under Garibaldi, had every reason to cry out for freedom. If they had
remained merely whimpering under the Bourbon and Austrian whips, they
would have deserved to be spurned by all who bear the hearts of men.
They were denied the meanest privileges of humanity; they lived in a
fashion which was rather like the violent, oppressed, hideous existence
which men imagine in evil dreams, and at length they struck, and
declared for liberty or annihilation. Perhaps they did not gain much in
the way of immediate material good, but that only makes their splendid
movement the more admirable. They fought for a magnificent idea, and
even now, though the populace have to bear a taxation three times as
great as any known before in their history, the ordinary Italian will
say, "Yes, signor--the taxes are very heavy; we toil very hard and pay
much money; but who counts money? We are a nation now--a real nation;
Italy is united and free." That is the gist of the matter. The people
were bitterly ground down, and they are content to suffer privation in
the present so long as they can ensure freedom from alien rule in the
future. Nothing that the most hardly-entreated Briton suffers in any
circumstances could equal the agonies of degradation borne by the people
of the Peninsula, and their emancipation was hailed as if it had been a
personal benefaction by all that was wisest and best in European
society. The millions who turned out to welcome Garibaldi as if he had
been an adored sovereign all had a true appreciation of real liberty;
the masses were right in their instinct, and it was left for hysterical
"thinkers" to shriek their deluded ideas in these later days.
"But surely the Irish rose for freedom in 1641?" I can almost imagine
some clever correspondent asking me that question with a view to taking
me in a neat trap. It is true enough that the Irish rose; but here again
we must learn to discriminate between cases. How did the wild folk rise?
Did they go out like the Thousand of Marsala and pit themselves against
odds of five and six to one? Did they show any chivalry? Alas for the
wicked story! The rebels behaved like cruel wild beasts; they were worse
than polecats in an aviary, and they met with about the same resistance
as the polecats would meet. They stripped the Ulster farmers and their
families naked, and sent them out in the bitter weather; they hung on
the skirts of the agonized crowd; the men cut down the refugees
wholesale, and even the little boys of the insurgent party were taught
to torture and kill the unhappy children of the flying farmers. Poor
little infants fell in the rear of the doomed host, but no mother was
allowed to succour her dying offspring, and the innocents expired in
unimaginable suffering. The stripped fugitives crowded into Dublin, and
there the plague carried them off wholesale. The rebels had gained
liberty with a vengeance, and they had their way for ten years and more.
Their liberty was degraded by savagery; they ruled Ireland at their own
sweet will; they dwelt in anarchy until the burden of their iniquity
grew too grievous for the earth to bear. Then their villainous freedom
was suddenly ended by no less a person than Oliver Cromwell, and the
curses, the murders, the unspeakable vileness of ten bad years all were
atoned for in wild wrath and ruin. Now is it not marvellous that, while
the murderers were free, they were poverty-stricken and most wretched?
As soon as Cromwell's voice had ceased to pronounce the doom on the
unworthy, the great man began his work of regeneration; and under his
iron hand the country which had been miserable in freedom became
prosperous, happy, and contented. There is no mistaking the facts, for
men of all parties swore that the six years which followed the storm of
Drogheda were the best in all Ireland's history. Had Cromwell only lived
longer, or had there been a man fit to follow him, then England and
Ireland would be happier this day.
In our social life the same conditions hold for the individual as hold
for nations in the assembly of the world's peoples. Freedom--true
freedom--means liberty to live a beneficent and innocent life. As soon
as an individual chooses to set up as a law to himself, then we have a
right--nay, it is our bounden duty--to examine his pretensions. If the
sense of the wisest in our community declares him unfit to issue dicta
for the guidance of men, then we must promptly suppress him; if we do
not, our misfortunes are on our own heads. The "independent" man may cry
out about liberty and the rest as much as he likes, but we cannot afford
to heed him. We simply say, "You foolish person, liberty, as you are
pleased to call it, would be poison to you. The best medicines for your
uneasy mind are reproof and restraint; if those fail to act on you, then
we must try what the lash will do for you."
Let us have liberty for the wise and the good--we know them well enough
when we see them; and no sophist dare in his heart declare that any
charlatan ever mastered men permanently. Liberty for the wise and
good--yes, and wholesome discipline for the foolish and
froward--sagacious guidance for all. Of course, if a man or a community
is unable to choose a guide of the right sort, then that man or
community is doomed, and we need say no more of either. I keep warily
out of the muddy conflict of politics; but I will say that the cries of
certain apostles of liberty seem woful and foolish. Unhappy shriekers,
whither do they fancy they are bound? Is it to some Land of Beulah,
where they may gambol unrestrained on pleasant hills? The shriekers are
all wrong, and the best friend of theirs, the best friend of humanity,
is he who will teach them--sternly if need be--that liberty and license
are two widely different things.
