maintain, to render great attainments and great excellence impossible
or rare, to make literary men slovenly and inaccurate and tasteless,
artists mediocre, professors of science dull and unenterprising, and
statesmen conscienceless and ignorant, it would threaten civilization
with such danger that no friend of progress could wish to see it.
But it is difficult to discover on what it is, either in history or
human nature, that this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville
and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive
to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the
patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is
generally content with mediocrity. But where is the proof of this?
The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most
powerful in its operation in all civilized countries, is the desire
of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or
love of wealth, or of both. In literary and artistic and scientific
pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the
subject. But it may be safely said that no man has ever yet labored
in any of the higher callings to whom the applause and appreciation
of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions.
There is probably not a masterpiece in existence, either in literature
or in art, probably few discoveries in science have ever been made,
which we do not owe in a large measure to the love of distinction. Who
paints pictures, or has ever painted them, that they may delight no
eye but his own? Who writes books for the mere pleasure of seeing his
thoughts on paper? Who discovers or invents, and is willing, provided
the world is the better of his discoveries or inventions, that another
should enjoy the honor? Fame has, in short, been in all ages and in all
countries recognized as one of the strongest springs of human action--
“The spur that doth the clear spirit raise
To scorn delight and live laborious days,--”
sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and even death itself of
their terrors.
What is there, we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions,
that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should
deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep? Is it not
notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities
of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is
the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which
possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the
law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke
become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows?
The secret of that great restlessness, which is one of the most
disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in
fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which
in aristocratic countries only the few have much chance. And in no
other society is success more worshipped, is distinction of any kind
more widely flattered and caressed. Where is the successful author, or
artist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage than in France
or America? And yet in both the principle of equality reigns supreme;
and his advancement in the social scale has gone on _pari passu_ in
every country with the spread of democratic ideas and manners. Grub
Street was the author’s retreat in the aristocratic age; in this
democratic one, he is welcome at the King’s table, and sits at the
national council board. In democratic societies, in fact, excellence
is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones, there are two
or three others which are far stronger, and which must be stronger,
or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the
highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the
most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible. But to make
the thirst for distinction lose its power over the human heart, you
must do something more than establish equality of conditions; you must
recast human nature itself....
There are some, however, who, while acknowledging that the love of
distinction will retain its force under every form of social or
political organization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts,
science, or literature requires leisure, and the possession of
leisure implies the possession of fortune. This men in a democratic
society cannot have, because the absence of great hereditary wealth
is necessary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every man, or nearly
every man, must toil for a living; and therefore it becomes impossible
for him to gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever so
strongly. The attention he can give to literature or art or science
must be too desultory and hasty, his mental training too defective, to
allow him to work out valuable results or conduct important researches.
To achieve great things in these fields, it is said and insinuated,
men must be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above the vulgar,
petty cares of life; their material wants must be provided for before
they concentrate their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the
task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we must look for any
great advance in these pursuits.
The history of literature and art and philosophy is, however, very far
from lending confirmation to this opinion. If it teaches us anything,
it teaches us that the possession of leisure, far from having helped
men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to have impeded them. Those who
have pursued it most successfully are all but invariably those who
have pursued it under difficulties. The possession of great wealth no
doubt gives facilities for study and cultivation which the mass of
mankind do not possess; but it at the same time exerts an influence on
the character which, in a vast majority of cases, renders the owner
unwilling to avail himself of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy
the great fabric of Roman jurisprudence; but, since their time, what
has any aristocracy done for art and literature, or law? They have for
over a thousand years been in possession of nearly the whole resources
of every country in Europe. They have had its wealth, its libraries,
its archives, its teachers, at their disposal; and yet was there ever
a more pitiful record than the list of “Royal and Noble Authors.”
