ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS.
=_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.)
From "The Lay Preacher."
=_150._= REFLECTION'S ON THE SEASONS.
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to
behold the sun."
The sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him
that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he
will, like all other things, be the better for his influence; for the
sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion
which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by
the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence
of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are
alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the
sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but
when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is
felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free.
Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in the
highest luxury,--
"Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn,
And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose,
And flocks, and herds, and human face divine."
It is nearly impossible for me to convey to my readers an idea of the
"vernal delight" felt at this period by the Lay Preacher, far declined
in the vale of years. My spectral figure, pinched by the rude gripe
of January, becomes as thin as that "dagger of lath" employed by the
vaunting Falstaff, and my mind, affected by the universal desolation of
winter, is nearly as vacant of joy and bright ideas as the forest is of
leaves and the grove is of song. Fortunately for my happiness, this
is only periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my
attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my
leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I
behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May
reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and
perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine....
I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in
May, and clasp to my bosom in June.
* * * * *
=_William Gaston,[46] 1778-1844._=
From "Essays and Addresses."
=_151._= THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRITY.
The first great maxim of human conduct--that which it is all-important
to impress on the understandings of young men, and recommend to their
hearty adoption--is, above all things, in all circumstances, and under
every emergency, to preserve a clean heart and an honest purpose....
Without it, neither genius nor learning, neither the gifts of God, nor
human exertions, can avail aught for the accomplishment of the great
objects of human existence. Integrity is the crowning virtue,--integrity
is the pervading principle which ought to regulate, guide, control, and
vivify every impulse, device, and action. Honesty is sometimes spoken of
as a vulgar virtue; and perhaps, that honesty which barely refrains from
outraging the positive rules ordained by society for the protection
of property, and which ordinarily pays its debts and performs its
engagements, however useful and commendable a quality, is not to be
numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue. But that integrity
which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against
detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place,
favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of
right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet
was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God."
It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this
high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity
and vivifying energy it imparts to his character.... Erected on such a
basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring. Such is the
fame of our Washington--of the man "inflexible to ill, and obstinately
just." While, therefore, other monuments, intended to perpetuate
human greatness, are daily mouldering into dust, and belie the proud
inscriptions which they bear, the solid, granite pyramid of his glory
lasts from age to age, imperishable, seen afar off, looming high over
the vast desert, a mark, a sign, and a wonder, for the wayfarers though
this pilgrimage of life.
[Footnote 46: A prominent lawyer and statesman of North Carolina.]
* * * * *
=_Jesse Buel, 1778-1839._= (Manual, p. 504.)
From "The Farmer's Instructor."
=_152._= EXTENT AND DEFECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.
We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and profits
of rural labor, to enlarge the sphere of useful knowledge, and, by
concentrating our energies, to give them greater effect in advancing the
public good. In no country does the agricultural class bear so great a
proportion to the whole population as in this. In England one-third of
the inhabitants only are employed in husbandry; in France, two-thirds;
in Italy, a little more than three-fourths; while in the United States
the agricultural portion probably exceeds five-sixths. And in no country
does the agricultural population exercise such a controlling political
power, contribute so much to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an
impress to the character of a nation as in the United States. Hence it
may be truly said of us that our agriculture is our nursing mother,
which nurtures, and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our
country.... Knowing no party, and confined to no sect, its benefits and
its blessings, like dews from heaven, fall upon all.
... Our agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much
improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are _too old
to learn_, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their
lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public
interests require, because they have no suitable school for their
instruction. We have no place where they can learn the _principles_ upon
which the _practice_ of agriculture is based, none where they can be
instructed in all the modern improvements of the art.
Much injury has been done to the cause of agriculture by sanguine
speculations, which have only led to expense and disappointments; but
all works on agriculture are not of that character; nor should it be
forgotten that theory is the parent of practical knowledge, and that the
very systems which farmers themselves adopt, were originally founded
upon those theories which they so much affect to despise. Neither can
it be denied that systems grounded upon theory alone, unsupported by
experiment, are properly viewed with distrust; for the most plausible
reasoning upon the operations of nature, without accompanying proof
deduced from facts, may lead to a wrong conclusion, and it is often
difficult to separate that which is really useful, from that which is
merely visionary.... Prudence, therefore, dictates the necessity of
caution; but ignorance is opposed to every change, from the mere want of
judgment to discriminate between that which is purely speculative, and
that which rests upon a more solid foundation.
