Thoughts on the future civil policy of America

Front matter

The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

THOUGHTS

ON THE

Preface

In a work on "The Intellectual Development of Europe," published by me in 1863, 1 showed that the historical progress of the nations of that continent illustrates the fact that social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law as is the bodily growth of an individual.

It was my intention in that work to limit the application of the principles employed to the case of Europe, but it is plain that they may equally be made to apply to the case of America.

Last winter, at the request of the New York Historical Society, I gave a course of four lectures for the purpose of showing that ajDplication.

The favor with which my work on Europe had been received, a great many editions, reprints and translations, of it having been called for in a short time, was again exhibited in the case of these lectures, and I became satisfied that it was desirable to give them a more permanent form.

Selecting, therefore, some of the more prominent principles thus presented, I design to show in this work their bearing on certain questions of great political interest in America. The lectures delivered before the Historical Society are here, of course, very much extended, the amount of matter having been almost quadrupled, and many new topics introduced.

iv PREFACE.

Perhaps at the present moment, when the Kepublic hasreached one of those epochs at which it must experience important transformations, it may not be inopportune to direct attention to the effects of physical agents and laws on the advancement of nations. We are too prone to depreciate their influence.

The aim of all science is prevision — the foretelling of the future. Historical foresight is not denied to man. As the Astronomer, from recorded facts, deduces the laws under which the celestial bodies move, and then applies them with unerring certainty to the prophesying of future events, so may the Historian, who relies on the immutability of Nature, predict the inevitable course through which a nation must pass.

To appreciate the working of some of those natural laws in the case of America, to divine the future tendencies of the Republic, to extract from the observations we make rules for national conduct — these are the objects to which the following pages are devoted.

New York, 1865.

CONTENTS,

Chapter I. On The Influence Of Climate

Commencing with the statement that Nations, like all the forms of life, are transitory, the physical influences that originate and destroy those forms are considered. And since plants and animals are found to change helplessly under such influences, they are therefore illustrations of the control of Universal Law. A special inquiry is made as to the effects of Climate on the skin and skull of man, and on his physical and intellectual powers.

Then follows a brief topographical description of the United States ; the Climate effects, North and South, are considered, and the conditions necessary to insure stability in the political institutions of the country are pointed out. The general inferences are illustrated by historical cases, as those of Egypt and Asia.

The main conclusion brought into relief is, that personal locomotion can check the effects of Climate. The importance of that locomotion in the development of the American Hepublic, and the necessity of legislation to encourage and secure it, are insisted upon Page 9

Chapter II. On The Effects Of Emigration

Admitting the correctness of the division of Society into three grades, as established by Machiavelli, the effect arising from the emigration of each of those grades is considered, and illustrations from the history of Spain and England examined. TJie extinction of the Romans and diffusion of the Arabs are traced to their physiological causes.

vi CONTENTS.

The political consequences of immigration are illustrated by the establishment of the Cotton manufacture in Europe and Negro slavery in America.

Tlie ante -historic settlement of Europe by immigrants from Asia, as determined by the modern methods of linguistic research, is next considered, the laics of Population explained in connection therewith, and the necessity of material to moral changes suggested.

Machiavelli 's principles and the foregoing results are then applied to the United States — 1st. European immigration in the North ; 2d. Interned emigration to the West / 3d. Prospective emigration to the South ; ith. Asiatic immigration to the Pacific States. The evils contingent on the spread of Polygamy, and the genercd effects of cdl these movements on the wealth and grandeur of the Republic, are shown .... Page 93

Chapter III. On The Political Force Of Ideas

Ideas act on masses of men in a double manner, sometimes exerting an impelling, sometimes a resisting agency.

The Impelling power of Ideas is illustrated in the case of Mohammedanism, of which the political development as attained in Sjyain, and the Intellectucd, as manifested in the philosophy of Averroes, are described.

