I
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ITS NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
The foregoing review of the relation which has come to subsist in Europe
between nationality and democracy should help us to understand the
peculiar bond which unites the American democratic and national
principles. The net result of that review was encouraging but not
decisive. As a consequence of their development as nations, the European
peoples have been unable to get along without a certain infusion of
democracy; but it was for the most part essential to their national
interest that such an infusion should be strictly limited. In Europe the
two ideals have never been allowed a frank and unconstrained relation
one to the other other. They have been unable to live apart; but their
marriage has usually been one of convenience, which was very far from
implying complete mutual dependence and confidence. No doubt the
collective interests of the German or British people suffer because such
a lack of dependence and confidence exists; but their collective
interests would suffer more from a sudden or violent attempt to destroy
the barriers. The nature and the history of the different democratic and
national movements in the several European countries at once tie them
together and keep them apart.
The peoples of Europe can only escape gradually from the large infusion
of arbitrary and irrational material in their national composition.
Monarchical and aristocratic traditions and a certain measure of
political and social privilege have remained an essential part of their
national lives; and no less essential was an element of defiance in
their attitude toward their European neighbors. Hence, when the
principle of national Sovereignty was proclaimed as a substitute for the
principal of royal Sovereignty, that principle really did not mean the
sudden bestowal upon the people of unlimited Sovereign power. "The true
people," said Bismarck, in 1847, then a country squire, "is an invisible
multitude of spirits. It is the living nation--the nation organized for
its historical mission--the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow." A
nation, that is, is a people in so far as they are united by traditions
and purposes; and national Sovereignty implies an attachment to national
history and traditions which permits only the very gradual alteration of
these traditions in the direction of increasing democracy. The mistake
which France made at the time of the French Revolution was precisely
that of interpreting the phrase "souvreneté nationale" as equivalent to
immediate, complete, and (in respect to the past) irresponsible popular
sovereignty.
The European nations are, consequently, not in a position to make their
national ideals frankly and loyally democratic. Their national integrity
depends upon fidelity to traditional ideas and forms quite as much as it
does upon the gradual modification of those ideas and forms in a
democratic direction. The orderly unfolding of their national lives
calls for a series of compromises which carry the fundamental democratic
implication of the national principle as far as it can under the
circumstances be safely carried; and in no other way does a people
exhibit its political common sense so clearly as in its ability to be
contemporary and progressive without breaking away from its historical
anchorage. A comparatively definite national mission and purpose clearly
emerge at some particular phase of the indefinite process of internal
and external readjustment; but such a mission and such purposes
necessarily possess a limited significance and a special character.
Restricted as they are by the facts of national history, they lack the
ultimate moral significance of the democratic ideal, which permits the
transformation of patriotic fidelity into devotion to the highest and
most comprehensive interests of humanity and civilization.
That an analogous condition exists in our own country, it would be vain
to deny. The American people possessed a collective character even
before they possessed a national organization; and both before and after
the foundation of a national government, these common traditions were by
no means wholly democratic. Furthermore, as we have frequently had
occasion to observe, the American democracy in its traditional form has
more often than not been anti-national in instinct and idea. Our own
country has, consequently, a problem to solve, similar in certain
respects to that of the European nations. Its national cohesion is a
matter of historical association, and the facts of its historical
association have resulted in a partial division and a misunderstanding
between its two fundamental principles--the principles of nationality
and democracy.
In the case of the United States there is, however, to be observed an
essential difference. A nation, and particularly a European nation,
cannot afford to become too complete a democracy all at once, because it
would thereby be uprooting traditions upon which its national cohesion
depends. But there is no reason why a democracy cannot trust its
interests absolutely to the care of the national interest, and there is
in particular every reason why the American democracy should become in
sentiment and conviction frankly, unscrupulously, and loyally
nationalist. This, of course, is a heresy from the point of view of the
American democratic tradition; but it is much less of a heresy from the
point of view of American political practice, and, whether heretical or
not, it indicates the road whereby alone the American people can obtain
political salvation.
The American democracy can trust its interest to the national interest,
because American national cohesion is dependent, not only upon certain
forms of historical association, but upon fidelity to a democratic
principle. A nation is a very complex political, social, and economic
product--so complex that political thinkers in emphasizing one aspect of
it are apt to forget other and equally essential aspects. Its habits and
traditions of historical association constitute an indispensable bond;
but they do not constitute the only bond. A specific national character
is more than a group of traditions and institutions. It tends to be a
formative idea, which defines the situation of a country in reference to
its neighbors, and which is constantly seeking a better articulation and
understanding among the various parts of its domestic life. The English
national idea is chiefly a matter of freedom, but the principle of
freedom is associated with a certain in measure of responsibility. The
German national idea is more difficult of precise description, but it
turns upon the principle of efficient and expert official leadership
toward what is as yet a hazy goal of national greatness. The French
national idea is democratic, but its democracy is rendered difficult by
French national insecurity, and its value is limited by its equalitarian
bias. The French, like the American, democracy needs above all to be
thoroughly nationalized; and a condition of such a result is the loyal
adoption of democracy as the national idea. Both French and American
national cohesion depend upon the fidelity of the national organization
to the democratic idea, and the gradual but intentional transformation
of the substance of the national life in obedience to a democratic
interest.
