manifestations whether on the other side of the Atlantic or here bear a
strong resemblance, yet difference of conditions and detail
--constitutional peculiarities, so to speak--must not be
disregarded. One form of treatment may not be prescribed for all. In our
case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country
and ourselves to the unforeseeable,--the navigation of uncharted waters;
and this adaptation cannot be considered hi any correct and helpful,
because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located.
Surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. A
physician, diagnosing the chances of a patient, must first correctly
ascertain, or at least ascertain with approximate correctness, the seat
of the trouble under which the patient is suffering. So, we.
And here I must frankly confess to small respect for the
politician,--the man whose voice is continually heard, whether from the
Senate Chamber or the Hustings. There is in those of his class a
continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as
the _post ergo propter_ dispensation. With them, the eye is fixed on the
immediate manifestation. Because one event preceded another, the first
event is obviously and indisputably the cause of the later event. For
instance, in the present case, the cause or seat of our existing and
very manifest social, political and financial disturbances is attributed
as of course to some peculiarity of legislation, either a subtreasury
bill passed in the administration of General Jackson, or a tariff bill
passed in the administration of Mr. Taft, or the demonetization of
silver in the Hayes period,--that "Crime of the Century," the
Crucifixion of Labor on the Cross of Gold! Once for all, let me say, I
contemplate this school of politicians and so-called "thinkers" with
sentiments the reverse of respectful. In plain language, I class them
with those known in professional parlance as quacks and charlatans. Not
always, not even in the majority of cases, does that which preceded bear
to that which follows the relation of cause and effect. A marked example
of this false attribution is afforded in more recent political history
by the everlasting recurrence of the statement that American prosperity
is the result of an American protective system. Yet in the Protectionist
dispensation, this has become an article of faith. To my mind, it is
undeserving of even respectful consideration.
If I were asked the cause of that change, little short of
revolutionary, if indeed in any respect short of it, which has occurred
in the material condition of the American people, and consequently in
all its theories and ideals, within the last thirty years, I should
attribute it to a wholly different cause. Mr. Lecky some years ago, in
his book entitled "Liberty and Democracy," made the following statement,
in no way original, but, as he put it, sufficiently striking: "The
produce of the American mines [incident to the discoveries made by
Columbus] created, in the most extreme form ever known in Europe, the
change which beyond all others affects most deeply and universally the
material well-being of men: it revolutionized the value of the precious
metals, and, in consequence, the price of all articles, the effects of
all contracts, the burden of all debts."
In other words, referring to the first half of the sixteenth
century,--the sixty years, we will say, following the land-fall of
Columbus,--the historian attributed the great change which then occurred
and which stands forth so markedly in history, to the increased
New-World production of the precious metals, combined with the impetus
given to trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of
the mastery of man over additional globe areas. Now, dismissing from
consideration the so-called American protective system, likewise our
currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of
crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the last
thirty years, I confidently submit that in the production of the results
under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of
consideration. The cause of the change which has taken place lies far
deeper and must be sought in influences of a wholly different nature,
influences developed into an increased and still ever increasing
activity, over which legislation has absolutely no control. I refer, of
course, to man's mastery over the latent forces of Nature. Of these
Steam and Electricity are the great examples, which, because always
apparent, at once strike the imagination. These, as tools, it is to be
remembered, date practically from within one hundred years back. It may,
indeed, safely be asserted that up to 1815, the end of the Wars of
Napoleon and the time of your Professor Lieber, steam even had not as
yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when
not a terror, was as yet but a toy. Commerce was still exclusively
carried on by the sailing ship and canal-boat. The years from the fall
of Napoleon to our own War of Secession--from Waterloo to
Gettysburg--were practically those of early and partial development. Not
until well after Appomattox, that is, since the year 1870,--a period
covering but little more than the life of a generation,--did what is
known to you here as the Applied Sciences cover a range difficult to
specialize. As factors in development, it is safe to say that those
three tremendous agencies--Steam, Electricity, Chemistry--have, so to
speak, worked all their noticeable results within the lifetime of the
generation born since we celebrated the Centennial of Independence. The
manifestations now resulting and apparent to all are the natural outcome
of the use of these modern appliances, become in our case everyday
working tools in the hands of the most resourceful, adaptive, ingenious
and energetic of communities, developing a virgin continent of
undreamed-of wealth. Naturally, under such conditions, the advance has
been not only general and continuous, but one of ever increasing
celerity. So Protection and the Currency become flies on the fast
revolving wheel!
