of the people 
 without social despotism, and individual free- 
 dom without anarchy. In other words, its 
 mission is to bring out in its life the dialectic 
 union of authority and liberty, of the natural 
 rights of man and those of society. The Greek 
 and Roman republics asserted the state to 
 the detriment of individual freedom; modern 
 republics either do the same, or assert indi- 
 vidual freedom to the detriment of the state. 
 The American republic has been instituted by 
 Providence to realize the freedom of each with 
 advantage to the other. 
 
 The real mission of the United States is to 
 introduce and establish a political constitution, 
 which, while it retains all the advantages of the 
 constitutions of states thus far known, is unlike 
 any of them, and secures advantages which none 
 of them did or could possess. The American 
 constitution has no prototype in any prior con- 
 stitution. The American form of government 
 can be classed throughout with none of the 
 forms of government described by Aristotle, or
 
 6 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 even by later authorities. Aristotle knew only 
 four forms of government : Monarchy, Aristoc- 
 racy, Democracy, and Mixed Governments. The 
 American form is none of these, nor any com- 
 bination of them. It is original, a new con- 
 tribution to political science, and seeks to attain 
 the end of all wise and just government by 
 means unknown or forbidden to the ancients, 
 and which have been but imperfectly compre- 
 hended even by American political writers them- 
 selves. The originality of the American con- 
 stitution has been overlooked by the great 
 majority even of our own statesmen, who seek 
 to explain it by analogies borrowed from the 
 constitutions of other states rather than by a 
 profound study of its own principles. They 
 have taken too low a view of it, and have 
 rarely, if ever, appreciated its distinctive and 
 peculiar merits. 
 
 As the United States have vindicated theii 
 national unity and integrity, and are preparing 
 to take a new start in history, nothing is more 
 important than that they should take that new 
 start with a clear and definite view of their 
 national constitution, and with a distinct un- 
 derstanding of their political mission in the fu- 
 ture of the world. The citizen who can help his 
 countrymen to do this will render them an im-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 portant service and deserve well of his country, 
 though he may have been unable to serve in her 
 fcrmies and defend her on the battle-field. The 
 work now to be done by American statesmen 
 is even more difficult and more delicate than 
 that which has been accomplished by our brave 
 armies. As yet the people are hardly better 
 prepared for the political work to be done than 
 they were at the outbreak of the civil war for 
 the military work they have so nobly achieved. 
 But, with time, patience, and good-will, the 
 difficulties may be overcome, the errors of the 
 past corrected, and the Government placed on 
 the right track for the future. 
 
 It will hardly be questioned that either the 
 constitution of the United States is very defec- 
 tive or it has been very grossly misinterpreted 
 by all parties. If the slave States had not held 
 that the States are severally sovereign, and the 
 Constitution of the United States a simple 
 agreement or compact, they would never have 
 seceded; and if the Free States had not con- 
 founded the Union with the General govern- 
 ment, and shown a tendency to make it the 
 entire national government, no occasion or 
 pretext for secession would have been given. 
 The great problem of our statesmen has been 
 from the first, How to assert union without
 
 8 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 consolidation, and State rights without disin- 
 tegration? Have they, as yet, solved that 
 problem? The war has silenced the State* 
 sovereignty doctrine, indeed, but has it done 
 so without lesion to State rights ? Has it done 
 it without asserting the General government 
 as the supreme, central, or national govern- 
 ment ? Has it done it without striking a dan- 
 gerous blow at the federal element of the con- 
 stitution ? In suppressing by armed force the 
 doctrine that the States are severally sovereign, 
 what barrier is left against consolidation ? Has 
 not one danger been removed only to give place 
 to another ? 
 
 But perhaps the constitution itself, if rightly 
 understood, solves the problem; and perhaps 
 the problem itself is raised precisely through 
 misunderstanding of the constitution. Our 
 statesmen have recognized no constitution of 
 the American people themselves; they have 
 confined their views to the written constitu- 
 tion, as if that constituted the American people 
 a state or nation, instead of being, as it is, only 
 a law ordained by the nation already existing 
 and constituted. Perhaps, if they had recog- 
 nized and studied the constitution which pre- 
 ceded that drawn up by the Convention of 
 1787, and which is intrinsic, inherent in the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 republic itself, they would have seen that it 
 solves the problem, and asserts national unity 
 without consolidation, and the rights of the 
 several States without danger of disintegration. 
 The whole controversy, possibly, has originated 
 in a misunderstanding of the real constitution 
 of the United States, and that misunderstanding 
 itself in the misunderstanding of the origin and 
 constitution of government in general. The 
 constitution, as will appear in the course of 
 this essay, is not defective ; and all that is ne- 
 cessary to guard against either danger is to 
 discard all our theories of the constitution, and 
 return and adhere to the constitution itself, as 
 it really is and always has been. 
 
 There is no doubt that the question of Sla- 
 very had much to do with the rebellion, but jt 
 was not its sole cause. The real cause must be 
 sought in the progress that had been made, 
 especially in the States themselves, in forming 
 and administering their respective govern- 
 ments, as well as the General government, in ac- 
 cordance with political theories borrowed from 
 European speculators on government, the so- 
 called Liberals and Revolutionists, which have 
 and can have no legitimate application in the 
 United States. The tendency of American 
 politics, for the last thirty or forty years, has
 
 10 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 been, within the several States themselves, in 
 the direction of centralized democracy, as if the 
 American people had for their mission only 
 the reproduction of ancient Athens. The 
 American system is not that of any of the sim- 
 ple forms of government, nor any combination 
 of them. The attempt to bring it under any 
 of the simple or mixed forms of government 
 recognized by political writers, is an attempt 
 to clothe the future in the cast-off garments, of 
 the past. The American system, wherever 
 practicable, is better than monarchy, better 
 than aristocracy, better than simple democracy, 
 better than any possible combination of these 
 several forms, because it accords more nearly 
 with the principles of things, the real order of 
 the universe. 
 
 But American statesmen have studied the 
 constitutions of other states more than that of 
 their own, and have succeeded in obscuring the 
 American system in the minds of the people, 
 and giving them in its place pure and simple 
 democracy, which is its false development or 
 corruption. Under the influence of this false 
 development, the people were fast losing sight 
 of the political truth that, though the people 
 are sovereign, it is the organic, not the inorganic 
 people, the territorial people, not the people as
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 simple population, and were beginning to assert 
 the absolute God-given right of the majority to- 
 govern. All the changes made in the bosom of 
 the States themselves have consisted in remo- 
 ving all obstacles to the irresponsible will of the 
 majority, leaving^minorities and individuals at 
 their mercy. This tendency to a centralized 
 democracy had more to do with provoking 
 secession and rebellion than the anti-slavery 
 sentiments of the Northern, Central, and West- 
 ern States. 
 
 The failure of secession and the triumph of 
 the National cause, in spite of the short-sighted- 
 aess and blundering of the Administration, have 
 proved the vitality and strength of the nation- 
 al constitution, and the greatness of the Amer- 
 ican people. They say nothing for or against 
 the democratic theory of our demagogues, but 
 every thing in favor of the American system 
 or constitution of government, which has found 
 * firmer support in American instincts than in 
 American statesmanship. In spite of all that 
 had been done by theorists, radicals, and revo- 
 lutionists, no-government men, non-resistants,, 
 humanitarians, and sickly sentimentalists to- 
 corrupt the American people in mind, heart, 
 and body, the native vigor of their national 
 *sonstitution has enabled them to come forth
 
 12 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 triumphant from the trial. Every AmericaD 
 patriot has reason to be proud of his country 
 men, and every American lover of freedom to 
 be satisfied with the institutions of his country 
 But there is danger that the politicians and 
 demagogues will ascribe the-merit, not to the 
 real and living national constitution, but to 
 their miserable theories of that constitution, 
 and labor to aggravate the several evils and cor 
 rupt tendencies which caused the rebellion it 
 has cost so much to suppress. What is now 
 wanted is, that the people, whose instincts are 
 right, should understand the American con 
 stitution as it is, and so understand it as to ren 
 der it impossible for political theorists, no mat 
 ter of what school or party, to deceive them 
 again as to its real import, or induce them to 
 depart from it in their political action. 
 
 A work written with temper, without pas- 
 sion ( or sectional prejudice, in a philosophical 
 spirit, explaining to the American people theii 
 own national constitution, and the mutual re- 
 lations of the General government and the 
 State governments, cannot, at this important 
 crisis in our affairs, be inopportune, and, if prop- 
 erly executed, can hardly fail to be of reai 
 service. Such a work is now attempted 
 would it were by another and abler hand
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 which, imperfect as it is, may at least offer 
 some useful suggestions, give a right direction 
 to political thought, although it should fail to 
 satisfy the mind of the reader. 
 
 This much the author may say in favor of 
 his own work, that it sets forth no theory of 
 government in general, or of the United States 
 in particular. The author is not a monarchist, 
 an aristocrat, a democrat, a feudalist, nor an 
 advocate of what are called mixed governments 
 like the English, at least for his own country ; 
 but' is simply an American, devoted to the 
 real, living, and energizing constitution of the 
 American republic as it is, not as some may 
 fancy it might be, or are striving to make it. 
 It is, in his judgment, what it ought to be, and 
 he has no other ambition than to present it as 
 it is to the understanding and love of his coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 Perhaps simple artistic unity and pro- 
 priety would require the author to commence 
 his essay directly with the United States ; but 
 while the constitution of the United States is 
 original and peculiar, the government of the 
 United States has necessarily something in com- 
 mon with all legitimate governments, and he 
 has thought it best to precede his discussion of 
 the American republic, its constitution, tenden-
 
 14 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 cies, and destiny, by some considerations or, 
 government in general. He does this because 
 he believes, whether rightly or not, that whDf 
 the American people have received from Prov 
 idence a most truly profound and admirablt 
 system of government, they are more or less ID 
 fected with the false theories of government 
 which have been broached during the last two 
 centuries. In attempting to realize these the< 
 Ties, they have already provoked or renders* 
 practicable a rebellion which has seriousb 
 threatened the national existence, and eoni- 
 very near putting an end to the American orde> 
 of civilization itself. These theories have rv 
 ceived already a shock in the minds of all at 
 nous and thinking men; but the men wh< 
 think are in every nation a small minority, ant' 
 it is necessary to give these theories a publi* 
 refutation, and bring back those who do not 
 think, as well as those who do, from the world 
 of dreams to the world of reality. It is hoped 
 therefore, that any apparent want of artistic 
 unity or symmetry in the essay will be pai 
 doned for the sake of the end the author hap 
 had in view.
 
 GOVERNMENT. 15 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 a VEENMENT. 
 
 MAN is a dependent being, and neither doea 
 nor can suffice for himself. He lives not in 
 himself, but lives and moves and has his being 
 in God. He exists, develops, and fulfils his ex- 
 istence only by communion, with God, through 
 which he participates of the divine being and 
 life. He communes with God through the 
 divine creative act and the Incarnation of the 
 Word, through his kind, and through the mate- 
 rial world. Communion with God through Crea- 
 tion and Incarnation is religion, distinctively 
 taken, which binds man to God as his first 
 cause, and carries him onward to God as his 
 final cause; communion through the material 
 world is expressed by the word property ; and 
 communion with God through humanity is so- 
 ciety. Religion, society, property, are the three 
 terms that embrace the whole of man's life, and 
 express the essential means and conditions of 
 his existence, his development, and his perfec
 
 16 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 tion, or the fulfilment of his existence, the attain* 
 raent of the end for which he is created. 
 
 Though society, or the communion of man with 
 his Maker through his kind, is not all that man 
 needs in order to live, to grow, to actualize the 
 possibilities of his nature, and to attain to his 
 beatitude, since humanity is neither God nor the 
 material universe, it is yet a necessary and essen- 
 tial condition of his life, his progress, and the 
 completion of his existence. He is born and 
 lives in society, and can be born and live no- 
 where else. It is one of the necessities of his 
 nature. " God saw that it was not good for 
 man to be alone." Hence, wherever man is 
 found he is found in society, living in more or 
 less strict intercourse with his kind. 
 
 But society never does and never can exist 
 without government of some sort. As society 
 is a necessity of man's nature, so is government 
 a necessity of society. The simplest form of 
 society is the family Adam and Eve. But 
 though Adam and Eve are in many respects 
 equal, and have equally important though dif- 
 ferent parts assigned them, one or the other 
 must be head and governor, or they cannot form 
 the society called family. They would be 
 simply two individuals of different sexes, and 
 the family would fail for the want of unity
 
 GOVERNMENT. 17 
 
 Children cannot be reared, trained, or educated 
 without some degree of family government, of 
 some authority to direct, control, restrain, or 
 prescribe. Hence the authority of the husband 
 and father is recognized by the common con- 
 sent of mankind. Still more apparent is the 
 necessity of government the moment the family 
 develops and grows into the tribe, and the tribe 
 into the nation. Hence no nation exists with- 
 out government ; and we never find a savage 
 tribe, however low or degraded, that does- not 
 assert somewhere, in the father, in the elders, 
 or in the tribe itself, the rude outlines or the 
 faint reminiscences of some sort of govern- 
 ment, with authority to demand obedience 
 and to punish the refractory. Hence, as man is 
 nowhere found out of society, so nowhere is so- 
 ciety found without government. 
 
 Government is necessary: but let it be re- 
 marked by the way, that its necessity does not 
 grow exclusively or chiefly out of the fact that 
 the human race by sin has fallen from its prim- 
 itive integrity, or original righteousness. The 
 fall asserted by Christian theology, though 
 often misinterpreted, and its effects underrated 
 or exaggerated, is a fact too sadly confirmed 
 by individual experience and universal history ; 
 
 but it is not the cause why government is neces- 
 
 s
 
 18 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 sary, though it may be an additional reason 
 for demanding it. Government would have 
 been necessary if man had not sinned, and it is 
 needed for the good as well as for the bad. The 
 law was promulgated in the Garden, while man 
 retained his innocence and remained in the in- 
 tegrity of his nature. It exists in heaven as 
 well as on earth, and in heaven in its perfec- 
 tion. Its office is not purely repressive, to re- 
 strain violence, to redress wrongs, and to punish 
 the transgressor. It has something more to do 
 than to restrict our natural liberty, curb our 
 passions, and maintain justice between man and 
 man. Its office is positive as well as negative. It 
 is needed to render effective the solidarity of the 
 individuals of a nation, and to render the nation 
 an organism, not a mere organization to com- 
 bine men in one living body, and to strengthen 
 all with the strength of each, and each with the 
 strength of all to develop, strengthen, and 
 sustain individual liberty, and to utilize and 
 direct it to the promotion of the common weal 
 to be a social providence, imitating in its 
 order and degree the action of the divine prov- 
 idence itself, and, while it provides for the 
 common good of all, to protect each, the lowest 
 and meanest, with the whole force and majesty 
 of society. It is the minister of wrath to wrong-
 
 GOVERNMENT. 1& 
 
 doers, indeed, but its nature is beneficent, and 
 its action defines and protects the right of prop- 
 erty, creates and maintains a medium in which 
 religion can exert her supernatural energy, pro- 
 motes learning, fosters science and art, advances 
 civilization, and contributes as a powerful 
 means to the fulfilment by man of the Divine 
 purpose in his existence. Next after religion, 
 it is man's greatest good ; and even religion 
 without it can do only a small portion of her 
 work. They wrong it who call it a necessary 
 evil ; it is a great good, and, instead of being 
 distrusted, hated, or resisted, except in its 
 abuses, it should be loved, respected, obeyed, 
 and, if need be, defended at the cost of all 
 earthly goods, and even of life itself. 
 
 The nature or essence of government is to 
 govern. A government that does not govern, 
 is simply no government at all. If it has not 
 the ability to govern and governs not, it may 
 be an agency, an instrument in the hands of 
 individuals for advancing their private inter- 
 ests, but it is not government. To be govern- 
 ment, it must govern both individuals and the 
 community. If it is a mere machine for making 
 prevail the will of one man, of a certain number 
 of men, or even of the community, it may be 
 very effective sometimes for good, sometimes
 
 20 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 for evil, oftenest for evil, but government in the 
 proper sense of the word it is not. To govern 
 is to direct, control, restrain, as the pilot con- 
 trols and directs his ship. It necessarily im- 
 plies two terms, governor and governed, and a 
 real distinction between them. The denial of 
 all real distinction between governor and gov- 
 erned is an error in politics analogous to that 
 in philosophy or theology of denying all real 
 distinction between creator and creature, God 
 and the universe, which all the world knows is 
 either pantheism or pure atheism the supreme 
 sophism. If we make governor and governed 
 one and the same, we efface both terms; for 
 there is no governor nor governed, if the will 
 that governs is identically the will that is gov- 
 erned. To make the controller and the con- 
 trolled the same, is precisely to deny all control. 
 There must, then, if there is government at all, 
 be a power, force, or will that governs, distinct 
 from that which is governed. In those gov- 
 ernments in which it is held that the people 
 govern, the people governing do and must act 
 in a diverse relation from the people governed, 
 or there is no real government. 
 
 Government is not only that which governs, 
 but that which has the right or authority to 
 govern. Power without right is not govern-
 
 GOVERNMENT. 21 
 
 ment. Governments have the right to use force 
 at need, but might does not make right, and 
 not every power wielding the physical force of a 
 nation is to be regarded as its rightful govern- 
 ment. Whatever resort to physical force it may 
 be obliged to make, either in defence of its au- 
 thority or of the rights of the nation, the govern 
 ment itself lies in the moral order, and poli- 
 tics is simply a branch of ethics that branch 
 which treats of the rights and duties of men in 
 their public relations, as distinguished from their 
 rights and duties in their private relations. 
 
 Government being not only that which gov- 
 erns, but that which has the right to govern, 
 obedience to it becomes a moral duty, not a 
 mere physical necessity. The right to govern 
 and the duty to obey are correlatives, and the 
 one cannot exist or be conceived without the 
 other. Hence loyalty is not simply an amiable 
 sentiment, but a duty, a moral virtue. Treason 
 is not merely a difference in political opinion 
 with the governing authority, but a crime 
 against the sovereign, and a moral wrong, there- 
 fore a sin against God, the Founder of the 
 Moral Law. Treason, if committed in other 
 countries, unhappily, has been more frequent- 
 ly termed by our countrymen patriotism and 
 loaded with honor than branded as a crime, the
 
 22 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 greatest of crimes, as it is, that human govern- 
 ments have authority to punish. The Ameri- 
 can people have been chary of the word loyalty, 
 perhaps because they regard it as the correlative 
 of royalty ; but loyalty is rather the correlative 
 of law, and is, in its essence, love and devotion 
 to the sovereign authority, however constituted 
 or wherever lodged. It is as necessary, as 
 much a duty, as much a virtue in republics as- 
 in monarchies; and nobler examples of the most 
 devoted loyalty are not found in the world's his- 
 tory than were exhibited in the ancient Greek 
 and Roman republics, or than have been exhib- 
 ited by both men and women in the young 
 republic of the United States. Loyalty is the 
 highest, noblest, and most generous of human 
 virtues, and is the human element of that sub- 
 lime love or charity which the inspired Apostle 
 tells us is the fulfilment of the law. It has in 
 it the principle of devotion, of self-sacrifice, and 
 is, of all human virtues, that which renders 
 man the most Godlike. There is nothing great, 
 generous, good, or heroic of which a truly 
 loyal people are not capable, and nothing mean, 
 base, cruel, brutal, criminal, detestable, not to 
 be expected of a really disloyal people. Such 
 a people no generous sentiment can move, no 
 love can bind. It mocks at duty, scorns vir-
 
 GOVERNMENT. 23 
 
 tue, tramples on all rights, and holds no person, 
 no thing, human or divine, sacred or inviolable. 
 The assertion of government as lying in the 
 moral order, defines civil liberty, and recon- 
 ciles it with authority. Civil liberty is free- 
 dom to do whatever one pleases that authority 
 permits or does not forbid. Freedom to follow 
 in all things one's own will or inclination, 
 without any civil restraint, is license, not lib- 
 erty. There is no lesion to liberty in repress- 
 ing license, nor in requiring obedience to 
 the commands of the authority that has the 
 right to command. Tyranny or oppression is 
 not in being subjected to authority, but in 
 being subjected to usurped authority to a 
 power that has no right to command, or that 
 commands what exceeds its right or its author- 
 ity. To say that it is contrary to liberty to be 
 forced to forego our own will or inclination in 
 any case whatever, is simply denying the right 
 of all government, and falling into no-govern- 
 mentism. Liberty is violated only when we 
 are required to forego our own will or inclina- 
 tion by a power that has no right to make the 
 requisition ; for we are bound to obedience as 
 far as authority has right to govern, and we 
 can never have the right to disobey a rightful 
 command. The requisition, if made by right
 
 24 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 fill authority, then, violates no right that we 
 have or can have, and where there is no viola- 
 tion of our rights there is no violation of our 
 liberty. The moral right of authority, which 
 involves the moral duty of obedience, presents, 
 then, the ground on which liberty and authority 
 may meet in peace and operate to the same end. 
 This has no resemblance to the slavish 
 doctrine of passive obedience, and that the 
 resistance to power can never be lawful. The 
 tyrant may be lawfully resisted, for the ty- 
 rant, by force of the word itself, is a usurper, 
 and without authority. Abuses of power may 
 be resisted even by force when they become 
 too great to be endured, when there is no legal 
 or regular way of redressing them, and when 
 there is a reasonable prospect that resistance 
 will prove effectual and substitute something 
 better in their place. But it is never lawful 
 to resist the rightful sovereign, for it can 
 never be right to resist right, and the rightful 
 sovereign in the constitutional exercise of his 
 power can never be said to abuse it. Abuse 
 is the unconstitutional or wrongful exercise 
 of a power rightfully held, and when it is not 
 so exercised there is no abuse or abuses to 
 redress. All turns, then, on the right of power, 
 or its legitimacy. Whence does government de-
 
 
 GOVERNMENT. i}6 
 
 rive its right to govern ? What is the origin 
 and ground of sovereignty ? This question is 
 fundamental, and without a true answer to it 
 politics cannot be a science, and there can be no 
 scientific statesmanship. Whence, then, comes 
 the sovereign right to govern ?
 
 36 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER m 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 GOVERNMENT is both a fact and a right. Its 
 origin as a fact, is simply a question of his- 
 tory ; its origin as a right or authority to gov- 
 ern, is a question of ethics. Whether a certain 
 territory and its population are a sovereign 
 state or nation, or not. whether the actual 
 ruler of a country is its rightful ruler, or not 
 ip to be determined by the historical facts 111 
 the case ; but whence the government derives 
 its right to govern, is a question that can be 
 solved only by philosophy, or, philosophy fail- 
 ing, only by revelation. 
 
 Political writers, not carefully distinguishing 
 between the fact and the right, have invented 
 various theories as to the origin of government, 
 among which may be named 
 
 L Government originates in the right of the 
 father to govern his child. 
 
 IL It originates in convention, and is a social 
 compact.
 
 OEIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 2T 
 
 III. It originates in the people, who, collec- 
 tively taken, are sovereign. 
 
 IV. Government springs from the spontane- 
 ous development of nature. 
 
 V. It derives its right from the immediate 
 and express appointment of God ; 
 
 VI. From God through the Pope, or visible 
 head of the spiritual society ; 
 
 VII. From God through the people ; 
 
 VIII. From God through the natural law. 
 
 I. The first theory is sound, if the question 
 is confined to the origin of government as a 
 fact. The patriarchal system is the earliest 
 known system of government, and unmistaka- 
 ble traces of it are found in nearlv all known 
 
 / 
 
 governments ^in the tribes of Arabia and 
 Northern Africa, the Irish septs and the Scot- 
 tish clans, the Tartar hordes, the Roman gentes, 
 and the Russian and Hindoo villages.}l}ie 
 right of the father was held to be his right to 
 govern his family or household, which, with his 
 children, included his wife and servants. From 
 the family to the tribe the transition is natural 
 and easy, as also from the tribe to the nation. 
 The father is chief of the family ; the chief of 
 the eldest family is chief of the tribe ; the chief 
 of the eldest tribe becomes chief of the nation.
 
 "88 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and, as such, king or monarch. The heads of 
 families collected in a senate form an aristoc- 
 racy, and the families themselves, represented 
 by their delegates, or publicly assembling for 
 public affairs, constitute a democracy. These 
 three forms, with their several combinations, 
 to wit, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and 
 mixed governments, are all the forms known to 
 Aristotle, and have generally been held to be 
 all that are possible. 
 
 Historically, all governments have, in some 
 sense, been developed from the patriarchal, as 
 all society has been developed from the family. 
 HEven those governments, like the ancient Roman 
 and the modern feudal, which seem to be 
 founded on landed property, may be traced 
 back to a patriarchal origin. The patriarch is 
 sole proprietor, and the possessions of the fam- 
 ily are vested in him, and he governs as pro- 
 prietor as well as father. In the* tribe, the 
 chief is the proprietor, and in the nation, the 
 king is the landlord, and holds the domain. 
 Hence, the feudal baron is invested with his 
 fief by the suzerain, holds it from him, and to 
 him it escheats when forfeited or vacant. All 
 the great Asiatic kings of ancient or modern 
 times hold the domain and govern as proprie- 
 tors; they have the authority of the father and
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 2& 
 
 the owner ; and their subjects, though theoreti- 
 cally their children, are really their slaves. 
 
 In Rome, however, the proprietary right un 
 dergoes an important transformation. The 
 father retains all the power of the patriarch 
 within his family, the patrician in his gens or 
 house, but, outside of it, is met and controlled 
 by the city or state. The heads of houses are 
 united in the senate, and collectively constitute 
 and govern the state. Yet, not all the heads 
 of houses have seats in the senate, but only 
 the tenants of the sacred territory of the city, 
 which has been surveyed and marked by the 
 god Terminus. Hence the great plebeian houses,, 
 often richer and nobler than the patrician, were 
 excluded from all share in the government and 
 the honors of the state, because they were not 
 tenants of any portion of the sacred territory. 
 Ihere is here the introduction of an element 
 which is not patriarchal, and which transforms 
 the patriarch or chief of a tribe into the city or 
 state, and founds the civil order, or what is 
 now called civilization. The city or state takea 
 the place of the private proprietor, and territorial 
 rights take the place of purely personal rights. 
 
 In the theory of the Roman law, the land 
 owns the man, not the man the land. When 
 land was transferred to a new tenant, the prac-
 
 SO THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 tice in early times was to bury him in it, in 
 order to indicate that it took possession of 
 him, received, accepted, or adopted him; and 
 it was only such persons as were taken posses- 
 sion of, accepted or adopted by the sacred ter- 
 ritory or domain that, though denizens of Rome, 
 were citizens with full political rights. This, 
 in modern language, means that the state is 
 territorial, not personal, and that the citizen ap- 
 pertains to the state, not the state to the citi- 
 zen. Under the patriarchal, the tribal, and the 
 Asiatic monarchical systems, there is, properly 
 speaking, no state, no citizens, and the organi- 
 zation is economical rather than political. Au- 
 thority even the nation itself is personal, not 
 territorial. The patriarch, the chief of the 
 tribe, or the king, is the only proprietor. Un- 
 der the Gneco-Roman system all this is trans- 
 formed. The nation is territorial as well as 
 personal, and the real proprietor is the city or 
 state. Under the Empire, no doubt, what law- 
 yers call the eminent domain was vested in 
 the emperor, but only as the representative 
 and trustee of the city or state. 
 
 When or by what combination of events this 
 transformation was effected, history does not 
 inform us. The first-born of Adam, we are 
 told, built a city, and called it after his SOD
 
 OBIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 31 
 
 jEnoch; but there is no evidence that it was 
 constituted a municipality. The earliest traces 
 of the civil order proper are found in the Greek 
 and Italian republics, and its fullest and grand- 
 est developments are found in Rome, imperial 
 as well as republican. It was no doubt pre- 
 ceded by the patriarchal system, and was his- 
 torically developed from it, but by. way of 
 accretion, rather than by simple explication. 
 It has in it an element that, if it exists in the 
 patriarchal constitution, exists there only in a 
 different form, and the transformation marks 
 the passage from the economical order to the 
 political, from the barbaric to the civil con- 
 stitution of society, or from barbarism to 
 civilization. 
 
 The word civilization stands opposed to bar- 
 barism, and is derived from cimtas city or 
 state. The Greeks and Romans call all tribes 
 and nations in which authority is vested in the 
 chief, as distinguished from the state, barbari- 
 ans. The origin of the word barbarian, bar- 
 barus, or ^ap/fopo?, is unknown, and its pri- 
 mary sense can be only conjectured. Webster 
 regards its primary sense as foreign, wild, 
 fierce ; but this could not have been its original 
 sense ; for the Greeks and Romans never termed 
 all foreigners barbarians, "and they applied the
 
 32 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 term to nations that had no inconsiderable cul- 
 ture and refinement of manners, and that had 
 made respectable progress in art and science 
 as the Indians, Persians, Medians, Chaldeans, 
 and Assyrians. They applied the term evident- 
 ly in a political, not an ethical or an aesthetical 
 sense, and as it would seem to designate a social 
 order in which the state was not developed, and 
 in which the nation was personal, not territo- 
 rial, and authority was held as a private right, 
 not as a public trust, or in which the domain. 
 vests in the chief or tribe, and not in the state ; 
 for they never term any others barbarians. 
 
 Republic is opposed not to monarchy, in the 
 modern European sense, but to monarchy in 
 the ancient or absolute sense. Lacedaemon had 
 kings; yet it was no less republican than 
 Athens; and Rome was called and was a repub- 
 lic under the emperors no less than under the 
 consuls. Republic, respublica, by the very force 
 of the term, means the public wealth, or, in 
 good English, the commonwealth ; that is, gov- 
 ernment founded not on personal or private 
 wealth, but on the public wealth, public terri- 
 tory, or domain, or a government that vests au- 
 thority in the nation, and attaches the nation 
 to a certain definite territory. France, Spain, 
 Italy, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, even Great
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 33 
 
 Britain in substance though not in form, are 
 all, in the strictest sense of the word, republican 
 states ; for the king or emperor does not gov- 
 ern in his own private right, but solely as repre- 
 sentative of the power and majesty of the state. 
 The distinctive mark of republicanism is the 
 substitution of the state for the personal chief, 
 and public authority for personal or private 
 right. Republicanism is really civilization as 
 opposed to barbarism, and all civility, in the 
 old sense of the word, or civilta in Italian, is 
 republican, and is applied in modern times to 
 breeding, or refinement of manners, simply be- 
 cause these are characteristics of a republican, 
 or polished [from uo/U'?, city] people. Every 
 people that has a real civil order, or a fully de- 
 veloped state or polity, is a republican people ; 
 and hence the church and her great doctors, 
 when they speak of the state as distinguished 
 from the church, call it the republic, as may be 
 seen by consulting even a late Encyclical of 
 Pius IX., which some have interpreted wrongly 
 in an anti-republican sense. 
 
 All tribes and nations in which the patriar- 
 chal system remains, or is developed without 
 transformation, are barbaric, and really so re- 
 garded by all Christendom. In civilized nations 
 the patriarchal authority is transformed into
 
 34 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 that of the city or state, that is, of the republic ; 
 but in all barbarous nations it retains its private 
 and personal character. The nation is only the 
 family or tribe, and is called by the name of 
 its ancestor, founder, or chief, not by a geo- 
 graphical denomination. Race has not been 
 supplanted by country ; they are a people, not 
 a state. They are not fixed to the soil, and 
 though we may find in them ardent love of 
 family, the tribe, or the chief, we never find 
 among them that pure love of country or patri- 
 otism whfch so distinguished the Greeks and 
 Romans, and is no less marked among modern 
 Christian nations. They have a family, a race, a 
 chief or king, but no patria, or country. The 
 barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire, 
 whether of the West or the East, were nations, 
 or confederacies of nations, but not states. The 
 nation with them was personal, not territorial 
 Their country was wherever they fed their flocks 
 and herds, pitched their tents, and encamped for 
 the night. There were Germans, but no German 
 state, and even to-day the German finds his 
 u father-land " wherever the German speech is 
 spoken. The Polish, Sclavonian, Hungarian, 
 Elyrian, Italian, and other provinces held by 
 German states, in which the German language 
 is not the mother-tongue, are excluded from
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 35 
 
 the Germanic Confederation. The Turks, or 
 Osmanlis, are a race, not a state, and are 
 encamped, not settled, on the site of the Eastern 
 Roman or Greek Empire. 
 
 Even when the barbaric nations have ceased 
 to be nomadic, pastoral, or predatory nations, 
 as the ancient Assyrians and Persians or modern 
 Chinese, and have their geographical boun- 
 daries, they have still no state, no country. 
 The nation defines the boundaries, not the 
 boundaries the nation. The nation does not 
 belong to the territory, but the territory to the 
 nation or its chief. The Irish and Anglo-Saxons, 
 in former times, held the land in gavelkind, 
 and the territory belonged to the tribe or sept ; 
 but if the tribe held it as indivisible, they still 
 held it as private property. The shah of 
 Persia holds the whole Persian territory as 
 private property, and the landholders among 
 his subjects are held to be his tenants. They 
 hold it from him, not from the Persian state. 
 The public domain of the Greek empire is in 
 theory the private domain of the Ottoman 
 emperor or Turkish sultan. There is in bar 
 baric states no republic, no commonweal tl 
 authority is parental, without being tempered 
 by parental affection. The chief is a despot, 
 and rules with the unlimited authority of the
 
 36 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 father and the harshness of the proprietor 
 He owns the land and his subjects. 
 
 Feudalism, established in Western Europe 
 after the downfall of the Roman Empire, how- 
 ever modified by the Church and by reminis- 
 cences of Greece-Roman civilization retained by 
 the conquered, was a barbaric constitution. 
 The feudal monarch, as far as he governed at 
 all, governed as proprietor or landholder, not 
 as the representative of the commonwealth. 
 Under feudalism there are estates, but no state. 
 The king governs as an estate, the nobles hold 
 their power as an estate, and the commons are 
 represented as an estate. The whole theory of 
 power is, that it is an estate; a private right, 
 not a public trust. It is not without reason, 
 then, that the common sense of civilized nations 
 terms the ages when it prevailed in Western 
 Europe barbarous ages. 
 
 It may seem a paradox to class democracy 
 with the barbaric constitutions, and yet as it is 
 defended by many stanch democrats, especially 
 European democrats and revolutionists, and by 
 French and Germans settled in our own coun- 
 try, it is essentially barbaric and anti-republican. 
 The characteristic principle of barbarism is, 
 that power is a private or personal right, and 
 when democrats assert that the elective fran-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 37 
 
 chise is a natural right of man, or that it is 
 held by virtue of the fact that the elector is a 
 man, they assert the fundamental principle of 
 barbarism and despotism. This says nothing 
 in favor of restricted suffrage, or against what 
 is called universal suffrage. To restrict suf- 
 frage to property-holders helps nothing, theoreti- 
 cally or practically. Property has of itself 
 advantages enough, without clothing its holders 
 with exclusive political rights and privileges, 
 and the laboring classes any day are as trust- 
 worthy as the business classes. The wise 
 statesman will never restrict suffrage, or exclude 
 the poorer and more numerous classes from all 
 voice in the government of their country. 
 General suffrage is wise, and if Louis Philippe 
 had had the sense to adopt it, and thus rally 
 the whole nation to the support of his govern- 
 ment, he would never have had to encounter 
 the revolution of 1848. The barbarism, the 
 despotism, is not in universal suffrage, but in 
 defending the elective franchise as a private or 
 personal right. It is not a private, but a politi- 
 cal right, and, like all political rights, a public 
 trust. Extremes meet, and thus it is that men 
 who imagine that they march at the head of 
 the human race and lead the civilization of the 
 age, are really in principle retrograding to the
 
 38 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 barbarism of the past, or taking their plate 
 with nations on whom the light of civilization 
 has never yet dawned. All is not gold that 
 glisters. 
 
 The characteristic of barbarism is, that it 
 makes all authority a private or personal right ; 
 and the characteristic of civilization is, that it 
 makes it a public trust. Barbarism knows 
 only persons; civilization asserts and maintains 
 the state. With barbarians the authority of 
 the patriarch is developed simply by way of 
 explication; in civilized states it is developed 
 by way of transformation. Keeping in mind 
 this distinction, it may be maintained that all 
 systems of government, as a simple historical 
 fact, have been developed from the patriarchal. 
 The patriarchal has preceded them all, and it is 
 with the patriarchal that the human race has 
 begun its career. The family or household is 
 not a state, a civil polity, but it is a govern- 
 ment, and, historically considered, is the initial 
 or inchoate state as well as the initial or 
 inchoate nation. But its simple direct develop- 
 ment gives us barbarism, or what is called 
 Oriental despotism, and which nowhere exists, or 
 can exist, in Christendom. It is found only in 
 pagan and Mohammedan nations; Christianity 
 in the secular order is republican, and continues
 
 ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT. 39 
 
 and completes the work of Greece and Rome. 
 It meets with little permanent success in any 
 patriarchal or despotic nation, and must either 
 find or create civilization, which has been de- 
 veloped from the patriarchal system by way of 
 transformation. 
 
 But, though the patriarchal system is the 
 earliest form of government, and all govern- 
 ments have been developed or modified from 
 it, the right of government to govern cannot 
 be deduced from the right of the father to 
 govern his children, for the parental right itself 
 is not ultimate or complete. All governments 
 that assume it to be so, and rest on it as the 
 foundation of their authority, are barbaric or 
 despotic, and, therefore, without any legitimate 
 authority. The right to govern rests on owner- 
 ship or dominion. Where there is no proprie- 
 torship, there is no dominion ; and where there 
 is no dominion, there is no right to govern. 
 Only he who is sovereign proprietor is sovereign 
 lord. 
 
 Property, ownership, dominion rests on crea- 
 tion. The maker has the right to the thing 
 made. He, so far as he is sole creator, is sole 
 proprietor, and may do what he will with it 
 God is sovereign lord and proprietor of the 
 universe, because He is its sole creator. He
 
 40 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 hath the absolute dominion, because He is abso- 
 lute maker. He has made it, He owns it ; and 
 one may do what he will with his own. His 
 dominion is absolute, because He is absolute 
 creator, and He rightly governs as absolute and 
 universal lord; yet is He no despot, because 
 He exercises only His sovereign right, and His 
 own essential wisdom, goodness, justness, recti- 
 tude, and immutability, are the highest of all 
 conceivable guaranties that His exercise of His 
 power will always be right, wise, jusf, and 
 good. The despot is a man attempting to 
 be God upon earth, and to exercise a usurped 
 power. Despotism is based on the parental 
 right, and the parental right is assumed to be 
 absolute. Hence, your despotic rulers claim to 
 reign, and to be loved and worshipped as gods. 
 Even the Roman emperors, in the fourth and 
 fifth centuries, were addressed as divinities ; 
 and Theodosius the Great, a Christian, was 
 addressed as "Your Eternity," Eternitas ves- 
 tras so far did barbarism encroach on civil- 
 ization, even under Christian emperors. 
 
 The right of the father over his child is 
 an imperfect right, for he is the generator, 
 not the creator of his child. Generation is in 
 the order of second causes, and is simply the 
 development or explication of the race. The
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 41 
 
 -early Roman law, founded on the confusion of 
 generation with creation, gave the father abso- 
 lute authority over the child the right of life 
 and death, as over his servants or slaves ; but 
 this was restricted under the Empire, and in 
 all Christian nations the authority of the father 
 is treated, like all power, as a trust. The child, 
 like the father himself, belongs to the state, 
 and to the state the father is answerable for 
 the use he makes of his authority. The law 
 fixes flhe age of majority, when the child is 
 completely emancipated; and even during his 
 nonage, takes him from the father and places 
 him under guardians, in case the father is in- 
 competent to fulfil or grossly abuses his trust. 
 This is proper, because society contributes to 
 the life of the child, and has a right as well as 
 an interest in him. Society, again, must suffer 
 if the child is allowed to grow up a worthless 
 vagabond or a criminal ; and has a right to in- 
 tervene, both in behalf of itself and of the 
 child, in case his parents neglect to train him 
 up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, 
 or are training him up to be a liar, a thief, a 
 drunkard, a murderer, a pest to the community. 
 How, then, base the right of society on the 
 right of the father, since, in point of fact, the
 
 42 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 right of society is paramount to the right of the 
 parent ? 
 
 But even waiving this, and granting what is 
 not the fact, that the authority of the father is 
 absolute, unlimited, it cannot be the ground 
 of the right of society to govern. Assume the 
 parental right to be perfect and inseparable 
 from the parental relation, it is no right to 
 govern where no such relation exists. Nothing 
 true, real, solid in government can be founded 
 on what Carlyle calls a " sham." The statesman, 
 if worthy of the name, ascertains and con- 
 forms to the realities, the verities of things; 
 and all jurisprudence that accepts legal fictions 
 is imperfect, and even censurable. The presump- 
 tions or assumptions of law or politics must 
 have a real and solid basis, or they are inad- 
 missible. How, from the right of the father to 
 govern his own child, bom from his loins, con- 
 clude his right to govern one not his child? 
 Or how, from my right to govern my child, 
 conclude the right of society to found the state, 
 institute government, and exercise political au- 
 thority over its members ?
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 4b> 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 II. REJECTING the patriarchal theory as un- 
 tenable, and shrinking from asserting the divine 
 origin of government, lest they should favor 
 theocracy, and place secular society under the 
 control of the clergy, and thus disfranchise the 
 laity, modern political writers have sought to 
 render government purely human, and main- 
 tain that its origin is conventional, and that 
 it is founded in compact or agreement. Their 
 theory originated in the seventeenth century, 
 and was predominant in the last century and 
 the first third of the present. It has been, and 
 perhaps is yet, generally accepted by American 
 politicians and statesmen, at least so far as they 
 ever trouble their heads with the question at 
 all, which it must be confessed is not far. 
 x The moral theologians of the Church have 
 generally spoken of government as a social pact 
 or compact, and explained the reciprocal rights- 
 and obligations of subjects and rulers by the
 
 44 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 general law of contracts ; but they have never 
 held that government originates in a voluntary 
 agreement between the people and their rulers, 
 or between the several individuals composing 
 the community. They have never held that 
 government has only a conventional origin or 
 authority. They have simply meant, by the 
 social compact, the mutual relations and recip- 
 rocal rights and duties of princes and their 
 subjects, as implied in the very existence and 
 nature of civil society. Where there are rights 
 and duties on each side, they treat the fact, not 
 as an agreement voluntarily entered into, and 
 which creates them, but as a compact which 
 binds alike sovereign and subject; and in de- 
 termining whether either side has sinned or 
 not, they inquire whether either has broken 
 the terms of the social compact. Tbey were 
 engaged, not with the question whence does 
 government derive its authority, but with its 
 nature, and the reciprocal rights and duties of 
 governors and the governed. The compact it- 
 self they held was not voluntarily formed by 
 the people themselves, either individually or 
 collectively, but was imposed by God, either 
 immediately, or mediately, through the law of 
 nature. u Every man," says Cicero, " is born in 
 society, and remains there." They held the
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 45 
 
 same, and maintained that every one born into 
 society contracts by that fact certain obligations 
 to society, and society certain obligations to 
 him ; for under the natural law, every one has 
 certain rights, as life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness, and owes certain duties to society 
 for the protection and assistance it affords him. 
 But modern political theorists have abused 
 the phrase borrowed from the theologians, and 
 made it cover a political doctrine which they 
 would have been the last to accept. These- 
 theorists or political speculators have imagined 
 a state of nature antecedently to civil society, 
 in which men lived without government, law, 
 or manners, out of which they finally came by 
 entering into a voluntary agreement with some 
 one of their number to be king and to govern 
 them, or with one another to submit to the rule 
 of the majority. Hobbes, the English material- 
 ist, is among the earliest and most distinguished 
 of the advocates of this theory. He held that 
 men lived, prior to the creation of civil society, 
 in a state of nature, in which all were equal, 
 and every one had an equal right to every 
 thing, and to take any thing on which he could 
 lay his hands and was strong enough to hold. 
 There was no law but the will of the strongest. 
 Hence, the state of nature was a state of con*
 
 46 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 tinual war. At length, wearied and disgusted, 
 men sighed for peace, and, with one accord, 
 said to the tallest, bravest, or ablest among 
 them : Come, be our king, our master, our sov- 
 ereign lord, and govern us; we surrender our 
 natural rights and our natural independence to 
 you, with no other reserve or condition than 
 that you maintain peace among us, keep us 
 from robbing and plundering one another or 
 cutting each other's throats. 
 
 Locke followed Hobbes, and asserted virtually 
 the same theory, but asserted it in the interests 
 of liberty, as Hobbes had asserted it in the inter- 
 ests of power. Rousseau, a citizen of Geneva, 
 followed in the next century with InisContrat So- 
 cial, the text-book of the French revolutionists 
 almost their Bible and put the finishing stroke 
 to the theory. Hitherto the compact or agree- 
 ment had been assumed to be between the gov- 
 ernor and the governed ; Rousseau supposes it to 
 be between the people themselves, or a compact 
 to which the people are the only parties. He 
 adopts the theory of a state of nature in which 
 men lived, antecedently to their forming them- 
 selves into civil society, without government or 
 law. All men in that state were equal, and 
 each was independent and sovereign proprietor 
 of himself. These equal, independent, sovereign
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 individuals met, or are held to have met, in 
 convention, and entered into a compact with 
 themselves, each with all, and all with each, 
 that they would constitute government, and 
 would each submit to the determination and 
 authority of the whole, practically of the fluctu- 
 ating and irresponsible majority. Civil society, 
 the state, the government, originates in this 
 compact, and the government, as Mr. Jefferson 
 asserts in the Declaration of American Inde- 
 pendence, "derives its just powers from the 
 consent of the governed." 
 
 This theory, as so set forth, or as modified by 
 asserting that the individual delegates instead 
 of surrendering his rights to civil society, was 
 generally adopted by the American people in 
 the last century, and is still the more prevalent 
 theory with those among them who happen to 
 have any theory or opinion on the subject. It 
 is the political tradition of the country. The 
 state, as defined by the elder Adams, is held to 
 be a voluntary association of individuals. In- 
 dividuals create civil society, and may uncreate 
 it whenever they judge it advisable. Prior to 
 the Southern Rebellion, nearly every American 
 asserted with Lafayette, " the sacred right of 
 -insurrection " or revolution, and sympathized 
 with insurrectionists, rebels, and revolutionists,
 
 48 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 wherever they made their appearance. Loyalty 
 was held to be the correlative of royalty, treason 
 was regarded as a virtue, and traitors were 
 honored, feasted, and eulogized as patriots, ar- 
 dent lovers of liberty, and champions of the 
 people. The fearful struggle of the nation 
 against a rebellion which threatened its very 
 existence may have changed this. 
 
 That there is, or ever was, a state of nature 
 such as the theory assumes, may be questioned. 
 Certainly nothing proves that it is, or ever was, 
 a real state. That there is a law of nature is 
 undeniable. All authorities in philosophy, 
 morals, politics, and jurisprudence assert it; the 
 state assumes it as its own immediate basis, and 
 the codes of all nations are founded on it ; uni- 
 versal jurisprudence, the jus gentium of the Ro- 
 mans, embodies it, and the courts recognize 
 and administer it. It is the reason and con- 
 science of civil society, an'd every state acknowl- 
 edges its authority. But the law of nature is 
 as much in force in civil society as out of it 
 Civil law does not abrogate or supersede nat- 
 ural law, but presupposes it, and supports it- 
 self on it as its own ground and reason. As 
 the natural law, which is only natural justice 
 and equity dictated by the reason common to 
 all men, persists in the civil law, municipal or
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 49 
 
 international, as its informing soul, so does the 
 state of nature persist in the civil state, natural 
 society in civil society, which simply develops, 
 applies, and protects it. Man in civil society 
 is not out of nature, but is in it is in his most 
 natural state ; for society is natural to him, and 
 government is natural to society, and in some 
 form inseparable from it. The state of nature 
 under the natural law is not, as a separate state, 
 an actual state, and never was; but an ab- 
 straction, in which is considered, apart from the 
 concrete existence called society, what is de- 
 rived immediately from the natural law. But 
 as abstractions have no existence out of the 
 mind that forms them, the state of nature has 
 no actual existence in the world of reality as a 
 separate state. 
 
 But suppose with the theory the state of na- 
 ture to have been a real and separate state, in 
 which men at first lived, there is great difficulty 
 in understanding how they ever got out of it. 
 Can a man divest himself of his nature, or lift 
 himself above it ? Man is in his nature, and 
 inseparable from it. If his primitive state was 
 his natural state, and if the political state is 
 supernatural, preternatural, or subnatural, how 
 passed he alone, by his own unaided powers, 
 from the former to the latter ? The ancients,
 
 60 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 who had lost the primitive tradition of crea- 
 tion, asserted, indeed, the primitive man as 
 springing from the earth, and leading a mere 
 animal life, living in caves or hollow trees, and 
 feeding on roots and nuts, without speech, with- 
 out science, art, law, or sense of right and 
 wrong ; but prior to the prevalence of the Epi- 
 curean philosophy, they never pretended that 
 man could come out of that state alone by his 
 own unaided efforts. They ascribed the inven- 
 tion of language, art, and science, the institution 
 of civil society, government, and laws, to the in- 
 tervention of the gods. It remained for the 
 Epicureans who, though unable, like their 
 modern successors, the Positivists or Develop- 
 mentists, to believe in a first cause, believed in 
 effects without causes, or that things make or 
 take care of themselves to assert that men 
 could, by their own unassisted efforts, or by 
 the simple exercise of reason, come out of the 
 primitive state, and institute what in modern 
 times is called civitia, civility, or civilization. 
 
 The partisans of this theory of the state of 
 nature from which men have emerged by the 
 voluntary and deliberate formation of civil so- 
 ciety, forget that if government is not the sole 
 condition, it is one of the essential conditions 
 of progress. The only progressive nations are
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 51 
 
 civilized or republican nations. Savage and 
 barbarous tribes are unprogressive. Ages on 
 ages roll over them without changing any 
 thing in their state ; and Niebuhr has well re- 
 marked with others, that history records no in- 
 stance of a savage tribe or. people having be- 
 come civilized by its own spontaneous or in- 
 digenous efforts. If savage tribes have ever 
 become civilized, it has been by influences from 
 abroad, by the aid of men already civilized, 
 through conquest, colonies, or missionaries; 
 never by their own indigenous efforts, nor even 
 by commerce, as is so confidently asserted in 
 this mercantile age. Nothing in all history in- 
 dicates the ability of a savage people to pass of 
 itself from the savage state to the civilized. 
 But the primitive man, as described by Horace 
 in his Satires, and -asserted by Hobbes, Locke, 
 Rousseau, and others, is far below the savage. 
 The lowest, most degraded, and most debased 
 savage tribe that has yet been discovered has at 
 least some rude outlines or feeble reminiscences 
 of a social state, of government, morals, law, and 
 religion, for even in superstition the most gross 
 there is a reminiscence of true religion ; but the 
 people in the alleged state of nature have none. 
 The advocates of the theory deceive them- 
 selves by transporting into their imaginary
 
 52 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 state of nature the views, habits, and capacities 
 of the civilized man. It is, perhaps, not diffi- 
 cult for men who have been civilized, who have 
 the intelligence, the arts, the affections, and the 
 habits of civilization, if deprived by some great 
 social convulsion of society, and thrown back 
 on the so-called state of nature, or cast away on 
 some uninhabited island in the ocean, and cut 
 off from all intercourse with the rest of man- 
 kind, to reconstruct civil society, and re-estab- 
 lish and maintain civil government. They are 
 civilized men, and bear civil society in their 
 own life. But these are no representatives of 
 the primitive man in the alleged state of na- 
 ture. These primitive men have no experi- 
 ence, no knowledge, no conception even of civil- 
 ized life, or of any state superior to that in 
 which they have thus fa lived. How then 
 can they, since, on the theory, civil society has 
 no root in nature, but is a purely artificial crea- 
 tion, even conceive of civilization, much less 
 realize it ? 
 
 These theorists, as theorists always do, fail to 
 make a complete abstraction of the civilized 
 state, and conclude from what they feel they 
 could do in case civil society were broken up, 
 what men may do and have done in a state 
 of nature. Men cannot divest themselves of
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 53 
 
 themselves, and, whatever their efforts to do 
 it, they think, reason, and act as they are. 
 Every writer, whatever else he writes, writes 
 himself. The advocates of the theory, to have 
 made their abstraction complete, should have 
 presented their primitive man as below the 
 lowest known savage, unprogressive, and in 
 himself incapable of developing any progressive 
 energy. Unprogressive, and, without foreign as- 
 sistance, incapable of progress, how is it possible 
 for your primitive man to pass, by his own un- 
 assisted eiforts, from the alleged state of nature 
 to that of civilization, of which he has no con- 
 ception, and towards which no innate desire, nc 
 instinct, no divine inspiration pushes him ? 
 
 But even if, by some happy inspiration, 
 hardly supposable without supernatural inter- 
 vention repudiated by the theory if by some 
 happy inspiration, a rare individual should so far 
 rise above the state of nature as to conceive of 
 civil society and of civil government, how could 
 he carry his conception into execution ? Con- 
 ception is always easier than its realization, and 
 between the design and its execution there is 
 always a weary distance. The poetry of all 
 nations is a wail over unrealized ideals. It is 
 little that even the wisest and most potent 
 statesman can realize of what he conceives to
 
 54 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 be necessary for the state : political, legislative^ 
 or judicial reforms, even when loudly demand- 
 ed, and favored by authority, are hard to be 
 effected, and not seldom generations come and 
 go without effecting them. The republics of 
 Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Harring- 
 ton, as the communities of Robert Owen and 
 M. Cabet, remain Utopias, not solely because 
 intrinsically absurd, though so in fact, but 
 chiefly because they are innovations, have no- 
 support in experience, and require for their 
 realization the modes of thought, habits, man- 
 ners, character, life, which only their introduc- 
 tion and realization can supply. So to be able 
 to execute the design of passing from the sup- 
 posed state of nature to civilization, the re- 
 former would need the intelligence, the habits, 
 and characters in the public which are not pos- 
 sible without civilization itself. Some philoso- 
 phers suppose men have invented language, 
 forgetting that it requires language to give the 
 ability to invent language. 
 
 Men are little moved by mere reasoning, how- 
 ever clear and convincing it may be. They are 
 moved by their affections, passions, instincts,, 
 and habits. Routine is more powerful with 
 them than logic. A few are greedy of novel- 
 ties, and are always for trying experiments;
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 65 
 
 but the great body of the people of all nations 
 have an invincible repugnance to abandon what 
 they know for what they know not. They are, 
 to a great extent, the slaves of their own vis 
 inertise, and will not make the necessary ex- 
 ertion to change their existing mode of life, 
 even for a better. Interest itself is power- 
 less before their indolence, prejudice, habits, and 
 usages. Never were philosophers more igno- 
 rant of human nature than they, so numerous 
 tn the last century, who imagined that men can 
 be always moved by a sense of interest, and 
 that enlightened self-interest, Pinteret bwn en- 
 tendu, suffices to found and sustain the state. 
 No reform, no change in the constitution of 
 government or of society, whatever the advan- 
 tages it may promise, can be successful, if in- 
 troduced, unless it has its root or germ in the past. 
 Man is never a creator ; he can only develop 
 and continue, because he is himself a creature, 
 and only a second cause. The children of Israel, 
 when they encountered the privations of the 
 wilderness that lay between them and the prom- 
 ised land flowing with milk and honey, fainted 
 in spirit, and begged Moses to lead them back 
 to Egypt, and permit them to return to slavery. 
 In the alleged state of nature, as the phi- 
 losophers describe it, there is no germ of civ-
 
 66 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ilization, and the transition to civil society 
 would not be a development, but a complete 
 rupture with the past, and an entire new crea- 
 tion. When it is with the greatest difficulty 
 that necessary reforms are introduced in old and 
 highly civilized nations, and when it can seldom 
 be done at all without terrible political and 
 social convulsions, how can we suppose men 
 without society, and knowing nothing of it, can 
 deliberately, and, as it were, with " malice afore- 
 thought," found society ? Without government, 
 and destitute alike of habits of obedience and 
 habits of command, how can they initiate, es- 
 tablish, and sustain government? To suppose 
 it, would be to suppose that men in a state of 
 nature, without culture, without science, with- 
 out any of the arts, even the most simple and 
 necessary, are infinitely superior to the men 
 formed under the most advanced civilization. 
 Was Rousseau right in asserting civilization as 
 a fall, as a deterioration of the race ? 
 
 But suppose the state of nature, even suppose 
 that men, by some miracle or other, can get 
 out of it and found civil society, the origin 
 of government as authority in compact is not 
 yet established. According to the theory, the 
 rights of civil society are derived from the 
 rights of the individuals who form or enter into
 
 ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT. 57 
 
 ihe compact. But individuals cannot give what 
 they have not, and no individual has in himself 
 the right to govern another. By the law of 
 nature all men have equal rights, are equals, 
 and equals have no authority one over another. 
 Nor has an individual the sovereign right even 
 to himself, or the right to dispose of himself as 
 he pleases. Man is not God, independent, self- 
 existing, and self-sufficing. He is dependent, 
 and dependent not only on his Maker, but on 
 his fellow-men, on society, and even on nature, 
 or the material world. That on which he de- 
 pends, in the measure in which he depends on 
 it, contributes to his existence, to his life, and 
 to his well-being, and has, by virtue of its con- 
 tribution, a right in him and to him ; and hence 
 it is that nothing is more painful to the proud 
 spirit than to receive a favor that lays him 
 under an obligation to another. The right 
 of that on which man depends, and by com- 
 munion with which he lives, limits his own 
 right over himself. 
 
 Man does not depend exclusively on society, 
 for it is not his only medium of communion 
 with God, and therefore its right to him is 
 neither absolute nor unlimited ; but still he de- 
 pends on it, lives in it, and cannot live without 
 it. It has, then, certain rights over him, and
 
 58 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 he cannot enter into any compact, league, or 
 alliance that society does not authorize, or at 
 least permit. These rights of society override 
 his rights to himself, and he can neither surren- 
 der them nor delegate them. Other .rights, as 
 the rights of religion and property, which are 
 held directly from God and nature, and which 
 are independent of society, are included in what 
 are called the natural rights of man ; and these 
 rights cannot be surrendered in forming civil 
 society, for they are rights of man only before 
 civil society, and therefore not his to cede, and 
 because they are precisely the rights that gov- 
 ernment is bound to respect and protect. The 
 compact, then, cannot be formed as pretended, 
 for the only rights individuals could delegate 
 or surrender to society to constitute the sum of 
 the rights of government are hers already, and 
 those which are not hers are those which can- 
 not be delegated or surrendered, and in the free 
 and full enjoyment of which, it is the duty, the 
 chief end of government to protect each and 
 every individual. 
 
 The convention not only is not a fact, but in- 
 dividuals have no authority without society, to 
 meet in convention, and enter into the alleged 
 compact, because they are not independent, sov 
 ereign individuals. But pass over this: sup-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 5& 1 
 
 pose the convention, suppose the compact, it 
 must still be conceded that it binds and can 
 bind only those who voluntarily and deliber- 
 ately enter into it. This is conceded by Mr, 
 Jefferson and the American Congress of 1^76, 
 in the assertion that government derives its 
 "just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 This consent, as the matter is one of life and 
 death, must be free, deliberate, formal, explicit,, 
 not simply an assumed, implied, or constructive- 
 consent. It must be given personally, and not 
 by one for another without his express author- 
 ity. 
 
 It is usual to infer the consent or the accept- 
 ance of the terms of the compact from the 
 silence of the individual, and also from his con- 
 tinued residence in the country and submission 
 to its government. But residence is no evi 
 dence of consent, because it may be a matter 
 of necessity. The individual may be unable to 
 emigrate, if he would ; and by what right can 
 individuals form an agreement to which I must 
 consent or else migrate to some strange land 
 Can my consent, under such circumstances, even 
 if given, be any thing but a forced consent, & 
 consent given under duress, and therefore in- 
 valid ? Nothing can be inferred from one's 
 silence, for he may have many reasons for being
 
 t50 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 silent besides approval of the government. He 
 may be silent because speech would avail noth- 
 ing ; because to protest might be dangerous 
 cost him his liberty, if not his life ; because he 
 sees and knows nothing better, and is ignorant 
 that he has any choice in the case ; or because, 
 as very likely is the fact with the majority, he 
 has never for a moment thought of the matter, 
 or ever had his attention called to it, and has 
 no mind on the subject. 
 
