Of that treach'rous, bloody tale,
Or the grief, and the rage, and the wrong,
Shall enforce atonement due,
On some Danish Waterloo,
To be chanted by our countrymen in song,
'I will keep my love and truth
For the Denmark of my youth,
Nor clasp hands with her enemies alive;
Ay, I'd train this very gun
On that British prince and son,
Who comes _here_, in his arrogance, to wive.
'When I gave my good right arm,
And my blood was spouting warm
O'er my dying brother's face, as we lay,
I played a better part,
I bore a prouder heart,
Than the proudest in that pageant bears to-day.
* * * * *
'--There floats the Royal Bride,
On that unreturning tide;--
By the blood of all the sea-kings of yore,
'Twere better for her fame,
That Denmark sunk her shame
Where the maelstrom might drown it in his roar!'
* * * * *
There was silence for a space,
As they gazed upon his face,
Dark with grief, and with passion overwrought;
When out spoke a foreign tongue,
That gunner-group among:
'Neow old Jarl ses the thing he hed'nt ought.
'This idee of keeping mad
Half a cent'ry, is too bad;
'Tis onchristian, and poor policy beside;
For they say that the young man
Has the 'brass to buy the pan,'
And _her_ folks are putty sure that he'll _provide_.'
* * * * *
The old seaman's scornful eye
Glanced mute, but stern reply,
And the Yankee vowed and swore to me, the bard,
That old Jarl, that very night,
By the northern moon's cold light,
Talked with Hamlet's father's ghost in the back yard.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.
There are two opposite standpoints from which American civilization will
be regarded both by the present and future generations; opposite both in
respect to the views they give of American society and the judgment to
be formed thereon: so opposing, in fact, that they must ever give rise
to conflicting opinions, which can only be reconciled in individual
instances by the actual occurrence of great events, and never when
dealing with generalities. These two far distant points of view are the
foreign and the native. We are, more perhaps than any other nation in
existence, a peculiar people. Our institutions are new and in most
respects original, and cannot be judged by the experience of other
nations. Our manner of life and modes of thought--all our ideas of
individual and national progress, are _sui generis_, and our experience,
both social and political, as based upon those ideas, has been similar
to that of no other race which history records. Hence to the foreign
historian or philosopher our inner life is a sealed book; he can neither
understand the hidden springs of action which govern all the movements
of our body politic, nor appreciate the motives or the aspirations of
the American mind: in a word, he can never be imbued with the _spirit_
of our intellectual and moral life, which alone can give the key-note to
prophecy, the pitch and tone to true and impartial history. And he who,
reasoning from the few _à priori_ truths of human nature, or from those
characteristics which the American mind possesses in common with that of
the Old World, shall pretend to treat of our systems and our
intellectual life, or to map out our future destiny, will be as much at
fault as the historian of a thousand years ago who should attempt to
portray the events of this our day and generation. The historian of
American civilization must not only be among us, but _of_ us--one who is
able not only to identify his material interests with those of the great
American people, but also to partake of our moral habitudes, to be
actuated by the same feelings, desires, aspirations, and be governed by
the same motives. By such an one alone, who is able to understand our
moral life in all its phases and bearings, can a clear and truthful view
be taken of the great events which are continually agitating our
society, and their bearings upon our present and future civilization be
correctly estimated.
It is precisely from lack of this sympathy and of appreciation of the
difficulties under which we have labored, that America has suffered in
the opinion of the world. For the foreign view, looking upon us not as a
new people, but as the offshoot of an old and cultivated race, has
conceded to us little more than a certain mechanical ingenuity in
fitting together the parts of an edifice built upon a foundation already
laid for us away back in the ages--a carrying out of plans already
perfected for us, and requiring little of originality for their
development; forgetting that oftentimes the laying of the foundation is
the easiest part of the work, while the erection and embellishment of
the superstructure has taxed the efforts of the loftiest genius. In so
far as regards the development of the national mind, the strengthening
of the originating and energetic faculties, and the capability of
profound and well directed thought arising therefrom, we are, as a race,
deeply indebted to our progenitors of the Old World, and we have reaped
therefrom a great advantage over other nationalities in their inception.
But aside from these benefits, the cultivation of the race before the
settlement of our country has been rather a hamper upon our progress.