Let us seek for this complicated formula a specific application. How can
it be translated into terms of contemporary American conditions? Well,
in the first place, Americans are tied together by certain political,
social, and economic habits, institutions, and traditions. From the
political point of view these forms of association are at once
constitutional, Federal, and democratic. They are accustomed to some
measure of political centralization, to a larger measure of local
governmental responsibility, to a still larger measure of individual
economic freedom. This group of political institutions and habits has
been gradually pieced together under the influence of varying political
ideas and conditions. It contains many contradictory ingredients, and
not a few that are positively dangerous to the public health. Such as it
is, however, the American people are attached to this national
tradition; and no part of it could be suddenly or violently transformed
or mutilated without wounding large and important classes among the
American people, both in their interests and feelings. They have been
accustomed to associate under certain conditions and on certain terms;
and to alter in any important way those conditions and terms of
association without fair notice, full discussion, a demonstrable need
and a sufficient consent of public opinion, would be to drive a wedge
into the substance of American national cohesion. The American nation,
no matter how much (or how little) it may be devoted to democratic
political and social ideas, cannot uproot any essential element in its
national tradition without severe penalties--as the American people
discovered when they decided to cut negro slavery out of their national
composition.
On the other hand, their national health and consistency were in the
long run very much benefited by the surgical operation of the Civil War;
and it was benefited because the War eradicated the most flagrant
existing contradiction among the various parts of the American national
tradition. This instance sufficiently showed, consequently, that
although nationality has its traditional basis, it is far from being
merely a conservative principle. At any one time the current of national
public opinion embodies a temporary accommodation among the different
traditional ideas, interests, conditions, and institutions. This balance
of varying and perhaps conflicting elements is constantly being
destroyed by new conditions,--such, for instance, as the gradual
increase before the Civil War of the North as compared to the South in
wealth, population, and industrial efficiency. The effect of this
destruction of the traditional balance was to bring out the
contradiction between the institution of negro slavery and the American
democratic purpose--thereby necessitating an active conflict, and the
triumph of one of these principles over the other. The unionist
democracy conquered, and as the result of that conquest a new balance
was reached between the various ingredients of American national life.
During the past generation, the increased efficiency of organization in
business and politics, the enormous growth of an irresponsible
individual money-power, the much more definite division of the American
people into possibly antagonistic classes, and the pressing practical
need for expert, responsible, and authoritative leadership,--these new
conditions and demands have been by way of upsetting once more the
traditional national balance and of driving new wedges into American
national cohesion. New contradictions have been developed between
various aspects of the American national composition; and if the
American people wish to escape the necessity of regaining their health
by means of another surgical operation, they must consider carefully how
much of a reorganization of traditional institutions, policy, and ideas
are necessary for the achievement of a new and more stable national
balance.
In the case of our own country, however, a balance is not to be struck
merely by the process of compromise in the interest of harmony. Our
forbears tried that method in dealing with the slavery problem from
1820 to 1850, and we all know with what results. American national
cohesion is a matter of national integrity; and national integrity is a
matter of loyalty to the requirements of a democratic ideal. For better
or worse the American people have proclaimed themselves to be a
democracy, and they have proclaimed that democracy means popular
economic, social, and moral emancipation. The only way to regain their
national balance is to remove those obstacles which the economic
development of the country has placed in the path of a better democratic
fulfillment. The economic and social changes of the past generation have
brought out a serious and a glaring contradiction between the demands of
a constructive democratic ideal and the machinery of methods and
institutions, which have been considered sufficient for its realization.
This is the fundamental discrepancy which must be at least partially
eradicated before American national integrity can be triumphantly
re-affirmed. The cohesion, which is a condition of effective
nationality, is endangered by such a contradiction, and as long as it
exists the different elements composing American society will be pulling
apart rather than together. The national principle becomes a principle
of reform and reconstruction, precisely because national consistency is
constantly demanding the solution of contradictory economic and
political tendencies, brought out by alterations in the conditions of
economic and political efficiency. Its function is not only to preserve
a balance among these diverse tendencies, but to make that balance more
than ever expressive of a consistent and constructive democratic ideal.
Any disloyalty to democracy on the part of American national policy
would in the end prove fatal to American national unity.
The American democracy can, consequently, safely trust its genuine
interests to the keeping of those who represent the national interest.
It both can do so, and it must do so. Only by faith in an efficient
national organization and by an exclusive and aggressive devotion to the
national welfare, can the American democratic ideal be made good. If the
American local commonwealths had not been wrought by the Federalists
into the form of a nation, they would never have continued to be
democracies; and the people collectively have become more of a democracy
in proportion as they have become more of a nation. Their democracy is
to be realized by means of an intensification of their national life,
just as the ultimate moral purpose of an individual is to be realized by
the affirmation and intensification of its own better individuality.