The Resisting power of Ideas is illustrated in the case of the Jews. A brief sketch is given of their history, their sacred loritings, and the modifications impressed upon them by the Persians, Greeks, and Arabs. It is their Messianic idea that resists the influences of Conquest and Time, and preserves them a separate people among all nations.

Man may comprehend Nature and subjugate physiccd forces. Tinder this Idea modern civilization is advancing. It is illustrated by a sketch of certain scientific discoveries and useful inventions.

The ecclesiastical causes of the European opposition to Science are explained, and the duty of America to develop) and protect free thought is enforced 178

CONTENTS. vii

Chapter IV. On The Natural Course Of National Development

The Organization, Development, and Government of the Natural World are shown to involve a continual tendency to concentration ofpoioer, and the conferring of a dominant control on Intelligence.

This principle applies in the case of human societies during their political development. A comparison is instituted between the European method of government through the Morals, and the American of government through the Intellect. It is illustrated by the history of England, taken as a type of the former, and by the history of the United States, taken as a type of the latter.

It follows, from the Intellectual method adopted, that America must be the scene of a future conflict of Ideas. Their action, reaction, and modifications are alluded to, and the scientific tendency to unity of opinion pointed out.

And, finally, the analogies between the Italian ecclesiastical system and the American civil system are referred to.

The general object of the chapter is to show that in all durable human associations there is a natural, an inevitable tendency to the concentration of power ; and that, so far from this being in antagonism to democraticcd institutions, it is their legitimate and unavoidable residt Page 238

Shortly will be publifhed, by the same Author,

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Three Volumes, 8vo.

THOUGHTS

ON

AMERICAN CIVIL POLICY.

Introduction

At the close of the Civil War, which has ended in the military vindication of the Great Republic, the minds of thoughtful men naturally turn to the Future. An Imperial power has come into existence before our eyes. It rivals — perhaps, indeed, it already excels — in warlike resources the ancient monarchies of Europe. There is before it a career of unparalleled grandeur, a splendid history, to be wrought out on a greater scale than that of Rome.

What topics, then, are more worthy of public attention than those with which American statesmanship will now necessarily be called upon to deal? With what else can the American reader, who has faith in the Destiny of his Nation, more profitably occupy himself? There are political problems of surpassing importance, for which solutions must now be found.

10 INTRODUCTION.

Having been occupied for many years in the study of the Intellectual Development of Europe, I have had occasion to observe the manner in which many of these problems have been solved on that continent. There are principles specially applicable to each nation, which guide it in its determinations, and settle the course of its life.

Some of these principles I propose now to point out, selecting from many topics the four following :

Influence of Climate,

Effects of Emigration,

Political Force of Ideas,

Natural Course of National Development, and making these serve as a framework for the convenient presentation of those principles.

Chapter I. On The Influence Of Climate

Commenting with the statement that Nations, like all the forms °f We-> are transitory, the physical influences that originate and destroy those forms are considered. And since plants and animals are found to change helplessly under such influences, they are therefore illustrations of the control of Universal Law. A specicd inquiry is made as to the effects of Climate on the skin and skull of man, and on his physical and intellectual powers.

Then follows a brief topographical description of the United States ; the Climate effects, North and South, are considered, and the conditions necessary to insure stability in the politiccd institutions of the country are p>ointed out. The general inferences are illustrated by historical cases, as those of Egypt and Asia.

The main conclusion brought into relief is, that personal locomotion can check the effects of Climate. The importance of that locomotion in the development of the American Hepublic, and the necessity of legislation to encourage and secure it, are insisted upon.

Nations, like individual men, are born and die — an unpalatable truth, for each tries to hide from itself the contemplation of its final day. Each also amuses itself with the delusion that, whatever may be the hapless lot of others, there is an immortal future in store for it. But what does the inexorable hand of History write ? Rome, Macedon, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, all are gone.