 But however this may be, there certainly 
 must be excluded from the compact or obligation 
 to obey the government created by it all the 
 women of a nation, all the children too young to 
 be capable of giving their consent, and all who 
 are too ignorant, too weak of mind to be able 
 to understand the terms of the contract. These 
 several classes cannot be less than three-fourths 
 of the population of any country. What is to 
 be done with them? Leave them without gov- 
 ernment? Extend the power of the govern- 
 ment over them? By what right? Govern- 
 ment derives its just powers from the consent 
 of the governed, and that consent they have 
 not given. Whence does one-fourth of the 
 population get its right to govern the other 
 three-fourths ? 
 
 But what is to be done with the rights of
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 61 
 
 minorities? Is the rule of unanimity to be 
 insisted on in the convention, and in the gov- 
 ernment, when it goes into operation ? Unanim- 
 ity is impracticable, for where there are many 
 men there will be differences of opinion. . The 
 rule of unanimity gives to each individual a veto 
 on the whole proceeding, which was the grand 
 defect of the Polish constitution. Each mem- 
 ber of the Polish Diet, which included the 
 whole body of the nobility, had an absolute 
 veto, and could, alone, arrest the whole action 
 of the government. Will you substitute the 
 rule of the majority, and say the majority must 
 govern $ By what right ? It is agreed to in 
 the convention. Unanimously, or only by a 
 majority ? The right of the majority to have 
 their will is, on the social compact theory, a 
 conventional right, and therefore cannot come 
 into play before the convention is completed, 
 or the social compact is framed and accepted. 
 How, in settling the terms of the compact,. will 
 you proceed? By majorities? But suppose a 
 minority objects, and demands two- thirds, three- 
 fourths, or four-fifths, and votes against the 
 majority rule, which is carried only by a sim- 
 ple plurality of votes, will the proceedings of 
 the convention bind the dissenting minority I
 
 <52 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 What gives to the majority the right to govern 
 the minority who dissent from its action ? 
 
 On the supposition that society has rights 
 not derived from individuals, and which are in- 
 trusted to the government, there is a good 
 reason why the majority should prevail within 
 the legitimate sphere of government, because 
 the majority is the best representative practica- 
 ble of society itself; and if the constitution 
 secures to minorities and dissenting individuals 
 their natural rights and their equal rights as 
 citizens, they have no just cause of complaint, 
 for the majority in such case has no power to 
 tyrannize over them or to oppress them. But 
 the theory under examination denies that society 
 has any rights except such as it derives from 
 individuals who all have equal rights. Accord- 
 ing to it, society is itself conventional, and 
 created by free, independent, equal, sovereign 
 individuals. Society is a congress of sovereigns, 
 in which no one has authority over another, and 
 no one can be rightfully forced to submit to any 
 decree against his will. In such a congress the 
 rule of the majority is manifestly improper, 
 illegitimate, and invalid, unless adopted by 
 unanimous consent. 
 
 But this is not all. The individual is always 
 the equal of himself, and if the government
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 63 
 
 derives its powers from the consent of the 
 governed, he governs in the government, and 
 parts with none of his original sovereignty. 
 The government is not his master, but his agent, 
 as the principal only delegates, not surrenders, 
 his rights and powers to the agent. He is free 
 at any time he pleases to recall the powers he 
 has delegated, to give new instructions, or to 
 dismiss him. The sovereignty of the individual 
 survives the compact, and persists through all 
 the acts of his agent, the government. He 
 must, then, be free to withdraw from the com- 
 pact whenever he judges it advisable. Seces- 
 sion is perfectly legitimate if government is 
 simply a contract between equals. The dis- 
 affected, the criminal, the thief the government 
 would send to prison, or the murderer it would 
 hang, would be very likely to revoke his con- 
 sent, and to secede from the state. Any num- 
 ber of individuals large enough to count a ma- 
 jority among themselves, indisposed to pay the 
 government taxes, or to perform the military 
 service exacted, might hold a convention, adopt 
 a secession ordinance, and declare themselves a 
 free, independent, sovereign state, and bid defi- 
 ance to the tax-collector and the provost-mar- 
 shal, and that, too, without forfeiting their 
 estates or changing their domicile. Would
 
 64 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the government employ military force to coerce 
 them back to their allegiance ? By what right * 
 Government is their agent, their creature, and 
 no man owes allegiance to his own agent, or 
 creature. 
 
 The compact could bind only temporarily, 
 and could at any moment be dissolved. Mr. 
 Jefferson saw this, and very consistently main- 
 tained that one generation has no power to bind 
 another; and, as if this was not enough, he 
 asserted the right of revolution, and gave it as 
 his opinion that in every nation a revolution 
 once in every generation is desirable, that is, 
 according to his reckoning, once every nineteen 
 years. The doctrine that one generation has no 
 power to bind its successor is not only a logical 
 conclusion from the theory that governments 
 derive their just powers from the consent 
 of the governed, since a generation cannot give 
 its consent before it is born, but is very con- 
 venient for a nation that has contracted a large 
 national debt ; yet, perhaps, not so convenient to 
 the public creditor, since the new generation 
 may take it into its head not to assume or dis- 
 charge the obligations of its predecessor, but to 
 repudiate them. No man, certainly, can con- 
 tract for any one but himself; and how then can 
 the son be bound, without his own personal or
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 65 
 
 individual consent, freely given, by the objiga- 
 tions entered into by his father ? 
 
 The social compact is necessarily limited to 
 the individuals who form it, and as necessarily, 
 unless renewed, expires with them. It thus 
 creates no state, no political corporation, which 
 survives in all its rights and powers, though 
 individuals die. The state is on this theory a 
 voluntary association, and in principle, except 
 that it is not a secret society, in no respect dif- 
 fers from the Carbonari, or the Knights of the 
 Golden Circle. When Orsini attempted to exe- 
 cute the sentence of death on the Emperor of the 
 French, in obedience to the order of the Carbo 
 nari, of which the Emperor was a member, he was, 
 if the theory of the origin of government in com- 
 pact be true, no more an assassin than was the 
 officer who executed on the gallows the rebel 
 spies and incendiaries Beal and Kennedy. 
 
 Certain it is that the alleged social compact 
 has in it no social or civil element. It does not 
 and cannot create society. It can give only an 
 aggregation of individuals, and society is not an 
 aggregation nor even an organization of indi- 
 viduals. It is an organism, and individuals live 
 in its life as well as it in theirs. There is a 
 real . living solidarity, which makes individuals 
 members of the social body, and members one
 
 66 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 of another. There is no society without indi- 
 viduals, and there are no individuals without 
 society; but in society there is that which is not 
 individual, and is more than all individuals. 
 The social compact is an attempt to substitute 
 for this real living solidarity, which gives to 
 society at once unity of life and diversity of 
 members, an artificial solidarity, a fictitious uni- 
 ty for a real unity, and membership by contract 
 for real living membership, a cork leg for that 
 which nature herself gives. Real government 
 has its ground in this real living solidarity, and 
 represents the social element, which is not indi- 
 vidual, but above all individuals, as man is above 
 men. But the theory substitutes a simple agency 
 for government, and makes each individual its 
 principal. It is an abuse of language to call this 
 agency a government. It has no one feature or 
 element of government. It has only an artifi- 
 cial unity, based on diversity ; its authority is 
 only personal, individual, and in no sense a 
 public authority, representing a public will, a 
 public right, or a public interest. In no coun- 
 try could government be adopted and sustained 
 if men were left to the wisdom or justness of 
 their theories, or in the general affairs of life 
 acted on them. Society, and government as rep- 
 resenting society, has a real existence, life, facul-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 67 
 
 ties, and organs of its own, not derived or 
 derivable from individuals. As well might it 
 be maintained that the human body consists in 
 and derives all its life from the particles of mat- 
 ter it assimilates from its food, and which are 
 constantly escaping, as to maintain that society 
 derives its life, or government its powers, from 
 individuals. No mechanical aggregation of 
 brute matter can make a living body, if there 
 is no living and assimilating principle within; 
 and no aggregation of individuals, however 
 closely bound together by pacts or oaths, can 
 make society where there is no informing 
 social principle that aggregates and assimilates 
 them to a living body, or produce that mystic 
 existence called a state or commonwealth. 
 
 The origin of government in the Contrat 
 Social supposes the nation to be a purely per- 
 sonal affair. It gives the government no terri- 
 torial status, and clothes it with no territorial 
 rights or jurisdiction. The government that 
 could so originate would be, if any thing, a 
 barbaric, not a republican government. It has 
 only the rights conferred on it, surrendered or 
 delegated to it by individuals, and therefore, at 
 best, only individual rights. Individuals can 
 confer only such rights as they have in the sup- 
 posed state of nature. In that state there is
 
 68 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 neither private nor public domain. The earth 
 in that state is not property, and is open to the 
 first occupant, and the occupant can lay no 
 claim to any more than he actually occupies. 
 Whence, then, does government derive its terri- 
 torial jurisdiction, and its right of eminent do- 
 main claimed by all national governments? 
 Whence its title to vacant or unoccupied lands? 
 How does any particular government fix its 
 territorial boundaries, and obtain the right to 
 prescribe who may occupy, and on what condi- 
 tions, the vacant lands within those bounda- 
 ries? Whence does it get its jurisdiction of 
 navigable rivers, lakes, bays, and the seaboard 
 within its territorial limits, as appertaining to 
 its domain ? Here are rights that it could not 
 have derived from individuals, for individuals 
 never possessed them in the so-called state of 
 nature. The concocters of the theory evidently 
 overlooked these rights, or considered them of 
 no importance. They seem never to have con- 
 templated the existence of territorial states, or 
 the division of mankind into nations fixed to 
 the soil. They seem not to have supposed 
 the earth could be appropriated ; and, indeed, 
 many of their followers pretend that it cannot 
 be, and that the public lands of a nation are 
 open lands, and whoso chooses may occupy
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 69 
 
 them, without leave asked of the national au- 
 thority or granted. The American people re- 
 tain more than one reminiscence of the nomadic 
 and predatory habits of their Teutonic or Scy- 
 thian ancestors before they settled on the banks 
 of the Don or the Danube, on the Northern 
 Ocean, in Scania, or came in contact with the 
 Grseco-Roman civilization. 
 
 Yet mankind are divided into nations, and 
 all civilized nations are fixed to the soil. The 
 territory is defined, and is the domain of the 
 state, from which all private proprietors hold 
 their title-deeds. Individual proprietors hold 
 under the state, and often hold more than thev 
 
 ' V 
 
 occupy ; but it retains in all private estates the 
 eminent domain, and prohibits the alienation 
 of land to one who is not a citizen. It defends 
 its domain, its public unoccupied lands, and 
 the lands owned by private individuals, against 
 all foreign powers. Now whence, if government 
 has only the rights ceded it by individuals, does 
 it get this domain, and hold the right to treat 
 settlers on even its unoccupied lands as tres- 
 passers ? In the state of nature the territorial 
 rights of individuals, if any they have, are re- 
 stricted to the portion of land they occupy with 
 their rude culture, and with their flocks and 
 herds, and in civilized nations to what they
 
 70 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 hold from the state, and, therefore, the right as 
 held and defended by all nations, and without 
 which the nation has no status, no fixed dwell- 
 ing, and is and can be no state, could never 
 have been derived from individuals. The ear- 
 liest notices of Rome show the city in posses- 
 sion of the sacred territory, to which the state 
 and all political power are attached. Whence 
 did Rome become a landholder, and the gov- 
 erning people a territorial people? Whence 
 does any nation become a territorial nation and 
 lord of the domain ? Certainly never by the 
 cession of individuals, and hence no civilized 
 government ever did or could originate in the 
 so-called social compact.
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 71 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT CONTINUED. 
 
 III. THE tendency of the last century was to 
 individualism ; that of the present is to social- 
 ism. The theory of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, 
 and Jefferson, though not formally abandoned, 
 and still held by many, has latterly been much 
 modified, if not wholly transformed. Sover- 
 eignty, it is now maintained, is inherent in the 
 people; not individually, indeed, but collectively, 
 or the people as society. The constitution is 
 held not to be simply a compact or agreement 
 entered into by the people as individuals crea- 
 ting civil society and government, but a law or- 
 dained by the sovereign people, prescribing the 
 constitution of the state and defining its rights 
 and powers. 
 
 This transformation, which is rather going on 
 than completed, is, under one aspect at least, a 
 progress, or rather a return to the sounder prin- 
 ciples of antiquity. Under it government 
 ceases to be a mere agency, which must obtain
 
 72 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the assassin's consent to be hung before it can 
 rightfully hang him, and becomes authority, 
 which is one and imperative. The people 
 taken collectively are society, and society is a 
 living organism, not a mere aggregation of in- 
 dividuals. It does not, of course, exist without 
 individuals, but it is something more than in- 
 dividuals, and has rights not derived from them, 
 and which are paramount to theirs. There is 
 more truth, and truth of a higher order, in this 
 than in the theory of the social compact. In- 
 dividuals, to a certain extent, derive their life 
 from God through society, and so far they de- 
 pend on her, and they are hers; she owns 
 them, and has the right to dp as she will with 
 them. On this theory the state emanates from 
 society, and is supreme. It coincides with 
 the ancient Greek and Roman theory, as ex- 
 pressed by Cicero, already cited. Man is born 
 in society and remains there, and it may be re- 
 garded as the source of ancient Greek and Ro- 
 man patriotism, which still commands the admi- 
 ration of the civilized world. The state with 
 Greece and Rome was a living reality, and 
 loyalty a religion. The Romans held Rome 
 to be a divinity, gave her statues and altars, 
 and offered her divine worship. This was 
 superstition, no doubt, but it had in it an ele-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 73 
 
 tnent of truth. To every true philosopher there 
 is something divine in the state, and truth 
 in all theories. Society stands nearer to God, 
 and participates more immediately of the Di- 
 vine essence, and the state is a more lively image 
 of God than the individual. It was man, the 
 generic and reproductive man, not the isolated 
 individual, that was created in the image and 
 likeness of his Maker. " And God created man 
 in his own image ; in the image of God created 
 he him ; male and female created he them." 
 
 This theory is usually called the democratic 
 "theory, and it enlists in its support the instincts, 
 the intelligence, the living forces, and active 
 tendencies of the age. Kinsrs, kaisers, and 
 
 O O / / 
 
 hierarchies are powerless before it, and war 
 against it in vain. The most they can do is to 
 restrain its excesses, or to guard against its 
 abuses. Its advocates, in returning to it, some- 
 times revive in its name the old pagan super- 
 stition. Not a few of the European democrats 
 recognize in the earth, in heaven, or in hell, no 
 power superior to the people, and say not only 
 people-king, but people-God. They say abso- 
 lutely, without any qualification, the voice of 
 the people is the voice of God, and make their 
 will the supreme law, not only in politics, but 
 in religion, philosophy, morals, science, and the
 
 74 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 arts. The people not only found the state,, 
 but also the church. They inspire or reveal 
 the truth, ordain or prohibit worships, judge of 
 doctrines, and decide cases of conscience. Maz- 
 zini said, when at the head of the Roman Re- 
 public in 1848, the question of religion must 
 be remitted to the judgment of the people. 
 Yet this theory is the dominant theory of the 
 age, and is in all civilized nations advancing 
 w^th apparently irresistible force. 
 
 But this theory has its difficulties. Who are 
 the collective people that have the rights of 
 society, or, who are the sovereign people ? The 
 word people is vague, and in itself determines 
 nothing. It may include a larger or a smaller 
 number; it may mean the political people, or 
 it may mean simply population ; it may mean 
 peasants, artisans, shopkeepers, traders, mer- 
 chants, as distinguished from the nobility; 
 hired laborers or workmen as distinguished from 
 their employer, or slaves as distinguished from 
 their master or owner. In which of these senses 
 is the word to be taken when it is said, " The 
 people are sovereign ?" The people are the 
 population or inhabitants of one and the same 
 country. That is something. But who or 
 what determines the country ? Is the country 
 the whole territory of the globe ? That will
 
 ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT. 75' 
 
 not be said, especially since the dispersion of 
 mankind and their division into separate na- 
 tions. Is the territory indefinite or undefined ?'. 
 Then indefinite or undefined are its inhabitants,, 
 or the people invested with the rights of so- 
 ciety. Is it defined and its boundaries fixed ? 
 Who has done it ? The people. But who are 
 the people ? We are as wise as we were at 
 starting. The logicians say that the definition 
 of idem per idem, or the same by the same, is 
 simply no definition at all. 
 
 The people are the nation, undoubtedly, if 
 you mean by the people the sovereign people. 
 But who are the people constituting the nation? 
 The sovereign people ? This is only to revolve- 
 in a vicious circle. The nation is the tribe or 
 the people living under the same regimen, and 
 born of the same ancestor, or sprung from the 
 same ancestor or progenitor. But where find a 
 nation in this the primitive sense of the word ? 
 Migration, conquest, and intermarriage, have so 
 broken up and intermingled the primitive 
 races, that it is more than doubtful if a single 
 nation, tribe, or family of unmixed blood now 
 exists on the face of the earth. A Frenchman, . 
 Italian, Spaniard, German, or Englishman, may 
 have the blood of a hundred different races 
 coursing in his veins. The nation is the people-
 
 76 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 inhabiting the same country, and united under 
 one and the same government, it is further 
 answered. The nation, then, is not purely per- 
 sonal, but also territorial Then, again, the 
 question comes up, who or what determines the 
 territory ? The government ? But not before 
 it is constituted, and it cannot be constituted 
 till its territorial limits are determined. The 
 tribe doubtless occupies territory, but is not 
 fixed to it, and derives no jurisdiction from it, 
 ind therefore is not territorial But a nation, 
 in the modern or civilized sense, is fixed to the 
 territory, and derives from it its jurisdiction, 
 or sovereignty; and, therefore, till the terri- 
 tory is determined, the nation is not and cannot 
 be determined. 
 
 The question is not an idle question. It is 
 one of great practical importance; for, till it 
 is settled, we can neither determine who are 
 the sovereign people, nor who are united under 
 one and the same government. Laws have no 
 -extra-territorial force, and the officer who should 
 attempt to enforce the national laws beyond the 
 national territory w r ould be a trespasser. If the 
 limits are undetermined, the government is not 
 territorial, and can claim as within its jurisdic- 
 tion only those who choose to acknowledge its 
 authority. The importance of the question has
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 77 
 
 been recently brought home to the American 
 people by the secession of eleven or more 
 States from the Union. Were these States a part 
 of the American nation, or were they not? 
 Was the war which followed secession, and 
 which cost so many lives and so much treasure, 
 a civil war or a foreign war ? Were the seces- 
 sionists traitors and rebels to their sovereign, 
 or were they patriots fighting for the liberty 
 and independence of their country and the 
 right of self-government? All on both sides 
 agreed that the nation is sovereign ; the dispute 
 was as to the existence of the nation itself, and 
 the extent of its jurisdiction. Doubtless, when 
 a nation has a generally recognized existence as 
 an' historical fact, most of the difficulties in de- 
 termining who are the sovereign people can be 
 got over ; but the question here concerns the 
 institution of government, and determining who 
 constitute sodiety and have the right to meet 
 in person, or by their delegates in convention, 
 to institute it. This question, so important, 
 and at times so difficult, the theory of the 
 origin of government in the people collectively, 
 or the nation, does not solve, or furnish any 
 means of solving. 
 
 But suppose this difficulty surmounted, there 
 is still another, and a very grave one, to over-
 
 78 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 come. The theory assumes that the people 
 collectively, "in their own native right and 
 might," are sovereign. According to it the 
 people are ultimate, and free to do whatever 
 they please. This sacrifices individual free- 
 dom. The origin of government in a compact 
 entered into by individuals, each with all and 
 all with each, sacrificed the rights of society, 
 and assumed each individual to be in himself 
 an independent sovereignty. If logically carried 
 6ut, there could be no such crime as treason, 
 there could be no state, and no public authori- 
 ty. This new theory transfers to society the 
 sovereignty which that asserted for the indi- 
 vidual, and asserts social despotism, or the ab- 
 solutism of the state. It asserts with sufficient 
 energy public authority, or the right of the 
 people to govern; but it leaves no space for 
 individual rights, which society must recognize, 
 respect, and protect. This was the grand de- 
 fect of the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization. 
 The historian explores in vain the records of 
 the old Greek and Roman republics for any 
 recognition of the rights of individuals not 
 held as privileges or concessions from the state. 
 Society recognized no limit to her authority, 
 and the state claimed over individuals all the 
 authority of the patriarch over his household,
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 79 
 
 the chief over his tribe, or the absolute mon- 
 arch over his subjects. The direct and indirect 
 influence of the body of freemen admitted to a 
 voice in public affairs, in determining the reso- 
 lutions and action of the state, no doubt tem- 
 pered in practice to some extent the authority of 
 the state, and prevented acts of gross oppression; 
 but in theory the state was absolute, and the 
 people individually were placed at the mercy 
 of the people collectively, or, rather, the ma- 
 jority of the collective people. 
 
 Under ancient republicanism, there were 
 lights of the state and rights of the citizen, 
 dut no rights of man, held independently of 
 society, and not derived from God through the 
 state. The recognition of these rights by mod- 
 ern society is due to Christianity : some say to 
 the barbarians, who overthrew the Roman em- 
 pire; but this last opinion is not well founded. 
 The barbarian chiefs and nobles had no doubt 
 a lively sense of personal freedom and inde- 
 pendence, but for themselves only. They had 
 no conception of personal freedom as a general or 
 universal right, and men never obtain universal 
 principles by generalizing particulars. They 
 may give a general truth a particular appli- 
 cation, but not a particular truth understood 
 to be a particular truth a general or universal
 
 80 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 application. They are too good logicians for 
 that. The barbarian individual freedom and 
 personal independence was never generalized 
 into the doctrine of the rights of man, any 
 more than the freedom of the master has been 
 generalized into the right of his slaves to be 
 free. The doctrine of individual freedom be* 
 fore the state is due to the Christian relig- 
 ion, which asserts the dignity and worth of 
 every human soul, the accountability to God 
 of each man for himself, and lays it down as 
 law for every one that God is to be obeyed 
 rather than men. The church practically de- 
 nied the absolutism of the state, and asserted 
 for every man rights not held from the state, in 
 converting the empire to Christianity, in defi- 
 ance of the state authority, and the imperial 
 edicts punishing with death the profession of the 
 Christian faith. In this she practically, as well 
 as theoretically, overthrew state absolutism, and 
 infused into modern society the doctrine that 
 every individual, even the lowest and meanest, 
 has rights which the state neither confers nor 
 can abrogate ; and it will only be by extinguish- 
 ing in modern society the Christian faith, and 
 obliterating all traces of Christian civilization, 
 that state absolutism can be revived with more 
 than a partial and temporary success.
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 81 
 
 The doctrine of individual liberty may be 
 abused, and so explained as to deny the rights 
 of society, and to become pure individualism ; 
 but no political system that runs to the op- 
 posite extreme, and absorbs the individual in 
 the state, stands the least chance of any general 
 or permanent success till Christianity is extin- 
 guished. Yet the assertion of principles which 
 logically imply state absolutism is not entirely 
 harmless, even in Christian countries. Error 
 js never harmless, and only truth can give a 
 solid foundation on which to build. Individu- 
 alism and socialism are each opposed to the 
 other, and each has only a partial truth. The 
 state founded on either cannot stand, and so- 
 ciety will only alternate between the two ex- 
 tremes. To-day it is torn by a revolution in favor 
 of socialism ; to-morrow it will be torn by an- 
 other in favor of individualism, and without 
 effecting any real progress by either revolution. 
 Real progress can be secured only by recogni- 
 zing and building on the truth, not as it exists 
 in our opinions or in our theories, but as it 
 exists in the world of reality, and independent 
 of our opinions. 
 
 Now, social despotism or state absolutism is 
 not based on truth or reality. Society has 
 certain rights over individuals, for she is a
 
 82 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 medium of their communion with God, or 
 through which they derive life from God, the 
 primal source of all life; but she is not the 
 only medium of man's life. Man, as was said 
 in the beginning, lives by communion with 
 God, and he communes with God in the cre- 
 ative act and the Incarnation, through his kind, 
 and through nature. This threefold com- 
 munion gives rise to three institutions re- 
 ligion or the church, society or the state, and 
 property. The life that man derives from Go(\ 
 through religion and property, is not derived 
 from him through society, and consequently so 
 much of his life he holds independently of so- 
 ciety ; and this constitutes his rights as a man 
 as distinguished from his rights as a citizen. 
 In relation to society, as not held from God 
 through her, these are termed his natural rights, 
 which she must hold inviolable, and govern- 
 ment protect for every one, whatever his com- 
 plexion or his social position. These rights 
 the rights of conscience and the rights of prop- 
 erty, with all their necessary implications are 
 limitations of the rights of society, and the in- 
 dividual has the right to plead them against 
 the state. Society does not confer them, and 
 it cannot take them away, for they are at least 
 as sacred and as fundamental as her own.
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 83 
 
 But even this limitation of popular sover- 
 eignty is not all. The people can be sovereign 
 only in the sense in which they exist and act. 
 The people are not God, whatever some theo- 
 rists may pretend are not independent, self- 
 existent, and self-sufficing. They are as depend- 
 ent collectively as individually, and therefore 
 can exist and act only as second cause, never as 
 first cause. They can, then, even in the limited 
 sphere of their sovereignty, be sovereign only 
 in a secondary sense, never absolute sovereign 
 in their own independent right. They are sov- 
 ereign only to the extent to which they impart 
 life to the individual members of society, and 
 only in the sense in which she imparts it, or is 
 its cause. She is not its first cause or creator, 
 and is the medial cause or medium through 
 which they derive it from God, not its efficient 
 cause or primary source. Society derives her 
 own life from God, and exists and acts only as 
 dependent on him. Then she is sovereign over 
 individuals only as dependent on God. Her 
 dominion is then not original and absolute, but 
 secondary and derivative. 
 
 This third theory does not err in assuming 
 that the people collectively are more than the 
 people individually, or in denying society to be 
 a mere aggregation of individuals with no life
 
 84 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and no rights but what it derives from them ; 
 nor even in asserting that the people in the 
 sense of society are sovereign, but in asserting 
 that they are sovereign in their own native or 
 underived right and might. Society has not in 
 herself the absolute right to govern, because 
 she has not the absolute dominion either of her- 
 self or her members. God gave to man do- 
 minion over the irrational creation, for he made 
 irrational creatures for man ; but he never gave 
 him either individually or collectively the do- 
 minion over the rational creation. The the- 
 ory that the people are absolutely sovereign 
 in their own independent right and might, as 
 some zealous democrats explain it, asserts the 
 fundamental principle of despotism, and all des- 
 potism is false, for it identifies the creature with 
 the Creator. No creature is creator, or has the 
 rights of creator, and consequently no one in 
 his own right is or can be sovereign. This 
 third theory, therefore, is untenable. 
 
 IV A still more recent class of philosophers, 
 if philosophers they may be called, reject the ori- 
 gin of government in the people individually 
 or collectively. Satisfied that it has never been 
 instituted by a voluntary and deliberate act of 
 the people, and confounding government as a
 
 ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT. 85 
 
 fact with government as authority, maintain 
 that government is a spontaneous development 
 of nature. Nature develops it as the liver se- 
 cretes bile, as the bee constructs her cell, or the 
 beaver builds his dam. Nature, working by 
 her own laws and inherent energy, develops so- 
 ciety, and society develops government. That 
 is all the secret. Questions as to the origin of 
 government or its rights, beyond the simple posi- 
 tive fact, belong to the theological or metaphys- 
 ical stage of the development of nature, but 
 are left behind when the race has passed be- 
 yond that stage, and has reached the epoch of 
 positive science, in which all, except the posi- 
 tive fact, is held to be unreal and non-existent. 
 Government, like every thing else in the uni 
 verse, is simply a positive development of na- 
 ture. Science explains the laws and conditions 
 of the development, but disdains to ask for its 
 origin or ground in any order that transcends 
 the changes of the world of space and time. 
 
 These philosophers' profess to eschew all 
 theory, and yet they only oppose theory to 
 theory. The assertion that reality for the hu- 
 man mind is restricted to the positive facts of 
 the sensible order, is purely theoretic, and is 
 -any thing but a positive fact. Principles are as 
 really objects of science as facts, and it is only
 
 86 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 in the light of principles that facts themselves 
 are intelligible. If the human mind had no 
 science of reality that transcends the sensible 
 order, or the positive fact, it could have no> 
 science at all. As things exist only in their 
 principles or causes, so can they be known only 
 in their principles and causes ; for things can be 
 known only as they are, or as they really exist. 
 The science that pretends to deduce principles 
 from particular facts, or to rise from the fact by 
 way of reasoning to an order that transcends 
 facts, and in which facts have their origin, is 
 undoubtedly chimerical, and as against that the 
 positivists are unquestionably right. But to- 
 maintain that man has no intelligence of any 
 thing beyond the fact, no intuition or intellec- 
 tual apprehension of its principle or cause, is 
 equally chimerical. The human mind cannot 
 have all science, but it has real science as far as 
 it goes, and real science is the knowledge of 
 things as they are, not as they are not. Sen- 
 sible facts are not intelligible by themselves, be- 
 cause they do not exist by themselves ; and if 
 the human mind could not penetrate beyond 
 the individual fact, beyond the mimetic to the 
 methexic, or transcendental principle, copied or 
 imitated by the individual fact, it could never 
 know the fact itself. The error of modern
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 87 
 
 philosophers, or philosopherlings,is in supposing 
 the principle is deduced or inferred from the 
 fact, and in denying that the human mind has 
 direct and immediate intuition of it. 
 
 Something that transcends the sensible order 
 there must be, or there could be no develop 
 ment ; and if we had no science of it, we could 
 never assert that development is development, 
 or scientifically explain the laws and conditions 
 of development. Development is explication, 
 and supposes a germ which precedes it, and is 
 not itself a development; and development, how- 
 ever far it may be carried, can never do more 
 than realize the possibilities of the germ. De- 
 velopment is not creation, and cannot supply its 
 own germ. That at least must be given by the 
 Creator, for from nothing nothing can be devel- 
 oped. If authority has not its germ in nature, 
 it cannot be developed from nature sponta- 
 neously or otherwise. All government has a 
 governing will ; and without a will that com. 
 mands, there is no government ; and nature has 
 in her spontaneous developments no will, for 
 she has no personality. Reason itself, as dis- 
 tinguished from will, only presents the end and 
 the means, but does not govern ; it prescribes a 
 rule, but cannot ordain a law. An imperative 
 will, the will of a superior who has the right to
 
 88 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 command what reason dictates or approves, is 
 essential to government ; and that will is not 
 developed from nature, because it has no germ 
 in nature. So something above and beyond 
 nature must be asserted, or government itself 
 cannot be asserted, even as a development. 
 Nature is no more self-sufficing than are the 
 people, or than is the individual man. 
 
 No doubt there is a natural law, which is 
 law in the proper sense of the word law ; but 
 this is a positive law under which nature is 
 placed by a sovereign above herself, and is 
 never to be confounded with those laws of na- 
 ture so-called, according to which she is produc- 
 tive as second cause, or produces her effects,* 
 which are not properly laws at all. Fire burns, 
 water flows, rain falls, birds fly, fishes swim, 
 food nourishes, poisons kill, one substance has 
 a chemical affinity for another, the needle points 
 to the pole, by a natural law, it is said ; that is, 
 the effects are produced by an inherent and 
 uniform natural force. Laws in this sense are 
 simply physical forces, and are nature herself. 
 The natural law, in an ethical sense, is not a 
 physical law, is not a natural force, but a law 
 imposed by the Creator on all moral creatures, 
 that is, all creatures endowed with reason and 
 free-will, and is called natural because promul-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 89 
 
 gated in natural reason, or the reason common 
 and essential to all moral creatures. This js 
 the moral law. It is what the French call le 
 droit naturel, natural right, and, as the theo- 
 logians teach us, is the transcript of the eternal 
 law, the eternal will or reason of God. It is 
 the foundation of all law, and all acts of a state 
 that contravene it are, as St. Augustine main- 
 tains, violences rather than laws. The moral 
 law is no development of nature, for it is above 
 nature, and is imposed on nature. The only 
 development there is about it is in our under- 
 standing of it. 
 
 There is, of course, development in nature, 
 for nature considered as creation has been 
 created in germ, and is completed only in suc- 
 cessive developments. Hence the origin of 
 space and time. There would have been no 
 space if there had -been no external creation, 
 and no time if the creation had been completed 
 externally at once, as it was in relation to the 
 Creator. Ideal space is simply the ability of 
 God to externize his creative act, and actual 
 space is the relation of coexistence in the things 
 created; ideal time is the ability of God to 
 create existences with the capacity of being 
 completed by successive developments, and ac- 
 tual time is the relation of these in the order of
 
 90 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 succession, and when the existence is completed 
 or consummated development ceases, and time 
 is no more. In relation to himself the Creator's 
 works are complete from the first, and hence 
 with him there is no time, for there is no suc- 
 cession. But in relation to itself creation is in- 
 complete, and there is room for development, 
 which may be continued till the whole possibil- 
 ity of creation is actualized. Here is the foun- 
 dation of what is true in the modern doctrine 
 of progress. Man is progressive, because the 
 possibilities of his nature are successively un- 
 folded and actualized. 
 
 Development is a fact, and its laws and con- 
 ditions may be scientifically ascertained and 
 defined. All generation is development, as is 
 all growth, physical, moral, or intellectual. But 
 every thing is developed in its own order, and 
 after its kind. The Darwinian theory of the 
 development of species is not sustained by 
 science. The development starts from the 
 germ, and in the germ is given the law or prin- 
 ciple of the development. From the acorn is 
 developed the oak, never the pine or the lin- 
 den. Every kind generates its kind, never an- 
 other. But no development is, strictly speak- 
 ing, spontaneous, or the result alone of the in- 
 herent energy or force of the gerin developed.
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 91* 
 
 There is not only a solidarity of race, but in- 
 some sense of all races, or species ; all created 
 things are bound to their Creator, and to one 
 another. One and the same law or principle 
 of life pervades all creation, binding the uni- 
 verse together in a unity that copies or imitates 
 the unity of the Creator. No creature is isolated 
 from the rest, or absolutely independent of 
 others. All are parts of one stupendous whole, 
 and each depends on the whole, and the whole 
 on each, and each on each. All creatures are 
 members of one body, and members one of 
 another. The germ of the oak is in the acorn,, 
 but the acorn left to itself alone can never grow 
 into the oak, any more than a body at rest can 
 place itself in motion. Lay the acorn away in 
 your closet, where it is absolutely deprived of 
 air, heat, and moisture, and in vain will you 
 watch for its germination. Germinate it cannot 
 without some external influence, or com- 
 munion, so to speak, with the elements from 
 which it derives its sustenance and support. 
 
 There can be no absolutely spontaneous de- 
 velopment. All things are doubtless active,, 
 for nothing exists except in so far as it is an ac- 
 tive force of some sort ; but only God himself 
 alone suffices for his own activity. All cre- 
 ated things are dependent, have not their being;
 
 D2 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 in themselves, and are real only as they par- 
 ticipate, through the creative act, of the Divine 
 being. The germ can no more be developed 
 than it could exist without God, and no more 
 develop itself than it could create itself. What 
 is called the law of development is in the germ ; 
 but that law or force can operate only in con- 
 junction with another force or other forces. 
 All development, as all growth, is by accretion 
 or assimilation. The assimilating force is, if 
 you will, in the germ, but the matter assimi- 
 lated comes and must come from abroad. 
 Every herdsman knows it, and knows that to 
 rear his stock he must supply them with ap- 
 propriate food; every husbandman knows it, 
 and knows that to raise a crop of corn, he must 
 plant the seed in a soil duly prepared, and 
 which will supply the gases needed for ita 
 germination, growth, flowering, boiling, and 
 ripening. In all created things, in all things 
 not complete in themselves, in all save God, 
 in whom there is no development possible, for 
 He is, as say the schoolmen, most pure act, in 
 whom there is no unactualized possibility, the 
 same law holds good. Development is always 
 the resultant of two factors, the one the thing 
 itself, the other some external force co-opera- 
 ting with it, exciting it, and aiding it to act.
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 9$ 
 
 Hence the prcemotio physica of the Thomists, 
 and the prcevenient and adjuvant grace of the 
 theologians, without which no one can begin 
 the Christian life, and which must needs be 
 supernatural when the end is supernatural. 
 The principle of life in all orders is the same, 
 and human activity no more suffices for itself 
 in one order than in another. 
 
 Here is the reason why the savage tribe 
 never rises to a civilized state without com- 
 munion in some form with a people already 
 civilized, and why there is no moral or intel- 
 lectual development and progress without edu- 
 cation and instruction, consequently without 
 instructors and educators. Hence the value 
 of tradition ; and hence, as the first man could 
 not instruct himself, Christian theologians, with 
 a deeper philosophy than is dreamed of by the 
 sciolists of the age, maintain that God himself 
 was man's first teacher, or that he created 
 Adam a full-grown man, with all his faculties 
 developed, complete, and in full activity. Hence, 
 too, the heathen, mythologies, which always 
 contain some elements of truth, however they 
 may distort, mutilate, or travesty them, make 
 the gods the first teachers of the human race, 
 and ascribe to their instruction even the most 
 simple and ordinary arts of every-day life.
 
 "94 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 The gods teach men to plough, to plant, to 
 reap, to work in iron, to erect a shelter from 
 the storm, and to build a fire to warm them 
 and to cook their food. The common sense, 
 as well as the common traditions of mankind, 
 refuses to accept the doctrine that men are de- 
 veloped without foreign aid, or progressive 
 without divine assistance. Nature of herself 
 -can no more develop government than it can 
 language. There can be no language without 
 society, and no society without language. 
 There can be no government without society, 
 and no society without government of some 
 sort. 
 
 But even if nature could spontaneously develop 
 herself, she could never develop an institution 
 that has the right to govern, for she has not her- 
 self that right. Nature is not God, has not cre- 
 ated us, therefore has not the right of property 
 in us. She is not and cannot be our sovereign. 
 We belong not to her, nor does she belong to her- 
 self, for she is herself creature, and belongs to 
 her Creator. Not being in herself sovereign, 
 she cannot develop the right to govern, nor can 
 she develop government as a fact, to say noth- 
 ing of its right, for govemment, whether we 
 speak of it as fact or as authority, is distinct 
 from that which is governed ; but natural de-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 95 
 
 Telopments are nature, and indistinguishable 
 from her. The governor and the governed, the 
 restrainer and the restrained, can never as such 
 be identical. Self-government, taken strictly, 
 is a contradiction in terms. When an indi- 
 vidual is said to govern himself, he is never 
 understood to govern himself in the sense in 
 which he is governed. He by his reason and 
 will governs or restrains his appetites and pas- 
 sions. It is man as spirit governing man as 
 flesh, the spiritual mind governing the carnal 
 mind. 
 
 Natural developments cannot in all cases be 
 even allowed to take their own course without 
 injury to nature herself. " Follow. nature " is an 
 unsafe maxim, if it means, leave nature to de- 
 velop herself as she will, and follow thy natural 
 inclinations. Nature is good, but inclinations 
 are frequently bad. All our appetites and pas- 
 sions are given us for good, for a purpose useful 
 and necessary to individual and social life, but 
 they become morbid and injurious if indulged 
 without restraint. Each has its special object, 
 and naturally seeks it exclusively, and thus 
 generates discord and war in the individual, 
 which immediately find expression in society, 
 and also in the state, if the state be a simple 
 'natural development. .The Christian maxim,
 
 96 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Deny thyself, is far better than the Epicurean 
 maxim, Enjoy thyself, for there is no real en- 
 joyment without self-denial. There is deep 
 philosophy in Christian asceticism, as the Posi- 
 tivists themselves are aware, and even insist. 
 But Christian asceticism aims not to destroy na- 
 ture, as voluptuaries pretend, but to regulate, 
 direct, and restrain its abnormal developments 
 for its own good. It forces nature in her devel- 
 opments to submit to a law which is not in 
 her, but above her. The Positivists pretend 
 that this asceticism is itself a natural develop- 
 ment, but that cannot be a natural development 
 which directs, controls, and restrains natural 
 development. 
 
 The Positivists confound nature at one time 
 with the law of nature, and at another the law 
 of nature with nature herself, and take what is 
 called the natural law to be a natural develop- 
 ment. Here is their mistake, as it is the mis- 
 take of all who accept naturalistic theories. 
 Society, no doubt, is authorized by the law of 
 nature to institute and maintain government. 
 But the law of nature is not a natural develop- 
 ment, nor is it in nature, or any part of nature. It 
 is not a natural force which operates in nature, 
 and which is the developing principle of nature. 
 Do they say reason is. natural, and the law of
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 97 
 
 nature is only reason ? This is not precisely the 
 fact. The natural law is law proper, and is 
 reason only in the sense that reason includes 
 both intellect and will, and nobody can pretend 
 that nature in her spontaneous developments 
 acts from intelligence and volition. Reason, 
 as the faculty of knowing, is subjective and nat- 
 ural ; but in the sense in which it is coincident 
 with the natural law, it is neither subjective 
 nor natural, but objective and divine, and is 
 God affirming himself and promulgating his 
 law to his creature, man. It is, at least, an im- 
 mediate participation of the divine light, by 
 which He reveals himself and His will to the 
 human understanding, and is not natural, but 
 supernatural, in the sense that God himself is 
 supernatural. This is wherefore reason is law, 
 and every man is bound to submit or conform 
 to reason. 
 
 That legitimate governments are instituted 
 under the natural law is frankly conceded, but 
 this is by no means the concession of govern- 
 ment as a natural development. The reason 
 and will of which the natural law is the ex- 
 pression are the reason and will of God. The 
 natural law is the divine law as much as the 
 revealed law itself, and equally obligatory. It 
 is not a natural force developing itself in na-
 
 98 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ture, like the law of generation, for instance, and 
 therefore proceeding from God as first cause, 
 but it proceeds from God as final cause, and is, 
 therefore, theological, and strictly a moral law 
 founding moral rights and duties. Of course, 
 all morality and all legitimate government rest 
 on this law, or, if you will, originate in it. But 
 not therefore in nature, but in the Author of na- 
 ture. The authority is not the authority of na- 
 ture, but of Him who holds nature in the hol- 
 low of His hand. 
 
 V. In the seventeenth century a class of poli- 
 tical writers who very well understood that no 
 creature, no man, no number of men, not even 
 nature herself, can be inherently sovereign, 
 defended the opinion that governments are 
 founded, constituted, and clothed with their 
 authority by the direct and express appoint- 
 ment of God himself. They denied that rulers 
 hold their power from the nation ; that, however 
 oppressive may be their rule, that they are jus- 
 ticiable by any human tribunal, or that power, 
 except by the direct judgment of God, is 
 amissible. Their doctrine is known in histoiy 
 as the doctrine of " the divine right of kings, 
 and passive obedience." All power, says St. 
 Paul, is from God, and the powers that be are 
 ordained of God, and to resist them is to resist
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 99 
 
 the ordination of God. They must be obeyed 
 for conscience' sake. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be rash to say that this 
 doctrine had never been broached before the 
 seventeenth century, but it received In that 
 century, and chiefly in England, its fullest and 
 most systematic developments. It was patron- 
 ized by the Anglican divines, asserted by James 
 L of England, and lost the Stuarts the crown 
 of three kingdoms. It crossed the Channel, 
 into France, where it found a few hesitating 
 and stammering defenders among Catholics, 
 under Louis XIV., but it has never been very 
 generally held, though it has had able and zeal- 
 ous supporters. In England it was opposed by 
 all the Presbyterians, Puritans, Independents, 
 and Republicans, and was forgotten or aban- 
 doned by the Anglican divines themselves in 
 the Revolution of 1688, that expelled James II. 
 and crowned William and Mary. It was ably 
 refuted by the Jesuit Suarez in his reply 
 to a Remonstrance for the Divine Hight 
 of Kings by the James I. ; and a Spanish 
 monk who had asserted it in Madrid, under 
 Philip II., was compelled by the Inquisition to 
 retract it publicly in the place where he had 
 asserted it. All republicans reject it, and the 
 Church has never sanctioned it. The Sovereign
 
 100 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Pontiffs have claimed and exercised the right to 
 deprive princes of their principality, and to ab- 
 solve their subjects from, the oath of fidelity. 
 Whether the Popes rightly claimed and exer- 
 cised that power is not now the question ; but 
 their having claimed and exercised it proves 
 that the Church does not admit the inamissi- 
 bility of power and passive obedience ; for the 
 action of the Pope was judicial, not legislative. 
 The Pope has never claimed the right to depose 
 a prince till by his own act he has, under the 
 moral law or the constitution of his state, for- 
 feited his power, nor to absolve subjects from 
 their allegiance- till their oath, according to its 
 true intent and meaning, has ceased to bind. 
 If the Church has always asserted with the 
 Apostle there is no power but from God non 
 estpotestas nisi a Deo she has always through 
 her doctors maintained that it is a trust to be 
 exercised for the public good, and is forfeited 
 when persistently exercised in a contrary sense. 
 St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Suarez all main- 
 tain that unjust laws are violences rather than 
 laws, and do not oblige, except in charity or pru- 
 dence, and that the republic may change its 
 magistrates, and even its constitution, if it sees 
 proper to do so. 
 
 That God, as universal Creator, is Sovereign
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 101 
 
 Lord and proprietor of all created things or ex- 
 istences, visible or invisible, is certain ; for the 
 maker has the absolute right to the thing 
 made ; it is his, and he may do with it as he 
 will. As he is sole creator, he alone hath do- 
 minion; and as he is absolute creator, he has 
 absolute dominion over all the things which he 
 has made. The guaranty against oppression 
 is his own essential nature, is in the plenitude 
 of his own being, which is the plenitude of. 
 wisdom and goodness. He cannot contradict 
 himself, be other than he is, or act otherwise 
 than according to his own essential nature. As 
 he is, in his own eternal and immutable essence, 
 supreme reason and supreme good,, his dominion 
 must always in its exercise be supremely 
 good and supremely reasonable, therefore su- 
 premely just and equitable. From him cer- 
 tainly is all power ; he is unquestionably King 
 of kings, and Lord of lords. By him kings 
 reign and magistrates decree just things. He 
 may, at his will, set up or pull down kings, 
 rear or overwhelm empires, foster the infant 
 colony, and make desolate the populous city. 
 All this is unquestionably true, and a simple 
 dictate of reason common to all men. But in 
 what sense is it time ? Is it true in a supernat- 
 ural sense ? Or is it true only in the sense
 
 102 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 that it is true that by him we breathe, perforn* 
 any or all of our natural functions, and in him 
 live, and move, and have our being ? 
 
 . Viewed in their first cause, all things are 
 the immediate creation of God, and are super- 
 natural, and from the point of view of the first 
 cause the Scriptures usually speak, for the 
 great purpose and paramount object of the 
 sacred writers, as of religion itself, is to make 
 prominent the fact that God is universal creator, 
 and supreme governor, and therefore the first 
 and final cause of all things. But God creates 
 second causes, or substantial existences, capable 
 themselves of acting and producing effects in a 
 secondary sense, and hence he is said to be 
 causa causarum, cause of causes. What is 
 done by these second causes or creatures is done 
 eminently by him, for they exist only by his 
 creative act, and produce only by virtue of his 
 active presence, or effective concurrence. What 
 he does through them or through their agency 
 is done by him, not immediately, but mediately, 
 and is said to be done naturally, as what he 
 does immediately is said to be done supernatu- 
 rally. Natural is what God does through sec- 
 ond causes, which he creates ; supernatural is 
 that which he does by himself alone, without 
 their intervention or agency. Sovereignty, or
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 103 
 
 the right to govern, is in him, and he may at 
 his will delegate it to men either mediately or 
 immediately, by a direct and express appoint- 
 ment, or mediately through nature. In the 
 absence of all facts proving its delegation direct 
 and express, it must be assumed to be mediate, 
 through second causes. The natural is always 
 to be presumed, and the supernatural is to be 
 admitted only on conclusive proof. 
 
 The people of Israel had a supernatural voca 
 tion, and they received their law, embracing 
 their religious and civil constitution and their 
 ritual directly from God at the hand of 
 Moses, and various individuals from time to 
 time appear to have been specially called to be 
 their judges, rulers, or kings. Saul was so 
 called, and so was David. David and his line 
 appear, also, to have been called not only to 
 supplant Saul and his line, but to have been 
 supernaturally invested with the kingdom for- 
 ever; but it does not appear that the royal 
 power with which David and his line were in- 
 vested was inamissible. They lost it in the 
 Babylonish captivity, and never afterwards re- 
 covered it. The Asmonean princes were of 
 another line, and when our Lord came the 
 sceptre was in the hands of Herod, an Idumean 
 or Edomite. The promise made to David and
 
 104 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 his house is generally held by Christian com- 
 mentators to have received its fulfilment in the 
 everlasting spiritual royalty of the Messiah, 
 sprung through Mary from David's line. 
 
 The Christian Church is supernaturally con- 
 stituted and supernaturally 'governed, but the 
 persons selected to exercise powers supernatu- 
 rally defined, from the Sovereign Pontiff down to 
 the humblest parish priest are selected and in- 
 ducted into office through human agency. The 
 Gentiles very generally claimed to have received 
 their laws from the gods, but it does not ap- 
 pear, save in exceptional cases, that they claimed 
 that their princes were designated and held 
 their powers by the direct and express appoint- 
 ment of the god. Save in the case of the Jews, 
 and that of the Church, there is no evidence 
 that any particular government exists or ever 
 has existed by direct or express appointment, 
 or otherwise than by the action of the Creator 
 through second causes, or what is called his or- 
 dinary providence. Except David and his line, 
 there is no evidence of the express grant by the 
 Divine Sovereign to any individual or family, 
 class or caste of the government of any nation or 
 country. Even those Christian princes who 
 professed to reign " by the grace of God," never 
 claimed that they received their principalities
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 106 
 
 from God otherwise than through his ordinary 
 providence, and meant by it little more than 
 an acknowledgment of their dependence on 
 him, their obligation to use their power accord- 
 ing to his law, and their accountability to him 
 for the use they make of it. 
 
 The doctrine is not favorable to human lib- 
 erty, for it recognizes no rights of man in face 
 of civil society. It consecrates tyranny, and 
 makes God the accomplice of the tyrant, if we 
 suppose all governments have actually existed 
 by his express appointment. It puts the king 
 in the place of God, and requires us to worship 
 in him the immediate representative of the Di- 
 vine Being. P ower is irresponsible and inamis- 
 sible, and however it may be abused, or how- 
 ever corrupt and oppressive may be its exercise, 
 there is no human redress. Resistance to 
 power is resistance to God. There is nothing 
 for the people but passive obedience and unre- 
 served submission. The doctrine, in fact, de- 
 nies all human government, and allows the 
 people no voice in the management of their 
 own affairs, and gives no place for human activ- 
 ity. It stands opposed to all republicanism, 
 and makes power an hereditary and indefeasible 
 right, not a trust which he who holds it may 
 forfeit, and of which he may be deprived if he 
 abuses it.
 
 106 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT CONCLUDED. 
 
 VI. THE theory which derives the right of 
 government from the direct and express ap- 
 pointment of God is sometimes modified so as 
 to mean that civil authority is derived from 
 God through the spiritual authority. The 
 patriarch combined in his person "both authori- 
 ties, and was in his own household both priest 
 and king, and so originally was in his own 
 tribe the chief, and in his kingdom the king. 
 When the two offices became separated is not 
 known. In the time of Abraham they were 
 still united. Melchisedech, king of Salem, was 
 both priest and king, and the earliest historical 
 records of kings present them as offering sacri- 
 fices. Even the Roman emperor was Pontifex 
 Maximus as well as Imperator, but that was 
 so not because the two offices were held to be in- 
 separable, but because they were both conferred 
 on the same person by the republic. In Egypt, 
 in the time of Moses, the royal authority and
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 107' 
 
 the priestly were separated, and held by differ- 
 ent persons. Moses, in his legislation for his 
 nation, separated them, and instituted a sacer- 
 dotal order or caste. The heads of tribes and 
 the heads of -families are, under his law,, 
 princes, but not priests, and the priesthood is 
 conferred on and restricted to his own tribe of 
 Levi, and more especially the family of his own- 
 brother Aaron. 
 
 The priestly office by its own nature is su- 
 perior to the kingly, and in all primitive nations- 
 with a separate organized priesthood, whether 
 a true priesthood or a corrupt, the priest is held 
 to be above the king, elects or establishes the 
 law by which is selected the temporal chief y 
 and inducts him into his office, as if he received 
 his authority from God through the priesthood. 
 The Christian priesthood is not a caste, and is 
 transmitted by the election of grace, not as 
 with the Israelites and all sacerdotal nations, 
 by natural generation. Like Him whose priests- 
 they are, Christian priests are priests after the 
 order of Melchisedech, who was without priest- 
 ly descent, without father or mother of the 
 priestly line. But in being priests after the 
 order of Melchisedech, they are both priests 
 and kings, as Melchisedech was, and as was 
 our Lord himself, to whom was given by hi*
 
 108 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Father all power in heaven and in earth. The 
 Pope, or Supreme Pontiff, is the vicar of our 
 Lord on earth, his representative the repre- 
 sentative not only of him who is our invisible 
 High-Priest, but of him who is King of kings 
 and Lord of lords, therefore of both the priestly 
 and the kingly power. Consequently, no one 
 can have any mission to govern in the state any 
 more than in the church, unless 'derived from 
 God directly or indirectly through the Pope or 
 Supreme Pontiff. Many theologians and canon- 
 ists in the Middle Ages so held, and a few per- 
 haps hold so still. The bulls and briefs of 
 several Popes, as Gregory VII., Innocent HE., 
 Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Boniface VIII, 
 have the appearance of favoring it. 
 
 At one period the greater part of the mediae- 
 val kingdoms and principalities were fiefs of the 
 Holy See, and recognized the Holy Father as 
 their suzerain. The Pope revived the imperial 
 dignity in the person of Charlemagne, and none 
 could claim that dignity in the Western world 
 unless elected and crowned by him, that is, un , 
 less elected directly by the Pope or by electors 
 designated by him, and acting under his author- 
 ity. There can be no question that the spir- 
 itual is superior to the temporal, and that the 
 temporal is bound in the veiy nature of things
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 10l> 
 
 to conform to the spiritual, and any law enacted 
 by the civil power in contravention of the law 
 of God is null and void from the beginning. 
 This is what Mr. Seward meant by the higher law, 
 ' a law higher even than the Constitution of the 
 United States. Supposing this higher law, and 
 supposing that kings and princes hold from God 
 through the spiritual society, it is very evident 
 that the chief of that society would have the 
 right to deprive them, and to absolve their sub- 
 jects, as on several occasions he actually has 
 done. 
 
 But this theory has never been a dogma of 
 the Church, nor, to any great extent, except for 
 a brief period, maintained by theologians or 
 canonists. The Pope conferred the imperial 
 dignity on Charlemagne and his successors, but 
 not the civil power, at least out of the Pope's 
 own temporal dominions. The emperor of Ger- 
 many was at first elected by the Pope, and 
 afterwards by hereditary electors designated or 
 accepted by him, but the king of the Germans 
 with the full royal authority could be elected 
 and enthroned without the papal intervention, 
 or permission. The suzerainty of the Holy See 
 over Italy, Naples, Aragon, Muscovy, England, 
 and other European states, was by virtue of 
 feudal relations, not by virtue of the spiritual au-
 
 110 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 thority of the Holy See or the vicarship of the 
 Holy Father. The right to govern under feu- 
 dalism was simply an estate, or property ; and 
 as the church could acquire and hold property, 
 nothing prevented her holding fiefs, or her 
 chief from being suzerain. The expressions in 
 the papal briefs and bulls, taken in connection 
 with the special relations existing between the 
 Pope and emperor in the Middle Ages, and his 
 relations with other states as their feudal sover- 
 eign, explained by the controversies concerning 
 rights growing out of these relations, will be found 
 to give no countenance to the theory in question. 
 These relations really existed, and they gave 
 the Pope certain temporal rights in certain 
 states, even the temporal supremacy, as he has 
 still in what is left him of the States of the 
 Church; but they were exceptional or accidental 
 relations, not the universal and essential rela- 
 tions between the church and the state. The 
 rights that grew out of these relations were 
 real rights, sacred and inviolable, but only 
 where and while the relations subsisted. They, 
 for the most part, grew out of the feudal sys- 
 tem introduced into the Roman empire by its 
 barbarian conquerors, and necessarily ceased 
 with the political order in .which they origi- 
 nated. Undoubtedly the church consecrated
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. Ill 
 
 civil rulers, but this did not imply that they 
 received their power or right to govern from 
 {rod through her; but implied that their per- 
 sons were sacred, and that violence to them 
 would be sacrilege ; that they held the Chris- 
 tian faith, and acknowledged themselves bound 
 to protect it, and to govern their subjects justly, 
 according to the law of God. 
 
 The church, moreover, has always recognized 
 the distinction of the two powers, and although 
 the Pope owes to the fact that he is chief of the 
 spiritual society, his temporal principality, no 
 theologian or canonist of the slightest respecta- 
 bility would argue that he derives his rights 
 as temporal sovereign from his rights as pontiff* 
 His rights as pontiff depend on the express 
 appointment of God ; his rights as temporal 
 prince are derived from the same source from 
 which other princes derive their rights, and are 
 held by the same tenure. Hence canonists have 
 maintained that the subjects of other states 
 may even engage in war with the Pope as prince, 
 without breach of their fidelity to him as pon- 
 tiff or supreme visible head of the church. 
 
 The church not only distinguishes between 
 the two powers, but recognizes as legitimate, 
 governments that manifestly do not derive from 
 Ood through her. St. Paul enjoins obedience
 
 112 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to the Roman emperors for conscience' sake, and 
 the church teaches that infidels and heretics 
 may have legitimate government ; and if she has 
 ever denied the right of any infidel or heretical 
 prince, it has been on the ground that the con- 
 stitution and laws of his principality require 
 him to profess and protect the Catholic faith. 
 She tolerates resistance in a non-Catholic 
 state no more than in a Catholic state to the 
 prince ; and if she has not condemned and cut 
 off from her communion the Catholics who in 
 our struggle have joined the Secessionists and 
 fought in their ranks against the United States, 
 it is because the prevalence of the doctrine of 
 State sovereignty has seemed to leave a reason- 
 able doubt whether they were really rebels 
 fighting against their legitimate sovereign or 
 not. 
 
 No doubt, as the authority of the church is 
 derived immediately from God in a supernatural 
 manner, and as she holds that the state derives 
 its authority only mediately from him, in a 
 natural mode, she asserts the superiority of her 
 authority, and that, in case of conflict between 
 the two powers, the civil must yield. But this 
 is only saying that supernatural is above natu- 
 ral But and this is the important point 
 she does not teach, nor permit the faithful to
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 113 
 
 hold, that the supernatural abrogates the natu- 
 ral, or in any way supersedes it. Grace, say 
 the theologians, supposes nature, gratia supponit 
 naturam. The church in the matter of govern- 
 ment accepts the natural, aids it, elevates it, and 
 is its firmest support. 
 
 VII. St. Augustine, St. Gregory Magnus, St. 
 Thomas, Bellarmin, Suarez, and the theologi- 
 ans generally, hold that princes derive their 
 power from God through the people, or that 
 the people, though not the source, are the me- 
 dium of all political authority, and therefore 
 rulers are accountable for the use they make of 
 their power to both God and the people. 
 
 This doctrine agrees with the democratic 
 theory in vesting sovereignty in the people, in- 
 stead of the king or the nobility, a particular 
 individual, family, class, or caste ; and differs 
 from it, as democracy is commonly explained, in 
 understanding by the people, the people collec- 
 tively, not individually the organic people, or 
 people fixed to a given territory, not the people 
 as a mere population the people in the repub- 
 lican sense of the word nation, not in the barbaric 
 or despotic sense; and in deriving the sovereignty 
 from God, from whom is all power, and except 
 from whom there is and can be no power, in- 
 
 9
 
 114 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 stead of asserting it as the underived and inde- 
 feasible right of the people in their " own na- 
 tive right and might." The people not being 
 God, and being only what philosophers call a 
 second cause, they are and can be sovereign 
 only in a secondary and relative sense. It as- 
 serts the divine origin of power, while democ- 
 racy asserts its human origin. But as, under 
 the law of nature, all men are equal, or have 
 equal rights as men, one man has and can have 
 in himself no right to govern another; and as 
 man is never absolutely his own, but always and 
 everywhere belongs to his Creator, it is clear 
 that no government originating in humanity 
 alone can be a legitimate government. Every 
 such government is founded on the assumption 
 that man is God, which is a great mistake is, 
 in fact, the fundamental sophism which under- 
 lies eveiy error and every sin. 
 