* * * * *
=_Robert Walsh, 1784-1859._= (Manual, p. 504.)
From "Didactics, Social, Literary, &c."
=_153._= FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS.
Whatever the impulse to guilt, some suppression or aberration of
the reason may ever be alleged and admitted. In this mode, however,
sentimentalists might argue or whine away the whole body of crimes and
punishments. It is the duty of every true friend of humanity and order,
to protest against perverted sensibilities or sophistical refinements,
which find warrant or apology for depraved appetites,--for the worst
distemperature of the mind, and the most fatal catastrophes,--in natural
propension, and unrestrained feeling. Spurious sympathy is a more
prolific evil than sanguinary rigor, useless and pernicious as the
latter is, in our humble opinion. Public executions do more harm than
good,--but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty
for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied,
after fair and merciful trial....
Many of the worst criminals, who, in different ages and countries,
have justly suffered ignominious death on the wheel, the block, or the
gallows, were men of "extraordinary character," of singular acuteness,
of the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud
their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character....
We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr.
Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or
worship _splendid wickedness_; that, with too many persons, the ideas of
justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when
it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre
of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this
species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to
guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort
others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in
individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of
all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the
history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may
be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or
executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or
concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the
true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to
produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not
with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the
court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with
an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we
can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted
highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung
amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity,
or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or
admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene.
* * * * *
=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834._=
From "Addresses, Scientific and Literary."
=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most
remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations....
The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations.
_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty
devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing
air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuous.
_Secondly_, the translators came to the task looking to the _thoughts_,
not to the _style_. Their object was not that of all other translators,
to imitate and rival the beauty of _style_. Their sole object was to
render faithfully, and in a plain, appropriate style, the _thoughts_
of the sacred writers. Hence they became _thoroughly imbued with the
spirit_ of the original, and gave an incomparably better version of the
Hebrew and Greek Testaments than any or all of them together could have
done of any classic. Had each of them left us translations of some
classic, I hesitate not to say they would not now have been found in
any library but as mere curiosities. _Thirdly_, the number of persons
employed contributed very much to prevent any _personal_ style from
prevailing, and gave to the whole an air of plain, simple uniformity.
_Fourthly_, the era was providential in one important view. As the
translation was made before all the bitterness of sectarian spirit
distracted the English Protestant church, it was executed far less with
a view to party differences than could have been the case at any time
afterwards. _Fifthly_, fortunately the only great religious difference
that could have affected it was the dispute with the Catholic church,
and, as to that, all Protestants were agreed in England on every
important point. _Sixthly_, the English language was then at the
happiest stage of its progress, with all the strength, simplicity, and.
clearness of the elder literature, whilst, at the same time, it was free
from the cant of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, from the vulgarity
and levity of that of Charles II., and from the artificial character of
that of Anne.
Such a translation is an illustrious monument of the age, the nation,
the language. It is, properly speaking, less a translation than an
original, having most of the merit of the _former_ as to _style_, and
all the merit of the _latter_ as to _thought_. It is the noblest, best,
most finished classic of the English tongue.
[Footnote 47: A native of South Carolina, distinguished in the law and in
literature.]
* * * * *
=_Henry C. Carey, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 504.)
From "Principles of Social Science."
=_155._= AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE.
That agriculture may become a science, it is indispensable that man
always repay to the great bank from which he has drawn his food, the
debt he thereby has contracted. The earth, as has been already said,
gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are
punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but
when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans
are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house
and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily
susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the
exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those
men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by
their fellow men.
... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities
back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the
machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the
kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those
of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and
iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges
between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the
granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quantity, and
diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market.
* * * * *
=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._=
From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures."
=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS.
Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much
of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by
acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost
without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin
land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The
cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no
other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But
if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within
his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so constituted as
to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers,
who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence
of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a
great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping,
which would have utterly ruined soils much better constituted, the
powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant,
and ready to be called into action by merely being relieved of its acid
quality. A few crops will reduce a new acid field to so low a rate of
product, that it scarcely will pay for its cultivation; but no great
change is afterwards caused, by continuing scourging tillage and
grazing, for fifty years longer. Thus our acid soils have two remarkable
and opposite qualities,--both proceeding from the same cause; they can
neither be enriched by manure, nor impoverished by cultivation, to
any great extent. Qualities so remarkable deserve all our powers of
investigation; yet their very frequency seems to have caused them to be
overlooked; and our writers on agriculture have continued to urge those
who seek improvement, to apply precepts drawn from English authors,
to soils which are totally different from all those for which their
instructions were intended.
* * * * *
=_Francis Wayland, 1796-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 502, 504.)
From "The Limitations of Human Responsibility."
=_157._= SUPERIORITY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS.
It is a common remark, that, whenever it has been thought necessary to
arouse the mind of man to enterprises of great pith and moment, the
appeal has always been made to his moral sentiments. Hence, among the
most ancient nations, it was the invariable custom to accompany the
declaration of war with religious ceremonies; and if, in later times,
this custom has become somewhat less usual, the change itself, in a more
remarkable manner, illustrates the tendency of our nature.... But let
victory declare for the assailed, let the invader become the invaded,
let it become necessary to stimulate men to put forth the highest effort
of human daring, and the sacred names of conscience, of duty to family,
to country, and to God, are universally invoked, and the Supreme Being
is urgently appealed to, to succor the cause of a sinking commonwealth.
It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, in passing, that this
consciousness of right is a source of power which belongs specially to
the oppressed, and which, other things being equal, will always insure
to them the victory; and, when other things are not equal, it is
frequently sufficient, of itself, to outweigh a vast preponderance of
physical force. It is, moreover, efficient in proportion to the purity of
the moral principle of a people. We hence perceive the elements of
superiority which, by the constitution of our nature, have been bestowed
upon virtue.
Another illustration of the power of the moral principle, is seen in
the sentiments with which we contemplate the character of confessors,
martyrs, and men of every age, who have sacrificed every thing else
for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human
nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of
conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with
blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power.
Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes
absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening
princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but we venerate
Socrates in his dungeon, patiently suffering death for holding forth the
truth; and the dictates of our own bosoms spontaneously assign to him
the highest place among the uninspired teachers of wisdom. Or, to turn
to more awful examples, the foundations of the Christian religion were
laid in blood. The Captain of our salvation "was obedient unto death,
the death of the cross." The martyrdoms of the early age of the church
gave to the world examples of the love of right, of which it had never
before conceived even the possibility, and thus set on foot a moral
reformation, which is destined to work in the character of man a
universal transformation.
* * * * *
=_Horace Mann, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 532.)
From "Lectures on various Subjects."
=_158._= THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN.
In this country most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which
they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and
integrity, the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in
business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even, of everything that
does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we
look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world
springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify all honest efforts for the
acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired,
then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows
whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common
reptile. In the duty of accumulation--and I call it a _duty_, in the most
strict and literal signification of that word--all below a competence
is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a
fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for
it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when
the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of
pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing
goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and
it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has
arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands....
Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been
performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary,
it usurps the sacred rights of the higher.
* * * * *
=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.)
From "New Views."
=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS.
Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty
to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy,
all his institutions of politics and society, all the productions of his
genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is
his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing,
and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to
self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of
its inconceivably grand and holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to
recognize clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not designedly,
not with foresight; it has done it instinctively, by the aid of the
invisible but safe-guiding hand of its Father. Without knowing what it
did, it has condemned progress while it was progressing. It has stoned
the prophets and reformers, even while it was itself reforming and
uttering glorious prophecies of its future condition. But the time has
now come for humanity to understand itself, to accept the law imposed
upon it for its own good, to foresee its end, and march with intention
steadily towards it. Its future religion is the religion of progress.
The true priests are those who can quicken in mankind a desire for
progress, and urge them forward in the direction of the true, the good,
the perfect.
* * * * *
From "The Convert."
=_160._= POLITICS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
DESPOTIC.
In France, Spain, Portugal, and a large part of Italy, all through the
seventeenth century, the youth were trained in the maxim, The prince is
the State, and his pleasure is law. Bossuet, in his politics, did only
faithfully express the political sentiments and convictions of his age,
shared by the great body of Catholics as well as of non-Catholics.
Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were exiled, like Fénelon,
from the court. The politics of Philip II. of Spain, of Richelieu,
Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the politics of Catholic
Europe, hardly opposed, except by the popes, through the greater part
of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, tended
directly to enslave the people, and to restrict the freedom, and
efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis,
succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in
realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have
been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that
into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and
it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed
the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to
the arms of Eugene and Marlborough.
* * * * *
=_Theodore Dwight Woolsey, 1801-._=
From his "Introduction to the Study of International Law."
=_161._= IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY.
From all that has been said it has become apparent that the study of
international law is important, as an index of civilization, and not to
the student of law only, but to the student of history. In our land,
especially, it is important, on more than one account, that this science
should do its share in enlightening educated minds. One reason for this
lies in the new inducements which we, as a people, have to swerve from
national rectitude. Formerly our interests threw us on the side of
unrestricted commerce, which is the side towards which justice inclines,
and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or
be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to
which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the
question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased;
our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of
neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we
pick quarrels to gain conquests; and at length, after more than half a
century of public condemnation of the slave-trade, after being the first
to brand it as piracy, we hear the revival of the trade advocated as a
right, as a necessity. Is it not desirable that the sense of justice,
which seems fading out of the national mind before views of political
expediency or destiny, should be deepened and made fast by that study
which frowns on national crimes?
And, again, every educated person ought to become acquainted with
national law, because he is a responsible member of the body politic;
because there is danger that party views will make our doctrine in this
science fluctuating, unless it is upheld by large numbers of intelligent
persons; and because the executive, if not controlled, will be tempted
to assume the province of interpreting international law for us. As it
regards the latter point it may be said, that while Congress has power
to define offences against the laws of nations, and thus, if any public
power, to pronounce authoritatively what the law of nations is, the
executive through the Secretary of State, in practice, gives the lead in
all international questions. In this way the Monroe doctrine appeared;
in this way most other positions have been advanced; and perhaps this
could not be otherwise. But we ought to remember that the supreme
executives in Europe have amassed power by having diplomatic relations
in their hands, that thus the nation may become involved in war against
its will, and that the prevention of evils must lie, if there be any,
with the men who have been educated in the principles of international
justice.
I close this treatise here, hoping that it may be of some use to my
native land, and to young men who may need a guide in the science of
which it treats.
* * * * *
=_Taylor Lewis, 1802-.[48]_=
From "The Six Days of Creation."
=_162._= UNITY OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT.
Another striking trait of the Mosaic cosmogony is its unbroken wholeness
or unity.... Be it invention or inspiration, it is the invention or the
inspiration of one mind. Other cosmogonies, though bearing unmistakable
evidence of their descent from the Mosaic, have had successive deposits,
in successive series, of mythological strata. This stands towering out
in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the
Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the
Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc
excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the
Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and
Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the
earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God
said, Let there be light, and it was light. And God saw the light that
it was fair, and God divided the light from the darkness. And thus there
was an evening and a morning--one day!" What is there like it, or to be
at all compared with it, in any mythology on earth? There it stands,
high above them all, and remote from them all, in its air of great
antiquity, in its unaccountableness, in its serene truthfulness, in
its unapproachable sublimity, in that impress of divine majesty and
ineffable holiness which even the unbelieving neologist has been
compelled to acknowledge, and by which every devout reader feels that
the first page in Genesis is forever distinguished from any mere human
production.
[Footnote 48: Born In New York; a prolific writer, eminent for his
profound scholarship, his wide acquaintance with Oriental and Biblical
literature, and his originality and freedom of mind: long Professor of
Greek in Union College.]
* * * * *
From "State Rights."
=_163._= CRUEL INTESTINE WARS CAUSED BY NATIONAL DIVISION.
If it were Death alone! But "Hell follows hard after." What a heaving
Tartarus was Greece, when all hope of a true nationality was given up!
From Corcyra to Rhodes, from Byzantium to Cyrene, one bloody scene of
faction, "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion." In the cities, in
the isles, in the colonies, banishments, confiscations, ostracisms, and
cruel deaths. The most ferocious parties everywhere, fomented in the
smaller States by the influence of the larger, and kept alive in the
leading cities by the continual presence of foreign emissaries. With us
it would be far more like Satan's kingdom, inasmuch as our states are
more numerous, relatively more petty, and, from the increased powers of
modern knowledge and modern invention, capable of the greater mutual
mischief.
