it has only a conventional value; I mean, it does not make a nation
rich or poor, since the rarer it is the more it will purchase of
the necessaries of life. A pound's weight of gold, in ancient
Greece, or in Mediaeval Europe, would purchase as much wheat as
twenty pounds' weight will purchase to-day. If the mines of Mexico
or Peru or California had never been worked, the gold in the
civilized world three hundred years ago would have been as valuable
for banking purposes, or as an exchange for agricultural products,
as twenty times its present quantity, since it would have bought as
much as twenty times the quantity will buy to-day. Make diamonds
as plenty as crystals, they would be worth no more than crystals,
if they were not harder and more beautiful. Make gold as plenty as
silver, it would be worth no more than silver, except for
manufacturing purposes; it would be worth no more to bankers and
merchants. The vast increase in the production of the precious
metals simply increased the value of the commodities for which they
were exchanged. A laborer can purchase no more bread with a dollar
to-day than he could with five cents three hundred years ago. Five
cents were really as much wealth three hundred years ago as a
dollar is to-day. Wherein, then, has the increase in the precious
metals added to the wealth of the world, if a twentieth part of the
gold and silver now in circulation would buy as much land, or
furniture, or wheat, or oil three hundred years ago as the whole
amount now used as money will buy to-day? Had no gold or silver
mines been discovered in America, the gold and silver would have
appreciated in value in proportion to the wear of them. In other
words, the scarcer the gold and silver the more the same will
purchase of the fruits of human industry. So industry is the
wealth, not the gold. It is the cultivated farms and the
manufactures and the buildings and the internal improvements of a
country which constitute its real wealth, since these represent its
industry,--the labor of men. Mines, indeed, employ the labor of
men, but they do not furnish food for the body, or raiment to wear,
or houses to live in, or fuel for cooking, or any purpose whatever
of human comfort or necessity,--only a material for ornament; which
I grant is wealth, so far as ornament is for the welfare of man.
The marbles of ancient Greece were very valuable for the labor
expended on them, either for architecture or for ornament.
Gold and silver were early selected as useful and convenient
articles for exchange, like bank-notes, and so far have inherent
value as they supply that necessity; but if a fourth part of the
gold and silver in existence would supply that necessity, the
remaining three-fourths are as inherently valueless as the paper of
which bank-notes are printed. Their value consists in what they
represent of the labors and industries of men.
Now Spain ultimately became poor, in spite of the influx of gold
and silver from the American mines, because industries of all kinds
declined. People were diverted from useful callings by the mighty
delusion which gold discoveries created. These discoveries had the
same effect on industry, which is the wealth of nations, as the
support of standing armies has in our day. They diverted men from
legitimate callings. The miners had to be supported like soldiers;
and, worse, the sudden influx of gold and silver intoxicated men
and stimulated speculation. An army of speculators do not enrich a
nation, since they rob each other. They cause money to change
hands; they do not stimulate industry. They do not create wealth;
they simply make it flow from one person to another.
But speculations sometimes create activity in enterprise; they
inflame desires for wealth, and cause people to make greater
exertions. In that sense the discovery of American mines gave a
stimulus to commerce and travel and energy. People rushed to
America for gold: these people had to be fed and clothed. Then
farmers and manufacturers followed the gold-hunters; they tilled
the soil to feed the miners. The new farms which dotted the region
of the gold-diggers added to the wealth of the country in which the
mines were located. Colonization followed gold-digging. But it
was America that became enriched, not the old countries from which
the miners came, except so far as the old countries furnished tools
and ships and fabrics, for doubtless commerce and manufacturing
were stimulated. So far, the wealth of the world increased; but
the men who returned to riot in luxury and idleness did not
stimulate enterprise. They made others idle also. The necessity
of labor was lost sight of.
And yet if one country became idle, another country may have become
industrious. There can be but little question that the discovery
of the American mines gave commerce and manufactures and
agriculture, on the whole, a stimulus. This was particularly seen
in England. England grew rich from industry and enterprise, as
Spain became poor from idleness and luxury. The silver and gold,
diffused throughout Europe, ultimately found their way into the
pockets of Englishmen, who made a market for their manufactures.