 The divine origin of government, in the 
 sense asserted by Christian theologians, is never 
 found distinctly set forth in the political wri- 
 tings of the ancient Greek and Roman writers. 
 Gentile philosophy had lost the tradition of 
 creation, as some modern philosophers, in so- 
 called Christian nations, are fast losing it, and 
 were as unable to explain the origin of govern- 
 ment as they were the origin of man himselt
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 115 
 
 Even Plato, the profoundest of all ancient phi- 
 losophers, and the most faithful to the tradi- 
 tionary wisdom of the race, lacks the concep- 
 tion of creation, and never gets -above that of 
 generation and formation. Things are produced 
 by the Divine Being impressing his own ideas, 
 eternal in his own mind, on a pre-existing mat- 
 ter, as a seal on wax. Aristotle teaches sub- 
 stantially the same doctrine. Things eternally 
 exist as matter and form, and all the Divine 
 Intelligence does, is to unite the form to the 
 matter, and change it, as the schoolmen say, 
 from materia informis to materia formata. 
 Even the Christian Platonists and Peripatetics 
 never as philosophers assert creation ; they 
 assert it, indeed, but as theologians, as a fact of 
 revelation, not as a fact of science ; and hence it 
 is that their theology and their philosophy 
 never thoroughly harmonize, or at least are not 
 shown to harmonize throughout. 
 
 Speaking generally, the ancient Gentile phi- 
 losophers were pantheists, and represented the 
 universe either as God or as an emanation 
 from God. They had no proper conception of 
 Providence, or the action of God in nature 
 through natural agencies, or as modern physi- 
 cists say, natural laws. If they recognized the 
 action of divinity at all, it was a supernatural
 
 116 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 or miraculous intervention of some god They 
 saw no divine intervention in any thing natu- 
 rally explicable, or explicable by natural laws. 
 Having no conception of the creative act, they 
 could have none of its immanence, or the active 
 and efficacious presence of the Creator in all his 
 works, even in the action of second causes 
 themselves. Hence they could not assert the 
 divine origin of government, or civil authority, 
 without supposing it supernaturally founded, 
 and excluding all human and natural agencies 
 from its institution. Their writings may be 
 studied with advantage on the constitution of 
 the state, on the practical workings of different 
 forms of government, as well as on the practical 
 administration of affairs, but never on the origin 
 of the state, and the real ground of its authority. 
 The doctrine is derived from Christian the- 
 ology, which teaches that there is no power ex- 
 cept from God, and enjoins civil obedience as 
 a religious duty. Conscience is accountable to 
 God alone, and civil government, if it had only 
 a natural or human origin, could not bind it. 
 Yet Christianity makes the civil law, within its 
 legitimate sphere, as obligatory on conscience 
 as the divine law itself, and no man is blame- 
 less before God who is not" blameless before the 
 state. No man performs faithfully his religious
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 117 
 
 duties who neglects his civil duties, and hence 
 the law of the church allows no one to retire 
 from the world and enter a religious order, who 
 has duties that bind him or her to the family 
 or the state ; though it is possible that the law 
 is not always strictly observed, and that indi- 
 viduals sometimes enter a convent for the sake 
 of getting rid of those duties, or the equally im- 
 portant duty of taking care of themselves. But 
 by asserting the divine origin of government, 
 Christianity consecrates civil authority, clothes 
 it with a religious character, and makes civil 
 disobedience, sedition, insurrection, rebellion, 
 revolution, civil turbulence of any sort or de- 
 gree, sins against God as well as crimes against 
 the state. For the same reason she makes usur- 
 pation, tyranny, oppression of the people by 
 civil rulers, offences against God as well as 
 against society, and cognizable by the spiritual 
 authority. 
 
 After the establishment of the Christian 
 church, after its public recognition, and when 
 conflicting claims arose between the two powers 
 the civil and the ecclesiastical this doctrine of 
 the divine origin of civil government was abused, 
 and turned against the church with most dis- 
 astrous consequences. While the Roman Em- 
 pire of the West subsisted, and even after its
 
 118 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 fall, so long as the emperor of the East asserted 
 and practically maintained his authority in the 
 Exarchate of Ravenna and the Duchy of Rome r 
 the Popes comported themselves, in civil mat- 
 ters, as subjects of the Roman emperor, and set 
 forth no claim to temporal independence. But 
 when the emperor had lost Rome, and all his 
 possessions in Italy, had abandoned them, or 
 been deprived of them by the barbarians, and 
 ceased to make any efforts to recover them, the 
 Pope was no longer a subject, even in civil mat- 
 ters, of the emperor, and owed him no civil al- 
 legiance. He became civilly independent of 
 the Roman Empire, and had only spiritual re- 
 lations with it. To the new powers that* sprang 
 up in Europe he appears never to have acknowl- 
 edged any civil subjection, and uniformly as- 
 serted, in face of them, his civil as well as spirit- 
 ual independence. 
 
 This civil independence the successors of 
 Charlemagne, who pretended to be the suc- 
 cessors of the Roman Emperors of the West, and 
 called their empire the Holy Roman Empire, de- 
 nied, and maintained that the Pope owed them 
 civil allegiance, or that, in temporals, the em- 
 peror was the Pope's superior. If, said the em- 
 peror, or his lawyers for him, the civil power is 
 from God, as it must be, since non est potestas
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 119 
 
 nisi a Deo, the state stands on the same footing 
 with the church, and the imperial power ema- 
 nates from as high a source as the pontifical. 
 The emperor is then as supreme in temporals as 
 the Pope in spirituals ; and as the emperor is 
 subject to the Pope in spirituals, so must the 
 Pope be subject to the emperor in temporals. 
 As, at the time when the dispute arose, the tem- 
 poral interests of churchmen were so inter- 
 woven with their spiritual rights, the preten- 
 sions of the emperor amounted practically to the 
 subjection in spirituals as well as temporals of 
 the ecclesiastical authority to the civil, and ab- 
 sorbed the church in the state, the reasoning 
 was denied, and churchmen replied : The Pope 
 represents the spiritual order, which is always 
 and everywhere supreme over the temporal, 
 since the spiritual order is the divine sover- 
 eignty itself. Always and everywhere, then, is 
 the Pope independent of the emperor, his su- 
 perior, and to subject him in any thing to the 
 emperor would be as repugnant to reason as to 
 subject the soul to the body, the spirit to the 
 flesh, heaven to earth, or God to man. 
 
 If the universal supremacy claimed for the 
 Pope, rejoined the imperialists, be conceded, the 
 state would be absorbed in the church, the au- 
 tonomy of civil society would be destroyed, and
 
 ISO THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 civil rulers would Lave no functions but to do 
 the bidding of the clergy. It would estab- 
 lish a complete theocracy, or, rather, clerocracy, 
 of all possible governments the government 
 the most odious to mankind, and the most hos- 
 tile to social progress. Even the Jews could 
 not, or would not, endure it, and prayed God 
 to give them a king, that they might be like 
 other nations. 
 
 In the heat of the controversy neither party 
 clearly and distinctly perceived the true state 
 of the question, and each was partly right and 
 partly wrong. The imperialists wanted room 
 for the free activity of civil society, the church 
 wanted to establish in that society the su- 
 premacy of the moral order, or the law of God, 
 without which governments can have no sta- 
 bility, and society no real well-being. The 
 real solution of the difficulty was always to 
 be found in the doctrine of the church her- 
 self, and had been given time and again by 
 her most approved theologians. The Pope, 
 as the visible head of the spiritual society, is, 
 no doubt, superior to the emperor, not pre- 
 cisely because he represents a superior order, 
 but because the church, of which he is the visi- 
 ble chief, is a supernatural institution, and holds 
 immediately from God ; whereas civil society,
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 121 
 
 represented by the emperor, holds from God 
 only mediately, through second causes, or the 
 people. Yet, though derived from God only 
 through the people, civil authority still holds 
 from God, and derives its right from Him 
 through another channel than the church or 
 spiritual society, and, therefore, has a right, a 
 sacredness, which the church herself gives not, 
 and must recognize and respect. This she her- 
 self teaches in teaching that even infidels, as we 
 have seen, may have legitimate government, 
 and since, though she interprets and applies the 
 law of God, both natural and revealed, she 
 makes neither. 
 
 Nevertheless, the imperialists or the statists 
 insisted on their false charge against the Pope, 
 that he labored to found a purely theocratic or 
 clerocratic government, and finding themselves 
 unable to place the representative of the civil 
 society on the same level with the representa- 
 tive of the spiritual, or to emancipate the state 
 from the law of God while they conceded the 
 divine origin or right of government, they 
 sought to effect its independence by asserting 
 for it only a natural or purely human origin. 
 For nearly two centuries the most popular and 
 influential writers on government have rejected 
 the divine origin and ground of civil authority,
 
 122 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and excluded God from the state. They 
 refused to look beyond second causes, and have 
 labored to derive authority from man alone. 
 They have not only separated the state from 
 the church as an external corporation, but from 
 God as its internal lawgiver, and by so doing 
 have deprived the state of her sacredness, in- 
 violability, or hold on the conscience, scoffed at 
 loyalty as a superstition, and consecrated not 
 civil authority, but what is called " the right of 
 insurrectign." Under their teaching the age 
 sympathizes not with authority in its efforts to 
 sustain itself and protect society, but with those 
 who conspire against it the insurgents, rebels, 
 revolutionists seeking its destruction. The es- 
 tablished government that seeks to enforce 
 respect for its legitimate authority and compel 
 obedience to the laws, is held to be despotic, 
 tyrannical, oppressive, and resistance to it to be 
 obedience to God, and a wild howl rings 
 through Christendom against the prince that 
 will not stand still and permit the conspirators 
 to cut his throat. There is hardly a govern- 
 ment now in the civilized world that can sus- 
 tain itself for a moment without an armed force 
 sufficient to overawe or crush the party or 
 parties in permanent conspiracy against it. 
 This result is not what was aimed at or de
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 gired, but it is the logical or necessar} result of 
 the attempt to erect the state on atheistical 
 principles. Unless founded on the divine sov- 
 ereignty, authority can sustain itself only by 
 force, for political atheism recognizes no right 
 but might. No doubt the politicians have 
 sought an atheistical, or what is the same thing, 
 a purely human, basis for government, in order 
 to secure an open field for human freedom and 
 activity, or individual or social progress. The 
 end aimed at has been good, laudable even r 
 but they forgot that freedom, is possible only 
 with authority that protects it against license 
 as well as against despotism, and that there can 
 be no progress where there is nothing that i 
 not progressive. In civil society two things 
 are necessary stability and movement. The hu 
 man is the element of movement, for in it are pos- 
 sibilities that can be only successively actualized. 
 But the element of stability can be found only 
 in the divine, in God, in whom there is no un- 
 actualized possibility, who, therefore, is im- 
 movable, immutable, and eternal. The doc- 
 trine that derives authority from God through- 
 the people, recognizes in the state both of 
 these elements, and provides alike for stability 
 and progress. 
 
 This doctrine is not mere theory ; it simply
 
 124 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 states the real order of things. It is not telling 
 what ought to be, but what is in the real ordei. 
 It only asserts for civil government the relation 
 to God which nature herself holds to him, 
 which the entire universe holds to the Creator. 
 Nothing in man, in nature, in the universe, is 
 explicable without the creative act of God, for 
 nothing exists without that act. That God " in 
 the beginning created heaven and earth," is the 
 first principle of all science as of all existences, 
 in politics no less than in theology. God 
 and creation comprise all that is or exists, 
 and creation, though distinguishable from God 
 as the act from the actor, is inseparable from, 
 him, " for in Him we live and move and have 
 our being." All creatures are joined to him 
 by his creative act, and exist only as through 
 that act they participate of his being. Through 
 that act he is immanent as first cause in all 
 f creatures and in every act of every creature. 
 The creature deriving from his creative act can 
 no more continue to exist than it could begin 
 to exist without it. It is as bad philosophy as 
 theology, to suppose that God created the uni- 
 verse, endowed it with certain laws of devel- 
 opment or activity, wound it up, gave it a jog, 
 set it agoing, and then left it to go of itself. 
 It cannot go of itself, because it does not exist
 
 ORIGIN OP GOVERNMENT. 125- 
 
 of itself. It did not merely not begin to exist, 
 but it cannot continue to exist, without the 
 creative act. Old Epicurus was a sorry philos- 
 opher, or rather, no philosopher at all. Provi- 
 dence is as necessary as creation, or rather, 
 Providence is only continuous creation, the 
 creative act not suspended or discontinued, or 
 not passing over from the creature and return- 
 ing to God. 
 
 Through the creative act man participates of 
 God, and he can continue to exist, act, or live only 
 by participating through it of his divine being. 
 There is, therefore, something of divinity, so to 
 speak, in every creature, and therefore it is 
 that God is worshipped in his works without 
 idolatry. But he creates substantial existences 
 capable of acting as second causes. Hence, in 
 all living things there is in their life a divine 
 element and a natural element ; in what is called 
 human life, there are the divine and the human, 
 the divine as first and the human as second 
 cause, precisely what the doctrine of the great 
 Christian theologians assert to be the fact with 
 all legitimate or real government. Govern- 
 ment cannot exist without the efficacious pres- 
 ence of God any more than man himself, and 
 men might as well attempt to build up a 
 world as to attempt to found a state without
 
 126 THE AMEBICA-N REPUBLIC. 
 
 God. A government founded on atheistical 
 principles were less than a castle in the air. It 
 would have nothing to rest on, would not be 
 veh so much as "the baseless fabric of a 
 vision," and they who imagine that they really 
 do exclude God from their politics deceive them- 
 selves ; for they accept and use principles which, 
 though they know it not, are God. What they 
 call abstract principles, or abstract forms of 
 reason, without which there were no logic, are 
 not abstract, but the real, living God himsel 
 Hence government, like man himself, partici- 
 pates of the divine being, and, derived from God 
 through the people, it at the same time partici- 
 pates of human reason and will, thus reconciling 
 authority with freedom, and stability with prog- 
 ress. 
 
 The people, holding their authority from God, 
 hold it not as an inherent right, but as a trust 
 from Him, and are accountable to Him for 
 it. It is not their own. If it were their own 
 they might do with it as they pleased, and no 
 one would have any right to call them to an ac- 
 count ; but holding it as a trust from God, they 
 are under his law, and bound to exercise it as 
 that law prescribes. Civil rulers, holding their 
 authority from God through the people, are ac- 
 countable for it both to Him and to them. If
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 127 
 
 they abuse it they are justiciable by the people 
 and punishable by God himself.. 
 
 Here is the guaranty against tyranny, oppres- 
 sion, or bad government, or what in modern 
 times is called the responsibility of power. At 
 the same time the state is guarantied against 
 sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, by 
 the elevation of the civic virtues to the rank of 
 religious virtues, and making loyalty a matter of 
 conscience. Religion is brought to the aid of 
 the state, not indeed as a foreign auxiliary, but 
 as integral in the political order itself. Religion 
 sustains the state, not because it externally com- 
 mands us to obey the higher powers, or to be 
 submissive to the powers that be, not because it 
 trains the people to habits of obedience, and 
 teaches them to be resigned and patient under 
 the grossest abuses of power, but because it and 
 the state are in the same order, and insepara- 
 ble, though distinct, parts of one and the same 
 whole. The church and the state, as corpora- 
 tions or external governing bodies, are indeed sep- 
 arate in their spheres, and the church does not 
 absorb the state, nor does the state the church ; 
 but both are from God, and both work to the 
 same end, and when each is rightly understood 
 there is no antithesis or antagonism between 
 them. Men serve God in serving the state as
 
 128 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 directly as in serving the church. He who dies 
 on the battle-field fighting for his country ranks 
 with him who dies at the stake for his faith. 
 Civic virtues are themselves religious virtues, 
 or at least virtues without which there are no 
 religious virtues, since no man who loves not 
 his brother does or can love God. 
 
 The guaranties offered the state or authority 
 are ample, because it has not only conscience, 
 moral sentiment, interest, habit, and the vis in- 
 ertia of the mass, but the whole physical force 
 of the nation, at its command. The individual 
 has, indeed, only moral guaranties against the 
 abuse of power by the sovereign people, which 
 may no doubt sometimes prove insufficient. 
 But moral guaranties are always better than 
 none, and there are none where the people are 
 held to be sovereign in their own native right 
 and might, organized or unorganized, inside or 
 outside of the constitution, as most modern dem- 
 ocratic theorists maintain ; since, if so, the will 
 of the people, however expressed, is the crite- 
 rion of right and wrong, just and unjust, true 
 and false, is infallible and impeccable, and no 
 moral light can ever be pleaded against it; 
 they are accountable to nobody, and, let them 
 do what they please, they can do no wrong. 
 This would place the individual at the mercy
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 129 
 
 of the state, and deprive him of all right to 
 complain, however oppressed or cruelly treated. 
 This would establish the absolute despotism of 
 the state, and deny every thing like the natu- 
 ral rights of man, or individual and personal 
 freedom, as has already been shown. Now as 
 men do take part in government, and as men, 
 either individually or collectively, are neither 
 infallible nor impeccable, it is never to be ex- 
 pected, under any possible constitution or form 
 of government, that authority will always be 
 wisely and justly exercised, that wrong will 
 never be done, and the rights of individuals 
 never in any instance be infringed ; but with 
 the clear understanding that all power is of 
 God, that the political sovereignty is vested in 
 the people or the collective body, that the civil 
 rulers hold from God through them and are re- 
 sponsible to Him through them, and justiciable 
 by them, there is all the guaranty against the 
 abuse of power by the nation, the political or 
 organic people, that the nature of the case 
 admits. The nation may, indeed, err or do 
 wrong, but in the way supposed you get in the 
 government all the available wisdom and vir- 
 tue the nation has, and more is never, under 
 any form or constitution of government, prac- 
 ticable or to be expected. 
 10
 
 130 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 It is a maxim with constitutional statesmen, 
 that " the king reigns, not governs." The peo- 
 ple, though sovereign under God, are not the 
 government. The government is in their name 
 and by virtue of authority delegated from God 
 through them, but they are not it, are not their 
 own ministers. It is only when the people for- 
 get this and undertake to be their own minis- 
 ters and to manage their own affairs immedi- 
 ately by themselves instead of selecting agents 
 to do it for them, and holding their agents to a 
 strict account for their management, that they 
 are likely to abuse their power or to sanction 
 injustice. The nation may be misled or de- 
 ceived for a moment by demagogues, those 
 popular courtiers, but as a rule it is disposed 
 to be just and to respect all natural rights. 
 The wrong is done by individuals who assume 
 to speak in their name, to wield their power, 
 and to be themselves the state. Eetat, dest 
 moi, I am the state, said Louis XIV. of France, 
 and while that was conceded the French nation 
 could have in its government no more wisdom 
 or virtue than he possessed, or at least no more 
 than he could appreciate. And under his gov- 
 ernment France was made responsible for many 
 deeds that the nation would never have sanc- 
 tioned, if it had been recognized as the deposi-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 131 
 
 tary of the national sovereignty, or as the French 
 state, and answerable to God for the use it 
 made of political power, or the conduct of its 
 government. 
 
 But be this as it may, there evidently can be 
 no physical force in the nation to coerce the na- 
 tion itself in case it goes wrong, for if the sov- 
 ereignty vests in the nation, only the nation can 
 rightly command or authorize the employment 
 of force, and all commissions must run in its 
 name. Written constitutions alone will avail 
 little, for they emanate from the people, who 
 can disregard them, if they choose, and alter 
 or revoke them at will. The reliance for the 
 wisdom and justice of the state must after all 
 be on moral guaranties. In the very nature of 
 the case there are and can be no other. But 
 these, placed in a clear light, with an intelligent 
 and religious people, will seldom be found in- 
 sufficient. Hence the necessity for the protec- 
 tion, not of authority simply or chiefly, but of 
 individual rights and the liberty of religion and 
 intelligence in the nation, of the general under- 
 standing that the nation holds its power to 
 govern as a trust from God, and that to God 
 through the people all civil rulers are strictly 
 responsible. Let the mass of the people in 
 any nation lapse into the ignorance and barba
 
 132 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 rism of atheism, or lose themselves in that su- 
 preme sophism called pantheism, the grand 
 error of ancient as well as of modern gentilism, 
 and liberty, social or political, except that wild 
 kind of liberty, and perhaps not even that 
 should be excepted, which obtains among sav- 
 ages, would be lost and irrecoverable. 
 
 But after all, this theory does not meet all 
 the difficulties of the case. It derives sover- 
 eignty from God, and thus asserts the divine 
 origin of government in the sense that the 
 origin of nature is divine ; it derives it from 
 God through the people, collectively, . or as 
 society, and therefore concedes it a natural, 
 human, and social element, which distinguishes 
 it from pure theocracy. It, however, does not 
 explain how authority comes from God to the 
 people. The ruler, king, prince, or emperor, 
 holds from God through the people, but how 
 do the people themselves hold from God ? Me- 
 diately or immediately? If mediately, what 
 is the medium ? Surely not the people them- 
 selves. The people can no more be the me- 
 dium than the principle of their own sovereign- 
 ty. If immediately, then God governs in them 
 as he does in the church, and no man is free 
 to think or act contrary to popular opinion, or 
 in any case to question the wisdom or justice
 
 OBIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 133 
 
 af any of the acts of the state, which is arriv- 
 ing at state absolutism by another process. Be- 
 sides, this would theoretically exclude all hu- 
 man or natural activity, all human intelligence 
 and free-will from the state, which were to fall 
 into either pantheism or atheism. 
 
 VIII. The right of government to govern, or 
 political authority, is derived by the collective 
 people or society, from God through the law of 
 nature. Rulers hold from God through the 
 people or nation, and the people or nation hold 
 from God through the natural law. How na- 
 tions are founded or constituted, or a particular 
 people becomes a sovereign political people, in- 
 vested with the rights of society, will be con- 
 sidered in following chapters. Here it suf- 
 fices to say that supposing a political people or 
 nation, the sovereignty vests in the community, 
 not supernaturally, or by an external supernat- 
 ural appointment, as the clergy hold their au- 
 thority, but by the natural law, or law by which 
 God governs the whole moral creation. 
 
 They who assert the origin of government in 
 nature are right, so far as they derive it from 
 God through the law of nature, and are wrong 
 only when they understand by the law of nature 
 the physical force or forces of nature, which
 
 134 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 are not laws in the primary and proper sense 
 of the term. The law of nature is not the or- 
 der or rule of the divine action in nature which 
 is rightfully called providence, but is, as has 
 been said, law in its proper and primary sense, 
 ordained by the Author of nature, as its sover- 
 eign and supreme Lawgiver, and binds all of 
 his creatures who are endowed with reason and 
 free-will, and is called natural, because promul- 
 gated through the reason common to all men. 
 Undoubtedly, it was in the first instance, to 
 the first man, supernaturally promulgated, as it 
 is republished and confirmed by Christianity, 
 as an integral part of the Christian code itself. 
 Man needs even yet instruction in relation to- 
 matters lying within the range of natural rea- 
 son, or else secular schools, colleges, and 'univer- 
 sities would be superfluous, and manifestly the 
 instructor of the first man could have been 
 only the Creator himself. 
 
 The knowledge of the natural law has been 
 transmitted from Adam to us through two chan- 
 nels reason, which is in every man, and in im- 
 mediate relation with the Creator, and the 
 traditions of the primitive instruction embodied 
 in language and what the Romans call jus gen- 
 tium, or law common to all civilized nations. 
 Under this law. whose prescriptions are promul-
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 135 
 
 gated through reason and embodied in universal 
 jurisprudence, nations are providentially consti- 
 tuted, and invested with political sovereignty ; 
 and as they are constituted under this law and 
 hold from God through it, it defines their re- 
 spective rights and powers, their limitation and 
 their extent. 
 
 The political sovereignty, under the law of 
 nature, attaches to the people, not individually, 
 but collectively, as civil or political society. It 
 is vested in the political community or nation, 
 not in an individual, or family, or a class, be- 
 cause, under the natural law, all men are equal, 
 as they are under the Christian law, and one 
 man has, in his own right, no authority over 
 another. The family has in the father a natural 
 chief, but political society has no natural chief 
 or chiefs. The authority of the father is do- 
 mestic, not political, and ceases when his chil- 
 dren have attained to majority, have married 
 and become heads of families themselves, or 
 have ceased to make part of the paternal house- 
 hold. The recognition of the authority of the 
 father beyond the limits of his own household, 
 is, if it ever occurs, by virtue of the ordinance, 
 the consent, express or tacit, of the political 
 society. There are no natural-born political 
 chiefs, and wherever we find men claiming
 
 136 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 or acknowledged to be such, they are either 
 usurpers, what the Greeks called tyrants, or 
 they are made such by the will or constitution 
 of the people or the nation. 
 
 Both monarchy and aristocracy were, no 
 doubt, historically developed from the author- 
 ity of the patriarchs, and have unquestionably 
 been sustained by an equally false development 
 of the right of property, especially landed prop- 
 erty. The owner of the land, or he who claimed 
 to own it, claimed as an incident of his owner- 
 ship the right to govern it, and consequently to 
 govern all who occupied it. But however valid 
 may be the landlord's title to the soil, and it is 
 doubtful if man can own any thing in land be- 
 yond the usufruct, it can give him under the 
 law of nature no political right. Property, like 
 all natural rights, is entitled by the natural law 
 to protection, but not to govern. Whether it 
 shall be made a basis of political power or not 
 is a question of political prudence, to be deter- 
 mined by the supreme political authority. It 
 was the basis, and almost exclusive basis, in the 
 Middle Ages, under feudalism, and is so still 
 in most states. France and the United States 
 are the principal exceptions in Christendom. 
 Property alone, or coupled with birth, is made 
 elsewhere in some form a basis of political
 
 ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. 137 
 
 power, and where made so by the sovereign au- 
 thority, it is legitimate, but not wise nor desir- 
 able ; for it takes from the weak and gives to the 
 strong. The rich have in their riches advantages 
 enough over the poor, without receiving from the 
 state any additional advantage. An aristocracy, 
 in the sense of families distinguished by birth, 
 noble and patriotic services, wealth, cultivation, 
 refinement, taste, and manners, is desirable in 
 every nation, is a nation's ornament, and also 
 its chief support, but they need and should re- 
 ceive no political recognition. They should 
 form no privileged class in the state or political 
 society.
 
 138 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE Constitution is twofold : the constitution 
 of the state or nation, and the constitution of 
 the government. The constitution of the gov- 
 ernment is, or is held to be, the work of the 
 nation itself; the constitution of the state, or 
 the people of the state, is, in its origin at least, 
 providential, given by God himself, operating 
 through historical events or natural causes. 
 The one originates in law, the other in histori- 
 cal fact. The nation must exist, and exist as a 
 political community, before it can give itself a 
 constitution; and no state, any more than an 
 individual, can exist without a constitution of 
 some sort. 
 
 The distinction between the providential con- 
 stitution of the people and the constitution of 
 the government, is not always made. The illus- 
 trious Count de Maistre, one of the ablest polit- 
 ical philosophers who wrote in the last century, 
 or the first quarter of the present, in his work
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 13& 
 
 on the Generative Principle of Political Con- 
 stitutions, maintains that constitutions are gen- 
 erated, not made, and excludes all human agency 
 from their formation and growth. Disgusted 
 with French Jacobinism, from which he and 
 his king and country had suffered so much, and 
 deeply wedded to monarchy in both church 
 and state, he had the temerity to maintain that 
 God creates expressly royal families for the 
 government of nations, and that it is idle for a 
 nation to expect a good government without a 
 king who has descended from one of those 
 divinely created royal families. It was with 
 some such thought, most likely, that a French 
 journalist, writing home from the United States, 
 congratulated the American people on having 
 a Bonaparte in their army, so that when their 
 democracy failed, as in a few years it was sure 
 to do, they would have a descendant of a royal 
 house to be their king or emperor. Alas ! the 
 Bonaparte has left us, and besides, he was^ 
 not the descendant of a royal house, and was, 
 like the present Emperor of the French, a. 
 decided parvenu. Still, the Emperor of the 
 French, if only a parvenu, bears himself right 
 imperially among sovereigns, and has no peer 
 among any of the descendants of the old royal 
 families of Europe
 
 140 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 There is a truth, however, in De Maistre's 
 doctrine that constitutions are generated, or 
 developed, not created de novo, or made all at 
 once. But nothing is more true than that a 
 nation can alter its constitution by its own de- 
 liberate and voluntary action, and many nations 
 have done so, and sometimes for the better, as 
 well as for the worse. If the constitution once 
 given is fixed and unalterable, it must be 
 wholly divine, and contain no human element, 
 and the people have and can have no hand in 
 their own government the fundamental ob- 
 jection to the theocratic constitution of society 
 To assume it is to transfer to civil society, 
 founded by the ordinary providence of God, 
 the constitution of the church, founded by his 
 gracious or supernatural providence, and to 
 maintain that the divine sovereignty governs in 
 civil society immediately and supernaturally, as 
 in the spiritual society. But such is not the 
 fact. God governs the nation by the* nation 
 itself, through its own reason and free-will. 
 De Maistre is right only as to the constitution 
 the nation starts with, and as to the control 
 which that constitution necessarily exerts over 
 the constitutional changes the nation can suc- 
 cessfully introduce. 
 
 The disciples of Jean Jacques Rousseau rec-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 141 
 
 ognize no providential constitution, and call 
 the written instrument drawn up by a conven- 
 tion of sovereign individuals the constitution, 
 and the only constitution, both of the people 
 and the government. Prior to its adoption 
 there is no government, no state, no political 
 community or authority. Antecedently to it 
 the people are an inorganic mass, simply indi- 
 viduals, without any political or national soli- 
 darity. These individuals, they suppose, come 
 together in their own native right and might, 
 organize themselves into a political community, 
 give themselves a constitution, and draw up 
 and vote rules for their government, as a 
 number of individuals might meet in a public 
 hall and resolve themselves into a temperance 
 society or a debating club. This might do very 
 well if the state were, like the temperance 
 society or debating club, a simple voluntary 
 association, which men are free to join or not as 
 they pl'ease, and which they are bound to obey 
 no farther and no longer than suits their con- 
 venience. But the state is a power, a sov 
 ereignty; speaks to all within its jurisdiction 
 with an imperative voice ; commands, and may 
 use physical force to compel obedience, when 
 not voluntarily yielded. Men are born its 
 subjects, and no one can withdraw from it
 
 142 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 without its express or tacit permission, unless 
 for causes that would justify resistance to its 
 .authority. The right of subjects to denational 
 ize or expatriate themselves, except to escape a 
 tyranny or an oppression which would forfeit 
 the rights of power and warrant forcible resist- 
 ance to it, does not exist, any more than the 
 right of foreigners to become citizens, unless by 
 the consent and authorization of the sovereign ; 
 for the citizen or subject belongs to the state, 
 and is bound to it. 
 
 The solidarity of the individuals composing 
 the population of a territory or countiy under 
 one political head is a truth; but "the soli- 
 darity of peoples," irrespective of the govern- 
 ment or political authority of their respective 
 countries, so eloquently preached a few years 
 since by the Hungarian Kossuth, is not only a 
 falsehood, but a falsehood destructive of all 
 government and of all political organization. 
 Kossuth's doctrine supposes the people, or the 
 populations of all countries, are, irrespective of 
 their governments, bound together in solido, 
 each for all and all for each, and therefore not 
 only free, but bound, wherever they find a pop- 
 ulation struggling nominally for liberty against 
 its government, to rush with arras in their hands 
 Ao its assistance a doctrine clearly incompati-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 143 
 
 t>le with any recognition of political authority 
 or territorial rights. Peoples or nations com 
 mune with each other only through the national 
 authorities, and when the state proclaims neu- 
 trality or non-intervention, all its subjects are 
 bound to be neutral, and to abstain from all 
 intervention on either side. There may be, and 
 indeed there is, a solidarity, more or less dis- 
 tinctly recognized, of Christian nations, but of 
 the populations with and through their govern- 
 ments, not without them. Still more strict is 
 the solidarity of all the individuals of one and 
 the same nation. These are all bound together, 
 all for each and each for all. The individual is 
 born into society and under the government, 
 and without the authority of the government, 
 which represents all and each, he cannot release 
 himself from his obligations. The state is then 
 by no means a voluntary association. Every 
 one born or adopted into it is bound to it, and 
 cannot without its permission withdraw from 
 it, unless, as just said, it is manifest that he can 
 have under it no protection for his natural 
 rights as a man, more especially for his rights 
 of conscience. This is Vattel's doctrine, and 
 the dictate of common sense. 
 
 The constitution drawn up, ordained, and 
 established by a nation for itself is a law the
 
 144 THE AMERICAN KEPUBUC. 
 
 organic or fundamental law, if you will, "but a 
 law, and is and must be the act of the sovereign 
 power. That sovereign power must exist before 
 it can act, and it cannot exist, if vested in the 
 people or nation, without a constitution, or 
 without some sort of political organization of 
 the people or nation. There must, then, be for 
 every state or nation a constitution anterior to 
 the constitution which the nation gives itself, 
 and from which the one it gives itself derives 
 all its vitality and legal force. 
 
 Logic and historical facts are here, as else- 
 where, coincident, for creation and providence 
 are simply the expression of the Supreme Logic, 
 the Logos, by whom all things are made. Na- 
 tions have originated in various ways, but his- 
 tory records no instance of a nation existing as 
 an inorganic mass organizing itself into a politi- 
 cal community. Every nation, at its first ap- 
 pearance above the horizon, is found to have an 
 organization of some sort. This is evident from 
 the only ways in which history shows us nations 
 originating. These ways are: 1. The union of 
 families in the tribe. 2. The union of tribes 
 in the nation. 3. The migration of families, 
 tribes, or nations in search of new settlements 
 4. Colonization, military, agricultural, commer- 
 cial, industrial, religious, or penal. 5. War
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 145 
 
 and conquest. 6. The revolt, separation, and 
 independence of provinces. 7. The intermin- 
 gling of the conquerors and conquered, and 
 by amalgamation forming a new people. 
 These are all the ways known to history, and 
 in none of these ways does a people, absolutely 
 destitute of all organisation, constitute itself a 
 state, and institute and carry on civil govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The family, the tribe, the colony are, if in- 
 complete, yet incipient states, or inchoate na- 
 tions, with an organization, individuality, and 
 a centre of social life of their own. The fam- 
 ilies and tribes that migrate in search of new 
 settlements carry with them their family and 
 tribal organizations, and retain it for a long 
 time. The Celtic tribes retained it in Gaul till 
 broken up by the Roman conquest, under Cae- 
 sar Augustus ; in Ireland, till the middle of the 
 seventeenth century ; and . in Scotland, till the 
 middle of the eighteenth. It subsists still in 
 the hordes of Tartary, the Arabs of the Desert, 
 and the Berbers or Kabyles of Africa. 
 
 Colonies, of whatever description, have been 
 founded, if not by, at least under, the authority 
 of the mother country, whose political constitu- 
 tion, laws, manners, and customs they carry 
 with them. They receive from the parent state 
 11
 
 146 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 a political organization, which, though subor- 
 dinate, yet constitutes them embryonic states, 
 with a unity, individuality, and centre of pub- 
 lic life in themselves, and which, when they are 
 detached and recognized as independent, render 
 them complete states. War and conquest effect 
 great national changes, but do not, strictly 
 speaking, create new states. They simply ex- 
 tend and consolidate the power of the conquer- 
 ing state. 
 
 Provinces revolt and become independent 
 states or nations, but only when they have pre- 
 viously existed as such, and have retained the 
 tradition of their old constitution and inde- 
 pendence; or when the administration has 
 erected them into real though dependent polit- 
 ical communities. A portion of the people of 
 a state not so erected or organized, that has in 
 no sense had a distinct political existence of its 
 own, has never separated from the national 
 body and formed a new and independent na- 
 tion. It cannot revolt ; it may rise up against 
 the government, and either revolutionize and 
 take possession of the state, or be put down by 
 the government as an insurrection. The amal- 
 gamation of the conquering and the conquered 
 forms a new people, and modifies the institu- 
 tions of both, but does not necessarily form a
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 147 
 
 new nation or political community. The Eng- 
 lish of to-day are very different from both the 
 Normans and the Saxons, or Dano-Saxons, of 
 the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, but they 
 constitute the same state or political community. 
 England is still England. 
 
 The Roman empire, conquered by the North 
 ern barbarians, has been cut up into several 
 separate and independent nations, but because 
 its several provinces had, prior to their conquest 
 by the Roman arms, been independent nations 
 or tribes, and more especially because the con- 
 querors themselves were divided into several 
 distinct nations or confederacies. If the bar- 
 barians had been united in a single nation or 
 state, the Roman empire most likely would 
 have changed masters, indeed, but have retained 
 its unity and its constitution, for the Germanic 
 nations that finally seated themselves on its 
 ruins had no wish to destroy its name or na- 
 tionality, for they were themselves more than 
 half Romanized before conquering Rome. But 
 the new nations into which the empire has been 
 divided have never been, at any moment, with- 
 out political or governmental organization, con- 
 tinued from the constitution of the conquering 
 tribe or .nation, modified more or less by what 
 was retained from the empire.
 
 148 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 It is not pretended that the constitutions of 
 states cannot be altered, or that every people 
 starts with a constitution fully developed, as 
 would seem to be the doctrine of De Maistre. 
 The constitution of the family is rather econom- 
 ical than political, and the tribe is far from 
 being a fully developed state. Strictly speak- 
 ing, the state, the modern equivalent for the 
 city of the Greeks and Romans, was not fully 
 formed till men began to build and live in 
 cities, and became fixed to a national territory. 
 But in the first place, the eldest born of the hu- 
 man race, we are told, built a city, and even in 
 cities we find traces of the family and tribal or- 
 ganization long after tjieir municipal existence 
 in Athens down to the Macedonian conquest, 
 and in Rome down to the establishment of the 
 Empire ; and, in the second place, the pastoral 
 nations, though they have not precisely the city 
 or state organization, yet have a national 
 organization, and obey a national authority. 
 Strictly speaking, no pastoral nation has a civil 
 or political constitution, but they have what in 
 our modern tongues can be expressed by no 
 other term. The feudal regime, which was in 
 full vigor even in Europe from the tenth to the 
 close of the fourteenth century, had nothing to 
 do with cities, and really recognized no state
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 149 
 
 proper ; yet who hesitates to speak of it as a 
 civil or political system, though a very imper- 
 fect one ? 
 
 The civil order, as it now exists, was not fully 
 developed in the early ages. For a long time 
 the national organizations bore unmistakable 
 traces of having been developed from the patri- 
 archal, and modelled from the family or tribe, 
 as they do still in, all the non-Christian world. 
 Religion itself, before the Incarnation, bore 
 traces of the ( same organization. Even with the 
 Jews, religion was transmitted and diffused, not 
 as under Christianity by conversion, but by 
 natural generation or family adoption. With 
 all the Gentile tribes or nations, it was the 
 same. At first the father was both priest and 
 king, and when the two offices were separated, 
 the priests formed a distinct and hereditary 
 lass or caste, rejected by Christianity, which, as 
 we have seen, admits priests only after the order 
 of Melchisedech. The Jews had the synagogue, 
 .and preserved the primitive revelation in its 
 purity and integrity ; but the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans, more fully than any other ancient nations, 
 preserved or developed the political order that 
 best conforms to the Christian religion; and 
 Christianity, it is worthy of remark, followed 
 in the track of the Roman armies, and it gains
 
 150 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 a permanent establishment only where was 
 planted, or where it is able to plant, the Grseco- 
 Roman civilization. The Grseco-Roman repub- 
 lics were hardly less a schoolmaster to bring 
 the world to Christ in the civil order, than the 
 Jewish nation was to bring it to Him in the 
 spiritual order, or in faith and worship. In the 
 Christian order nothing is by hereditary de- 
 scent, but every thing is by election of grace. 
 The Christian dispensation is teleological, palin- 
 genesiac, and the whole order, prior to the In- 
 carnation, was initial, genesiac, and continued 
 by natural generation, as it is still in all nations 
 and tribes outside of Christendom. No non- 
 Christian people is a civilized people, and, in 
 deed, the human race seems not anywhere, prior 
 to the Incarnation, to have attained to its ma- 
 jority : and it is, perhaps, because the race were 
 not prepared for it, that the Word was not 
 sooner incarnated. He came only in the ful- 
 ness of time, when the world was ready to 
 receive him. 
 
 The providential constitution is, in fact, that 
 with which the nation is born, and is, as long 
 as the nation exists, the real living and efficient 
 constitution of the state. It is the source of 
 the vitality of the state, that which controls or 
 governs its action, and determines its destiny.
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 151 
 
 The constitution which a nation is said to give 
 itself, is never the constitution of the state, but 
 is the law ordained by the state for the govern- 
 ment instituted under it. Thomas Paine would 
 admit nothing to be the constitution but a writ- 
 ten document which he could fold up and put 
 in his pocket, or file away in a pigeon-hole. 
 The Abbe" Sieyes pronounced politics a science, 
 which he had finished, and he was ready to turn 
 you out constitutions to order, with no other 
 defect than that they had, as Carlyle wittily 
 says, no feet, and could not go. Many in the 
 last century, and some, perhaps, in the present, 
 for folly as well as wisdom has her heirs, con- 
 founded the written instrument with the con- 
 stitution itself. No constitution can be written 
 on paper or engrossed on parchment. What 
 the convention may agree upon, draw up, and 
 the people ratify by their votes, is no constitu- 
 tion, for it is extrinsic to the nation, not inhe- 
 rent and living in it is, at best, legislative in- 
 stead of constitutive. The famous Magna Char- 
 ta drawn up by Cardinal Langton, and wrung 
 from John Lackland by the English barons at 
 Runnymede, was no constitution of England 
 till long after the date of its concession, and 
 even then was LO constitution of the- state, but a 
 set of restrictions on power. The constitution is
 
 162 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the intrinsic or inherent and actual constitu- 
 tion of the people or political community itself; 
 that which makes the nation what it is, and 
 distinguishes it from every other nation, and 
 varies as nations themselves vaiy from one an- 
 other. 
 
 The constitution of the state is not a theory, 
 nor is it drawn up and established in accord 
 ance with any preconceived theory. What is 
 theoretic in a constitution is unreal. The con- 
 stitutions conceived by philosophers in their 
 closets are constitutions only of Utopia or 
 Dreamland. This world is not governed by ab- 
 stractions, for abstractions are nullities. Only 
 the concrete is real, and only the real or actual 
 has vitality or force. The French people 
 adopted constitution after constitution of the 
 most approved pattern, and amid bonfires, 
 beating of drums, sound of trumpets, roar of 
 musketry, and thunder of artillery, swore, no 
 doubt, sincerely as well as enthusiastically, to 
 observe them, but all to no effect ; for they had 
 no authority for the nation, no hold on its affec- 
 tions, and formed no element of its life. The 
 English are great constitution-mongers for 
 other nations. They fancy that a constitution 
 fashioned after their own will fit any nation 
 that can be persuaded, wheedled, or bullied into
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 153 
 
 trying it on ; but, unhappily, all that have tried 
 it on have found it only an embarrassment 
 or encumbrance. The doctor might as well 
 attempt to give an individual a new constitu- 
 tion, or the constitution of another man, as the 
 statesman to give a nation any other constitu- 
 tion than that which it has, and with which it 
 is born. 
 
 The whole history of Europe, since the fall 
 of the Roman empire, proves this thesis. The 
 barbarian conquest of Rome introduced into 
 the nations founded on the site of the empire, 
 a double constitution the barbaric and the 
 civil the Germanic and the Roman in the 
 West, and the Tartaric or Turkish and the 
 Grseco-Roman in the East. The key to all 
 modern history is in the mutual struggles of 
 these two constitutions and the interests re- 
 spectively associated with them, which created 
 two societies on the same territory, and, for the 
 most part, under the same national denomina- 
 tion. The barbaric was the constitution of 
 the conquerors ; they had the power, the gov- 
 ernment, rank, wealth, and fashion, were reen- 
 forced down to the tenth century by fresh hordes 
 of barbarians, and had even brought the external 
 ecclesiastical society to a very t great extent into 
 harmony with itself. The Pope became a
 
 154 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 feudal sovereign, and the bishops and mitred 
 abbots feudal princes and barons. Yet, after 
 eight hundred years of fierce struggle, the Ro- 
 man constitution got the upper hand, and the 
 bai baric constitution, as far as it could not be 
 assimilated to the Roman, was eliminated. The 
 original Empire of the West is now as thor- 
 oughly Roman in its constitution, its laws, and 
 its civilization, as it ever was under any of its 
 Christian emperors before the barbarian con* 
 quest. 
 
 The same process is going on in the East, 
 though it has not advanced so far, having be- 
 gun there several centuries later, and the Graeco- 
 Roman constitution was far feebler there than in 
 the West at the epoch of the conquest. The 
 Germanic tribes that conquered the West had 
 long had close relations with the empire, had 
 served as its allies, and even in its armies, and 
 were partially Romanized. Most of their chiefs 
 had received a Roman culture ; and their early 
 conversion to the Christian faith facilitated the 
 revival and permanence of the old Roman con- 
 stitution. In the East it was different. The 
 conquerors had no touch of Roman civilization, 
 and, followers of the Prophet, they were ani- 
 mated with an intense hatred, which, after the 
 conquest, was changed into a superb contempt,
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 155 
 
 of Christians and Romans. They had their 
 civil constitution in the Koran ; and Ihe Koran, 
 in its principles, doctrines, and spirit, is exclu- 
 sive, and profoundly intolerant. The Grseco- 
 Roman constitution was always much weaker 
 in the East, and had far greater obstacles to 
 overcome there than in the West ; yet it has 
 survived the shock of the conquest. Through- 
 out the limits of the ancient Empire of the East r 
 the barbaric constitution has received and is 
 daily receiving rude blows, and, but as ree'n- 
 forced by barbarians lying outside of the boun 
 . daries of that empire, would be no longer able 
 to sustain itself. The Greek or Christian pop- 
 ulations of the empire are no longer in danger 
 of being exterminated or absorbed by the Mo- 
 hammedan state or population. They are the 
 only living and progressive people of the Otto- 
 man Empire, and their complete success in 
 absorbing or expelling the Turk is only a ques- 
 tion of time. They will, in all present proba- 
 bility, reestablish a Christian and Roman East 
 in much less time from the fall of Constantino- 
 ple in 1453, than it took the West from the fall 
 of Rome in 476 to put an end to the feudal or 
 barbaric constitution founded by its Germanic 
 invaders. 
 
 Indeed, the Roman constitution, laws, and
 
 156 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 civilization not only gain the mastery in the 
 nations seated within the limits of the old Ro- 
 man Empire, but extend their power through out 
 the whole civilized world. The Grseco-Roinan 
 civilization is, in fact, the only civilization now 
 recognized, and nations are accounted civilized 
 only in proportion as they are Romanized and 
 Christianized. The Roman law, as found in the 
 Institutes, Pandects, and Novellas of Justinian, 
 or the Corpus Legis Civilis, is the basis of the 
 law and jurisprudence of all Christendom. 
 The Graeco-Roman civilization, called not im- 
 properly Christian civilization, is the only pro- 
 gressive civilization. The old feudal system 
 remains in England little more than an empty 
 name. The king is only the first magistrate of 
 the kingdom, and the House of Lords is only 
 an hereditary senate. Austria is hard at work 
 in the Roman direction, and finds her chief ob- 
 stacle to success in Hungary, with the Magyars 
 whose feudalism retains almost the full vigor 
 of the Middle Ages. Russia is moving in the 
 same direction; and Prussia and the smaller 
 Germanic states obey the same impulse. In- 
 deed, Rome has survived the conquest has 
 conquered her conquerors, and now .invades 
 very region from which they came. The Ro 
 man Empire ma}" be said to be acknowledged
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 157 
 
 and obeyed in lands lying far beyond the farthest 
 limits reached by the Roman eagles, and to be 
 more truly the mistress of the world than 
 under Augustus, Trajan, or the Antonines. 
 Nothing can stand before the Christian and 
 Romanized nations, and all pagandom and Mo 
 hammedom combined are too weak to resist 
 their onward march. 
 
 All modern European revolutions result only 
 in reviving the Roman Empire, whatever the 
 motives, interests, passions, or theories that in- 
 itiate them. The French Revolution of the 
 last century and that of the present prove 
 it. France, let people say what they will, 
 stands at the head of the European civilized 
 world, and displays en grand all its good and 
 all its bad tendencies. When she moves, Eu- 
 rope moves ; when she has a vertigo, all Euro- 
 pean nations are dizzy ; when she recovers her 
 health, her equilibrium, and good sense, others 
 become sedate, steady, and reasonable. She is 
 the head, nay, rather, the heart of Christendom 
 the head is at Rome through which circu- 
 lates the pure and impure blood of the nations. 
 It is in vain Great Britain, Germany, or Russia 
 disputes with her the hegemony of European 
 civilization. They are forced to yield to her 
 at last, to be content to revolve around her as-
 
 168 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 4)he centre of the political system, that masters 
 them. The reason is, France is more complete- 
 ly and sincerely Roman than any other nation. 
 The revolutions that have shaken the world 
 have resulted in eliminating the barbaric ele- 
 ments she had retained, and clearing away all 
 .obstacles to the complete triumph of Imperial 
 Rome. Napoleon IIL is for France what Augus- 
 tus was for Rome. The revolutions in Spain 
 -and Italy have only swept away the relics of 
 the barbaric constitution, and aided the revival 
 of Roman imperialism. In no country do the 
 revolutionists succeed in establishing their own 
 theories; Caesar remains master of the field. 
 Even in the United States, a revolution under- 
 taken in favor of the barbaric system has re- 
 sulted in the destruction of what remained of 
 that system in sweeping away the last relics 
 of disintegrating feudalism, and in the complete 
 establishment of the Graeco-Roman system, with 
 important improvements, in the New World. 
 
 The Roman system is republican, in the broad 
 eense of the term, because under it power is 
 never an estate, never the private property of 
 the ruler, but, in whose hands soever vested, is 
 held as a trust to be exercised for the public 
 good. As it existed under the Caesars, and 
 .is revived in modern times, whether under the
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 15JJ 
 
 imperial or the democratic form, it, no doubt, 
 tends to centralism, to the concentration of all 
 the powers and forces of the state in one cen- 
 tral government, from which all local authori- 
 ties and institutions emanate. Wise men oppose 
 it as affording no guaranties to individual lib- 
 erty against the abuses of power. This it may 
 not do, but the remedy is not in feudalism. The 
 feudal lord holds his authority as an estate, and 
 has over the people under him all the power 
 of Caesar and all the rights of the proprietor. 
 He, indeed, has a guaranty against his liege, 
 lord, sometimes a more effective guaranty than 
 his liege-lord has against him ; but against his 
 centralized power his vassals and serfs have 
 only the guaranty that a slave has against his 
 owner. 
 
 Feudalism is alike hostile to the freedom of 
 public authority and of the people. It is essen- 
 tially a disintegrating element in the nation. 
 It breaks the unity and individuality of the 
 state, embarrasses the sovereign, and guards 
 against the abuse of public authority by over- 
 powering and suppressing it. Every feudal lord 
 is a more thorough despot in his own domain 
 than Csesar ever was or could be in the empire ; 
 and the monarch, even if strong enough, is yet 
 not competent to intervene between him and his
 
 160 THE AMERfCAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 people, any more than the General government 
 in the United States was to intervene between 
 the negro slave and his master. The great vas- 
 sals of the crown singly, or, if not singly, in 
 combination and they could always combine 
 in the interest of their order were too strong 
 for the king, or to be brought under any piib- 
 lic authority, and could issue from their fortified 
 castles and rob and plunder to their hearts' 
 content, with none to call them to an account. 
 Under the most thoroughly centralized govern- 
 ment there is far more liberty for the people, 
 and a far greater security for person and prop- 
 erty, except in the case of the feudal nobles 
 themselves, than was even dreamed of while 
 the feudal regime was in full vigor. Nobles 
 were themselves free, it is conceded, but not the 
 people. The king was too weak, too restricted 
 in his action by the feudal constitution to reach 
 them, and the higher clergy were ex officio sov- 
 ereigns, princes, barons, or feudal lords, and 
 were led by their private interests to act with 
 the feudal nobility, save when that nobility 
 threatened the temporalities of the church. The 
 only reliance, under God, left in feudal times to 
 the poor people was in the lower ranks of the 
 clergy, especially of the regular clergy. All 
 the great German emperors in the twelfth and
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 161 
 
 thirteenth centuries, who saw the evils of feu- 
 dalism, and attempted to break it up and revive 
 imperial Rome, became involved in quarrels 
 with the chiefs of the religious society, and 
 failed, because the interest of the Popes, as feu- 
 dal sovereigns and Italian princes, and the in- 
 terests of the dignified clergy, were for the time 
 bound up with the feudal society, though their 
 Roman culture and civilization made them at 
 heart hostile to it. The student of history, 
 however strong his filial affection towards the 
 visible head of the church, cannot help admir- 
 ing the grandeur of the political views of Fred- 
 eric the Second, the greatest and last of the 
 Hohenstaufen, or refrain from dropping a tear 
 over his sad failure. He had great faults as a 
 man, but he had rare genius as a statesman ; 
 and it is some consolation to know that he died 
 a Christian death, in charity with all men, after 
 having received the last sacraments of his 
 religion. 
 
 The Popes, under the circumstances, were no 
 doubt justified in the policy they pursued, for the 
 Suabian emperors failed to respect the acknowl- 
 edged rights of the church, and to remember 
 their own incompetency in spirituals ; but evi- 
 dently their political views and aims were lib- 
 eral, far-reaching, and worthy of admiration. 
 
 12
 
 162 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Their success, if it could have been effected 
 without lesion to the church, would have set 
 Europe forward some two or three hundred 
 years, and probably saved it from the schisms 
 of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. But 
 it is easy to be wise after the event. The fact 
 is, that during the period when feudalism was 
 in full vigor, the king was merely a shadow ; 
 the people found their only consolation in re- 
 ligion, and their chief protectors in the monks, 
 who mingled with them, saw their sufferings, 
 and sympathized with them, consoled them, 
 carried their cause to the castle before the feu- 
 dal lord and lady, and did, thank God, do 
 something to keep alive religious sentiments 
 and convictions in the bosom of the feudal so- 
 ciety itself. Whatever opinions may be formed 
 of the monastic orders in relation to the pres- 
 ent, this much is certain, that they were the 
 chief civilizers of Europe, and the chief agents 
 in delivering European society from feudal 
 barbarism. 
 
 The aristocracy have been claimed as the 
 natural allies of the throne, but history proves 
 them to be its natural enemies, whenever it 
 cannot be used in their service, and kings do 
 not consent to be their ministers and to do their 
 bidding. A political aristocracy has at heart
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 163 
 
 only the interests of its order, and pursues 
 no line of policy but the extension or preserva- 
 tion of its privileges. Having little to gain 
 and much to lose, it opposes every political 
 change that would either strengthen the crown 
 or elevate the people. The nobility in the 
 French Revolution were the first to desert both 
 the king and the kingdom, and kings have al- 
 ways found their readiest and firmest allies in 
 the people. The people in Europe have no 
 such bitter feelings towards royalty as they 
 have towards the feudal nobility for kings 
 have never so grievously oppressed them. In 
 Rome the patrician order opposed alike the 
 emperor and the people, except when they, as 
 chivalric nobles sometimes will do, turned cour- 
 tiers or demagogues. They were the people 
 of Rome and the provinces that sustained the 
 emperors, and they were the emperors who sus- 
 tained the people, and gave to the provincials 
 the privileges of Roman citizens. 
 
 Guaranties against excessive centralism are 
 certainly needed, but the statesman will not 
 seek them in the feudal organization of society 
 in a political aristocracy, whether founded on 
 birth or private wealth, nor in a privileged 
 class of any . sort. Better trust Caesar than 
 Brutus, or even Cato. Nor will he seek them
 
 164 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 in the antagonism of interests intended to neu 
 tralize or balance each other, as in the English 
 constitution. This was the great error of Mr. 
 Calhoun. No man saw more clearly than Mr. 
 Calhoun the utter worthlessness of simple paper 
 constitutions, on which Mr. Jefferson placed such 
 implicit reliance, or that the real constitution is 
 in the state itself, in the manner in which the 
 people themselves are organized; but his reli- 
 ance was in constituting, as powers in the state, 
 the several popular interests that exist, and pit- 
 ting them against each other the famous sys- 
 tem of checks and balances of English states- 
 men. He was led to this, because he distrusted 
 power, and was more intent on guarding against 
 its abuses than on providing for its free, vigor- 
 ous, and healthy action, going on the principle 
 that "that is the best government which gov- 
 erns least." But, if the opposing interests could 
 be made to balance one another perfectly, the 
 result would be an equilibrium, in which power 
 would be brought to a stand-still ; and if not, 
 the stronger would succeed and swallow up all 
 the rest. The theory of checks and balances is 
 admirable if the object be to trammel power, 
 and to have as little power in the government 
 as possible ; but it is a theory which is born 
 from passions engendered by the struggle against
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 165 
 
 despotism or arbitrary power, not from a calm 
 and philosophical appreciation of government 
 itself. The English have not succeeded in 
 establishing their theory, for, after all, their 
 constitution does not work so well as they pre- 
 tend. The landed interest controls at one time, 
 and the mercantile and manufacturing interest 
 at another. They do not perfectly balance one 
 another, and it is not difficult to see that the 
 mercantile and manufacturing interest, com- 
 bined with the moneyed interest, is henceforth 
 to predominate. The 'aim of the real states- 
 man is to organize all the interests and forces 
 of the state dialectically, so that they shall 
 unite to add to its strength, and work together 
 harmoniously for the common goo.d.
 
 166 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 THOUGH the constitution of the people is con- 
 genital, like the constitution of an individual, 
 and cannot be radically changed without the 
 destruction of the state, it must not be sup- 
 posed that it is wholly withdrawn from the 
 action of the reason and free-will of the nation, 
 nor from that of individual statesmen. All 
 created things are subject to the law of devel- 
 opment, and may be developed either in a good 
 sense or in a bad ; that is, may be either com- 
 pleted or corrupted. All the possibilities of 
 the national constitution are given originally 
 in the birth of the nation, as all the possibilities 
 of mankind were given in the first man. The 
 germ must be given in the original constitution. 
 But in all constitutions there is more than one ele- 
 ment, and the several elements may be developed 
 pari passu, or unequally, one haying the as- 
 cendency and suppressing the rest. In the 
 original constitution of Rome the patrician ele-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 167 
 
 merit was dominant, showing that the patri- 
 archal organization of society still retained no 
 little force. The king was only the presiding 
 officer of the senate and the leader of the army 
 in war. His civil functions corresponded very 
 nearly to those of a mayor of the city of New 
 York, where all the effective power is in the 
 aldermen, common council, and heads of de- 
 partments. Except in name he was little else 
 than a pageant. The kings, no doubt, labored 
 to develop and extend the royal element of the 
 constitution. This was natural ; and* it was 
 equally natural that they should be resisted by 
 the patricians. Hence when the Tarquins, or 
 Etruscan dynasty, undertook to be kings in 
 fact as well as in name, and seemed likely to 
 succeed, the patricians expelled them, and sup- 
 plied their place by two consuls annually 
 elected. Here was a modification, but no real 
 change of the constitution. The effective 
 power, as before, remained in the senate. 
 
 But there was from early times a plebeian 
 element in the population of the city, though 
 forming at first no part of the political people. 
 Their origin is not very certain, nor their orig- 
 inal position in the city. Historians give 
 different accounts of them. But that they 
 should n as they increased in numbers, wealth,
 
 168 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and importance, demand admission into the pc* 
 litical society, religious or solemn marriage, 
 a voice in the government, and the faculty of 
 holding civil and military offices, was only in 
 the order of regular development. At first the 
 patricians fought them, and, failing to subdue 
 them by force, effected a compromise, and 
 bought up their leaders. The concession which 
 followed of the tribunitial veto was only a 
 further development. By that veto the ple- 
 beians gained no initiative, no positive power, 
 indeed, but their tribunes, by interposing it, 
 could stop the proceedings of the government. 
 They could not propose the measures they liked, 
 but they could prevent the legal adoption of 
 measures they disliked a faculty Mr. Calhoun 
 asserted for the several States of the American 
 IJnion in his doctrine of nullification, or State 
 veto, as he called it. It was simply an obstruc- 
 tive power. 
 