But what has otherwise resulted?--An unrest, social, economical,
political. Not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of
wrong! We hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the
increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard
of living. What was considered wealth by our ancestors is to-day hardly
competence. What sufficed for luxury in our childhood barely now
supplies what are known as the comforts of life. Take, for instance, the
motor,--the automobile. I speak within bounds, I think, when I say there
are many fold more motors to-day racing over the streets, the highways
and the byways of America than there were one-horse wagons thirty-five
years ago. Six hundred, I am told, are to be found within the immediate
neighborhood of Columbia; and, since I have been here I have seen in
your streets just one man on horse-back! These figures and that
statement tell the tale. A few years only back, every Carolinian rode
to town, and the motor was unknown. A single illustrative example, this
could be duplicated in innumerable ways everywhere and in all walks
of life.
The result is obvious, and was inevitable. Entered on a new phase of
existence, the world is not as it was in the days of Columbus, when a
single new continent was discovered containing in it what we would now
regard as a limited accumulation of the precious metals. It is, on the
contrary, as if, in the language of Dr. Johnson, "the potentiality of
wealth" had been revealed "beyond the dreams of avarice"; together with
not one or two, but a dozen continents, the existence and secrets of
which are suddenly laid bare. The Applied Sciences have been the
magicians,--not Protection or the Currency.
And still scientists are continually dinning in our ears the question
whether this state of affairs is going to continue,--whether the era of
disturbance has reached its limit! I hold such a question to be little
short of childish. That era has not reached its limits, nor has it even
approximated those limits. On the contrary, we have just entered on the
uncharted sea. We know what the last thirty years have brought about as
the result of the agencies at work; but as yet we can only dimly dream
of what the next sixty years are destined to see brought about.
Imagination staggers at the suggestion.
What, then, has been of this the inevitable consequence,--the
consequence which even the blindest should have foreseen? It has
resulted in all those far-reaching changes suggested in the earlier part
of what I have said to-day, as respects our ideals, our political
theories, our social conditions. In other words, the old era is ended;
what is implied when we say a new era is entered upon?
To attempt a partial answer to the query implies no claim to a prophetic
faculty. Whether we like to face the fact or not, far-reaching changes
in our economical theories and social conditions are imminent, involving
corresponding readjustments in our constitutional arrangements and
political machinery. Tennyson foreshadowed it all in his "Locksley Hall"
seventy years ago:--"The individual withers, and the world is more and
more." The day of individualism as it existed in the American ideal of
sixty years since is over; that of collectivism and possibly socialism
has opened. The day of social equality is relegated to what may be
considered a somewhat patriarchal past,--that patriarchal past having
come to a close during the memory of those still in active life.
And yet, though all this can now be studied in the political discussion
endlessly dragging on, strangely and sadly enough that discussion
carries in it hardly a note of encouragement. It is, in a word,
unspeakably shallow. And here, having sufficiently for my present
purpose though in hurried manner, diagnosed the situation,--located the
seat of disturbance,--we come to the question of treatment. Involving,
as it necessarily does, problems of the fundamental law, and a
rearrangement and different allocation of the functions of government,
this challenges the closest thought of the publicist. That the problem
is here crying aloud for solution is apparent. The publications which
cumber the counters of our book-stores, those for which the greatest
popular call to-day exists--treatises relating to trade interests, to
collectivism, to socialism, even to anarchism--tell the tale in part; in
part it is elsewhere and otherwise told. Only recently, in once Puritan
Massachusetts, processions paraded the streets carrying banners marked
with this device, more suggestive than strange:--"No master and no God!"
What are the remedies popularly proposed? In that important branch of
polity known as Political Ethics, or, as he termed them, Hermeneutics,
which your Professor Lieber sixty years ago endeavored to treat of, what
advance has since his time been effected?--Nay! what advance has been
effected since the time, over two thousand years, of his great
predecessor, Aristotle? I confidently submit that what progress is now
being made in this most erudite of sciences is in the nature of that of
the crab--backwards! In the discussions of Aristotle, the problem in
view was, how to bring about government by the wisest,--that is, the
most observant and expert. In other words, government, the object of
politics, was by Aristotle treated in a scientific spirit. And this is
as it should be. Take, for example, any problem,--I do not care whether
it is legal or medical or one of engineering: How successfully dispose
of it? Uniformly, in one way. Those problems are successfully solved, if
at all, only when their solution is placed in the hands of the most
proficient. Judged by the discussions of to-day, what advance has in
politics been effected? Do the _Outlook_ and the _Commoner_ imply
progress since the Stagirite? Not to any noticeable extent. We are, on
the contrary, fumbling and wallowing about where the Greek pondered and
philosophized.