_August, 1888._
_EQUALITY_.
One of the strangest shocks which the British traveller can experience
occurs to him when he makes his first acquaintance with the American
servant--especially the male servant. The quiet domineering European is
stung out of his impassivity by a sort of moral stab which disturbs
every faculty, unless he is absolutely stunned and left gasping. In
England, the quiet club servant waits with dignity and reserve, but he
is obedient to the last degree, and his civility reaches the point of
absolute polish. When he performs a service his air is impassive, but if
he is addressed his face assumes a quietly good-humoured expression, and
he contrives to make his temporary employer feel as though it was a
pleasure to attend upon him. All over our country we find that
politeness between employer and servant is mutual. Here and there we
find a well-dressed ruffian who thinks he is doing a clever thing when
he bullies a servant; but a gentleman is always considerate, quiet,
respectful; and he expects consideration, quietness, and respect from
those who wait upon him. The light-footed, cheerful young women who
serve in hotels and private houses are nearly always charmingly kind and
obliging without ever descending to familiarity; in fact, I believe
that, if England be taken all round, it will be found that female
post-office clerks are the only servants who are positively offensive.
They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt
post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert
themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the
queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms are almost equal
to the post-office damsels; but both classes are growing more
good-natured--thanks to Charles Dickens, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. _Punch_.
But the American servant exhibits no such weakness as civility; he is
resolved to let you know that you are in the country of equality, and,
in order to do that effectually, he treats you as a grovelling inferior.
You ask a civil question, and he flings his answer at you as he would
fling a bone at a dog. Every act of service which he performs comes most
ungraciously from him, and he usually contrives to let you plainly see
two things--first, he is ashamed of his position; secondly, he means to
take a sort of indirect revenge on you in order to salve his lacerated
dignity. A young English peer happened to ask a Chicago servant to clean
a pair of boots, and his tone of command was rather pronounced and
definite. That young patrician began to doubt his own identity when he
was thus addressed--"Ketch on and do them yourself!" There was no
redress, no possible remedy, and finally our compatriot humbled himself
to a negro, and paid an exorbitant price for his polish.
Here we have an absurdity quite fairly exposed. The young American
student who acts as a reporter or waiter during his college vacation is
nearly always a respectful gentleman who neither takes nor allows a
liberty; but the underbred boor, keen as he is about his gratuities,
will take even your gifts as though he were an Asiatic potentate, and
the traveller a passing slave whose tribute is condescendingly received.
In a word, the servant goes out of his way to prove that, in his own
idea, he is quite fit to be anybody's master. The Declaration of
Independence informs us that all men are born equal; the transatlantic
servant takes that with a certain reservation, for he implies that,
though men may be equal in a general way, yet, so far as he is
concerned, he prefers to reckon himself the superior of anybody with
whom business brings him into contact.
It was in America that I first began to meditate on the problem of
equality, and I have given it much thought at intervals during several
years. The great difficulty is to avoid repeating stale commonplaces on
the matter. The robust Briton bellows, "Equality! Divide up all the
property in the world equally among the inhabitants, and there would be
rich and poor, just as before, within a week!" The robust man thinks
that settles the whole matter at once. Then we have the stock story of
the three practical communists who forced themselves upon the society of
Baron Rothschild, and explained their views at some length. The Baron
said: "Gentlemen, I have made a little calculation, and I find that, if
I divided my property equally among my fellow-citizens, your share would
be one florin each. Oblige me by accepting that sum at once, and permit
me to wish you good-morning." This was very neat in its way, but I want
to talk just a little more seriously of a problem which concerns the
daily life of us all, and affects our mental health, our placidity, and
our self-respect very intimately. In the first place, we have to
consider the deplorable exhibitions made by poor humanity whenever
equality has been fairly insisted on in any community. The Frenchmen of
1792 thought that a great principle had been asserted when the President
of the Convention said to the king, "You may sit down, Louis." It seemed
fine to the gallery when the queenly Marie Antoinette was addressed as
the widow Capet; but what a poor business it was after all! The howling
familiarity of the mob never touched the real dignity of the royal
woman, and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant's
mean "independence." I cannot treat the subject at all without going
into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a
bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a
comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just
as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher.