 But from a power to obstruct legislative ac- 
 tion to the power to originate or propose it, 
 and force the senate to adopt it through fear 'of 
 the veto of measures the patricians had at 
 heart, was only a still further development. This 
 gained, the exclusively patrician constitution 
 had disappeared, and Marius, the head of a 
 great plebeian house, could be elected .consul.
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 169 
 
 and the plebeians in turn threaten to become 
 predominant, which Sylla or Sulla, as dictator, 
 seeing, tried in vain to prevent. The dictator 
 was provided for in the original constitution. 
 Retain the dictatorship for a time, strength en- 
 the plebeian element by ruthless proscriptions of 
 patricians and by recruits from the provinces, 
 unite the tribunitial, pontifical, and military 
 powers in the imperator designated by the 
 army, all elements existing in the constitution 
 from an early day, and already developed in the 
 Roman state, and you have the imperial consti 
 tution, which retained to the last the senate and 
 consuls, though with less and less practical 
 power. These changes are very great, but are 
 none of them radical, dating from the recogni- 
 tion of the plebs as pertaining to the Roman 
 people. They are normal developments, not 
 corruptions, and the transition from the con- 
 sular republic to the imperial was unquestion- 
 ably a real social and political progress. And 
 yet the Roman people, had they chosen, could 
 have given a different direction to the develop- 
 inents of their constitution. There was Provi- 
 dence in the course of events, but no fatalism. 
 
 Sulla was a true patrician, a blind partisan 
 of the past. He sought to arrest the plebeian 
 development led by Marius, and to restore the
 
 170 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 exclusively patrician government. But it waa 
 too late. His proscriptions, confiscations, butch- 
 eries, unheard-of cruelties, which anticipated 
 and surpassed those of the French Revolution 
 of 1793, availed nothing. The Marian or ple- 
 beian movement, apparently checked for a mo- 
 ment, resumed its march with renewed vigor 
 under Julius, and triumphed at Pharsalia. In 
 vain Cicero, only accidentally associated with 
 the patrician party, which distrusted him 
 in vain Cicero declaims, Cato scolds, or parades 
 his impractical virtues, Brutus and Cassius seize 
 the assassin's dagger, and strike to the earth 
 " the foremost man of all the world ;" the plebe- 
 ian cause moves on with resistless force, tri- 
 umphs anew at Philippi, and young Octavius 
 avenges the murder of his uncle, and proves 
 to the world that the assassination of a ruler is a 
 blunder as well as a crime. In vain does Mark 
 Antony desert the movement, rally Egypt 
 and the barbaric East, and seek to transfer the 
 seat of empire from the Tiber to the banks of 
 the Nile or the Orontes ; plebeian and imperial 
 Rome wins a final victory at Actium, and de- 
 finitively secures the empire of the civilized 
 world to the 'West. 
 
 Thus far the developments were normal, and 
 advanced civilization. But Rome still retained
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 171 
 
 the barbaric element of slavery in her bosom r 
 and had conquered more barbaric nations than 
 she had assimilated. These nations she at 
 first governed as tributary states, with their 
 own constitutions and national chiefs; after- 
 wards as Roman provinces, by her own procon- 
 suls and prefects. When the emperors threw 
 open the gates of the city to the provincials, 
 and conceded them the rights and privileges of 
 Roman citizens, they introduced not only a for- 
 eign element into the state, destitute of Roman 
 patriotism, but the barbaric and despotic ele- 
 ments retained by the conquered nations as yet 
 only partially assimilated. These elements be- 
 came germs of anti-republican developments,, 
 rather of corruptions, and prepared the down- 
 fall of the empire. Doubtless these corrup- 
 tions might have been arrested, and would have 
 been, if Roman patriotism had survived the 
 changes effected in the Roman population by 
 the concession of Roman citizenship to provin- 
 cials ; but it did not, and they were favored as 
 time went on by the emperors themselves, and 
 more especially by Dioclesian, a real barba- 
 rian, who hated Rome, and by Constantine, sur- 
 named the Great, a real despot, who converted 
 the empire from a republican to a despotic 
 empire. Rome fell from the force of barba-
 
 172 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 rism developed from within, far more than from 
 the force of the barbarians hovering on her 
 frontiers and invading her provinces. 
 
 The law of all possible developments is in 
 the providential or congenital constitution; 
 but these possible developments are many and 
 various, and the reason and free-will of the 
 nation as well as of individuals are operative 
 in determining which of them shall be adopted. 
 The nation, under the direction of wise and 
 able statesmen, who understood their age 
 And country, who knew how to discern between, 
 normal developments and barbaric corruptions, 
 placed at the head of affairs in season, might 
 have saved Rome from her fate, eliminated the 
 barbaric and assimilated the foreign elements, 
 and preserved Rome as a Christian and re- 
 publican empire to this day, and saved the civ- 
 ilized world from the ten centuries of barba- 
 rism which followed her conquest by the bar- 
 barians of the North. But it rarely happens 
 that the real statesmen of a nation are placed 
 ^t the head of affairs. 
 
 Rome did not fall in consequence of the 
 strength of her external enemies, nor through 
 the corruption of private morals and manners, 
 which was never greater than under the first 
 Triumvirate. She fell from the want of true
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 173 
 
 statesmanship in her public men, and patriot- 
 ism in her people. Private virtues and private 
 vices are of the last consequence to individuals, 
 both here and hereafter; but private virtues 
 never saved, private vices never ruined a na- 
 tion. Edward the Confessor was a saint, and 
 yet he prepared the way for the Norman con- 
 quest of England ; and France owes infinitely 
 less to St. Louis than to Louis XI., Richelieu, 
 and Napoleon, who, though no saints, were 
 statesmen. What is specially needed in states- 
 men is public spirit, intelligence, foresight, 
 broad views, manly feelings, wisdom, energy, 
 resolution ; and when statesmen with these qual 
 ities are placed at the head of affairs, the state, 
 if not already lost, can, however far gone it 
 may be, be recovered, restored, reinvigorated, 
 advanced, and private vice and corruption dis- 
 appear in the splendor of public virtue. Prov- 
 idence is always present in the affairs of na- 
 tions, but not to work miracles to counteract 
 the natural effects of the ignorance, ineptness, 
 short-sightedness, narrow views, public stupid- 
 ity, and imbecility of rulers, because they are 
 irreproachable and saintly in th,eir private 
 characters and relations, as was Henry VI. of 
 England, or, in some respects, Louis XVI. of 
 France Providence is God intervening through
 
 174 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 
 
 the laws he by his creative act gives to crea- 
 tures, not their suspension or abrogation. It 
 was the corruption of the statesmen, in substi- 
 tuting the barbaric element for the proper Ro- 
 man, to which no one contributed more than 
 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, that 
 was the real cause of the downfall of Rome, 
 and the centuries of barbarism that followed, 
 relieved only by the superhuman zeal and 
 charity of the church to save souls and restore 
 civilization. 
 
 But in the constitution of the government, 
 as distinguished from the state, the nation is 
 freer and more truly sovereign. The constitu 
 tion of the state is that which gives to the peo- 
 ple of a given territory political existence, unity, 
 and individuality, and renders it capable of po- 
 litical action. It creates political or national 
 solidarity, in imitation of the solidarity of the 
 race, in which it has its root. It is the provi- 
 dential charter of national existence, and that 
 which gives to each nation its peculiar charac- 
 ter, and distinguishes it from every other na- 
 tion. The constitution of government is the 
 constitution by the sovereign authority of the 
 nation of an agency or ministry for the manage- 
 ment of its affairs, and the letter of instructions 
 according to which the agent or minister is to
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 175 
 
 tact and conduct the matters intrusted to Mm. 
 The distinction which the English make be- 
 tween the sovereign and the ministry is analo 
 gous to that between the state and the govern 
 ment, only they understand by the sovereign 
 the king or queen, and by the ministry the ex- 
 ecutive, excluding, or not decidedly including, 
 the legislature and the j udiciary. The sovereign 
 is the people as the state or body politic, 
 and as the king holds from God only through 
 the people, he is not properly sovereign, and is 
 to be ranked with the ministry or government. 
 Yet when the state delegates the full or chief 
 governing power to the king, and makes him 
 its sole or principal representative, he may, with 
 sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes, be 
 called sovereign. Then, understanding by the 
 ministry or government the. legislative and 
 judicial, as well as the executive functions, 
 whether united in one or separated into distinct 
 and mutually independent departments, the 
 English distinction will express accurately 
 enough, except for strictly scientific purposes, 
 the distinction between the state and the gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Still, it is only in despotic states, which are 
 not founded on right, but force, that the king 
 -can say, I}etat, dest moi, I am the state; and
 
 176 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Shakspeare's usage of callmg the king of France 
 simply France, and the king of England simply 
 England, smacks of feudalism, under which 
 monarchy is an estate, property, not a public 
 trust. It corresponds to the Scottish usage of 
 calling the proprietor by the name of his estate. 
 It is never to be forgotten that in republican 
 states the king has only a delegated sover- 
 eignty, that the people, as well as God, are 
 above him. He holds his power, as the Emperor 
 of the French professes to hold his, by the 
 grace of God and the national will the only 
 title by which a king or emperor can legiti- 
 mately hold power. 
 
 The king or emperor not being the state, 
 and the government, whatever its form or con- 
 stitution, being a creature of the state, he can 
 be dethroned, and the whole government even 
 virtually overthrown, without dissolving the 
 state or the political society. Such an event 
 may cause much evil, create much social confu- 
 sion, and do grave injury to the nation, but the 
 political society may survive it ; the sovereign 
 remains in the plenitude of his rights, as 
 competent to restore government as he was 
 originally to institute it. When, in 1848, Louis 
 Philippe was dethroned by the Parisian mob, 
 and fled the kingdom, there was in France no
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 177 
 
 legitimate government, for all commissions ran 
 in the king's name ; but the organic or territo- 
 rial people of France, the body politic, re- 
 mained, and in it remained the sovereign power 
 to organize and appoint a new government. 
 When, on the 2d of December, 1851, the presi- 
 dent, by a coup d'etat, suppressed the legisla- 
 tive assembly and the constitutional govern- 
 ment, there was no legitimate government 
 standing, and the power assumed by the presi- 
 dent was unquestionably a usurpation ; but the 
 nation was competent to condone his usurpa- 
 tion and legalize his power, and by a plebis- 
 citum actually did so. The wisdom or justice 
 of the coup d'etat is another question, about 
 which men may differ; but when the French 
 nation, by its subsequent act, had condoned 
 it, and formally conferred dictatorial powers on 
 the prince-president, the principal had approved 
 the act of his agent, and given him discretion- 
 ary powers, and nothing more was to be said. 
 The imperial constitution and the election of 
 the president to be emperor, that followed on 
 December 2d, 1852, were strictly legal, and, 
 whatever men may think of Napoleon UL, it 
 must be conceded that there is no legal flaw 
 in his title, and that he holds his power by a 
 
 13
 
 178 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 title as high and as perfect as there is for any 
 prince or ruler. 
 
 But the plebiscitum cannot be legally ap- 
 pealed to or be valid when and where there is 
 a legal government existing and in the full 
 exercise of its constitutional functions, as was 
 decided by the Supreme Court of the United 
 States in a case growing out of what is known 
 as the Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island. A suf- 
 frage committee, having no political authority, 
 drew up and presented a new constitution of 
 government to the people, plead a plebisci- 
 tum in its favor, and claimed the officers elected 
 under it as the legally elected officers of the 
 state. The court refused to recognize the ple- 
 biscitum, and decided that it knew Rhode 
 Island only as represented through the govern- 
 ment, which had never ceased to exist. New 
 States in Territories have been organized on the 
 strength of a plebiscitum when the legal Ter- 
 ritorial government was in force, and were ad- 
 mitted as States into the Union, which, though 
 irregular and dangerous, could be done without 
 revolution, because Congress, that admitted 
 them, is the power to grant the permission to 
 organize as States and apply for admission. 
 Congress is competent to condone an offence 
 against its own rights. The real danger of the
 
 CONSTITUTION OP GOVERNMENT. 179 
 
 practice is, that it tends to create a conviction 
 that sovereignty inheres in the people individ- 
 ually, or as population, not as the body politic 
 or organic people attached to a sovereign do- 
 main ; and the people who organize under a 
 plebiscitum are not, till organized and admitted 
 into the Union, an organic or a political people 
 at all. When Louis Napoleon made his appeal 
 to a vote of the French people, he made an ap- 
 peal to a people existing as a sovereign people, 
 and a sovereign people without a legal govern 
 ment. In his case the plebiscitum was proper 
 and sufficient, even if it be conceded that it 
 was through his own fault that France at the 
 moment was found without a legal govern- 
 ment. When a thing is done, though wrongly 
 done, you cannot act as if it were not done, but 
 must accept it as a fact and act accordingly. 
 
 The plebiscitum, which is simply an appeal to 
 the people outside of government, is not valid 
 when the government has not lapsed, either by 
 its usurpations or by its dissolution, nor is it 
 valid either in the case of a province, or of a 
 population that has no organic existence as an 
 independent sovereign state. The plebiscitum 
 in France was valid, but in the Grand Duchy 
 of Tuscany, the Duchies of Modena, Parma, 
 and Lucca, and in the Kingdom of the Two
 
 180 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Sicilies it was not valid, for their legal govern- 
 ments had not lapsed; nor was it valid in the 
 ^Einiliau provinces of the Papal States, because 
 they were not a nation or a sovereign people, 
 but only a portion of such nation or people. 
 In the case of the states and provinces except 
 Lombardy, ceded to France by Austria, and sold 
 to the Sardinian king annexed to Piedmont 
 to form the new kingdom of Italy, the plebis- 
 citum was invalid, because implying the light 
 of the people to rebel against the legal author- 
 ity, and to break the unity and individuality 
 of the state of which they form an integral 
 part. The nation is a whole, and no part has 
 the right to secede or separate, and set up a 
 government for itself, -or annex itself to another 
 state, without the consent of the whole. The 
 solidarity of the nation is both a fact and a 
 law. The secessionists from the United States 
 defended their action only on the ground that 
 the States of the American Union are sever- 
 ally independent sovereign states, and they 
 only obeyed the authority of their respective 
 states. 
 
 The plebiscitum, or irregular appeal to what 
 is called universal suffrage, since adopted by 
 Louis Napoleon in France after the coup d'etat, 
 is becoming not a little menacing to the stabil-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERMMENT. 181 
 
 ity of governments and the rights and integ- 
 rity of states, and is not less dangerous to the 
 peace and order of society than " the solidarity 
 of peoples" asserted by Kossuth, the revolu- 
 tionary ex-governor of Hungary, the last strong- 
 hold of feudal barbarism in Christian Europe; 
 for Russia has emancipated her serfs. 
 
 The nation, as sovereign, is free to constitute 
 government according to its own judgment, un- 
 der any form it pleases monarchical, aristocrat- 
 ic, democratic, or mixed vest all power in an 
 hereditary monarch, in a class or hereditary no- 
 bles, in' a king and two houses of parliament, 
 one hereditary, the other elective, or both elec- 
 tive ; or it may establish a single, dual, or triple 
 executive, make all officers of government hered- 
 itary or all elective, and if elective, elective for 
 a longer or a shorter time, by universal suffrage 
 or a select body of electors. Any of these 
 forms and systems, and many others besides, 
 are or may be legitimate, if established and 
 maintained by the national will. There is 
 nothing in the law of God or of nature, antece- 
 dently to the national will, that gives any one 
 of them a right to the exclusion of any one of 
 the others. The imperial system in France is at 
 legitimate as the federative system in the 
 United States. The only form or system that
 
 182 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 is necessarily illegal is the despotic. That can 
 never be a truly civilized government, nor a 
 legitimate government, for God has given to 
 man no dominion over man. He gave men, as 
 St. Augustine says, and Pope St. Gregory the 
 Great repeats, dominion over the irrational 
 creation, not over the rational, and hence the 
 primitive rulers of men were called pastors or 
 shepherds, not lords. It may be the duty of 
 the people subjected to a despotic government 
 to demean themselves quietly and peaceably 
 towards it, as a matter of prudence, to avoid 
 sedition, and the evils that would necessarily 
 follow an attempted revolution, but not be- 
 cause, founded as it is on mere force, it has 
 itself any right or legality. 
 
 All other forms of government are republi- 
 can in their essential constitution, founded on 
 public right, and held under God from and for 
 the commonwealth, and which of them is wisest 
 and best for the commonwealth is, for the most 
 part, an idle question. "Forms of govern- 
 ment," somebody has said, " are like shoes 
 that is the best form which best fits the feet 
 that are to wear them." Shoes are to be fitted 
 to the feet, not the feet to the shoes, and feet 
 vary in size and conformation. There is, in regard 
 to government, as distinguished from the state,
 
 CONSTITUTION OP GOVERNMENT. 183 
 
 no antecedent right which binds the people, for 
 antecedently to the existence of the govern- 
 ment as a fact, the state is free to adopt any 
 form that it finds practicable, or judges the 
 wisest and best for itself. Ordinarily the form 
 of the government practicable for a nation is 
 determined by the peculiar providential consti- 
 tution of the territorial people, and a form of 
 government that would be practicable and 
 good in one country may be the reverse in 
 another. The English government is no doubt 
 the best practicable in Great Britain, at present 
 at least, but it has proved a failure wherever 
 else it has been attempted. The American sys- 
 tem has proved itself, in spite of the recent 
 formidable rebellion to overthrow it, the best 
 and only practicable government for the United 
 States, but it is impracticable everywhere else, 
 and all attempts by any European or other 
 American state to introduce it can end only 
 in disaster. The imperial system apparently 
 works well in France, but though all European 
 states are tending to it, it would not work well 
 at all on the American continent, certainly not 
 until the republic of the United States has 
 ceased to exist. While the United States re- 
 main the great American power, that system, or 
 its kindred system, democratic centralism, can
 
 184 THE AMERICAN RKPUBLuC 
 
 * 
 
 never become an Amerkian system, as Maximil- 
 ian's experiment in Mexico is likely to prove. 
 
 Political propagandism, except on the Roman 
 plan, that is, by annexation and incorporation, 
 is as impracticable as it is wanting in the re- 
 spect that one independent people owes to 
 another. The old French Jacobins tried to 
 propagate, even with fire and sword, their sys- 
 tem throughout Europe, as the only system 
 compatible with the rights of man. The Eng- 
 lish, since 1688, have been great political prop- 
 agandists, and at one time it seemed not un- 
 likely that every European state would try the 
 experiment of a parliamentary government, 
 composed of an hereditary crown, an heredi- 
 tary house of lords, and an elective house of 
 commons. The democratic Americans are also 
 great political propagandists, and are ready to 
 sympathize with any rebellion, insurrection, or 
 movement in behalf of democracy in any part 
 of the world, however mean or contemptible, 
 fierce or bloody it may be ; but all this is as 
 unstatesmanlike as unjust; un statesmanlike, 
 for no form of government can bear transplant- 
 ing, and because every independent nation is 
 the sole judge of what best comports with its 
 own interests, and its judgment is to be re- 
 spected by the citizens as well as by the gov-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 185 
 
 ^rnments of other states. Religious propa- 
 gandism is a right and a duty, because religion 
 is catholic, and of universal obligation ; and so 
 is the jus gentium of the Romans, which is only 
 the application to individuals and nations of 
 the great principles of natural justice ; but no 
 political propagandism is ever allowable, because 
 no one form of government is catholic in its 
 nature, or of universal obligation. 
 
 Thoughtful Americans are opposed to politi- 
 cal propagandism,. and respect the right of 
 every nation to choose its own form of govern- 
 ment ; but they hold that the American system 
 is the best in itself, and that if other nations 
 were as enlightened as the American, they 
 would adopt it. But though the American 
 system, rightly understood, is the best, as they 
 hold, it is not because other nations are less 
 enlightened, which is by no means a fact, that 
 they do not adopt, or cannot bear it, but solely 
 because their providential constitutions do not 
 require or admit it, and an attempt to introduce 
 it in any of them would prove a failure and a 
 grave evil. 
 
 Fit your shoes to your feet. The law of the 
 governmental constitution is in that of the na- 
 tion. The constitution of the government must 
 grow out of the constitution of the state, and
 
 186 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 accord with the genius, the character, the habits r 
 customs, and wants of the people, or it will not 
 work well, or tend to secure the legitimate ends 
 of government. The constitutions imagined by 
 philosophers are for Utopia, not for any ac- 
 tual, living, breathing people. You must take 
 the state as it is, and develop your govern- 
 mental constitution from it, and harmonize it 
 with it. Where there is a discrepancy between 
 the two constitutions, the government has no 
 support in the state, in the organic people, or 
 nation, and can sustain itself only by corrup- 
 tion or physical force. A government may be 
 under the necessity of using force to suppress an 
 insurrection or rebellion against the national au 
 thority, or the integrity of the national territory, 
 but no government that can sustain itself, 
 not the state, only by physical force or large 
 standing armies, can be a good government, or 
 suited to the nation. It must adopt the most 
 stringent repressive measures, suppress liberty 
 of speech and of conscience, outrage liberty 
 in what it has the most intimate and sacred, 
 and practise the most revolting violence and 
 cruelty, for it can govern only by terror. Such 
 a government is unsuited to the nation. 
 
 This is seen in all history: in the attempt 
 of the dictator Sulla to preserve the old patri-
 
 CONSTITUTION OP GOVERNMENT. 187 
 
 cian government against the plebeian power 
 that time and events had developed in the Ro- 
 man state, and which was about to gain the su- 
 premacy, as we have seen, at Pharsalia, Philippi, 
 and Actium ; in the efforts to establish a Jaco 
 binical government in France in 1793 ; in Rome 
 in 1848, and the government of Victor Em- 
 manuel in Naples in 1860 and 1861. These 
 efforts, proscriptions, confiscations, military ex- 
 ecutions, assassinations, massacres, are all made 
 in the name of liberty, or in defence of a gov- 
 ernment supposed to guaranty the well-being 
 of the state and the rights of the people. They 
 are rendered inevitable by the mad attempt to 
 force on a nation a constitution of government 
 foreign to the national constitution, or repug- 
 nant to the national tastes, interests, habits, 
 convictions, or whole interior life. The repres- 
 sive policy, adopted to a certain extent by nearly 
 all European governments, grows out of the 
 madness of a portion of the people of the several 
 states in seeking to force upon the nation an 
 anti-national constitution. The sovereigns may 
 not be very wise, but they are wiser, more na- 
 tional', more patriotic than the mad theorists 
 who seek to revolutionize the state and estab- 
 lish a government that has no hold in the na- 
 tional traditions, the national character, or the
 
 188 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 national life ; and the statesman, the patriot, the 
 true friend of liberty sympathizes with the na- 
 tional authorities, not with the mad theorists 
 and revolutionists. 
 
 The right of a nation to change its form of 
 government, and its magistrates or representa- 
 tives, by whatever name called, is incontestable. 
 Hence the French constitution of 1789, which 
 involved that of 1793, was not illegal, for 
 though accompanied by some irregularities, it 
 was adopted by the manifest will of the nation, 
 and consented to by all orders in the state. 
 Not its legality but its wisdom is to be ques- 
 tioned, together with the false and dangerous 
 theories of government which dictated it. There 
 is no compact or mutual stipulation between 
 the state and the government. The state, un- 
 der God, is sovereign, and ordains and estab- 
 lishes the government, instead of making a 
 contract, a bargain, or covenant, with it. -The 
 common democratic doctrine on this point is 
 right, if by people is understood the organic 
 people attached to a sovereign domain, not the 
 people as individuals or as a floating or nomadic 
 multitude. By people in the political sense, 
 Cicero, and St. Augustine after him, understood 
 the people as the republic, organized in reference 
 to the common or public good. With this under-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 standing, the sovereignty persists in the people, 
 and they retain the supreme authority over the 
 government. The powers delegated are still the 
 powers of the sovereign delegating them, and 
 may be modified, altered, or revoked, as the 
 sovereign judges proper. The nation does not, 
 and cannot abdicate or delegate away its own 
 sovereignty, for sovereign it is, and cannot but 
 be, so long as it remains a nation not subjected 
 to another nation. 
 
 By the imperial constitution of the French 
 government, the imperial power is vested in 
 Napoleon IIL, and made hereditary in his 
 family, in the male line of his legitimate de- 
 scendants. This is legal, but the nation has not 
 parted with its sovereignty or bound itself by 
 contract forever to a Napoleonic dynasty. Na- 
 poleon holds the imperial power "by the grace 
 of God and the will of the nation," which 
 means simply that he holds his authority from 
 God, through the French people, and is bound 
 to exercise it according to the law of God and 
 the national will. The nation is as competent 
 to revoke this constitution as the legislature is 
 to repeal any law it is competent to enact, and 
 in doing so breaks no contract, violates no 
 right, for Napoleon and his descendants hold 
 their right to the imperial throne subject to the
 
 190 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 national will from which it is derived. In case 
 the nation should revoke the powers delegated, 
 he or they would have no more valid claim to 
 the throne than have the Bourbons, whom the 
 nation has unmistakably dismissed from its 
 service. 
 
 The only point here to be observed is, that 
 the change must be by the nation itself, in its 
 sovereign capacity ; not by a mob, nor by a part 
 of the nation conspiring, intriguing, or rebelling, 
 without any commission from the nation. The 
 first Napoleon governed by a legal title, but he 
 was never legally dethroned, and the govern 
 rnent of the Bourbons, whether of the elder 
 branch or the younger, was never a legal gov- 
 ernment, for the Bourbons had lost their origi- 
 nal rights by the election of the first Napoleon, 
 and never afterwards had the national will in 
 their favor. The republic of 1848 was legal, 
 in the sense that the nation acquiesced in it as 
 a temporary necessity; but hardly anybody be- 
 lieved in it or wanted it, and the nation accept- 
 ed it as a sort of locum tenens, rather than willed 
 or ordained it. Its overthrow by the coup tfetat 
 may not be legally defensible, but the election 
 of Napoleon III. condoned the illegality, if there 
 was any, and gave the emperor a legal title, 
 that no republican, that none but a despot
 
 CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 191 
 
 or a no-government man can dispute. As the 
 will of the nation, in so far as it contravenes 
 not the law of God or the law of nature, binds 
 every individual of the nation, no individual or 
 number of individuals has, or can have, any 
 right to conspire against him, or to labor to oust 
 him from his place, till his escheat has been pro- 
 nounced by the voice of the nation. The state, 
 in its sovereign capacity, willing it, is the only 
 power competent to revoke or to change the form 
 and constitution of the imperial government. 
 The same must be said of every nation that has 
 a lawful government; and this, while it pre- 
 serves the national sovereignty, secures freedom 
 of progress, condemns all sedition, conspiracy, 
 rebellion, revolution, as does the Christian law 
 itself.
 
 192 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 SOVEREIGISTTY, under God, inheres in the organ- 
 ic people, or the people as the republic; and every 
 organic people fixed to the soil, and politically 
 independent of every other people, is a sover- 
 eign people, and, in the modern sense, an in- 
 dependent sovereign nation. 
 
 Sovereign states may unite in an alliance, 
 league, or confederation, and mutually agree 
 to exercise their sovereign powers or a portion 
 of them in common, through a common organ 
 or agency; but in this agreement they part 
 with none of their sovereignty, and each remains 
 a sovereign state or nation as before. The com- 
 mon organ or agency created by the convention 
 is no state, is no nation, has no inherent sover- 
 eignty, and derives all its vitality and force 
 from the persisting sovereignty of the states 
 severally that have united in creating it. The 
 agreement no more affects the sovereignty of 
 the several states entering into it, than does the
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 193 
 
 appointment of an agent affect the rights and 
 powers of the principal The creature takes 
 nothing from the Creator, exhausts not, lessens 
 not his creative energy, and it is only by his 
 retaining and continuously exerting his creative 
 power that the creature continues to exist. 
 
 An independent state or nation may, with or 
 without its consent, lose its sovereignty, but 
 only by being merged in or subjected to another. 
 Independent sovereign states cannot by conven- 
 tion, or mutual agreement, form themselves into 
 a single sovereign state or nation. The com- 
 pact, or agreement, is made by sovereign states, 
 and binds by virtue of the sovereign power of 
 each of the contracting parties. To destroy 
 that sovereign power would be to annul the 
 compact, and render void the agreement. The 
 agreement can be valid and binding only on 
 condition that each of the contracting parties 
 retains the sovereignty that rendered it com- 
 petent to enter into the compact, and states that 
 retain severally their sovereignty do not form a 
 single sovereign state or nation. The states in 
 convention cannot become a new and single 
 sovereign state, unless they lose their several 
 sovereignty, and merge it in the new sovereignty; 
 but this they cannot do by agreement, because 
 the moment the parties to the agreement cease
 
 194 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to be sovereign, the agreement, on which alone 
 depends the new sovereign state, is vacated, in 
 like manner as a contract is vacated by the 
 death of the contracting parties. 
 
 That a nation may voluntarily cede its sover- 
 eignty is frankly admitted, but it can cede it 
 only to something or somebody actually existing, 
 for to cede to nothing and not to cede is one 
 and the same thing. They can part with their 
 own sovereignty by merging themselves in an- 
 other national existence, but not by merging 
 themselves in nothing ; and, till they have part- 
 ed with their own sovereignty, the new sover- 
 eign state does not exist. A prince can abdi- 
 cate his power, because by abdicating he simply 
 gives back to the people the trust he had re- 
 ceived from them; but a nation cannot, save 
 by merging itself in another. An independent 
 state not merged in another, or that is not sub- 
 ject to another, cannot cease to be a sovereign 
 nation, even if it would. 
 
 That no sovereign state can be formed by 
 agreement or compact has already been shown 
 in the refutation of the theory of the origin of 
 government in convention, or the so-called social 
 compact. Sovereign states are as unable to form 
 themselves into a single sovereign state by 
 mutual compact as are the sovereign individ-
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 195 
 
 uals imagined by Eousseau. The convention, 
 either of sovereign states or of sovereign indi- 
 viduals, with the best will in the World, can 
 form only a compact or agreement between sov- 
 ereigns, and an agreement or compact, whatever 
 its terms or conditions, is only an alliance, a 
 league, or a confederation, which no one can 
 pretend is a sovereign state, nation, or republic. 
 The question, then, whether the United States 
 are a single sovereign state or nation, or a con- 
 federacy of independent sovereign states, de- 
 pends on the question whether the American 
 people originally existed as one people or as 
 several independent states. Mr. Jefferson main- 
 tains that before the convention of 1787 they 
 existed as several independent sovereign states, 
 but that since that convention, or the ratification 
 of the constitution it proposed, they exist as one 
 political people in regard to foreign nations, 
 and several sovereign states in regard to 
 their internal and domestic relations. Mr. 
 Webster concedes that originally the States ex- 
 isted as severally sovereign states, but contends 
 that by ratifying the constitution they have been 
 made one sovereign political people, state, or 
 nation, and that the General government is 
 a supreme national government, though with a 
 reservation in favor of State rights. But both
 
 196 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 are wrong. If the several States of the Union 
 were severally sovereign states when they met 
 in the convention, they are so now ; and the 
 constitution is only an agreement or compact 
 between sovereigns, and the United States are, 
 as Mr. Calhoun maintained, only a confedera- 
 tion of sovereign states, and not a single state 
 or one political community. 
 
 But if the sovereignty persists in the States 
 severally, any State, saving its faith, may, when- 
 ever it chooses to do so, withdraw from the 
 Union, absolve its subjects from all obligation 
 to the Federal authorities, and make it treason 
 in them to adhere to the Federal government. 
 Secession is, then, an incontestable right ; not a 
 right held under the constitution or derived 
 from the convention, but a right held prior to 
 it, independently of it, inherent in the State 
 sovereignty, and inseparable from it. The State 
 is bound by the constitution of the Union 
 only while she is in it, and is one of the States 
 united. In ratifying the constitution she did 
 not part with her sovereignty, or with any por- 
 tion of it, any more than France has parted with 
 her sovereignty, and ceased to be an indepen- 
 dent sovereign nation, by vesting the imperial 
 power in Napoleon HL and his legitimate heirs 
 male. The principal parts not with his power
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 197 
 
 to his agent, for the agent is an agent only by 
 virtue of the continued power of the principal. 
 Napoleon is emperor by the will of the French 
 people, and governs only by the authority of 
 the French nation, which is as competent to re- 
 vote the powers it has conferred on him, when 
 it judges proper, as it was to confer them. The 
 Union exists and governs, if the States are 
 sovereign, only by the will of the State, and she 
 is as competent to revoke the powers she has 
 delegated as she was to delegate them. The 
 Union, as far as she is concerned, is her creation, 
 and what she is competent to make she is 
 competent to unmake. 
 
 In seceding or withdrawing from the Union a 
 State may act very unwisely, veiy much against 
 her own interests and the interests of the other 
 members of the confederacy; but, if sovereign, 
 she in doing so only exercises her unquestionable 
 right. The other members may regret her 
 action, both for her sake and their own, but they 
 cannot accuse her or her citizens of disloyalty in 
 seceding, nor of rebellion, if in obedience to her 
 authority they defend their independence by 
 force of arms against the Union. Neither she 
 nor they, on the supposition, ever owed alle- 
 giance to the Union. Allegiance is due from 
 the citizen to the sovereign state, but never from
 
 198 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 a sovereign state or from its citizens to any 
 other sovereign state. While the State is in the 
 Union the citizen owes obedience to the United 
 States, but only because his State has, in ratify- 
 ing the Federal constitution, enacted that it and 
 all laws and treaties made under it shall be law 
 within her territory. The repeal by the State 
 of the act of ratification releases the citizen from 
 the obligation even of obedience, and renders it 
 criminal for him to yield it without her permis- 
 sion. 
 
 It avails nothing, on the hypothesis of the 
 sovereignty of the States as distinguished from 
 that of the United States, to appeal to the lan- 
 guage or provisions of the Federal constitution. 
 That constitutes the government, not the state 
 or the sovereign. It is ordained by the sover- 
 eign, and if the States were severally indepen- 
 dent and sovereign states, that sovereign is the 
 States severally, not the States united. The con- 
 stitution is law for the citizens of a State only 
 so long as the State remains one of the United 
 States. No matter, then, how clear and express 
 the language, or stringent the provisions of the 
 constitution, they bind only the citizens of the 
 States that enact the constitution. The written 
 constitution is simply a compact, and obliges 
 only while the compact is continued by the
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 199 
 
 States, each for itself. The sovereignty of the 
 United States as a single or political people 
 must be established before any thing in the con- 
 stitution can be adduced as denying the right 
 of secession. 
 
 That this doctrine would deprive the General 
 government of all right to enforce the laws of 
 the Union on a State that secedes, or the citi- 
 zens thereof, is no doubt true ; that it would 
 weaken the central power and make the Union 
 a simple voluntary association of states, no bet- 
 ter than a rope of sand, is no less true ; but 
 what then ? It is simply saying that a confed- 
 eration is inferior to a nation, and that a federal 
 government lacks many of the advantages of a 
 national government. Confederacies are always 
 weak in the centre, always lack unity, and are 
 liable to be dissolved by the influence of local 
 passions, prejudices, and interests. But if the 
 United States are a confederation of states or 
 nations, not a single nation or sovereign state, 
 then there is no remedy. 
 
 If the Anglo-American colonies, when their 
 independence of Great Britain was achieved 
 and acknowledged, were severally sovereign 
 states, it has never since been in their power 
 to unite and form a single sovereign state, or to 
 form themselves into one indivisible sovereign
 
 200 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 nation. They could unite only by mutual 
 agreement, which gives only a confederation, in 
 which each retains its own sovereignty, as two 
 individuals, however closely united, retain each 
 his own individuality. No sovereignty is of 
 conventional origin, and none can emerge from 
 the convention that did not enter it. Either the 
 states are one sovereign people or they are not. 
 If they are not, it is undoubtedly a great dis- 
 advantage ; but a disadvantage that must be 
 accepted, and submitted to without a murmur. 
 
 Whether the United States are one sovereign 
 people or only a confederation is a question of 
 very grave importance. If they are only a confed- 
 eration of states and if they ever were severally 
 sovereign states, only a confederation they cer- 
 tainly are state secession is an inalienable 
 right, and the government has had no right to 
 make war on the secessionists as rebels, or to 
 treat them, when their military power is broken, 
 as traitors, or disloyal persons. The honor of 
 the government, and of the people who have 
 sustained it, is then deeply compromised. 
 
 What then is the fact? Are the United 
 States politically one people, nation, state, or 
 republic, or are they simply independent sov- 
 ereign states united in close and intimate alli- 
 ance, league, or federation, by a mutual pact or
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 201 
 
 agreement? Were the people of the United 
 States who ordained and established the writ- 
 ten constitution one people, or were they not ? 
 If they were not before ordaining and estab- 
 lishing the government, they are not now ; for 
 the adoption of the constitution did not and 
 could not make them one. Whether they are 
 one or many is then simply a question of fact, 
 to be decided by the facts in the case, not by 
 the theories of American statesmen, the opinion 
 of jurists, or even by constitutional law itself. 
 The old Articles of Confederation and the later 
 Constitution can serve here only as historical 
 documents. Constitutions and laws presuppose 
 the existence of a national sovereign from which 
 they emanate, and that ordains them, for they 
 are the formal expression of a sovereign will. The 
 nation must exist as an historical fact, prior to the 
 possession or exercise of sovereign power, prior 
 to the existence of written constitutions and 
 laws of any kind, and its existence must be 
 established before they can be recognized as 
 having any legal force or vitality. 
 
 The existence of any nation, as an indepen- 
 dent sovereign nation, is a purely historical fact, 
 for its right to exist as such is in the simple 
 fact that it does so exist. A nation de facto is 
 a nation de jure, and when we have ascertained
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the fact, we have ascertained the right. There 
 is no right in the case separate from the fact 
 only the fact must be really a fact. A people 
 hitherto a part of another people, or subject to 
 another sovereign, is not in fact a nation, be- 
 cause they have declared themselves indepen- 
 dent, and have organized a government, and are 
 engaged in what promises to be a successful 
 struggle for independence. The struggle must 
 be practically over ; the former sovereign must 
 have practically abandoned the effort to reduce 
 them to submission, or to bring them back 
 under his authority, and if he continues it, 
 does it as a matter of mere form ; the postulant 
 must have proved his ability to maintain civil 
 government, and to fulfil within and without 
 the obligations which attach to every civil- 
 ized nation, before it can be recognized as an 
 independent sovereign nation ; because before 
 it is not a fact that it is a sovereign nation* 
 The prior sovereign, when no longer will- 
 ing or able to vindicate his right, has lost it, 
 and no one is any longer bound to respect 
 it, for humanity demands not martyrs to lost 
 causes. 
 
 This doctrine may seem harsh, and untena- 
 ble even, to those sickly philanthropists who 
 are always weeping over extinct or oppressed
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 203- 
 
 nationalities ; but nationality in modern civiliza- 
 tion is a fact, not a right antecedent to the fact. 
 The repugnance felt to this assertion arises 
 chiefly from using the word nation sometimes 
 in a strictly political sense, and sometimes in its 
 original sense of tribe, and understanding by it 
 not simply the body pplitic, but a certain re- 
 lation of origin, family, kindred, blood, or race. 
 But God has made of one blood, or race, all the 
 nations of men; and, besides, no political rights 
 are founded by the law of nature on relations 
 of blood, kindred, or family. Under the patri- 
 archal or tribal system, and, to some extent,, 
 under feudalism, these relations form the- 
 basis of government, but they are economical 
 relations rather than civil or political, and, un- 
 der Christian and modern civilization, are re- 
 stricted to the household, are domestic rela- 
 tions, and enter not the state or body politic,, 
 except by way of reminiscence or abuse. They 
 are protected by the state, but do not found 
 or constitute it. The vicissitudes of time, the 
 revolutions of states and empires, migration,., 
 conquest, and intermixture of families and. 
 races, have rendered it impracticable, even if 
 it were desirable, to distribute people into na- 
 tions according to their relations of blood or 
 descent.
 
 "204 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 There is no civilized nation now existing that 
 has "been developed from a common ancestor 
 this side of Adam, and the most mixed are the 
 most civilized. The nearer a nation approaches 
 to a primitive people of pure unmixed blood, 
 
 the farther removed it is from civilization. All 
 
 
 
 civilized nations are political nations, and are 
 founded in the fact, not on rights antecedent 
 to the fact. A hundred or more lost nationali- 
 ties went to form the Roman empire, and who 
 <jan tell us how many layers of crushed nation 
 alities, superposed one upon another, serve for 
 the foundation of the present French, English, 
 Russian, Austrian, or Spanish nationalities? 
 "What other title to independence and sover- 
 eignty, than the fact, can you plead in behalf 
 of any European nation ? Every one has ab- 
 sorbed and extinguished no one can say how 
 many nationalities, that once had as good a 
 right to be as it has, or can have. "Whether 
 those nationalities have been justly extin- 
 guished or not, is no question for the statesman ; 
 it is the secret of Providence. Failure in this 
 world is not always a proof of wrong ; nor suc- 
 cess, of right. The good is sometimes over- 
 borne, and the bad sometimes triumphs ; but it 
 it is consoling, and even just, to believe that the 
 good oftener triumphs than the bad.
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 205- 
 
 In the political order, the fact, under God, 
 precedes the law. The nation holds not from 
 the law, but the law holds from, the nation. 
 Doubtless the courts of every civilized nation 
 recognize and apply both the law of nature and 
 the law of nations, but only on the ground that 
 they are included, or are presumed to be in- 
 cluded, in the national law, or jurisprudence. 
 Doubtless, too, the nation holds from God, un- 
 der the law of nature, but only by virtue of 
 the fact that it is a nation; and when it is a 
 nation dependent on no other, it holds from 
 God all the rights and powers of any indepen- 
 dent sovereign nation. There is no right behind 
 the fact needed to legalize the fact, or to put 
 the nation that is in fact a nation in posses- 
 sion of full national rights. In the case of a 
 new nation, or people, lately an integral part 
 of another people, or subject to another peo- 
 ple, the right of the prior sovereign must be 
 extinguished indeed, but the extinction of 
 that right is necessary to complete the fact, 
 which otherwise would be only an initial, 
 inchoate fact, not a fait accompli. But that 
 right ceases when its claimant, willingly or 
 unwillingly, formally or virtually, abandons it ; 
 and he does so when he practically abandons 
 the struggle, and shows no ability or intention
 
 * THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of soon renewing it with any reasonable pros- 
 pect of success. 
 
 The notion of right, independent of the fact 
 :as applied to sovereignty, is founded in error. 
 Empty titles to states and kingdoms are of no 
 validity. The sovereignty is, under God, in the 
 nation, and the title and the possession are in- 
 separable. The title of the Palaeologi to the 
 Roman Empire of the East, of the king of Sicily, 
 the king of Sardinia, or the king of Spain for 
 they are all claimants to the kingdom of 
 Jerusalem founded by Godfrey and his crusa- 
 ders, of the Stuarts to the thrones of England, 
 Ireland, and Scotland, or of the Bourbons to the 
 throne of France, are vacated and not worth the 
 parchment on which they are engrossed. The 
 contrary opinion, so generally entertained, be- 
 longs to barbarism, not to civilization. It is in 
 modern society a relic of feudalism, which places 
 the state in the government, and makes the gov 
 ernment a private estate a private, and not a 
 public right a right to govern the public, not a 
 right to govern held from or by the public. 
 
 The proprietor may be dispossessed in fact 
 of his estate by violence, by illegal or unjust 
 means, without losing his right, and another 
 may usurp it, occupy it, and possess it in fact 
 -without acquiring any right or legal title to it.
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 207 
 
 The man who holds the legal title has the right 
 to oust him and re-enter upon his estate when- 
 ever able to do so. Here, in the economical 
 order, the fact and the right are distinguish- 
 able, and the actual occupant may be required 
 to show his title-deeds. Holding sovereignty 
 to be a private estate, the feudal lawyers very 
 properly distinguish between governments de 
 facto and governments dejure, and argue very 
 logically that violent dispossession of a prince 
 does not invalidate his title. But sovereignty, 
 it has been shown, is not in the government, 
 but in the state, and the state is inseparable 
 from the public domain. The people organized 
 and held by the domain or national territory, 
 are, under God, the sovereign nation, and remain 
 so as long as the nation subsists without sub- 
 jection to another. The government, as dis- 
 tinguished from the state or nation, has only a 
 delegated authority, governs only by a commis- ' 
 sion from the nation. The revocation of the 
 commission vacates its title and extinguishes 
 its rights. The nation is always sovereign, and 
 every organic people fixed to the soil, and ac- 
 tually independent of every other, is a nation. 
 There can then be no independent nation de 
 facto that is not an independent nation de jwre, 
 nor dejure that is not de facto. The moment a
 
 208 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 people cease to be an independent nation in 
 fact, they cease to be sovereign, and the moment 
 they become in fact an independent nation, they 
 are so of right. Hence in the political order 
 the fact and the right are born and expire to- 
 gether ; and when it is proved that a people are 
 in fact an independent nation, there is no ques- 
 tion to be asked as to their right to be such nation. 
 In the case of the United States there is only 
 the question of fact. If they are in fact one 
 people they are so in right, whatever the 
 opinions and theories of statesmen, or even the 
 decisions of courts ; for the courts hold from 
 the national authority, and the theories and 
 opinions of statesmen may be erroneous. Cer- 
 tain it is that the States in the American Union 
 have never existed and acted as severally sover- 
 eign states. Prior to independence, they were 
 colonies under the sovereignty of Great Britain, 
 and since independence they have existed and 
 acted only as states united. The colonists, be- 
 fore separation and independence, were British 
 subjects, and whatever rights the colonies had 
 they held by charter or concession from the 
 British crown. The colonists never pretended 
 to be other than British subjects, and the alleged 
 ground of their complaint against the mother 
 country was not that she had violated their
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 209 
 
 natural rights as men, but their rights as British 
 subjects rights, as contended by the colonists, 
 secured by the English constitution to all Eng- 
 lishmen or British subjects. The denial to them 
 of these common rights of Englishmen they 
 called tyranny, and they defended themselves in 
 throwing off their allegiance to George HI., 
 on the ground that he had, in their regard, 
 become a tyrant, and the tyranny of the prince 
 absolves the subject from his allegiance. 
 
 In the Declaration of Independence they de- 
 clared themselves independent states indeed, 
 but not severally independent. The declara- 
 tion was not made by the states severally, but 
 by the states jointly, as the United States. 
 They unitedly declared their independence ; 
 they carried on the war for independence, won 
 it, and were acknowledged by foreign powers 
 and by the mother country as the United 
 States, not as severally independent sovereign 
 states. Severally they have never exercised the 
 fall powers of sovereign states ; they have had 
 no flag symbol of sovereignty recognized by 
 foreign powers, have made no foreign treaties, 
 held no foreign relations, had no commerce 
 foreign or interstate, coined no money, entered 
 into no alliances or confederacies with foreign 
 
 states or with one another, and in several re- 
 is
 
 210 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 spects have been more restricted in their powers 
 in the Union than they were as British colonies. 
 
 Colonies are initial or inchoate states, and 
 become complete states by declaring and win- 
 ning their independence; and if the English 
 colonies, now the United States, had separately 
 declared and won their independence, they 
 would unquestionably have become separately 
 independent states, each invested by the law 
 of nature with all the rights and powers of a 
 sovereign nation. But they did not do this. 
 They declared and won their independence 
 jointly, and have since existed and exercised 
 sovereignty only as states united, or the United 
 States, that is, states sovereign in their union, 
 but not in their separation. This is of itself 
 decisive of the whole question. 
 
 But the colonists have not only never exer- 
 cised the fall powers of sovereignty save as 
 citizens of states united, therefore as one peo- 
 ple, but they were, so far as a people at all, one 
 people even before independence. The colo- 
 nies were all erected and endowed with their 
 rights and powers by one and the same national 
 authority, and the colonists were subjects of 
 one and the same national sovereign. Mr. 
 Quincy Adams, who almost alone among our 
 prominent statesmen maintains the unity of
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 211 
 
 the colonial people, adds indeed to their sub- 
 jection to the same sovereign authority, com- 
 munity of origin, of language, manners, customs, 
 and law. All these, except the last, or com- 
 mon law, may exist without national unity in 
 the modern political sense of the term nation. 
 The English common law was recognized by 
 the colonial courts, and in force in all the colo- 
 nies, not by virtue of colonial legislation, but 
 by virtue of English authority, as expressed in 
 English jurisprudence. The colonists were 
 under the Common Law, because they were 
 Englishmen, and subjects of the English sover- 
 eign. This proves that they were really one 
 people with the English people, though exist- 
 ing in a state of colonial dependence, and not a 
 separate people having nothing politically in 
 common with them but in the accident of hav- 
 ing the same royal person for their king. The 
 union with the mother country was national, 
 not personal, as was the union existing be- 
 tween England and Hanover, or that still ex- 
 isting between the empire of Austria, formerly 
 Germany, and the kingdom of Hungary; and 
 hence the British parliament claimed, and not 
 illegally, the right to tax the colonies for the 
 support of the empire, and to bind them in all 
 cases whatsoever a claim the colonies them-
 
 212 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 selves admitted in principle by recognizing and 
 observing the British navigation laws. The 
 people of the several colonies being really one 
 people before independence, in the sovereignty 
 of the mother country, must be so still, unless 
 they have since, by some valid act, divided 
 themselves or been divided into separate and 
 independent states. 
 
 The king, say the jurists, never dies, an.d the 
 heralds cry, " The king is dead ! Live the 
 king !" Sovereignty never lapses, is never in 
 abeyance, and the moment it ceases in one peo- 
 ple it is renewed in another. The British sov- 
 ereignty ceased in the colonies with indepen- 
 dence, and the American took its place. Did 
 the sovereignty, which before independence 
 was in Great Britain, pass from -Great Britain 
 to the States severally, or to the States united ? 
 It might have passed to them severally, but did 
 it ? There is no question of law or antecedent 
 lighten the case, but a simple question of fact, 
 and the fact is determined by determining who 
 it was that assumed it, exercised it, and has 
 continued to exercise it. As to this there is no 
 doubt. The sovereignty as a fact has been as- 
 sumed and exercised by the United States, the 
 States united, and never by the States sepa- 
 rately, or severally. Then as a fact the sover-
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 213 
 
 eignty that before independence was in Great 
 Britain, passed on independence to the States 
 united, and reappears in' all its vigor in the 
 United States, the only successor to Great 
 Britain known to or recognized by the civil- 
 ized world. 
 
 As the colonial people were, though distrib- 
 uted in distinct colonies, still one people, the 
 people of the United States, though distributed 
 into distinct and mutually independent States, 
 are yet one sovereign people, therefore a sover- 
 eign state or nation, and not a simple league 
 or confederacy of nations. 
 
 There is no doubt that all the powers exer- 
 cised by the General Government, though em- 
 bracing all foreign relations and all general 
 interests and relations of all the States, might 
 have been exercised by it under the authority 
 of a mutual compact of the several States, and 
 practically the difference between the compact 
 theory and the national view would be very 
 little, unless in cases like that of secession. On 
 the supposition that the American people are 
 one political people, the government would 
 have the right to treat secession, in the sense in 
 which the seceders understand it, as rebellion, 
 and to suppress it by employing all the physi- 
 cal force at its command ; but on the compact
 
 214 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 theory it would have no such right. But the 
 question now under discussion turns simply 
 on what has been and is the historical fact. 
 Before the States could enter into the compact 
 and delegate sovereign powers to the Union, 
 they must have severally possessed them. It 
 is historically certain that they did not possess 
 them before independence ; they did not obtain 
 them by independence, for they did not sever* 
 ally succeed to the British sovereignty, to which 
 they succeeded only as States united. When, 
 then, and by what means did they or could 
 they become severally sovereign States ? The 
 United States having succeeded to the British 
 sovereignty in the Anglo-American colonies, 
 they came into possession of full national sover- 
 eignty, and have alone held and exercised it 
 ever since independence became a fact. The- 
 States severally succeeding only to the colonies,, 
 never held, and have never been competent to 
 delegate sovereign powers. 
 
 The old Articles of Confederation, it is con- 
 ceded, were framed on the assumption that the 
 States are severally sovereign ; but the several 
 States, at the same time, were regarded as form- 
 ing one nation, and, though divided into sep- 
 arate States, the people were regarded as one- 
 people. The Legislature of New York, aa
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 215 
 
 early as 1782, calls for an essential change in 
 the Articles of Confederation, as proved to be 
 inadequate to secure the peace, security, and 
 prosperity of " the nation." All the proceedings 
 that preceded and led to the call of the conven- 
 tion of 1787 were based on the assumption that 
 the people of the United States were one peo- 
 ple. The States were called united, not con- 
 federated States, even in the very Articles of 
 Confederation themselves, and officially the 
 United States were called " the Union." That 
 the united colonies by independence became 
 united States, and formed really one and only 
 one people, was in the thought, the belief, the 
 instinct of the great mass of the people. They 
 acted as they existed through State as they had 
 previously acted through colonial organization, 
 for in throwing off the British authority there 
 was no other organization through which they 
 could act. The States, or people of the States, 
 severally sent their delegates to the Congress 
 of the United States, and these delegates 
 adopted the rule of voting in Congress by 
 States, a rule that might be revived without 
 detriment to national unity. Nothing was 
 more natural, then, than that Congress, com- 
 posed of delegates elected or appointed by 
 States, should draw up articles of confederation
 
 216 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 rather than articles of union, in order, if for no 
 other reason, to conciliate the smaller States, 
 and to prevent their jealousy of the larger 
 States such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 Moreover, the Articles of Confederation were 
 drawn up and adopted during the transition 
 from colonial dependence to national independ- 
 ence. Independence was declared in 1776, "but 
 it was not a fact till 1782, when the pre- 
 liminary treaty acknowledging it was signed 
 at Paris. Till then the United States were not 
 an independent nation ; they were only a people 
 struggling to become an independent nation. 
 Prior to that preliminary treaty, neither the 
 Union nor the States severally were sovereign. 
 The articles were agreed on in Congress in 
 1777, but they were not ratified by all the 
 States till May, 1781, and in 1782 the move- 
 ment was commenced in the Legislature of New 
 York for their amendment. Till the organiza- 
 tion under the constitution ordained by the 
 people of the United States in 1787, and which 
 went into operation in 1789, the United States 
 had in reality only a provisional government, 
 and it was not till then that the national gov- 
 ernment was definitively organized, and the 
 line of demarcation between the General Gov-
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 217 
 
 eminent and the particular State governments 
 was fixed. 
 
 The Confederation was an acknowledged fail- 
 ure, and was rejected by the American people, 
 precisely "because it was not in harmony with 
 the unwritten or Providential constitution of 
 the nation ; and it was not in harmony with 
 that constitution precisely because it recognized 
 the States as severally sovereign, and substituted 
 confederation for union. The failure of con- 
 federation and the success of union are ample 
 proofs of the unity of the American nation. 
 The instinct of unity rejected State sovereignty 
 in 1787 as it did in 1861. The first and the 
 last attempt to establish State sovereignty have 
 failed, and the failure vindicates the fact that 
 the sovereignty is in the States united, not in 
 the States severally.
 
 218 THS AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: 
 
 THE constitution of the United States is two- 
 fold, written and unwritten, the constitution of 
 the people and the constitution of the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The written constitution is simply a law or- 
 dained by the nation or people instituting and 
 organizing the government ; the unwritten con- 
 stitution is the real or actual constitution of the- 
 people as a state or sovereign community, and 
 constituting them such or such a state. It is 
 Providential, not made by the nation, but born 
 with it. The written constitution is made and 
 ordained by the sovereign power, and presup- 
 poses that power as already existing and con- 
 stituted. 
 
 The unwritten or Providential constitution 
 of the United States is peculiar, and difficult to- 
 understand, because incapable of being fully 
 explained by analogies borrowed from any 
 other state historically known, or described
 
 CONSTITUTION OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 by political philosophers. It belongs to the* 
 Grseco-Roman family, and is republican as dis- 
 tinguished from despotic constitutions, but it 
 comes under the head of neither monarchical 
 nor aristocratic, neither democratic nor mixed 
 constitutions, and creates a state which is 
 neither a centralized state nor a confederacy. 
 The difficulty of understanding it is augmented 
 by the peculiar use under it of the word state T 
 which does not in the American system mean, 
 a sovereign community or political society com- 
 plete in itself, like France, Spain, or Prussia,, 
 nor yet a political society subordinate to another, 
 political society and dependent on it. The- 
 American States are all sovereign States united, 
 but, disunited, are no States at all. The rights 
 and powers of the States are not derived from, 
 the United States, nor the rights and powers 
 of the United States derived from the States. 
 
 The simple fact is, that the political or sover- 
 eign people of the United States exists as united 
 States, and only as united States. The Union 
 and the States are coeval, born together, and 
 can exist only together. Separation is dissolu- 
 tion the death of both. The United States 
 are a state, a single sovereign state; but this- 
 single sovereign state consists in the union and 
 solidarity of States instead' of individuals. The
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Union is in each of the States, and each of the 
 States is in the Union. 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish in the outset 
 between the United States and the government 
 of the United States, or the so-called Federal 
 government, which the convention refused, con- 
 trary to its first intention to call the national 
 government. That government is not a supreme 
 national government, representing all the powers 
 of the United States, but a limited government, 
 restricted by its constitution to certain specific 
 relations and interests. The United States are 
 anterior to that government, and the first ques- 
 tion to be settled relates to their internal and 
 inherent Providential constitution as one politi- 
 cal people or sovereign state. The written 
 constitution, in its preamble, professes to be 
 ordained by "We, the people of the United 
 States." Who are this people ? How are they 
 constituted, or what the mode and conditions 
 of their political existence ? Are they the peo- 
 ple of the States severally ? No ; for they call 
 themselves the people of the United States. 
 Are they a national people, really existing out- 
 side and independently of their organization 
 into distinct and mutually independent States ? 
 No ; for they define themselves to be the peo- 
 ple of the United States. If they had considered
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 'STATES. 221 
 
 themselves existing as States only, they would 
 have said "We, the States," and if independently 
 of State organization, they would have said 
 " We, the people," do ordain, &c. 
 
 The key to the mystery is precisely in this 
 appellation United States, which is not the 
 name of the country, for its distinctive name 
 is America, but a name expressive of its 
 political organization. In it there are no sov- 
 ereign people without States, and no States 
 without union, or that are not united States. 
 The term united is not part of a proper name, 
 but is simply an adjective qualifying States, 
 and has its full and proper sense. Hence while 
 the sovereignty is and must be in the States, it is 
 in the States united, not in the States severally, 
 precisely as we have found the sovereignty of 
 the people is in the people collectively or as 
 society, not in the people individually. The life 
 is in the body, not in the members, though the 
 body could not exist if it had no members ; so 
 the sovereignty is in the Union, not in the States 
 severally; but there could be no sovereign 
 union without the States, for there is no union 
 where there is nothing united. 
 
 This is not a theory of the constitution, but 
 the constitutional fact itself. It is the simple 
 historical f&ct that precedes the law and con-
 
 '222 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 stitutes the law-making power. The people of 
 ihe United States are one people, as has already 
 been proved : they were one people, as far as a 
 people at all, prior to independence, because 
 under the same Common Law and subject to the 
 same sovereign, and have been so since, for as 
 united States they gained their independence 
 and took their place among sovereign nations, 
 and as united States they have possessed and 
 still possess the government. As their exist- 
 ence before independence in distinct colonies 
 did not prevent their unity, so their existence 
 since in distinct States does not hinder them 
 from being one people. The States severally 
 simply continue the colonial organizations, and 
 united they hold the sovereignty that was 
 originally in the mother country. But if one 
 people, they are one people existing in distinct 
 State organizations, as before independence they 
 were one people existing in distinct colonial 
 -organizations. This is the original, the un- 
 written, and Providential constitution of the 
 people of the United States. 
 