We are not prophesying at random. Here is our old guidebook. The road
is all mapped out, the way surveyed, by which we march to ruin. All the
dire calamities of Greece may be traced to this word autonomia.[49]
... Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now
in danger of furnishing another and more terrible example to the world.
It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a
geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage,
one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided
into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities
themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No
animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus
geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have
been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous,
and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions
of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to
each other in language and religion.
[Footnote 49: State sovereignty.]
* * * * *
=_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._=
From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor."
=_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR.
The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man.
Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political
harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature
comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his
feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so
blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is
ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that
this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people
on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery
tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which
inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at
length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober
and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more
keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him
in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his
prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible;
and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected,
and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of
thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the
burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all
comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a
share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle
for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently
awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of
his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to
earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who
faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the
product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than
he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it? In short, why
should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages,
splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot?"
Such, as I interpret it, is the problem which occupies and puzzles the
knotted brain of Toil in our day.
[Footnote 50: The well-known journalist of New York; conspicuous for his
many writings on social and political reform, his reminiscences, &c.; a
native of New Hampshire.]
* * * * *
From an Address on Success in Business.
=_165._= THE BENEFICENCE OF LABOR-SAVING INVENTIONS.
There is, if not an ever-increasing need, an ever-increasing
consciousness of need, of labor-saving inventions and machinery. And, if
those inventions should render labor twenty times as productive as it
is to-day, should make this a general rule, that all human labor shall
produce twenty times as much as it does to-day--there would be no glut
of products, as so many mistakenly apprehend. There would only be a
very much fuller and broader satisfaction of human needs. Our wants
are infinite. They expand and dilate on every side, according to our
means--often very much in advance of our means,--of satisfying them. If
labor shall become--as I doubt not it will become at an early day, far
more productive, far more effective, than it is now, we shall hear
nothing like a complaint that there are no more wants to be satisfied,
but the contrary. And yet, we know the fact is deplorably true, that the
time is scarcely yet remote when the laboring class, distinctively so
called, set its face resolutely against new inventions--set to work
deliberately to destroy labor-saving machinery, and so to act as more
and more to throw labor back into the barbaric period when probably
every yard of cloth cost a day's labor, as did every bushel of grain.
England herself, it is computed now does the work, by means of steam and
machinery, of eight hundred millions of men. And yet English wants are
no more satisfied to-day than they were a thousand years ago. I do not
say they are altogether unsatisfied; but I say that the consciousness of
want, the demand for products, is just as keen to-day; and I have not
a doubt that if inventions could be introduced into China whereby the
labor of her people should be rendered fifty times as effective as it is
to-day, you would find not a dearth of employment as a consequence, but
rather an increase of activity and an increased demand for labor. To-day
British capital and British talent are fairly grid-ironing the ancient
plains and slopes of Hindostan with British canals, irrigating, and
railroads. It is their _gold_ they say; but it is not British capital,
so much as British genius and British confidence, that are required.
There is wealth enough in India, more gold and silver and gems, probably
to-day than in Europe, for the precious metals always flow thither, and
they very seldom flow thence.
* * * * *
From "Recollections of a Busy Life."
=_166._= LITERATURE AS A VOCATION; THE EDITOR.
No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present, as the
Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth,--the most
self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that
regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely
as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall
jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and
the miser's bag,--can but be noted in their day, and with their day
forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,--to condemn
Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences
of the vicious,--to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give
annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor
without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances
by which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dexterously
between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century
may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his
long rest with the non-achievements of his life emblazoned on the very
whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust.
There is a different and sterner path,--I know not whether there be
any now qualified to tread it,--I am not sure that even one has ever
followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its
temporal rewards, and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere
so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor's, must be shrouded by the dark
waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of
the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and
those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed
by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next
street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready
to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury
enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been
committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia, some centuries ago. Such an
Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy,
indolent, or wholly joyous life,--to be blessed by Archbishops, or
followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities; but he might
find some recompense for their loss, in the calm verdict of an approving
conscience: and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved
from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a
season the daisies that bloomed above his grave.
* * * * *
From "The Crystal Palace and its Lessons."
=_167._= TRANQUILITY OF RURAL LIFE.
