extorted from authority by fear of violence, what can be gained?
What new materials, with which to make the earthly paradise? None.
We see what men are, what motives now rule; such and such parties,
politicians, official people, "400" people; a vast population of
working people who have no definite principle of social equality,
much less of fraternity. The mass, in the distance, may appear in
solidarity, like the distant ocean; but, seen closely, it is made
up of distinct waves. The bootblack looks down on the sweep, as the
millionaire looks down on the tradesman. There is as much social
inequality in Washington as in London. Revolutions pass and leave
you the same old human nature. Whence is socialism to get a cabinet
of angels who will administer the new order,—run the farms, public
works, railways, and so on,—without selfishness, jobbery, personal
ends, or corruption? And shall our schools train intelligence downward,
so that it shall not rise above mediocrity? "The snow may fall level
one day, the next it is piled into drifts." Property might be equally
distributed this year; the next it would be in the hands of the
cleverest. You seize a man by the throat and say "You've got to be
fraternal." He may gasp out "I will"; but when his throat is free he
will love you no better.
But we are told that the selfish forces of human nature, its tendency
to social inequality, can themselves be revolutionised. It was so
with the early Christians. Jesus was not a socialist, he advised
tribute to Cæsar, and respect for those who sat in Moses's seat;
but, some two centuries after his death, the Christians did give up
their private possessions, and had all things in common. The avowed
cause of this, however, was that the world was just coming to an end.
Why labor and accumulate in a world about to be consumed? No sooner
did that superstitious expectation fade away than socialism ceased.
The forces of human nature resumed their sway. Those forces,—the
love of property, of luxury, competition, enterprise,—have since
been dissolved, here and there, but only by similar superstitions. A
hundred communities were formed for secular interests, about Robert
Owen's time. They all failed. The only ones existing are those founded
in the belief that this world is a wilderness of woe, destined to
destruction, and heaven the only true investment. Such are the Oneida,
Shaker, and Mormon communities. The modern socialists can appeal to
no such superstition. And yet, though many of them believe themselves
"infidels," their movement is the afterglow of Christianity. Their
method is millennial. They look for the destruction of the old
political world in much the same way as the early Christians looked
for the destruction of the physical world. There is to be a grand
transformation scene. Some Bellamy is to sound a trumpet, a lucifer
match is to be scratched, and, puff! away go the pomp and glories of
this world. The high are to be laid low, the low raised high, and a new
social kingdom to be established.
All this, though uttered by some atheists, is supernaturalism.
It is a survival from the millennial superstition. It is secular
second-adventism. It will pass away like its forerunners, though it may
like them cause revolutions. The socialistic fathers and their children
will fall asleep, and the old world roll on much the same as before,
diurnally, but on its moral orbit somewhat slower. For revolutionary
changes invariably retard human progress. Because, while they cannot
alter the inherited habitudes of a people,—their motives, prejudices,
superstitions,—they give these unreformed feelings a new habitation,
swept and garnished, so that the last state of that nation is worse
than the first. So long as outgrown notions remain only in antiquated
institutions, their error is demonstrated by their folly; their
tumbling walls instruct them in new needs; and when at last the old
institution falls, as it must, the experience induces adaptation of the
new one to the forces that laid low the old. When the outer embodies
an inner reform, there is no reaction. The progress is permanent. Such
is not the case when decrepit sentiments are suddenly given the sinews
of youth.
This view is not speculative. It is derived from the study of
revolutions. Near 250 years ago the English people began a revolution
which presently beheaded the king, and disestablished the church.
But monarchal superstition was not beheaded; religious superstition
was not disestablished. In place of Charles I. was set up a monarch
of unlimited power, whose little finger was heavier than Charles's
whole body,—that same Cromwell whose massacres of people in Ireland
is represented to-day in the one-sided feud that makes the curse of
England. The disestablishment of a church, at least scholarly and
picturesque, was followed by the inauguration of a primitive God of
wrath, whose prophet was Calvin, and Cromwell his destroying angel.
Bonfires were made of the most beautiful works of art in England. The
finest statues and monuments were destroyed because a barbarian said,
"Thou shalt not make a graven image." The revolution provided a fresh
stronghold for the grossest prejudices and superstitions; and, despite
the weakness of Charles I. and the faults of the clergy, the last state
of England was so much worse than the first, that the revolution was
reversed, the old monarchy restored, the church re-established, and the
future of that country given to the forces of evolution.