One can hardly help being astonished, too, at the smallness and
paltriness of the legacies which the aristocracy of the aristocratic
age has bequeathed to this democratic age which is succeeding it. It
has, indeed, handed down to us many glorious traditions, many noble
and inspiring examples of courage and fortitude and generosity. The
democratic world would certainly be worse off than it is if it never
heard of the Cid, or Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden,
or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which the lover of art
may be thankful, by which literature has been made richer, philosophy
more potent or more fruitful? The painting and sculpture of modern
Europe owe not only their glory, but their very existence, to the
labors of poor and obscure men. The great architectural monuments
by which its soil is covered were hardly any of them the product
of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If we except a few palaces
and a few fortresses, we owe nearly all of them to the labor or the
genius or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up in the
midst of feudalism. If we take away the sum total of the monuments of
Continental art all that was created by the Italian republics, the
commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and the communes of France,
and by the unaided efforts of the illustrious obscure, the remainder
would form a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say much the same
thing of every great work in literature, and every great discovery in
science. Few of them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly all
by those whose life was a long struggle to escape from the vulgarest
and most sordid cares. And what is perhaps most remarkable of all
is, that the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organizing
genius, the most impressive example of the power of combination and
of discipline which the world has ever seen, was built up and has
been maintained by the labors of men drawn from the humblest ranks of
society.
Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to the profession of
arms. If there was anything at which it might have seemed hopeless
for democracy to compete with it, it was in the raising, framing and
handling of armies. But the very first time that a democratic society
found itself compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas, it
displayed a force, an originality, a vigor and rapidity of conception,
in this, to it, new pursuit, which speedily laid Europe at its feet.
And the great master of the art of war, be it ever remembered, was born
in obscurity and bred in poverty.
Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted themselves to the art of
government, have they made any contributions worth mentioning to
political science. They have displayed, indeed, consummate skill
and tenacity in pursuing any line of policy on which they have once
deliberately fixed; but all the great political reforms have been,
though often carried into effect by aristocracies, conceived, agitated,
and forced on the acceptance of the government by the middle and lower
classes. The idea of equality before the law was originated in France
by literary men. In England, the slave-trade was abolished by the
labors of the middle classes. The measure met with the most vigorous
opposition in the House of Lords. The emancipation of the negroes,
Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially
the reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact, nearly every
change which has had for its object the increase of national happiness
and prosperity, has been conceived by men of low degree, and discussed
and forced on the upper classes by men busy about many other things.
We are, however, very far from believing that democratic society
has no dangers or defects. What we have been endeavoring to show
is that the inquiry into their nature and number has been greatly
impeded by the natural disposition of foreign observers to take the
United States as a fair specimen of what democracy is under the most
favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of unoccupied land at
our disposal, which raises every man in the community above want, by
affording a ready outlet for surplus population, is constantly spoken
of as a condition wholly favorable to the democratic experiment,--more
favorable than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In so far as it
contributes to the general happiness and comfort, it no doubt makes the
work of government easy; but what we think no political philosopher
ought to forget is that it also offers serious obstacles to the
settlement of a new society on a firm basis, and produces a certain
appearance of confusion and instability, both in manners and ideas,
which unfit it to furnish a basis for any inductions of much value as
to the tendencies to defects either of an equality of conditions or of
democratic institutions.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] From “Problems of Modern Democracy.” Copyright, 1896, by Charles
Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the publishers.
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY
The extremely romantic life of John Boyle O’Reilly began on June
28th, 1844, at Dowth Castle, near the town of Drogheda in Ireland.
His chivalrous nature and passionate love of country and of liberty
were stimulated by the traditions and beauty of the surroundings and
by the atmosphere of legend and story in which he was brought up by
his schoolmaster father and clever and gifted mother. As a young man
he was employed as a compositor in a printing office in Ireland and
later at Preston in Lancashire. In consequence of his connection with
the Fenian movement he was banished to Australia, whence he escaped
to America in 1869, settling in Boston, where his ability as poet,
journalist and orator was quickly recognized. Maurice Francis Egan
has said of him: “In the United States, after adventures by sea and
land, and tortures and suffering borne with a heroism that was both
Greek and Christian, he found the spirit of freedom in concrete form.
Our country satisfied his aspirations for liberty; he loved Ireland
not less, but America more; he was exiled from the land of his birth,
yet he found ample consolation in the country he had chosen.”
The life of the poet by James Jeffrey Roche, together with his
complete poems and speeches, edited by Mrs. O’Reilly, was published
by Cassell in 1891. A volume of selected poems was published by
Kenedy in 1913.
THE EXILE OF THE GAEL
“What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sons of the Gael?