As for me, long tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and
arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years
fell upon me, the weary tempest-driven voyager's longing for land, the
wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by
his mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober
down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it developes or
strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or
overlaid, for "that dear hut, our home." And so I, in the sober
afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought
me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither
my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city's labors
and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a
farmer, the memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I
realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already
I find in that day's quiet, an antidote and a solace for the feverish,
festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already, my brook murmurs
a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain; and my trees,
gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of
their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly
realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which
shall irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer education
shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science
shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from
drudgery, while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and
plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth.
* * * * *
=_Theodore Parker_,= about =_1812-1860_=. (Manual, p. 531.)
From "Lessons from the World of Nature," &c.
=_168._= WINTER AND SPRING.
In the hard, cold winter of our northern lands, how do we feel a longing
for the presence of life! Then we love to look on a pine or fir tree,
which seems the only living thing in the woods, surrounded by dead oaks,
birches, maples, looking like the gravestones of buried vegetation:
that seems warm and living then; and at Christmas, men bring it into
meetinghouses and parlors, and set it up, full of life, and laden with
kindly gifts for the little folk. Then even the unattractive crow seems
half sacred, through the winter bearing messages of promise from the
perished autumn to the advancing spring--this dark forerunner of the
tuneful tribes which are to come. We feel a longing for fresh, green
nature, and so in the shelter of our houses keep some little Aaron's
rod, budding alike with promise and memory; or in some hyacinth or
Dutchman's tulip we keep a prophecy of flowers, and start off some
little John to run before, and with his half-gospel tell of some great
Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near
at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations
has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is
spangled with many flowers that came unasked....
What if there was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred
years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its
wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees
became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth!
How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a
sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."
* * * * *
From an "Installation Sermon," January 4th, 1846.
=_169._= THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets;
they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor.
It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze
in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red
right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for
the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is
our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and
his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or
the weak in all their forms.... But the saints and the heroes of this
day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no
fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the
saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of
conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble
aims, men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; who will honor
no sins, though never so profitable, respectable, and ancient; men who
count Christ not their master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive
like him to practice all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word
of God, these men I honor far more than the saints of old.... Racks and
fagots soon waft the soul to God, stern messengers, but swift. A boy
could bear that passage,--the martyrdom of death. But the temptation of
a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame, and want, and
desertion by false friends; to live blameless though blamed, cut off
from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I shed no tears
for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage and thank God
for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day.... Yea, though now
men would steal the rusty sword from underneath the bones of a saint or
hero long deceased, to smite off therewith the head of a new prophet,
that ancient hero's son; though they would gladly crush the heart out of
him with the tombstones they piled up for great men, dead and honored
now; yet in some future day, that mob penitent, baptized with a new
spirit, like drunken men returned to sanity once more, shall search
through all this land for marble white enough to build a monument to
that prophet whom their fathers slew; they shall seek through all the
world for gold of fineness fit to chronicle such names. I cannot wait;
but I will honor such men now, not adjourn the warning of their voice,
and the glory of their example, till another age! The church may cast
out such men; burn them with the torments of an age too refined in its
cruelty to use coarse fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no loss to these
men; but the ruin of the church. I say the Christian church of the
nineteenth century must honor such men, if it would do a church's work;
must take pains to make such men as these, or it is a dead church, with
no claim on us, except that we bury it. A true church will always be
the church of martyrs. The ancients commenced every great work with a
victim! We do not call it so; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready,
and offered by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did
not Christianity begin with a martyrdom?
* * * * *
From "Historic Americans."
=_170._= CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN.
His was the morality of a strong, experienced person, who had seen the
folly of wise men, the meanness of proud men, the baseness of honorable
men, and the littleness of great men, and made liberal allowances for
the failures of all men. If the final end to be reached were just, he
did not always inquire about the provisional means which led thither. He
knew that the right line is the shortest distance between two points, in
morals as in mathematics, but yet did not quarrel with such as attained
the point by a crooked line. Such is the habit of politicians,
diplomatists, statesmen, who look on all men as a commander looks on his
soldiers, and does not ask them to join the church or keep their hands
clean, but to stand to their guns and win the battle.