The French revolution beheaded a weak king, and raised a monster in his
place. Robespierre concentrated in his year or two all crimes spread
through the history of tyranny. The masses threw down the Virgin Mary,
and raised on her chief altar a goddess of Reason. Much pious horror
has been expressed about that worship of a beautiful Woman instead of
an image; but the real evil was the superstition, which, as it had
beheaded a helpless king now shattered a helpless image, but without
beheading itself—that is, superstition itself. The worship of the
goddess Reason was entirely too reasonable; so she was set aside,
and the revolution established a ceremonial worship of Nature, which
consecrated all that was natural,—the passions, the revolutionary
wrath, the natural desire to guillotine a Count, take possession of
his house, drink his wine, and imitate his revelries. Robespierre
presently turned to butchering revolutionists too, if not submissive to
him, so he was put out of the way. But the whole revolution naturally
led to the destructive imperialism of the first Napoleon,—the enemy
of mankind. He so paralysed the forces of progress that, even in 1848,
the French had not learned the lesson of their first revolution. They
tried another, and history repeated itself. They formed a revolutionary
democracy,—that is, a disguised imperialism,—as they were soon shown.
Their president proved to be an emperor, who destroyed liberty in
France and Italy for twenty years, and nearly destroyed his country.
But what of America? It was from the romantic success of the American
revolution,—a handful of colonists throwing off the yoke of
England,—that France caught fire; and the revolutionary spirit in
Europe has been kept alive by the magnificent material development
of America. All these fruits of the century of independence are
ascribed to our revolution; although the more astonishing growth of
Australia, which had no white settler fifty years ago, might as justly
be ascribed to the English throne. It is due to a false patriotism
that Americans competent to do so have not exposed the superstitions
about their country. To love one's native land more than humanity, is
no better than to love a king more than our country. There appears to
me nothing more important than that the world should be undeceived
about America, whose political history is, really, the great warning
against revolution,—a handwriting on the walls of the world, the
misunderstanding of which is a peril to mankind.
The independence of America was a necessary thing, but it came in
the worst way possible. The colonies resisted taxation, imposed by a
parliament 3000 miles away,—in those days fifteen times that distance
in time,—in which parliament they had no voice. The quarrel came to
blows; but the colonists had no idea of separation from England, until
Thomas Paine persuaded them that independence alone could end such
quarrels. That was true, but it was a heavy misfortune, from which we
still suffer, that independence was secured by war. The colonies had
exhausted their resources in their success; but they had not exhausted
England. The British government, sore and humiliated, still held
the north and northwest of America, commanded the force of the great
aboriginal tribes, controlled the whole American coast with its ships.
The Colonies, still confronted by the powerful enemy they had made,
were compelled to unite for common defence. These colonies had radical
differences, political, religious, commercial; some were free, some
held slaves. But in presence of the common foe they had to unite at
once, and sink their differences. When they met to frame a constitution
for their union the majority had no notion of any constitution save
that of England, and little accurate knowledge of that. What they
framed was a crude imitation of the undeveloped English constitution of
a hundred years ago. They made two legislatures because England seemed
to have two; but made them equal, not knowing that in England the two
were not equal. They supposed England was really governed by the king;
so, having knocked down George III. they set up a monarch much more
powerful, who to-day under the name of president possesses more power
than any throne on earth. They formed a Senate, able to defeat the
popular House.
The Senate is a peerage of states, in which New York has no more power
than states hardly larger than some of its counties. This anomaly was
advocated on the ground that in England boroughs of a few hundred
voters had equal representation with others of many thousands. The
old monstrosity, now the extinct "rotten borough" system, was here
actually raised into a constitutional principle. Command of the Army
and Navy, there nominally lodged in the crown, was really lodged
with the American monarch, so that he may slip from his civil to his
military throne, and rule by martial law. This powerful monarch is
not elected by the people of the United States, but of the states
separately, through electors proportioned to their members of Congress.
Consequently, as New York has the greatest number of electors, the
monarch in nine cases out of ten, is chosen by one state. The present
President got a trifling majority in New York, and was elected. Mr.
Cleveland received some 100,000 majority of votes in the nation, and
was defeated. A popular superstition calls that the Great Republic.
Since the electors ceased to be real electors, as the constitution
intended, and became mere messenger-boys carrying votes they never
cast, this government is not so republican as is now that its
revolution overthrew a hundred years ago. Even at its best our hasty
constitution gave new lease to an England discredited at home, and a
new lease to slavery, which had been decaying. Slavery entered its
new stronghold, and ruled America for generations; had it not lost
its head and assailed its own stronghold, it might be ruling still.