Consequently the organization of the American democracy into a nation is
not to be regarded in the way that so many Americans have regarded
it,--as a necessary but hazardous surrender of certain liberties in
order that other liberties might be better preserved,--as a mere
compromise between the democratic ideal and the necessary conditions of
political cohesion and efficiency. Its nationalized political
organization constitutes the proper structure and veritable life of the
American democracy. No doubt the existing organization is far from being
a wholly adequate expression of the demands of the democratic ideal, but
it falls equally short of being an adequate expression of the demands of
the national ideal. The less confidence the American people have in a
national organization, the less they are willing to surrender themselves
to the national spirit, the worse democrats they will be. The most
stubborn impediments which block the American national advance issue
from the imperfections in our democracy. The American people are not
prepared for a higher form of democracy, because they are not prepared
for a more coherent and intense national life. When they are prepared to
be consistent, constructive, and aspiring democrats, their preparation
will necessarily take the form of becoming consistent, constructive, and
aspiring nationalists.
The difficulty raised by European political and economic development
hangs chiefly on a necessary loyalty to a national tradition and
organization which blocks the advance of democracy. Americans cannot
entirely escape this difficulty; but in our country by far the greater
obstacle to social amelioration is constituted by a democratic theory
and tradition, which blocks the process of national development. We
Americans are confronted by two divergent theories of democracy.
According to one of these theories, the interest of American democracy
can be advanced only by an increasing nationalization of the American
people in ideas, in institutions, and in spirit. According to the other
of these theories, the most effective way of injuring the interest of
democracy is by an increase in national authority and a spread of the
national leaven. Thus Americans, unlike Englishmen, have to choose, not
between a specific and efficient national tradition and a vague and
perilous democratic ideal--they have to choose between two democratic
ideals, and they have to make this choice chiefly on logical and moral
grounds. An Englishman or a German, no matter how clear his intelligence
or fervid his patriotism, cannot find any immediately and entirely
satisfactory method of reconciling the national traditions and forms of
organization with the demands of an uncompromising democracy. An
American, on the other hand, has it quite within his power to accept a
conception of democracy which provides for the substantial integrity of
his country, not only as a nation with an exclusively democratic
mission, but as a democracy with an essentially national career.
II
NATIONALITY AND CENTRALIZATION
The Federal political organization has always tended to confuse to the
American mind the relation between democracy and nationality. The nation
as a legal body was, of course, created by the Constitution, which
granted to the central government certain specific powers and
responsibilities, and which almost to the same extent diminished the
powers and the responsibilities of the separate states. Consequently, to
the great majority of Americans, the process of increasing
nationalization has a tendency to mean merely an increase in the
functions of the central government. For the same reason the affirmation
of a constructive relation between the national and the democratic
principles is likely to be interpreted merely as an attempt on the
grounds of an abstract theory to limit state government and to disparage
states rights. Such an interpretation, however, would be essentially
erroneous. It would be based upon the very idea against which I have
been continually protesting--the idea that the American nation, instead
of embodying a living formative political principle, is merely the
political system created by the Federal Constitution; and it would end
in the absurd conclusion that the only way in which the Promise of
American democracy can be fulfilled would be by the abolition of
American local political institutions.
The nationalizing of American political, economic, and social life means
something more than Federal centralization and something very different
therefrom. To nationalize a people has never meant merely to centralize
their government. Little by little a thoroughly national political
organization has come to mean in Europe an organization which combined
effective authority with certain responsibilities to the people; but the
national interest has been just as likely to demand de-centralization as
it has to demand centralization. The Prussia of Frederick the Great, for
instance, was over-centralized; and the restoration of the national
vitality, at which the Prussian government aimed after the disasters of
1806, necessarily took the form of reinvigorating the local members of
the national body. In this and many similar instances the national
interest and welfare was the end, and a greater or smaller amount of
centralized government merely the necessary machinery. The process of
centralization is not, like the process of nationalization, an
essentially formative and enlightening political transformation. When a
people are being nationalized, their political, economic, and social
organization or policy is being coördinated with their actual needs and
their moral and political ideals. Governmental centralization is to be
regarded as one of the many means which may or may not be taken in order
to effect this purpose. Like every other special aspect of the national
organization, it must be justified by its fruits. There is no
presumption in its favor. Neither is there any general presumption
against it. Whether a given function should or should not be exercised
by the central government in a Federal system is from the point of view
of political logic a matter of expediency--with the burden of proof
resting on those who propose to alter any existing Constitutional
arrangement.