 This constitution is not conventional, for it 
 existed before the people met or could meet in 
 convention. They have not, as an independent 
 sovereign people, either established their union, 
 ^or distributed themselves into distinct and mu-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 223 
 
 tually independent States. The union and the 
 distribution, the unity and the distinction, are 
 both original in their constitution, and they 
 were born United States, as much and as truly 
 so as the son of a citizen is born a citizen, or as 
 every one born at all is born a member of so- 
 ciety, the family, the tribe, or the nation. The 
 Union and the States were born together, are 
 inseparable in their constitution, have lived and 
 grown up together ; no serious attempt till the 
 late secession movement has been made to 
 separate them; and the secession movement, 
 to all persons who knew not the real constitu- 
 tion of the United States, appeared sure to suc- 
 ceed, and in fact would have succeeded if, as 
 the secessionists pretended, the Union had been 
 only a confederacy, . and the States had been 
 held together only by a conventional compact, 
 and not by a real and living bond of unity. 
 The popular instinct of national unity, which 
 seemed so weak, proved to be strong enough to 
 defeat the secession forces^ to trample out the 
 confederacy, and maintain the unity of the na 
 tion and the integrity of its domain. 
 
 The people can act only as they exist, as they 
 are, not as they are not. Existing originally 
 only as distributed in distinct and mutually in- 
 dependent colonies, they could at first act only
 
 224 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 through their colonial organizations, and after- 
 ward only through their State organizations. 
 The colonial people met in convention, in the 
 person of representatives chosen by colonies, 
 and after independence in the person of repre- 
 sentatives chosen by States. Not existing outside 
 of the colonial or State organizations, they could 
 not act outside or independently of them. They 
 chose their representatives or delegates by colo- 
 nies or States, and called at first their conven- 
 tion a Congress ; but by an instinct surer than 
 their deliberate wisdom, they called it not the 
 Congress of the confederate, but of the United 
 States, asserting constitutional unity as well as 
 constitutional multiplicity. It ia true, in their 
 first attempt to organize a general government, 
 they called the constitution they devised Arti- 
 cles of Confederation, but only because they had 
 not attained to full consciousness of themselves; 
 and that they really meant union, not confede- 
 ration, is evident from their adopting, as the 
 official style of the nation or new power, united, 
 not confederate States. 
 
 That the sovereignty vested in the States 
 united, and was represented in some sort by the 
 Congress, is evident from the fact that the sever- 
 al States, when they wished to adopt State con- 
 stitutions in place of colonial charters, felt not
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 225 
 
 at liberty to do so without asking and obtain- 
 ing the permission of Congress, as the elder 
 Adams informs us in his Diary, kept at the 
 time; that is, they asked and obtained the 
 equivalent of what has since, in the case of or- 
 ganizing new States, been called an " enabling 
 act." This proves that the States did not regard 
 themselves as sovereign States out of the Union, 
 but as completely sovereign only in it. And 
 this again proves that the Articles of Confedera- 
 tion did not correspond to the real, living con- 
 stitution of the people. Even then it was felt 
 that the organization and constitution of a State 
 in the Union could be regularly effected only 
 by the permission of Congress ; and no Territory 
 can, it is well known, regularly organize itself 
 as a State, and adopt a State constitution, with- 
 out an enabling act by Congress, or its equiva- 
 lent. 
 
 New States, indeed, have been organized and 
 been admitted into the Union without an ena- 
 bling act of Congress ; but the case of Kansas, if 
 nothing else, proves that the proceeding is irreg- 
 ular, illicit, invalid, and dangerous. Congress, 
 of course, can condone the wrong and validate 
 the act, but it were better that the act should 
 be validly done, and that there should be no 
 wrong to condone. Territories have organized 
 
 16
 
 226 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 as States, adopted State constitutions, and insti- 
 tuted State governments under what has been 
 called " squatter sovereignty ;" but such sover- 
 eignty has no existence, because sovereignty is 
 attached to the domain ; and the domain is in 
 the United States. It is the offspring of that 
 false view of popular sovereignty which places 
 it in the people personally or generically, irre- 
 spective of the domain, which makes sovereignty 
 a purely personal right, not a right fixed to 
 the soil, and is simply a return to the bar- 
 baric constitution of power. In all civilized 
 nations, sovereignty is inseparable from the 
 state, and the state is inseparable from the 
 domain. The will of the people, unless they 
 are a state, is no law, has no force, binds no- 
 body, and justifies no act. 
 
 The regular process of forming and admitting 
 new States explains admirably the mutual rela- 
 tion of the Union and the several States. The 
 people of a Territory belonging to the United 
 States or included in the public domain not 
 yet erected into a State and admitted into the 
 Union, are subjects of the United States, with- 
 out any political rights whatever, and, though 
 a part of the population, are no part of the sov- 
 ereign people of the United States. They be- 
 come a part of that people, with political rights
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 227 
 
 and franchises, only when they are erected into 
 a State," and admitted into the Union as one of 
 the United States. They may meet in conven- 
 tion, draw up and adopt a constitution declaring 
 or assuming them to be a State, elect State 
 officers; senators, and representatives in the 
 State legislature, and representatives and sena- 
 tors in Congress, but they are not yet a State, 
 and are, as before, under the Territorial govern- 
 ment established by the General Government. 
 It does not exist as a State till recognized by 
 Congress and admitted into the Union. The 
 existence of the State, and the rights and powers 
 of the people within the, State, depend on their 
 being a State in the Union, or a State united. 
 Hence a State erected on the national domain, 
 but itself outside of the Union, is not an inde- 
 pendent foreign State, but simply no State at 
 all, in any sense of the term. As there is no 
 union outside of the States, so is there no State 
 outside of the Union ; and to be a citizen either 
 of a State or of the United States, it is necessary 
 to be a citizen of a State, and of a State in the 
 Union. The inhabitants of Territories not yet 
 erected into States are subjects, not citizens 
 that is, not citizens with political rights. The sov- 
 ereign people are not the people outside of State 
 organization, nor the people of the States sever-
 
 228 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ally, but the distinct people of the several States 
 united, and therefore most appropriately called 
 the people of the United States. 
 
 This is the peculiarity of the American con- 
 stitution, and is substantially the very peculi- 
 arity noted and dwelt upon by Mr. Madison in 
 his masterly letter to Edward Everett, published 
 in the "North American Review," October, 1830. 
 
 " In order to understand the true character 
 of the constitution of the United States," says 
 Mr. Madison, " the error, not uncommon, must 
 be avoided of viewing it through the medium 
 either of a consolidated government or of a 
 confederated government, whilst it is neither 
 the one nor the other, but a mixture of both. 
 And having, in no model, the similitudes and 
 analogies applicable to other systems of govern- 
 ment, it must, more than any other, be its own 
 interpreter, according to its text and the facts 
 in the case. 
 
 " From these it will be seen that the charac- 
 teristic peculiarities of the constitution are : 1. 
 The mode of its formation. 2. The division of 
 the supreme powers of government between the 
 States in their united capacity and the States in 
 their individual capacities. 
 
 "1. It was formed not by the governments 
 of the component States, as the Federal Govern-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 229 
 
 ment, for which it was substituted, was formed ; 
 nor was it formed by a majority of the people 
 of the United States as a single community, in 
 the manner of a consolidated government. It 
 was formed by the States ; that is, by the peo- 
 ple in each of the States, acting in their highest 
 sovereign capacity, and formed consequently by 
 the same authority which formed the State, con- 
 stitution. 
 
 ft Being thus derived from the same source as 
 the constitutions of the States, it has within 
 each State the same authority as the constitu- 
 tion of the State, and is as much a constitution 
 in the strict sense of the term, within its pre- 
 scribed sphere, as the constitutions of the States 
 are within their respective spheres; but with 
 this obvious and essential difference, that, being 
 a compact among the States in their highest 
 capacity, and constituting the people thereof 
 one people for certain purposes, it cannot be 
 altered or annulled at the will of the States in- 
 dividually, as the constitution of a State may 
 be at its individual will. 
 
 " 2. And that it divides the supreme powers 
 of government between the government of the 
 United States and the governments of the in- 
 dividual States, is stamped on the face of the 
 instrument ; the powers of war and of taxation,
 
 230 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of commerce and treaties, and other enumerated 
 powers vested in the government of the United 
 States, are of as high and sovereign a character 
 as any of the powers reserved to the State 
 governments." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Webster, Chancellor Kent, 
 Judge Story, and nearly all the old Repub- 
 licans, and even the old Federalists, on the 
 question as to what is the actual constitution 
 of the United States, took substantially the 
 same view; but they all, as well as Mr. Madi- 
 son himself, speak of the written constitution, 
 which on their theory has* and can have only a 
 conventional value. Mr. Madison evidently 
 recognizes no constitution of the people prior 
 to the written constitution, from which the 
 written constitution, or the constitution of the 
 government, deiives all its force and vitality.. 
 The organization of the American people, which 
 he knew well, no man better, and which he so 
 justly characterizes, he supposes to have been 
 deliberately formed by the people themselves,, 
 through the convention not given them by 
 Providence as their original and inherent con- 
 stitution. But this was merely the effect of the 
 general doctrine which he had adopted, in com- 
 mon with nearly all his contemporaries, of the 
 origin of the state in compact, and may be
 
 CONSTITUTION OP THE UNITED STATES. 231 
 
 eliminated from his view of what the constitu- 
 tion actually is, without affecting that view 
 itsel 
 
 Mr. Madison lays great stress on the fact 
 that though the constitution of the Union was 
 formed by the States, it was formed, not by the 
 governments, but by the people of the several 
 States ; but this makes no essential difference, 
 if the people are the people of the States, and 
 sovereign in their severalty, and not in their 
 union. Had it been formed by the State gov- 
 ernments with the acquiescence of the people, 
 it would have rested on as high authority as if 
 formed by the people of the State in conven- 
 tion assembled. The only difference is, that if 
 the State ratified it by the legislature, she could 
 abrogate it by the legislature ; if in convention, 
 she could abrogate it only in convention. Mr. 
 Madison, following Mr. Jefferson, supposes the 
 constitution makes the people of the several 
 States one people for certain specific purposes, 
 and leaves it to be supposed that in regard to 
 all other matters, or in all other relations, they 
 are sovereign ; and hence he makes the govern- 
 ment a mixture of a consolidated government 
 and a confederated government, but neither the 
 one nor the other exclusively. Say the people 
 of the United States were one people in all
 
 232 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 respects, and under a government which is 
 neither a consolidated nor a confederated gov- 
 ernment, nor yet a mixture of the two, but a 
 government in which the powers of government 
 are divided between a general government and 
 particular governments, each emanating from 
 the same source, and you will have the simple 
 fact, and precisely what Mr. Madison means, 
 when is eliminated what is derived from his 
 theory of the origin of government in compact. 
 It is this theory of the conventional origin of 
 the constitution, and which excludes the Provi- 
 dential or real constitution of the people, that 
 has misled him and so many other eminent 
 statesmen and constitutional lawyers. 
 
 The convention did not create the Union or 
 unite the States, for it was assembled by the 
 authority of the United States who were pres- 
 ent in it. The United States or Union existed 
 before the convention, as the convention itself 
 affirms in declaring one of its purposes to be 
 " to provide for a more perfect union" If there 
 had been no union, it could not and would not 
 have spoken of providing for a more perfect 
 union, but would have stated its purpose to be 
 to create or form a union. The convention did 
 not form the Union, nor in fact provide for a 
 more perfect union ; it simply provided for the
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 233 
 
 more perfect representation or expression in the 
 General government of the Union already exist- 
 ing. The convention, in common with the 
 statesmen at the time, recognized no unwritten 
 or Providential constitution of a people, and 
 regarded the constitution of government as 
 the constitution of the state, and consequent- 
 ly sometimes put the state for the government. 
 In interpreting its language, it is necessary to 
 distinguish between its act and its theory. Its 
 act is law, its theory is not. The convention 
 met, among other things, to organize a govern- 
 ment which should- more perfectly represent 
 the union of the States than did the govern- 
 ment created by the Articles of Confederation. 
 The convention, certainly, professes to grant 
 or concede powers to the United States, and to 
 prohibit powers to the States; but it simply 
 puts the state for the government. The pow- 
 ers of the United States are, indeed, grants or 
 trusts, but from God through the law of nature, 
 and are grants, trusts, or powers always con- 
 ceded to every nation or sovereign people. But 
 none of them are grants from the convention. 
 The powers the convention grants or concedes 
 to the United States are powers granted or con- 
 ceded by the United States to the General gov- 
 ernment it assembled to organize and establish,
 
 234 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 which, as it extends over the whole population 
 and territory of the Union, and, as the interests 
 it is charged with relate to all the States in 
 common, or to the people as a whole, is with 
 no great impropriety called the government of 
 the United States, in contradistinction from the 
 State governments, which have each only a 
 local jurisdiction. But the more exact term 
 is, for the one, the general government,, 
 and for the others, particular governments, as 
 having charge only of the particular interests 
 of the. State; and the two together consti- 
 tute the government of . the United States,, 
 or the complete national government; for 
 neither the General government nor the State 
 government is complete in itself. The conven- 
 tion developed a general government, and pre- 
 scribed its powers, and fixed their limits and 
 extent, as well as the bounds of the powers 
 of the State or particular governments ; but 
 they are the United States assembled in con- 
 vention that do all this, and, therefore, strictly 
 speaking, no powers are conceded to the United 
 States that they did not previously possess. 
 The convention itself, in the constitution it or- 
 dained, defines very clearly from whom the 
 General government holds its powers. It holds 
 them, as we have seen, from " We, the people
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 235* 
 
 of the United States ;" not we, the people of the 
 States severally, but of the States united. If 
 it had meant the States severally, it would 
 have said, We, the States; if it had recog- 
 nized and meant the population of the country 
 irrespective of its organization into particu- 
 lar States, it would have said simply, We, the 
 people. By saying "We, the people of the 
 United States," it placed the sovereign power 
 where it is, in the people of the States united. 
 The convention ordains that the powers not 
 conceded to the General government or prohib~ 
 ited to the particular governments, " are reserved 
 to the States respectively, or to the people." 
 But the powers reserved to the States severally 
 are reserved by order of the United States, and 
 the powers not so reserved are reserved to the 
 people. What people ? The first thought is that 
 they are the people of the States severally ; for 
 the constitution understands by people the 
 state as distinguished from the state govern- 
 ment ; but if this had been its meaning in this 
 place, it would have said, " are reserved to the 
 States respectively, or to the people " thereof. As- 
 it does not say so, and does not define ' the peo- 
 ple it means, it is necessary to understand by 
 them the people called in the preamble " the 
 people of the United States." This is con-
 
 236 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 firmed by the authority reserved to amend the 
 constitution, which certainly is not reserved 
 to the States severally, but necessarily to the 
 power that ordains the constitution " We, the 
 people of the United States." No power ex- 
 cept that which ordains is or can be compe- 
 tent to amend a constitution of government. 
 The particular mode prescribed by the con- 
 vention in which the constitution of the gov- 
 ernment may be amended has no bearing on 
 the present argument, because it is prescribed 
 by the States united, not severally, and the 
 power to amend is evidently reserved, not 
 indeed to the General government, but to the 
 United States ; for the ratification by any State 
 or Territory not in the Union counts for nothing. 
 The States united, can, in the way prescribed, 
 give more or less power to the General govern- 
 ment, and reserve more or less power to the 
 States individually. The so-called reserved 
 powers are really reserved to the people of the 
 United States, who can make such disposition 
 of them as seems to them good. 
 
 The conclusion, then, that the General gov- 
 ernment 'holds from the States united, not from 
 the States severally, is not invalidated by the 
 fact that its constitution was completed only 
 by the ratification of the States in their individ
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 237 
 
 ual capacity. The ratification was made neces- 
 sary by the will of the people in convention 
 assembled ; but the convention was competent 
 to complete it and put it in force without that 
 ratification, had it so willed. The general prac- 
 tice under the American system is for the 
 convention to submit the constitution it has 
 agreed on to the people, to be accepted or re- 
 jected by a plebistitum; but such submission^ 
 though it may be wise and prudent, is not 
 necessary. The convention is held to be the 
 convention of the people, and to be clothed 
 with the full authority of the sovereign people, 
 and it is in this that it differs from the congress 
 or the legislature. It is not a congress of dele- 
 gates or ministers who are obliged to act under 
 instructions, to report their acts to their re- 
 spective sovereigns for approval or rejection ; it 
 is itself sovereign, and may do whatever the 
 people themselves can do. There is no neces- 
 sity for it to appeal to a plebiscitum to com- 
 plete its acts. That the convention, on the 
 score of prudence, is wise in doing so, nobody 
 questions; but the convention is always com- 
 petent, if it chooses, to ordain the constitution 
 without appeal. The power competent to or- 
 dain the constitution is always competent to 
 change, modify, or amend it. That amend-
 
 238 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ments to the constitution of the governm- ut, 
 can be adopted only by being proposed bj a 
 convention of all the States in the Union, or ky 
 Toeing proposed by a two-thirds vote of both 
 houses of Congress, and ratified by three- 
 fourths of the States, is simply a conventional 
 ordinance, which the convention can change at 
 its pleasure. It proves nothing as it stands but 
 the will of the convention. 
 
 The term ratification itself, because the term 
 commonly used in reference to treaties between 
 sovereign powers, has been seized on, since 
 sometimes used by the convention, to prove 
 that the constitution emanates from the States 
 severally, and is a treaty or compact between 
 sovereign states, not an organic or fundamental 
 law ordained by a single sovereign will; but 
 this argument is inadmissible, because, as we 
 have just seen, the convention is competent to 
 ordain the constitution without submitting it 
 for ratification, and because the convention uses 
 sometimes the word adopt instead of the word 
 ratify. That the framers of the constitution 
 held it to be a treaty, compact, or agreement 
 among sovereigns, there is no doubt, for they 
 so held in regard to all constitution of govern- 
 ment; and there is just as little doubt that they 
 intended to constitute, and firmly believed that
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 239 
 
 they were constituting a real government. Mr. 
 Madison's authority on this point is conclusive. 
 They unquestionably regarded the States, prior 
 to the ratification of the constitution they pro- 
 posed, as severally sovereign, as they were de- 
 clared to be by the old Articles of Confederation, 
 but they also believed that all individuals are 
 sovereign prior to the formation of civil society. 
 Yet very few, if any, of them believed that they 
 remained sovereign after the adoption of the con- 
 stitution ; and we may attribute to their belief 
 in the conventional origin of all government, 
 the almost universal belief of the time among 
 political philosophers, the little account which 
 they made of the historical facts that prove that 
 the people of the United States were always one 
 people, and that the States never existed 'as 
 severally sovereign states. 
 
 The political philosophers of the present day 
 do not generally accept the theory held by 
 our fathers, and it has been shown in these 
 pages to be unsound and incompatible with 
 the essential nature of government. The states- 
 men of the eighteenth century believed that the 
 state is derived from the people individually, 
 and held that sovereignty is created by the 
 people in convention. The rights and powers 
 of the state, they held, were made up of the
 
 240 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 'rights held by individuals under the law of na- 
 ture, and which the individuals surrendered to 
 civil society on its formation. So they sup- 
 posed that independent sovereign states might 
 meet in convention, mutually agree to surrender 
 a portion of their rights, organize their sur- 
 rendered rights into a real government, and 
 leave the convention shorn, at least, of a portion 
 of their sovereignty. This doctrine crops out 
 everywhere in the writings of the elder Adams, 
 and is set forth with rare ability by Mr. Web- 
 ster, in his great speech in the Senate against 
 the State sovereignty doctrine of General Hayne 
 and Mr. Calhoun, which won for him the 
 honorable title of Expounder of the Constitu- 
 tion and expound it he, no doubt, did in the 
 sense of its framers. He boldly concedes that 
 prior to the adoption of the constitution, the 
 people of the United States were severally sov- 
 ereign states, but by the constitution they were 
 made one sovereign political community or 
 people, and that the States, though retaining 
 certain rights, have merged their several sover- 
 eignty in the Union. 
 
 The subtle mind of Mr. Calhoun, who did 
 not hold that a state can originate in com- 
 pact, proved to Mr. Webster that his theory 
 could not stand ; that, if the States went into
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 241 
 
 the convention sovereign States, they came out 
 of it sovereign States ; and that the constitution 
 they formed could from the nature of the case 
 be only a treaty, compact, or agreement be- 
 tween sovereigns. It could create an agency, 
 but not a government. The sovereign States 
 could only delegate the exercise of their sov- 
 ereign powers, not the sovereign powers 
 themselves. The States could agree to exercise 
 certain specific powers of sovereignty only in 
 common, but the force and vitality of the 
 agreement depended on the States, parties to 
 the agreement, retaining respectively their 
 sovereignty. Hence, he maintained that sover- 
 eignty, after as before the convention, vested 
 in the States severally. Hence State sover- 
 eignty, and hence his doctrine that in all cases 
 that cannot come properly before the Supreme 
 Court of the United States for* decision, each 
 State is free to decide for itself, on which he 
 based the right of nullification, or the State 
 veto of acts of Congress whose constitution- 
 ality the State denies. Mr. Calhoun was him- 
 self no secessionist, but he laid down the prem- 
 ises from which secession is the logical deduc- 
 tion ; and large numbers of young men, among 
 the most open, the most generous, and the most 
 patriotic in the country, adopted his premises, 
 11
 
 242 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 without being aware of this fact any more than 
 he himself was, and who have been behind 
 none in their loyalty to the Union, and in 
 their sacrifices to sustain it, in the late rebel- 
 lion. 
 
 The formidable rebellion which is now hap- 
 pily suppressed, and which attempted to justify 
 itself by the doctrine of State sovereignty, has 
 thrown, in many minds, new light on the sub- 
 ject, and led them to re-examine the historical 
 facts in the case from a different point of view, 
 to see if Mr. Calhoun's theory is not as unfound- 
 ed as he had proved Mr. Webster's theory to be. 
 The facts in the case really sustain neither, and 
 both failed to see it : Mr. Calhoun because he 
 had purposes to accomplish which demanded 
 State sovereignty, and Mr. Webster because he 
 examined them in the distorting medium of the 
 theory or understanding of the statesmen of the 
 eighteenth century. The civil war has vindi- 
 cated the Union, and defeated the armed forces 
 of the State sovereignty men ; but it has not re- 
 fated their doctrine, and as far as it has had 
 any effect, it has strengthened the tendency to 
 consolidation or centralism. 
 
 But the philosophy, the theory of govern- 
 ment, the understanding of the framers of the 
 constitution, must be considered, if the expres-
 
 CONSTITUTION OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 sion will be allowed, as obiter dicta, and be 
 judged on their merits. "What binds is the 
 thing done, not the theory on which it was 
 done, or on which the actors explained their 
 work either to themselves or to others. Their 
 political philosophy, or their political theory, 
 may sometimes affect the phraseology they 
 adopt, but forms no rule for interpreting their 
 work. Their work was inspired by and ac- 
 cords with the historical facts in the case, and 
 is authorized and explained by them. The 
 American people were not made one people by 
 the written constitution, as Mr. Jefferson, Mr. 
 Madison, Mr. Webster, and so many others 
 supposed, but were made so by the unwritten 
 constitution, born with and inherent in them.
 
 244 THE AMERICA^ REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 PROVIDENCE, or God operating through his- 
 torical facts, constituted the American people 
 one political or sovereign people, existing and 
 acting in particular communities, organizations, 
 called states. This one people organized as 
 states, meet in convention, frame and ordain the 
 constitution of government, or institute a 
 general government in place of the Continen- 
 tal Congress ; and the same people, in their re- 
 spective State organizations, meet in conven- 
 tion in each State, and frame and ordain a par- 
 ticular government for the State individually, 
 which, in union with the General government, 
 constitutes the complete and supreme gov- 
 ernment within the States, as the General 
 government, in union with all the particular 
 governments, constitutes the complete and 
 supreme government of the nation or whole 
 country. This is clearly the view taken by 
 Mr. Madison in his letter to Mr. Everett,
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 245 
 
 when freed from his theory of the origin of gov- 
 ernment in compact. 
 
 The constitution of the people as one people, 
 and the distinction at the same time of this one 
 people into particular States, precedes the con- 
 vention, and is the unwritten constitution, the 
 Providential constitution, of the American peo- 
 ple or civil society, as distinguished from the 
 constitution of the government, which, whether 
 general or particular, is the ordination of civil 
 society itself. The unwritten constitution is 
 the creation or constitution of the sovereign, 
 and the sovereign providentially constituted 
 constitutes in turn the government, which is 
 not sovereign, but is clothed with just so much 
 and just so little authority as the sovereign 
 wills or ordains. 
 
 The sovereign in the republican order is the 
 organic people, or state, and is with us the 
 United States, for with us the organic people ex- 
 ist only as organized into States united, which in 
 their union form one compact and indissoluble 
 whole. That is to say, the organic American 
 people do not exist as a consolidated people or 
 state ; they exist only as organized into distinct 
 but inseparable States. Each State is a living 
 member of the one body, and derives its life 
 from its union with the body / so that the Amer-
 
 246 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ican state is one body with many members ; 
 and the members, instead of being siinply in- 
 dividuals, are States, or individuals organized 
 into States. The body consists of many mem- 
 bers, and is one body, because the members are all 
 members of it, and members one of another. It 
 does not exist as separate or distinct from the 
 members, but exists in their solidarity or mem- 
 bership one of another. There is no sovereign 
 people or existence of the United States distin- 
 guishable from the people or existence of the- 
 particular States united. The people of the 
 United States, the state called the United States r 
 are the people of the particular States united. The- 
 solidarity of the members constitutes the unity 
 of the body. The difference between this view 
 and Mr. Madison's is, that while his view sup- 
 poses the solidarity to be conventional, origina- 
 ting and existing in compact, or agreement,, 
 this supposes it to be real, living, and prior to 
 the convention, as much the work of Provi- 
 dence as the existence in the human body of the 
 living solidarity of its members. One law, one 
 ]ife, circulates through all the members, consti- 
 tuting them a living organism, binding them in 
 living union, all to each and each to all 
 
 Such is the. sovereign people, and so far the 
 original unwritten constitution. The sovereign,
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 247 
 
 in order to live and act, must have an organ 
 through which he expresses his will. This 
 organ, under the American system, is primarily 
 the Convention. The convention is the supreme 
 political body, the concrete sovereign authority, 
 and exercises practically the whole sovereign 
 power of the people. The convention persists 
 always, although not in permanent session. It 
 can at any time be convened by the ordinary 
 authority of the government, or, in its failure, 
 by a plebiscitum. 
 
 Next follows the Government created and con- 
 stituted by the convention. The government is 
 constituted in such manner, and has such and only 
 such powers, as the convention ordains. The gov- 
 ernment has, in the strict sense, no political author- 
 ity under the American system, which separates 
 the government from the convention. All political 
 questions proper, such as the elective franchise, 
 eligibility, the constitution of the several depart- 
 ments of government, as the legislative, the 
 judicial, and the executive, changing, altering, 
 or amending the constitution of government, 
 enlarging or contracting its powers, in a word, 
 all those questions that arise on which it is ne- 
 cessary to take the immediate orders of the sov- 
 ereign, belong not to the government, but to 
 the convention ; and where the will of the sover-
 
 248 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 eign is not sufficiently expressed in the con- 
 stitution, a new appeal to the convention is ne- 
 cessary, and may always be had. 
 
 The constitution of Great Britain makes no 
 distinction between the convention and the 
 governments Theoretically the constitution of 
 Great Britain is feudal, 'and there is, properly 
 speaking,. no British state; there are only the 
 estates, king, lords, and commons, and these 
 three estates constitute the Parliament, which 
 is held to be omnipotent ; that is, has the plen- 
 itude of political sovereignty. The British Par- 
 liament, composed of the three estates, possesses 
 in itself all the powers of the convention in the 
 American constitution, and is at once the con- 
 vention and the government. The imperial 
 constitution of France recognizes no convention, 
 but clothes the senate with certain political 
 functions, which, in some respects, subjects the- 
 oretically the sovereign to his creature. The 
 emperor confessedly holds his power by the 
 grace of God and the will of the nation, which 
 is a clear acknowledgment that the sovereignty 
 vests in the French people as the French 
 state; but the imperial constitution, which is 
 the constitution of the government, not of the 
 state, studies, while acknowledging the sover- 
 eignty of the people, to render it nugatory, by
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 249 
 
 transferring it, under various subtle disguises, 
 to the government, and practically to the em- 
 peror as chief of the government. The senate, 
 the council of state, the legislative body, and 
 the emperor, are all creatures of the French 
 state, and have properly no political functions, 
 and to give them such functions is to place the 
 sovereign under his own subjects! The real 
 aim of the imperial constitution is to secure 
 despotic power under the guise of republican- 
 ism. It leaves and is intended to leave the 
 nation no way of practically asserting its sov- 
 ereignty but by either a revolution or a plebis- 
 citum, and a plebiscitum is permissible only 
 where there is no regular government. 
 
 The British constitution is consistent with 
 itself, but imposes no restriction on the power 
 of the government. The French imperial con- 
 stitution is illogical, inconsistent with itself as 
 well as with the free action of the nation. The 
 American constitution has all the advantages 
 of both, and the disadvantages of neither. The 
 convention is not the government like the Brit- 
 ish Parliament, nor a creature of the state like 
 the French senate, but the sovereign state itself, 
 in a practical form. By means of the conven- 
 tion the government is restricted to its delegated 
 powers, and these, if found in practice eithei
 
 250 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 too great or too small, can be enlarged or con- 
 tracted in a regular, orderly way, without re- 
 sorting to a revolution or to a plebiscitum* 
 Whatever political grievances there may be, there- 
 is always present the sovereign convention com- 
 petent to redress them. The efficiency of power 
 is thus secured without danger to liberty, and 
 freedom without danger to power. The recog- 
 nition of the convention, the real political sov- 
 ereign of the country, and its separation from 
 and independence of the ordinary government, 
 is one of the most striking features of the 
 American constitution. 
 
 The next thing to be noted, after the conven- 
 tion, is the constitution by the convention of 
 the government. This constitution, as Mr. 
 Madison well observes, divides the powers con- 
 ceded by the convention to government between 
 the General government and the particular State 
 governments. Strictly speaking, the govern- 
 ment is one, and its powers only are divided 
 and exercised by two sets of agents or ministries^ 
 This division of the powers of government could 
 never have been established by the convention 
 if the American people had not been providen- 
 tially constituted one people, existing and act- 
 ing through particular State organizations. Here 
 the unwritten constitution, or the constitution
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 25$ 
 
 written in the people themselves, rendered 
 practicable and dictated the written constitu- 
 tion, or constitution ordained by the convention 
 and engrossed on parchment. It only expresses 
 in the government the fact which pre-existed in- 
 the national organization and life. 
 
 This division of the powers of government is 
 peculiar to the United States, and is an effective- 
 safeguard against both feudal disintegration and 
 Roman centralism. Misled by their prejudices- 
 and peculiar interests, a portion of the people 
 of the United States, pleading in their justifica- 
 tion the theory of State sovereignty, attempted 
 disintegration, secession, and national independ- 
 ence separate from that of the United States, 
 but the central force of the constitution was too ; 
 strong for them to succeed. The unity of the 
 nation was too strong to be effectually broken.. 
 No doubt the reaction against secession and 
 disintegration will strengthen the tendency to 
 centralism, but centralism can succeed no better 
 than disintegration has succeeded, because the 
 General government has no subsistentia, no sup- 
 positum, to borrow a theological term, outside 
 or independent of the States. The particular 
 governments are stronger, if there be any differ- 
 ence, to protect the States against centralism^ 
 than the General government is to protect
 
 252 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Union against disintegration; and after swing 
 ing for a time too far toward one extreme and 
 then too far toward the other, the public mind 
 will recover its equilibrium, and the govern- 
 ment move on in its constitutional path. 
 
 Republican Rome attempted to guard against 
 excessive centralism by the tribunitial veto, or 
 by the organization of a negative or obstructive 
 power. Mr. Calhoun thought this admirable, 
 and wished to effect the same end here, where 
 it is secured by other, more effective, and less 
 objectionable means, by a State veto on the acts 
 of Congress, by a dual executive, and by sub- 
 stituting concurrent for numerical majorities. 
 Imperial Rome gradually swept away the tri- 
 bunitial veto, concentrated all power in the 
 hands of the emperor, became completely cen- 
 tralized, and fell. The British constitution 
 seeks the same end by substituting estates for 
 the state, and establishing a mixed government, 
 in which monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy 
 temper, check, or balance each other ; but prac- 
 tically the commons estate has become supreme, 
 and the nobility govern not in the house of 
 lords, and can really influence public affairs 
 only through the house of commons. The prin- 
 ciple of the British constitution is not the divi- 
 sion of the powers of government, but the an-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED ST4.TES. 253 
 
 tagonism of estates, or rather of interests, trusting 
 to the obstructive influence of that antagonism 
 to preserve the government from pure central- 
 ism. Hence the study of the British statesman 
 is to manage diverse and antagonistic parties 
 and interests so as to gain the ability to act, 
 which he can do only by intrigue, cajolery, 
 bribery in one form or anoth'er, and corruption 
 of every sort. The British government cannot 
 be carried on by fair, honest, and honorable 
 means, any more than could the Roman under 
 the antagonism created by the tribunitial veto. 
 The French tried the English system of organ- 
 ized antagonism in 1789, as a cure for the cen- 
 tralism introduced by Richelieu and Louis XIV., 
 and again under the Restoration and Louis Phil- 
 ippe, and called it the system of constitutional 
 guarantees; but they could never manage it, 
 and they have taken refuge in unmitigated 
 centralism under Napoleon HI., who, however 
 well disposed, finds no means in the constitu- 
 tion of the French nation of tempering it. The 
 English system, called the constitutional, and 
 sometimes the parliamentary system, will not 
 work in France, and indeed works really well 
 nowhere. 
 
 The American system, sometimes called the 
 Federal system, is not founded on antagonism
 
 254 "THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of classes, estates, or interests, and is in no 
 -sense a system of checks and balances. It 
 needs and tolerates no obstructive forces. It 
 -does not pit section against section, the States 
 severally against the General government, nor 
 the General government against the State gov- 
 ernments, and nothing is more hurtful than the 
 attempt to explain it and work it on the prin- 
 ciples of British constitutionalism. The con- 
 vention created no antagonistic powers ; it sim- 
 ply divided the powers of government, and 
 gave neither to the General government nor to 
 the State governments all the powers of govern- 
 ment, nor in any instance did it give to the two 
 governments jurisdiction in the same matters. 
 Hence each has its own sphere, in which it can 
 move on without colliding with that of the 
 other. Each is independent and complete in 
 relation to its own work, incomplete and de- 
 pendent on the other for the complete work of 
 government. 
 
 The division of power is not between a NA- 
 TIONAL government and State governments, but 
 between a GENERAL governmen and particular 
 governments. The General government, inas- 
 much as it extends to matters common to all 
 the States, is usually called the Government of 
 the United States, and sometimes the Federal
 
 X30NSTITUT10N OF THE UNITED STATES. 255 
 
 government, to distinguish it from the particu- 
 iar or State governments, but without strict 
 propriety ; for the government of the United 
 States, or the Federal government, means, in 
 strictness, both the General government and the 
 particular governments, since neither is in itself 
 the complete government of the country. The 
 Oeneral government has authority within each 
 of the States, and each of the State governments 
 has authority in the Union. The line between 
 the Union and the States severally, is not pre- 
 cisely the line between the General government 
 and the particular governments. As, for in- 
 stance, the General government lays direct taxes 
 on the people of the States, and collects internal 
 revenue within them ; and the citizens of a par 
 ticular State, and none others, are electors of 
 President and Vice-President of the United 
 States, and representatives in the lower house 
 of Congress, while senators in Congress are 
 elected by the State legislatures themselves. 
 
 The line that distinguishes the two govern- 
 ments is that which distinguishes the general 
 relations and interests from the particular rela- 
 tions and interests of the people of the United 
 States. These general relations and interests are 
 placed under the General government, which, 
 because its jurisdiction is coextensive with the
 
 256 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Union, is called the Government of the United 
 States; the particular relations and interests 
 are placed under particular governments, which, 
 because their jurisdiction is only coextensive 
 with the States respectively, are called State 
 governments. The General government governs 
 supremely all the people of the United States 
 and Territories belonging to the Union, in all 
 their general relations and interests, or relations 
 and interests common alike to them all ; the par- 
 ticular or State government governs supremely 
 the people of a particular State, as Massachusetts, 
 New York, or New Jersey, in all that pertains 
 to their particular or private rights, relation?, 
 and interests. The powers of each are equally 
 sovereign, and neither are derived from the 
 other. The State governments are not subordi- 
 nate to the General government, nor the General 
 government to the State governments. They 
 are co-ordinate governments, each standing on 
 the same level, and deriving its powers from 
 the same sovereign authority. In their respec- 
 tive spheres neither yields to the other. In 
 relation to the matters within its jurisdiction, 
 each government is independent and supreme 
 in regard of the other, and subject only to the 
 convention.
 
 CONSTITUTION OP THE UNITED STATES. 257 
 
 The powers of the General government are 
 the power 
 
 To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and 
 excises, to pay the debts and provide for the 
 general welfare of the United States ; to bor- 
 row money on the credit of the United States ; 
 to regulate commerce with foreign nations, 
 among the several States, and with the Indian 
 tribes ; to establish a uniform rule of natural- 
 ization, and uniform laws on the subject of 
 bankruptcies throughout the United States ; to 
 coin money and regulate the value thereof, and 
 fix the standard of weights and measures ; to 
 provide for the punishment of counterfeiting 
 the securities and current coin of the United 
 States ; to establish post-offices and post-roads ; 
 to promote the progress of science and of the 
 useful arts, by securing for limited times to au- 
 thors and inventors the exclusive right to their 
 respective writings and discoveries; to define 
 and punish piracies and felonies committed on 
 the high seas, and offences against the law of 
 nations ; to declare war, grant letters of marque 
 and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures 
 on land and water; to raise and support ar- 
 mies ; to provide and maintain a navy ; to make 
 rules for the government of the land and naval 
 forces; to pro vide for calling forth the militia to 
 
 18
 
 258 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 execute the laws of the Union, suppress insur- 
 rections, and repel invasions ; to provide for or- 
 ganizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, 
 and of governing such part of them as may be 
 employed in the service of the United States ; 
 to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases 
 whatsoever over such district, not exceeding ten 
 
 ' O 
 
 miles square, as may by cession of particular 
 States and the acceptance of Congress, become 
 the seat of the government of the United States, 
 and to exercise a like authority over all places 
 purchased by the consent of the legislature of 
 the State in which the same shall be, for the 
 erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, 
 and other needful buildings ; and to make all 
 laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
 carrying into execution the foregoing powers, 
 and all other powers vested by this constitution 
 in the government of the United States, or in 
 any department or office thereof. 
 
 In addition to these, the General government is 
 clothed with the treaty-making power, and the 
 whole charge of the foreign relations of the coun- 
 try ; with power to admit new States into the 
 Union ; to dispose of and make all needful rules 
 and regulations concerning the territory and all 
 other property belonging to the United States ; to 
 declare, with, certain restrictions, the punishment
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 259 
 
 of treason, the constitution itself defining what 
 is treason against the United States; and to 
 propose, or to call, on the application of the 
 legislatures of two-thirds of all the states, a 
 convention for proposing amendments to this 
 constitution; and is vested with supreme judicial 
 power, original or appellate, in all cases of law 
 and equity arising under this constitution, the 
 laws of the United States, and treaties made or 
 to be made under their authority, in all cases 
 affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, 
 and consuls, in all cases of admiralty and mari- 
 time jurisdiction, in all controversies to which 
 the United States shall be a party, all contro- 
 versies between two or more States, between a 
 State and citizens of another State, between citi- 
 zens of different States, between citizens of the 
 same State claiming lands under grants of dif- 
 ferent States, and between a State or the citizens 
 thereof and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. 
 
 These, with what is incidental to them, and 
 what is necessary and proper to carry them 
 into effect, are all the positive powers with 
 which the convention vests the General gov- 
 ernment, or government of the United States, 
 as distinguished from the governments of the 
 particular States ; and these, with the exception 
 of what relates to the district in which it has
 
 260 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 its seat, and places of forts, magazines, <fcc., are 
 of a general nature, and restricted to the com- 
 mon relations and interests of the people, or at 
 least to interests and relations which extend 
 beyond the limits of a particular State. They 
 are all powers that regard matters which extend 
 beyond not only the individual citizen, but the 
 individual State, and affect alike the relations 
 and interests of all the States, or matters which 
 cannot be disposed of by a State government 
 without the exercise of extra-territorial juris- 
 diction. They give the government no jurisdic- 
 tion of questions which affect individuals or 
 citizens only in their private and domestic rela- 
 tions which lie wholly within a particular State. 
 The General government does not legislate con- 
 cerning private rights, whether of persons or 
 things, the tenure of real estate, marriage, 
 dower, inheritance, wills, the transference or 
 transmission of property, real or personal; it 
 can charter no private corporations, out of the 
 District of Columbia, for business, literary, 
 scientific, or eleemosynary purposes, establish 
 no schools, found no colleges or universities, 
 and promote science and the useful arts only 
 by securing to authors and inventors for a time 
 the exclusive right to their writings and dis- 
 coveries. The United States Bank was man-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 261 
 
 ifestly unconstitutional, as probably are the 
 present so-called national banks. The United 
 States Bank was a private or particular cor- 
 poration, and the present national banks are 
 only corporations of the same sort, though or- 
 ganized under a general law. The pretence 
 that they are established to supply a national 
 currency does not save their constitutionality, 
 for the convention has not given the General 
 government the power nor imposed on it the 
 duty of furnishing a national currency. To 
 coin money, and regulate the value thereof, is 
 something very different from authorizing pri- 
 vate companies to issue bank notes, on the 
 basis of the public stocks held as private prop- 
 erty, or even on what is called a specie basis. 
 To claim the power under the general welfare 
 clause would be a simple mockery of good 
 sense. It is no more for the general welfare 
 than any other successful private business. 
 The private welfare of each is, no doubt, for 
 the welfare of all, but not therefore is it the 
 4< general welfare," for what is private, partic- 
 ular in its nature, is not and cannot be general. 
 To understand by general welfare that which 
 is for the individual welfare of all or the greater 
 number, would be to claim for the General 
 government all the powers of government, and
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to deny that very division of powers which is the 
 crowning merit of the American system. The 
 general welfare, by the very force of the words 
 themselves, means the common as distinguished 
 from the private or individiiiw welfare. The 
 system of national banks may or may not be a 
 good and desirable system, but it is difficult to 
 understand the constitutional power of the 
 General government to establish it. 
 
 On the ground that its powers are general, 
 not particular, the General government has no- 
 power to lay a protective tariff. It can lay a 
 tariff for revenue, not for protection of home 
 manufactures or home industry; for the interests- 
 fostered, even though indirectly advantageous to 
 the whole people, are in their nature private or 
 particular, not general interests, and chiefly inter- 
 ests of private corporations and capitalists. Their 
 incidental or even consequential effects do not 
 change their direct and essential nature. So- 
 with domestic slavery. Slavery comes under 
 the head of private rights, whether regarded 
 on the side of the master or on the side of the 
 slave. The right of a citizen to hold a slave, 
 if a right at all, is the private right of property, 
 and the right of the slave to his freedom is a 
 private and personal right, and neither is placed 
 under the safeguard of the General government,.
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 263 
 
 which has nowhere, unless in the District of 
 Columbia and the places over which it has ex- 
 clusive legislative power in all cases whatsoever, 
 either the right to establish it or to abolish it, 
 except perhaps under the war power, as a mili- 
 tary necessity, an indemnity for the past, or a 
 security for the future. 
 
 This applies to what are called Territories as 
 well as to the States. The right of the govern- 
 ment to govern the Territories in regard to pri- 
 vate and particular rights and interests, is de- 
 rived from no express grant of power, and is 
 held only ex necessitate the United States 
 owning the domain, and there being no other 
 authority competent to govern them. But, as 
 in the case of all powers held ex necessitate, 
 the power is restricted to the absolute ne- 
 cessity in the case. What are called Territorial 
 governments, to distinguish them from the 
 State governments, are only provisional govern- 
 ments, and can touch private rights and inter- 
 ests no further than is necessary to preserve 
 order and prepare the way for the organization 
 and installation of a regular State government. 
 Till then the law governing private rights is 
 the law that was in force, if any such there was, 
 when the territory became by purchase, by
 
 264 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 conquest, or by treaty, attached to the domain 
 of the United States. 
 
 Hence the Supreme Court declared unconsti- 
 tutional the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting sla- 
 very in what was called the Territory of the 
 Northwest, and the so-called Missouri Compro- 
 mise, prohibiting slavery north of the parallel 
 36 3CK. The Wilmot proviso was for the 
 same reason unconstitutional The General 
 government never had and has not any power 
 to exclude slavery from the Territories, any 
 more than to abolish it in the States. But 
 slavery being a local institution, sustained 
 neither by the law of nature nor the law of 
 nations, no citizen migrating from a slave State 
 could carry his slaves with him, and hold them 
 as slaves in the Territory. Rights enacted by 
 local law are rights only in that locality, and 
 slaves carried by their masters into a slave 
 State even, are free, unless the State into which 
 they are carried enacts to the contrary. The 
 only persons that could be held as slaves in a 
 Territory would be those who were slaves or 
 the children of those who were slaves in the 
 Territory when it passed to the United States. 
 The whole controversy on slavery in the Terri- 
 tories, and which culminated in the civil war, 
 was wholly unnecessary, and never could have
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 265 
 
 occurred had the constitution been properly un- 
 derstood and adhered to by both sides. True, 
 Oongress could not exclude slavery from the 
 Territory, but neither could citizens migrating to 
 them hold slaves in them; and so really slavery 
 was virtually excluded, for the inhabitants in 
 nearly all of them, not emigrants from the 
 States after the cession to the United States, 
 were too few to be counted. 
 
 The General government has power to es- 
 tablish a uniform rule of naturalization, to 
 which all the States must conform, and it was 
 very proper that it should have this power, so 
 as to prevent one State from gaining by its natu- 
 ralization laws an undue advantage over anoth- 
 er; but the General government has itself no 
 power to naturalize a single foreigner, or in any 
 case to say who shall or who shall not be citi- 
 zens, either of a State or of the United States, 
 or to declare who may or may not be elec- 
 tors even of its own officers. The convention 
 ordains that members of the house of represen- 
 tatives shall be chosen by electors who have 
 the qualifications requisite for electors of the 
 most numerous branch of the State legislature, 
 but the State determines these qualifications, and 
 who do or do not possess them ; that the sena- 
 tors shall be chosen by the State legislatures, and
 
 266 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 that the electors of President and Vice-President 
 shall be appointed in such manner as the respec- 
 tive State legislatures may direct. The whole 
 question of citizenship, what shall or shall not 
 be the qualifications of electors, who shall or 
 shall not be freemen, is reserved to the States, as 
 coming under the head of personal or private 
 rights and franchises. In practice, the exact 
 line of demarcation may not always have been 
 strictly observed either by the General govern- 
 ment or by the State governments ; but a care- 
 ful study of the constitution cannot fail to show 
 that the division of powers is the division or dis- 
 tinction between the public and general rela- 
 tions and interests, rights and duties of the 
 people, and their private and particular rela- 
 tions and interests, rights and duties. As these 
 two classes of relations and interests, rights and 
 duties, though distinguishable, are really insep- 
 arable in nature, it follows that the two gov- 
 ernments are essential to the existence of a com- 
 plete government, or to the existence of a real 
 government in its plenitude and integrity. 
 Left to either alone, the people would have only 
 an incomplete, an initial, or inchoate govern- 
 ment. The General government is the com- 
 plement of the State governments, and the
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 26T 
 
 State governments are the complement of the 
 General government. 
 
 The consideration of the powers denied by 
 the convention to the General government and 
 to the State governments respectively, will lead 
 to the* same conclusion. To the General gov- 
 ernment is denied expressly or by necessary 
 implication all jurisdiction in matters of pri- 
 vate rights and interests, and to the State gov- 
 ernment is denied all jurisdiction in rights or 
 interests which extend, as has been said, be- 
 yond the boundaries of the State. " No State 
 shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- 
 federation ; grant letters of marque and reprisal ; 
 coin money, emit bills of credit, make any 
 thing but gold and silver coin a tender in the 
 payment of debts ; pass any bill of attainder, ex 
 post facto law, or law impairing the obligation 
 of contracts, or grant any title of nobility. No 
 State shall, without the consent of Congress, 
 lay any imposts or duties on imports or ex- 
 ports, except what may be absolutely necessary 
 for executing its inspection laws, and the net 
 produce of all duties and imposts laid by any 
 State on imports and exports shall be for the 
 use of the treasury of the United States, and 
 all such laws shall be subject to the revision 
 and control of Congress. No State shall, with-
 
 S68 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 out the consent of Congress, lay any duty of 
 tonnage, keep troops or ships-of-war in time of 
 peace, enter into any agreement or compact 
 with another State or with a foreign power, or 
 engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in 
 
 such imminent danger as will not admit of de- 
 
 
 
 lay." 
 
 The powers denied to the States in some 
 matters which are rather private and particular, 
 such as bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, 
 laws impairing the obligation of contracts, 
 granting titles of nobility, are denied equally 
 to the General government. There is evidently 
 a profound logic in the constitution, and there 
 is not a single provision in it that is arbitrary, 
 or anomalous, or that does not harmonize dia- 
 lectically with the whole, and with the real 
 constitution of the American people. At first 
 sight the reservation to the State of the appoint- 
 ment of the officers of the militia might seem 
 an anomaly; but as the whole subject of inter- 
 nal police belongs to the State, it should have 
 some military force at its command. The sub- 
 ject of bankruptcies, also, might seem to be 
 more properly within the province of the State, 
 and so it would be if commerce between the 
 several States had not been placed under Con- 
 gress, or if trade were confined to the citizens
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 269 
 
 of the State and within its boundaries; but 
 as such is not the case, it was necessary to place 
 it under the General government, in order that 
 laws on the subject might be uniform through- 
 out the Union, and that the citizens of all the 
 States, and foreigners trading with them, should 
 be placed on an equal footing, and have the 
 same remedies. The subject follows naturally 
 in the train of commerce, for bankruptcies, as 
 understood at the time, were confined to the 
 mercantile class, bankers, and brokers; and 
 since the regulation of commerce, foreign and 
 inter-state, was to be placed under the sole 
 charge of the General government, it was 
 necessary that bankruptcy should be included. 
 The subject of patents is placed under, the 
 General government, though the patent is a 
 private right, because it wa the will of the 
 convention that the patent onould be good in 
 all the States, as affording more encouragement 
 to science and the useful arts than if good only 
 within a single State, or if the power were left 
 to each State to recognize or not patents granted 
 by another. The right created, though private 
 in its nature, is yet general or common to all 
 the States in its enjoyment 01 exercise. 
 
 The division of the powers of government 
 between a General government and particular
 
 "270 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 governments, rendered possible and practicable 
 by the original constitution of the people them- 
 selves, as one people existing and acting 
 through State organizations, is the American 
 method of guarding against the undue central- 
 ism to which Roman imperialism inevitably 
 tends ; and it is far simpler and more effective 
 than any of the European systems of mixed 
 governments, which seek their end by organ- 
 izing an antagonism of interests or classes. 
 The American method demands no such antag- 
 onism > no neutralizing of one social force by 
 another, but avails itself of all the forces of 
 society, organizes them dialectically, not antag- 
 onistically, and thus protects with equal effi- 
 ciency both public authority and private rights. 
 The General government can never oppress 
 the people as individuals, or abridge their pri- 
 vate rights or personal freedom and indepen- 
 dence, because these are not within its jurisdic- 
 tion, but are placed in charge, within each 
 State, of the State government, which, within its 
 sphere, governs as supremely as the General 
 government: the State governments cannot 
 weaken the public authority of the nation or 
 oppress the people in their general rights and 
 interests, for these are withdrawn from State 
 jurisdiction, and placed under charge of a Gen-
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 271 
 
 eral government, which, in its sphere, governs 
 as supremely as the State government. There 
 is no resort to a system of checks and balances ; 
 there is no restraint on power, and no sys- 
 temat ic distrust of power, but simply a division 
 of powers between two co-ordinate govern- 
 ments, distinct but inseparable, moving in dis- 
 tinct spheres, but in the same direction, or to a 
 common end. The system is no invention of 
 man, is no creation of the convention, but is 
 given us by Providence in the living constitu- 
 tion of the American people. The merit of the 
 statesmen of 1787 is that they did not destroy 
 or deface the work of Providence, but accepted 
 it, and organized the government in harmony 
 with the real order, the real elements given 
 them. They suffered themselves in all their posi- 
 tive substantial work to be governed by reality, 
 not by theories and speculations. In this they 
 proved themselves statesmen, and their work 
 survives; and the republic, laugh as sciolists may, 
 is, for the present and future, the model republic 
 as much so as was Rome in her day ; and it is 
 not simply national pride nor American self- 
 conceit that pronounces its establishment the 
 beginning of a new and more advanced order 
 of civilization; such is really the fact. 
 
 The only apparently weak point in the sys-
 
 272 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 tern is in the particular States themselves. Feu- 
 dalism protected the feudal aristocracy effec- 
 tively for a time against both the king and the 
 people, but left the king and the people with- 
 out protection against the aristocracy, and 
 hence it fell. It was not adequate to the wants 
 of civil society, did not harmonize all social ele- 
 ments, and protect all social and individual 
 rights and interests, and therefore could not 
 imt fail. The General government takes care of 
 public authority and rights ; the State protects 
 private rights and personal freedom as against 
 the General government : but what protects the 
 citizens in their private rights, their personal 
 freedom and independence, against the particular 
 State government ? Universal suffrage, answers 
 the democrat. Armed with the ballot, more 
 powerful than the sword, each citizen is able to 
 protect himself. But this is theory, not reality. 
 If it were true, the division of the powers of 
 government between two co-ordinate govern- 
 ments would be of no practical importance. 
 Experience does not sustain the theory, and the 
 power of the ballot to protect the individual 
 may be rendered ineffective by the tyranny of 
 party. Experience proves that the ballot is 
 far less effective in securing the freedom and 
 independence of the individual citizen than is
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 273 
 
 commonly pretended. The ballot of an isolated 
 individual counts for nothing. The individual, 
 though armed with the ballot, is as powerless, 
 if he stands alone, as if he had it not. To ren- 
 der it of any avail he must associate himself 
 with a party, and look for his success in the 
 success of his party ; and to secure the success 
 of his party, he must give up to it his own pri- 
 vate convictions and free will. In practice, in- 
 dividuals are nothing individually, and parties 
 are every thing. Even the suppression of the 
 late rebellion, and the support of the Adminis- 
 tration in doing it, was made a party question, 
 and the government found the leaders of the 
 party opposed to the Republican party an obsta- 
 cle hardly less difficult to surmount than the 
 chiefs of the armies of the so-called Confederate 
 States. 
 
 Parties are formed, one hardly knows how> 
 and controlled, no one knows by whom ; but 
 usually by demagogues, men who have some 
 private or personal purposes, for which they 
 wish, through party, to use the government. 
 Parties have no conscience, no responsibility, 
 and their very reason of being is, the usurpa- 
 tion and concentration of power. The real 
 practical tendency of universal suffrage is to 
 democratic, instead of an imperial, centralism. 
 
 19
 
 274 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 What is to guard against this centralism ? Not 
 universal suffrage, for that tends to create it ; 
 and if the government is left to it, the govern- 
 ment becomes practically the will of an ever- 
 shifting and irresponsible majority. Is the 
 remedy in written or paper constitutions? 
 Party can break through them, and by making 
 the judges elective by party, for short terms, 
 .and re-eligible, can do so with impunity. In 
 several of the States, the dominant majority 
 have gained the power to govern at will, with- 
 out any let or hindrance. Besides, constitutions 
 can be altered, and have been altered, very 
 nearly at the will of the majority. No mere pa- 
 per constitutions are any protection against the 
 usurpations of party, for party will always grasp 
 all the power it can. 
 
 Yet the evil is not so great as it seems, for in 
 most of the States the principle of division of 
 powers is carried into the bosom of the State 
 itself; in some States further than in others, 
 but in -all it obtains to some extent. In what 
 are called the New England States, the best- 
 governed portion of the Union, each town is 
 a corporation, having important powers and 
 the charge of all purely local matters chooses 
 its own officers, manages its own finances, 
 takes charge of its own poor, of its own roads
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 275 
 
 and bridges, and of the education of its own 
 children. Between these corporations and the 
 State government are the counties, that take 
 charge of another class of interests, more gen- 
 eral than those under the charge of the town, 
 but less general than those of the State. In the 
 great central, and Northwestern States the same 
 system obtains, though less completely carried 
 out. In the Southern and Southwestern States, 
 the town corporations hardly exist, and the 
 rights and interests of the poorer classes of per- 
 sons have been less well protected in them than 
 in the Northern and Eastern States. But with 
 the abolition of slavery, and the lessening of 
 tbe influence of the wealthy slaveholding class, 
 with the return of peace and the revival of 
 agricultural, industrial, and commercial pros- 
 perity, the New England system, in its main 
 features, is pretty sure to be gradually intro- 
 duced, or developed, and the division of powers 
 in the State to be as effectively and as system- 
 atically carried out as it is between the Gen- 
 eral government and the particular or State 
 governments. So, though universal suffrage, 
 good as far as it goes, is not alone sufficient, the 
 division of powers affords with it a not inade- 
 quate protection. 
 
 No government, whose workings are intrusted
 
 376 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to men, ever is or can be practically perfect 
 secure all good, and guard against all eviL In 
 all human governments there will be defects 
 and abuses, and he is no wise man who expects 
 perfection from imperfection. But the Ameri- 
 can constitution, taken as a whole, and in all its 
 parts, is the least imperfect that has ever exist- 
 ed, and under it individual rights, personal 
 freedom and independence, as well as public au- 
 thority or society, are better protected than un- 
 der any other ; and as the few barbaric elements 
 retained from the feudal ages are eliminated, 
 the standard of education elevated, and the 
 whole population Americanized, moulded by 
 and to the American system, it will be found to 
 effect all the good, with as little of the evil, as 
 can be reasonably expected from any possible 
 civil government or political constitution of so 
 ciety.
 
 SECESSION. 
 
 CHAPTER Xtt 
 
 SECESSION. 
 
 THE doctrine that a State has a right to se- 
 cede and carry with it its population and do- 
 main, has been effectually put down, and the 
 unity and integrity of the United States as a 
 sovereign nation have been effectively asserted 
 on the battle-field ; but the secessionists, though 
 disposed to submit to superior force, and de- 
 mean themselves henceforth as loyal citizens, 
 most likely hold as firmly to the doctrine as 
 before finding themselves unable to reduce it to 
 practice, and the Union victory will remain in- 
 complete till they are convinced in their under- 
 standings that the Union has the better reason 
 as well as the superior military resources. The 
 nation has conquered their bodies, but it is hardly 
 less important for our .tatesmen to conquer 
 their minds and win their hearts. 
 
 The right of secession is not claimed as a 
 revolutionary right, or even as a conventional 
 right. The secessionists disclaim revolutionary
 
 278 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 principles, and hold that the right of secession 
 is anterior to the convention, a right which the 
 convention could neither give nor take away, 
 because inherent in the very conception of a 
 sovereign State. Secession is simply the repeal 
 by the State of the act of accession to the Union ; 
 and as that act was a free, voluntary act of the 
 State, she must always be free to repeal it. The 
 Union is a copartnership ; a State in the Union 
 is simply a member of the firm, and has the 
 right to withdraw when it judges it for its in- 
 terest to do so. There is no power in a firm to 
 compel a copartner to remain a member any 
 longer than he pleases. He is undoubtedly 
 holden for the obligations contracted by the 
 firm while he remains a member ; but for none 
 contracted after he has withdrawn and given 
 due notice thereof. 
 
 So of a sovereign State in the Union. The 
 Union itself, apart from the sovereign States 
 that compose it, is a mere abstraction, a nullity, 
 and binds nobody. All its substance and vital- 
 ity are in the agreement by which the States 
 constitute themselves a firm or copartnership,, 
 for certain specific purposes, and for which they 
 open an office and establish an agency under 
 express instructions for the management of the 
 general affairs of the firm. The State is held
 
 SECESSION. 279 
 
 jointly and severally for all the legal obliga- 
 tions of the Union, contracted while she is in 
 it, but no further ; and is free to withdraw when 
 she pleases, precisely as an individual may 
 withdraw from an ordinary business firm. 
 The remaining copartners have no right of 
 compulsion or coercion against the seceding 
 member, for he, saving the obligations already 
 contracted, is as free to withdraw as they are 
 to remain. 
 