It was not alone the precious metals which enriched England, but
the will and power to produce those articles of industry for which
the rest of the world parted with their gold and silver. What has
made France rich since the Revolution? Those innumerable articles
of taste and elegance--fabrics and wines--for which all Europe
parted with their specie; not war, not conquest, not mines. Why
till recently was Germany so poor? Because it had so little to
sell to other nations; because industry was cramped by standing
armies and despotic governments.
One thing is certain, that the discovery of America opened a new
field for industry and enterprise to all the discontented and
impoverished and oppressed Europeans who emigrated. At first they
emigrated to dig silver and gold. The opening of mines required
labor, and miners were obliged to part with their gold for the
necessaries of life. Thus California in our day has become peopled
with farmers and merchants and manufacturers, as well as miners.
Many came to America expecting to find gold, and were disappointed,
and were obliged to turn agriculturists, as in Virginia. Many came
to New England from political and religious motives. But all came
to better their fortunes. Gradually the United States and Canada
became populated from east to west and from north to south. The
surplus population of Europe poured itself into the wilds of
America. Generally the emigrants were farmers. With the growth of
agricultural industry were developed commerce and manufactures.
Thus, materially, the world was immensely benefited. A new
continent was opened for industry. No matter what the form of
government may be,--I might almost say no matter what the morals
and religion of the people may be,--so long as there is land to
occupy, and to be sold cheap, the continent will fill up, and will
be as densely populated as Europe or Asia, because the natural
advantages are good. The rivers and the lakes will be navigated;
the products of the country will be exchanged for European and
Asiatic products; wealth will certainly increase, and increase
indefinitely. There is no calculating the future resources and
wealth of the New World, especially in the United States. There
are no conceivable bounds to their future commerce, manufactures,
and agricultural products. We can predict with certainty the rise
of new cities, villas, palaces, material splendor, limited only to
the increasing resources and population of the country. Who can
tell the number of miles of new railroads yet to be made; the new
inventions to abridge human labor; what great empires are destined
to rise; what unknown forms of luxury will be found out; what new
and magnificent trophies of art and science will gradually be seen;
what mechanism, what material glories, are sure to come? This is
not speculation. Nothing can retard the growth of America in
material wealth and glory. The splendid external will call forth
more panegyrics than the old Roman world which fancied itself
eternal. The tower of the new Babel will rise to the clouds, and
be seen in all its glory throughout the earth and sea. No Fourth
of July orator ever exaggerated the future destinies of America in
a material point of view. No "spread-eagle" politician even
conceived what will be sure to come.
And what then? Grant the most indefinite expansion,--the growth of
empires whose splendor and wealth and power shall utterly eclipse
the glories of the Old World. All this is probable. But when we
have dwelt on the future material expansion; when we have given
wings to imagination, and feel that even imagination cannot reach
the probable realities in a material aspect,--then our predictions
and calculations stop. Beyond material glories we cannot count
with certainty. The world has witnessed many powerful empires
which have passed away, and left "not a rack behind." What remains
of the antediluvian world?--not even a spike of Noah's ark, larger
and stronger than any modern ship. What remains of Nineveh, of
Babylon, of Thebes, of Tyre, of Carthage,--those great centres of
wealth and power? What remains of Roman greatness even, except in
laws and literature and renovated statues? Remember there is an
undeviating uniformity in the past history of nations. What is the
simple story of all the ages?--industry, wealth, corruption, decay,
and ruin. What conservative power has been strong enough to arrest
the ruin of the nations of antiquity? Have not material forces and
glories been developed and exhibited, whatever the religion and
morals of the fallen nations? Cannot a country grow materially to
a certain point, under the most adverse influences, in a religious
and moral point of view? Yet for lack of religion and morals the
nations perished, and their Babel-towers were buried in the dust.
They perished for lack of true conservative forces; at least that
is the judgment of historians. Nobody doubts the splendor of the
material glories of the ancient nations. The ruins of Baalbec, of
Palmyra, of Athens, prove this, to say nothing of history. The
material glories of the ancient nations may be surpassed by our
modern wonders; but yet all the material glories of the ancient
nations passed away.