It may be affirmed, consequently, without paradox, that among those
branches of the American national organization which are greatly in need
of nationalizing is the central government. Almost every member of the
American political body has been at one time or another or in one way or
another perverted to the service of special interests. The state
governments and the municipal administrations have sinned more in this
respect than the central government; but the central government itself
has been a grave sinner. The Federal authorities are responsible for the
prevailing policy in respect to military pensions, which is one of the
most flagrant crimes ever perpetrated against the national interest. The
Federal authorities, again, are responsible for the existing tariff
schedules, which benefit a group of special interests at the expense of
the national welfare. The Federal authorities, finally, are responsible
for the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, whose existence on the statute books is
a fatal bar to the treatment of the problem of corporate aggrandizement
from the standpoint of genuinely national policy. Those instances might
be multiplied, but they suffice to show that the ideal of a constructive
relation between the American national and democratic principles does
not imply that any particular piece of legislation or policy is national
because it is Federal. The Federal no less than the state governments
has been the victim of special interests; and when a group of state or
city officials effectively assert the public interest against the
private interests, either of the machine or of the local corporations,
they are noting just as palpably, if not just as comprehensively, for
the national welfare, as if their work benefited the whole American
people. The process of nationalization in its application to American
political organization means that political power shall be distributed
among the central, state, and municipal officials in such a manner that
it can be efficiently and responsibly exerted in the interest of those
affected by its action.
Be it added, however, in the same breath, that under existing conditions
and simply as a matter of expediency, the national advance of the
American democracy does demand an increasing amount of centralized
action and responsibility. In what respect and for what purposes an
increased Federal power and responsibility is desirable will be
considered in a subsequent chapter. In this connection it is sufficient
to insist that a more scrupulous attention to existing Federal
responsibilities, and the increase of their number and scope, is the
natural consequence of the increasing concentration of American
industrial, political, and social life. American government demands more
rather than less centralization merely and precisely because of the
growing centralization of American activity. The state governments,
either individually or by any practicable methods of coöperation, are
not competent to deal effectively in the national interest and spirit
with the grave problems created by the aggrandizement of corporate and
individual wealth and the increasing classification of the American
people. They have, no doubt, an essential part to play in the attempted
solution of these problems; and there are certain aspects of the whole
situation which the American nation, because of its Federal
organization, can deal with much more effectually than can a rigidly
centralized democracy like France. But the amount of responsibility in
respect to fundamental national problems, which, in law almost as much
as in practice, is left to the states, exceeds the responsibility which
the state governments are capable of efficiently redeeming. They are
attempting (or neglecting) a task which they cannot be expected to
perform with any efficiency.
The fact that the states fail properly to perform certain essential
functions such as maintaining order or administering justice, is no
sufficient reason for depriving them thereof. Functions which should be
bestowed upon the central government are not those which the states
happen to perform badly. They are those which the states, even with the
best will in the world, cannot be expected to perform satisfactorily;
and among these functions the regulation of commerce, the organization
of labor, and the increasing control over property in the public
interest are assuredly to be included. The best friends of local
government in this country are those who seek to have its activity
confined with the limits of possible efficiency, because only in case
its activity is so confined can the states continue to remain an
essential part of a really efficient and well-coördinated national
organization.
Proposals to increase the powers of the central government are, however,
rarely treated on their merits. They are opposed by the majority of
American politicians and newspapers as an unqualified evil. Any attempt
to prove that the existing distribution of responsibility is necessarily
fruitful of economic and political abuses, and that an increase of
centralized power offers the only chance of eradicating these abuses is
treated as irrelevant. It is not a question of the expediency of a
specific proposal, because from the traditional point of view any
change in the direction of increased centralization would be a violation
of American democracy. Centralization is merely a necessary evil which
has been carried as far as it should, and which cannot be carried any
further without undermining the foundations of the American system. Thus
the familiar theory of many excellent American democrats is rather that
of a contradictory than a constructive relation between the democratic
and the national ideals. The process of nationalization is perverted by
them into a matter merely of centralization, but the question of the
fundamental relation between nationality and democracy is raised by
their attitude, because the reasons they advance against increasingly
centralized authority would, if they should continue to prevail,
definitely and absolutely forbid a gradually improving coördination
between American political organization and American national economic
needs or moral and intellectual ideals. The conception of democracy out
of which the supposed contradiction between the democratic and national
ideals issues is the great enemy of the American national advance, and
is for that reason the great enemy of the real interests of democracy.
To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility,
expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional
American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic
tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before
the march of a constructive national democracy. The national advance
will always be impeded by these misleading and erroneous ideas, and,
what is more, it always should be impeded by them, because at bottom
ideas of this kind are merely an expression of the fact that the average
American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a
serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.
An American national democracy must always prove its right to a further
advance, not only by the development of a policy and method adequate for
the particular occasion, but by its ability to overcome the inevitable
opposition of selfish interests and erroneous ideas. The logic of its
position makes it the aggressor, just as the logic of its opponents'
position ties them to a negative and protesting or merely insubordinate
part. If the latter should prevail, their victory would become
tantamount to national dissolution, either by putrefaction, by
revolution, or by both.