If we accept the very first maxim of biology, and agree that no two
individuals of any living species are exactly alike, we have a
starting-point from which we can proceed to argue sensibly. We may pass
over the countless millions of inequalities which we observe in the
lower orders of living things: and there is no need to emphasize
distinctions which are plain to every child. When we come to speak of
the race of men we reach the only concern which has a passionate and
vital interest for us; even the amazing researches and conclusions of
the naturalists have no attraction for us unless they throw a light, no
matter how oblique, on our mysterious being and our mysterious fate. The
law which regulates the differentiation of species applies with
especial significance when we consider the birth of human individuals;
the law which ordains that out of countless millions of animalculae
which once shed their remains on the floor of the deep sea, or that now
swarm in any pond, there shall be no two alike, holds accurately for the
myriads of men who are born and pass away. The type is the same; there
are fixed resemblances, but exact similarity never. The struggle for
existence, no matter what direction it may take, always ends in the
singling out of individuals who, in some respect or other, are worthy to
survive, while the weak perish and the elements of their bodies go to
form new individuals. It soon becomes plain that the crazy cry for
equality is really only a weak protest against the hardships of the
battle for existence. The brutes have not attained to our complexity of
brain; ideas are only rudimentary with them, and they decide the
question of superiority by rude methods. Two lions fight until one is
laid low; the lioness looks calmly on until the little problem of
superiority is settled, and then she goes off with the victor. The
horses on the Pampas have their set battles until one has asserted his
mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly,
and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are
given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the
object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we
have that mysterious, immaterial ally of the body, and our struggles are
settled amid bewildering refinements and subtleties and restrictions. In
one quarter, power of the soul gives its possessor dominion; in another,
only the force of the body is of any avail. If we observe the struggles
of savages, we see that the idea of equality never occurs to
half-developed men; the chief is the strong man, and his authority can
be maintained only by strength or by the influence that strength gives.
As the brute dies out of man, the conditions of life's warfare become so
complex that no one living could frame a generalization without finding
himself at once faced by a million of exceptions that seem to negative
his rule. Who was the most powerful man in England in Queen Anne's day?
Marlborough was an unmatched fighter; Bolingbroke was an imaginative and
masterful statesman; there were thousands of able and strong warriors;
but the one who was the most respected and feared was that tiny cripple
whose life was a long disease. Alexander Pope was as frail a creature as
ever managed to support existence; he rarely had a moment free from
pain; he was so crooked and aborted that a good-hearted woman like Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu was surprised into a sudden fit of laughter when he
proposed marriage to her. Yet how he was feared! The only one who could
match him was that raging giant who wrote "Gulliver," and the two men
wielded an essential power greater than that of the First Minister. The
terrible Atossa, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, shrank from contact with
Pope, while for a long time the ablest men of the political sets
approached Swift like lackeys. One power was made manifest by the
waspish verse-maker and the powerful satirist, and each was acknowledged
as a sort of monarch.
It would be like playing at paradoxes if I went on to adduce many
mysteries and contradictions that strike us when we consider man's
dominion over man. We can only come to the same conclusion if we bring
forward a million of instances; we can only see that the whole human
race, individual by individual, are separated one from the other by
differences more or less minute, and wherever two human beings are
placed together one must inevitably begin to assert mastery over the
other. The method of self-assertion may be that of the athlete, or that
of the intriguer, or that of the clear-sighted over the purblind, or
that of the subtle over the simple; it matters not, the effort for
mastery may be made either roughly or gently, or subtly, or even
clownishly, but made it will be.
Would it not be better to cease babbling of equality altogether, and to
try to accept the laws of life with some submission? The mistake of
rabid theorists lies in their supposition that the assertion of
superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas
it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes
the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who
is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness
because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the
law. Yes--but how was the recognition of equality enforced? Simply by
the power of the strong. No monarch in the world would venture to deal
out such measure to our rude servitor as was dealt by Clovis to one of
his men. The king regarded himself as being affronted by his soldier,
and he wiped out the affront to his own satisfaction by splitting his
follower's head in twain. But the civilized man is secured by a bulwark
of legality built up by strong hands, and manned, like the great Roman
walls, by powerful legionaries of the law. In this law of England, if a
peer and a peasant fight out a cause the peer has the advantage of the
strength given by accumulated wealth--that is one example of our
multifarious complexities; but the judge is stronger than either
litigant, and it is the inequality personified by the judge that makes
the safety of the peasant. In our ordered state, the strong have forced
themselves into positions of power; they have decided that the
coarseness of brutish conflict is not to be permitted, and one ruling
agency is established which rests on force, and force alone, but which
uses or permits the use of force only in cases of extremity. We know
that the foundation of all law is martial law, or pure force; we know
that when a judge says, "You shall be hanged," the convict feels
resistance useless, for behind the ushers and warders and turnkeys there
are the steel and bullet of the soldier. Thus it appears that even in
the sanctuary of equality--in the law court--the life and efficiency of
the place depend on the assertion of one superior strength--that is, on
the assertion of inequality.
