The commonwealth reconstructed

Preface

MANY readers, I am well aware, will claim that the account of the present state of our politics that is contained in the following pages is partial and overdrawn. I shall admit the justice of the criticism, but only in the sense that the redeeming features of the situation are not equally presented with the condemnatory. But to do that did not belong to the purpose that I had in view in that description, which was to show that the condition of our political affairs is too shameful and calamitous to be willingly submitted to by an intelligent and virtuous people. In doing this no exaggeration has been practiced ; and none was necessary.

The justice of my representation will be the more readily disputed because there seems, just now, to be a lull in the storm of our political afflictions, which sanguine and superficial observers readily take for a lasting change in the weather. But, while I am ready to believe that the public business is more honestly conducted to-day in the majority of our capitols and city halls than it was in 1 870, I can see no ground for expecting that the amelioration will be permanent. Particular enormities may never be repeated, but the species is the native and inevitable product of our present political system, and will multiply in number and variety till the defects of that system are corrected. Moreover, no improvement whatever appears in the competency of the men who are put in charge of the public interests.

4 PREFACE.

Nevertheless, the topic in the ensuing discussion where I have most failed to satisfy myself is this very matter of setting forth the existing state of public affairs. The sketch is not only scanty, but broken, unskilful and most incomplete. But I console myself with the reflection that, as no painter was ever yet able to spread upon the canvas the common brute landscape in all its variety of motion, form and color, so must literary art forever fail perfectly to portray the complex, ever changing and innumerable phenomena of political society. I comfort myself also with this ; that intelligent readers will easily be able, by recollection and the conclusions of reasonable analogy, to fill out the picture.

Oswego, N. Y., August 28, 1877.

Chapter I. Introductory

POLITICAL institutions are not the first necessity of mankind, nor the chief. Personal wants are earlier and more pressing than any that belong to the neighborhood. Compared with clothing, food and fire, roads, laws and punishments are an after thought, and a convenience merely. So the sexual and family instincts, which draw after them so many activities, long antedate the thought of politics. But, while thus a secondary matter to the individual, civil government is the very cradle and anchorage of society, and alone makes possible the concord and cooperation that are essential to the progress of the species. Its importance increases with time. Of few and narrow offices at first, it has constantly augmented their number and scope, encroaching more and more upon individual autonomy, and more and more affecting the general welfare. When its operations extend, as they do now in this country, from the repair of a neighborhood highway to the building of a railroad across the continent, and from the education of childhood to the bloody conscription of war, its influence on human happiness outstrips hyperbole.

Compared with the philosophy of politics, therefore, all other philosophies — the analysis of mind or the classification of matter, the problems of religion or of morals, the weighing of atoms or of planets, chemistry, mechanics, aesthetics, history, or whatever other inquiry has ever occupied the attention of men — is of but mean account. To study on these while that remains unsettled, is to be busied with the ornamentation of a home whose very foundations are still insecure.

Throughout history this august arena has been the perpetual scene of strife, uncertainty and disaster,

" Where eldest night and chaos hold eternal war, And by confusion stand."

The mutual slaughter of conflicting interests ; the devastations of pride, resentment, jealousy and ambition, among individuals and nations ; reason and humanity constantly violated ; fraud crowned with success and incompetency with advancement, have given to the story of political society a prevailing sombre hue. Bright spots are now and then, and here and there, apparent, but nowhere can be seen the wide and long continued prevalence of concord, prosperity and truth.

Also have spontaneous growth and peaceful change in systems of government been almost unknown. Not the painless metamorphosis of healthy development, but rather the cruel surgery of vivisection is the customary spectacle in this theatre — or even self-mutilation, as though nature, insane or insensitive, warred with herself.

The evils that are generally laid to the conduct of politics, it is to be remembered, are by no means all that belong there. Many of them reach us so indirectly that their true origin is undetected, while many others are so widely prevalent as to be easily taken for a part of the scheme of nature, and therefore inevitable.

With the progress of time the turmoil of political society rather increases than abates, as keeping pace with the growing extent, numerousness and complexity of social relations. Each integration begets new differences, and every contest broods of contests. There is no movement of populations, or lagging of race behind race ; no forward step of knowledge or conquest of art, nor even any fresh effort of religion or philanthropy, that does not awaken new contentions, and call for a fresh adjustment of powers or rights, between nations, neighborhoods, sentiments, interests and callings.