Under the influence of certain practical demands, an increase has
already taken place in the activity of the Federal government. The
increase has not gone as far as governmental efficiency demands, but it
has gone far enough to provoke outbursts of protest and anguish from the
"old-fashioned Democrats." They profess to see the approaching
extinction of the American democracy in what they call the drift towards
centralization. Such calamitous predictions are natural, but they are
none the less absurd. The drift of American politics--its instinctive
and unguided movement--is almost wholly along the habitual road; and any
effective increase of Federal centralization can be imposed only by most
strenuous efforts, by one of the biggest sticks which has ever been
flourished in American politics. The advance made in this direction is
small compared to the actual needs of an efficient national
organization, and considering the mass of interest and prejudice which
it must continue to overcome, it can hardly continue to progress at more
than a snail's pace. The great obstacle to American national fulfillment
must always be the danger that the American people will merely succumb
to the demands of their local and private interests and will permit
their political craft to drift into a compromising situation--from which
the penalties of rescue may be almost as distressing as the penalties of
submission.
The tradition of an individualist and provincial democracy, which is the
mainstay of an anti-national policy, does not include ideals which have
to be realized by aggressive action. Their ideals are the ones embodied
in our existing system, and their continued vitality demands merely a
policy of inaction enveloped in a cloud of sacred phrases. The advocates
and the beneficiaries of the prevailing ideas and conditions are little
by little being forced into the inevitable attitude of the traditional
Bourbon--the attitude of maintaining customary or legal rights merely
because they are customary or legal, and predicting the most awful
consequences from any attempt to impair them. Men, or associations of
men, who possess legal or customary rights inimical to the public
welfare, always defend those rights as the essential part of a political
system, which, if it is overthrown, will prove destructive to public
prosperity and security. On no other ground can they find a plausible
public excuse for their opposition. The French royal authority and
aristocratic privileges were defended on these grounds in 1780, and as
the event proved, with some show of reason. In the same way the partial
legislative control of nationalized corporations now exercised by the
state government, is defended, not on the ground that it has been well
exercised, not even plausibly on the ground that it can be well
exercised. It is defended almost exclusively on the ground that any
increase in the authority of the Federal government is dangerous to the
American people. But the Federal government belongs to the American
people even more completely than do the state governments, because a
general current of public opinion can act much more effectively on the
single Federal authority than it can upon the many separate state
authorities. Popular interests have nothing to fear from a measure of
Federal centralization, which bestows on the Federal government powers
necessary to the fulfillment of its legitimate responsibilities; and the
American people cannot in the long run be deceived by pleas which bear
the evidence of such a selfish origin and have such dubious historical
associations. The rights and the powers both of states and individuals
must be competent to serve their purposes efficiently in an economical
and coherent national organization, or else they must be superseded. A
prejudice against centralization is as pernicious, provided
centralization is necessary, as a prejudice in its favor. All rights
under the law are functions in a democratic political organism and must
be justified by their actual or presumable functional adequacy.
The ideal of a constructive relation between American nationality and
American democracy is in truth equivalent to a new Declaration of
Independence. It affirms that the American people are free to organize
their political, economic, and social life in the service of a
comprehensive, a lofty, and far-reaching democratic purpose. At the
present time there is a strong, almost a dominant tendency to regard the
existing Constitution with superstitious awe, and to shrink with horror
from modifying it even in the smallest detail; and it is this
superstitious fear of changing the most trivial parts of the fundamental
legal fabric which brings to pass the great bondage of the American
spirit. If such an abject worship of legal precedent for its own sake
should continue, the American idea will have to be fitted to the rigid
and narrow lines of a few legal formulas; and the ruler of the American
spirit, like the ruler of the Jewish spirit of old, will become the
lawyer. But it will not continue, in case Americans can be brought to
understand and believe that the American national political organization
should be constructively related to their democratic purpose. Such an
ideal reveals at once the real opportunity and the real responsibility
of the American democracy. It declares that the democracy has a
machinery in a nationalized organization, and a practical guide in the
national interest, which are adequate to the realization of the
democratic ideal; and it declares also that in the long run just in so
far as Americans timidly or superstitiously refuse to accept their
national opportunity and responsibility, they will not deserve the names
either of freemen or of loyal democrats. There comes a time in the
history of every nation, when its independence of spirit vanishes,
unless it emancipates itself in some measure from its traditional
illusions; and that time is fast approaching for the American people.
They must either seize the chance of a better future, or else become a
nation which is satisfied in spirit merely to repeat indefinitely the
monotonous measures of its own past.
III
THE PEOPLE AND THE NATION
At the beginning of this discussion popular Sovereignty was declared to
be the essential condition of democracy; and a general account of the
nature of a constructive democratic ideal can best be brought to a close
by a definition of the meaning of the phrase, popular Sovereignty,
consistent with a nationalist interpretation of democracy. The people
are Sovereign; but who and what are the people? and how can a
many-headed Sovereignty be made to work? Are we to answer, like
Bismarck, that the "true people is an invisible multitude of
spirits--the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow"? Such an answer seems
scarcely fair to living people of to-day. On the other hand, can we
reply that the Sovereign people is constituted by any chance majority
which happens to obtain control of the government, and that the
decisions and actions of the majority are inevitably and unexceptionally
democratic? Such an assertion of the doctrine of popular Sovereignty
would bestow absolute Sovereign authority on merely a part of the
people. Majority rule, under certain prescribed conditions, is a
necessary constituent of any practicable democratic organization; but
the actions or decisions of a majority need not have any binding moral
and national authority. Majority rule is merely one means to an
extremely difficult, remote and complicated end; and it is a piece of
machinery which is peculiarly liable to get out of order. Its arbitrary
and dangerous tendencies can, as a matter of fact, be checked in many
effectual and legitimate ways, of which the most effectual is the
cherishing of a tradition, partly expressed in some body of fundamental
law, that the true people are, as Bismarck declared, in some measure an
invisible multitude of spirits--the nation of yesterday and to-morrow,
organized for its national historical mission.