12 TRANSITORY CHARACTER OF NATIONS.

The waves of the ocean spring up, we know not where or why. They come careering past us, the very emblems of resistless power. They subside and are lost among other succeeding waves. In like manner, on the vast sea of human life, Empires mysteriously emerge. They raise their ephemeral forms conspicuously high, overwhelming whatever stands in the way of their march. They also subside and are lost, but the unfathomed abyss of humanity still remains.

To the infinite expanse of the ocean belongs endless duration. Its waves are only temporary. The forces that have impelled them into existence are soon expended; an inevitable disappearance awaits them. The material of which they are composed may be eternal, but they themselves are only vanishing forms.

Vanishing forms ! Such, too, are Nations emerging from the mass of humanity.

Then it might seem to be of trifling moment to concern ourselves with the study of any one of them. And so indeed it is, if we rise to the most elevated point of view that history can occupy. No isolated fact is of any intrinsic value in itself. It is its connection with other facts that gives it all its worth. No sound, whatever its quality may be, can ever of itself yield music; that arises from the well-ordered sequence of sounds. We only become conscious of historical harmony through a presentment of success-

ANALOGY BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND NATIONS. 13

ive nations, varying in their form, their strength, their duration.

With what a solemn emphasis does the Past impress upon us its monition that national life is thus, in the necessity of circumstances, transitory ! How vain it is to close our eyes to the portentous lesson, to refuse to read what is written in the Book of Destiny ! How vain to try to persuade ourselves that, though all other things in the world are disappearing, we are to be immortal ! Permanence may belong to humanity, but not to those forms into which, here and there at intervals, humanity has been forced. A succession of Nations is the consequence of the life of the race, being manifestations of the varying ac» tivity of groups of men. Life is the active, existence the passive state. Life is evanescent, existence is enduring-.

o

Such groups of men, thus with an inevitable fate before them, may well desire, as does the individual man, to postpone as long as possible their end. They may legitimately seek to enjoy their existence while it lasts — nay, more, to make it memorable.

The analogy between the life of an Individual and of a Nation arises from a similarity in their constitution. In the individual there must be unceasing changes in the component parts. The appearance of permanence is altogether an illusion. Physicians sometimes say that the body changes completely in

14 CHANGES IN INDIVIDUALS.

seven years. Iu truth, it changes far more quickly than that. The particles of which it is composed are continually becoming eifete. They must be removed, and new ones introduced in their stead. Such replacements are going on from the moment of birth to that of death ; they occur by night as well as by day ; during sleep as well as when we are awake. This death of the constituent particles of a living being is called interstitial death. It is the very condition of life. It occurs in every part indifferently — in the soft textures, as in the muscles or nerves; in the hardest, as bone.

Energy of life depends altogether on the rapidity of these transmutations. No motion can be accomplished without the wasting away of substance. The foot can not take a step, the finger can not be lifted, the brain can not execute any intellectual act, without the death of a portion of its material. As such actions are more vigorous, the losses are greater. If, then, the body is to be maintained in an unimpaired condition, operations of renovation must needs be resorted to. On the removal of a particle that is dead, a new one must be ready to take its place. With rapidity and precision the process of transmutation goes ou, and in a very short time a completely renovated structure, identical in form, but changed as to its constituents, is produced.

It is surprising on what an enormous scale these

CHANGES IN NATIONS. 15

transmutations are carried forward. An adult man, weighing not more than 140 pounds, requires to be supplied with nearly a ton and a half of material in the form of food, water, and air, in the course of every year, the larger portion of it being consumed in accomplishing these replacements. In the same period, the same weight, that is, a ton and a half of material, is dismissed from his system as dead or effete. The aspect of identity he presents is therefore altogether illusory. Particles are perpetually abandoning him, and new particles are being perpetually introduced. In a waterfall which retains its appearance for many years unchanged, the supply from above continually flows in, and the precipitated portions below glide finally and forever away. The waste is compensated by the supply. In no other manner can the transitory matter exhibit a permanent form. The waterfall is only a form which the flux of liquid assumes.