Such is the disorder of the scene that what is spoken of as the Philosophy of History is little more than the history of the philosopher's own mind. The science of political society, by the confession of its most renowned expounder, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has still little other basis than heaps of statistics, which, like clay in the hands of the potter, can take any form and illustrate any conceit. Thus far, it must be admitted, the boiling ocean is the truest type of politics to human understanding. That this surge is lifted by the last it is easy to see, but the general array is an incomprehensible tumult. If there be, deep down, some tendency " to law, system and order" — as the Gulf-stream beneath its storm-tossed surface still bears with steady current toward the polar star — its latitude and direction are as yet undescribed.

Of this also can governments be justly accused: that, considering their mighty powers, they have done little toward the advancement of society. Not the general welfare, but its own security and promotion, has been the chief aspiration and employ of political power. Seldom has it done more for civilization than to occupy what private undertaking had conquered. Neither equality of rights, enlarged liberty, humaner laws, material prosperity, nor any other of the many benefits that now surround us, was conceived in the nest of authority, or took first wing from its exalted verge. Their sperm has come from private loins, they have been nourished up by private assiduity, and launched by private daring. Not Parliament, but Wilberforce, Clarkson and Zacharay Macauly, made freedom universal throughout the British Empire. Not the State, but Dewitt Clinton, was the father of our canals.

Moreover, the student of history is forced to doubt whether the art of government is really making much progress. In all that concerns political construction and administration the devices of the present age are little more than scholia on the methods of antiquity. Hardly will any modern state dare to boast over Rome, whether as regards its home system or its colonial, its Senatus Populusque of authority, its military roster or its civil code, its adjustment of duties or of rights, its machinery of movement, or its buttresses of security. Certainly, there is nothing now going that either so fully accords with the spirit of the age, or so effectually endows society with power, as the constitutions of the states that twenty centuries ago rose and fell along the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Take the matter of municipal business, in which political skill has as fair a scope and as complete an exhibition as anywhere : it would be hardihood to deny that Rome or Carthage was better watered, drained and paved, considering the mechanical attainments of its era, than any modern metropolis ; or that in the free cities of Italy and Germany, three centuries ago, the common welfare was as well watched over as it is to-day in Manchester, Lyons, Berlin, New Orleans or Brooklyn.

What progress in politics have the republics to the south of us made since their beginning? or what we ourselves? Or what has been gained in Europe to the cause of peace — prime object of social endeavor — since Sully's time? If, in this Christian day, a temple stood to Janus for the region over which Rome ruled, it would be as seldom shut as it was under her pagan gods. More civilized blood has been spilt in senseless war within these last two decades than in any other equal period of recorded history.

At the very best, political society, in the language of sailors, is still in the doldrums, becalmed or baffled. If there be any forward movement, it is so slow that to await its work is like watching while autumnal rains wash down the mountains to the plains. At the rate we go it will surely take far more than the two hundred years of Carlyle's prediction to put society in good order.

In one particular the art of politics seems absolutely to retrograde. More now than in the time of Lucullus or Oxenstiern must the bystander be shocked, at least in this country, by the spectacle of small men in great station.

A forcible inculpation of all existing systems of government is to be found, also, in the difficulty and delay that improvements in political business constantly meet with in spreading from one community to another. Every well informed man can point out cases in plenty where one public matter is better managed here, and another there ; but the attempt to transport a political amelioration from one community to another meets obstacles almost as great as what separated Dives from Lazarus. If the very elixir of political life were somewhere found out, and its recipe published, it would be an eternity, as things have gone, before surrounding nations would arrive to

INTRODUCTORY. I I

drink the inspiring draught. In other fields of human skill no worthy invention lacks quick recognition and employment on every side. Thus politics remains a medley, while the chief principles and practices of chemistry, engineering, and all the like, are uniform throughout the world.

It is further to be noticed, that, throughout history, the several forms of government have been perpetually interchanging, without much other law of precedence than chance, or ground of favor than success. There is hardly a country or a people that has not tried them all, and, often, over and over again. Within a century France has been thrice a republic and four times a monarchy, tinctured each time, in always different degrees, with aristocracy and hierarchy. This very generation has seen a majority of the thrones of Europe cast down, and set up again, as it were between two days. Even in the most advanced communities the several native forces of politics appear to be playing at leap frog. To-day the spirit of reform mounts over the rest, to-morrow conservatism, next day capital, and the day after brute numbers, or high striding personality. In every department of politics cast-off styles come back to be used again, about as frequently as the fashions that women wear.