 The population is fixed to the domain, and 
 goes with it ; the domain is attached to the 
 State, and secedes in the secession of the State. 
 Secession, then, carries the entire State, govern- 
 ment, people, and domain, out of the Union, 
 and restores ipso facto the. State to its original 
 position of a sovereign State, foreign to the United 
 States. Being an independent sovereign State, 
 she may enter into a new confederacy, form a 
 new copartnership, or merge herself in some 
 other foreign state, as she judges proper or finds 
 opportunity. The States that seceded formed 
 among themselves a new confederacy, more to 
 their mind than the one formed in 1787, as 
 they had a perfect right to do, and in the war 
 just ended they were not rebels nor revolution- 
 ists, but a people fighting for the right of self- 
 government, loyal citizens and true patriots de-
 
 280 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 fending the independence and inviolability of 
 their country against foreign invaders. They 
 are to be honored for their loyalty and patriot- 
 ism, and not branded as rebels and punished 
 as traitors. 
 
 This is the secession argument, which rests 
 on no assumption of revolutionary principles or 
 abstract rights of man, and on no allegation of 
 real or imaginary wrongs received from the 
 Union, but simply on the original and inherent 
 rights of the several States as independent sov- 
 ereign States. The argument is conclusive, and 
 the defence complete, if the Union is only a 
 firm or copartnership, and the sovereignty vests 
 in the States severally. The refutation of the . 
 secessionists is in the facts adduced that dis- 
 prove the theory of State sovereignty, and prove 
 that the sovereignty vests not in the States 
 severally, but in the States united, or that the 
 Union is sovereign, and not the States individ- 
 ually. The Union is not a firm, a copartner- 
 ship, nor an artificial or conventional union, 
 but a real, living, constitutional union, founded 
 in the original and indissoluble unity of the 
 American people, as one sovereign people. 
 There is, indeed, no such people, if we abstract 
 the States, but there are no States if we abstract 
 this sovereign people or the Union. There is
 
 SECESSION. 281 
 
 no Union without the States, and there are no 
 States without the Union. The people are born 
 States, and the States are born United States. 
 The Union and the States are simultaneous, 
 born together, and enter alike into the original 
 and essential constitution of the American state. 
 This the facts and reasonings adduced fully es- 
 tablish. 
 
 But this one sovereign people that exists 
 only as organized into States, does not necessa- 
 rily include the whole population or territory 
 included within the jurisdiction of the United 
 States. It is restricted to the people and ter- 
 ritory or domain organized into States in the 
 Union, as in ancient Home the ruling people 
 were restricted to the tenants of the sacred ter- 
 ritory, which had been surveyed, and its boun- 
 daries marked by the god Terminus, and which 
 by no means included all the territory held by 
 the city, and of which she was both the private 
 proprietor and the public sovereign. The city 
 had vast possessions acquired by confiscation, 
 by purchase, by treaty, or by conquest, and in 
 reference to which her celebrated agrarian 
 laws were enacted, and which have their coun- 
 terpart in our homestead and kindred laws. 
 In this class of territory, of which the city was 
 the private owner, was the .territory of all the
 
 282 THE AMERICAN REPT7BLIC. 
 
 Roman provinces, which was held to be only 
 leased to its occupants, who were often dis- 
 possessed, and their lands given as a recompense 
 by the consul or imperator to his disbanded 
 legionaries. The provincials were subjects of 
 Rome, but formed no part of the Roman peo- 
 ple, and had no share in the political power of 
 the state, till at a.late period the privileges of Ro- 
 man citizens were extended to them, and the 
 Roman people became coextensive with the Ro- 
 man empire. So the United States have held 
 and still hold large territorial possessions, ac- 
 quired by the acknowledgment of their inde- 
 pendence by Great Britain, the former sover- 
 eign, the cession of particular states, and pur- 
 chase from France, Spain, and Mexico. Till 
 erected into States and admitted into the Union, 
 this territory, with its population, though sub- 
 ject to the United States, makes no part of 
 the political or sovereign territoiy and people 
 of the United States. It is under the Union, 
 not in it, as is indicated by the phrase admit- 
 ting into the Union a legal phrase, since the 
 constitution ordains that " new States may be 
 admitted by the Congress into this Union." 
 
 There can be no secession that separates a 
 State from the national domain, and withdraws 
 it from the territorial sovereignty or jurisdic*
 
 SECESSION. 283" 
 
 tion of the United States ; yet what hinders a 
 State from going out of the Union in the sense 
 that it comes into it, and thus ceasing to belong 
 to \hv political people of the United States? 
 
 If the view of the constitution taken in the 
 preceding chapters be correct, and certainly na 
 facts tend to disprove it, the accession of a Ter- 
 ritory as a State in the Union is a free act of the 
 territorial people. The Territory cannot organ- 
 ize and apply for admission as a State, without 
 what is called an "enabling act" of Congress 
 or its equivalent ; but that act is permissive, not 
 mandatory, and nothing obliges the Territory 
 to organize under it and apply for admission. 
 It may do so or ^iot, as it chooses. What r 
 then, hinders the State once in the Union from 
 going out or returning to its' former condition 
 of territory subject to the Union ? The origi- 
 nal States did not need to come in under an 
 enabling act, for they were born States in the 
 Union, and were never territory outside of the 
 Union and subject to it. But they and the 
 new States, adopted or naturalized States, once 
 in the Union, stand on a footing of perfect 
 equality, and the original States are no more 
 and no less bound than they to remain 
 States in the Union. The ratification of 
 the constitution by .the original States was a
 
 284 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 free act, as much so as the accession of a new 
 State formed from territory subject to the 
 Union is a free act, and a free act is an act 
 which one is free to do or not to do, as he 
 pleases. What a State is free to do or not to 
 do, it is free to undo, if it chooses. There is 
 nothing in either the State constitution or in 
 that of the United States that forbids it. 
 
 This is denied . The population and domain 
 are inseparable in the State ; and if the State 
 <uld take itself out of the Union, it would take 
 them out, and be ipso facto a sovereign State 
 foreign to the Union. It would take the do- 
 main and the population out of the Union, it is 
 <x>nceded and even maintained, but not there- 
 fore would it take them out of the jurisdiction 
 of the Union, or would they exist as a State 
 foreign to the Union ; for population and terri- 
 tory may coexist, as Dacota, Colorado, or New 
 Mexico, out of the Union, and yet be subject 
 to the Union, or within the jurisdiction of the 
 United States. 
 
 But the Union is formed by the surrender 
 by each of the States of its individual sover- 
 eignty, and each State by its admission into 
 the Union surrenders its individual sovereign- 
 ty, or binds itself by a constitutional compact 
 to merge its individual sovereignty in that of
 
 SECESSION. 285 
 
 the whole. It then cannot cease to be a State 
 in the Union without breach of contract. Hav- 
 ing surrendered its sovereignty to the Union, 
 or bound itself by the constitution to exercise 
 its original sovereignty only as one of the Uni- 
 ted States, it can unmake itself of its state 
 character, only by consent of the United States, 
 or by a successful revolution. It is by virtue 
 of this fact that secession is rebellion against 
 the United States, and that the General govern- 
 ment, as representing the Union, has the right 
 and the duty to suppress it by all the forces at 
 its command. 
 
 There can be no rebellion where there is no 
 allegiance. The States in the Union cannot 
 owe allegiance to the Union, for they are it, and 
 for any one to go out of it is' no more an act of 
 rebellion than it is for a king to abdicate his 
 throne. The Union is not formed by the sur- 
 render to it by the several States of their 
 respective individual sovereignty. Such sur- 
 render could, as we have seen, form only an 
 alliance, or a confederation, not one sovereign 
 people ; and from an alliance, or confederation, 
 the ally or confederate has, saving its faith, the 
 inherent right to secede. The argument as- 
 sumes that the States were originally each in its 
 individuality a sovereign state, but by the con-
 
 286 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 / 
 
 ventiou which framed the constitution, each 
 surrendered its sovereignty to the whole, and 
 thus several sovereign states became one sov- 
 ereign political people, governing in general 
 matters through the General government, and 
 in particular matters through particular or 
 State governments. This is Mr. Madison's the- 
 ory, and also Mr. Webster's; but it has been 
 refuted in the refutation of the theory that 
 makes government originate in compact. A 
 sovereign state can, undoubtedly, surrender its 
 sovereignty, but can surrender it only to some- 
 thing or somebody that really exists; for to 
 surrender to no one or to nothing is, as has been 
 shown, the same thing as not to surrender at 
 all ; and the Union, being formed only by the 
 surrender, is nothing prior to it, or till after it 
 is made, and therefore can be no recipient of 
 the surrender. 
 
 Besides, the theory is the reverse of the fact. 
 The State does not surrender or part with its 
 sovereignty by coming into the Union, but 
 acquires by it all the rights it holds as a State. 
 Between the original States and the new 
 States there is a difference of mode by which 
 they become States in the Union, but none in 
 their powers, or the tenure by which they hold 
 them. The process by which new States are
 
 SECESSION. 287 
 
 actually formed and admitted into the Union, 
 discloses at once what it is that is gained or 
 lost by admission. The domain and popula- 
 tion, before the organization of the Territory 
 into one of the United States, are subject to the 
 United States, inseparably attached to the do- 
 main of the Union, and under its sovereignty. 
 The Territory so remains, organized or unor- 
 ganized, under a Territorial government cre- 
 ated by Congress. Congress, by an enabling 
 act, permits it to organize as a State, to call a 
 convention to form a State constitution, to elect 
 under it, in such way as the convention ordains, 
 State officers, a State legislature, and, in the way 
 prescribed by the Constitution of the United 
 States, senators and representatives in Con- 
 gress. Here is a complete organization as a 
 State, yet, though called a State, it is no State 
 at all, and is simply territory, without a single 
 particle of political power. To be a State it 
 must be recognized and admitted by Congress 
 as a State in the Union, and when so recog- 
 nized and admitted it possesses, in union with 
 the other United States, supreme political sov- 
 ereignty, jointly in all general matters, and 
 individually in all private and particular mat- 
 ters. 
 
 The Territoiy gives up no sovereign powers
 
 288 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 by coming into the Union, for before it came 
 into the Union it had no sovereignty, no polit- 
 ical rights at all All the rights and powers it 
 holds are held by the simple fact that it has 
 become a State in the Union. This is as true of 
 the original States as of the new States ; for it 
 has been shown in the chapter on The United 
 States, that the original British sovereignty un- 
 der which the colonies were organized and ex- 
 isted passed, on the fact of independence, to the 
 States united, and not to the States severally. 
 Hence if nine States had ratified the constitu- 
 tion, and the other four had stood out, and re- 
 fused to do it, which was within their compe- 
 tency, they would not have been independent 
 sovereign States, outside of the Union, but Ter- 
 ritories under the Union. 
 
 Texas forms the only exception to the rule 
 that the States have never been independent 
 of the Union. All the other new States have 
 been formed from territory subject to the 
 Union. This is true of all the States formed 
 out of the Territory of the Northwest, and out 
 of the domain ceded by France, Spain, and 
 Mexico to the United States. AH these ces- 
 sions were held by the United States as terri- 
 tory immediately subject to the Union, before 
 being erected into States ; and by far the larger
 
 SECESSION. 289 
 
 part is so held even yet. But Texas was an 
 independent foreign state, and was annexed as 
 a State without having been first subjected as 
 territory to the United States. It of course 
 lost by annexation its separate sovereignty. 
 But this annexation was held by many to be 
 unconstitutional ; it was made when the State 
 sovereignty theory had gained possession of the 
 Government, and was annexed as a State in- 
 stead of being admitted as a State formed from 
 territory belonging to the United States, for the 
 very purpose of committing the nation to that 
 theory. Its annexation was the prologue, as the 
 Mexican war was the first act in the secession 
 drama, and as the epilogue is the suppression 
 of the rebellion on Texan soil. Texas is an 
 exceptional case, and forms no precedent, and 
 cannot be adduced as invalidating the general 
 rule. Omitting Texas, the simple fact is, the 
 States acquire all their sovereign powers by 
 being States in the Union, instead of losing or 
 surrendering them. 
 
 Our American statesmen have overlooked OP 
 not duly weighed the facts in the case, because, 
 holding the origin of government in compact, they 
 felt no need of looking back of the constitution 
 to find the basis of that unity of the American 
 people which they assert. Neither Mr. Madi- 
 
 19
 
 290 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 son nor Mr. Webster felt any difficulty in 
 asserting it as created by the convention of 
 1787, or in conceding the sovereignty of the 
 States prior to the Union, and denying its 
 existence after the ratification of the constitu- 
 tion. If it were not that they held that the 
 State originates in convention or the social com- 
 pact, there would be unpardonable presumption 
 on the part of the present writer in venturing 
 to hazard an assertion contrary to theirs. But, 
 if their theoiy was unsound, their practical doc- 
 trine was not; for they maintained that the 
 American people are one sovereign people, and 
 Mr. Quincy Adams, an authority inferior to 
 neither, maintained that they were always one 
 people, and that the States hold from the 
 Union, not the Union from the States. The 
 States without the Union cease to exist as polit- 
 ical communities : the Union without the States 
 ceases to be a Union, and becomes a vast cen- 
 tralized and consolidated state, ready to lapse 
 from a civilized into a barbaric, from a republi- 
 can to a despotic nation. 
 
 The State, under the American system, as 
 distinguished from Territory, is not in the 
 domain and population fixed to it, nor yet in 
 its exterior organization, but solely in the po- 
 litical powers, rights, and franchises which it
 
 SECESSION. 291 
 
 holds from the United States, or as one of the 
 United States. As these are rights, not obli- 
 gations, the State may resign or abdicate them 
 and cease to be a State, on the same principle 
 that any man may abdicate or forego his rights. 
 In doing so, the State breaks no oath of alle- 
 giance, fails to fulfil no obligation she con- 
 tracted as a State: she simply forgoes her 
 political rights and franchises. So far, then, 
 secession is possible, feasible, and not unconsti- 
 tional or unlawful. But it is, as Mr. Sumner 
 and others have maintained, simply State sui- 
 cide. Nothing hinders a State from commit- 
 ting suicide, if she chooses, any more than there 
 was something which compelled the Territory 
 to become a State in the Union against its will. 
 It is objected to this conclusion that the 
 States were, prior to the Union, independent 
 sovereign States, and secession would not de- 
 stroy the State, but restore it to its origi- 
 nal sovereignty and independence, as the seces- 
 sionists maintain. Certainly, if the States were, 
 prior to the Union, sovereign States j but this 
 is precisely what has been denied and dis- 
 proved ; for prior to the Union there were no 
 States. Secession restores, or reduces, rather, 
 the State to the condition it was in before its 
 admission into the Union; but that condition
 
 292 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 is that of Territory, or a Territory subject ti> 
 the United States, and not that of an indepen- 
 dent sovereign state. The State holds all its 
 political rights and powers in the Union from 
 the Union, and has none out of it, or in the con- 
 dition in which its population and domain were 
 before being a State in the Union. 
 
 State suicide, it has been urged, releases its 
 population and territory from their allegiance 
 to the Union, and as there is no rebellion where 
 there is no allegiance, resistance by its popula- 
 tion and territory to the Union, even war 
 against the Union, would not be rebellion, but 
 the simple assertion of popular sovereignty. 
 This is only the same objection in another form. 
 The lapse of the State releases the population 
 and territory from no allegiance to the Union ; 
 for their allegiance to the Union was not con- 
 tracted by their becoming a State, and they 
 have never in their State character owed alle- 
 giance to the United States. A State owes no 
 allegiance to the United States, for it is one of 
 them, and is jointly sovereign. The relation 
 between the United States and the State is 
 not the relation of suzerain and liegeman or 
 vassal. A State owes no allegiance, for it is not 
 subject to the Union ; it is never in their State 
 capacity that its population and territory do or
 
 SECESSION. 293 
 
 
 
 can rebel. Hence, the Government has steadily 
 denied that, in the late rebellion, any State as 
 such rebelled. 
 
 But as a State cannot rebel, no State can go 
 out of the Union ; and therefore no State in the 
 late rebellion has seceded, and the States that 
 passed secession ordinances are and all along 
 have been States in the Union. No State can 
 rebel, but it does not follow therefrom that no 
 State can secede or cease to exist as a State : it 
 only follows that secession, in the sense of State 
 suicide, or the abdication by the State of its 
 political rights and powers, is not rebellion. 
 Nor does it follow from the fact that no State 
 has rebelled, that no State has ceased to be a 
 State ; or that the States that passed secession 
 ordinances have been all along States in the 
 Union. 
 
 The secession ordinances were illegal, uncon- 
 stitutional, not within the competency of the 
 State, and therefore null and void from the be- 
 ginning. Unconstitutional, illegal, and not 
 within the competency of the State, so far as 
 intended to alienate any portion of the national, 
 domain and population thereto annexed, they 
 certainly were, and so far were void and of no 
 -effect ; but so far as intended to take the State 
 eimply as a State out of the Union, they were
 
 294 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 within the competency of the State, were not 
 illegal or unconstitutional, and therefore not 
 null and void. Acts unconstitutional in some 
 parts and constitutional in others are not 
 wholly void. The unconstitutionality vitiates 
 only the unconstitutional parts ; the others are 
 valid, are law, and recognized and enforced as 
 such by the courts. 
 
 The secession ordinances are void, because 
 they were never passed by the people of the 
 State, but by a faction that overawed them 
 and usurped the authority of the State. This 
 argument implies that, if a secession ordinance 
 is passed by the people proper of the State, it 
 is valid; which is more than they who urge it 
 against the State suicide doctrine are prepared 
 to concede. But the secession ordinances were 
 in every instance passed by the people of the 
 State in convention legally assembled, there- 
 fore by them in their highest State capacity 
 in the same capacity in which they ordain and 
 ratify the State constitution itself; and in nearly 
 all the States they were in addition ratified and 
 confirmed, if the facts have been correctly re- 
 ported, by a genuine plebiscitum, or direct vote 
 of the people. In all cases they were adopted 
 by a decided majority of the political people 
 of the State, and after their adoption they were
 
 SECESSION. 295 
 
 acquiesced in and indeed actively supported by 
 very nearly the whole people. The people of 
 the States adopting the secession ordinances 
 were far more unanimous in supporting seces- 
 sion than the people of the other States were 
 in sustaining the Government in its efforts to 
 suppress the rebellion by coercive measures. It 
 will not do, then, to ascribe the secession ordi- 
 nances to a faction. The people are never a 
 faction, nor is a faction ever the majority. 
 
 There has been a disposition at the North, 
 encouraged by the few Union men at the South, 
 to regard secession as the work of a few ambi- 
 tious and unprincipled leaders, who, by their 
 threats, their violence, and their overbearing 
 manner, forced the mass of the people of their 
 respective States into secession, against their 
 convictions and their will. No doubt there 
 were leaders at the South, as there are in 
 every great movement at the North ; no doubt 
 there were individuals in the seceding States 
 that held secession wrong in principle, and 
 were conscientiously attached to the Union; 
 no doubt, also, there were men who adhered to 
 the Union, not because they disapproved seces- 
 sion, but because they disliked the men at the 
 head of the movement, or because they were 
 keen-sighted enough to see that it could not
 
 296 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC. 
 
 succeed, that the Union ninst be the winning 
 side, and that by adhering to it they would 
 become the great and leading men of their re- 
 spective States, which they certainly could not 
 be under secession. Others sympathized fully 
 with what was called the Southern cause, held 
 firmly the right of secession, and hated cor- 
 dially the Yankees, but doubted either the 
 practicability or the expediency of secession, 
 and opposed it till resolved on, but, after it was 
 resolved on, yielded to none in their earnest 
 support of it. These last comprised the im- 
 mense majority of those who voted against 
 secession. Never could those called the South- 
 ern leaders have carried the secession ordi- 
 nances, never could they have carried on the 
 war with the vigor and determination, and with 
 such formidable armies as they collected and 
 armed for four years, making at times the des- 
 tiny of the Union wellnigh doubtful, if they 
 had not had the Southern heart with them, 
 if they had not been most heartily supported 
 by the overwhelming mass of the people. They 
 led a popular, not a factious movement. 
 
 No State, it is said again, has seceded, or 
 could secede. The State is territorial, not per- 
 sonal, and as no State can carry its territory 
 and population out of the Union, no State can
 
 SECESSION. 297 
 
 secede. Out of the jurisdiction of the Union, or 
 alienate them from the sovereign or national do- 
 main, very true ; but out of the Union as a State, 
 with rights, powers, or franchises in the Union, 
 not true. Secession is political, not territorial. 
 
 But the State holds from the territory or do- 
 main. The people are sovereign because at- 
 tached to a sovereign territory, not the domain 
 because held by a sovereign people, as was 
 established by the analysis of the early Roman 
 constitution. The territory of the States cor- 
 responds to the sacred territory of Rome, to 
 which was attached the Roman sovereignty. 
 That territory, once surveyed and consecrated, 
 remained sacred and the ruling territory, and 
 <3ould not be divested of its sacred and govern- 
 ing character. The portions of the territory 
 of the United States once erected into States 
 and consecrated as ruling territory can never 
 be deprived, except by foreign conquest or suc- 
 cessful revolution, of its sacred character and 
 inviolable rights. 
 
 The State is territorial, not personal, and is 
 constituted \>jpuUic, not by private wealth, and 
 is always respublica or commonwealth, in dis- 
 tinction from despotism or monarchy in its 
 oriental sense, which is founded on private 
 wealth, or which assumes that the authority to
 
 298 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 govern, or sovereignty, is the private estate of 
 the sovereign. All power is a domain, but 
 there is no domain without a dominus or lord. 
 In oriental monarchies the dominus is the mon 
 arch ; in republics it is the public or people 
 fixed to the soil or territory, that is, the people 
 in their territorial, and not in their personal or 
 genealogical relation. The people of the Uni- 
 ted States are sovereign only within the terri- 
 tory or domain of the United States, and their 
 sovereignty is a state, because fixed, attached,, 
 or limited to that specific territory. It is fixed 
 to the soil, not nomadic. In barbaric nations- 
 power is nomadic and personal,'or genealogical, 
 confined to no locality, but attaches to the chief, 
 and follows wherever he goes. The Gothic 
 chiefs hold their power by a personal title, and 
 have the same authority in their tribes on the 
 Po or the Ehone as on the banks of the Elbe 
 or the Danube. Power migrates with the chief 
 and his people, and may be exercised where- 
 ever he and they find themselves, as a Swedish; 
 queen held when she ordered the execution 
 of one of her subjects at Paris, without asking 
 permission of the territorial lord. In these- 
 nations, power is a personal right, or a private 
 estate, not a state which exists only as attached 
 to the domain, and, as attached to the domain,
 
 SECESSION. 
 
 exists independently of the chief or the govern- 
 ment. The distinction is between public do- 
 main and private domain. 
 
 The American system is' republican, and, con- 
 trary to what some democratic politicians assert, 
 the American democracy is territorial, not per- 
 sonal ; not territorial because the majority of 
 the people are agriculturists or landholders,, 
 but because all political rights, powers, or fran- 
 chises are territorial. The sovereign people of 
 the United States are sovereign only within the 
 territory of the United States. The great body 
 of the freemen have the elective franchise,, but 
 no one has it save in his State, his county, his 
 town, his ward, his precinct. Out of the elec- 
 tion district in which he is domiciled, a citizen 
 of the United States has no more right to vote 
 than has the citizen or subject of a foreign* 
 state. This explains what is meant by the- 
 attachment of power to the territory, and the 
 dependence of the state on the domain. The 
 state, in republican states, exists only as in- 
 separably united with the public domain ; un-- 
 der feudalism, power was joined to territory or 
 domain, but the domain was held as a private r 
 not as a public domain. All sovereignty rests- 
 on domain or proprietorship, and is dominion.. 
 The proprietor is the dominus or lord, and ii>
 
 300 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 republican states the lord is society, or the 
 public, and the domain is held for the common 
 or public good of all. All political rights are 
 held from society, or the dominus, and there- 
 fore it is the elective franchise is held from so- 
 ciety, and is a civil right, as distinguished from 
 & natural, or even a purely personal right. 
 
 As there is no domain without a lord or 
 dominus, territory alone cannot possess any po- 
 litical rights or franchises, for it is not a domain. 
 In the American system, the dominus or lord 
 is not the particular State, but the United 
 States, arid the domain of tho whole territory, 
 whether erected into particular States or not, 
 is in the United States alone. The United 
 States do not part with the dominion of that 
 portion of the national domain included within 
 a particular State. The State holds the domain 
 not separately but jointly, as inseparably one 
 of the United States : separated, it has no do- 
 minion, is no State, and is no longer a joint 
 sovereign at all, and the territory that it in- 
 cluded falls into the condition of any other ter- 
 ritory held by the United States not erected 
 into one of the United States. 
 
 Lawyers, indeed, tell us that the eminent do- 
 main is in the particular State, and that all es- 
 cheats are to the State, not -to the United
 
 SECESSION. 301 
 
 States. All escheats of private estates, but no 
 public or general escheats. But this has nothing 
 to do with the public domain. The United 
 States are the dominus, but they have, by the 
 constitution, divided the powers of govern- 
 ment be ween a General government and partic- 
 ular State governments, and ordained that all 
 matters of a general nature, common to all the 
 States, should be placed under the supreme 
 control of the former, and all matters of a pri- 
 vate or particular character under the supreme 
 control of the latter. The eminent domain of 
 private estates is in the particular State, 
 but the sovereign authority in the particular 
 State is that of the United States expressing 
 itself through the State government. The 
 United States, in the States as well as out 
 of them, is the dominus, as the States respect- 
 ively would soon find if they were to undertake 
 to alienate any part of their domain to a foreign 
 power, or even to the citizens or subjects of a 
 foreign State, as is also evident from the fact 
 that the United States, in the way prescribed 
 by the constitution, may enlarge or contract at 
 will the rights and powers of the States. The 
 mistake on this point grows out of the habit 
 of restricting the action of the United States to 
 the General government, and not recollecting
 
 502 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 that the United States govern one class of sub- 
 jects through the General government and an- 
 other class through State governments, but that 
 it is one and the same authority that governs 
 in both. 
 
 The analogy borrowed from the Roman con- 
 stitution, as far as applicable, proves the reverse 
 of what is intended. The dominus of the sacred 
 territory was the city, or the Roman state, not the 
 sacred territory itself, The territory received 
 the tenant, and gave him as tenant the right to 
 a seat in the senate ; but the right of the terri- 
 tory was derived not from the domain, but from 
 the dominus, that is, the city. But the city 
 could revoke its grant, as it practically did when 
 it conferred the privileges of Roman citizenship 
 on the provincials, and gave to plebeians seats 
 in the senate. Moreover, nothing in Roman 
 history indicates that to the validity of a sena- 
 tus consultum it was necessary to count the 
 vacant domains of the sacred territory. The 
 particular domain must, under the American 
 system, be counted when it is held by a State, 
 but of itself alone, or even with its population, 
 it is not a State, and therefore as a State domain 
 is vacant and without any political rights or 
 powers whatever. 
 
 To argue that the territory and population
 
 SECESSION. 303 
 
 a State in the Union must needs always 
 "be so, would be well enough if a State in the 
 Union were individually a sovereign state ; for 
 territory, with its population not subject to an- 
 other, is always a sovereign state, .even though 
 its government has been subverted. But this 
 is not the fact, for territory with its population 
 does not constitute a State in the Union ; and, 
 therefore, when of a State nothing remains but 
 territory and population, the State has evident- 
 ly disappeared. It will not do then to main- 
 tain that State suicide is impossible, and that 
 the States that adopted secession ordinances 
 have never for a moment ceased to be States in 
 the Union, and are free, whenever they choose, 
 to send their representatives and senators to 
 occupy their vacant seats in Congress. They 
 must be reorganized first. 
 
 There would also be some embarrassment to 
 the government in holding that the States that 
 passed the secession ordinance remain, notwith- 
 standing, States in the Union. The citizens of 
 a State in the Union cannot be rebels to the 
 United States, unless they are rebels to their 
 State ; and rebels to their State they are not, 
 unless they resist its authority and make war 
 on it. The authority of the State in the Union 
 is a legal authority, and the citizen in obeying
 
 304 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 it is disloyal neither to the State nor to the 
 Union. The citizens in the States that made 
 war on the United States did not resist their 
 State, for they acted by its authority. The 
 only men, on this supposition, in them, who 
 have been traitors or rebels, are precisely the 
 Union men who have refused to go with their 
 respective States, and have resisted, even with 
 armed force, the secession ordinances. The 
 several State governments, under which the so- 
 called rebels carried on the war for the destruc- 
 tion of the Union, if the States are in the 
 Union, were legal and loyal governments of 
 their respective States, for they were legally 
 elected and installed, and conformed to their 
 respective State constitutions. All the acts of 
 these governments have been constitutional 
 Their entering into a confederacy for attaining 
 a separate nationality has been legal, and the 
 debts contracted by the States individually, or 
 by the confederacy legally formed by them, 
 have been legally contracted, stand good against 
 them, and perhaps against the United States, 
 The war against them has been all wrong, and 
 the confederates killed in battle have been 
 murdered by the United States. The blockade 
 has been illegal, for no nation can blockade its 
 own ports, and the captures and seizures under
 
 SECESSION. 305 
 
 it, robberies. The Supreme Court has been 
 wrong in declaring the war a territorial civil 
 war, as well as the government in acting ac- 
 cordingly. Now, all these conclusions are 
 manifestly false and absurd, and therefore the 
 assumption that the States in question have 
 all along been States in the Union cannot be 
 sustained. 
 
 It is easy to understand the resistance the 
 Government offers to the doctrine that a State 
 may commit suicide, or by its own act abdicate 
 its rights and cease to be a State in the Union. 
 It is admissible on no theory of the constitu- 
 tion that has been widely entertained. It is 
 not admissible on Mr. Calhoun's theory of State 
 sovereignty, for on that theory a State in going 
 out of the Union does not cease to be a State, 
 but simply resumes the powers it had dele- 
 gated to the General government. It cannot 
 be maintained on Mr. Madison's or Mr. Web 
 ster's theory, that the States prior to the Union 
 were severally sovereign, but by the Union were 
 constituted one people ; for, if this one people are 
 understood to be a federal people, State seces- 
 sion would not be State suicide, but State inde- 
 pendence ; and if understood to be one consol 
 idated or centralized people, it would be simply 
 
 insurrection or rebellion against the national 
 20
 
 306 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 authority, laboring to make itself a revolution, 
 The government seems to have understood Mr. 
 Madison's theory in both senses in the consoli- 
 dated sense, in declaring the secessionists insur- 
 'gents and rebels, and in the federal sense, in 
 maintaining that they have never seceded, and 
 are still States in the Union, in full possession 
 of all their political or State rights. Perhaps, 
 if the government, instead of borrowing from 
 contradictoiy theories of the constitution which 
 have gained currency, had examined in the 
 light of historical facts the constitution itself, 
 it would have been as constitutional in its doc- 
 trine as it has been loyal and patriotic, ener- 
 getic and successful in its military administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Another reason why the doctrine that State 
 secession is State suicide has appeared so offen- 
 sive to many, is the supposition entertained at 
 one time by some of its friends, that the disso- 
 lution of the State vacates all rights and fran- 
 chises held under it. But this is a mistake. 
 The principle is well known and recognized by 
 the jurisprudence of all civilized nations, that 
 in the transfer of a territory from one territo- 
 rial sovereign to another, the laws in force 
 under the old sovereign remain in force after 
 the change, till abrogated, or others are enacted
 
 SECESSION. 307 
 
 m their place by the new sovereign, except 
 such as are necessarily abrogated by the change 
 itself of the sovereign ; not, indeed, because the 
 old sovereign retains any authority, but because 
 such is presumed by the courts to be the will 
 of the new sovereign. The principle applies 
 in the case of the death of a State in the Union. 
 The laws of the State are territorial, till abro- 
 gated by competent authority, remain the lex 
 looij and are in full force. All that would be va- 
 cated would be the public rights of the State, 
 and in no case the private rights of citizens, 
 corporations, or laws affecting them. 
 
 But the same conclusion is reached in an 
 other way. In the lapse of a State or its re- 
 turn to the condition of a Territory, there is 
 really no change of sovereignty. The sover- 
 eignty, both before and after, is the United 
 States. The sovereign authority that governs 
 in the State government, as we have seen, 
 though independent of the General govern- 
 ment, is the United States. The United States 
 govern certain matters through a General gov- 
 ernment, and others through particular State 
 governments. The private rights and interests 
 created, regulated, or protected by the particu- 
 lar State, are created, regulated, or protected by 
 the United States, as much and as plenarily as
 
 308 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 if done by the General government, and the 
 State laws creating, regulating, or protecting 
 them can be abrogated by no power known 
 to the constitution, but either the State itself, 
 or the United States in convention legally 
 assembled. If this were what is meant by the 
 States that have seceded, or professed to secede, 
 remaining States in the Union, they would, in- 
 deed, be States still in the Union, notwithstand- 
 ing secession, and the government would be 
 right in saying that no State can secede. But 
 this is not what is meant, at least not all that 
 is meant. It is meant not only that the pri- 
 vate rights of citizens and corporations remain, 
 but the citizens retain all the public rights of 
 the State, that is, the right to representation in 
 Congress and in the electoral college, and the 
 right to sit in the convention, which is not true. 
 But the correction of the misapprehension 
 that the private rights and interests are lost by 
 the lapse of the State may remove the graver 
 prejudices against the doctrine of State suicide, 
 and dispose loyal and honest Union men to 
 hear the reasons by which it is supported, and 
 which nobody has refuted or can refute on 
 constitutional grounds. A Territory by com- 
 ing into the Union becomes a State ; a State 
 by going out of the Union becomes a Territory.
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 309 
 
 CHAPTEK 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 
 
 THE question of reconstructing the States 
 that seceded will be practically settled before 
 these pages can see the light, and will therefore 
 "be considered here only so far as necessary to 
 complete the view of the constitution of the 
 United States. The manner in which the gov- 
 ernment proposed to settle, has settled, or will 
 settle the question, proves that both it and the 
 American people have only confused views of 
 the rights and powers of the General govern- 
 ment, but imperfectly comprehend the distinc- 
 tion between the legislative and executive de- 
 partments of that government, and are far more 
 familiar with party tactics than with constitu- 
 tional law. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine any thing 
 more unconstitutional, more crude, or more 
 glaringly impolitic than the mode of recon- 
 struction indicated by the various executive 
 proclamations that have been issued, bearing on 
 the subject, or even 'by the bill for guaranteeing 
 the States republican governments, that passed
 
 310 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Congress, but which failed to obtain the Presi- 
 dent's signature. It is, in some measure, char- 
 acteristic of the American government to un- 
 derstand how things ought to be done only 
 when they are done and it is too late to do 
 them in the right way. Its wisdom conies after 
 action, as if engaged in a series of experiments. 
 But, happily for the nation, few blunders are 
 committed that with our young life and elas- 
 ticity are irreparable, and that, after all, are 
 greater than are ordinarily committed by older 
 and more experienced nations. They are not of 
 the most fatal character, and are, for the most 
 part, such as are incident to the conceit, the heed- 
 lessness, the ardor, and the impatience of youth, 
 and need excite no serious alarm for the future. 
 There has been no little confusion in the 
 public mind, and in that of the government 
 itself, as to what reconstruction is, who has the 
 power to reconstruct, and how that power is to 
 be exercised. Are the States that seceded 
 States in the Union, with no other disability 
 than that of having no legal governments ? or are 
 they Territories subject to the Union ? Is their 
 reconstruction their erection into new States,, 
 or their restoration as States previously in the 
 Union ? Is the power to reconstruct in the States 
 themselves ? or is it in the General government I
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 311 
 
 If partly in the people and partly in the Gen- 
 eral government, is the part in the General 
 government in Congress, or in the Executive ? 
 If in Congress, can the Executive, without the 
 authority of Congress, proceed to reconstruct, 
 simply leaving it for Congress to accept or 
 reject the reconstructed State? If the power 
 is partly in the people of the disorganized 
 States, who or what defines that people, decides 
 who may or may not vote in the reorganiza- 
 tion? On all these questions there has been 
 much crude, if not erroneous, thinking, and 
 much inconsistent and contradictory action. 
 
 The government started with the theory 
 that no State had seceded or could secede, and 
 held that, throughout, the States in rebellion 
 continued to be States in the Union. That is. 
 it held secession to be a purely personal and 
 not a territorial insurrection. Yet it proclaimed 
 eleven States to be in insurrection against the 
 United States, blockaded their ports, and inter- 
 dicted all trade and intercourse of any kind 
 with them. The Supreme Court, in order to 
 sustain the blockade and interdict as legal, 
 decided the war to be not a war against simply 
 individual or personal insurgents, but " a terri- 
 torial civil war." This negatived the assump- 
 tion that the States that took up arms against
 
 812 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the United States remained all the while peace- 
 able and loyal States, with all their political 
 rights and powers in the Union. The States in 
 the Union are integral elements of the political 
 sovereignty, for the sovereignty of the American 
 nation vests in the States united; and it is 
 absurd to pretend that the eleven States that 
 made th rebellion and were carrying on a for- 
 midable war against the United States, were in 
 the Union, an integral element of that sovereign 
 authority which was carrying on a yet more 
 formidable war against them. Nevertheless, 
 the government still held to its first assump- 
 tion, that the States in rebellion continued to 
 be States in the Union loyal States, with all 
 their rights and franchises unimpaired ! 
 
 That the government should at first have 
 favored or acquiesced in the doctrine that no 
 State had ceased to be a State in the Union, is 
 not to be wondered at. The extent and deter- 
 mination of the secession movement were im- 
 perfectly understood, and the belief among the 
 supporters of the government, and, perhaps, of 
 the government itself, was, that it was a spas- 
 modic movement for a temporaiy purpose, 
 rather than a fixed determination to found an 
 independent separate nationality; that it was 
 and would be sustained by the real majority
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 313 
 
 of the people of none of the States, with per- 
 haps the exception of South Carolina ; that the 
 true policy of the government would be to 
 treat the seceders with great forbearance, to 
 avoid all measures likely to exasperate them 
 or to embarrass their loyal fellow-citizens, to 
 act simply on the defensive, and to leave the 
 Union men in the several seceding States to 
 gain a political victory at the polls over the 
 secessionists, and to return their States to their 
 normal position in the Union. 
 
 The government may not have had much 
 faith in this policy, and Mr. Lincoln's personal 
 authority might be cited to the effect that it 
 had not, but it was urged strongly by the 
 Union men of the Border States. The admin- 
 istration was hardly seated in office, and its 
 members were new men, without administra- 
 tive experience ; the President, who had been 
 legally elected indeed, but without a majority 
 of the popular votes, was far from having the 
 full confidence even of the party that elected 
 him; opinions were divided; party spirit ran 
 high ; the excitement was great, the crisis was 
 imminent, the government found itself left by 
 its predecessor without an army or a navy, and 
 almost without arms or ordnance ; it knew not 
 how far it could count on popular support, and
 
 314 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 was hardly aware whom it could trust or shoul J 
 distrust ; all was hurry and confusion ; and 
 what could the government do but to gain 
 time, keep off active war as long as possi- 
 ble, conciliate all it could, and take ground 
 which at the time seemed likely to rally the 
 largest number of the people to its support ? 
 There were men then, warm friends .of the ad- 
 ministration, and still warmer friends of their 
 country, who believed that a bolder, a less- 
 timid, a less cautious policy would have been 
 wiser; that in revolutionary times boldness, what 
 in other times would be rashness, is the highest 
 prudence, on the side of the government as- 
 well as on the side of the revolution ; that 
 when once it has shown itself, the rebellion 
 that hesitates, deliberates, consults, is defeated 
 and so is the government. The seceders owed 
 from the first their successes not to their supe- 
 rior organization, to their better preparation,, 
 or to the better discipline and appointment of 
 their armies, but to their very rashness, to their 
 audacity even, and the hesitancy, caution, and 
 deliberation of the government. Napoleon 
 owed his successes as general and civilian far 
 more to the air of power he assumed, and the 
 conviction he produced of his invincibility in 
 the minds of his opponents^ than, to his civil or
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 31f> 
 
 military strategy and tactics, admirable as they 
 both were. 
 
 But the government believed it wisest to 
 adopt a conciliatory, and, in many respects, a- 
 temporizing policy, and to rely more on weak- 
 ening the secessionists in their respective States 
 than on strengthening the hands and hearts of its* 
 own stanch and uncompromising supporters. It 
 must strengthen the Union party in the insur- 
 rectionary States, and as this party hoped to- 
 succeed by political manipulation rather than, 
 by military force, the governmont must rely 
 rather on a show of military power than on- 
 gaining any decisive battle. As it hoped, or 
 'affected to hope, to suppress the rebellion in- 
 the States that seceded through their loyal citi- 
 zens, it was obliged to assume that secession 
 was the work of a faction, of a few ambitious 
 and disappointed politicians, and that the States 
 were all in the Union, and continued in the loyal 
 portion of their inhabitants. Hence its aid to 
 the loyal Virginians to organize as the State 
 of Virginia, and its subsequent efforts to organ- 
 ize the Union men in Louisiana, Arkansas, and 
 Tennessee, and its disposition to recognize their 
 organization in each of those States as the State 
 itself, though including only a small minority 
 of the territorial people. Had the facts been
 
 316 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 as assumed, the government might have treated 
 the loyal people of each State as the State it- 
 self, without any gross usurpation of power; 
 but, unhappily, the facts assumed were not facts, 
 and it was soon found that the Union party in 
 all the States that seceded, except 'the western 
 part of Virginia and the eastern section of Ten- 
 nessee, after secession had been carried by the 
 popular vote, went almost unanimously with 
 the secessionists ; for they as well as the seces- 
 sionists held the doctrine of State sovereignty ; 
 and to treat the handful of citizens that re- 
 mained loyal .in each State as the State itself 
 became ridiculous, and the government should 
 have seen and acknowledged it. 
 
 The rebellion being really territorial, and not 
 personal, the State that seceded was no more 
 continued in the loyal than in the disloyal pop- 
 ulation. While the war lasted, both were pub- 
 lic enemies of the United States, and neither 
 had or could have any rights as a State in the 
 Union. The law recognizes a solidarity of all 
 the citizens of a State, and assumes that, when 
 a State is at war, all its citizens are at war, 
 whether approving the war or not. The loyal 
 people in the States that seceded incurred none 
 of the pains and penalties of treason, but they 
 retained none of the political rights of the
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 317 
 
 State in the Union, and, in reorganizing the 
 State after the suppression of the rebellion, they 
 have no more right to take part than the se- 
 cessionists themselves. They,- as well as the 
 secessionists, have followed the territory. It 
 was on this point that the government com- 
 mitted its gravest mistake. As to the reor- 
 ganization or reconstruction of the State, the 
 whole territorial people stood on the same 
 footing. 
 
 Taking the decision of the Supreme Court 
 as conclusive on the subject, the rebellion was 
 territorial, and, therefore, placed all the States 
 as States out of the Union, and retained them 
 only as population and territory under or sub 
 ject to the Union. The States ceased to exist, 
 that is, as integral elements of the national sov- 
 ereignty. The question then occurred, are they 
 to be erected into new States, or are they to be 
 reconstructed and restored to the Union as the 
 identical old States that seceded ? Shall their 
 identity be revived and preserved, or shall they 
 be new States, regardless of that identity ? 
 There can be no question that the work to be 
 done was that of restoration, not of creation ; no 
 tribe should perish from Israel, no star be 
 struck from the firmament of the Unixm. Every 
 inhabitant of the fallen States, and every citi-
 
 .818 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC?. 
 
 -zen of the United States must desire them to 
 be revived and continued with their old names 
 and boundaries, and all true Americans wish 
 to continue the' constitution as it is, and the 
 Union as it was. Who would see old Virginia, 
 the Virginia of revolutionary fame, of Wash- 
 ington, Jefferson, Madison, of Monroe, the " Old 
 Dominion," once the leading State of the 
 Union, dead without hope of resurrection ? or 
 South Carolina, the land of Rutledge, Moul- 
 trie, Laurens, Hayne, Sumter, and Marion ? 
 There is something grating to him who values 
 State associations, and would encourage State 
 emulation and State pride, in the mutilation of 
 the Old Dominion, and the erection within her 
 borders of the new State called West Virginia. 
 States in the Union are not mere prefectures, or 
 mere dependencies on the General government, 
 created for the convenience of administra- 
 tion. They have an individual, a real exist- 
 ence of their own, as much so as have the in- 
 dividual members of society. They are free 
 members, not of a confederation indeed, but of 
 a higher political community, and reconstruc- 
 tion should restore the identity of their indivi- 
 dual life, suspended for a moment by secession, 
 but capable of resuscitation. 
 
 These States had become, indeed, for a mo-
 
 HECOXSTRUCTION. 319 
 
 jnent, territory under the Union; but in no 
 instance had they or could they become terri- 
 tory that had never existed as States. The 
 fact that the territory and people had existed 
 as a State, could with regard to none of them 
 be obliterated, and, therefore, they could not 
 be erected into absolutely new States. The 
 process of reconstructing them could not be the 
 same as that of creating new States. In ere 
 ating a new State, Congress, ex necessitate, be- 
 cause there is no other power except the na- 
 tional convention competent to do it, defines the 
 boundaries of the new State, and prescribes the 
 electoral people, or who may take part in the pre- 
 liminary organization; but in reconstructing 
 States it does neither, for both are done by a law 
 Congress is not competent to abrogate or modify, 
 and which can be done only by the United 
 States in convention assembled, or by the State 
 itself after its restoration. The government 
 has conceded this, and, in part, has acted on it. 
 It preserves, except in Virginia, the old boun- 
 daries, and recognizes, or rather professes to 
 recognize the old electoral law, only it claims 
 the right to exclude from the electoral people 
 those who have voluntarily taken part in the 
 rebellion. 
 
 The work to be done in States that have se-
 
 320 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ceded is that of reconstruction, not creation ;, 
 and this work is not and cannot be done exclu- 
 sively nor chiefly by the General government, 
 either by the Executive or by Congress. That 
 government can appoint military, or even pro- 
 visional govern ors, wh:> may designate the time 
 and place of holding the convention of the electo- 
 ral people of the disorganized State, as also the 
 time and place of holding the elections of dele- 
 gates to it, and superintend the elections so far 
 as to see the polls are opened, and that none 
 but qualified electors vote, but nothing more. 
 All the rest is the work of the territorial elec- 
 toral people themselves, fpr the State within its 
 own sphere must, as one of the United States,' 
 be a self-governing community. The General 
 government may concede or withhold permis- 
 sion to the disorganized State to reorganize, as 
 it judges advisable, but it cannot itself reorgan- 
 ize it. , If it concedes the permission, it must 
 leave the whole electoral people under the 
 pre-existing electoral law free to take part in 
 the work of reorganization, and to vote ac- 
 cording to their own judgment. It has no au- 
 thority to purge the electoral people, and say 
 who may or may not vote, for the whole ques- 
 tion of suffrage and the qualifications of electors 
 is left to the State, and can be settled neither
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 321 
 
 by an act of Congress nor by an Executive 
 proclamation. 
 
 If the government theory were admissible, 
 that the disorganized States remain States in 
 the Union, the General government could have 
 nothing to say on the subject, and could no 
 more interfere with elections in any one of them 
 than it could with elections in Massachusetts or 
 New York. But even on the doctrine here de- 
 fended it can interfere with them only by way 
 of general superintendence. The citizens have, 
 indeed, lost their political rights, but not their 
 private rights. Secession has not dissolved 
 civil society, or abrogated any of the laws of 
 the disorganized State that were in force at the 
 time of secession. The error of the government 
 is not in maintaining that these laws survive 
 the secession ordinances, and remain the territo- 
 rial law, or lex loci, but in maintaining that they 
 do so by will of the State, that has, as a State, 
 really lapsed. They do so by will of the Uni- 
 ted States, which enacted them through the in- 
 dividual State, and which has not in conven- 
 tion abrogated them, save the law authorizing 
 slavery, and its dependent laws. 
 
 This point has already been made, but as it 
 is one of the niceties of the American constitu- 
 tion, it may not be amiss to elaborate it at
 
 322 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 greater length. The doctrine of Mr. Jefferson, 
 Mr. Madison, and the majority of our jurists, 
 would seem to be that the States, under God, 
 are severally sovereign in all matters not ex- 
 pressly confided to the General government, 
 and therefore that the American sovereignty is 
 divided, and the citizen owes a double allegi- 
 ance allegiance to his State, and allegiance to 
 the United States as if there was a United 
 States distinguishable from the States. Hence 
 Mr. Seward, in an official dispatch to our minis- 
 ter at the court of St. James, says r "The citizen 
 owes allegiance to the State and to the United 
 States." And nearly all who hold allegiance 
 is due to the Union at all, hold that it is also 
 due to the States, only that which is due to 
 the United States is paramount, as that under 
 feudalism due to the overlord. But this is not 
 the case. There is no divided sovereignty, no 
 divided allegiance. Sovereignty is one, and 
 vests not in the General government or in the 
 State government, but in the United States, and 
 allegiance is due to the United States, and to 
 them alone. Treason can be committed only 
 against the United States, and against a State 
 "only because against the United States, and is 
 properly cognizable only by the Federal courts. 
 Hence the Union men committed no treason in
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 323 
 
 refusing to submit to the secession ordinances 
 of their respective States, and in sustaining the 
 national arms against secession. 
 
 There are two very common mistakes : the 
 one that the States individually possess all the 
 powers not delegated to the General govern- 
 ment; and the other that the Union, or United 
 States, have only delegated powers. But the 
 United States possess all the powers of a sover- 
 eign state, and the States individually and the 
 General government possess only such powers 
 as the United States in convention delegate to 
 them respectively. The sovereign is neither 
 the General government nor the States sever- 
 ally, but the United States in convention. The 
 United States are the one indivisible sovereign, 
 and this sovereign governs alike general mat- 
 ters m the General government, and particular 
 matters in the several State governments. All 
 legal authority in either emanates from this one 
 indivisible and plenary sovereign, and hence 
 the laws enacted by a State are really enacted 
 by the United States, and derive from them 
 their force and vitality as laws. Hence, as the 
 United States survive the particular State, the 
 lapse of the State does not abrogate the State 
 laws, or dissolve civil society within its juris- 
 diction
 
 824 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 This ia evidently so, because civil society in 
 the particular State does not rest on the State 
 alone, nor on Congress, but on the United 
 States. Hence all civil rights of every sort 
 created by the individual State are really held 
 from the United States, and therefore it was 
 that the people of non-slaveholding States were, 
 as citizens of the United States, responsible 
 for the existence of slavery in the States that 
 seceded. There is a solidarity of States in 
 the Union as there is of individuals in each of 
 the States. The political error of the Aboli- 
 tionists was not in calling upon the people of 
 the United States to abolish slavery, but in 
 calling upon them to abolish it through the 
 General government, which had no jurisdiction 
 in the case ; or in their sole capacity as men, 
 on purely humanitarian grounds, which were 
 the abrogation of all government and civil 
 society itself, instead of calling upon them to 
 do it as the United States in convention assem- 
 bled, or by an amendment to the constitution 
 of the United States in the way ordained by 
 that constitution itself. This understood, the 
 constitution and laws of a defunct State remain 
 in force by virtue of the will of the United 
 States, till the State is raised from the dead, 
 restored to life and activity, and repeals or al-
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 325 
 
 ters them, or till they are repealed or altered 
 by the United States or the national conven- 
 tion. But as the defunct State could not, and 
 the convention had not repealed or altered 
 them, save in the one case mentioned, the 
 General government had no alternative but to 
 treat them and all rights created by them 
 as the territorial law, and to respect them as 
 such. 
 
 What then do the people of the several 
 States that seceded lose by secession? They 
 lose, besides incurring, so far as disloyal, the 
 pains and penalties of treason, their political 
 rights, or right, as has just been said, to be in 
 their own department self-governing commu- 
 nities, with the right of representation in Con- 
 gress and the electoral colleges, and to sit in 
 the national convention, or of being counted in 
 the ratification of amendments to the consti- 
 tution precisely what it was shown a Terri- 
 torial people gain by being admitted as a State 
 into the Union. This is the difference between 
 the constitutional doctrine and that adopted 
 by Mr. Lincoln's and Mr. Johnson's Adminis- 
 trations. But what authority, on this consti- 
 tutional doctrine, does the General government 
 gain over the people of States that secede, that 
 it has not over others ? As to their internal
 
 326 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 constitution, their private rights of person or 
 property, it gains none. It has over them, till 
 they are reconstructed and restored to the 
 Union, the right to institute for them provi- 
 sional governments, civil or military, precisely 
 as it has for the people of a territory that is 
 not and has never been one of the United 
 States ; but in their reconstruction it has less,. 
 for the geographical boundaries and electoral 
 people of each are already denned by a law 
 which does not depend on its will, and which it 
 can neither abrogate nor modify. Here is the 
 difference between the constitutional doctrine 
 and that of the so-called radicals. The State 
 has gone, but its laws remain, so far as the 
 United States in convention does not abrogate 
 them ; not because the authority of the State 
 survives, but because the United States so will r 
 or are presumed to will. The United States 
 have by a constitutional amendment abrogated 
 the laws of the several States authorizing 
 slavery, and prohibited slavery forever within 
 the jurisdiction of the Union; and no State 
 can now be reconstructed and be admitted into 
 the Union with a constitution that permits 
 slaveiy, for that would be repugnant to the 
 constitution of the United States. If the con- 
 stitutional amendment is not recognized as rati-
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 327 
 
 fied by the requisite number of States, it is the 
 fault of the government in persisting in count- 
 ing as States what are no States. Negro suf- 
 frage, as white suffrage, is at present a question 
 for the States. 
 
 The United States guarantee to such State 
 a republican form of government. And this 
 guarantee, no doubt, authorizes Congress to 
 intervene in the internal constitution of a State 
 so far as to force it to adopt a republican form 
 of government, but not so far as to organize a 
 government for a State, or to compel a territo- 
 rial people to accept or adopt a State constitu- 
 tion for themselves. If' a State attempts to 
 organize a form of government not republican, 
 it can prevent it ; and if a Territory adopts an 
 unrepublican form, it can force it to change its 
 constitution to one that is republican, or com- 
 pel it to remain a Territory under a provisional 
 government. But this gives the General gov- 
 ernment no authority in the organization or 
 re-organization of States beyond seeing that 
 the form of government adopted by the terri- 
 torial people is republican. To press it further, 
 to make the constitutional clause a pretext for 
 assuming the entire control of the organization 
 or re-organization of a State, is a manifest abuse 
 a palpable violation of the constitution and
 
 828 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of the whole American system. The authority 
 given by the clause is specific, and is no 
 authority for intervention in the general recon- 
 struction of the lapsed State. It gives author- 
 ity in no question raised by secession or its 
 consequences, and can give none, except, from 
 within or from without, there is an overt at- 
 tempt to organize a State in the Union with an 
 unrepublican form of government. 
 
 The General government gives permission to 
 the territorial people of the defunct State to 
 re-organize, or it contents itself with suffering 
 them, without special recognition, to reorgan- 
 ize in their own way, 'and apply to Congress for 
 admission, leaving it to Congress to admit them 
 as a State, or not, according to its own discre- 
 tion, in like manner as it admits a new State ; 
 but the re-organization itself must be the work 
 of the territorial people themselves, under 
 their old electoral law. The power that recon- 
 structs is in the people themselves ; the power 
 that admits them, or receives them into the 
 Union, is Congress. The Executive, therefore, 
 has no authority in the matter, beyond that of 
 seeing that the laws are duly complied with ; 
 and whatever power he assumes, whether by 
 proclamation or by instructions given to the 
 provisional governors, civil or military, is
 
 RECONSTRUCTION 329 
 
 simply a usurpation of the power of Congress, 
 which it rests with Congress to condone or not, 
 as it may see fit. Executive proclamations, 
 excluding a larger or a smaller portion of the 
 electoral or territorial people from the exercise 
 of the elective franchise in re-organizing the 
 .State, and executive efforts to throw the 'State 
 into the hands of one political party or another, 
 are an unwarrantable assumption of power, for 
 the President, in relation to reconstruction, acts 
 only under the peace powers of the constitu- 
 tion, and simply as the first executive officer of 
 the Union. His business is to execute the laws, 
 not to make them. His legislative authority is 
 confined to his qualified veto on the acts of 
 Congress, and to the recommendation to Con- 
 gress of such measures as he believes are needed 
 by the country. 
 
 In reconstructing a disorganized State, neither 
 Congress nor the Executive has any power that 
 either has not in time of peace. The Executive, 
 as commander-in-chief of the army, may ex neces- 
 sitate place it ad interim under a military gov- 
 ernor, but he cannot appoint even a provisional 
 civil governor till Congress has created the 
 office and given him authority to fill it ; far less 
 can he legally give instructions to the civil 
 governor as to the mode or manner of recon-
 
 330 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 structing the disorganized State, or decide wha 
 may or may not vote in the preliminary re- 
 organization. The Executive could do nothing 
 of the sort, even in regard to a Territory never 
 erected into a State. It belongs to Congress, 
 not to the Executive, to erect Territorial or pro- 
 visional governments, like those of Dacotah, 
 Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, and New Mexico ; 
 and Congress, not the executive, determines the 
 boundaries of the Territory, passes the enabling 
 act, and defines the electoral people, till -the 
 State is organized and able to act herself. 
 Even Congress, in reconstructing and restoring 
 to life and vigor in the Union a disorganized 
 State, has nothing to say as to its boundaries or 
 its electoral people, nor any right to interfere 
 between parties in the State, to throw the 
 reconstructed State into the hands of one or 
 another party. All that Congress can insist on 
 is, that the territorial people shall reconstruct 
 with a government republican in form; that its 
 senators and representatives in Congress, and 
 the members of the Stfcte legislature, and all 
 executive and judicial officers of the State shall 
 be bound by oath or affirmation to support and 
 defend the constitution of the United States. 
 In the whole work the President has nothing 
 to do with reconstruction, except to see that
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 331 
 
 peace is preserved and the laws are fully exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 It may be at least doubted that the Executive 
 has power to proclaim amnesty and pardon to 
 rebels after the civil war has ceased, and ceased 
 it has when the rebels have thrown down their 
 arms and submitted; for his pardoning power 
 is only to pardon after conviction and judg 
 ment of the court : it is certain that he has no 
 power to proscribe or punish even traitor^ 
 except by due process of law. When the war 
 is over he has only his ordinary peace powers. 
 He cannot then disfranchise any portion of the 
 electoral people of a State that seceded, even 
 though there is no doubt that they have taken 
 part in the rebellion, and may still be suspected 
 of disloyal sentiments. Not even Congress can 
 do it, and no power known to the constitution 
 till the State is reconstructed can do it without 
 due process of law, except the national conven- 
 tion. Should the President do any of the 
 things supposed, he would both abuse the 
 power he has and usurp power that he has 
 not, and render himself liable to impeachment. 
 There are many things very proper, and even 
 necessary to be done, which are high crimes 
 when done by ajn improper person or agent. 
 The duty of the President, when there ar<*
 
 332 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 steps to be taken or things to be done which 
 he believes very necessary, but which are not 
 within his competency, is, if Congress is not in 
 session, to call it together at the earliest practi- 
 cable moment, and submit the matter to its 
 wisdom and discretion. 
 
 It must be remembered that the late rebel- 
 lion was not a merely personal but a territorial 
 rebellion. In such a rebellion, embracing eleven 
 -States, and, excluding slaves, a population of 
 at least seven millions, acting under an organ- 
 ized territorial government, preserving internal 
 civil order, supporting an army and navy under 
 regularly commissioned officers, and carrying on 
 war as a sovereign nation in such a territorial 
 rebellion no one in particular can be accused 
 and punished as a traitor. The rebellion is not 
 the work of a few ambitious or reckless leaders, 
 but of the people, and the responsibility of the 
 crime, whether civil or military, is not indi- 
 vidual, but common to the whole territorial 
 people engaged in it ; and seven millions, or the 
 half of them, are too many to hang, to exile, or 
 even to disfranchise. Their defeat and the 
 failure of their cause must be their punishment. 
 The interest of the country, as well the sentiment 
 of the civilized world it might almost be said 
 the law of nations demands their permission
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 333 
 
 to return to their allegiance, to be treated 
 according to their future merits, as an integral 
 portion of the American people. 
 