Now if this is to be the destiny of America,--an unbounded material
growth, followed by corruption and ruin,--then Columbus has simply
extended the realm for men to try material experiments. Make New
York a second Carthage, and Boston a second Athens, and
Philadelphia a second Antioch, and Washington a second Rome, and we
simply repeat the old experiments. Did not the Romans have nearly
all we have, materially, except our modern scientific inventions?
But has America no higher destiny than to repeat the old
experiments, and improve upon them, and become rich and powerful?
Has she no higher and nobler mission? Can she lay hold of forces
that the Old World never had, such as will prevent the uniform doom
of nations? I maintain that there is no reason that can be urged,
based on history and experience, why she should escape the fate of
the nations of antiquity, unless new forces arise on this continent
different from what the world has known, and which have a
conservative influence. If America has a great mission to declare
and to fulfil, she must put forth altogether new forces, and these
not material. And these alone will save her and save the world.
It is mournful to contemplate even the future magnificent material
glories of America if these are not to be preserved, if these are
to share the fate of ancient wonders. It is obvious that the real
glory of America is to be something entirely different from that of
which the ancients boasted. And this is to be moral and
spiritual,--that which the ancients lacked.
This leads me to speak of the moral consequences of the discovery
of America,--infinitely grander than any material wonders, of which
the world has been full, of which every form of paganism has
boasted, which nearly everywhere has perished, and which must
necessarily perish everywhere, without new forces to preserve them.
In a moral point of view scarcely anything good immediately
resulted, at least to Europe, by the discovery of America. It
excited the wildest spirit of adventure, the most unscrupulous
cupidity, the most demoralizing speculation. It created jealousies
and wars. The cruelties and injustices inflicted on the Indians
were revolting. Nothing in the annals of the world exceeds the
wickedness of the Spaniards in the conquest of Peru and Mexico.
That conquest is the most dismal and least glorious in human
history. We see in it no poetry, or heroism, or necessity; we read
of nothing but its crimes. The Jesuits, in their missionary zeal,
partly redeemed the cruelties; but they soon imposed a despotic
yoke, and confirmed their sway. Monopolies scandalously increased,
and the New World was regarded only as spoil. The tone of moral
feeling was lowered everywhere, for the nations were crazed with
the hope of sudden accumulations. Spain became enervated and
demoralized.
On America itself the demoralization was even more marked. There
never was such a state of moral degradation in any Christian
country as in South America. Three centuries have passed, and the
low state of morals continues. Contrast Mexico and Peru with the
United States, morally and intellectually. What seeds of vice did
not the Spaniards plant! How the old natives melted away!
And then, to add to the moral evils attending colonization, was the
introduction of African slaves, especially in the West Indies and
the Southern States of North America. Christendom seems to have
lost the sense of morality. Slavery more than counterbalances all
other advantages together. It was the stain of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Not merely slaves, but the slave-trade,
increase the horrors of the frightful picture. America became
associated, in the minds of Europeans, with gold-hunting, slavery,
and cruelty to Indians. Better that the country had remained
undiscovered than that such vices and miseries should be introduced
into the most fertile parts of the New World.
I cannot see that civilization gained anything, morally, by the
discovery of America, until the new settlers were animated by other
motives than a desire for sudden wealth. When the country became
colonized by men who sought liberty to worship God,--men of lofty
purposes, willing to undergo sufferings and danger in order to
plant the seeds of a higher civilization,--then there arose new
forms of social and political life. Such men were those who
colonized New England. And, say what you will, in spite of all the
disagreeable sides of the Puritan character, it was the Puritans
who gave a new impulse to civilization in the New World. They
founded schools and colleges and churches. They introduced a new
form of political life by their town-meetings, in which liberty was
nurtured, and all local improvements were regulated. It was the
autonomy of towns on which the political structure of new England
rested. In them was born that true representative government which
has gradually spread towards the West. The colonies were embryo
States,--States afterwards to be bound together by a stronger tie
than that of a league. The New England States, after the war of
independence, were the defenders and advocates of a federal and
central power. An entirely new political organization was
gradually formed, resting equally on such pillars as independent
townships and independent States, and these represented by
delegates in a national centre.