Our much eulogised constitution, by its compromise with slavery, cost
America a million lives, and a billion of money. And all of those
evils, involving a steady degradation of our politics, are due to
the fact that America got its independence not by evolution,—which
would have surely secured it, leaving England its friend,—but by
revolution, which made England its enemy; necessitating a premature,
crude, military union; preventing the mature discussion and development
which could have made the constitution an advance in political
civilisation instead of a retrogression. When our fathers had swept
English authority out of the country, they had not swept political
superstitions, monarchal notions, out of it; so they re-enthroned
in their garnished habitation the defects of the system they had
fought. When Washington was presently both reigning and governing in
America, when he was the idol of monarchs, with a petted courtier
representing him in every European Court, poor Thomas Paine, who made
the revolution, was a prisoner in Paris for trying to moderate the gory
giant he had evoked; and pleading for something like the ministerial
government of England, which was steadily adopting his principles of
toleration, and the rights of man, by sure forces of evolution. By such
forces,—by argument, petition, parliamentary influence,—England has
secured something like republican government under its mask of monarchy.
When people are suffering, it is natural for them to attribute their
sufferings to this or that institution which has an appearance of
anachronism and injustice. But it is precisely when institutions are
thus antiquated and anomalous that evolution is able to utilise them
for an advance. The United States monarch is able to transfer office
from his opponents to his supporters. He is powerful because he is
removed every four years. He can claim that the nation has freshly
given him all that power. The English sovereign has no political
power at all. The nation is governed by responsible ministers. The
president may snap his fingers at a parliamentary majority; the English
executive may be dismissed in a night. Why has the English monarch
been thus deprived of power? The cause is traceable to its hereditary
character,—that same hereditary character which seems so anomalous. It
was found of old that the throne, because it was hereditary, sometimes
fell to a baby, who could not rule. Grown up people had to act for the
child. To escape interruptions of government, when the monarch might be
incapable, ministers became essential; and thus ministerial government
and responsibility were developed out of the antiquated hereditary
anomaly. Popular government, in its development, was able to act
through this elected ministry, and the monarch, though an adult, could
not claim that he had the national authority behind him, except by
accordance with an elected ministry. Moreover in a monarchy all classes
are interested to reduce a power which only one family can enjoy; but
under a presidency all are anxious to enhance the power of an office to
which all may aspire,—especially where it is renewed every four years
by an electoral revolution.
In England other antiquated things have subserved progress. For the
very reason that hereditary legislation is anomalous, antiquated,
the peers became weak; the "upper" house became "under," by an
evolution that had been impossible had it been elective. But in this
very irresponsibility to the popular vote lay that independence of
popularity which gives their House weight as a debating and revising
body. A further step in evolution, which should determine the exact
number of times that the Lords might reject a measure, after which its
passage through the Commons would make it law, might make the peers a
useful body in checking popular passion and haste. Their independence
causes the Lords to pass bills for opening Museums and Art Galleries on
Sunday, which are killed by the Commoners for fear of the Sabbatarians
among their constituents. This independence of the popular breath makes
the House of Lords the source of a Supreme Court whose justice was
lately shown by the redress it gave Bradlaugh at the very moment when
the Commons were inflicting wrongs on him, in fear of their sectarian
constituents. The like may be said of another antiquated institution
in England—the Church. By reason of its anomalous establishment in a
nation of various creeds and a hundred and fifty sects, that Church is
theologically disestablished. Subjected to the forces of political and
ethical evolution, it is now preserving the vast property bequeathed by
England's superstitious Past to its free-thinking Future, keeping it
from being divided up among the sects, before the religious thought of
the country has come of age to claim its endowment. The Church cannot
spend this wealth for sectarian ends, precisely because that Church is
antiquated, and without authority to represent spiritually the nation
of to-day.
We might thus go through one after another anachronistic institution
and show each subservient to agencies of evolution, whereas, if
destroyed by revolution, they could only be succeeded by new
institutions embodying, in stronger forms, the snobbery, the
superstition, the sectarianism, still remaining in the country. It
being certain, at the same time, that no revolution can possibly reach
the troubles which alone could cause one. In England the troubles of
labor are due to the fact that the birth rate is double the death rate.
So long as paupers are multiplied twice as fast as they are removed,
pauperism must increase. The more charity and medical care lower
the death rate, the more they intensify the struggle for existence.
In other swarming countries of Europe overpopulation once led to
brigandage, but they are now largely relieved by emigration. This
involves a steady flood of paupers to America, in addition to those
spawned by native animalism. That evil may be checked when in welcoming
the sound world, we shall quarantine the unsound world,—the diseased,
the criminal, the ignorant. An immigrant without a dollar may be more
safely admitted than one who cannot write his name.
We have a right to evolutionary legislation. We should prevent the
congestion of our cities with paupers while millions of our fields are
waiting to be tilled. New York will not be comforted, weeping for her
children because they are not counted in the census. Rather should she
weep for a multitude of those that are counted,—immigrants from its
own slums as well as from the slums of Europe. Evolutionary legislation
would prevent early marriage, and forbid marriage where there is
no means of supporting offspring. Such unions are just as illicit
as if there were no ceremony at all, and the children more cruelly
illegitimate.