Democracy, as it is called, is to-day the great panacea,--the political
nostrum; as such it is confidently advocated by statesmen and professors
and even by the presidents of our institutions of the advanced
education. "Trust the People" is the shibboleth! "Let the People rule!"
"The cure for too much Liberty is more Liberty!" To Democracy plain and
simple--Composite Wisdom--I frankly confess I feel no call,--no call
greater than, for instance, towards Autocracy or Aristocracy or
Plutocracy. Taken simply, and applied as hitherto applied, all and each
lead to but one result,--failure! And that result, let me here predict,
will, in the future, be the same in the case of pure Democracy that, in
the past, it was in the case of the pure Autocracy of the Caesars, or
the case of the pure Aristocracy of Rome or of the so-called Republics
of the Middle Ages. A political edifice on shifting sands.
Yet, to-day what do we see and hear in America? Tell it not in Gath;
publish it not in the streets of Askalon I Two thousand years after the
time of Aristotle, we see a prevailing school working directly back to
the condition of affairs which existed in the Athenian agora under the
disapproving eyes of the father of political philosophy. Panaceas,
universal cure-alls, and quack remedies--the Initiative, the Referendum,
and the Recall are paraded as if these--nostrums of the mountebanks of
the county fair--would surely remedy the perplexing ills of new and
hitherto unheard-of social, economical, and political conditions.
Democracy! What is Democracy? Democracy, as it is generally understood,
I submit, is nothing but the reaching of political conclusions through
the frequent counting of noses; or, as Macaulay two generations ago
better phrased it, "the majority of citizens told by the head";--the
only question at just this juncture being whether, in order to the
arriving at more acceptable results, both sexes shall be "told," instead
of one sex only. Moreover, I with equal confidence make bold to suggest
that while conceded, and while men have even persuaded themselves that
they have faith in it, and really do believe in this "telling" of noses
as the best and fairest attainable means of reaching correct results,
yet in so doing and so professing they simply, as men are prone to do,
deceive themselves. In other words, victims of their own cant, they
preach a panacea in which they really do not believe. Nor of this is
proof far to seek. _Vox populi, vox Dei_! If you extend the application
of this principle by a single step, its loudest advocates draw back in
alarm from the inevitable. They seek refuge in the assertion--"Oh! That
is different!" For instance, take a concrete case; so best can we
illustrate.
One of the greatest scientific triumphs reached in modern times--perhaps
I might fairly say the greatest--is the discovery of the cause of yellow
fever, and its consequent control. As a result of the studies, the
patient experimentation and self-sacrifice of the wisest,--that is, the
most observant and expert,--the amazing conclusion was reached that not
only the yellow fever but the innumerable ills of the flesh known under
the caption of "malarial," were due to causes hitherto unsuspected,
though obvious when revealed,--to the existence in the atmosphere of a
venomous insect, in comparison with the work of which the ravages on
mankind of the entire carnivorous and reptile creation were of
comparatively small account. The mosquito flew disclosed, the
atmospheric viper,--a viper most venomous and deadly. How was the
disclosure brought about? What was the remedy applied? Was the discovery
effected through universal suffrage? Was the remedy sought for and
decided upon by the Initiative, or through a Referendum at an election
held on the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday of a certain month and
year? Had recourse in this case been had to the panacea now in greatest
political vogue, we all know perfectly well what would have followed.
History tells us. The quarantine, as it is called, would have been
decreed, and a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer appointed. The
mosquito, quite ignored, would then have gone on in his deadly work. We
all equally well know that the man, even the politician or the
statesman, who had suggested a solution of that problem by a count of
noses would have been effaced with ridicule. Even the most simple minded
would have rejected that method of reaching a result. Yet the ilia of
the body politic, too, are complicated. Indeed, far more intricate in
their processes and more deceitful in their aspects, they more deeply
affect the general well-being and happiness than any ill or epidemic
which torments the physical being, even the mosquito malaria. Yet the
ills of the body politic, the complications which surround us on every
side,--for these the unfailing panacea is said to lie in universal
suffrage, that remedy which is immediately and of course laughed out of
court if suggested in case of the simpler ills of the flesh.
This, I submit, is demonstration. The true remedy is not to be sought in
that direction in the one case any more than the other.