Whether one form of government be better than the rest history still leaves in doubt. Each of them has its benefactions to boast of, but each is also shamed by the record of too many mean, weak and wicked deeds, to warrant a lordly air. The best argument for any one of them is the shortcomings of the rest. If the past have any instruction, they must all somewhere be greatly lacking. France, which has some claim to be called the focus of modern political life, has tried them all repeatedly within a century ; has found in all equal insecurity and disaster ; and hangs to-day on the verge of some unknown abyss. Surely a machine that should work so ill, and fly so often into pieces as political contrivances have, would be condemned by every good mechanic.

This testimony of facts to the incompetency of all existing forms of political construction is but what reason would expect. Not here will I discuss democracy, either in its principles or its customary methods ; but, surely, its ancient and only logical opponent, the hereditary rule of monarchs or oligarchs, is a thing that nature and common sense revolt at. No more can be said, as Franklin remarked, in favor of hereditary princes, than in favor of hereditary professors of mathematics. The idea is, at best, but the " go farther and fare worse " suggestion of expediency. That the many should be the heirlooms of the few were not so incongruous in Homer's time, or in Japan ; but for the liberty-loving German race, whose portrait in the pages of Caesar and Tacitus promised so much, and which has so long enjoyed the benefits of Christianity and the printing press, nothing could be more disappointing.

It has been imagined that in some such distribution of authority among kings, lords and commons as the constitution of Great Britain presents, is to be found the natural adjustment of political society. But many congener populations on the Continent have tried a like arrangement with very poor results. It is not to this, nor to her copious mines, her fertile soil, her steady clime, or her supposed superior stock, that England owes her long prosperity, but to the fortification of the sea. Had she been joined to the Continent, and stood elbow to jostling elbow amid its various tribes and states, her politics would be as uncertain and unsuccessful to-day as that of the most forlorn community in Europe. It is only this isolation that has saved her industry, wealth and freedom from the repeated disastrous trampling that France and Germany have so often suffered from foreign powers.

Certainly the British constitution can lay small claim to be considered a system of government that much accords with reason or nature. It is full of solecisms against both. Its figment of royalty, its vestige of hierarchy, its House of Lords, seated half by heirship and half by promotion, and its monstrous inequalities of democracy, form an inconsistent and incoherent farrago at which philosophy can but smile, and which nature refuses to father. To the eye of skill it looks like an ill-sorted museum, where all about antique fragments are set side by side with the newest inventions. To see how lacking it is of correspondence with universal principles, it is only necessary to consider how utterly impossible it would be to set it up in Canada, Australia, Mexico, France, or this country ! Whom should we make king, or duke, or lord bishop? However good that system of political authority may be for the British, no other people are likely ever to enjoy it. It is in fact but the mixed result of a long series of casualties and makeshifts, the like of which can by no chance anywhere occur again.

Always political society has seemed to bear within itself the seeds of its own decay. Humanitarianism, its present liveliest inspiration, threatens the degradation of the whole race, by aiding the weak, the wicked, and the diseased to propagate their kind with a refreshed fecundity.

On the whole, it is difficult to see what guaranty there anywhere is against a continuance of the periodic disastrous revolutions that have heretofore characterized the career of nations. It is by no means clear that printing, railroads, telegraphs, and the many other material inventions that have of late so greatly advanced individual welfare, have much conduced to the good behavior of government. Certainly the railroad has not, in this country ; and it is doubtful whether the newspaper has. All such things are the weapons of the worse, as well as of the better elements of society ; and perhaps but tend, like the musket in warfare, to bring base qualities nearer to a level with high.

Germany is confident in herself to-day, but, if Barbarossa has indeed returned, may he not go back? Who will guarantee a decade of tranquillity to any nation on the Continent of Europe ? Great Britain has long been studiously employed in rebuilding and replanting : but will her new towers stand faster than her old? or will her planted orchards of larch and chestnut outlive her native oaks? What will her new-born grimy democracy spare, in that near day when her various mines, with all the occupations that depend on them, shall begin to fail ? or her industry outgrow her commerce ? I know not what warrants our own belief in the permanence of this republic. To-day seems sunshiny ; but there was a bad storm yesterday ; and there may be a worse to-morrow. Surely he who lately looked so struck with death that they who stood around exclaimed with one accord : " Lo ! now he breathes his last," can make but doubtful claim to immortality. A hundred years is no great longevity for a nation.