So in that collection of substance constituting man, or any animal, whatever may be its position, high or low, in the realm of life, there is a perpetual introduction of new material and a perpetual departure of the old.

And so, too, with Nations ; they undergo unceasing change. The death of an individual in them corresponds to the death of a particle in the Individual. In the space of thirty or forty years — the period of a generation, as it is often called — a complete replace-

16 PROGRESS OF NATIONS.

ment has occurred. The men who were active have all been removed; succeeding men have occupied their places. If there has been a season of violent national exertion, such as of war, the substitution has gone on with greater rapidity. And yet, notwithstanding all this change, the nation may still exist with all its essential lineaments unimpaired. Like the man or the waterfall, it is only a transitory form.

Nor does the analogy between an Individual and a Nation end here. A similar, perhajjs a more surprising parallelism is perceived when their modes of growth are considered, for not alone in the incidents of birth and death are they alike. As the former pursues his way through the successive stages of infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, so, as history teaches, does the latter too. The Individual helplessly and in a predestined manner runs through these stages, being unable to modify their succession, or to accelerate or retard their occurrence. The Nation, also, in a like helpless and predetermined way, moves through the same inevitable career. An unavoidable destiny rules over the progress of both.

That transitory permanence, if such a contradictory expression may be used, which is equally seen in the Nation, the Individual, the Waterfall, depends on the invariability of external conditions. If they change, it also changes, and a new form is the result. In the waterfall, if the jutting ledge over which the waters

RELATIONS OF MATTER AND FORCE. 17

rush should break suddenly away, or if some new obstacle interfere, the figure of the flowing sheet of liquid will be remodeled.

I repeat with emphasis the significant remark, that if external circumstances change, the transitory form will change with them; for it leads us by a ready step to the subject to which many of these pages are now to be devoted — the Influence of Climate on Man. To this I therefore hasten, premising, however, some preliminary thoughts and facts needful for its clear appreciation.

A rain-drop descends from the clouds : that simple phenomenon, like a thousand others we might consider, teaches us that there are two existences with which all exact science has to deal. They are Matter and Force. The substance of which the rain-drop consists might, if we chose, occupy our attention. We might dwell upon the nature, the properties, the constitution of water. And then, again, we might consider what is that power through the influence of which the drop has come down from the clouds, descending to the earth. Our books of Natural Philosophy teach us to call it gravitation : they speak of it as a Force. We see, therefore, the truth of the remark, that there are two things before us, Matter and Force.

Whence came that matter, that drop of water? Chemistry tells us that it was vaporized by the warmth of the sun from the ocean, perhaps many

B

"Lg VICISSITUDES OF MATTER.

thousands of miles away. As an invisible steam it ascended through the air. Borne along by drifting winds, it came at length to a space where the atmosphere happened to be cooler, and, here condensing, lost the invisible and took on the visible form. Now it had become a portion of a cloud, ready to reflect the glories of the departing day. As a rain-drop it then fell to the ground, soaking through the earthy strata, to issue forth again in a gushing spring or fountain. In company with many others like itself, constituting a flowing rill that emptied into larger streams, it found through some river a return to the sea from which it came. After its many mutations, after all the vicissitudes it had undergone, an inevitable destiny awaited it — restoration to its original source.

So with the power that gently evaporated it from the sea, the power that in the winds drifted it from climate to climate, the power that made it fall to the ground, that carried it down the gently flowing current back to its native place, there was no deterioration, no decay. It might have assumed one form after another — motion, heat, and the like — but in its intrinsic nature it was altogether indestructible. It is the glory of modern science to have proved that Matter and Force are both imperishable.

For matter, see from the illustration here presented how, though it may pass from form to form, in what

VICISSITUDES OF FORCE. 19

a returning circle it runs. For force it is the same. With predestined certainty both come back to their starting-point.