Until there is a high moral standard which shall restrain such cruelty
to the unborn, Pauperism, prolific parent of both vices and crimes, can
only be mitigated by a development of communal life. A hundred people,
dining at a common table, can get the same dinner for ten cents each,
that, separately would cost each twenty-five cents. That is, so far as
food is concerned, communal life more than doubles every man's wages.
There is no more reason why a poor family should support a kitchen of
its own than that it should support a carriage of its own, instead of
going in the omnibus. Gentlemen in their clubs get the advantage of
wholesale prices, while the poor do not. The principle of combination
is more largely applicable to lodgings also than is now the case. It
costs far less to procure and keep clean one large tenement than a
number of separate houses, to say nothing of the humanising influence,
on manners and morals, of communal interests, and the social spirit
so engendered. The home brute would be checked, the drunkard sobered,
by amenability to the larger social censorship, and to a standard of
communal conduct. When the working people have learned to utilise in
normal life such combination as they occasionally use for strikes,
they will find their means increasing enough even to strike, when
necessary, with less recoil on themselves. They will also find that
where institutions of that kind once take root, endowments and bequests
seek them out, and make them centres of happiness and culture.
Political and social evolution must not be confused with natural
selection: it is human selection. Some years ago a cotton-planter in
Georgia observed that the leaves on one of his plants was unlike the
usual leaf; it was divided as if into fingers. So far nature had gone.
The planter added his intelligence. He concluded that such a divided
leaf would let in more sunshine on the cotton. Also such a leaf would
not be comfortable for caterpillars. So he searched out one or two
of these peculiar plants, transplanted them to a field by themselves;
as they propagated, he plucked up those with the old leaf, cultivated
those with the new,—and now these new cotton plants, finer than the
old, free from caterpillars, are spread through many regions. That
is human selection, based on natural selection, securing the fruits
of evolution. It is just as applicable to man as to vegetation. A
better man may be bred as well as a better kind of cotton. Already
many old forms of crime have been largely bred out of society, by
the substitution of imprisonment for thefts instead of the capital
punishments which juries refused to inflict. Crime being largely
hereditary, the offenders used to get free, and multiplied their bad
species. But when punishments were assigned which juries were ready
to inflict, the criminals were isolated for years, or transported,
and their race diminished. The crime that now flourishes most is
murder; because its death penalty survives. It was recently shown in
Parliament that about three fourths of English murderers escape, mainly
through aversion of juries, and merciful people, to inflict a savage
and irrevocable penalty. Were capital punishment abolished the three
fourths would be isolated for life. They would be kindly treated, but
must have no offspring. No such survival of autocracy as a pardoning
power could exist; no individual would be able to alter decrees of
courts and juries. Instead of aiming at the murderer evolution aims
at the murder. It will secure a survival of the peaceful, and breed
ferocity out of man as it has bred the wolf out of dogs.
But that implies breeding the wolf out of our law. The eye for eye,
blood for blood, spirit is wolfish. So is the whole revolutionary
spirit, whether shown in armed violence, or in arbitrary laws. It can
be acted upon, controlled, shamed out of society, only by pure moral
and intellectual forces. There is no greater power than instructed
thought, animated by love to man, enforced by honor and character.
There is as yet no civilised nation; civilisation exists in oases,
which gradually encroach on the deserts. They have largely encroached
on some of these already, but civilisation can only extend as it is
real. The European nations are slicing up Africa among them. This we
are told is Christian civilisation: they are taking their neighbor's
property only because they love him like themselves. What is the
civilisation going out there? You can see it in the dens of European
cities. The Africans have got to be dragged through all that. What
kind of religion will go there? A Bible recording divinely ordered
massacres will be put in every savage hand. Stanley says that when in
sore trouble, in the African forest, he made a vow that if God would
only help him, he would acknowledge his aid among men. His troubles
began to clear next day. God was indifferent, it seems, so long as
man and beast were suffering, but when this great temptation was held
out to Jehovah—this promise of distinguished patronage—he at once
interfered. There is nothing new about that God. In the Bible, his
providence is always purchasable by glory. There are thousands of such
gods in Africa. But Europeans are going there as representatives of
civilisation, and will say to them in the name of German and English
Science, in the name of Berlin, Oxford, and Cambridge,—"These be thy
gods, O Africa! Only agree to call their name Jehovah, who helped
Jephtha, when he vowed a sacrifice which proved to be his daughter, and
who helped Stanley on condition that the service would be reported in
the press."