AN AMERICAN newspaper holds this opinion: "If republican government
had done nothing else than give independence to American character and
preserve it from the servility inseparable from the allegiance to kings,
it would have accomplished a great work."
I do not doubt that the writer of that sentence believes that republican
government has actually wrought the change in human nature which
challenges his admiration. He is very sure that his countrymen are not
sycophants; that before rank and power and wealth they stand covered,
maintaining "the godlike attitude of freedom and a man" and exulting in
it. It is not true; it is an immeasurable distance from the truth. We
are as abject toadies as any people on earth--more so than any European
people of similar civilization. When a foreign emperor, king, prince or
nobleman comes among us the rites of servility that we execute in his
honor are baser than any that he ever saw in his own land. When a
foreign nobleman's prow puts into shore the American shin is pickled in
brine to welcome him; and if he come not in adequate quantity those of
us who can afford the expense go swarming over sea to struggle for front
places in his attention. In this blind and brutal scramble for social
recognition in Europe the traveling American toady and impostor has many
chances of success: he is commonly unknown even to ministers and consuls
of his own country, and these complaisant gentlemen, rather than incur
the risk of erring on the wrong side, take him at his own valuation and
push him in where his obscurity being again in his favor, he is treated
with kindly toleration, and sometimes a genuine hospitality, to which he
has no shadow of right nor title, and which, if he were a gentleman, he
would not accept if it were voluntarily proffered. It should be said in
mitigation that all this delirious abasement in no degree tempers his
rancor against the system of which the foreign notable is the flower and
fruit. He keeps his servility sweet by preserving it in the salt of
vilification. In the character of a blatant blackguard the American snob
is so happily disguised that he does not know himself.
An American newspaper once printed a portrait of her whom the irreverent
Briton had a reprehensible habit of designating colloquially as "The Old
Lady," But the editor in question did not so designate her--his simple
American manhood and republican spirit would not admit that she was
a lady. So he contented himself with labeling the portrait "Her Most
Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria" This incident raises an important
question.
Important Question Raised by This Incident: Is it better to be a subject
and a man, or a citizen and a flunkey--to own the sway of a "gory
tyrant" and retain one's self-respect, or dwell, a "sovereign elector,"
in the land of liberty and disgrace it?
However it may be customary for English newspapers to designate the
English sovereign, they are at least not addicted to sycophancy in
designating the rulers of other countries than their own. They would
not say "His Abracadabral Humpti-dumptiness Emperor William," nor "His
Pestilency the Speaker of the American House of Representatives."
They would not think of calling even the most ornately self-bemedaled
American sovereign elector "His Badgesty." Of a foreign nobleman they do
not say "His Lordship;" they will not admit that he is a lord; nor when
speaking of their own noblemen do they spell "lord" with a capital L, as
we do. In brief, when mentioning foreign dignitaries, of whatever rank
in their own countries, the English press is simply and serviceably
descriptive: the king is a king, the queen a queen, the jack a jack. We
use "another kind of common sense." At the very foundation of our
political system lies the denial of hereditary and artificial rank. Our
fathers created this government as a protest against all that, and all
that it implies. They virtually declared that kings and noblemen could
not breathe here, and no American loyal to the principles of the
Revolution which made him one will ever say in his own country "Your
Majesty" or "Your Lordship"--the words would choke him and they ought.
There are a few of us who keep the faith, who do not bow the knee
to Baal, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of
political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty
are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that illimitable inane where
their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs
of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made
gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires
of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good
standing. In view of this general recreancy and treason to the
principles that our fathers established by the sword--having in constant
observation this almost universal hospitality to the solemn nonsense
of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, my faith in practical
realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work
of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are
too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting
monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality
of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as
elsewhere; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable, and that
of the public more so; that the law's majesty is a dream and its failure
a fact--hearing everywhere the footfalls of disorder and the watchwords
of anarchy, I despair of the republic and catch in every breeze that
blows "a cry prophetic of its fall."