In the month of March the Sun crosses the Equator, dispensing his rays more abundantly over our northern hemisphere. Following in his train, a wave of verdure advances toward the pole. Trees, awaking from winter, assume their leafy ornaments. The vegetable world enters on a new period of growth. As autumn comes on, this orderly advance of light and life is followed by an orderly retreat, and in its turn the other hemisphere, the southern, presents the same beautiful appearance.

Whence came all these green leaves and tinted flowers, these seeds that are to furnish food for man ? Not from the ground, as some persons think. The Omnipotent Sun, that central governor of our planetary system, obtains and condenses the needful material from the air. Under his genial influences a refined chemical operation is going on. He extracts from an invisible and noxious gas — the same that is expired from our lungs in the act of breathing, as useless and even poisonous to the system — that plastic material out of which the unnumbered beautiful plantorgans are composed. Plants are therefore nothing more than condensations from the Air, their parts being held together by Force that has been derived from the Sun — force that, as it were, is imprisoned in

20 ORIGIN OF ANIMALS.

them, but ever ready to re-appear. Each year, in this manner, through that arch-chemic influence, a store of Matter and of Force is laid up, as we are now to see, for the animal world.

For, directly or indirectly, all animals find their nutrition in feeding on plants. Even for those called carnivorous, or flesh -feeders, the remark holds good. They feed on others that have fed on plants. The muscles, and fat, and nerve substance, nay, the very bone, all have come from the vegetable world.

Wherein is the imperious necessity that food thus composed and thus obtained should be used by man and other animals ? It is for the double purpose of securing Matter and Force. The former, in being consumed, furnishes the latter.

We have already seen that an animal is only a transitory form, through which material substance is visibly passing. A scientific examination of its life must include two primary facts. It must consider whence and in what manner the stream of material substance has been derived, and whither it passes away. And since Force can not be created from nothing, and is in its very nature indestructible, it must determine from what source that which is displayed by animals has been obtained, in what manner it is employed, and what disposal is made of it eventually. The Force comes from the Sun, the Matter from the Air.

RELATION OF THE PLANT AND ANIMAL WORLDS. 21

But how does all this wasted material, that has subserved its offices in animals, escape from them ? To so great an extent by the breath, that, with certain exceptions needless to notice here, it may be said that the breathing of animals is essential to the growing of plants. We cast out into the atmosphere those inert products no longer useful to life. Plants then appropriate them under the influence of the Sun, and organize them again. And this brings us back to the same truth that was revealed to us by the drop of water. There is a cycle or revolution through which material particles suitable for organization incessantly run. At one moment they exist as inorganic combinations in the air or the soil, then as portions of plants, then as portions of animals, then they return to the air or the soil, once more to renew their cycle of movement. The metamorphoses feigned by the poets of antiquity have hence a foundation in fact; and the Vegetable and Animal, the organic and inorganic worlds, are indissolubly bound together. Plants form, animals destroy.

In this relation of the Plant and Animal worlds to each other, there is a condition too important to be overlooked. It is their mutual interbalancing. The sum total of the one must be exactly adjusted to that of the other. If either were permitted to acquire a superiority, it would impress upon the atmosphere a specific change. If animal life predominated, the

22 CONTROLLING LAW.

quantity of carbonic acid would preponderate; if plant life, the quantity of oxygen. Now there is evidence the most copious, the most satisfactory, that for many thousands of years the relative quantity of these ingredients has remained unchanged. The atmosphere is to-day the same in composition that it was sixty centuries ago.

There must therefore have been during that long lapse of time a rigorous adjustment of the two forms of life to one another, neither being permitted to gain a superiority, but each minutely and exactly balanced to the other. I will not at present enter on a description of the simple manner in which this equipoise is accomplished, but will be content with the emphatic remark, that in the most conspicuous manner it indicates THE EXISTENCE OF CONTROLLING LAW.

