Part 9

To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot of popular heroes; but the Lincoln legend will be more than ordinarily apt to become fanciful, as his individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous qualities and forces in a character at the same time grand and most lovable, was so unique, and his career so abounding in startling contrasts. As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and foe gathered to praise him--which they have since never ceased to do--as one of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.

TRUE AMERICANISM

It is one of the earliest recollections of my boyhood that one summer night our whole village was stirred up by an uncommon occurrence. I say our village, for I was born not far from the beautiful spot where the Rhine rolls his green waters out of the wonderful gate of the Seven Mountains, and then meanders with majestic tranquillity through one of the most glorious valleys of the world. That night our neighbors were pressing around a few wagons covered with linen sheets and loaded with household utensils and boxes and trunks to their utmost capacity. One of our neighboring families was moving far away across a great water, and it was said they would never again return. And I saw silent tears trickling down weather-beaten cheeks, and the hands of rough peasants firmly pressing each other, and some of the men and women hardly able to speak when they nodded to one another a last farewell. At last the train started into motion, they gave three cheers for America, and then in the first gray dawn of the morning I saw them wending their way over the hill until they disappeared in the shadow of the forest. And I heard many a man say, how happy he would be if he could go with them to that great and free country, where a man could be himself.

That was the first time that I heard of America, and my childish imagination took possession of a land covered partly with majestic trees, partly with flowery prairies, immeasurable to the eye, and intersected with large rivers and broad lakes,--a land where everybody could do what he thought best, and where nobody need be poor because everybody was free.

And later, when I was old enough to read, and descriptions of this country and books on American history fell into my hands, the offspring of my imagination acquired the colors of reality, and I began to exercise my brain with the thought what man might be and become when left perfectly free to himself. And still later, when ripening into manhood, I looked up from my schoolbooks into the stir and bustle of the world, and the trumpet-tones of struggling humanity struck my ear and thrilled my heart, and I saw my nation shake her chains in order to burst them, and I heard a gigantic, universal shout for Liberty rising up to the skies; and at last, after having struggled manfully and drenched the earth of Fatherland with the blood of thousands of noble beings, I saw that nation crushed down again, not only by overwhelming armies, but by the dead weight of customs and institutions and notions and prejudices, which past centuries had heaped upon them, and which a moment of enthusiasm, however sublime, could not destroy; then I consoled an almost despondent heart with the idea of a youthful people and of original institutions clearing the way for an untrammeled development of the ideal nature of man. Then I turned my eyes instinctively across the Atlantic Ocean, and America and Americanism, as I fancied them, appeared to me as the last depositories of the hopes of all true friends of humanity.

I say all this, not as though I indulged in the presumptuous delusion that my personal feelings and experience would be of any interest to you, but in order to show you what America is to the thousands of thinking men in the old world, who, disappointed in their fondest hopes and depressed by the saddest experience, cling with their last remnant of confidence in human nature, to the last spot on earth where man is free to follow the road to attainable perfection, and where, unbiased by the disastrous influence of traditional notions, customs, and institutions, he acts on his own responsibility. They ask themselves: Was it but a wild delusion when we thought that man has the faculty to be free and to govern himself? Have we been fighting, were we ready to die, for a mere phantom, for a mere product of a morbid imagination? This question downtrodden humanity cries out into the world, and from this country it expects an answer....

They speak of the greatness of the Roman Republic! Oh, sir, if I could call the proudest of Romans from his grave, I would take him by the hand and say to him, Look at this picture, and at this! The greatness of the Roman Republic consisted in its despotic rule over the world; the greatness of the American Republic consists in the secured right of man to govern himself. The dignity of the Roman citizen consisted in his exclusive privileges; the dignity of the American citizen consists in his holding the natural rights of his neighbor just as sacred as his own. The Roman Republic recognized and protected the rights of the citizen, at the same time disregarding and leaving unprotected the rights of man; Roman citizenship was founded upon monopoly, not upon the claims of human nature. What the citizen of Rome claimed for himself, he did not respect in others; his own greatness was his only object; his own liberty, as he regarded it, gave him the privilege to oppress his fellow-beings. His democracy, instead of elevating mankind to its own level, trampled the rights of man into the dust. The security of the Roman Republic, therefore, consisted in the power of the sword; the security of the American Republic rests in the equality of human rights! The Roman Republic perished by the sword; the American Republic will stand as long as the equality of human rights remains inviolate. Which of the two Republics is the greater--the Republic of the Roman, or the Republic of man?