 The sentiment of the civilized world has 
 much relaxed from its former severity toward 
 political offenders. It regards with horror the 
 savage cruelties of Great Britain to the unfor- 
 tunate Jacobites, after their defeat under Charlef 
 Edward, at Culloden, in 1746, their barbarous 
 treatment of the United Irishmen in 1798, and 
 her brutality to the mutinous Hindoos in 1857 
 '58 ; the harshness of Russia toward the insurgent 
 Poles, defeated in their mad attempts to recover 
 their lost nationality ; the severity of Austria, 
 under Haynau, toward the defeated Magyars.' 
 The liberal press kept up for years, especially 
 in England and the United States, a perpetual 
 howl against the Papal and Neapolitan govern- 
 ments for arresting and imprisoning men who 
 conspired to overthrow them. Louis Kossuth 
 was no less a traitor than Jefferson Davis, and 
 yet the United States solicited his release from 
 a Turkish prison, and sent a national ship to 
 bring him hither as the nation's guest. The 
 people of the United States have held from the 
 first " the right of insurrection," and have given 
 their moral support to every insurrection in the 
 Old or New World they discovered, and for them
 
 .334 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to treat with severity any portion of the South- 
 ern secessionists, who, at the very worst, only 
 acted on the principles the nation had uni- 
 formly avowed and pronounced sacred, would 
 be regarded, and justly, by the civilized world, 
 as little less than infamous. 
 
 Not only the fair fame, but the interest of 
 the Union forbids any severity toward the peo- 
 ple lately in arms against the government. The 
 interest of the nation demands not the death or 
 the expulsion of the secessionists, and, least of 
 all, of those classes prosciibed by the Presi- 
 dent's proclamation of the 29th of May, 1865, nor 
 even their disfranchisement, perpetual or tempo- 
 rary; but their restoration to citizenship, and 
 their loyal co-operation with all true-hearted 
 Americans, in healing the wounds inflicted on 
 the whole country by the civil war. There 
 need be no fear to trust them. Their cause is 
 lost ; they may or may not regret it, but lost it 
 is, and lost forever. They appealed to the bal- 
 lot-box, and were defeated ; they appeal edfrom 
 the ballot-box to arms, to war, and have been 
 again defeated, terribly defeated. They know 
 it and feel it. There is no further appeal for 
 them ; the judgment of the court of last resort 
 has been rendered, and rendered against them. 
 "The cause is finished, the controversy closed,
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 33,5 
 
 never to IOQ re-opened. Henceforth the Union 
 is invincible, and it is worse than idle to at- 
 tempt to renew the war against it. Henceforth 
 their lot is bound up with that of the nation, 
 and all their hopes and interests, for themselves 
 and their children, and their children's children, 
 depend on their being permitted to demean 
 themselves henceforth as peaceable and loyal 
 American citizens. They must seek their free- 
 dom, greatness, and glory in the freedom, 
 greatness, and glory of the American republic, 
 in which, after all, they can be far freer, greater, 
 more glorious than in a separate and inde- 
 pendent confederacy. All the arguments and 
 '-considerations urged by Union men against 
 their secession, come back to them now with 
 redoubled force to keep them henceforth loyal 
 to the Union. 
 
 They cannot afford to lose the nation, and 
 the nation cannot afford to lose them. To hang 
 or exile them, and depopulate and suffer to run 
 to waste the lands they had cultivated, were 
 sad thrift, sadder than that of deporting four 
 millions of negroes and colored men. To ex- 
 change only those excepted from amnesty and 
 pardon by President Johnson, embracing some 
 two millions or more, the very pars sanior of 
 the Southern population, for what would re-
 
 336 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 main or flock in to supply their place, would 
 be only the exchange of Glaucus and Diomed r 
 gold for brass ; to disfranchise them, confiscate 
 their estates, and place them under the politi- 
 cal control of the freedmen, lately their slaves, 
 and the ignorant and miserable " white trash," 
 would be simply to render rebellion chronic, 
 and to convert seven millions of Americans, 
 willing and anxious to be free, loyal Ameri- 
 can citizens, into eternal enemies. They have 
 yielded to superior numbers and resources; 
 beaten, but not disgraced, for they have, even in 
 rebellion, proved themselves what they are 
 real Americans. They are the product of the 
 American soil, the free growth of the Ameri- 
 can republic, and to disgrace them were to dis- 
 grace the whole American character and peo- 
 ple. 
 
 The wise Romans never allowed a triumph to 
 a Roman general for victories, however brilliant, 
 won over Romans. In civil war, the victory 
 won by the government troops is held to be a 
 victory for the country, in which all parties are 
 victors, and nobody is vanquished. It was as 
 truly for the good of the secessionists to fail, as 
 it was for those who sustained the government 
 to succeed ; and the government having forced 
 their submission and vindicated its own author-
 
 HECONSTRUCTION. 337 
 
 ity, it should now leave them to enjoy, with 
 others, the victory which it has won for the 
 common good of all. When war becomes a stern 
 necessity, when it breaks out, and while it lasts, 
 humanity requires it to be waged in earnest, 
 prosecuted with vigor, and made as damaging, as 
 distressful to the enemy as the laws of civilized 
 nations permit. It is the way to bring it to a 
 speedy close, and to save life and property. 
 But when it is over, when the enemy submits, and 
 peace returns, the vanquished should be treated 
 with gentleness and love. No rancor should 
 remain, no vengeance should be sought; they 
 who met in mortal conflict on the battle-field 
 should be no longer enemies, but embrace as 
 comrades, as friends, as brothers. None but a 
 coward kicks a fallen foe; a brave people is 
 generous, and the victors in the late war can 
 afford to be generous generously. They fought 
 for the Union, and the Union has no longer an 
 enemy ; their late enemies are wilKng and 
 proud to be their countrymen, fellow-citizens, 
 and friends; and they should look to it that 
 small politicians do not rob them in the eyes 
 of the world, by unnecessary and ill-timed 
 severity to the submissive, of the glory of be- 
 ing, as they are, a great, noble, chivalric, gen- 
 erous, and magnanimous people.
 
 338 THE AMERICAN REPCTBLIC. 
 
 The government and the small politicians, 
 who usually are the most influential with all 
 governments, should remember that none of the 
 secessionists, however much in error they have 
 been, have committed the moral crime of trea- 
 son. They held, with the majority of the 
 American people, the doctrine of State sover- 
 eignty, and on that doctrine they had a right 
 to secede, and have committed no treason, been 
 guilty of no rebellion. That was, indeed, no 
 reason why the government should not use all 
 its force, if necessary, to preserve the national 
 unity and the integrity of the national domain ; 
 but it is a reason, and a sufficient reason, why 
 no penalty of treason should be inflicted on 
 secessionists or their leaders, after their submis- 
 sion, and recognition of the sovereignty of the 
 United States as that to which they owe 
 allegiance. None of the secessionists have 
 been rebels or traitors, except in outward act, 
 and there can, after the act has ceased, be no 
 just punishment where there has been no crim- 
 inal intent. Treason is the highest crime, and 
 deserves exemplary punishment ; but not where 
 there has been no treasonable intent, where they 
 who committed it did not believe it was treason, 
 and on principles held by the majority of their 
 countrymen, and by the party that had gener-
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 339 
 
 ally held the government, there really was no 
 treason. Concede State sovereignty, and Jeffer- 
 son Davis was no traitor in the war he made 
 on the United States, for he made none till his 
 State had seceded. He could not then be ar- 
 raigned for his acts after secession, and at most, 
 only for conspiracy, if at all, before secession. 
 
 But, if you permit all to vote in the re-organ- 
 ization of the State who, under the old electoral 
 law, have the elective franchise, you throw the 
 State into the hands of those who have been 
 disloyal to the Union. If so, and you cannot 
 trust them, the remedy is not in disfranchising 
 the majority, but in prohibiting re-organization, 
 and in holding the territorial people still longer 
 under the provisional government, civil or mili- 
 tary. The old electoral law disqualifies all who 
 have been convicted of treason either* to the 
 State or the United States, and neither Con- 
 gress nor the Executive can declare any others 
 disqualified on account of disloyalty. But you 
 must throw the State into the hands of those 
 who took part, directly or indirectly, in the 
 rebellion, if you reconstruct the States at all, 
 for they are undeniably the great body of the 
 territorial people in all the States that seceded. 
 These people having submitted, and declared 
 their intention to reconstruct the State as a
 
 340 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 State in the Union, you must amend the consti- 
 tution of the United States, unless they are 
 convicted of a disqualifying crime by due pro- 
 cess of law, before you can disfranchise them. 
 It is impossible to reconstruct any one of the 
 disorganized States with those alone, or as the 
 dominant party, who have adhered to the 
 Uniorr throughout the fearful struggle, as self- 
 governing States. The State, resting on so- 
 small a portion of the people, would have no- 
 internal strength, no self-support, and could 
 stand only as upheld by Federal arms, which 
 would greatly impair the free and healthy 
 action of the whole American system. 
 
 The government attempted to do it in Vir- 
 ginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, be- 
 fore the rebellion was suppressed, but without 
 authority and without success. The organiza- 
 tions, effected at great expetise, and sustained 
 only by military force, were neither States nor 
 State governments, nor capable of being made 
 so by any executive or congressional action. 
 If the disorganized States, as the government 
 held, were still States in the Union, these or- 
 ganizations were flagrantly revolutionary, as 
 effected not only without, but in defiance of 
 State authority ; if they had seceded and ceased 
 to be States, as was the fact, they were equally
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 341 
 
 unconstitutional and void of authority, "because 
 not created by the free suffrage of the territo- 
 rial people, who alone are competent to con- 
 struct or reconstruct a State. 
 
 If the Unionists had retained the State or- 
 ganization and government, however small their 
 number, they would have held the State, and 
 the government would have been bound to 
 recognize and to defend them as such with all 
 the force of the Union. The rebellion would 
 then have been personal, not territorial. But 
 such was not the case. The State organization, 
 the State government, the whole State author- 
 ity rebelled, made the 'rebellion territorial, not 
 personal, and left the Unionists, very respec- 
 table perso-ns assuredly, residing, if they re- 
 mained at home, in rebel territory, traitors in 
 the eye of their respective States, and shorn of 
 all political status or rights. Their political 
 status was simply that of the old loyalists, or 
 adherents of the British crown in the Ameri- 
 can war for Independence, and it was as absurd 
 to call them the State, as it would have been 
 for Great Britain to have called the old Tories 
 the colonies. 
 
 The theoiy on which the government at- 
 tempted to re-organize the disorganized States 
 rested on two false assumptions : first, that the
 
 342 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 people are personally sovereign; and, second, 
 that all the power of the Union vests in the 
 General government. The first, as we have 
 seen, is the principle of so-called " squatter sov- 
 ereignty," embodied in the famous Kansas- Ne- 
 braska Bill, which gave birth, in opposition, to 
 the Republican party of 1856. The people are 
 sovereign only as the State, and the State is 
 inseparable from the domain. The Unionists 
 without the State government, without any 
 State organization, could not hold the domain,, 
 which, when the State organization is gone, 
 escheats to the United States, that is to say, 
 ceases to exist. The American democracy is 
 territorial, not personal. 
 
 The General government, in time of war or 
 rebellion, is indeed invested, for war purposes, 
 with all the power of the Union. This is the 
 war power. But, though apparently unlimited r 
 the war power is yet restricted to war purposes, 
 and expires by natural limitation when peace 
 returns ; and peace returns, in a civil war, when 
 the rebels have thrown down their arms and 
 submitted to the national authority, and with- 
 out any formal declaration. During the war, or 
 while the rebellion lasts, it can suspend the 
 civil courts, the civil laws, the State constitu- 
 tions, any thing necessary to the success of the
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 343 
 
 war and of the necessity the military author- 
 ities are the judges ; but it cannot abolish, ab- 
 rogate, or reconstitute them. On the return of 
 peace they revive of themselves in all their 
 vigor. The emancipation proclamation of the 
 President, if it emancipated the slaves in cer- 
 tain States and parts of States, and if those 
 whom it emancipated could not be re-enslaved, 
 did not anywhere abolish slavery, or change 
 the laws authorizing it ; and if the Govern- 
 ment should be sustained by Congress or by 
 the Supreme Court in counting the disorgan- 
 ized States as States in the Union, the legal 
 status of slavery throughout the Union, with 
 the exception of Maryland, and perhaps Mis- 
 souri, is what it was before the war.* 
 
 The Government undoubtedly supposed, in 
 the reconstructions it attempted, that it was act- 
 ing under the war power ; but as reconstruction 
 can never be necessary for war purposes, and as 
 it is in its very nature a work of peace, incapa- 
 ble of being effected by military force, since its 
 validity depends entirely on its being the free 
 action of the territorial people to be recon- 
 structed, the General government had and 
 could have, with regard to it, only its ordinary 
 
 * This was the case in August, 1865. It may be quite otherwise 
 before these pages see the light.
 
 344 THE AMERICAN E.EPUBLIC. 
 
 peace powers. Reconstruction is jure pac?#, not 
 jure belli. 
 
 Yet such illegal organizations, though they 
 are neither States nor State governments, and 
 incapable of being legalized by any action of 
 the Executive or of Congress, may, neverthe- 
 less, be legalized by being indorsed or acqui- 
 esced in by the territorial people. They are 
 wrong, as are all usurpations ; they are undem- 
 ocratic, inasmuch as they attempt to give the 
 minority the power to rule the majority ; they 
 are dangerous, inasmuch as they place the State 
 in the hands of a party that can stand only .as 
 supported by the General government, and 
 thus destroy the proper freedom and independ- 
 ence of the State, and open the door to corrup- 
 tion, tend to keep alive rancor and ill feeling, 
 and to retard the period of complete pacifica- 
 tion, which might be effected in three months 
 as well as in three years, or twenty years ; yet 
 they can become legal, as other governments il- 
 legal in their origin become legal, with time 
 and popular acquiescence. The right way is 
 always the shortest and easiest; but when a 
 government must oftener follow than lead the 
 public, it is not always easy to hit the right 
 way, and still less easy to take it. The general 
 instincts of the people are right as to the end
 
 EECOXSTRUCTIOX. 345 
 
 to "be gained, but seldom right as to the means 
 of gaining it ; and politicians of the Union party, 
 as well as of the late secession party, have an eye 
 in reconstructing, to the future political control 
 of the State when it is reconstructed. 
 
 The secessionists, if permitted to retain their 
 franchise, would, even if they accepted aboli- 
 tion, no doubt re-organize their respective States 
 on the basis of white suffrage, and so would the 
 Unionists, if left to themselves. There is no 
 party at the South prepared to adopt negro suf- 
 frage, and there would be none at the North if 
 the negroes constituted any considerable por- 
 tion of the population. As the reconstruction 
 of a State cannot be done under the war power, 
 the General government can no more enfran- 
 chise than it can disfranchise any portion 
 of the territorial people, and the question of 
 negro suffrage must be left, where the 'con- 
 stitution leaves it to the States severally, each 
 to dispose of it for itself. Negro suffrage will, 
 no doubt, come in time, as soon as the freedmen 
 are prepared for it, and the danger is that it 
 will be attempted too soon. 
 
 It would be a convenience to have the negro 
 vote in the reconstruction of the States disorgan- 
 ized by secession, for it would secure their re-con- 
 struction with anti-slavery constitutions, and also
 
 346 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 make sure of the proposed anti-slavery amend- 
 ment to the Constitution of the United States ; 
 but there is no power in Congress to enfranchise 
 the negroes in the States needing reconstruction,, 
 and, once assured of their freedom, the freedmen 
 would care little for the Union, of which they 
 understand nothing. They would vote, for the 
 most part, with their former masters, their em 
 ployers, the wealthier and more intelligent 
 classes, whether loyal or disloyal; for, as a 
 rule, these will treat them with greater per- 
 sonal consideration and kindness than others 
 The dislike of the negro, and hostility to ne- 
 gro equality, increase as you descend in the- 
 social scale. The freedmen, without political 
 instruction or experience, who have had no 
 country, no domicile, understand nothing of 
 loyalty or of disloyalty. They have strong 
 local attachments, but they can have no patri- 
 otism. If they adhered to the Union in the 
 rebellion, fought for it, bled for it, it was not 
 from loyalty, but because they knew that their 
 freedom could come only from the success of 
 the Union arms. That freedom secured, they 
 have no longer any interest in the Union, and 
 their local attachments, personal associations,, 
 habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, are Southern,, 
 not Northern. In any contest between the
 
 RECONSTRUCTION. 347 
 
 North and the South, they would take, to a 
 man, the Southern side. After the taunts of the 
 women, the captured soldiers of the Union 
 found, until nearly the last year of the war, 
 nothing harder to bear, when marched as prison- 
 ers into Richmond, than the antics and hootings 
 of the negroes. Negro suffrage on the score of 
 loyalty, is at best a matter of indifference to 
 the Union, and as the elective franchise is not 
 a natural right, but a civil trust, the friends 
 of the negro should, for the present, be con- 
 tented with securing him simply equal rights 
 of person and property.
 
 148 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 
 
 THE most marked political tendency of the 
 American people has been, since 1825, to inter- 
 pret their government as a pure and simple 
 democracy, and to shift it from a territorial to 
 a purely popular basis, or from the people as 
 the state, inseparably united to the national 
 territory or domain, to the people as simply 
 population, either as individuals or as the race. 
 Their tendency has unconsciously, therefore, 
 been to change their constitution from a repub- 
 lican to a despotic, or from a civilized to a bar- 
 baric constitution. 
 
 The American constitution is democratic, in 
 the sense that the people are sovereign ; that all 
 laws and public acts run in their name ; that 
 the rulers are elected by them, and are respon- 
 sible to them j but they are the people terri- 
 torially constituted and fixed to the soil, consti- 
 tuting what Mr. Disraeli, with more propriety 
 perhaps than he thinks, calls a "territorial 
 democracy." To this territorial democracy, the 
 real American democracy, stand opposed two
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES 349" 
 
 other democracies the one personal and the 
 other humanitarian each alike hostile to civil- 
 ization, and tending to destroy the state, and 
 capable, of sustaining government only on prin- 
 ciples common to all despotisms. 
 
 In every man there is a natural craving for 
 personal freedom and unrestrained action a 
 strong desire to be himself, not another to be 
 his own master, to go when and where 
 he pleases, to do what he chooses, to take 
 what he wants, wherever he can find it, and to 
 keep what he takes. It is strong in all 
 nomadic tribes,- who are at once pastoral and 
 predatory, and is seldom weak in our bold 
 frontier-men, too often real " border ruffians." 
 It takes different forms in different stages of 
 social development, but it everywhere identi- 
 fies liberty with power. Restricted in its en- 
 joyment to one man, it makes him chief, chief 
 of the family, the tribe, or the nation ; ex- 
 tended in its enjoyment to the few, it founds 
 an aristocracy, creates a nobility for nobleman 
 meant originally only freeman, as it does still 
 with the Magyars ; extended to the many, it 
 founds personal democracy, a simple associa- 
 tion of individuals, in which all are equally free 
 and independent, and no restraint is imposed 
 on any one's action, will, or inclination, without
 
 350 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 his own consent, express or constructive. This 
 is the so-called Jeffersonian democracy, in which 
 government has no powers but such as it de- 
 rives from the consent of the governed, and is 
 personal democracy or pure individualism 
 philosophically considered, pure egoism, which 
 says, "I ain God." Under this sort of democ- 
 racy, based on popular, or rather individual 
 sovereignty, expressed by politicians when they 
 call the electoral people, half seriously, half 
 mockingly, " the sovereigns," there obviously 
 can be no state, no social rights or civil au- 
 thority ; there can be only a voluntary associa- 
 tion, league, alliance, or confederation, in which 
 individuals may freely act together as long as 
 they find it pleasant, convenient, or useful, 
 but from which they may separate or secede 
 whenever they find it for their interest or 
 their pleasure to do so. State sovereignty and 
 secession are based on the same democratic 
 principle applied to the several States of the 
 Union instead of individuals. 
 
 The tendency to this sort of democracy has 
 been strong in large sections of the American 
 people from the first, and has been greatly 
 strengthened by the general acceptance of the 
 theory that government originates in compact. 
 The full realization of this tendency, which, hap
 
 APOLITICAL TENDENCIES. 351 
 
 jrily, is impracticable save in theory, would be 
 to render every man independent alike of every 
 other man and of society, with full right and 
 power to make his own will prevail. This 
 tendency was strongest in the slaveholding 
 States, and especially, in those States, in the 
 slaveholding class, the American imitation of 
 the feudal nobility of mediaeval Europe ; and on 
 this side the war just ended \vas, in its most 
 general expression, a war in defence of personal 
 democracy, or the sovereignty of the people in- 
 dividually, against the humanitarian democracy, 
 represented by the abolitionists, and the terri- 
 torial democracy, represented by the Govern- 
 ment. This personal democracy has been 
 signally defeated in the defeat of the late con- 
 federacy, and can hardly again become strong 
 enough to be dangerous. 
 
 But the humanitarian democracy, which 
 scorns all geographical lines, effaces all in indi- 
 vidualities, and professes to plant itself on hu- 
 manity alone, has acquired by the war new 
 strength, and is not without menace to our fu- 
 ture. The solidarity of the race, which is the con- 
 dition of all human life, founds, as we have seen, 
 society, and creates what are called social rights, 
 the rights alike of society in regard to individ 
 uals, and of individuals in regard to society
 
 352 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Territorial divisions or circumscriptions found 
 particular societies, states, or nations ; yet as 
 the race is one, and all its members live by 
 communion with God through it and by com- 
 munion one with another, these particular states 
 or nations are never absolutely independent of 
 each other, but bound together by the solidar- 
 ity of the race, so that there is a real solidarity 
 of nations as well as of individuals the truth 
 underlying Kossuth's famous declaration of 
 " the solidarity of peoples." 
 
 The solidarity of nations is the basis of in- 
 ternational law, binding on every particular 
 nation, and which every civilized nation recog- 
 nizes, and enforces on its own subjects or citi- 
 zens, through its own courts, as an integral 
 part of its own municipal or national law. 
 The personal or individual right is therefore 
 restricted by the rights of society, and the 
 rights of the particular society or nation are 
 limited by international law, or the rights of 
 universal society the truth the ex-governor 
 of Hungary overlooked. The grand error of 
 Gentilism was in denying the unity and there- 
 fore the solidarity of the race, involved in its 
 denial or misconception of the unity of God. 
 It therefore was never able to assign any solid 
 basis to international law, and gave it only a
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 353 
 
 conventional or customary authority, thus leav- 
 ing the jus gentium, which it recognized in- 
 deed, without any real foundation in the con- 
 stitution of things, or authority in the real 
 world. Its real basis is in the solidarity of the 
 race, which has its basis in the unity of God, 
 not the dead or abstract unity asserted by the 
 old Eleatics, the Neo-Platonists, or the modern 
 Unitarians, but the living unity consisting in 
 the threefold relation in the Divine Essence, of 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as asserted by 
 Christian revelation, and believed, more or less 
 intelligently, by all Christendom. 
 
 The tendency in the Southern States has 
 been to overlook the social basis of the state, 
 or the rights of society founded on the solid- 
 arity of the race, and to make all rights and 
 powers personal, or individual; and as only 
 the white race has been able to assert and 
 maintain its personal freedom, only men of 
 that race are held to have the right to be 
 free. Hence the people of those States felt no 
 scruple in holding the black or colored race as 
 slaves. Liberty, said they, is the right only of 
 those who have the ability to assert and main 
 tain it. Let the negro prove that he has this 
 ability by asserting and maintaining his free- 
 dom, and he will prove his right to be free, 
 
 23
 
 3o4 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and that it is a gross outrage, a manifest in- 
 justice, to enslave Mm; but, till then, let him 
 be my servant, which is best for him and for 
 me. Why ask me to free him ? I shall by 
 doing so only change the form of his servitude. 
 Why appeal to nie ? Am I my brother's keep- 
 er? Nay, is he my brother? Is this negro, 
 more like an ape or a baboon than a human 
 being, of the same race with myself? I be- 
 lieve it not. But in some instances, at least, 
 my dear slaveholder, your slave is literally your 
 brother, and sometimes even your son, born of 
 your own daughter. The tendency of the 
 Southern democrat was to deny the unity of 
 the race, as well as all obligations of society to 
 protect the weak and helpless, and therefore all 
 true civil society. 
 
 At the North there has been, and is even 
 yet, an opposite tendency a tendency to exag- 
 gerate the social element, to overlook the terri- 
 torial basis of the state, and to disregard 
 the rights of individuals. This tendency has 
 been and is strong in the people called aboli- 
 tionists. The American abolitionist is so en- 
 grossed with the unity that he loses the solid- 
 arity of the race, which supposes unity of 
 race and multiplicity of individuals ; and fails 
 to see any thing legitimate and authoritative ill
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 355 
 
 
 
 geographical divisions or territorial circumscrip- 
 tions. Back of these, back of individuals, he sees 
 humanity, superior to individuals, superior to 
 states, governments, and laws, and holds that he 
 may trample on them all or give them to the 
 winds at the call of humanity or "the higher law." 
 The principle on which he acts is as indefensi- 
 ble as the personal or egoistical democracy of 
 the slaveholders and their sympathizers. Were 
 his socialistic tendency to become exclusive and 
 realized, it would found in the name of human- 
 ity a complete social despotism, which, proving 
 impracticable from its very generality, would 
 break up in anarchy, in which might makes 
 right, as in the slaveholder's democracy. 
 
 The abolitionists, in supporting themselves on 
 humanity in its generality, regardless of individ- 
 ual and territorial rights, can recognize no state, 
 no civil authority, and therefore are as much 
 out of the order of civilization, and as much in 
 that of barbarism, as is the slaveholder him- 
 self. Wendell Phillips is as far removed from 
 true Christian civilization as was John C. Car 
 houn, and William Lloyd Garrison is as much 
 of a barbarian and despot in principle and 
 tendency as Jefferson Davis. Hence the great 
 body of the people in the non-slaveholding 
 States, wedded to American democracy as they
 
 356 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 
 
 were and are, could never, as much as they de- 
 tested slavery, be induced to make common 
 cause with the abolitionists, and their apparent 
 union in the late civil war was accidental, sim- 
 ply owing to the fact that for the time the 
 social democracy and the territorial coincided, 
 or had the same enemy. The great body of tl:e 
 loyal people instinctively felt that pure social- 
 ism is as incompatible with American democracy 
 as pure individualism ; and the abolitionists 
 are well aware that slavery has been abolished, 
 not for humanitarian or socialistic reasons, but 
 really for reasons of state, in order to save the 
 territorial democracy. The territorial democ- 
 racy would not unite to eliminate even so bar- 
 baric an element as slavery, till the rebellion 
 gave them the constitutional right to abolish it ; 
 and evon then so scrupulous were they, that 
 
 thev demanded a constitutional amendment, so 
 
 j 
 
 as to be able to make clean work of it, without 
 any blow to individual or State rights. 
 
 The abolitionists were right in opposing 
 slavery, but not in demanding its abolition on 
 humanitarian or socialistic grounds. Slavery 
 is really a barbaric element, and is in direct 
 antagonism to American civilization. The whole 
 force of the national life opposes it, and must 
 finally eliminate it, or become itself extinct;
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 357 
 
 and it is no mean proof of their utter want of 
 sympathy with all the living forces of modern 
 civilization, that the leading men of the South 
 and their prominent friends at the North really 
 persuaded -themselves that with cotton, rice, 
 and tobacco, they could effectually resist the 
 anti-slavery movement, and perpetuate their 
 barbaric democracy. They studied the classics, 
 they admired Greece and Rome, and imagined 
 that those nations became great by slavery, 
 instead of being great even in spite of slavery. 
 They failed to take into the account the fact 
 that when Greece and Rome were in the zenith 
 of their glory, all contemporary nations were 
 also slaveholding nations, and that if they 
 were the greatest and most highly civilized 
 nations of their times, they were not fitted to 
 be the greatest and most highly civilized na- 
 tions of all times. They failed also to perceive 
 that, if the Grseco-Roman republic did not 
 include the whole territorial people in the 
 political people, it yet recognized both the 
 social and the territorial foundation , of the 
 state, and never attempted to rest it on pure 
 individualism; they forgot, too, that Greece 
 and Rome both fell, and fell precisely through 
 internal weakness caused by the barbarism 
 within, not through the force of the barbarism
 
 358 THE AMEBICAN KEPCBLIC. 
 
 beyond their frontiers. The world has changed 
 since the time when ten thousand of his slaves 
 were sacrificed as a religious offering to the- 
 inanes of a single Koman master. The infusion 
 of the Christian dogma of the unity and solid- 
 arity of the race into the belief, the life, the laws, 
 the jurisprudence of all civilized nations, has 
 doomed slavery and every species of barbarism ; 
 but this our slaveholding countrymen saw not. 
 It rarely happens that in any controversy, in- 
 dividual or national, the real issue is distinctly 
 presented, or the precise question in debate is 
 clearly and distinctly understood by either 
 party. Slavery was only incidentally involved 
 in the late war. The war was occasioned by 
 the collision of two extreme parties; but it 
 was itself a war between civilization and bar- 
 barism, primarily between the territorial democ- 
 racy and the personal democracy, and in reality, 
 on the part of the nation, as much a war 
 against the socialism of the abolitionist as 
 against the individualism of the slaveholder.. 
 Yet the victory, though complete over the for- 
 mer, is only half won over the latter, for it has 
 left the humanitarian democracy standing, and 
 perhaps for the moment stronger than ever- 
 The socialistic democracy was enlisted by the 
 territorial, not to strengthen the government at
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 
 
 home, as it imagines, for that it did not do, 
 and could not do, since the national instinct 
 was even more opposed to it than to the per- 
 sonal democracy; but under its anti-slavery 
 aspect, to soften the hostility of foreign powers, 
 and ward off foreign intervention, which was 
 seriously threatened. The populations of 
 Europe, especially of France and England, 
 were decidedly anti-slavery, and if the war 
 here appeared to them a war, not solely for the 
 unity of the nation and the integrity of its 
 domain, as it really was, in which they 
 took and could take no interest, but a war for 
 the abolition of slavery, their governments 
 would not venture to intervene. This was the 
 only consideration that weighed with Mr. Lin- 
 coln, as he himself assured the author, and 
 induced him to issue his Emancipation Pro- 
 clamation; and Europe rejoices in our victory 
 over the rebellion only so far as it has liberated 
 the slaves, and honors the late President only 
 as their supposed liberator, not as the preserver 
 of the unity and integrity of the nation. This 
 is natural enough abroad, and proves the wisdom 
 of the anti-slavery policy of the government, 
 which had become absolutely necessary to save 
 the Republic long before it was adopted ; yet it 
 is not as the emancipator of some two or three
 
 360 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 millions of slaves that the American patriot 
 cherishes the memory of Abraham Lincoln, but, 
 aided by the loyal people, generals of rare 
 merit, and troops of unsurpassed bravery and 
 endurance, as the saviour of the American state, 
 and the protector of modern civilization. His 
 anti-slavery policy served this end, and therefore 
 was wise, but he adopted it with the greatest 
 possible reluctance. 
 
 There were greater issues in the late was 
 than negro slavery or negro freedom. That 
 was. only an incidental issue, as the really great 
 men of the Confederacy felt, who to save 
 their cause were willing themselves at last to 
 free and arm their own negroes, and perhaps 
 were willing to do it even at first. This fact 
 alone proves that they had, or believed they had, 
 a far more important cause than the preserva- 
 tion of negro slavery. They fought for per- 
 sonal democracy, under the form of State 
 sovereignty, against social democracy; for per- 
 sonal freedom and independence against social 
 or humanitarian despotism; and so far their 
 cause was as good as that against which they 
 took up arms ; and if they had or could have 
 fought against that, without fighting at the 
 same time against the territorial, the real 
 American, the only civilized democracy, they
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 361 
 
 would have succeeded. It is not socialism nor 
 abolitionism that has won ; nor is it the North 
 that has conquered. The Union itself has won 
 no victories over the South, and it is both his- 
 torically and legally false to say that the South 
 has been subjugated. The Union has pre- 
 served itself and American civilization, alike 
 for North and South, East and "West. The 
 armies that so often met in the shock of battle 
 were not drawn up respectively by the North 
 and the South, but by two rival democracies, 
 to decide which of the two should rule the 
 future. They were the armies of two mutually 
 antagonistic systems, and neither army was 
 clearly and distinctly conscious of the cause 
 for which it was shedding its blood ; each 
 obeyed instinctively a power stronger than it- 
 self, and which at best it but dimly discerned 
 On both sides the cause was broader and 
 deeper than negro slavery, and neither the pro- 
 slavery men nor the abolitionists have won. 
 The territorial democracy alone has won, and 
 won what will prove to be a final victory over 
 the purely personal democracy, which had its 
 chief seat in the Southern States, though by no 
 means coufined to them. The danger to Amer- 
 ican democracy from that quarter is forever 
 removed, and democracy a la Rousseau has
 
 362 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 received a terrible defeat throughout the world r 
 though as yet it is far from being aware of it. 
 But in this world victories are never com- 
 plete. The socialistic democracy claims the 
 victory which has been really won by the ter- 
 ritorial democracy, as if it had been socialism, 
 not patriotism, that fired the hearts and nerved 
 the arms of the brave men led by McClellan r 
 Grant, and Sherman. The humanitarians are 
 more dangerous in principle than the ego- 
 ists, for they have the appearance of build- 
 ing on a broader and deeper foundation, of being 
 more Christian, more philosophic, more gener- 
 ous and philanthropic ; but Satan is never more 
 successful than under the guise of an angel of 
 light. His favorite guise in modern times is 
 that of philanthropy. He is a genuine hu- 
 manitarian, and aims to persuade the world 
 that humanitarian ism is Christianity, and that 
 man is God ; that the soft and charming senti- 
 ment of philanthropy is real Christian charity ; 
 and he dupes both individuals and nations, and 
 makes them do his work, when they believe 
 they are earnestly and most successfully doing 
 the work of God. Your leading abolitionists 
 are as much affected by satanophany as your 
 leading confederates, nor are they one whit 
 more philosophical or less sophistical. The one
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 36$ 
 
 .oses the race, the other the individual, and 
 neither has learned to apply practically that 
 fundamental truth that there is never the gen- 
 eral without the particular, nor the particular 
 without the general, the race without individuals, 
 nor individuals without the race. The whole race 
 was in Adam, and fell in him, as we are taught 
 by the doctrine of original sin, or the sin of the 
 race, and Adam was an individual, as we are 
 taught in the fact that original sin was in him 
 actual or personal sin. 
 
 The humanitarian is carried away by a vague 
 generality, and loses men in humanity, sacri- 
 fices the rights of men in a vain endeavor to> 
 secure the rights of man, as your Calvinist or 
 his brother Jansenist sacrifices the rights of 
 nature in order to secure the freedom of grace. 
 Yesterday he agitated for the abolition of 
 slavery, to-day he agitates for negro suffrage, 
 negro equality, and announces that when, he 
 has secured that he will agitate for female suf-. 
 frage and the equality of the sexes, forgetting 
 or ignorant that the relation of equality subsists 
 only between individuals of the same sex; 
 that God made the man the head of the 
 woman, and the woman for the man, no"t the 
 man for the woman. Having obliterated all 
 distinction of sex in politics, in social, in-
 
 364 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 dustrial, and domestic arrangement*, lie must 
 go farther, and agitate for equality of property. 
 But since property, if recognized at all. will be 
 unequally acquired and distributed, he must go 
 farther still, and agitate for the total abolition 
 of property, as an injustice, a grievous wrong, 
 a theft, with M. Proudhon, or the English- 
 man Godwin. It is unjust that one should 
 have what another wants, or even more than 
 another. What light have you to ride in your 
 coach or astride your spirited barb while I am 
 forced to trudge on foot 2 Nor can our hu- 
 manitarian stop there. Individuals are, and as 
 long as there are hidividuals will be, unequal : 
 some are handsomer and some are uglier, some 
 wiser or sillier, more or less gifted, stronger or 
 weaker, taller or shorter, stouter or thinner 
 than others, and therefore some have natural 
 advantages which others have not. There is 
 inequality, therefore injustice, which can be 
 remedied only by the abolition of all individu- 
 alities, and the reduction of all individuals to 
 the race, or humanity, man in general. He can 
 find no limit to his agitation this side of vague 
 generality, which is no reality, but a pure nul- 
 lity, for he respects no territorial or individual 
 circumscriptions, and must regard creation itself 
 as a blunder. This is not fancy, for he has
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 365 
 
 gone very nearly as far as it is here shown, if 
 logical, he must go. 
 
 The danger now is that the Union victory 
 will, at home and abroad, be interpreted as a 
 victory won in the interest of social or humani- 
 tarian democracy. It was because they regard- 
 ed the war waged on the side of the Union 
 as waged in the interest of this terrible democ- 
 racy, that our bishops and clergy sympathized 
 so little with the Government in prosecuting 
 it; not, as some imagined, because they were 
 disloyal, hostile to American or territorial 
 democracy, or not heartily in favor of freedom 
 for all men, whatever their race or complexion. 
 They had no wish to see slavery prolonged, the 
 evils of which they, better than any other class 
 of men, knew, and more deeply deplored ; none 
 would have regretted more than they to have 
 seen the Union broken up ; but they held the 
 socialistic or humanitarian democracy repre- 
 sented by Northern abolitionists as hostile alike 
 to the Church and to civilization. For the same 
 reason that they were "backward or reserved in 
 their sympathy, all the humanitarian sects at 
 home and abroad were forward and even osten- 
 tatious in theirs. The Catholics feared the 
 war might result in encouraging La Republique 
 democratique et sotiale; the humanitarian sects
 
 366 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 trusted that it would. If the victory of the 
 Union should turn out to be a victory for the 
 humanitarian democracy, the civilized world 
 will have no reason to applaud it. 
 
 That there is some danger that for a time 
 the victory will be taken as a victory for hu- 
 man itarianism or socialism, it would be idle to 
 deny. It is so taken now, and the humanitari- 
 an party throughout the world are in ecstasies 
 over it. The party claim it. The European 
 Socialists and Red Republicans applaud it, and 
 the Mazzinis and the Garibaldis inflict on us the 
 deep humiliation of their congratulations. A 
 cause that can be approved by the revolution- 
 ary leaders of European Liberals must be 
 strangely misunderstood, or have in it some 
 infamous element. It is no compliment to a 
 nation to receive the congratulations of men 
 who assert not only people-king, but people- 
 God ; and those Americans who are delighted 
 with them are worse enemies to the American 
 democracy than ever were Jefferson Davis and 
 his fellow conspirators, and more contemptible, 
 as the swindler is more contemptible than the 
 highwayman. 
 
 But it is probable the humanitarians have 
 reckoned without their host. Not they are the 
 real victors. When the smoke of battle has
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 367 
 
 
 
 Cleared away, the victory, it will be seen, has 
 been won by the Republic, and' that that alone 
 has trimuphed. The abolitionists, in so far as 
 they asserted the unity of the race and opposed 
 slavery as a denial of that unity, have also 
 won ; but in so far as they denied the reality 
 or authority of territorial and individual cir- 
 umscriptions ; followed a purely socialistic tend- 
 ency, and sought to dissolve patriotism into a 
 watery sentimentality called philanthropy, have 
 in reality been crushingly defeated, as they will 
 find when the late insurrectionary States are 
 fully reconstructed. The Southern or egoistical 
 democrats, so far as they denied the unity and 
 solidarity of the race, the rights of society over 
 individuals, and the equal rights of each and 
 every individual in face of the state, or the 
 obligations of society to protect the weak and 
 help the helpless, have been also defeated ; but 
 so far as they asserted personal or individual 
 rights which society neither gives nor can take 
 away, and so far as they asserted, not State sov- 
 ereignty, but State rights, held independently 
 of the General government, and which limit its 
 authority and sphere of action, they share in 
 the victory, as the future will prove. 
 
 European Jacobins, revolutionists, conspiring 
 openly or secretly against all legitimate author
 
 368 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ity, whether in Church or State, have no lot or 
 part in the victory of the American people : 
 not for them nor for men with their nefarious de- 
 signs or mad dreams, have our brave soldiers 
 fought, suffered, and bled for four years of the 
 most terrible war in modern times, and against 
 troops as brave and as well led as themselves ; 
 not for them has the country sacrificed a million 
 of lives, and contracted a debt of four thousand 
 millions of dollars, besides the waste and destruc- 
 tion that it will take years of peaceful industry 
 to repair. They and their barbaric democracy 
 have been defeated, and civilization has won its 
 most brilliant victory in all history. The 
 American democracy has crushed, actually or 
 potentially, every species of barbarism in the 
 New World, asserted victoriously the state, and 
 placed the government definitively on the side 
 of legitimate authority, and made its natural as- 
 sociation henceforth with all civilized govern- 
 ments not with the revolutionary movements 
 to overthrow them. The American people will 
 always be progressive as well- as conservative ; 
 but they have learned a lesson, which they 
 much needed, against false democracy: civil 
 war has taught them that "the sacred right 
 of insurrection" is as much out of place in a 
 democratic state as in an aiistocratic or a mon-
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 369 
 
 arehical state ; and that the government should 
 always be clothed with ample authority to ar- 
 rest and punish whoever plots its destruction. 
 They must never be delighted again to have 
 their government send a national ship to bring 
 hither a noted traitor to his own sovereign as 
 the nation's guest. The people of the Northern 
 States are hardly less responsible for the late 
 rebellion than the people of the Southern States. 
 Their press had taught them to call every gov- 
 ernment a tyranny that refused to remain quiet 
 while the traitor was cutting its throat or as- 
 sassinating the nation, and they had nothing 
 but mad denunciations of the Papal, the Aus- 
 trian, and the Neapolitan governments for their 
 severity against conspirators and traitors. But 
 their own government has found it necessaiy 
 for the public safety to be equally arbitrary, 
 prompt, and severe, and they will most likely re- 
 quire it hereafter to co-operate with the govern- 
 ments of the Old World in advancing civiliza- 
 tion, instead of lending all its moral support, as 
 heretofore, to the Jacobins, revolutionists, so- 
 cialists, and humanitarians, to bring back the 
 reign of barbarism. 
 
 The tendency to individualism has been 
 sufficiently checked by the failure of the re- 
 bellion, and no danger from the disintegrating 
 
 25
 
 370 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 element, either in the particular State or in 
 the United States, is henceforth to be appre- 
 hended. But the tendency in the opposite di- 
 rection may give the American state some 
 trouble. The tendency now is, as to the Union, 
 consolidation, and as to the particular state, hu- 
 manitarianism, socialism, or centralized democ- 
 racy. Yet this tendency, though it may do 
 much mischief, will hardly become exclusive. 
 The States that seceded, when restored, will al- 
 ways, even in abandoning State sovereignty, 
 resist it, and still assert State rights. When 
 these States are restored to their normal posi- 
 tion, they will always be able to protect them- 
 selves against any encroachments on their spe- 
 cial rights by the General government. The con- 
 stitution, in the distribution of the powers of 
 government, provides the States severally with 
 ample means to protect their individuality 
 against the centralizing tendency of the Gen- 
 eral government, however strong it may be. 
 
 The war has, no doubt, had a tendency to 
 strengthen the General government, and to cause 
 the people, to a great extent, to look upon it as 
 the supreme and exclusive national government, 
 and to regard the several State governments as 
 subordinate instead of co-ordinate governments. 
 It is not improbable that the Executive, since
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES 371 
 
 the outbreak of the rebellion, has proceeded 
 throughout on that supposition, and hence his 
 extraordinary assumptions of power ; but when 
 once peace is fully re-established, and the States 
 have all resumed their normal position in the 
 Union, every State will be f6und prompt enough 
 to resist any attempt to encroach on its con- 
 stitutional rights. Its instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion will lead it to resist, and it will be pro- 
 tected by both its own judiciary and that of 
 the United States. 
 
 The danger that the General government 
 will usurp the rights of the States is far 
 less than the danger that the Executive will 
 usurp all the powers of Congress and the ju- 
 diciary. Congress, during the rebellion, clothed 
 the President, as far as it could, with dic- 
 tatorial powers, and these powers the Execu- 
 tive continues to exercise even after the re- 
 bellion is suppressed. They were given and 
 held under the rights of war, and for war pur- 
 poses only, and expired by natural limitation 
 when the war ceased; but the Executive for- 
 gets this, and, instead of calling Congress to- 
 gether and submitting the work of reconstruc- 
 tion of the States that seceded to its wisdom 
 and authority, undertakes to reconstruct them 
 himself, as if he were an absolute sovereign ;
 
 372 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 and the people seem to like it. He might and 
 should, as Commander-in-chief of the army and 
 navy, govern them as military departments, 
 by his lieutenants, till Congress could either 
 create provisional civil governments for them 
 or recognize them as self-governing States in 
 the Union ; but he has no right, under the con- 
 stitution nor under the war power, to appoint 
 civil governors, permanent or provisional ; and 
 every act he has done in regard to reconstruc- 
 tion is sheer usurpation, and done without au- 
 thority and without the slightest plea of neces- 
 sity. His acts in this respect, even if wise and 
 just in themselves, are inexcusable, because 
 clone by one who has no legal right to do 
 them. Yet his usurpation is apparently sus- 
 tained by public sentiment, and a deep wound 
 is inflicted on the constitution, which will be 
 long in healing. 
 
 The danger in this respect is all the greater 
 because it did not originate with the rebellion, 
 but had manifested itself for a long time before. 
 There is a growing disposition on the part of 
 Congress to throw as much of the business of 
 government as possible into the hands of the 
 Executive. The patronage the Executive 
 wields, even in times of peace, is so large that 
 he has indirectly an almost supreme control
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 373 
 
 over the legislative branch of the government. 
 For this, which is, and, if not checked will con- 
 tinue to be, a growing evil, there is no obvious 
 remedy, unless the President is chosen for a 
 longer term of office and made ineligible for a 
 second term, and the mischievous doctrine of 
 rotation in office is rejected as incompatible 
 with the true interests of the public. Here is 
 matter for the consideration of the American 
 statesman. But as to the usurpations of the 
 
 Executive in these unsettled times, thev will 
 
 / 
 
 be only temporary, and will cease when the 
 States are all restored. They are abuses, but 
 only temporary abuses, and the Southern States, 
 when restored to the Union, will resume their 
 rights in their own sphere, as self-governing 
 -communities, and legalize or undo the unwar- 
 rantable acts of the Federal Executive. 
 
 The socialistic and centralizing tendency in 
 the bosom of the individual States is the most 
 dangerous, but it will not be able to become 
 predominant; for philanthropy, unlike char- 
 ity, does not begin at home, and is powerless 
 unless it operates at a distance. In the States in 
 which the humanitarian tendency is the strongest, 
 the territorial democracy has its most effective 
 organization. Prior to the outbreak of the 
 rebellion the American people had asserted
 
 374 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 popular sovereignty, but Lad never rendered 
 an account to themselves in what sense the peo- 
 ple are or are not sovereign. They had never 
 distinguished the three sorts of democracy from 
 one another, asked themselves which of the- 
 three is the distinctively American democracy- 
 For them, democracy was democracy, and those 
 who saw dangers ahead sought to avoid them 
 either by exaggerating one or the other of 
 the two exclusive tendencies, or else by re- 
 straining democracy itself through restrictions 
 on suffrage. The latter class began to distrust 
 universal suffrage, to lose faith in the people,, 
 and to dream of modifying the American con- 
 stitution so as to make it conform more nearly 
 to the English model. The war has proved 
 that they were wrong, for nothing is more cer- 
 tain than that the people have saved the national 
 unity and integrity almost in spite of their gov- 
 ernment. The General government either was- 
 not disposed or was afraid to take a decided 
 stand against secession, till forced to do it by 
 the people themselves. No wise American can 
 henceforth distrust American democracy. The 
 people may be trusted. So much is settled. 
 But as the two extremes were equally demo* 
 cratic, as the secessionists acted in the name of 
 popular sovereignty, and as the humanitarians
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 375 
 
 were not unwilling to allow separation, and 
 would not and did not engage in the war against 
 secession for the sake of the Union and the in- 
 tegrity of the national domain, the conviction 
 becomes irresistible that it was not democracy 
 in the sense of either of the extremes that 
 made the war and came out of it victorious ; and 
 hence the real American democracy must differ 
 from them both, and is neither a personal nor a 
 humanitarian, but a territorial democracy. The 
 true idea of American democracy thus comes 
 out, for the first time, freed from the two ex- 
 treme democracies which have been identified 
 with it, and henceforth enters into the under- 
 standings as well as the hearts of the people. 
 The war has enlightened patriotism, and what 
 was sentiment or instinct becomes reason a 
 well-defined, and clearly understood constitu- 
 tional conviction. 
 
 In the several States themselves there are 
 many things to prevent the socialistic tendency 
 from becoming exclusive. In the States that 
 seceded socialism has never had a foothold, and 
 will not gain it, for it is resisted by all the sen- 
 timents, convictions, and habits vf'the Southern 
 people, and the Southern people will not be ex- 
 terminated nor swamped by migrations either 
 from the North or from Europe. They are and
 
 376 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 always will be an agricultural people, and an 
 agricultural people are and always will be op- 
 posed to socialistic dreams, unless unwittingly 
 held for a moment to favor it in pursuit of some 
 special object in which they take a passionate 
 interest. The worst of all policies is that of 
 hanging, exiling, or disfranchising the wealthy 
 landholders of the South, in order to bring up 
 the poor and depressed whites, shadowed forth 
 in the Executive proclamation of the 29th of 
 May, 1865. Of course that policy will not be 
 carried out, and if the negroes are enfranchised, 
 they will alwaj^s vote with the wealthy land- 
 holding class, and aid them in resisting all 
 socialistic tendencies. The humanitarians will 
 fail for the want of a good social grievance 
 against which they can declaim. 
 
 In the New England States the humanita- 
 rian tendency is strong as a speculation, but 
 only in relation to objects at a distance. It is 
 aided much by the congregational constitution 
 of their religion ; yet it is weak at home, and 
 fc resisted practically by the territorial division 
 of power. New England means Massachusetts, 
 and nowhere is the subdivision of the pow- 
 ers of government carried further, or the consti- 
 tution of the territorial democracy more com- 
 plete, than in that State. Philanthropy sel-
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 377 
 
 dom works in private against piivate vices and' 
 evils : it is effective only against public griev- 
 ances, and the farther they are from home and 
 the less its right to interfere with them, the 
 more in earnest and the more effective for evil 
 does it become. Its nature is to mind ever} 
 one's business but its own. But now that 
 slavery is abolished, there is nowhere in the 
 United States a social grievance of magnitude 
 enough to enlist any considerable number of 
 the people, even of Massachusetts, in a move- 
 ment to redress it. Negro enfranchisement is 
 A question of which the humanitarians can 
 make something, and they will make the most 
 of it ; but as it is a question that each State 
 will soon settle for itself, it will not serve their 
 purpose of prolonged agitation. They could 
 not and never did carry away the nation, even 
 on the question of slavery itself, and abolition- 
 ism had comparatively little direct influence in 
 abolishing slavery ; and the exclusion of negro 
 suffrage can never be made to appear to the 
 American people as any thing like so great a 
 grievance as was slavery. 
 
 Besides, in all the States that did not secede, 
 Catholics are a numerous and an important por- 
 tion of the population. Their increasing num- 
 bers, wealth, and education secure them, as much
 
 378 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 as the majority may dislike their religion, a 
 constantly increasing influence, and it is idle to 
 leave them out in counting the future of the 
 country. They will, in a very few years, be 
 the best and most thoroughly educated class 
 of the American people ; and, aside from their 
 religion, or, rather, in consequence of their re- 
 ligion, the most learned, enlightened, and intelli- 
 gent portion of the American population ; and 
 as much as they have disliked the abolitionists,, 
 they have, in the army and elsewhere, contrib- 
 uted their full share to the victory the nation 
 has won. The best things written on the con- 
 troversy have been written by Catholics, and 
 Catholics are better fitted by their religion to 
 comprehend the real character of the American 
 constitution than any other class of Ameri- 
 cans, the moment they study it in the light of 
 their own theology. The American constitu- 
 tion is based on that of natural society, on the 
 solidarity of the race, and the difference be- 
 tween natural society and the church or Chris- 
 tian society is, that the one is initial and the 
 other teleological. The law of both is the 
 same ; Catholics, as such, must resist both ex- 
 tremes, because each is exclusive, and whatever 
 is exclusive or one-sided is uncatholic. If they 
 Lave been backward in their sympathy with
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 379' 
 
 the government, it has been through their dis- 
 like of the puritanic spirit and the humanita- 
 rian or socialistic elements they detected in the 
 Republican party, joined with a prejudice 
 against political and social negro equality. But 
 their church everywhere opposes the socialistic 
 movements of the age, all movements in behalf 
 of barbarism, and they may always be counted 
 on to resist the advance of the socialistic de- 
 mocracy. If the country has had reason to 
 complain of some of them in the late war, it 
 will have, in the future, far stronger reason to 
 be grateful ; not to them, indeed, for the citizen 
 owes his life to his country, but to their reli- 
 gion, which has been and is the grand protec- 
 tress of modern society and civilization. 
 
 From the origin of the government there 
 has been a tendency to the extension of suffrage, 
 and to exclude both birth and private property 
 as bases of political rights or franchises. This 
 tendency has often been justified on the ground 
 that the elective franchise is a natural right ; 
 which is not true, because the elective franchise 
 is political power, and political power is always 
 a civil trust, never a natural right, and the 
 state judges for itself to whom it will or will 
 not confide the trust ; but there can be no 
 doubt that it is a normal tendency, and in strict
 
 380 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 accordance with the constitution of American 
 <nvil society, which rests on the unity of the 
 race, and public instead of private property. 
 All political distinctions founded on birth, race, 
 or private wealth are anomalies in the Ameri- 
 can system, and are necessarily eliminated by 
 its normal developments. To contend that none 
 but property-holders may vote, or none but per- 
 sons of a particular race may be enfranchised, 
 is un American and contrary to the order of civ- 
 ilization the New "World is developing. The 
 only qualification for the elective franchise the 
 American system can logically insist on is that 
 the elector belong to the territorial people 
 that is, be a natural-born or a naturalized citi- 
 zen, be a major in full possession of his natural 
 faculties, and unconvicted of any infamous of- 
 fence. The State is free to naturalize foreign- 
 ers or not, and under such restrictions as it 
 judges proper; but, having naturalized them, 
 it must treat them as standing on the same 
 footing with natural-born citizens. 
 
 The naturalization question is one of great 
 national importance. The migration of for- 
 eigners hither has added largely to the national 
 population, and to the national wealth and re- 
 sources, but less, perhaps, to the development 
 of patriotism, the purity of elections, or the
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 381 
 
 wisdom and integrity of the government. It is 
 impossible that there should be perfect harmony 
 between the national territorial democracy and 
 individuals born, brought up, and formed under 
 a political order in many respects widely dif- 
 ferent from it; and there is no doubt that the 
 democracy, in its objectionable sense, has been 
 greatly strengthened by the large infusion of 
 naturalized citizens. There can be no question 
 that, if the laboring classes, in whom the na- 
 tional sentiment is usually the strongest, had 
 been composed almost wholly of native Ameri- 
 cans, instead of being, as they were, at least in 
 the cities, large towns, and villages, composed 
 almost exclusively of persons foreign born, the 
 Government would have found far less difficul- 
 ty in filling up the depleted ranks of its armies. 
 But to leave so large a portion of the actual 
 population as the foreign born residing in the 
 country without the rights of citizens, would 
 have been a far graver evil, and would, in the 
 late struggle, have given the victory to seces- 
 sion. There are great national advantages de- 
 rived from the migration hither of foreign labor, 
 and if the migration be encouraged or permitted, 
 naturalization on easy and liberal terms is the 
 wisest, the best, and only safe policy. The chil- 
 dren of foreign-born parents are real Americans,
 
 382 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Emigration has, also, a singular effect in de- 
 veloping the latent powers of the emigrant, and 
 the children of emigrants are usually more 
 active, more energetic than the children of the 
 older inhabitants of the country among whom 
 they settle. Some of our first men in civil life 
 have been sons of foreign-born parents, and so 
 are not a few of our greatest and most success- 
 ful generals. The most successful of our mer- 
 chants have been foreign-born. The same thing 
 has been noticed elsewhere, especially in the 
 emigration of the French Huguenots to Holland, 
 ^Germany, England, and Ireland. The immigra- 
 tion of so many millions from the Old World 
 has, no doubt, given to the American people 
 much of their bold, energetic, and adventurous 
 character, and made them a superior people on 
 the whole to what they would otherwise have 
 been. This has nothing to do with superiority 
 or inferiority of race or blood, but is a natural 
 effect of breaking men away from routine, and 
 throwing them back on their own individual 
 energies and personal resources. 
 
 Resistance is offered to negro suffrage, and 
 justly too, till the recently emancipated slaves 
 liave served an apprenticeship to freedom ; but 
 that resistance cannot long stand before the on- 
 ward progress of American democracy, which
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 383 
 
 asserts equal rights for all, and not for a race 
 or class only. Some would confine suffrage to 
 landholders, or, at least, to property-holders ; 
 but that is inconsistent with the American idea, 
 and is a relic of the barbaric constitution which 
 founds power on private instead of public 
 wealth. Nor are property-owners a whit more 
 likely to vote for the public good than are those 
 who own no property but their own labor. The 
 men of wealth, the business men, manufactur- 
 ers and merchants, bankers and brokers, are the 
 men who exert the worst influence on govern- 
 ment in every country, for they always strive 
 to use it as an instrument of advancing their 
 own private interests. They act on the beau- 
 tiful maxim, " Let government take care of the 
 rich, and the rich will take care of the poor," 
 instead of the far safer maxim, "Let govern- 
 ment take care of the weak, the strong can take 
 care of themselves." Universal suffrage is bet- 
 
 O 
 
 ter than restricted suffrage, but even universal 
 suffrage is too weak to prevent private property 
 from having an undue political influence. 
 
 The evils attributed to universal suffrage are 
 not inseparable from it, and, after all, it is 
 doubtful if it elevates men of an inferior class 
 to those elevated by restricted suffrage. The 
 Congress of I860, or of 1862. was a fair average
 
 384 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of the wisdom, the talent, and the virtue of the 
 country, and not inferior to that of 1776, or 
 that of lt89; and the Executive during the re- 
 bellion was at least as able and as efficient as 
 it was during the war of 1812, far superior to 
 that of Great Britain, and not inferior to that 
 of France during the Crimean war. The Cri- 
 mean war developed and placed in high com- 
 mand, either with the English or the French, no 
 generals equal to Halleck, Grant, and Sherman, 
 to say nothing of others. The more aristocratic 
 South proved itself, in both statesmanship and 
 generalship, in no respect superior to the ter- 
 ritorial democracy of the North and West. 
 
 The great evil the country experiences is not 
 from universal suffrage, but from what may 
 be called rotation in office. The number of po- 
 litical aspirants is so great that, in the Northern, 
 and Western States especially, the representa- 
 tives in Congress are changed every two or four 
 years, and a member, as soon as he has acquired 
 the experience necessary to qualify him for his 
 position, is dropped, not through the fickleness 
 of his constituency, but to give place to another 
 whose aid had been necessary to his first or 
 second election. ' Employe's are " rotated," not 
 because they are incapable or unfaithful, but, 
 because there are others who want their places..
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 385 
 
 This is all bad, but it springs not from univer- 
 sal suffrage, but from a wrong public opinion, 
 which might be corrected by the press, but 
 which is mainly formed by it. There is, no 
 doubt, a due share of official corruption, but 
 not more than elsewhere, and that would be 
 much diminished by increasing the salaries of 
 the public servants, especially in the higher 
 offices of the government, both General and 
 State. The pay to the lower officers and em-' 
 ployes of the government, and to the privates 
 and non-commissioned officers in the army, is 
 liberal, and, in general, too liberal ; but the pay 
 of the higher grades in both the civil and mili- 
 tary service is too low, and relatively far lower 
 than it was when the government was first or- 
 ganized. 
 
