1
_Le Contrat Social_
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior
man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If
it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man
who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact;
if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior
in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to
regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and
as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat
originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential
change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous
man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for
himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he
lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he
is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic
personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot.
Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in
even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am
convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that
he used to loose in the cafés of Vienna had its effects—that some
of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves
translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate
men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names
of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of
Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle
did, not the German people or the German administration. In his
“Errinerungen,” whenever he discusses the government that he was a part
of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum.
Nine times out of ten, it seems to me, the man who proposes a change
in the government he lives under, no matter how defective it may be,
is romantic to the verge of sentimentality. There is seldom, if ever,
any evidence that the kind of government he is unlawfully inclined
to would be any better than the government he proposes to supplant.
Political revolutions, in truth, do not often accomplish anything of
genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one
gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course,
the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that
they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who
denies it. But that surely doesn’t prove their case. In Russia, for
many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar
would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of
him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. The Germans, with
the Kaiser in exile, have discovered that a shoemaker turned statesman
is ten times as bad as a Hohenzollern. The Alsatians, having become
Frenchmen again after 48 years anxious wait, have responded to the boon
by becoming extravagant Germanomaniacs. The Tyrolese, though they hated
the Austrians, now hate the Italians enormously more. The Irish, having
rid themselves of the English after 700 years of struggle, instantly
discovered that government by Englishmen, compared to government by
Irishmen, was almost paradisiacal. Even the American colonies gained
little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the
Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they
would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive,
more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only
the gradual material progress of the country that saved them from
starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the
virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under
the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a
great deal better.
The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert
Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone—one which barely
escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be
realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed
from these scenes and taken up my home in Hell.
2
_On Minorities_
It is a commonplace of historical science that the forgotten worthies
who framed the Constitution of the United States had no belief in
democracy. Prof. Dr. Beard, in a slim, sad book, has laboriously proved
that most obvious of obviousities. Two prime objects are visible in the
Constitution, beautifully enshrouded in disarming words: to protect
property and to safeguard minorities—in brief, to hold the superior
few harmless against the inferior many. The first object is still
carried out, despite the effort of democratic law to make capital an
outlaw. The second, alas, has been defeated completely. What
is worse, it has been defeated in the very holy of holies of those
who sought to attain it, which is to say, in the funereal chamber
of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bit by bit this great
bench of master minds has gradually established the doctrine that
a minority in the Republic has no rights whatever. If they still
exist theoretically, as fossils surviving from better days, there is
certainly no machinery left for protecting and enforcing them. The
current majority, if it so desired to-morrow, could add an amendment to
the Constitution prohibiting the ancient Confederate vice of chewing
the compressed leaves of the tobacco plant _(Nicotiana tabacum)_; the
Supreme Court, which has long since forgotten the Bill of Rights,
would promptly issue a writ of _nihil obstat_, with a series of moral
reflections as _lagniappe._ More, the Supreme Court would as promptly
uphold a law prohibiting the chewing of gum _(Achras sapota)_—on
the ground that any unnecessary chewing, however harmless in itself,
might tempt great hordes of morons to chew tobacco. This is not a mere
torturing of sardonic theory: the thing has been actually done in the
case of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the sale of
intoxicating beverages; the Supreme Court has decided plainly that, in
order to enforce it, Congress also has the right to prohibit the sale
of beverages that are admittedly _not_ intoxicating. It could, indeed,
specifically prohibit near-beer to-morrow, or any drink containing
malt or hops, however low in alcohol; the more extreme Prohibitionists
actually demand that it do so forthwith.
Worse, a minority not only has no more inalienable rights in the United
States; it is not even lawfully entitled to be heard. This was well
established by the case of the Socialists elected to the New York
Assembly. What the voters who elected these Socialists asked for was
simply the privilege of choosing spokesmen to voice their doctrines in
a perfectly lawful and peaceable manner,—nothing more. This privilege
was denied them. In precisely the same way, the present national House
of Representatives, which happens to be Republican in complexion, might
expel all of its Democratic members. The voters who elected them would
have no redress. If the same men were elected again, or other men of
the same views, they might be expelled again. More, it would apparently
be perfectly constitutional for the majority in Congress to pass a
statute denying the use of the mails to the minority—that is, for the
Republicans to bar all Democratic papers from the mails. I do not toy
with mere theories. The thing has actually been done in the case of
the Socialists. Under the present law, indeed—upheld by the Supreme
Court—the Postmaster-General, without any further authority from
Congress, might deny the mails to all Democrats. Or to all Catholics.
Or to all single taxers. Or to all violoncellists.
Yet more, a citizen who happens to belong to a minority is not even
safe in his person: he may be put into prison, and for very long
periods, for the simple offense of differing from the majority. This
happened, it will be recalled, in the case of Debs. Debs by no means
advised citizens subject to military duty, in time of war, to evade
that duty, as the newspapers of the time alleged. On the contrary,
he advised them to meet and discharge that duty. All he did was to
say that, even in time of war, he was against war—that he regarded
it as a barbarous method of settling disputes between nations. For
thus differing from the majority on a question of mere theory he was
sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of the three young Russians
arrested in New York was even more curious. These poor idiots were
jailed for the almost incredible crime of circulating purely academic
protests against making war upon a country with which the United States
was legally at peace, to wit, Russia. For this preposterous offense two
of them were sent to prison for fifteen years, and one, a girl, for
ten years, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. Here was a
plain case of proscription and punishment for a mere opinion. There was
absolutely no contention that the protest of the three prisoners could
have any practical result—that it might, for example, destroy the
_morale_ of American soldiers 6,000 miles away, and cut off from all
communication with the United States. The three victims were ordered
to be punished in that appalling manner simply because they ventured
to criticise an executive usurpation which happened, at the moment,
to have the support of public opinion, and particularly of the then
President of the United States and of the holders of Russian government
securities.
It must be obvious, viewing such leading cases critically—and hundreds
like them might be cited—that the old rights of the free American, so
carefully laid down by the Bill of Rights, are now worth nothing. Bit
by bit, Congress and the State Legislatures have invaded and nullified
them, and to-day they are so flimsy that no lawyer not insane would
attempt to defend his client by bringing them up. Imagine trying to
defend a man denied the use of the mails by the Postmaster-General,
without hearing or even formal notice, on the ground that the
Constitution guarantees the right of free speech! The very catchpolls
in the courtroom would snicker. I say that the legislative arm is
primarily responsible for this gradual enslavement of the Americano;
the truth is, of course, that the executive and judicial arms are
responsible to a scarcely less degree. Our law has not kept pace with
the development of our bureaucracy; there is no machinery provided for
curbing its excesses. In Prussia, in the old days, there were special
courts for the purpose, and a citizen oppressed by the police or by
any other public official could get relief and redress. The guilty
functionary could be fined, mulcted in damages, demoted, cashiered,
or even jailed. But in the United States to-day there are no such
tribunals. A citizen attacked by the Postmaster-General simply has
no redress whatever; the courts have refused, over and over again,
to interfere save in cases of obvious fraud. Nor is there, it would
seem, any remedy for the unconstitutional acts of Prohibition agents.
Some time ago, when Senator Stanley, of Kentucky, tried to have a law
passed forbidding them to break into a citizen’s house in violation of
the Bill of Rights, the Prohibitionists mustered up their serfs in the
Senate against him, and he was voted down.
The Supreme Court, had it been so disposed, might have put a stop to
all this sinister buffoonery long ago. There was a time, indeed, when
it was alert to do so. That was during the Civil War. But since then
the court has gradually succumbed to the prevailing doctrine that the
minority has no rights that the majority is bound to respect. As it
is at present constituted, it shows little disposition to go to the
rescue of the harassed freeman. When property is menaced it displays
a laudable diligence, but when it comes to the mere rights of the
citizen it seems hopelessly inclined to give the prosecution the
benefit of every doubt. Two justices commonly dissent—two out of nine.
They hold the last switch-trench of the old constitutional line. When
they depart to realms of bliss the Bill of Rights will be buried with
them.