Thus, in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Franklin found great
difficulty in carrying on the necessary measures for military defence,
because a majority of the Assembly were Quakers, who, though friendly
to the success of the revolution founded contrary to their principles,
refused to vote the supplies of war. So he caused them to vote
appropriations to purchase bread, flour, wheat, _or other grain_. The
Government said, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well
their meaning,--other grain is gunpowder." He afterwards moved the
purchase of a fire-engine, saying to his friend, "Nominate me on the
committee, and I will nominate you; we will buy a great gun, which is
certainly a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that."
Such was the course of policy that Franklin took, as I think, to excess;
but yet I believe that no statesman of that whole century did so much to
embody the eternal rules of right in the customs of the people, and to
make the constitution of the universe the common law of all mankind; and
I cannot bestow higher praise than that, on any man whose name I can
recall. He mitigated the ferocities of war. He built new hospitals, and
improved old ones. He first introduced this humane principle into the
Law of Nations, that in time of war, private property on land shall
be unmolested, and peaceful commerce continued, and captive soldiers
treated as well as the soldiers of the captors. Generous during his
life-time, his dead hand still gathers and distributes blessings to the
mechanics of Boston, and their children. True is it that
"Him only pleasure leads and peace attends,
Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends."
But it is a great thing in this stage of the world to find a man whose
_ends_ are pure and spotless. Let us thank him for that.
* * * * *
From "Historic Americans."
=_171._= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.
Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the
Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and
State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been
more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to
be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than
Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men
he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for
patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in
pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit
was this--that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government,
and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the
lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true
Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to
education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in
advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his
Nation--ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and
conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this--that he so
ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made
himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried
these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of
class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and
applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education
to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we
have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have
won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and
painful Revolution.
* * * * *
=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._=
From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861."
=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION.
I would have government announce to the world that we understand the
evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the
natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves
and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national
conscience. We know well its character. But democracy, unlike other
governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own
death--strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions. It
was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our
fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it
until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of
disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky. But
our cheeks do not blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this
forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to
execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf--freedom
to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that
disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic.
[Footnote 51: A native of Massachusetts: a vigorous thinker and speaker
on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most
eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.]
* * * * *
From His "Speeches, Lectures." &c.
=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his
power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to
General Leclerc,--the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,--thirty
thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery. Among
these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes.
* * * * *
Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, Samana,
he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty
ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the
point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread,
like Caesar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids,
and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment,
counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and,
turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can
only come to make us slaves; and we are lost." He then recognized the
only mistake of his life,--his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led
him to disband his army. Returning to the hills, he issued the only
proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance: "My children,
France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right
to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the
roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he
comes to make"; and he was obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw
Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, "Break down the dykes,
give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander
saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow,
starve back the invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw
all Europe marshalled to crush him, and gave to his people the same
heroic example of defiance.
* * * * *
=_Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864._= (Manual, p. 532.)
From "Patriotism and other Papers."
=_174._= GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
If we go to Nature for our morals, we shall learn the necessity of
perfection in the smallest act. Infinite skill is not exhausted nor
concentrated in the structure of a firmament, in drawing the orbit of a
planet, in laying the strata of the earth, in rearing the mountain cone.
The care for the bursting flower is as wise as the forces displayed in
the rolling star; the smallest leaf that falls and dies unnoticed in the
forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in
the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed
in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the
subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing.
However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent
skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great.
It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life....
The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is
the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest
principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling
deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the
Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is
mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the
touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual
gold.
The Greek philosopher, Plato, has left an instructive and beautiful
poetic picture of the judgment of souls, when they had been collected
from the regions of temporary bliss and pain, and suffered once more to
return to the duties and pleasures of earthly life. The spirits advanced
by lot, to make their choice of the condition and form under which they
should re-enter the world. The dazzling and showy fortunes, the lives of
kings and warriors and statesmen were soon exhausted; and the spirit of
Ulysses, who had been the wisest prince among all the Greeks, came last
to choose. He advanced with sorrow, fearing that his favorite condition
had been selected by some more fortunate soul who had gone before him.
But, to his surprise and pleasure, Ulysses found that the only life
which had not been chosen was the lot of an obscure and private man,
with its humble cares and quiet joys; the lot which he, the wisest,
would have selected, had his turn come first; the life for which he had
longed, since he had felt the folly and meanness of station, wealth, and
power....