The phrase popular Sovereignty is, consequently, for us Americans
equivalent to the phrase "national Sovereignty." The people are not
Sovereign as individuals. They are not Sovereign in reason and morals
even when united into a majority. They become Sovereign only in so far
as they succeed in reaching and expressing a collective purpose. But
there is no royal and unimpeachable road to the attainment of such a
collective will; and the best means a democratic people can take in
order to assert its Sovereign authority with full moral effect is to
seek fullness and consistency of national life. They are Sovereign in so
far as they are united in spirit and in purpose; and they are united in
so far as they are loyal one to another, to their joint past, and to the
Promise of their future. The Promise of their future may sometimes
demand the partial renunciation of their past and the partial sacrifice
of certain present interests; but the inevitable friction of all such
sacrifices can be mitigated by mutual loyalty and good faith. Sacrifices
of tradition and interest can only be demanded in case they contribute
to the national purpose--to the gradual creation of a higher type of
individual and associated life. Hence it is that an effective increase
in national coherence looks in the direction of the democratic
consummation--of the morally and intellectually authoritative expression
of the Sovereign popular will. Both the forging and the functioning of
such a will are constructively related to the gradual achievement of the
work of individual and social amelioration.
Undesirable and inadequate forms of democracy always seek to dispense in
one way or another with this tedious process of achieving a morally
authoritative Sovereign will. We Americans have identified democracy
with certain existing political and civil rights, and we have,
consequently, tended to believe that the democratic consummation was
merely a matter of exercising and preserving those rights. The grossest
form of this error was perpetrated when Stephen A. Douglas confused
authoritative popular Sovereignty with the majority vote of a few
hundred "squatters" in a frontier state, and asserted that on democratic
principles such expressions of the popular will should be accepted as
final. But an analogous mistake lurks in all static forms of democracy.
The bestowal and the exercise of political and civil rights are merely a
method of organization, which if used in proper subordination to the
ultimate democratic purpose, may achieve in action something of the
authority of a popular Sovereign will. But to cleave to the details of
such an organization as the very essence of democracy is utterly to
pervert the principle of national democratic Sovereignty. From this
point of view, the Bourbon who wishes the existing system with its
mal-adaptations and contradictions preserved in all its lack of
integrity, commits an error analogous to that of the radical, who wishes
by virtue of a majority vote immediately to destroy some essential part
of the fabric. Both of them conceive that the whole moral and national
authority of the democratic principle can be invoked in favor of
institutions already in existence or of purposes capable of immediate
achievement.
On the other hand, there are democrats who would seek a consummate
democracy without the use of any political machinery. The idea that a
higher type of associated life can be immediately realized by a supreme
act of faith must always be tempting to men who unite social aspirations
with deep religious faith. It is a more worthy and profound conception
of democracy than the conventional American one of a system of legally
constituted and equally exercised rights, fatally resulting in material
prosperity. Before any great stride can be made towards a condition of
better democracy, the constructive democratic movement must obtain more
effective support both from scientific discipline and religious faith.
Nevertheless, the triumph of Tolstoyan democracy at the present moment
would be more pernicious in its results than the triumph of Jeffersonian
Democracy. Tolstoy has merely given a fresh and exalted version of the
old doctrine of non-resistance, which, as it was proclaimed by Jesus,
referred in the most literal way to another world. In this world faith
cannot dispense with power and organization. The sudden and immediate
conversion of unregenerate men from a condition of violence,
selfishness, and sin into a condition of beatitude and brotherly love
can obtain even comparative permanence only by virtue of exclusiveness.
The religious experience of our race has sufficiently testified to the
permanence of the law. One man can be evangelized for a lifetime. A
group of men can be evangelized for many years. Multitudes of men can be
evangelized only for a few hours. No faith can achieve comparatively
stable social conquests without being established by habit, defined by
thought, and consolidated by organization. Usually the faith itself
subsequently sickens of the bad air it breathes in its own house.
Indeed, it is certain to lose initiative and vigor, unless it can appeal
intermittently to some correlative source of enthusiasm and devotion.
But with the help of efficient organization it may possibly survive,
whereas in the absence of such a worldly body, it must in a worldly
sense inevitably perish. Democracy as a living movement in the direction
of human brotherhood has required, like other faiths, an efficient
organization and a root in ordinary human nature; and it obtains such an
organization by virtue of the process of national development--on
condition, of course, that the nation is free to become a genuine and
thorough-going democracy.