It is this troubled aspect and clouded outlook of political society that chill the hearts of old observers like Hugo and

Carlyle, and turn into apathy or moroseness the cheerful earnestness of youth in humanity's cause. It was this that silenced the eloquence of Kossuth, and made Garibaldi hide so long in Caprera, wrapped in his faded flag. It is this that makes many weaker minds demand the abolishment of all existing political institutions, as the only road to general justice and content. Indeed there have been times in the present age, and in the most enlightened countries, when, to every man of feeling, it has seemed far better to seek the solitude of the wilderness than to take part in the bloody sustentation of political institutions, or, watching aloof the cruel struggle, to bear the pangs of wounded sympathy.

Viewed the high importance of civil government, the medley and unsatisfactoriness of its past career, its present slow amelioration, if there be any, and its dubious future ; and remembered, also, the wide intellectual activity of the present age, it looks a little strange that, hardly since Aristotle, has the fundamental inquiry of political science been less prosecuted than it is at present. We have plenty of disquisition on the past, criticism of the present, and prophecy about the future ; and no end of petty patching of laws, charters and constitutions ; but the prime question of how to organize the body politic seems to be pretty much dismissed. It was more studied in the free states and cities of Italy three hundred years ago than it is now in all Europe. I recall at this moment but two or three suggestions towards its solution by contemporaries of note ; and these all from the fertile soil of French political invention. Comte proposed a sort of political hierarchy — and, as some critic remarked, would have been burnt at the stake by his own priests. Taine would divide society into layers, whose political power should vary according to interest and desert ; but how to distinguish these castes, he does not explain. The soldier-president McMahon says (July, 1873,) that 44 when empires and republics become synonymous with discipline, every citizen a soldier and every soldier the servant of the republic, wrangling and strife will cease in this country. "

The general desertion of this high field of inquiry by thinking men proceeds somewhat from the idea that the theory of the subject has been already exhausted, and that only lengthened experience can bring improvements in practice: but it principally proceeds from the conviction (i) that argument can be of but little avail against the forces of ignorance, passion, prejudice, habit, casualty, violence and fraud that now have possession of the domain of politics ; and (2) that individual assault upon the works of society, garrisoned by society, must be forever futile. Nor should these discouraging views be hastily blamed : for if philosophy, armed with eloquence and devotion, and consecrated by martyrdom, could avail to force the ancient strongholds of maladjustment and wrong doing in public affairs, humanity, it might well seem, would not still so often be clad in weeds, nor social progress find such long delay.

But the real difficulty of introducing any deep political reform into a modern free community proceeds not so much from these opposing influences, nor even from the incompetence, indifference and inertia of the people, as from the hitherto unsolved problem of how to unite, in any large community, the many disconnected elements of native social influence in a concerted effort. But for this defect, the art of government might be as prosperous as mechanics, chemistry or any other of the various sorts of business that now infinitely surpass it in the rate of progress. In the latter case individual intelligence and energy suffice, but, in the other, wide consent and combined movement are required. Every pump-maker can avail himself of Torricelli's vacuum ; but not of Adam Smith's political economy.

This is the grand reason why neither general effort nor intention has ever had much to do with shaping political institutions. Says Cicero : " As children employ their limbs without learning how to use them, so political society has taken its various forms without much calculation of its own." The casualty of intestine broils, conquest, colonization, or the like, has made one country a monarchy, another an oligarchy, and another a republic. Our own boasted federal system was but the birth of an accidental congeries of small communities, each autonomic, but each needing the others' support. It is this predominance of chance that still makes the civil geography of Europe as changeable as the skies. Political society, even among the supreme Caucasian race, yet but imitates the blind elemental warfare which of old prepared its geologic seat. To boil and subside, to be shifted by nether shock and ground by upper violence, to be worn by floods, and suffer alternate heats and frosts, still mirrors its career.

Can this sorry state of things be helped by human endeavor ? The doctrines that are now in vogue seem to say not. Says Mr. Herbert Spencer, speaking of the constructions and behavior of political society : " Those forces alone are efficient which have grown out of national character." " The growth of a governmental organization follows from the nature of the men who. have associated themselves together to satisfy their needs." Again : " This belief in the innate virtue of constitutions is as baseless as was the belief in' the natural superiority of royal personages ;" and again : " Forms of government are of value only so far as national character gives life to them, and are essential only as agencies through which that national character may work out its effects." His American commentator and apostle, Mr. Youmans, in the June, 1873, number of the Popular Science Monthly, adds the logical corollary, that " character is certain to work out its effects, and whenever governmental forms cease to be suitable agencies of national character in the working out of the national destiny, the former give way, the latter alone persists."