Sir, I wish the words of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” were inscribed upon every gatepost within the limits of this Republic. From this principle the Revolutionary Fathers derived their claim to independence; upon this they founded the institutions of this country, and the whole structure was to be the living incarnation of this idea. This principle contains the programme of our political existence. It is the most progressive, and at the same time the most conservative one; the most progressive, for it takes even the lowliest members of the human family out of their degradation, and inspires them with the elevating consciousness of equal human dignity; the most conservative, for it makes a common cause of individual rights. From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor’s rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. And when the rights of one cannot be infringed without finding a ready defence in all others who defend their own rights in defending his, then, and only then, are the rights of all safe against the usurpation of governmental authority.

This general identity of interests is the only thing that can guarantee the stability of democratic institutions. Equality of rights, embodied in general self-government, is the great moral element of true democracy; it is the only reliable safety-valve in the machinery of modern society. There is the solid foundation of our system of government; there is our mission; there is our greatness; there is our safety; there, and nowhere else! This is true Americanism, and to this I pay the tribute of my devotion.

EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN

Edwin Lawrence Godkin was born of English ancestry at Moyne, County Wicklow, Ireland, on October 2, 1831. His father, the Rev. James Godkin, a Presbyterian minister of literary talents, after being forced from his pulpit for espousing the cause of Young Ireland, became a journalist of some distinction. The son received his preparatory education at Armagh, and at Silcoates School, Wakefield, Yorkshire. In 1846 he entered Queen’s College, Belfast. After graduating from this institution in 1851, he went to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn. After some journalistic experience in the Crimea and in Belfast, he came to America in 1856 and settled in New York. His real career began with the founding of The New York Nation in 1865. His connection with this journal was both long and distinguished, and his efforts for the encouragement of a sound and enlightened public opinion have recently been appropriately recognized in the semi-centenary volume, “Fifty Years of American Idealism,” edited by Gustav Pollak. He contributed many incisive essays on political and economic subjects to various magazines. The most important of these have been collected in three volumes, “Reflections and Comments,” “Problems of Modern Democracy,” and “Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy.” It is from the opening essay of the second that the following selection is taken.

Wendell Phillips Garrison, his associate, said of him: “As no American could have written Bryce’s ‘American Commonwealth’ or Goldwin Smith’s ‘History of the United States,’ so it may be doubted if any native of this country could have erected the standard of political independence which Mr. Godkin set up in The Nation and maintained in The Evening Post. He did this, however, not as a foreigner, but as an American to the core. A utilitarian of the school of Bentham, an economist of the school of John Stuart Mill, an English Liberal to whom America, with all its flagrant inconsistency of slaveholding, was still the hope of universal democracy, he cast in his lot with us, became a naturalized citizen, took an American wife--gave every pledge to the land of his adoption except that of being a servile follower of party.” Brilliant, thoughtful, questioning, he was keenly sensible of the many evil tendencies in modern democracy; yet with philosophic insight he rejected the unsound comparisons drawn by many political thinkers between ancient aristocratic democracies and modern democracy, which he viewed as a new experiment and therefore to be tested by new principles and new conditions.

AN IMMIGRANT’S FAITH IN DEMOCRACY

If, indeed, the defects which foreign observers see, and many of which Americans acknowledge and deplore, in the politics and society of the United States were fairly chargeable to democracy,--if “the principle of equality” were necessarily fatal to excellence in the arts, to finish in literature, to simplicity and force in oratory, to fruitful exploration in the fields of science, to statesmanship in the government, to discipline in the army, to grace and dignity in social intercourse, to subordination to lawful authority, and to self-restraint in the various relations of life,--the future of the world would be such as no friend of the race would wish to contemplate; for the spread of democracy is on all sides acknowledged to be irresistible. Even those who watch its advance with most fear and foreboding confess that most civilized nations must erelong succumb to its sway. Its progress in some countries may be slower than in others, but it is constant in all; and it is accelerated by two powerful agencies,--the Christian religion and the study of political economy.