A democracy organized into a nation, and imbued with the national
spirit, will seek by means of experimentation and discipline to reach
the object which Tolstoy would reach by an immediate and a miraculous
act of faith. The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe
coercive measures, but what schooling does not? A nation cannot merely
discharge its unregenerate citizens; and the best men in a nation or in
any political society cannot evade the responsibility which the fact of
human unregeneracy places upon the whole group. After men had reached a
certain stage of civilization, they frequently began to fear that the
rough conditions of political association excluded the highest and most
fruitful forms of social life; and they sought various ways of improving
the quality of the association by narrowing its basis. They tried to
found small communities of saints who were connected exclusively by
moral and religious bonds, and who in this way freed themselves from the
hazards, the distraction, and the violence inseparable from political
association. Such communities have made at different times great
successes; but their success has not been permanent. The political
aspect of associated life is not to be evaded. In proportion as
political organization gained in prosperity, efficiency, and dignity,
special religious associations lost their independence and power. Even
the most powerful religious association in the world, the Catholic
Church, has been fighting a losing battle with political authority, and
it is likely in the course of time to occupy in relation to the
political powers a position analogous to that of the Greek or the
English church. The ultimate power to command must rest with that
authority which, if necessary, can force people to obey; and any plan of
association which seeks to ignore the part which physical force plays in
life is necessarily incomplete. Just as formerly the irresponsible and
meaningless use of political power created the need of special religious
associations, independent of the state, so now the responsible, the
purposeful, and the efficient use of physical force, characteristic of
modern nations, has in its turn made such independence less necessary,
and tends to attach a different function to the church. A basis of
association narrower than the whole complex of human powers and
interests will not serve. National organization provides such a basis.
The perversity of human nature may cause its ultimate failure; but it
will not fail because it omits any essential constituent in the
composition of a permanent and fruitful human association. So far as it
fulfills its responsibilities, it guarantees protection against
predatory powers at home and abroad. It provides in appropriate measure
for individual freedom, for physical, moral, and intellectual
discipline, and for social consistency. It has prizes to offer as well
as coercion to exercise; and with its foundations planted firmly in the
past, its windows and portals look out towards a better future. The
tendency of its normal action is continually, if very slowly, to
diminish the distance between the ideal of human brotherhood, and the
political, economic, and social conditions, under which at any one time
men manage to live together.
That is the truth to which the patriotic Americans should firmly cleave.
The modern nation, particularly in so far as it is constructively
democratic, constitutes the best machinery as yet developed for raising
the level of human association. It really teaches men how they must
feel, what they must think, and what they must do, in order that they
may live together amicably and profitably. The value of this school for
its present purposes is increased by its very imperfections, because its
imperfections issue inevitably from the imperfections of human nature.
Men being as unregenerate as they are, all worthy human endeavor
involves consequences of battle and risk. The heroes of the struggle
must maintain their achievements and at times even promote their objects
by compulsion. The policeman and the soldier will continue for an
indefinite period to be guardians of the national schools, and the
nations have no reason to be ashamed of this fact. It is merely symbolic
of the very comprehensiveness of their responsibilities--that they have
to deal with the problem of human inadequacy and unregeneracy in all its
forms,--that they cannot evade this problem by allowing only the good
boys to attend school--that they cannot even mitigate it by drawing too
sharp a distinction between the good boys and the bad. Such
indiscriminate attendance in these national schools, if it is to be
edifying, involves one practical consequence of dominant importance.
Everybody within the school-house--masters, teachers, pupils and
janitors, old pupils and young, good pupils and bad, must feel one to
another an indestructible loyalty. Such loyalty is merely the subjective
aspect of their inevitable mutual association; it is merely the
recognition that as a worldly body they must all live or die and conquer
or fail together. The existence of an invincible loyalty is a condition
of the perpetuity of the school. The man who believes himself wise is
always tempted to ignore or undervalue the foolish brethren. The man who
believes himself good is always tempted actively to dislike the perverse
brethren. The man who insists at any cost upon having his own way is
always twisting the brethren into his friends or his enemies. But the
teaching of the national school constantly tends to diminish these
causes of disloyalty. Its tendency is to convert traditional patriotism
into a patient devotion to the national ideal, and into a patient
loyalty towards one's fellow-countrymen as the visible and inevitable
substance through which that ideal is to be expressed.
In the foregoing characteristic of a democratic nation, we reach the
decisive difference between a nation which is seeking to be wholly
democratic and a nation which is content to be semi-democratic. In the
semi-democratic nation devotion to the national ideal does not to the
same extent sanctify the citizen's relation in feeling and in idea to
his fellow-countrymen. The loyalty demanded by the national ideal of
such a country may imply a partly disloyal and suspicious attitude
towards large numbers of political associates. The popular and the
national interests must necessarily in some measure diverge. In a
nationalized democracy or a democratic nation the corresponding dilemma
is mitigated. The popular interest can only be efficiently expressed in
a national policy and organization. The national interest is merely a
more coherent and ameliorating expression of the popular interest. Its
consistency, so far as it is consistent, is the reflection of a more
humanized condition of human nature. It increases with the increasing
power of its citizens to deal fairly and to feel loyally towards their
fellow-countrymen; and it cannot increase except through the overthrow
of the obstacles to fair dealing and loyal feeling.