I have seen a vast crowd of Americans change color like a field of
waving grain, as it uncovered to do such base homage to a petty foreign
princess as in her own country she had never received. I have seen
full-grown, self-respecting American citizens tremble and go speechless
when spoken to by the Emperor of Brazil. I have seen a half-dozen
American gentlemen in evening clothes trying to outdo one another in the
profundity of their bows in the presence of the nigger King of Hawaii.
I have not seen a Chinese "Earl" borne in a chair by four Americans
officially detailed for the disgraceful service, but it was done,
and did not evoke a hiss of disapproval. And I did not--thank
Heaven!--observe the mob of American "simple republicans" that dogged
the heels of a disreputable little Frenchman who is a count by courtesy
only, and those of an English duke quietly attending to his business of
making a living by being a married man. The republican New World is
no less impested with servility than the monarchial Old. One form of
government may be better than another for this purpose or for that; all
are alike in the futility of their influence upon human character. None
can affect man's instinctive abasement in the contemplation of power and
rank.
Not only are we no less sycophantic than the people of monarchial
countries; we are more so. We grovel before their exalted personages,
and perform in addition a special prostration at the clay feet of
our own idols--which _they_ do not revere. The typical "subject,"
hat-in-hand to his sovereign and his nobleman, is a less shameful figure
than the "citizen" executing his genuflexion before the public of which
he is himself a part. No European court journal, no European courtier,
was ever more abject in subservience to the sovereign than are the
American newspaper and the American politician in flattery of the
people. Between the courtier and the demagogue I see nothing to choose.
They are moved by the same sentiment and fired by the same hope. Their
method is flattery, and their purpose profit. Their adulation is not a
testimony to character, but a tribute to power, or the shadow of power.
If this country were governed by its criminal idiots we should have the
same attestations of their goodness and wisdom, the same competition for
their favor, the same solemn doctrine that their voice is the voice of
God. Our children would be brought up to believe that an Idiotocracy is
the only natural and rational form of government And for my part I'm
not at all sure that it would not be a pretty good political system, as
political systems go. I have always, however, cherished a secret faith
in Smithocracy, which seems to combine the advantages of both the
monarchial and the republican idea. If all the offices were held for
life by Smiths--the senior John being President--we should have a
settled and orderly succession to allay all fears of anarchy and a
sufficiently wide eligibility to feed the fires of patriotic ambition.
All could not be Smiths, but many could marry into the family.
The Harrison "progress" left its heritage of shame, whereof each abaser
would gladly have washed the hands of him in his neighbor's basin. All
this was in due order of Nature, and was to have been expected. It was
a phenomenon of the same character as, in the loves of the low, the
squabbling consequent upon satiety and shame. We could not slink out
of sight; we could deny our sycophancy, albeit we might give it another
name; but we could somewhat medicine our damaged self-esteem by dealing
damnation 'round on one another. The blush of shame turned easily to the
glow of indignation, and many a hot hatred was kindled at the rosy flame
of self-contempt. Persons conscious of having dishonored themselves are
doubly sensitive to any indignity put upon them by others. The vices and
follies of human nature are interdependent; they do not move alone,
nor are they singly aroused to activity. In my judgment, this entire
incident of the President's "tour" was infinitely discreditable to
President and people. I do not go into the question of his motive in
making it. Be that what it may, the manner of it seems to me an
outrage upon all the principles and sentiments underlying republican
institutions. In all but the name it was a "royal progress"--the same
costly ostentation, the same civic and military pomp, the same solemn
and senseless adulation, the same abasement of spirit of the Many before
the One. And according to republican traditions, ten thousand times a
year affirmed, in every way in which affirmation is possible, we fondly
persuade ourselves, as a true faith in the hearts of our hearts,
that the One is the inferior of the Many! And it is no mere political
catch-phrase: he _is_ their servant; he _is_ their creature; all that
in him to which they grovel (dignifying and justifying their instinctive
and inherited servility by names as false as anything in ceremonial
imposture) they themselves have made, as truly as the heathen has
made the wooden god before which he performs his unmanly rite. It
is precisely this thing--the superiority of the people to their
servants--that constitutes, and was by our fathers understood to
constitute, the essential, fundamental difference between the monarchial
system which they uprooted and the democratic one which they planted in
its stead. Deluded men! how little they guessed the length and strength
and vitality of the roots left in the soil of the centuries when their
noxious harvestage of mischievous institutions had been cast as rubbish
to the void!
I am no contestant for forms of government--no believer in either the
practical value or the permanence of any that has yet been devised. That
all men are created equal, in the best and highest sense of the phrase,
I hold; not as I observe it held by others, but as a living faith. That
an officeholder is a servant of the people; that I am his political
superior, owing him no deference, and entitled to such deference
from him as may be serviceable to keep him in mind of his
subordination--these are propositions which command my assent, which
I _feel_ to be true and which determine the character of my personal
relations with those whom they concern. That I should give my hand, or
bend my neck, or uncover my head to any man in homage to or recognition
of his office, great or small, is to me simply inconceivable. These
tricks of servility with the softened names are the vestiges of an
involuntary allegiance to power extraneous to the performer. They
represent in our American life obedience and propitiation in their most
primitive and odious forms. The man who speaks of them as manifestations
of a proper respect for "the President's great office" is either a
rogue, a dupe or a journalist They come to us out of a fascinating but
terrible past as survivals of servitude. They speak a various language
of oppression, and the superstition of man-worship; they cany forward
the traditions of the sceptre and the lash. Through the plaudits of the
people may be heard always the faint, far cry of the beaten slave.
Respect? Respect the good. Respect the wise. Respect the dead. Let the
President look to it that he belongs to one of these classes. His going
about the country in gorgeous state and barbaric splendor as the guest
of a thieving corporation, but at our expense--shining and dining and
swining--unsouling himself of clotted nonsense in pickled platitudes
calculated for the meridian of Coon Hollow, Indiana, but ingeniously
adapted to each water tank on the line of his absurd "progress," does
not prove it, and the presumption of his "great office" is against him.
Can you not see, poor misguided "fellow citizens," how you permit your
political taskmasters to forge leg-chains of your follies and load you
down with them? Will nothing teach you that all this fuss-and-feathers,
all this ceremony, all this official gorgeousness and brass-banding,
this "manifestation of a proper respect for the nation's head" has no
decent place in American life and American politics? Will no experience
open your stupid eyes to the fact that these shows are but absurd
imitations of royalty, to hold you silly while you are plundered by the
managers of the performance?--that while you toss your greasy caps in
air and sustain them by the ascending current of your senseless hurrahs
the programmers are going through your blessed pockets and exploiting
your holy dollars? No; you feel secure; "power is of the People,"
and you can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable
privilege--to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And
you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those
designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
But then you are not "subjects;" you are "citizens"--there is much
in that Your tyrant is not a "King;" he is a "President." He does
not occupy a "throne," but a "chair." He does not succeed to it by
inheritance; he is pitchforked into it by the boss. Altogether, you are
distinctly better off than the Russian mujik who wears his shirt outside
his trousers and has never shaken hands with the Czar in all his life.
I hold that kings and noblemen can not breathe in America. When they set
foot upon our soil their kingship and their nobility fall away from them
like the chains of a slave in England. Whatever a man may be in his
own country, here he is but a man. My countrymen may do as they please,
lickspittling the high and mighty of other nations even to the filling
of their spiritual bellies, but I make a stand for simple American
manhood. I will meet no man on this soil who expects from me a greater
deference than I could properly accord to the President of my own
country. My allegiance to republican institutions is slack through lack
of faith in them as a practical system of governing men as men are. All
the same, I will call no man "Your Majesty," nor "Your Lordship." For
me to meet in my own country a king or a nobleman would require as much
preliminary negotiation as an official interview between the Mufti of
Moosh and the Ahkoond of Swat. The form of salutation and the style and
tide of address would have to be settled definitively and with precision.
With some of my most esteemed and patriotic friends the matter is more
simple; their generosity in concession fills me with admiration and
their forbearance in exaction challenges my astonishment as one of the
seven wonders of American hospitality. In fancy I see the ceremony of
their "presentation" and as examples of simple republican dignity I
commend their posture to the youth of this fair New World, inviting
particular attention to the grand, bold curves of character shown in the
outlines of the Human Ham.