 The worst tendency in the country, and 
 which is not encouraged at all by the territo- 
 rial democracy, manifests itself in hostility to 
 the military spirit and a standing army. The 
 depreciation of the military spirit comes from 
 the humanitarian or sentimental democracy, 
 which, like all sentimentalisms, defeats itself, 
 and brings about the very evils it seeks to 
 avoid. The hostility to standing armies is in- 
 herited from England, and originated in the 
 quarrels between king and parliament, and is a 
 
 2G
 
 386 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 
 
 striking evidence of the folly of that bundle of 
 antagonistic forces called the British constitution. 
 In feudal times most of the land was held by 
 military service, and the reliance of government 
 was on the feudal militia ; but no real progress 
 was made in eliminating barbarism till the na- 
 tional authority got a regular army at its com- 
 mand, and became able to defend itself against 
 its enemies. It is very doubtful if English civil- 
 ization has not, upon the whole, lost more than 
 it has gained by substituting parliamentary for 
 royal supremacy, and exchanging the Stuarts 
 for the Guelfs. 
 
 No nation is a living, prosperous nation that 
 has lost the military spirit, or in which the pro- 
 fession of the soldier is not held in honor and 
 esteem ; and a standing army of reasonable size 
 is public economy. It absorbs in its ranks a 
 class of men who are worth more there than 
 anywhere else ; it creates honorable places for 
 gentlemen or the sons of gentlemen without 
 wealth, in which they can serve both them- 
 selves and their country. Under a democratic 
 government the most serious embarrassment 
 to the state is its gentlemen, or persons not 
 disposed or not fitted to support themselves 
 by their own hands, more necessary in a demo- 
 cratic government than in any other. The civil
 
 \ 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. 387 
 
 service, divinity, law, and medicine, together 
 with literature, science, and art, cannot absorb 
 the whole of this ever-increasing class, and the 
 army and navy would be an economy and a 
 real service to the state were they maintained 
 only for the sake of the rank and position they 
 give to their officers, and the wholesome influ- 
 ence these officers would exert on society and 
 the politics of the country this even in case 
 there were no wars or apprehension of wars. 
 They supply an element needed in all society, 
 to sustain in it the chivalric and heroic spirit, 
 perpetually endangered by the mercantile and 
 political spirit, which has in it always some- 
 thin o- low and sordid. 
 
 O 
 
 But wars are inevitable, and when a nation 
 has no surrounding nations to fight, it will, as 
 we have just proved, fight itself. When it can 
 have no foreign war, it will get up a domestic 
 war ; for the human animal, like all animals, 
 must work off in some way its fighting humor, 
 and the only sure way of maintaining peace is 
 always to be prepared for war. A regular 
 standing army of forty thousand men would 
 have prevented the Mexican war, and an army 
 of fifty thousand well-disciplined and efficient 
 troops at the command of the President on his 
 inauguration in March, 1861, would have pre-
 
 388 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 vented the rebellion, or have instantly sup- 
 pressed it.. The cost of maintaining a land 
 army of even a hundred thousand men, and a 
 naval force to correspond, would have been, in 
 simple money value, only a tithe of what the 
 rebellion has cost the nation, to say nothing of 
 the valuable lives that have been sacrificed 
 for the losses on the rebel side, as well as those 
 on the side of the government, are equally to be 
 counted. The actual losses to the country have 
 been not less than six or eight thousand millions 
 of dollars, or nearly one-half the assessed value 
 of the whole property of the United States ac- 
 cording to the census returns of 1860, and which 
 has only been partially cancelled by actual in- 
 crease of property since. To meet the interest on 
 the debt incurred will require a heavier sum to 
 be raised annually by taxation, twice over, with- 
 out discharging a cent of the principal, than 
 would have been necessary to maintain an army 
 and navy adequate to the protection of peace 
 and the prevention of the rebellion. 
 
 The rebellion is now suppressed, and if the 
 government does not blunder much more in 
 its civil efforts at pacification than it did in its 
 military operations, before 1868 things will 
 settle down into their normal order ; but a reg- 
 ular army not militia or volunteers, who are
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES. - 389 
 
 too expensive of at least a hundred thousand 
 men of all arms, and a navy nearly as large as 
 that of England or France, will be needed as a 
 peace establishment. The army of a hundred 
 thousand men must form a cadre of an army 
 of three times that 'number, which will be ne- 
 cessary to place the army on a war footing. 
 Less will answer neither for peace nor war, for 
 the nation has, in spite of herself, to maintain 
 henceforth the rank of a first-class military 
 and maritime power, and take a leading part 
 in political movements of the civilized world, 
 and, to a great extent, hold in her hand the 
 peace of Europe. 
 
 Canning boasted that he had raised up the 
 New World to redress the balance of the Old : 
 a vain boast, for he simply weakened Spain and 
 gave the hegemony of Europe to Russia, which 
 the Emperor of the French is trying, by 
 strengthening Italy and Spain, and by a French 
 protectorate in Mexico, to secure to France, 
 both in the Old World and the New a magnifi- 
 cent dream, but not to be realized. His uncle 
 judged more wisely when he sold Louisiana, 
 left the New World to itself, and sought only to 
 secure to France the hegemony of the Old. But 
 the hegemony of the New World henceforth be- 
 longs to the United States, and she will have
 
 39 ) - THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 a potent voice in adjusting the balance of power 
 even in Europe. To maintain this position,, 
 which is imperative on her, she must always 
 have a large armed force, either on foot or in 
 reserve, which she can call out and put on a war 
 footing at short notice. The United States 
 
 O 
 
 must henceforth be a great military and naval 
 power, and the old hostility to a standing army 
 and the old attempt to bring the military into- 
 disrepute must be abandoned, and the country 
 yield to its destiny. 
 
 Of the several tendencies mentioned, the hu- 
 manitarian tendency, egoistical at the South, de- 
 taching the individual from the race, and social- 
 istic at the North, absorbing the individual in 
 the race, is the most dangerous. The egoistical 
 
 O O 
 
 form is checked, sufficiently weakened by the 
 defeat of the rebels ; but the social form be- 
 lieves that it has triumphed, and that individu- 
 als are effaced in society, and the States in the 
 Union. Against this, more especially should 
 public opinion and American statesmanship be 
 now directed, and territorial democracy and 
 the division of the powers of government be 
 asserted and vigorously maintained. The dan- 
 ger is that while this socialistic form of democ- 
 racy is conscious of itself, the territorial de- 
 mocracy has not yet arrived, as the Germans
 
 POLITICAL TENJDENUIES. 391 
 
 say, at self consciousness selbsbewusstseyn 
 and operates only instinctively. All the domi- 
 nant theories and sentimentalities are against 
 it, and it is only Providence that can sustain it.
 
 892 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 IT has been said in the Introduction to this 
 essay that eveiy living nation receives from 
 Providence a special work or mission in the 
 progress of society, to accomplish which is 
 its destiny, or the end for which it exists ; and 
 that the special mission of the United States is 
 to continue and complete in the political order 
 the Greece-Roman civilization. 
 
 Of all the states or colonies on this continent, 
 the American Republic alone has a destiny, or 
 the ability to add any thing to the civilization 
 of the race. Canada and the other British 
 Provinces, Mexico and Central America, Co- 
 lumbia and Brazil, and the rest of the South 
 American States, might be absorbed in the 
 United States without being missed by the civ- 
 ilized world. They represent no idea, and the 
 work of civilization could go on without them 
 as well as with them. If they keep up with 
 the progress of civilization, it is all that can be 
 expected of them. France, England, Germany, 
 and Italy might absorb the rest of Europe, and
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 393 
 
 all Asia and Africa, without withdrawing a 
 single laborer from the work of advancing 
 the civilization of the race ; and it is doubtful 
 if these nations themselves can severally or 
 jointly advance it much beyond the point 
 reached by the Roman Empire, except in abol- 
 ishing slavery and including in the political 
 people the whole territorial people. They can 
 only develop and give a general application to 
 the fundamental principles of the Roman consti- 
 tution. That indeed is much, but it. adds no new 
 element nor new combination of pre-existing 
 elements. But nothing of this can be said of 
 the United States. 
 
 In the Graeco-Roman civilization is found the 
 state proper, and the great principle of the ter- 
 ritorial constitution of power, instead of the 
 personal or the genealogical, the patriarchal or 
 the monarchical ; and yet with true civil or po- 
 litical principles it mixed up nearly all the 
 elements of the barbaric constitution. The 
 gentile system of Rome recalls the patriarchal, 
 and the relation that subsisted between the 
 patron and his clients has a striking resem- 
 blance to that which subsists between the 
 feudal lord and his retainers, and may have 
 had the same origin. The three tribes, Ramnes, 
 Quirites, and Luceres, into which the Roman
 
 394 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 people were divided before the rise of the- 
 plebs, may have been, as Niebuhr contends, 
 local, not genealogical, in their origin, but they 
 were not strictly territorial distinctions, and the 
 division of each tribe into a hundred houses or 
 gentes was not local, but personal, if not, as the 
 name implies, genealogical. No doubt the in- 
 dividuals or families composing the house or 
 gens were not all of kindred blood, for the 
 Oriental custom of adoption, so frequent with 
 our North American Indians, and with all peo- 
 ple distributed into tribes, septs, or clans, ob- 
 tained with the Romans. The adopted member 
 was considered a child of the house, and took 
 its name and inherited its goods. Whether, as 
 Xiebuhr maintains, all the free gentiles of the 
 three tribes were called patres or patri- 
 cians, or whether the term was restricted to the 
 heads of houses, it is certain that the head of 
 the house represented it in the senate, and the 
 vote in the curies was by houses, not by indi- 
 viduals en masse. After all, practically the 
 Roman senate was hardly less an estate than 
 the English house of lords, for no one could 
 sit in it unless a lauded proprietor and of noble 
 blood. The plebs, though outside of the 
 political people proper, as not being included 
 in the three tribes, when they came to be a
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 395 
 
 power in the republic under the emperors, and 
 the old distinction of plebs and patricians was- 
 forgotten, were an estate, and not a local or ter- 
 ritorial people. 
 
 The republican element was in the fact that 
 the land, which gave the right to participate in 
 political power, was the domain of the state, 
 and the tenant held, it from the state. The 
 domain was vested in the state, not in the sen- 
 ator nor the prince, and was therefore respublica^. 
 not private property the first grand leap of 
 the human race from barbarism. In all other 
 respects the Roman constitution was no more 
 republican than the feudal. Athens went 
 farther than Rome, and introduced the prin- 
 ciple of territorial democracy. The division 
 into demes or wards, whence comes the word 
 democracy, was. a real territorial division, not 
 personal nor genealogical. And if the equality 
 of all men was not recognized, all who were 
 
 O / 
 
 included in the political class stood on the same 
 footing. Athens and other Greek cities, though 
 conquered by Rome, exerted after their con- 
 quest a powerful influence on Roman civiliza- 
 tion, which became far more democratic under 
 the emperors than it had been under the patri- 
 cian senate, which the assassins of Julius Caesar r 
 and the superannuated conservative party they
 
 396 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 represented, tried so hard to preserve. The 
 senate and the consulship were opened to the 
 representatives of the great plebeian houses, and 
 the provincials were clothed with the rights of 
 Roman citizens, and uniform laws were estab- 
 lished throughout the empire. 
 
 The grand error, as has already been said, of 
 the Grseco-Roman or gentile civilization, was 
 in its denial or ignorance of the unity of the 
 human race, as well as the Unity of God, and 
 in its including in the state only a particular 
 class of the territorial people, while it held all 
 the rest as slaves, though in different degrees 
 of servitude. It recognized and sustained a 
 privileged class, a ruling order ; and if, as sub- 
 sequently did the Venetian aristocracy, it re- 
 cognized democratic equality within that order, 
 it held all outside of it to be less than men and 
 without political rights. Practically, power 
 was an attribute of birth and of private wealth. 
 Suffrage was almost universal among freemen, 
 but down almost to the Empire, the people voted 
 by orders, and were counted, not numerically, 
 but by the rank of the order, and the comitia 
 curiata could always carry the election over the 
 oomitia centuriata, and thus power remained 
 always in the hands of the rich and noble few. 
 
 The Roman law, as digested by jurists under
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 397 
 
 Justinian in the sixth century, indeed, recog- 
 nizes the unity of the race, asserts the equality of 
 all men by the natural law, and undertakes to- 
 defend slavery on principles not incompatible 
 with that equality.' It represents it as a com- 
 mutation of the punishment of death, which the 
 emperor has the right to inflict on captives taken 
 in war, to perpetual servitude; and as servitude 
 is less severe than death, slavery was really a 
 proof of imperial clemency. But it has never 
 yet been proved that the emperor has the right 
 under the natural law to put captives taken 
 even in a just war to death, and the Roman 
 poet himself bids us " humble the proud, but 
 spare the submissive." In a just war the em- 
 peror may kill on the battle-field those in arms 
 against him, but the jus gentium, as now inter- 
 preted by the jurisprudence of every civilized 
 nation, does not allow him to put them to death 
 after they have ceased resistance, have thrown 
 down their arms, and surrendered. But even 
 if it did, it gives him a right only over the per- 
 sons captured, not over their innocent children, 
 and therefore no right to establish hereditary 
 slavery, for the child is not punishable for the of- 
 fences of the parent. The law, indeed, assumed 
 that the captive ceased to exist as a person 
 and treated him as a thing, or mere property
 
 39S THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 of the conqueror ; and being property, lie could 
 beget only property, which would accrue only 
 to his owner. But there is no power in heaven 
 or earth that can make a person a thing, a mere 
 piece of merchandise, and it is only by a clumsy 
 fiction, or rather by a bare-faced lie, that the 
 law denies the slave his personality and treats 
 him as a thing. If the unity of the race and 
 the brotherhood of all men had been clearly 
 seen and vividly felt, the law would never have 
 attempted to justify perpetual slavery on the 
 ground of its penal character, or indeed on any 
 ground whatever. All men are born under the 
 law of nature with equal rights, and the civil 
 law can justly deprive no man of his liberty, 
 but for a crime, committed by him personally, 
 that justly forfeits his liberty to society. 
 
 These defects of the Graeco-Roman civiliza- 
 tion the European nations have in part reme- 
 died, and may completely remedy. . They can 
 carry out practically the Christian dogma of 
 the unity of the human race, abolish slavery in 
 every form, make all men equal before the law, 
 and the political people commensurate with the 
 territorial people. Indeed, France has already 
 done it. She has abolished slavery, villenage, 
 serfage, political aristocracy, asserted the equal- 
 ity of all men before the law, vindicated the
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 39iJ 
 
 sovereignty of the people, and established uni- 
 versal suffrage, complete social and territorial 
 democracy. The other nations may do as much, 
 but hardly can any of them do more or advance 
 farther. Yet in France, territorial democracy 
 the most complete results only in establishing 
 the most complete imperial centralism, usually 
 called Csesarism. 
 
 The imperial constitution of France recog- 
 nizes that the emperor reigns "by the grace 
 of God and the will of the nation," and 
 therefore, that by the grace of God and the 
 will of the nation he may cease to reign ; but 
 while he reigns he is supreme, and his will is 
 law. The constitution imposes no real or effec- 
 tive restraint on his power : while he sits upon 
 the throne he is practically France, and the 
 ministers are his clerks; the council of state, 
 the senate, and the legislative body are merely 
 his agents in governing the nation. This may, 
 indeed, be changed, but only to substitute 
 for. imperial centralism democratic centralism, 
 which were no improvement, or to go back to 
 the system of antagonisms, checks and balances, 
 called constitutionalism, or parliamentary gov- 
 ernment, of which Great Britain is the model, 
 and which were a return toward barbarism, or 
 .mediaeval feudalism.
 
 400 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 The human race has its life in God, and tends 
 to realize in all orders the Divine Word or 
 Logos, which is logic itself, and the principle of 
 all conciliation, of the dialectic union of all 
 opposites or extremes. Mankind will be logi- 
 cal ; and the worst of all tyrannies is that which 
 forbids them to draw from their principles 
 their last logical consequences, or that prohibits 
 them the free explication and application of the 
 Divine Idea, in which consists their life, their 
 progress. Such tyranny strikes at the very 
 existence of society, and wars against the reality 
 of things. It is supremely sophistical, and its 
 success is death ; for the universe in its consti~ 
 tution is supremely logical, and man, individu- 
 ally and socially, is rational. God is the author 
 and type of all created things; and all crea- 
 tures, each in its order, imitate or copies the 
 Divine Being, who is intrinsically Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, principle, medium, and end. 
 The Son or Word is the medium, which unites 
 the two extremes, whence God is living God 
 a real, active, living Being living, concrete, 
 not abstract or dead unity, like the unity 
 of old Xenophanes, Plotinus, and Proclus. In 
 the Holy Trinity is the principle and pro- 
 totype of all society, and what is called the 
 solidarity of the race is only the outward
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 401 
 
 expression, or copy in the external order, of 
 what theologians term the circumsession of the 
 three Divine Persons of the Godhead. 
 
 Now, human society, when it copies the Di- 
 vine essence and nature either in the distinction 
 of persons alone, or in the unity alone, is sophis- 
 tical, and wants the principle of all life and 
 reality. It sins against God, and must fail of 
 its end. The English system, which is based 
 on antagonistic elements, on opposites, without 
 the middle term that conciliates them, unites 
 them, and makes them dialectically one, copies 
 the Divine model in its distinctions alone, 
 which, considered alone, are opposites or con- 
 traries. It denies, if Englishmen could but see 
 it, the unity of God. The French, or imperial 
 system, which excludes the extremes, instead 
 of uniting them, denies all opposites, instead of 
 <xmciliating them denies the distinctions in 
 the model, and copies only the unity, which is 
 the supreme sophism called pantheism. The 
 English constitution has no middle term, and the 
 French no extremes, and each in its way denies 
 the Divine Trinity, the original basis and type 
 of the syllogism. The human race can be con- 
 tented with neither, for neither allows it free 
 scope for its inherent, life and activity. The 
 English system tends to pure individualism ; 
 
 27
 
 402 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 the French to pure socialism or despotism, each 
 endeavoring to suppress an element of the one 
 living and indissoluble TRUTH. 
 
 This is not fancy, is not fine-spun specula- 
 tion, or cold and lifeless abstraction, but the 
 highest theological and philosophical truth, 
 without which there were no reason, no man, 
 no society ; for God is the first principle of all 
 being, all existence, all science, all life, and it is 
 in Him that we live and move and have our 
 being. God is at the beginning, in the middle, 
 and at the end of all things the universal 
 principle, medium, and end ; and no truth can 
 be denied without His existence being directly 
 or indirectly impugned. In a deeper sense 
 than is commonly understood is it true that 
 nisi Dominus cedificaverit domum, in vanum 
 labomverunt qui cedificant earn. The English 
 constitution is composed of contradictory ele- 
 ments, incapable of reconciliation, and each 
 element is perpetually struggling with the 
 others for the mastery. For a long time the 
 king labored, intrigued, and fought to free him 
 self from the thraldom in which he was held 
 by the feudal barons; in 1688 the aristocracy 
 and people united and humbled the crown ; and 
 now the people are at work seeking to sap both 
 the crown and the nobles. The state is consti-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 403 
 
 tuted to nobody's satisfaction ; and though all 
 may unite in boasting its excellences, all are at 
 work trying to alter or amend it. The work 
 of constituting the state with the English is 
 ever beginning, never ending. Hence the eter- 
 nal clamor for parliamentary reform. 
 
 Great Britain and other European states may 
 sweep away all that remains of feudalism, in- 
 clude the whole territorial people with the equal 
 rights of all in the state or political people, con- 
 cede to birth and wealth no political rights, but 
 they will by so doing only establish either impe- 
 rial centralism, as has been done in France, or 
 democratic centralism, clamored for, conspired 
 for, and fought for by the revolutionists of Eu- 
 rope. The special merit of the American system 
 is not in its democracy alone, as too many at 
 home and abroad imagine ; but along with its 
 democracy in the division of the powers of 
 government, between a General government and 
 particular State governments, which are not an- 
 tagonistic governments, for they act on different 
 matters, and neither is nor can be subordinated 
 to the other. 
 
 Now, this division of power, which decen- 
 tralizes the government without creating mu- 
 tually hostile forces, can hardly be introduced 
 into any European state. There may be a
 
 404 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 union of states in Great Britain, in Germany, 
 in Italy, perhaps in Spain, and Austria is labor- 
 ing hard to effect it in her heterogeneous em- 
 pire ; but the union possible in any of them is that 
 of a Bund or confederation, like the Swiss or 
 German Bund, similar to what the secessionists- 
 in the United States so recently attempted and 
 have so signally failed to establish. An intel- 
 ligent Confederate officer remarked that their 
 Confederacy had not been in operation three 
 months before it became evident that the prin- 
 ciple on which it was founded, if not rejected, 
 would insure its defeat. It was that principle 
 of State sovereignty, for which the States se- 
 ceded, more than the superior resources and 
 numbers of the Government, that caused the 
 collapse of the Confederacy. The numbers 
 were relatively about equal, and the military 
 resources of the Confederacy were relatively not 
 much inferior to those of the Government. So 
 at least the Confederate leaders thought, and 
 they knew the material resources of the Govern- 
 ment as well as their own, and had calculated 
 them with as much care and accuracy as any men 
 could. Foreign powers also, friendly as well 
 as unfriendly, felt certain that the secessionists 
 would gain their independence, and so did a 
 large part of the people even of the loyal State*
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 405 
 
 The failure is due to the disintegrating princi- 
 ple of State sovereignty, the very principle of 
 the Confederacy. The war has proved that 
 united states are, other things being equal, au 
 overmatch for confederated states. 
 
 The European states must unite either a's 
 equals or as unequals. As equals, the union cau 
 "be only a confederacy, a sort of Zollverein, in 
 which each state retains its individual sover- 
 eignty ; if as unequals, then some one among 
 them will aspire to the hegemony, and you 
 have over again the Athenian Confederation, 
 formed at the conclusion of the Persian war, and 
 its fate. A union like the American cannot be 
 created by a compact, or by the exercise of su- 
 preme power. The Emperor of the French 
 cannot erect the several .Departments of France 
 into states, and divide the powers of govern- 
 ment between them as individual and as 
 united states. They would necessarily hold 
 from the imperial government, which, though 
 it might exercise a large part of its functions 
 thro ugh them, would remain, as now, the supreme 
 central government, from which all government- 
 al powers emanate, as our President is apparent, 
 ly attempting, in his reconstruction policy, to 
 make the government of the United States. The 
 elements of a state constituted like the American
 
 406 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 do not exist in any European nation, nor in the 
 constitution of European society ; and the 
 American constitution would have been im- 
 practicable even here had not Providence so or- 
 dered it that the nation was born with it, and 
 has never known any other. 
 
 Rome recognized the necessity of the federal 
 principle, and applied it in the best way she 
 could. At first it was a single tribe or people dis- 
 tributed into distinct gentes or houses ; after the 
 Sabine war, a second tribe was added on terms- 
 of equality, and the state was dual, composed 
 of two tribes, the Rarnnes and the Tities or 
 Quirites, and, afterward, in the time of Tullu* 
 Hostilius, were added the Lucertes or Luceres, 
 making the division into three ruling tribes^ 
 each divided into one hundred houses or gentes. 
 Each house in each tribe was represented by its 
 chief or decurion in the senate, making the num- 
 ber of senators exactly three hundred, at which 
 number the senate was fixed. Subsequently was- 
 added, by Ancus, the plebs, who remained with- 
 out authority or share in the government of the 
 city of Rome itself, though they might as- 
 pire to the first rank in the allied cities. The 
 division into tribes, and the division of the 
 tribes into gentes or houses, and the vote in the 
 state by tribes, and in the tribes by houses, ef-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 407 
 
 fectually excluded democratic centralism ; but 
 the division was not a division of the powers 
 of government between two co-ordinate gov- 
 ernments, for the senate had supreme control, 
 like the British parliament, over all matters, 
 general and particular. 
 
 The establishment, after the secession of the 
 plebs, of the tribuuitial veto, which gave the 
 plebeians a negative power in the state, there 
 was an incipient division of the powers of gov- 
 ernment ; but only a division between the posi- 
 tive and negative powers, not between the gen- 
 eral and the particular. The power accorded to 
 the plebs, or commons, as Niebuhr calls them 
 who is, perhaps, too fond of explaining the early 
 constitution of Rome by analogies borrowed 
 from feudalism, and especially from the consti- 
 tution of his native Ditmarsch was simply an 
 obstructive power; and when it, by development, 
 became a positive power, it absorbed all the 
 powers of government, and created the Empire. 
 
 There was, indeed, a nearer approach to the 
 division of powers in the American system, 
 between imperial Rome and her allied or con- 
 federated municipalities. These municipalities, 
 modelled chiefly after that of Rome, were elec- 
 tive, and had the management of their own local 
 aifairs ; but their local powers were not co-ordi-
 
 408 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 nate in their own sphere with those exercised 
 by the Roman municipality, but subordinate 
 and dependent. The senate had the supreme 
 power over them, and they held their rights 
 subject to its will. They were formally, or 
 virtually, subjugated states, to which the Roman 
 senate, and afterward the Roman emperors, 
 left the form of the state and the mere shadow 
 of freedom. Rome owed much to her affecting 
 to treat them as allies rather than as subjects, 
 and at first these municipal organizations secured 
 the progress of civilization in the provinces; 
 but at a later period, under the emperors, they 
 served only the imperial treasury, and were 
 crushed by the taxes imposed and the contribu- 
 tions levied on them by the fiscal agents of the 
 empire. So heavy were the fiscal burdens im- 
 posed on the burgesses, if the term may be 
 used, that it needed an imperial edict to compel 
 them to enter the municipal government ; and 
 it became, under the later emperors, no uncom- 
 mon thing for free citizens to sell themselves 
 into slavery, to escape the fiscal burdens im- 
 posed. There are actually imperial edicts ex- 
 tant forbidding freemen to sell themselves as 
 slaves. Thus ended the Roman federative sys- 
 tem, and it is difficult to discover in Europe 
 the elements of a federative system that could 
 have a more favorable result.
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 409 
 
 Now, the political destiny or mission of the 
 United States is, in common with the European 
 nations, to eliminate the barbaric elements re- 
 tained by the Eoman constitution, and specially 
 to realize that philosophical division of the 
 powers of government which distinguish it from 
 both imperial and democratic centralism on the 
 one hand, and, on the other, from the checks and 
 balances or organized antagonisms 'which seek to 
 preserve liberty by obstructing the exercise of 
 power. No greater problem in statesmanship 
 remains to be solved, and no greater contribution 
 to civilization to be made. Nowhere else than in 
 this New World, and in this New World only 
 in the United States, can this problem be solved, 
 .or this contribution be made, and what the 
 Grseco-Roman republic began be completed. 
 
 But the United States have a religious as 
 well as a political destiny, for religion and 
 politics go together. Church and state, as gov- 
 ernments, are separate indeed, but the princi- 
 pies on which the state is founded have their 
 origin and ground in the spiritual order in 
 the principles revealed or affirmed by religion 
 And are inseparable from them. There is no 
 state without God,, any more than there is a 
 church without Christ or the Incarnation. An 
 atheist may be a politician, but if there were 
 
 18
 
 410 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 no God there could be no politics. Theological 
 principles are the basis of political principles*. 
 The created universe is a dialectic whole, dis- 
 tinct but inseparable from its Creator, and all 
 its parts cohere and are essential to one an- 
 other. All has its origin and prototype in the 
 Triune God, and throughout expresses unity in 
 triplicity and triplicity in unity, without whicK 
 there is no real being and no actual or possible- 
 life. Every thing has its principle, medium, and 
 end. Natural society is initial, civil govern- 
 ment is medial, the church is teleological, but 
 the three are only distinctions in one indissolu- 
 ble whole. 
 
 Man, as we have seen, lives by communion, 
 with God through the Divine creative act, and 
 is perfected or completed only through the 
 Incarnation, in Christ, the Word made flesh.. 
 True, he communes with God through his kind,, 
 and through external nature, society in which, 
 he is born and reared, and property through 
 which he derives sustenance for his body ; but 
 these are only media of his communion with 
 God, the source of life not either the begin 
 ning or the end of his communion. They have 
 no life in themselves, since their being is in 
 God, and, of themselves, can impart none. They 
 ar" in the order of second causes, and second
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 411 
 
 causes, without the first cause, are nought. 
 Communion which stops with them, whicb 
 takes them as the principle and end, instead of 
 media, as they are, is the communion of death.. 
 not of life. As religion includes all that re- 
 lates to communion with God, it must in some- 
 form be inseparable from every living act of 
 man, both individually and socially ;>and, in the 
 long run, men must conform either their poli- 
 tics to their religion or their religion to their 
 politics. Christianity is constantly at work r 
 moulding political society in its own image and 
 likeness, and every political system struggles to- 
 harmonize Christianity with itself. If, then r 
 the United States have a political destiny, they 
 have a religious destiny inseparable from it. 
 
 The political destiny of the United States is- 
 to conform the state to the order of reality, or r 
 so to speak, to the Divine Idea in creation. 
 Their religious destiny is to render practicable 
 and to realize the normal relations between 
 church and state, religion and politics, as con- 
 creted in the life of the nation. 
 
 In politics, the United States are not realizing 
 a political theory of any sort whatever. They,, 
 on the contrary, are successfully refuting all 
 political theories, making away with them,, 
 and establishing the state not on a theory, not
 
 412 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 on an artificial basis or a foundation laid by 
 human reason or will, but on reality, the eter- 
 nal and immutable principles in relation to 
 which man is created. They are doing the 
 same in regard to religious theories. Religion 
 is not a theory, a .subjective view, an opin- 
 ion, but is, objectively, at once a principle, a 
 law, and a fact, and, subjectively, it is, by the 
 the aid of God's grace, practical conformity to 
 what is universally true and real. The United 
 States, in fulfilment of their destiny, are making 
 as sad havoc with religious theories as with po- 
 litical theories, and are pressing on with irre- 
 sistible force to the real or the Divine order 
 which is expressed in the Christian myste- 
 ries, which exists independent of man's under- 
 standing and will, and which man can neither 
 make nor unmake. 
 
 The religious destiny of the United States 
 is not to create a new religion nor to found a 
 new church. All real religion is catholic, and is 
 neither new nor old, but is always and every, 
 where true. Even our Lord came neither to 
 found a new church nor to create a new religion, 
 but to do the things which had been foretold, 
 .and to fulfil in time what had been determined 
 in eternity. God has himself founded the 
 <church on catholic principles, or principles al-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 413 
 
 ways and everywhere real principles. Hi& 
 church is necessarily catholic, because founded 
 on catholic dogmas, and the dogmas are cath- 
 olic, because they are universal and immuta- 
 ble principles, having their origin and ground 
 in the Divine Being Himself, or in the crea- 
 tive act by which He produces and sustains 
 all things. Founded on universal and immu- 
 table principles, the church can never grow 
 old or obsolete, but is the church for all times 
 and places, for all ranks and conditions of 
 men. Man cannot change either the church 
 or the dogmas of faith, for they are founded 
 in the highest reality, which is above him y 
 over him, and independent of him. Religion 
 is above and independent of the state, and the 
 state has nothing to do with the church or her 
 
 o 
 
 dogmas, but to accept and conform to them as 
 it does to any of the facts or principles of 
 science, to a mathematical truth, or to a physi- 
 cal law. 
 
 But while the church, with her essential con- 
 stitution, and her dogmas are founded in the 
 Divine order, and are catholic and unalterable, 
 the relations between the civil and ecclesiastical 
 authorities may be changed or modified by the 
 changes of time and place. These relations 
 have not been always the same, but have dif-
 
 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 -fered in different ages and countries. During 
 the first three centuries of our era the church 
 had no legal status, and was either connived at 
 or persecuted by the state. Under the Chris- 
 tian emperors she was recognized by the civil 
 law; her prelates had exclusive jurisdiction in 
 mixed civil and ecclesiastical questions, and 
 were made, in some sense, civil magistrates, and 
 paid as such by the empire. Under feudalism, 
 the prelates received investiture as princes and 
 barons, and formed alone, or in connection with 
 the temporal lords, an estate in the kingdom. 
 The Pope became a temporal prince and suze- 
 rain, at one time, of a large part of Europe, and 
 exercised the arbitratorship in all grave ques- 
 tions between Christian sovereigns themselves, 
 and between them and their subjects. Since 
 the downfall of feudalism and the establish- 
 ment of modern centralized monarchy, the 
 church has been robbed of the greater part 
 of her temporal possessions, and deprived, in 
 most countries, of all civil functions, and 
 treated by the state either as an enemy or as a 
 slave. 
 
 In all the sectarian and schismatic states of 
 the Old World, the national church is held in 
 strict subjection to the civil authority, as in 
 Great Britain and TCussia, and is the slave of
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS 415' 
 
 the state ; in the other states of Europe, as 
 France, Austria, Spain, and Italy, she is treated 
 with distrust by the civil government, and al- 
 lowed hardly a shadow of freedom and inde- 
 pendence. In France, which has the proud title 
 of eldest daughter of the church, Catholics, as 
 such, are not freer than they are in Turkey. 
 All religions are said to be free, and all 'are free, 
 except the religion of the majority of French- 
 men. The emperor, because nominally a Catho- 
 lic, takes it upon himself to concede the church 
 just as much and just as little freedom in the 
 empire as he judges expedient for his own sec- 
 ular interests. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mex- 
 ico, and the Central and South American states, 
 the policy of the civil authorities is the same, 
 or worse. It may be safely asserted that, ex- 
 cept in the United States, the church is either 
 held by the civil power in subjection, or treated 
 as an enemy. The relation is not that of union 
 and harmony, but that of antagonism, to the 
 grave detriment of both religion and civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 It is impossible, even if it were desirable, to 
 restore the mixture of civil and ecclesiastical 
 governments which obtained in the Middle 
 Ages; and a total separation of church and 
 state, oven as corporations, would, in the pres-
 
 416 THi, AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ent state of men's minds in Europe, be con- 
 strued, if approved by the church, into a sanc- 
 tion by her of political atheism, or the right 
 of the civil power to govern according to its 
 own will and pleasure in utter disregard of the 
 law of God, the moral order, or the immutable 
 distinctions between right and wrong. It could 
 only favor the absolutism of the state, and put 
 the temporal in the place of the spiritual. 
 Hence, the Holy Father includes the proposi 
 tion of the entire separation of church and state 
 in the Syllabus of Errors condemned in his 
 Encyclical, dated at Rome, December 8, 1864. 
 Neither the state nor the people, elsewhere than 
 in the United States, can understand practically 
 such separation in any other sense than th& 
 complete emancipation of our entire secular 
 life from the law of God, or the Divine order, 
 which is the real order. It is not the union of 
 church and state that is, the union, or identity 
 rather, of religious and political principles that 
 it is desirable to get rid of, but the disunion or 
 antagonism of church and state. But this is 
 nowhere possible out of the United States ; for 
 nowhere els^ is the state organized on catholic 
 principles, or capable of acting, when acting 
 from its own constitution, in harmony with a 
 really catholic church, or the religious order
 
 DESTIXY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 417 
 
 really existing, in relation to which all things 
 are created and governed. Nowhere else is it 
 practicable, at present, to maintain "between the 
 two powers their normal relations. 
 
 But what is not practicable in the Old 
 World is perfectly practicable in the New. 
 The state here being organized in accordance 
 with catholic principles, there can be no antag- 
 onism between it and the church. Though op- 
 erating in different spheres, both are, in their 
 respective spheres, developing and applying to 
 practical life the one and the same Divine Idea, 
 The church can trust the state, and the state 
 can trust the church. Both act from the same 
 principle to one and the same end. Each by 
 its own constitution co-operates with, aids, and 
 completes the other. It is true the church is 
 not formally established as the civil law of the 
 land, nor is it necessary that she should be ; be- 
 cause there is nothing in the state that conflicts 
 with her freedom and independence, with her 
 dogmas or her irreformable canons. The need 
 of establishing the church by law, and protect- 
 ing her by legal pains and penalties, as is still 
 done in most countries, can exist only in a 
 barbarous or semi-barbarous state of society, 
 where the state is not organized on catholic 
 principles, or the civilization is based on false 
 
 18*
 
 418 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 principles, and in its development tends not to 
 the real or Divine order of things. When the 
 state is constituted in harmony with that order, 
 it is carried onward by the force of its own 
 internal constitution in a catholic direction, 
 and a church establishment, or what is called a 
 state religion, would be an anomaly, or a super- 
 fluity. The true religion is in the heart of the 
 state, as its informing principle and real interior 
 life. The external establishment, by legal en- 
 actment of the church, would afford her no ad- 
 ditional protection, add nothing to her power 
 and efficacy, and effect nothing for faith or pie- 
 ty neither of which can be forced, because both 
 must, from their nature, be free-will offerings to 
 God. 
 
 In the United States, false religions are legally 
 as free as the true religion; but. all false reli- 
 gions being one-sided, sophistical, and uncath- 
 olic, are opposed by the principles of the state, 
 which tend, by their silent but effective work- 
 ings, to eliminate them. The American state 
 recognizes only the catholic religion. It eschews 
 all sectarianism, and none of the sects have 
 been able to get their peculiarities incorporated 
 into its constitution or its laws. The state con- 
 forms to what each holds that is catholic, that 
 18 always and everywhere religion ; and what
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 419 
 
 ever is not catholic it leaves, as outside of its 
 province, to live or die, according to its own in- 
 herent vitality or want of vitality. The state 
 conscience is catholic, not sectarian ; hence it is 
 that the utmost freedom can be allowed to all 
 religions, the false x as well as the true ; for the 
 state, being catholic in its constitution, can 
 never suffer the adherents of the false to oppress 
 the consciences of the adherents of the true. 
 The church being free, and the state harmo- 
 nizing with her, catholicity has, in the freedom 
 of both, all the protection it needs, all the se- 
 curity it can ask, and all the support it can, in 
 the nature of the case, receive from external 
 institutions, or from social and political organ- 
 izations. 
 
 This freedom may not be universally wise or 
 prudent, for all nations may not be prepared 
 for it : all may not have attained their majority. 
 The church, as well as the state, must deal with 
 men and nations as they are, not as they are not. 
 To deal with a child as with an adult, or with a 
 barbarous nation as with a civilized nation, would 
 be only acting a lie. The church cannot treat 
 men as free men where they are not free men, nor 
 appeal to reason in those in whom reason is unde- 
 veloped. She must adapt her discipline to the 
 age, condition, and culture of individuals, and
 
 420 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 to the greater or less progress of nations in 
 civilization. She herself remains always the 
 same in her constitution, her authority, and her 
 faith ; but varies her discipline with the varia- 
 tions of time and place. Many of her canons, 
 very proper and necessary in one age, cease to 
 be so in another, and many which are needed 
 in the Old World would be out of place in the 
 New World. Under the American system, she 
 can deal with the people as free men, and trust 
 them as freemen, because free men they are. 
 The freeman asks, why ? and the reason why 
 must be given him, or his obedience fails to be 
 secured. The simple reason that the church 
 commands will rarely satisfy him ; he would 
 know why she commands this or that. The 
 full-grown free man revolts at blind obedience, 
 and he regards all obedience as in some meas- 
 ure blind for which he sees only an extrinsic 
 command. Blind obedience even to the au- 
 thority of the church cannot be expected of* 
 the people reared under the American system, 
 not because they are filled with the spirit of 
 disobedience, but because they insist that obe- 
 dience shall be rationabile obsequium, an act 
 of the understanding, not of the will or the 
 affections alone. They are trained to demand 
 a reason for the command given them, to dis-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 421 
 
 tinguish between the law and the person of 
 the magistrate. They can obey God, but not 
 man, and they must see that the command 
 given has its reason in the Divine order, or the 
 intrinsic catholic reason of things, or they will 
 .not yield it a full, entire, and hearty obedi- 
 ence. The reason that suffices for the child 
 does not suffice for the adult, and the reason 
 that suffices for barbarians does not suffice 
 for civilized men, or that suffices for nations 
 in the infancy of their civilization does not 
 suffice for them in its maturity. The appeal 
 to external authority was much less frequent 
 under the Roman Empire than in the barbarous 
 ages that followed its downfall, when the 
 church became mixed up with the state. 
 
 This trait of the American character is not 
 uncatholic. An intelligent, free, willing obe- 
 dience, yielded from personal conviction, after 
 seeing its reasonableness, its justice, its logic 
 in the Divine order the obedience of a free 
 man, not of a slave is far more consonant to the 
 spirit of the church, and far more acceptable to 
 God, than simple, blind obedience ; and a peo- 
 ple capable of yielding it stand far higher in 
 the scale of civilization than the people that 
 must be governed as children or barbarians. It 
 
 O 
 
 is possible that the people of the Old World
 
 422 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 are not prepared for the regimen of freedom in 
 religion any more than they are prepared for 
 freedom in politics ; for they have been trained 
 only to obey external authority, and are not 
 accustomed to look on religion as having its 
 reason in the real order, or in the reason of 
 things. They understand no reason for obe- 
 dience beyond the external command, and do- 
 not believe it possible to give or to understand 
 the reason why the command itself is given. 
 They regard the authority of the church as a 
 thing apart, and see no way by which faith and 
 reason can be harmonized. They look upon 
 them as antagonistic forces rather than as in- 
 tegral elements of one and the same whole. Con- 
 cede them the regimen of freedom, and their 
 religion has no support but in their good- will, 
 their affections, their associations, their habits, 
 and their prejudices. It has no root in their 
 rational convictions, and when they begin to 
 reason they begin to doubt. This is not the 
 state of things that is desirable, but it can- 
 not be remedied under the political regime 
 established elsewhere than in the United 
 States. In every state in the world, except the 
 American, the civil constitution is sophistical ,. 
 and violates, more or less, the logic of things ; 
 and, therefore, in no one of them can the peo-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 423 
 
 pie receive a thoroughly dialectic training, or 
 an education in strict conformity to the real 
 order. Hence, in them all, the church is more 
 or less obstructed in her operations, and pre- 
 vented from carrying out in its fulness her o\vn 
 Divine Idea. She does the best she can in 
 the circumstances and with the materials with 
 which she is supplied, and exerts herself con- 
 tinually to bring individuals and nations into 
 harmony with her Divine law ; but still her 
 life in the midst of the nations is a struggle, a 
 warfare. 
 
 The United States being dialectically consti- 
 tuted, and founded on real catholic, not secta- 
 rian or sophistical principles, presents none of 
 these obstacles, and must, in their progressive 
 development or realization of their political 
 idea, put an end to this warfare, in so far as a 
 warfare between church and state, and leave 
 the church in her normal position in society, in 
 which she can, without let or hindrance, exert 
 her free spirit, and teach and govern men by 
 the Divine law as free men. She may encounter 
 unbelief, misbelief, ignorance, and indifference 
 in few, or in many; but these, deriving no sup- 
 port from the state, which tends constantly to 
 eliminate them, must gradually give way before 
 her invincible logic, her divine charity, the
 
 424 THE AMERICAS EEPUBLIC. 
 
 truth and reality of things, and the intelligence, 
 activity, and zeal of her ministers. The Amer- 
 ican people are, on the surface, sectarians or in- 
 differentists; but they are, in reality, less uncath- 
 olic than the people of any other country, be- 
 cause they are, in their intellectual and moral 
 development, nearer to the real order, or, in the 
 higher and broader sense of the word, more 
 truly civilized. The multitude of sects that 
 obtain may excite religious compassion for those 
 who are carried away by them, for men can be 
 saved or attain to their eternal destiny only by 
 truth, or conformity to Him who said, " I am 
 the way, the truth, and the life ;" but in re- 
 lation to the national destiny they need excite 
 no alarm, no uneasiness, for underlying them all 
 is more or less of catholic truth, and the vital 
 forces of the national life repel them, in so far 
 as they are sectarian and not catholic, as sub- 
 stances that cannot be assimilated to the na- 
 tional life. The American state being catholic 
 in its organic principles, as is all real religion, 
 and the church being free, whatever is anti- 
 catholic, or uncatholic, is without any support 
 in either, and having none, either in reality or 
 in itself, it must necessarily fall and gradually 
 disappear. 
 
 The sects themselves have a half unavowed
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 425 
 
 Conviction that they cannot subsist forever as 
 sects, if unsupported by the civil authority. 
 They are free, but do not feel safe in the United 
 States. They know the real church is catholic, 
 and that they themselves are none of them 
 catholic. The most daring among them even 
 pretends to be no more than a " branch " of 
 the catholic church. They know that only the 
 catholic church can withstand the pressure -of 
 events and survive the shocks of time, and 
 hence everywhere their movements to get rid 
 of their sectarianism and to gain a catholic 
 character. They hold conventions of delegates 
 from the whole sectarian world, form " unions," 
 " alliances," and- " associations ;" but, unhap- 
 pily for their success, the catholic church does 
 not originate in convention, but is founded by 
 the Word made flesh, and sustained by the in- 
 dwelling Holy Ghost. The most they can do, 
 even with the best dispositions in the world, 
 is to create a confederation, and confederated 
 sects are something very different from a church 
 inherently one and catholic. It is no more the 
 catholic church than the late Southern Confed- 
 eracy was the American state. The sectarian 
 combinations may do some harm," may injure 
 many souls, and retard, for a time, the progress 
 of civilization ; but in a state organized in ao-
 
 426 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 cordance with catholic principles, and left to- 
 themselves, they are powerless against the na- 
 tional destiny, and must soon wither and die 
 as branches severed from the vine. 
 
 Such being the case, no sensible Catholic can 
 imagine that the church needs any physical 
 force against the sects, except to repel actual 
 violence, and protect her in that freedom of 
 speech and possession which is the right of all 
 before the state. What are called religious es- 
 tablishments are needed only where either the 
 state is barbarous or the religion is sectarian. 
 Where the state, in its intrinsic constitution, is 
 in accordance with catholic principles, as in the 
 United States, the churcn has all she needs or 
 can receive. The state can add nothing more 
 to her power or her security in her moral and 
 spiritual warfare with sectarianism, and any 
 attempt to give her more would only weaken 
 her as against the sects, place her in a false 
 light, partially justify their hostility to her, ren- 
 der effective their declamations against her, 
 mix her up unnecessarily with political changes, 
 interests, and passions, and distract the atten- 
 tion of her ministers from their proper work 
 as churchmen, and impose on them the duties 
 of politicians and statesmen. Where there is 
 nothing in the state hostile to the church,
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 427 
 
 where she is tree to act according to her own 
 constitution and laws, and exercise her own 
 discipline on her own spiritual subjects, civil 
 enactments in her favor or against the sects 
 may embarrass or impede her operations, but 
 cannot aid her, for she can advance no farther 
 than she wins the heart and convinces the un- 
 derstanding. A spiritual work can, in the 
 nature of things, be effected only by spiritual 
 means. The church wants freedom in relation 
 to the state nothing more; for all her power 
 comes immediately from God, without any in- 
 tervention or mediation of the state. 
 
 The United States, constituted in accord- 
 ance with the real order of things, and founded 
 on principles which have their origin and 
 ground in the principles on which the church 
 herself is founded, can never establish any^ 
 one of the sects as the religion of the state, 
 for that would violate their political consti- 
 tution, and array all the other sects, as well 
 as the church herself, against the government. 
 They cannot be called upon to establish the- 
 church by law, because she is already in their 
 constitution as far as the state has in itself 
 any relation with religion, and because to- 
 establish her in any other sense would be to- 
 make her one of the civil institutions of the
 
 428 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 land, and to bring her under the control of the 
 state, which were equally against her interest 
 and her nature. 
 
 The religious mission of the United States is 
 not then to establish the church by external law, 
 or to protect her by legal disabilities, pains, and 
 penalties against the sects, however uncatholic 
 they may be ; but to maintain catholic freedom, 
 neither absorbing the state in the church nor the 
 church in the state, but leaving each to move 
 freely, according to its own nature, in the sphere 
 -assigned it in the eternal order of things. Their 
 mission separates church and state as external 
 governing bodies, but unites them in the interior 
 principles from which each derives its vitality 
 and force. Their union is in the intrinsic unity 
 of principle, and in the fact that, though moving 
 in different spheres, each obeys one and the 
 same Divine law. With this the Catholic, who 
 knows what Catholicity means, is of course sat- 
 isfied, for it gives the church all the advantage 
 over the sects of the real over the unreal ; and 
 with this the sects have no right to be dissatis- 
 fied, for it subjects them to no disadvantage not 
 inherent in sectarianism itself in presence of 
 Catholicity, and without any support from the 
 <ivil authority. 
 
 The effect of this mission of our country fully
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 realized, would be to harmonize church and 
 state, religion and politics, not by absorbing 
 either in the other, or by obliterating the natural 
 distinction between them, but by conforming 
 both to the real or Divine order, which is su- 
 preme and immutable. It places the two pow- 
 ers in their normal relation, which has hitherto 
 never been done, because hitherto there never 
 has been a state normally constituted. The 
 nearest approach made to the realization of the 
 proper relations of church and state, prior to 
 the birth of the American Republic, was in the 
 Roman Empire under the Christian emperors ; 
 but the state had been perverted by paganism, 
 and the emperors, inheriting the old pontifical 
 power, could never be made to understand 
 their own incompetency in spirituals, and per- 
 sisted to the last in treating the church as a 
 civil institution under their supervision and con- 
 trol, as does the Emperor of the French in 
 France, even yet. In the Middle Ages the state 
 was so barbarously constituted that the church 
 was obliged to supervise its administration^ 
 to mix herself up with the civil government, 
 in order to infuse some intelligence into civil 
 matters, and to preserve her own rightful free- 
 dom and independence. When the states broke 
 away from feudalism, they revived the Roman.
 
 430 THE AMERICAN. REPUBLIC. 
 
 -constitution, and claimed the authority in ec- 
 clesiastical matters that had been exercised by 
 the Roman Caesars, and the states that adopted 
 a sectarian religion gave the sect adopted a civil 
 establishment, and subjected it to the civil gov- 
 ernment, to which the sect not unwillingly con- 
 sented, on condition that the civil authority ex- 
 cluded the church and all other sects, and made 
 it the exclusive religion of the state, as in Eng- 
 land, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and 
 the states of Northern Germany. Even yet the 
 normal relations of church and state are nowhere 
 practicable in the Old "World ; for everywhere 
 either the state is more or less barbaric in its 
 constitution, or the religion is sectarian, and the 
 church as well as civilization is obliged to 
 struggle with antagonistic forces, for self-preser- 
 vation. 
 
 There are formidable parties all over Europe 
 at work to introduce what they take to be the 
 American system ; but constitutions are gener- 
 ated, not made Providential, not conventional. 
 Statesmen can only develop what is in the ex- 
 isting constitutions of their respective coun- 
 tries, and no European constitution contains all 
 the elements of the American. European Lib- 
 erals mistake the American system, and, were 
 they to succeed in their efforts, would not in-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AiVD EELIGIOUS. 431 
 
 trod uce it, but something more hostile to it 
 than the governments and institutions they are 
 waning against. They start from narrow, sec- 
 tarian, or infidel premises, and seek not freedom 
 of worship, but freedom of denial. They sup- 
 press the freedom of religion as the means of 
 securing what they call religious liberty ima- 
 gine that they secure freedom of thought by 
 extinguishing the light without which no 
 thought is possible, and advance civilization by 
 undermining its foundation. The condemna- 
 tion of their views and movements by the Holy 
 Father in the Encyclical, which has excited so 
 much hostility, may seem to superficial and 
 unthinking Americans even, as a condemnation 
 -of our American system indeed, as the con- 
 demnation of modern science, intelligence, and 
 civilization itself; but whoever looks below 
 the surface, has some insight into the course of 
 events, understands the propositions and mov<^ 
 ments censured, and the sense in which they 
 are censured, is well assured that the Holy 
 Father has simply exercised his pastoral and 
 teaching authority to save religion, society, 
 science, and civilization from utter corruption 
 or destruction. The opinions, tendencies, and 
 movements, directly or by implication censured, 
 are the effect of narrow and superficial think
 
 432 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 ing, of partial and one-sided views, and are secta- 
 rian, sophistical, and hostile to all real progress,, 
 and tend, as far as they go, to throw society 
 back into the barbarism from which, after centu- 
 ries of toil and struggle, it is just beginning to 
 emerge. The Holy Father has condemned noth- 
 ing that real philosophy, real science does not 
 also condemn ; nothing, in fact, that is not at war 
 with the American system itself. For the mass 
 of the people, it were desirable that fuller expla- 
 nations should be given of the sense in which 
 the various propositions censured are con- 
 demned, for some of them are not, in every sense, 
 false; but the explanations needed were expected 
 by the Holy Father to be given by the bishops 
 and prelates, to whom, not to the people, save 
 through them, the Encyclical was addressed. 
 Little is to be hoped, and much is to be feared, 
 for liberty, science, and civilization from Euro- 
 pean Liberalism, which has no real affinity 
 with American territorial democracy and real 
 civil and religious freedom. But God and real- 
 ity are present in the Old World as well as- 
 in the New, and it will never do to restrict 
 their power or freedom. 
 
 Whether the American people will prove 
 faithful to their mission, and realize their des- 
 tiny, or not, is known only to Him from whom
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 433 
 
 nothing is hidden. Providence is free, and 
 leaves always a space for human free-will. The 
 American people can fail, and will fail if they 
 neglect the appointed means and conditions of 
 success ; but there is nothing in their present 
 state or in their past history to render their 
 failure probable. They have in their internal 
 constitution what Rome wanted, and they are 
 in no danger of being crushed by exterior bar- 
 barism. Their success as feeble colonies of 
 Great Britain in achieving their national inde- 
 pendence, and especially in maintaining, un- 
 aided, and against the real hostility of Great 
 Britain and France, their national unity and in- 
 tegrity against a rebellion which, probably, no 
 other people could have survived, gives reason- 
 able assurance for their future. The leaders of the 
 rebellion, than whom none better knew or more 
 nicely calculated the strength and resources of 
 the Union, counted with certainty on success, 
 and the ablest, the most experienced, and best- 
 informed statesmen of the Old World felt sure 
 that the Republic was gone, and spoke of it as 
 the late United States. Not a few, even in the 
 loyal States, who had no sympathy with the 
 rebellion, believed it idle to think of suppress- 
 ing it by force, and advised peace on the best 
 terms that could be obtained. But Ilium fuit 
 
 29
 
 434 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 was chanted too soon; the American people 
 were equal to the emergency, and falsified the 
 calculations and predictions of their enemies, 
 and surpassed the expectations of their friends. 
 The attitude of the real American people du- 
 ring the fearful struggle affords additional confi- 
 dence in their destiny. With larger armies on foot 
 than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line 
 of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across 
 the whole breadth of the continent, they never, 
 during four long years of alternate victories and 
 defeats- and both unprecedentedly bloody 
 for a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared 
 less calm, collected, tranquil, than in the ordi- 
 nary times of peace. They not for a moment 
 interrupted their ordinary routine of business 
 or pleasure, or seemed conscious of being en- 
 gaged in any serious struggle which required 
 an effort. There was no hurry, no bustle, no 
 excitement, no fear, no misgiving. They seem- 
 ed to regard the war as a mere bagatelle, not 
 worth being in earnest about. The on-looker 
 was almost angry with their apparent indiffer- 
 ence, apparent insensibility, and doubted if 
 they moved at all. Yet move they did : guided 
 by an unerring instinct, they moved quietly on 
 with an elemental force, in spite of a timid and 
 hesitating administration, in spite of inexpe-
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 435 
 
 rienced, over-cautious, incompetent, or blunder- 
 ing military commanders, whom they gently 
 brushed aside, and desisted not till their object 
 was gained, and they saw the flag of the Union 
 floating anew in the breeze from the capitol of 
 every State that dared secede. No man could 
 contemplate them without feeling that there 
 was in them a latent power vastly superior to 
 any which they judged it necessary to put 
 forth. Their success proves to all that what, 
 prior to the war, was treated as American arro- 
 gance or self-conceit, was only the outspoken 
 confidence in their destiny as a Providential 
 people, conscious that to them is reserved the 
 hegemony of the world. 
 
 Count de Maistre predicted early in the cen- 
 tury the failure of the United States, because 
 they have no proper name ; but his prediction 
 assumed what is* not the fact. The United States 
 have a proper name by which all the world knows 
 and calls them. The proper name of the country 
 is America : that of the people is Americans. 
 Speak of Americans simply, and nobody under- 
 stands you to mean the people of Canada, Mexi- 
 co, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, but everybody 
 understands you to mean the people of the 
 United States. The fact is significant, and 
 foretells for the people of the United States a
 
 436 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 continental destiny, as is also foreshadowed in 
 the so-called " Monroe doctrine," which France, 
 during our domestic troubles, was permitted, 
 on condition of not intervening in our civil 
 war in favor of the rebellion, to violate. 
 
 There was no statesmanship in proclaiming 
 the " Monroe doctrine," for the statesman keeps 
 always, as far as possible, his government free 
 to act according to the exigencies of the case 
 when it comes up, unembarrassed by previous 
 declarations of principles. Yet the doctrine 
 only expresses the destiny of the American 
 people, and which nothing but their own fault 
 can prevent them from realizing in its own 
 good time. Napoleon will not succeed in his 
 Mexican policy, and Mexico will add some fif- 
 teen or twenty new States to the American 
 Union as soon as it is clearly for the interests 
 of all parties that it should be done, and it can 
 be done by mutual consent, without war or 
 violence. The Union will fight to maintain the 
 integrity of her domain and the supremacy of 
 her laws within it, but she can never, consist- 
 ently with her principles or her interests, enter 
 upon a career of war and conquest. Her sys- 
 tem is violated, endangered, not extended, by 
 subjugating her neighbors, for subjugation and 
 liberty go not together. Annexation, when it
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 437 
 
 takes place, must be on terms of perfect equal- 
 ity, and by the free act of the state annexed 
 The Union can admit of no inequality of rights 
 .and franchises between the States of which it 
 is composed. The Canadian Provinces and the 
 Mexican, and Central American States, when 
 annexed, must be as free as the original States 
 of the Union, sharing alike in the power and 
 the protection of the Republic alike in its 
 authority, its freedom, its grandeur, and its 
 glory, as one free, independent, self-governing 
 people. They may gain much, but must lose 
 nothing by annexation. 
 
 The Emperor Napoleon and his very respect- 
 able protege, Maximilian, an able man and a 
 liberal-minded prince, can change nothing in the 
 destiny of the United States, or of Mexico her- 
 self; no imperial government can be perma- 
 nent beside the American Republic, no longer 
 liable, since the abolition of slavery, to be dis- 
 tracted by sectional dissensions. The States 
 that seceded will soon, in some way, be restored 
 to their rights and franchises in the Union, 
 forming not the least patriotic portion of the 
 American people ; the negro question will be 
 settled, or settle itself, as is most likely, by the 
 melting away of the negro population before 
 the influx of white laborers ; all traces of the
 
 438 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 late contest in a very few years will be wiped 
 out, the national debt paid, or greatly reduced, 
 and the prosperity and strength of the Repub- 
 lic be greater than ever. Its moral force will 
 sweep away every imperial throne on the con- 
 tinent, without any effort or action on the part 
 of the government. There can be no stable 
 government in Mexico till eveiy trace of the 
 ecclesiastical policy established by the Council 
 of the Indies is obliterated, and the church 
 placed there on the same footing as in the 
 United States ; and that can hardly be done 
 without annexation. Maximilian cannot divest 
 the church of her temporal possessions, and 
 place Protestants and Catholics on the same- 
 footing, without offending the present church 
 party and deeply injuring religion, and that 
 too without winning the confidence of the re- 
 publican party. In all Spanish and Portuguese 
 America the relations between the church and 
 state are abnormal, and exceedingly hurtful to 
 both. Religion is in a wretched condition, and 
 politics in a worse condition still. There is- 
 no effectual remedy for either but in religious 
 freedom, now impracticable, and to be rendered 
 practicable by no European intervention, for 
 that subjects religion to the state, the very 
 source of the evils that now exist, instead of
 
 DESTINY POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 439 
 
 -emancipating it from the state, and leaving it 
 to act according to its own constitution and 
 laws, as under the American system. 
 
 But the American people need not trouble 
 themselves about their exterior expansion. 
 That will come of itself as fast as desirable. 
 Let them devote their attention to their inter 
 nal destiny, to the realization of their mission 
 within, and they will gradually see the whole 
 -continent coming under their system, forming 
 one grand nation, a really catholic nation, great, 
 glorious, and free. 
 
 THE END-
 
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