The Christian doctrine that men, however unequal in their condition or in their gifts on earth, are of equal value in the eyes of their Creator, and are entitled to respect and consideration, if for no other reason, for the simple one that they are human souls, long as it has been preached, has, strange to say, only very lately begun to exercise any perceptible influence on politics. It led a troubled and precarious life for nearly eighteen hundred years in conventicles and debating clubs, in the romance of poets, in the dreams of philosophers and the schemes of philanthropists. But it is now found in the cabinets of kings and statesmen, on the floor of parliament houses, and in the most secret of diplomatic conferences. It gives shape and foundation to nearly every great social reform, and its voice is heard above the roar of every revolution.

And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its place and extending its influence in national councils from the rapid spread of the study of political economy, a science which is based on the assumption that men are free and independent. There is hardly one of its principles which is applicable to any state of society in which each individual is not master of his own actions and sole guardian of his own welfare. In a community in which the relations of its members are regulated by status and not by contract, it has no place and no value. The natural result of the study and discussion which the ablest thinkers have expended on it during the last eighty years has been to place before the civilized world in the strongest light the prodigious impulse which is given to human energy and forethought and industry, and the great gain to society at large, by the recognition in legislation of the capacity, as well as of the right, of each human being to seek his own happiness in his own way. Of course no political system in which this principle has a place can long avoid conceding to all who live under it equality before the law; and from equality before the law to the possession of an equal share in the making of the laws, there is, as everybody must see who is familiar with modern history, but a very short step.

If this spread of democracy, however, was sure, as its enemies maintain, to render great attainments and great excellence impossible or rare, to make literary men slovenly and inaccurate and tasteless, artists mediocre, professors of science dull and unenterprising, and statesmen conscienceless and ignorant, it would threaten civilization with such danger that no friend of progress could wish to see it. But it is difficult to discover on what it is, either in history or human nature, that this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is generally content with mediocrity. But where is the proof of this? The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most powerful in its operation in all civilized countries, is the desire of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or love of wealth, or of both. In literary and artistic and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the subject. But it may be safely said that no man has ever yet labored in any of the higher callings to whom the applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions. There is probably not a masterpiece in existence, either in literature or in art, probably few discoveries in science have ever been made, which we do not owe in a large measure to the love of distinction. Who paints pictures, or has ever painted them, that they may delight no eye but his own? Who writes books for the mere pleasure of seeing his thoughts on paper? Who discovers or invents, and is willing, provided the world is the better of his discoveries or inventions, that another should enjoy the honor? Fame has, in short, been in all ages and in all countries recognized as one of the strongest springs of human action--

“The spur that doth the clear spirit raise To scorn delight and live laborious days,--”

sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and even death itself of their terrors.

What is there, we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions, that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows? The secret of that great restlessness, which is one of the most disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic countries only the few have much chance. And in no other society is success more worshipped, is distinction of any kind more widely flattered and caressed. Where is the successful author, or artist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage than in France or America? And yet in both the principle of equality reigns supreme; and his advancement in the social scale has gone on pari passu in every country with the spread of democratic ideas and manners. Grub Street was the author’s retreat in the aristocratic age; in this democratic one, he is welcome at the King’s table, and sits at the national council board. In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones, there are two or three others which are far stronger, and which must be stronger, or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible. But to make the thirst for distinction lose its power over the human heart, you must do something more than establish equality of conditions; you must recast human nature itself....

There are some, however, who, while acknowledging that the love of distinction will retain its force under every form of social or political organization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts, science, or literature requires leisure, and the possession of leisure implies the possession of fortune. This men in a democratic society cannot have, because the absence of great hereditary wealth is necessary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every man, or nearly every man, must toil for a living; and therefore it becomes impossible for him to gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever so strongly. The attention he can give to literature or art or science must be too desultory and hasty, his mental training too defective, to allow him to work out valuable results or conduct important researches. To achieve great things in these fields, it is said and insinuated, men must be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above the vulgar, petty cares of life; their material wants must be provided for before they concentrate their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we must look for any great advance in these pursuits.

