The enthusiastic philanthropist urgent for some act of parliament to
remedy this evil or secure the other good, thinks it a very trivial
and far-fetched objection that the people will be morally injured by
doing things for them instead of leaving them to do things themselves.
He vividly realizes the benefit he hopes to get achieved, which is a
positive and readily imaginable thing: he does not realize the
diffused, invisible, and slowly accumulating effect wrought on the
popular mind, and so does not believe in it; or, if he admits it,
thinks it beneath consideration. Would he but remember, however, that
all national character is gradually produced by the daily action of
circumstances, of which each day's result seems so insignificant as
not to be worth mentioning, he would see that what is trifling when
viewed in its increments, may be formidable when viewed in its sum
total. Or if he would go into the nursery, and watch how repeated
actions--each of them apparently unimportant--create, in the end, a
habit which will affect the whole future life; he would be reminded
that every influence brought to bear on human nature tells, and if
continued, tells seriously. The thoughtless mother who hourly yields
to the requests: "Mama, tie my pinafore," "Mama, button my shoe," and
the like, can not be persuaded that each of these concessions is
detrimental; but the wiser spectator sees that if this policy be long
pursued, and be extended to other things, it will end in hopeless
dependence. The teacher of the old school who showed his pupil the way
out of every difficulty did not perceive that he was generating an
attitude of mind greatly militating against success in life. The
modern instructor, however, induces his pupil to solve his
difficulties himself; believes that in so doing he is preparing him to
meet the difficulties which, when he goes into the world, there will
be no one to help him through; and finds confirmation for this belief
in the fact that a great proportion of the most successful men are
self-made.
[Footnote 46: From the "Essays, Moral, Political, and Esthetic." By
permission of D. Appleton & Co.]
Well, is it not obvious that this relationship between discipline and
success holds good nationally? Are not nations made of men; and are
not men subject to the same laws of modification in their adult as in
their early years? Is it not true of the drunkard, that each carouse
adds a thread to his bonds? of the trader, that each acquisition
strengthens the wish for acquisitions? of the pauper, that the more
you assist him the more he wants? of the busy man, that the more he
has to do the more he can do? And does it not follow that if every
individual is subject to this process of adaptation to conditions, a
whole nation must be so--that just in proportion as its members are
little helped by extraneous power they will become self-helping, and
in proportion as they are much helped they will become helpless? What
folly is it to ignore these results because they are not direct, and
not immediately visible. Tho slowly wrought out, they are inevitable.
We can no more elude the laws of human development than we can elude
the law of gravitation; and so long as they hold true must these
effects occur.
If we are asked in what special directions this alleged helplessness,
entailed by much state superintendence, shows itself, we reply that it
is seen in a retardation of all social growths requiring
self-confidence in the people--in a timidity that fears all
difficulties not before encountered--in a thoughtless contentment with
things as they are. Let any one, after duly watching the rapid
evolution going on in England, where men have been comparatively
little helped by governments--or better still, after contemplating the
unparalleled progress of the United States, which is peopled by
self-made men and the recent descendants of self-made men;--let such a
one, we say, go on to the Continent, and consider the relatively slow
advance which things are there making; and the still slower advance
they would make but for English enterprise.
Let him go to Holland, and see that tho the Dutch early showed
themselves good mechanics, and have had abundant practise in
hydraulics, Amsterdam has been without any due supply of water until
now that works are being established by an English company. Let him go
to Berlin, and there be told that, to give that city a water supply
such as London has had for generations, the project of an English firm
is about to be executed by English capital, under English
superintendence. Let him go to Paris, where he will if find a similar
lack, and a like remedy now under consideration. Let him go to
Vienna, and learn that it, in common with other continental cities, is
lighted by an English gas company. Let him go on the Rhone, on the
Loire, on the Danube, and discover that Englishmen established steam
navigation on those rivers. Let him inquire concerning the railways in
Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, how many of them are English
projects, how many have been largely helped by English capital, how
many have been executed by English contractors, how many have had
English engineers. Let him discover, too, as he will, that where
railways have been government made, as in Russia, the energy, the
perseverance, and the practical talent developed in England and the
United States have been called in to aid.
And then if these illustrations of the progressiveness of a
self-dependent race, and the torpidity of paternally governed ones, do
not suffice him, he may read Mr. Laing's[47] successive volumes of
European travel, and there study the contrast in detail. What, now, is
the cause of this contrast? In the order of nature, a capacity for
self-help must in every case have been brought into existence by the
practise of self-help; and, other things equal, a lack of this
capacity must in every case have arisen from the lack of demand for
it. Do not these two antecedents and their two consequents agree with
the facts as presented in England and Europe? Were not the inhabitants
of the two, some centuries ago, much upon a par in point of
enterprise? Were not the English even behind, in their manufactures,
in their colonization, and in their commerce? Has not the immense
relative change the English have undergone in this respect been
coincident with the great relative self-dependence they have been
since habituated to? And is not this change proximately ascribable to
this habitual self-dependence? Whoever doubts it is asked to assign a
more probable cause. Whoever admits it must admit that the enervation
of a people by perpetual state aids is not a trifling consideration,
but the most weighty consideration. A general arrest of national
growth he will see to be an evil greater than any special benefits can
compensate for. And, indeed, when, after contemplating this great
fact, the overspreading of the earth by the Anglo-Saxons, he remarks
the absence of any parallel phenomenon exhibited by a continental
race--when he reflects how this difference must depend chiefly on
difference of character, and how such difference of character has been
mainly produced by difference of discipline; he will perceive that the
policy pursued in this matter may have a large share in determining a
nation's ultimate fate.
[Footnote 47: Samuel Laing traveled in Norway and Sweden in 1834, and
published two books recounting his observations.]