The responsibility and loyalty which the citizens of a democratic nation
must feel one towards another is comprehensive and unmitigable; but the
actual behavior which at any one time the national welfare demands must,
of course, be specially and carefully discriminated. National policies
and acts will be welcome to some citizens and obnoxious to others,
according to their special interests and opinions; and the citizens
whose interests and ideas are prejudiced thereby have every right and
should be permitted every opportunity to protest in the most vigorous
and persistent manner. The nation may, however, on its part demand that
these protests, in order to be heeded and respected, must conform to
certain conditions. They must not be carried to the point of refusing
obedience to the law. When private interests are injured by the national
policy, the protestants must be able to show either that such injuries
are unnecessary, or else they involve harm to an essential public
interest. All such protest must find an ultimate sanction in a group of
constructive democratic ideas. Finally, the protest must never be made
the excuse for personal injustice or national disloyalty. Even if the
national policy should betray indifference to the fundamental interests
of a democratic nation, as did that of the United States from 1820 to
1860, the obligation of patient good faith on the part of the
protestants is not diminished. Their protests may be as vivacious and as
persistent as the error demands. The supporters of the erroneous policy
may be made the object of most drastic criticism and the uncompromising
exposure. No effort should be spared to secure the adoption of a more
genuinely national policy. But beyond all this there remains a still
deeper responsibility--that of dealing towards one's fellow-countrymen
in good faith, so that differences of interest, of conviction, and of
moral purpose can be made the agency of a better understanding and a
firmer loyalty.
If a national policy offends the integrity of the national idea, as for
a while that of the American nation did, its mistake is sure to involve
certain disastrous consequences; and those consequences constitute,
usually, the vehicle of necessary national discipline. The national
school is, of course, the national life. So far as the school is
properly conducted, the methods of instruction are, if you please,
pedagogic; but if the masters are blind or negligent, or if the scholars
are unruly, there remains as a resource the more painful and costly
methods of nature's instruction. A serious error will be followed by its
inevitable penalty, proportioned to the blindness and the perversity in
which it originated; and thereafter the prosperity of the country's
future will hang partly on the ability of the national intelligence to
trace the penalty to its cause and to fix the responsibility. No matter
how loyal the different members of a national body may be one to
another, their mutual good faith will bleed to death, unless some among
them have the intelligence to trace their national ills to their
appropriate causes, and the candid courage to advocate the necessary
remedial measures. At some point in the process, disinterested
patriotism and good faith must be reënforced by intellectual insight. A
people are saved many costly perversions, in case the official
school-masters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor
insubordinate; but if the lessons are foolishly phrased, or the pupils
refuse to learn, the school will never regain its proper disciplinary
value until new teachers have arisen, who understand both the error and
its consequences, and who can exercise an effective authority over their
pupils.
The mutual loyalty and responsibility, consequently, embodied and
inculcated in a national school, depends for its efficient expression
upon the amount of insight and intelligence which it involves. The
process of national education means, not only a discipline of the
popular will, but training in ability to draw inferences from the
national experience, so that the national consciousness will gradually
acquire an edifying state of mind towards its present and its future
problems. Those problems are always closely allied to the problems which
have been more or less completely solved during the national history;
and the body of practical lessons which can be inferred from that
history is the best possible preparation for present and future
emergencies. Such history requires close and exact reading. The national
experience is always strangely mixed. Even the successes of our own
past, such as the Federal organization, contain much dubious matter,
demanding the most scrupulous disentanglement. Even the worst enemies of
our national integrity, such as the Southern planters, offer in some
respects an edifying political example to a disinterested democracy.
Nations do not have to make serious mistakes in order to learn valuable
lessons. Every national action, no matter how trivial, which is
scrutinized with candor, may contribute to the stock of national
intellectual discipline--the result of which should be to form a
constantly more coherent whole out of the several elements in the
national composition--out of the social and economic conditions, the
stock of national opinions, and the essential national ideal. And it is
this essential national ideal which makes it undesirable for the
national consciousness to dwell too much on the past or to depend too
much upon the lessons of experience alone. The great experience given to
a democratic nation must be just an incorrigible but patient attempt to
realize its democratic ideal--an attempt which must mold history as well
as hang upon its lessons. The function of the patriotic political
intelligence in relation to the fulfillment of the national Promise must
be to devise means for its redemption--means which have their relations
to the past, their suitability to the occasion, and their contribution
towards a step in advance. The work in both critical, experienced, and
purposeful. Mistakes will be made, and their effects either corrected or
turned to good account. Successes will be achieved, and their effects
must be coolly appraised and carefully discriminated. The task will
never be entirely achieved, but the tedious and laborious advance will
for every generation be a triumphant affirmation of the nationalized
democratic ideal as the one really adequate political and social
principle.