If we choose to address each other as "Citizen," or play any fooleries
of that kind, we make no difference. Citizen Jourdain may go out
equipped in complete _carmagnole_, and he may refuse to doff his red cap
to any dignitary breathing; but all the while Citizen Barras is wielding
the real power, and Citizen Buonaparte is awaiting his turn in the
background. All the swagger of equality will avail nothing when Citizen
Buonaparte gets his chance; and the very men who talked loudest about
the reign of equality are the most ready to bow down and worship the
strong. Instead of ostentatiously proclaiming that one man is as good
as another--and better, we should devote ourselves to finding out who
are our real superiors. When the true man is found he will not stand
upon petty forms; and no one will demand such punctilios of him. He will
treat his brethren as beings to be aided and directed, he will use his
strength and his wisdom as gifts for which he must render an account,
and the trivialities of etiquette will count as nothing. When the street
orator yells, "Who is our ruler? Is he not flesh and blood like us? Are
not many of us above him?" he may possibly be stating truth. It would
have been hard to find any street-lounger more despicable than Bomba or
more foolish than poor Louis XVI; but the method of oratory is purely
destructive, and it will be much more to the purpose if the street
firebrand gives his audience some definite ideas as to the man who ought
to be chosen as leader. If we have the faculty for recognizing our best
man, all chatter about equalities and inequalities must soon drop into
silence. When the ragged Suwarrow went about among his men and talked
bluffly with the raw recruits, there was no question of equality in any
squad, for the tattered, begrimed man had approved himself the wisest,
most audacious, and most king-like of all the host; and he could afford
to despise appearances. No soldier ventured to think of taking a
liberty; every man reverenced the rough leader who could think and plan
and dare. Frederick wandered among the camp-fires at night, and sat down
with one group after another of his men. He never dreamed of equality,
nor did the rude soldiers. The king was greatest; the men were his
comrades, and all were bound to serve the Fatherland--the sovereign by
offering sage guidance, the men by following to the death. No company of
men ever yet did worthy work in the world when the notion of equality
was tried in practice; and no kind of effort, for evil or for good, ever
came to anything so long as those who tried did not recognize the rule
of the strongest or wisest. Even the scoundrel buccaneers of the Spanish
Main could not carry on their fiendish trade without sinking the notion
of equality, and the simple Quakers, the Society of Friends, with all
their straitened ideas, have been constantly compelled to recognize one
head of their body, even though they gave him no distinctive title. Our
business is to see that every man has his due as far as possible, and
not more than his due. The superior must perceive what is the degree of
deference which must be rendered to the inferior; the inferior must put
away envy and covetousness, and must learn to bestow, without servility,
reverence and obedience where reverence and obedience may be rightfully
offered.
_August, 1888._
_FRATERNITY_.
So far as we can see it appears plain that the wish for brotherhood was
on the whole reasonable, and its fulfilment easier than the wild desire
for liberty and equality. No doubt Omar and Cromwell and Hoche and
Dumouriez have chosen in their respective times an odd mode of spreading
the blessings of fraternity. It is a little harsh to say to a man, "Be
my brother or I will cut your head off;" but we fear that men of the
stamp of Mahomet, Cromwell, and the French Jacobins were given to
offering a choice of the alternatives named. Perhaps we may be safe if
we take the roughness of the mere proselytizers as an evidence of
defective education; they had a dim perception of a beautiful principle,
but they knew of no instrument with which they could carry conviction
save the sword. We, with our better light, can well understand that
brotherhood should be fostered among men; we are all children of one
Father, and it is fitting that we should reverently acknowledge the
universal family tie. The Founder of our religion was the earliest
preacher of the divine gospel of pity, and it is to Him that we owe the
loveliest and purest conception of brotherhood. He claimed to be the
Brother of us all; He showed how we should treat our brethren, and He
carried His teaching on to the very close of His life.