So we believe America was discovered, not so much to furnish a
field for indefinite material expansion, with European arts and
fashions,--which would simply assimilate America to the Old World,
with all its dangers and vices and follies,--but to introduce new
forms of government, new social institutions, new customs and
manners, new experiments in liberty, new religious organizations,
new modes to ameliorate the necessary evils of life. It was
discovered that men might labor and enjoy the fruits of industry in
a new mode, unfettered by the restraints which the institutions of
Europe imposed. America is a new field in which to try experiments
in government and social life, which cannot be tried in the older
nations without sweeping and dangerous revolutions; and new
institutions have arisen which are our pride and boast, and which
are the wonder and admiration of Europe. America is the only
country under the sun in which there is self-government,--a
government which purely represents the wishes of the people, where
universal suffrage is not a mockery. And if America has a destiny
to fulfil for other nations, she must give them something more
valuable than reaping machines, palace cars, and horse railroads.
She must give, not only machinery to abridge labor, but
institutions and ideas to expand the mind and elevate the soul,--
something by which the poor can rise and assert their rights.
Unless something is developed here which cannot be developed in
other countries, in the way of new spiritual and intellectual
forces, which have a conservative influence, then I cannot see how
America can long continue to be the home and refuge of the poor and
miserable of other lands. A new and better spirit must vivify
schools and colleges and philanthropic enterprises than that which
has prevailed in older nations. Unless something new is born here
which has a peculiar power to save, wherein will America ultimately
differ from other parts of Christendom? We must have schools in
which the heart as well as the brain is educated, and newspapers
which aspire to something higher than to fan prejudices and appeal
to perverted tastes. Our hope is not in books which teach
infidelity under the name of science, nor in pulpits which cannot
be sustained without sensational oratory, nor in journals which
trade on the religious sentiments of the people, nor in Sabbath-
school books which are an insult to the human understanding, nor in
colleges which fit youth merely for making money, nor in schools of
technology to give an impulse to material interests, nor in
legislatures controlled by monopolists, nor in judges elected by
demagogues, nor in philanthropic societies to ventilate unpractical
theories. These will neither renovate nor conserve what is most
precious in life. Unless a nation grows morally as well as
materially, there is something wrong at the core of society. As I
have said, no material expansion will avail, if society becomes
rotten at the core. America is a glorious boon to civilization,
but only as she fulfils a new mission in history,--not to become
more potent in material forces, but in those spiritual agencies
which prevent corruption and decay. An infidel professor, calling
himself a savant, may tell you that there is nothing certain or
great but in the direction of science to utilities, even as he may
glory in a philosophy which ignores a creator and takes cognizance
only of a creation.
As I survey the growing and enormous moral evils which degrade
society, here as everywhere, in spite of Bunker Hills and Plymouth
Rocks, and all the windy declamations of politicians and
philanthropists, and all the advance in useful mechanisms, I am
sometimes tempted to propound inquiries which suggest the old,
mournful story of the decline and ruin of States and Empires. I
ask myself, Why should America be an exception to the uniform fate
of nations, as history has demonstrated? Why should not good
institutions be perverted here, as in all other countries and ages
of the world? Where has civilization shown any striking triumphs,
except in inventions to abridge the labors of mankind and make men
comfortable and rich? Is there nothing before us, then, but the
triumphs of material life, to end as mournfully as the materialism
of antiquity? If so, then Christianity is a most dismal failure,
is a defeated power, like all other forms of religion which failed
to save. But is it a failure? Are we really swinging back to
Paganism? Is the time to be hailed when all religions will be
considered by the philosopher as equally false and equally useful?
Is there nothing more cheerful for us to contemplate than what the
old Pagan philosophy holds out,--man destined to live like brutes
or butterflies, and pass away into the infinity of time and space,
like inert matter, decomposed, absorbed, and entering into new and
everlasting combinations? Is America to become like Europe and
Asia in all essential elements of life? Has she no other mission
than to add to perishable glories? Is she to teach the world
nothing new in education and philanthropy and government? Are all
her struggles in behalf of liberty in vain?