This is but a dreary echo of Epicurus ; and would both unnerve personal effort and mummify public spirit : for surely it is little that the individual, or the generation can hope to do toward changing slow-grown national character. Logically carried out, this philosophy would lead the taxpayer of New York or New Orleans to sit idly by while the " natural development " of politics makes him a pauper. But history discredits, and reason repudiates the doctrine. Mr. Spencer in fact misapplies his own instruction. After having rightly made inheritance, environment and integration the three great elements of the social state, he seems, in the above passage, to forget that the last is by no means the mere passive product of the others, but their equal partner, also, in active force. It can deflect the stream of long inheritance ; and, like each separate particle of matter in gravity, reacts on equal terms upon all that surround it. As the skill and muscle of the mariner enable him to cross

INTRODUCTORY. I 7

the current that he floats on, so can individual power wrestle not in vain against the very tides of time. Frames of government are just as much matters of development as spinning frames are, and no more. Granted that Watt was the product of inheritance and the environment, the steam-engine was the product of Watt ; and it certainly has had no small influence in shaping the destiny of the nation that he belonged to. Man is the chief circumstance in the environment of man. For each passing generation it is personality — that near-by and short-lived tertium quid which telescopic philosophy is apt to overlook — that is chief arbiter of political affairs.

Unless, therefore, the question of the right construction of civil government be that fateful riddle which each generation in turn must undertake and fail at, suffering condignly for the failure, we need not regard the situation as hopeless. As in geology a new access of heat gathers new veins of silver or gold, so may fresh study avail to bring into profitable assemblage elements of political truth that have heretofore lain scattered, and therefore useless. I know not why the skill that in these keen-sighted days has found out the chemistry of the stars, sucked from the deep strata of the earth her profitable juices, and even analyzed the human conscience till the machinery of a clock is hardly easier to understand, may not yet avail to contrive something better in the construction of civil society than has yet been anywhere employed.

Let us examine this subject as it is presented to the American people. 2

Section I. N

PRESENT BEHAVIOR OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM.

OT many will deny that the present state of public affairs in this country gives cause for great dissatisfaction and anxiety. Only the successful politician, the fanatic partisan or the patriot fool is contented with it. The paeans to " Columbia ! child of the skies," that Dwight and Freneau sung, and Paine and Jefferson echoed, have turned to apologies in the mouths of Centennial orators, or even to reproaches. Neither government at Washington, nor at any State-house or city hall, is held in much respect. Democracy has begun to incur its own contempt. All the anchors by which the faith of the founders of our institutions held — whether written constitutions, frequent elections, or the general distribution of land — are loosening from the ground ; while, under the lee, threaten the rocky shores where lie strown the wrecks of all earlier republics. No means of security anywhere appear. Accounting has become a trick, responsibility a sham, investigation a farce, and punishment a myth. We separated from the mother country on account of " taxation without representation," but we have found that, the more general the representation, the heavier is the taxation. Not a few of the intelligent among us, witnessing the good behavior and good fortunes of all her present dependencies, almost regret that we ever forsook her guiding hand.

Our repute abroad is perishing. The glory that still clings about the American name is not due to the present behavior of our politics, but to its former purity and intelligence, the general character of the people, and the triumphs of individual genius. We are becoming a warning, instead of an example ; and the schools of tyranny and prescription use our story for a text-book of admonition.

Only a brief reference to some of the more conspicuous features of this miscarriage of American democracy, with an occasional illustration from facts, will be here made : an indictment that should embrace them all would fill volumes.

The first thing that the observer will notice is the division of the great body of the people into two

Conflicting Parties,

which, with seldom much basis in national, have none whatever in local policy ; but which, nevertheless, determine them both, wresting from uprightness every public function. Not personal fitness, nor any matter of policy chiefly decides which candidate shall be President, Congressman, Governor or Alderman, but what party he belongs to. So seated is this artifice, or fiction, that it is now not only constantly recognized in various ways by legislation, but is even taken account of in organic law — as in the latest constitutions of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A custom of frequent

Rotation in Office

everywhere prevails, whereby the experience and tried qualities that in all private business are counted of the greatest value, are lost to public use. From this come bad management of the commonwealth, and great stimulation of office-seeking.

The selection of all our public servants has virtually passed into the hands of

Organizations of Politicians^

who leave nothing for the people. to do but to endorse their nominations — and indeed, by false election returns, not seldom counterfeit that endorsement.

Politics having thus become a business, business has in turn become a politician. Hence

The Lobby,

which crowds the approaches of every capitol and city hall with the attorneys of private interests, cooperative with each other, and ready to buy all that are for sale.