第87章

POLITICAL TENDENCIES.

The most marked political tendency of the American people has been, since , to interpret 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 republican to a despotic, or from a civilized to a barbaric 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 responsible to them; but they are the people territorially constituted and fixed to the soil, constituting 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 other democracies--the one personal and the other humanitarian--each alike hostile to civilization, and tending to destroy the state, and capable of sustaining government only on principles 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 identifies liberty with power.

Restricted in its enjoyment to one man, it makes him chief, chief of the family, the tribe, or the nation; extended in its enjoyment to the few, it founds an aristocracy, creates a nobility--for nobleman meant originally only freeman, as it does his own consent, express or constructive.This is the so-called Jeffersonian democracy, in which government has no powers but such as it derives from the consent of the governed, and is personal democracy or pure individualism philosophically considered, pure egoism, which says, "I am God." Under this sort of democracy, 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 authority; there can be only a voluntary association, 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, happily, 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 was, in its most general expression, a war in defence of personal democracy or the sovereignty of the people individually, against the humanitarian democracy, represented by the abolitionists, and the territorial democracy, represented by the Government.This personal democracy has been signally defeated in the defeat of the late confederacy, and can hardly again become strong enough to be dangerous.

But the humanitarian democracy, which scorns all geographical lines, effaces all in individualities, and professes to plant itself on humanity alone, has acquired by the war new strength, and is not without menace to our future.The solidarity of the race, which is the condition 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 individuals, and of individuals in regard to society.

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 communion one with another, these particular states or nations are never absolutely independent of each other but, bound together by the solidarity 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 international law, binding on every particular nation, and which every civilized nation recognizes and enforces on its own subjects or citizens through its own courts as an integral part of its own municipal or national law.