The material which has flowed through the heart of man as blood, is transferred by breathing to the air, and aids in the formation of forest-trees and flowers. The Asiatics, with whom have originated all the varieties of religious creeds that have spread to any extent in the world, not unfrequently asserted a transmigration of souls. They would have been much nearer the truth had they believed in a transmigration of bodies. The coal that we burn is the remains of forests which in former ages were thronged with living things — forests that sprang, as do the trees with us, from gases that were formed by the respira-

NATURE OF THE AIR. 23

tion of animals, but of animals that are now all extinct.

Atmospheric air is then the grand receptacle from which all living things come, and to which they all return. It is the cradle of vegetable, the coffin of animal life. Made up as it is of atoms that have once lived, that have run through innumerable cycles of change, the aspect of purity it presents conceals too well its history. In its ethereal expanse are crowds of particles that have once blossomed as flowers, or participated in the pleasures and pains of animal life. Their former function discharged, they await their turn of re-organization, occupying themselves in transmitting the many-colored beams of light, or moving in vibration to musical sounds. A condition so tranquil suits well their former state and future destiny. In this general tomb the remains of wild beasts and of more ferocious men disappear, until the solar beams recall them to life and give them form again.

The daily rotation of the Earth on her axis determines periodic observances in the functions of organized beings, and fixes their times of activity and sleep. A similar result attends her yearly motion in her orbit. In our latitudes trees and plants awake at the coming of spring, and put forth their leaves and flowers, and then sink again into their annual slumber. Wild birds and beasts conform their habits to the progress of the seasons, at one time preparing to bring

24 INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS.

forth their young, at another anticipating with a provident foresight the coming winter. It is thus with those flocks of pigeons which in countless myriads seek the North in spring and return to the South in autumn ; thus, also, with the vast herds of buffaloes in the West. The migrations of fishes that take place at given seasons, and which are connected with the well-being and wealth of nations, are determined by the occurrence of astronomical epochs. It is no explanation of these curious facts to say that they depend on other facts like themselves — that an animal sleeps by night because his prey is also asleep — that a fish migrates at those periods when his instincts tell him that the food on which he lives is abundant. If in any of these cases we pass from fact to fact, we uniformly come at last to the conclusion that all these incidents are under the control of astronomical events ; that the Sun not only determines periods of awakening and sleep, of growth and decay, but that he controls and regulates the movements of animated beings all over the face of the Earth. His rays, falling perpendicularly, produce the luxuriant vegetation of tropical regions, and debilitate and enervate the human race. In the polar regions their obliquity suffers the ground to be always covered with snow, and makes those inhospitable countries almost without inhabitants. The trade winds also, blowing uninterruptedly for ages, carry toward the poles immense quantities of

INFLUENCE OF THE OCEAN. 25

oxygen gas, which the green parts of plants throw into the atmosphere of the torrid zone. That oxygen is evolved by light and then disseminated by heat. In the sea the same influence which thus presides in the ail' is also at work. The Gulf Stream, issuing from the Mexican waters, with its temperature elevated by solar action, determines the distribution of the Atlantic fishes: the Northern whale avoids its offensive warmth, and on its sides shoals congregate which delight in a more genial heat. As it approaches the coasts of Europe, and spreads out into a fan-like form, the vapors that rise from it give forth their latent heat to the air, and moderate the climates of England and France. The coldness and sterility of corresponding latitudes in America are there replaced by a better temperature ; and agriculture, the arts of life, science, and literature, have there reached their greatest perfection. This physical agent, thus eternally but invisibly continuing its operation, produces a thousand events in which its agency is only remotely traced ; nor are those influences limited to mere physical results ; they stand in connection with the progress of society and the evolution of mind. A full development of the reasoning faculty can only take place where physical circumstances conspire. Without the Gulf Stream, Newton would never have written his Principia, nor Milton Paradise Lost.