The history of literature and art and philosophy is, however, very far from lending confirmation to this opinion. If it teaches us anything, it teaches us that the possession of leisure, far from having helped men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to have impeded them. Those who have pursued it most successfully are all but invariably those who have pursued it under difficulties. The possession of great wealth no doubt gives facilities for study and cultivation which the mass of mankind do not possess; but it at the same time exerts an influence on the character which, in a vast majority of cases, renders the owner unwilling to avail himself of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy the great fabric of Roman jurisprudence; but, since their time, what has any aristocracy done for art and literature, or law? They have for over a thousand years been in possession of nearly the whole resources of every country in Europe. They have had its wealth, its libraries, its archives, its teachers, at their disposal; and yet was there ever a more pitiful record than the list of “Royal and Noble Authors.” One can hardly help being astonished, too, at the smallness and paltriness of the legacies which the aristocracy of the aristocratic age has bequeathed to this democratic age which is succeeding it. It has, indeed, handed down to us many glorious traditions, many noble and inspiring examples of courage and fortitude and generosity. The democratic world would certainly be worse off than it is if it never heard of the Cid, or Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden, or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which the lover of art may be thankful, by which literature has been made richer, philosophy more potent or more fruitful? The painting and sculpture of modern Europe owe not only their glory, but their very existence, to the labors of poor and obscure men. The great architectural monuments by which its soil is covered were hardly any of them the product of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If we except a few palaces and a few fortresses, we owe nearly all of them to the labor or the genius or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up in the midst of feudalism. If we take away the sum total of the monuments of Continental art all that was created by the Italian republics, the commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and the communes of France, and by the unaided efforts of the illustrious obscure, the remainder would form a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say much the same thing of every great work in literature, and every great discovery in science. Few of them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly all by those whose life was a long struggle to escape from the vulgarest and most sordid cares. And what is perhaps most remarkable of all is, that the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organizing genius, the most impressive example of the power of combination and of discipline which the world has ever seen, was built up and has been maintained by the labors of men drawn from the humblest ranks of society.

Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to the profession of arms. If there was anything at which it might have seemed hopeless for democracy to compete with it, it was in the raising, framing and handling of armies. But the very first time that a democratic society found itself compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas, it displayed a force, an originality, a vigor and rapidity of conception, in this, to it, new pursuit, which speedily laid Europe at its feet. And the great master of the art of war, be it ever remembered, was born in obscurity and bred in poverty.

Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted themselves to the art of government, have they made any contributions worth mentioning to political science. They have displayed, indeed, consummate skill and tenacity in pursuing any line of policy on which they have once deliberately fixed; but all the great political reforms have been, though often carried into effect by aristocracies, conceived, agitated, and forced on the acceptance of the government by the middle and lower classes. The idea of equality before the law was originated in France by literary men. In England, the slave-trade was abolished by the labors of the middle classes. The measure met with the most vigorous opposition in the House of Lords. The emancipation of the negroes, Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially the reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact, nearly every change which has had for its object the increase of national happiness and prosperity, has been conceived by men of low degree, and discussed and forced on the upper classes by men busy about many other things.

We are, however, very far from believing that democratic society has no dangers or defects. What we have been endeavoring to show is that the inquiry into their nature and number has been greatly impeded by the natural disposition of foreign observers to take the United States as a fair specimen of what democracy is under the most favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of unoccupied land at our disposal, which raises every man in the community above want, by affording a ready outlet for surplus population, is constantly spoken of as a condition wholly favorable to the democratic experiment,--more favorable than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In so far as it contributes to the general happiness and comfort, it no doubt makes the work of government easy; but what we think no political philosopher ought to forget is that it also offers serious obstacles to the settlement of a new society on a firm basis, and produces a certain appearance of confusion and instability, both in manners and ideas, which unfit it to furnish a basis for any inductions of much value as to the tendencies to defects either of an equality of conditions or of democratic institutions.

FOOTNOTE:

From “Problems of Modern Democracy.” Copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the publishers.

JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY