In Paris, some years ago, I was for a time a resident in a cultivated
French family, where the father was non-committal in politics, the mother
and son were republicans, and the daughter was a Bonapartist. Asking the
mother why the young lady thus held to a different creed from the rest, I
was told that she had made up her mind that the streets of Paris were kept
cleaner under the empire than since its disappearance: hence her
imperialism.
I have heard American men advocate the French empire at home and abroad,
without offering reasons so good as those of the lively French maiden. But
I always think of her remark when the question is seriously asked, as Mr.
Parkman, for instance, once gravely put it in "The North American
Review,"--"The real issue is this: Is the object of government the good of
the governed, or is it not?" Taken in a general sense, there is probably no
disposition to discuss this conundrum, for the simple reason that nobody
dissents from it. But the important point is: What does "the good of the
governed" mean? Does it merely mean better street cleaning, or something
more essential?
There is nothing new in the distinction. Ever since De Tocqueville wrote
his "Democracy in America," forty years ago, this precise point has been
under active discussion. That acute writer himself recurs to it again and
again. Every government, he points out, nominally seeks the good of the
people, and rests on their will at last. But there is this difference: A
monarchy organizes better, does its work better, cleans the streets better.
Nevertheless De Tocqueville, a monarchist, sees this advantage in a
republic, that when all this is done by the people for themselves, although
the work done may be less perfect, yet the people themselves are more
enlightened, better satisfied, and, in the end, their good is better
served. Thus in one place he quotes "a writer of talent" who complains of
the want of administrative perfection in the United States, and says, "We
are indebted to centralization, that admirable invention of a great man,
for the uniform order and method which prevails alike in all the municipal
budgets (of France) from the largest town to the humblest commune." But,
says De Tocqueville,--
"Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the
communes (municipalities) of France, with their excellent system of
accounts, plunged in the grossest ignorance of their true interests,
and abandoned to so incorrigible an apathy that they seem to
vegetate rather than to live; when, on the other hand, I observe the
activity, the information, and the spirit of enterprise which keeps
society in perpetual labor, in these American townships, whose
budgets are drawn up with small method and with still less
uniformity,--I am struck by the spectacle; _for, to my mind, the end
of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people_, and not
to establish order and regularity in the midst of its misery and its
distress."[1]
The italics are my own; but it will be seen that he uses a phrase almost
identical with Mr. Parkman's, and that he uses it to show that there is
something to be looked at beyond good laws,--namely, the beneficial effect
of self-government. In another place he comes back to the subject again:--
"It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts public
business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower order should
take a part in public business without extending the circle of their
ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of their mental
acquirements; the humblest individual who is called upon to
cooperate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of
self-respect; and, as he possesses authority, he can command the
services of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is
canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a
thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit....
Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon
the people; but it produces that which the most skilful governments
are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and
restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is
inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances,
beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of
democracy."[2]
These passages and others like them are worth careful study. They clearly
point out the two different standards by which we may criticise all
political systems. One class of thinkers, of whom Froude is the most
conspicuous, holds that the "good of the people" means good laws and good
administration, and that, if these are only provided, it makes no sort of
difference whether they themselves make the laws, or whether some Cæsar or
Louis Napoleon provides them. All the traditions of the early and later
Federalists point this way. But it has always seemed to me a theory of
government essentially incompatible with American institutions. If we could
once get our people saturated with it, they would soon be at the mercy of
some Louis Napoleon of their own.
When President Lincoln claimed, following Theodore Parker, that ours was
not merely a government for the people, but of the people, and by the
people as well, he recognized the other side of the matter,--that it is not
only important what laws we have, but who makes the laws; and that "the end
of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people," in this far
wider sense. That advantage which the French writer admits in democracy,
that it develops force, energy, and self-respect, is as essentially a part
of "the good of the governed" as is any perfection in the details of
government. And it is precisely these advantages which we expect that
women, sooner or later, are to share. For them, as for men, "the good of
the governed" is not genuine unless it is that kind of good which belongs
to the self-governed.
[Footnote 1: Sparks's _Franklin_, ii. 372.]
[Footnote 2: De Tocqueville, vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.]