I have a deep, though paradoxical, conviction that most of the European
nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure
monarchy; that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of
complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become
efficient in the apparent will of the king.[1] As it seems to me, the wise
and good in every country will, in all likelihood, become every day more
and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalized
as it is, and will be, by the predominance of democracy in England, France,
and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility
of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of
government; and, perhaps, they had more reason than we have been accustomed
to think.
[Footnote 1: This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be
acknowledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to
be considered the favourite.--ED.]
* * * * *
You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill
prophecies that were made of it--low, vulgar, meddling with every thing,
assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering
at every thing noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal
despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been
gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land.
As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much fiery spirit, if
there be no principle to guide and to sanctify it?
_April _10. 1833.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.--CAPTAIN B. HALL.--NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES.
--DEMOCRACY WITH SLAVERY.--QUAKERS.
The possible destiny of the United States of America,--as a nation of a
hundred millions of freemen,--stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare
and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not wish to see it
realized? America would then be England viewed through a solar microscope;
Great Britain in a state of glorious magnification! How deeply to be
lamented is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of the popular
books of travels have shown in treating of the Americans! They hate us, no
doubt, just as brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman
concerning themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other
country on earth. A very little humouring of their prejudices, and some
courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of Englishmen, would work
wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.
* * * * *
Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very entertaining and instructive;
but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and more especially
his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. After all, are not
most of the things shown up with so much bitterness by him mere national
foibles, parallels to which every people has and must of necessity have?
* * * * *
What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No
doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally, or
apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such cases
there is a hardship; but, in the long run, the matter is fully compensated
to the over-taxed class. For example, take the householders of London, who
complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is it not pretty clear
that, whether such householder be a tradesman, who indemnifies himself in
the price of his goods,--or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent,
--or a stockholder, who receives it back again in his dividends,--or a
country gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his land or his
other property,--one way or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the
same thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious,
and fit to be removed? But when New England, which may be considered a
state in itself, taxes the admission of foreign manufactures in order to
cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the Carolinians,
another state of itself, with which there is little intercommunion, which
has no such desire or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher
price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright
tyranny of the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you
think of a law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the
pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble
image of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the
property of the Southern States.
* * * * *
There are two possible modes of unity in a State; one by absolute
coordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by
subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never was
an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its
condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are no
exception.
The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on classes and
interests and unequal property, with a church, which is founded on the
person, and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a community _may_
exist, as in the case of the Quakers; but, in order to exist, it must be
compressed and hedged in by another society--_mundus mundulus in mundo
immundo_.
* * * * *
The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most patriotic
class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not simply the
patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and
distinction and supremacy.
_April _11. 1833.