What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail?”
“No treasure we bring from Erin--nor bring we shame nor guilt!
The sword we hold may be broken, but we have not dropped the hilt!
The wreath we bear to Columbia is twisted of thorns, not bays,
And the songs we sing are saddened by thoughts of desolate days.
But the hearts we bring for Freedom are washed in the surge of tears,
And we claim our right by a People’s fight outliving a thousand
years!”
“What bring ye else to the Building?”
“Oh, willing hands to toil;
Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;
Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field,--
The sons of a race of soldiers who never learned to yield.
Young hearts with duty brimming--as faith makes sweet the due;
Their truth to me their witness they cannot be false to you!”
“What send ye else, old Mother, to raise our mighty wall?
For we must build against Kings and Wrongs a fortress never to fall.”
“I send you in cradle and bosom, wise brain and eloquent tongue,
Whose crowns should engild my crowning, whose songs for me should be
sung.
Oh, flowers unblown, from lonely fields, my daughters with hearts
aglow,
With pulses warm with sympathies, with bosoms pure as snow,--
I smile through tears as the clouds unroll--my widening river that
runs!
My lost ones grown in radiant growth--proud mothers of free-born
sons.”
“It is well, aye, well, old Erin! The sons you give to me
Are symboled long in flag and song--your Sunburst on the Sea.
All mine by the chrism of Freedom, still yours by their love’s belief;
And truest to me shall the tenderest be in a suffering Mother’s grief.
Their loss is the change of the wave to the cloud, of the dew to the
river and main;
Their hope shall persist through the sea and the mist, and thy streams
shall be filled again.
As the smolt of the salmon go down to the sea, and as surely come back
to the river,
Their love shall be yours while your sorrow endures, for God guardeth
His right forever.”
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims’ leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower’s cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations’ gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers’ name.
More light has come,--more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath not told such a story,
Surpassing Plato’s dream, More’s phantasy, still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: _Liberty can be;_
_The State is freedom if the Town is free._
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds, and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People’s Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims’ Vision is accomplished here!
LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD[5]
Majestic warder by the nation’s gate,
Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory,
Holding the tablets of some unknown law,
With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,--
We stand about thy feet in solemn awe,
Like desert-tribes who seek their sphinx’s story,
And question thee in spirit and in speech;
What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach?
What vision hold those introverted eyes
Of revolutions framed in centuries?
Thy flame--what threat, or guide for sacred way?
Thy tablet--what commandment? What Sinai?
Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base,
We watch the somber grandeur of thy face,
And ask thee--what thou art.
I am Liberty--God’s daughter!
My symbols--a law and a torch;
Not a sword to threaten slaughter,
Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch;
But a light that the world may see
And a truth that shall make men free.
I am the sister of Duty,
And I am the sister of Faith;
To-day adored for my beauty,
To-morrow led forth to death.
I am she whom ages prayed for;
Heroes suffered undismayed for;
Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!
I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me:
Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be
won?
Freedom is more than a resolution--he is not free who is free alone.
Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the
circling sun;
Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when
night is done.
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the
rights are won;
Wrong shall die with the understanding--one truth clear and the work
is done.
Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety
enslaved for ten;
My word shall stand against mart and college; _The planet belongs to
its living men!_
And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a
kindly shore,
I am Liberty! patient, deathless--set by love at the nation’s door.
AMERICA[6]
O Land magnanimous, republican!
The last for Nationhood, the first for Man!
Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid,
Profound the sin to change or retrograde.
From base to cresting let thy work be new;
’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew.
To struggling peoples give at least applause;
Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws;
Like rays from that great Eye the altars show,
That fall triangular, free states should grow,
The soul above, the brain and hand below.
Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone;
That perils wait the land whose heavy throne,
Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show,
Is based on fettered misery below;
That nations grow where every class unites
For common interests and common rights;
Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son,
Till step by step the topmost height is won;
Where every hand subscribes to every rule,
And free as air are voice and vote and school!
A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art
Portray thy first, and Liberty will start
From every field in Europe at the sight.
“Why stand these thrones between us and the light?”
Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers
To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”
Oh, this thy work, Republic! this thy health,
To prove man’s birthright to a commonwealth;
To teach the peoples to be strong and wise,
Till armies, nations, nobles, royalties,
Are laid at rest with all their fears and hates;
Till Europe’s thirteen monarchies are states,
Without a barrier and without a throne,
Of one grand federation like our own!
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The poem is given in the abridged form in which it is printed in
the volume of O’Reilly’s selected poems, published by P. J. Kenedy &
Sons.
[6] This poem, which is here quoted in part only, was read at the
reunion of the Army of the Potomac, in Detroit, June 14, 1882, General
Grant being present on the occasion.
HANS MATTSON
Hans Mattson was the son of an independent freeholder and successful
farmer of the parish of Onnestad, near the city of Kristianstad,
Sweden. In an unpretending little cabin built by his father he spent
the first years of his happy and peaceful childhood. On one occasion
he was taken by his parents to see the king, who was to pass by on
the highway near his home. In the midst of the confusion he did
succeed in getting a glimpse of King Oscar I. In his childish mind he
had fancied that the king and his family and all others in authority
were the peculiar and elect people of the Almighty, but after this
event he began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of
his views on this matter.
After a year and a half in the Swedish army he decided to leave
the service and try his luck “in a country where inherited names
and titles were not the necessary conditions of success.” He says:
“At that time America was little known in our part of the country,
only a few persons having emigrated from the whole district. But we
knew that it was a new country, inhabited by a free and independent
people, that it had a liberal government and great natural resources,
and these inducements were sufficient for us.”
From the time of his arrival at Boston until his final settling in
Minnesota, his career is but typical of that of the many sturdy and
enterprising pioneers of Scandinavian origin who have contributed
so much to the building of the Northwest. He served as a colonel
in the Civil War, and in 1869 was elected as Secretary of State in
Minnesota. Later he was Consul General of the United States in India.
The selection that follows is taken from the final chapter of his
“Reminiscences,” the English translation of which was published in
1892.
SCANDINAVIAN CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN NATIONALITY
It is a great mistake which some make, to think that it is only for
their brawn and muscle that the Northmen have become a valuable
acquisition to the American population; on the contrary, they have
done, and are doing, as much as any other nationality within the domain
of mind and heart. Not to speak of the early discovery of America by
the Scandinavians four hundred years before the time of Columbus, they
can look back with proud satisfaction on the part they have taken in
all respects to make this great republic what it is to-day.
The early Swedish colonists in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey
worked as hard for liberty and independence as the English did in New
England and in the South. There were no tories among them, and when
the Continental Congress stood wavering equal in the balance for and
against the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, it was a
Swede, John Morton (Mortenson), of the old Delaware stock, who gave the
casting vote of Pennsylvania in favor of the sacred document.
When, nearly a century later, the great rebellion burst upon the land,
a gallant descendant of the Swedes, Gen. Robert Anderson, met its first
shock at Fort Sumter, and, during the bitter struggle of four years
which followed, the Scandinavian-Americans were as true and loyal to
their adopted country as their native-born neighbors, giving their
unanimous support to the cause of the Union and fighting valiantly for
it. Nor should it be forgotten that it was the Swede, John Ericsson,
who, by his inventive genius, saved the navy and the great seaports of
the United States, and that it was another Swede by descent, Admiral
Dahlgren, who furnished the model for the best guns of our artillery.
Surely love of freedom, valor, genius, patriotism and religious fervor
was not planted in America by the seeds brought over in the Mayflower
alone.
Yes, it is verily true that the Scandinavian immigrants, from the early
colonists of 1638 to the present time, have furnished strong hands,
clear heads and loyal hearts to the republic. They have caused the
wilderness to blossom like the rose; they have planted schools and
churches on the hills and in the valleys; they have honestly and ably
administered the public affairs of town, county and state; they have
helped to make wise laws for their respective commonwealths and in the
halls of Congress; they have, with honor and ability, represented their
adopted country abroad; they have sanctified the American soil by their
blood, shed in freedom’s cause on the battle-fields of the Revolution
and the Civil War; and, though proud of their Scandinavian ancestry,
they love America and American institutions as deeply and as truly
as do the descendants of the Pilgrims, the starry emblem of liberty
meaning as much to them as to any other citizen.