We all know that Christianity is the only hope of the world. The
question is, whether America is or is not more favorable for its
healthy developments and applications than the other countries of
Christendom are. We believe that it is. If it is not, then
America is only a new field for the spread and triumph of material
forces. If it is, we may look forward to such improvements in
education, in political institutions, in social life, in religious
organizations, in philanthropical enterprise, that the country will
be sought by the poor and enslaved classes of Europe more for its
moral and intellectual advantages than for its mines or farms; the
objects of the Puritan settlers will be gained, and the grandeur of
the discovery of a New World will be established.
"What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas,--the spoils of war?
They sought for Faith's pure shrine.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They've left unstained what there they found,--
Freedom to worship God."
AUTHORITIES.
Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella; Washington Irving; Cabot's
Voyages, and other early navigators; Columbus, by De Costa; Life of
Columbus, by Bossi and Spatono; Relations de Quatre voyage par
Christopher Colomb; Drake's World Encompassed; Murray's Historical
Account of Discoveries; Hernando, Historia del Amirante; History of
Commerce; Lives of Pizarro and Cortes; Frobisher's Voyages;
Histories of Herrera, Las Casas, Gomera, and Peter Martyr;
Navarrete's Collections; Memoir of Cabot, by Richard Biddle;
Hakluyt's Voyages; Dr. Lardner's Cyclopaedia,--History of Maritime
and Inland Discovery; Anderson's History of Commerce; Oviedo's
General History of the West Indies; History of the New World, by
Geronimo Benzoni; Goodrich's Life of Christopher Columbus.
SAVONAROLA.
A. D. 1452-1498.
UNSUCCESSFUL REFORMS.
This lecture is intended to set forth a memorable movement in the
Roman Catholic Church,--a reformation of morals, preceding the
greater movement of Luther to produce a reformation of both morals
and doctrines. As the representative of this movement I take
Savonarola, concerning whom much has of late been written; more, I
think, because he was a Florentine in a remarkable age,--the age of
artists and of reviving literature,--than because he was a martyr,
battling with evils which no one man was capable of removing. His
life was more a protest than a victory. He was an unsuccessful
reformer, and yet he prepared the way for that religious revival
which afterward took place in the Catholic Church itself. His
spirit was not revolutionary, like that of the Saxon monk, and yet
it was progressive. His soul was in active sympathy with every
emancipating idea of his age. He was the incarnation of a fervid,
living, active piety amid forms and formulas, a fearless exposer of
all shams, an uncompromising enemy to the blended atheism and
idolatry of his ungodly age. He was the contemporary of political,
worldly, warlike, unscrupulous popes, disgraced by nepotism and
personal vices,--men who aimed to extend not a spiritual but
temporal dominion, and who scandalized the highest position in the
Christian world, as attested by all reliable historians, whether
Catholic or Protestant. However infallible the Catholic Church
claims to be, it has never been denied that some of her highest
dignitaries have been subject to grave reproaches, both in their
character and their influence. Such men were Sixtus IV., Julius
II., and Alexander VI.,--able, probably, for it is very seldom that
the popes have not been distinguished for something, but men,
nevertheless, who were a disgrace to the superb position they had
succeeded in reaching.
The great feature of that age was the revival of classical learning
and artistic triumphs in sculpture, painting, and architecture,
blended with infidel levity and social corruptions, so that it is
both interesting and hideous. It is interesting for its triumphs
of genius, its dispersion of the shadows of the Middle Ages, the
commencement of great enterprises and of a marked refinement of
manners and tastes; it is hideous for its venalities, its murders,
its debaucheries, its unblushing wickedness, and its disgraceful
levities, when God and duty and self-restraint were alike ignored.
Cruel tyrants reigned in cities, and rapacious priests fattened on
the credulity of the people. Think of monks itinerating to sell
perverted "indulgences"; of monasteries and convents filled, not
with sublime enthusiasts as in earlier times, but with gluttons and
sensualists, living in concubinage and greedy of the very things
which primitive monasticism denounced and abhorred! Think of boys
elevated to episcopal thrones, and the sons of popes made cardinals
and princes! Think of churches desecrated by spectacles which were
demoralizing, and a worship of saints and images which had become
idolatrous,--a degrading superstition among the people, an infidel
apathy among the higher classes: not infidel speculations, for
these were reserved for more enlightened times, but an indifference
to what is ennobling, to all vital religion, worthy of the Sophists
in the time of Socrates!