There is a considerable element of truth, though possibly a not
inconsiderable one of exaggeration, in this statement from a paper I
recently chanced upon in the issue of the sober and classical _Edinburgh
Review_ for October last,--a paper entitled "Democracy and
Liberalism":--"History testifies unmistakably and unanimously to the
passion of democracies for incompetence. There is nothing democracy
dislikes and suspects so heartily as technical efficiency, particularly
when it is independent of the popular vote." But to-day, what is
politically proposed by our senatorial charlatans and the mountebanks of
the market-place? The Referendum, the constant and easy Recall, the
everlasting Initiative are dinned into our ears as the cure-alls of
every ill of the body politic. On the contrary, I submit that, while in
the absence of any better method as yet devised and accepted, the
process of reaching results by a count of the "majority told by the
head" of the citizens then present and voting has certain political
advantages, yet, for all this, as a final, scientific, political
process, it is unworthy of consideration. A passing expedient, it in no
degree reflects credit on twentieth-century intelligence.
And now I come to the crux of my discussion. Thus rejecting results
reached by the ballot as now in practical use, a query is already in the
minds of those who listen. At once suggesting itself and flung in my
face, it is asked as a political poser, and not without a sneer,--What
else or better have I to propose? Would I advise a return to old and
discarded methods,--Heredity, Caste, Autocracy, Plutocracy? I
respectfully submit this is a question no one has a right to put, and
one I am not called upon to answer. Again, let me take a concrete case.
Once more I appeal to the yellow fever precedent. The first step towards
a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct
diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to
observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the
yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the
nature of the disease and the manifest inadequacy of current theories
and prevailing methods of prevention and treatment, do you think others
would have had a right to turn upon him and demand that he instantly
prescribe a remedy which should be not only complete, but at once
recognized as such and so accepted? In the present case, as I have
already observed, from the days of Aristotle down through two and twenty
centuries, men had been experimenting in all, to them, conceivable ways,
on the government of the body politic, exactly as they experimented on
the disorders of the physical body. But only yesterday was the source of
the yellow fever, for instance, diagnosed and located, and the proper
means of prevention applied. The cancer and tuberculosis are to-day
unsolved problems. By analogy, they are inviting subjects for an
Initiative and a Referendum! Yet would any person who to-day, standing
where I stand, expressed a disbelief, at once total and contemptuous, of
such a procedure as respects them, be met by a demand for some other
panacea of immediate and guaranteed efficiency? And so with the body
politic. I here to-day am merely attempting a diagnosis, pointing out
the disorders, and exposing as best I can the utter crudeness and
insufficiency of the market-place remedies proposed. Have you a right,
then, to turn on me, and call for some other prescription, warranted to
cure, in place of the nostrums so loudly advertised by the sciolists and
the dabblers of the day, and by me so contemptuously set aside? I
confess I am unable to respond, or even to attempt a response to any
such demand. I am not altogether a quack, nor is this a county fair.
"Paracelsus," so denominated, was one of Robert Browning's earlier
poems. In it he causes the fifteenth-century alchemist and forerunner of
all modern pharmaceutical chemistry, to declare that as the result of
long travel and much research
"I possess
Two sorts of knowledge: one,--vast, shadowy,
Hints of the unbounded aim....
The other consists of many secrets, caught
While bent on nobler prize,--perhaps a few
Prime principles which may conduct to much:
These last I offer."
So, _longo intervallo_, I have a few suggestions,--the result of an
observation extending, as I said at the beginning, over the lives of two
generations and a connection with many great events in which I have
borne a part,--a part not prominent indeed, and more generally, I
acknowledge, mistaken than correct. My errors, however, have at least
made me cautious and doubtful of my own conclusions. I submit them for
what they are worth. Not much, I fear.
What, then, would I do, were it in my power to prescribe alterations and
curatives for the ills of our American body politic, of which I have
spoken; or, more correctly, the far-reaching disturbances manifestly due
to the agencies at work, to which I have made reference? Let us come at
once to the point, taking the existing Constitution of the United States
as a concrete example, and recognizing the necessity for its revision
and readjustment to meet radically changed conditions,--conditions
social, material, geographical, changed and still changing.
It was Mr. Gladstone who, years ago, made the often-quoted assertion
that the Constitution of the United States was "the most wonderful work
ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." I do
not think he was far wrong; though we, of course, realize that the
Federal Constitution was a growth and in no degree an inspiration. That
Constitution has through a century and a quarter stood the test of time
and stress of war, during a period of almost unlimited growth of the
community for which it was devised. It has outlasted many nationalities
and most of the dynasties in existence at the time of its adoption; and
that, too, under conditions sufficiently trying. I, therefore, regard it
with profound respect; and, so regarding it, I would treat it with a
cautious and tender hand. Not lightly pronouncing it antiquated, what
changes would I make in it if to-morrow it were given me to prescribe
alterations adapting it to the altered conditions which confront us? I
do not hesitate to say, and I am glad to say, the changes I would
suggest would be limited; yet, I fancy, far-reaching.