For here was to be inaugurated a new civilization, upon a different
basis from and entirely incompatible with that of the Old World; here
was to be established an idea antagonistic to those of the preexisting
world, and evolving a new and more progressive social life, which needed
not only a new sphere and new material, but also entire freedom from the
restraints of the old-time civilization. And it is harder to unlearn an
old lesson than to learn a new. The institutions and modes of thought of
the Old World are to the last degree unfavorable to the progress of such
a nationality as ours. Their tendency being toward the aggrandizement of
the few and the centralization of power, renders them wholly
incompatible with that freedom of thought and action, that opening up of
large fields of exertion as well as of the road to distinction and
eminence, with all their incentives to effort, which are the very life
of a majestic republic stretching over a large portion of the earth's
surface, embracing such mixed nationalities, and founded upon principles
of progress both in its physical and mental relations which have
rendered it in very truth a new experiment among the nations. We had
first to forget the divine right of kings, and the invidious
distinctions of class, with all their deep-seated and time-honored
prejudices, and to start forward in a different and hitherto despised
path toward which the iron hand of our necessity pointed, and in which
all men should be considered equal in their rights, and the position of
each should depend, not upon the distance to which he could trace a
proud genealogy, but upon the energy with which he should grapple with
the stern realities of life, the honesty and uprightness with which he
should tread its path, and the use he should make of the blessings which
God and his own exertions bestowed upon him. We had to learn the great
but simple lesson that
'The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the man for a' that;'
and in so doing, to accept, for a time, the position of the Pariahs of
Christendom, through the imputation of degrading all things high and
noble to the rank of the low and vulgar, of casting the pearls of a
lofty and ennobled class before the swinish multitude, of throwing open
the doors of the treasury, that creatures of low, plebeian blood might
grasp the crown jewels which had for ages been kept sacred to the
patrician few; in a word, we had to take upon ourselves all the odium of
a despised democracy--a moral agrarianism which should make common
property of all blessings and privileges, and mingle together all
things, pure and impure, in one common hotch-potch of corruption and
degradation. Greater heresy than all this was not then known, and the
philosopher of to-day has little conception of the sacrifice required of
those who would at that time accept such a position.
Another and not less important lesson which our ancestors had to learn
was, that national prosperity which depends upon the learning and
refinement or energy of a certain privileged class, can never be
otherwise than ephemeral; that the common people--the low plebeians,
whom they had been taught to consider of the least importance in the
state, are in reality the strength of the land; and that in the
amelioration of their condition, in the education and mental training of
the masses, while at the same time placing before them the highest
incentives to individual exertion, lies the only sure basis of an
enduring prosperity--that the only healthful national growth is that
which is made up of the individual strivings of the great mass rather
than the self-interested movements of the few; and as a consequence of
this truth, that the privileged minority is really the least important
of the two classes in any community. In the infancy of government, when
a rude and unlettered people are little able to take care of
themselves, the establishment of class distinctions is undoubtedly
conducive to progress, as it tends to unite the people, thereby
counteracting the thousand petty jealousies and strifes and bickerings
which invariably beset an infant people, and to organize and systematize
all progressive effort. It is, in fact, a putting of the people to
school under such wholesome restraints as shall compel them forward
while guarding them against those evil influences which militate against
their prosperity. But in the course of events the time comes when these
restraints are no longer necessary, but rather become hampers upon the
wheels of progress; and when that period arrives, all these invidious
distinctions should, in a well-regulated state, gradually disappear and
give place to that freedom which is essential to individual advancement
as the basis of national power. Trained as our ancestors had been to
consider these distinctions divinely appointed, it was no easy task for
them to abrogate so aged and apparently sacred a system, and nothing but
the material evidence before their eyes in the experience of their own
society, convincing them that such a course was an actual necessity of
their future well-being, could have induced them so to depart from the
teachings of their progenitors. Nor was it less difficult to determine
how far these safeguards of the olden time might safely be dispensed
with, or where or how deeply the knife should be applied which, in the
fallibility of human judgment, might possibly cut away some main root of
their social organization. Here was required the exercise of the
profoundest wisdom and the most careful discretion--wisdom unassisted by
any experience in the past history of the world other than that of the
utter failure of all past experiments in any way similar to their own.
To us of to-day, viewed in the light of intervening experience and of
the increased knowledge of human affairs, this may seem a little thing;
but to them it was not so, for the path was new and untried, and they
were surrounded by the thickest of darkness. Thus it will be seen that
in the founding of our system there were great difficulties, which only
the loftiest aims and the utmost firmness and determination in the cause
of the good and the true, with the liveliest sense of the necessities
and the yearnings of human nature, and the true end of all human
existence, could have overcome,--difficulties which, with all the
cultivation of their past, rendered their task not less arduous than
that of the founders of any community recorded in history even among the
rudest and most savage of peoples. And for all their energy and
perseverance the world has not yet given them the credit which is their
due, although the yearly developing results of their labors are
gradually restoring them to their proper position in the appreciation of
humanity. And the time will come when their memory will be cherished all
over the earth as that of the greatest benefactors of the human kind. As
the Alpine glacier year after year heaves out to its surface the bodies
of those who many decades ago were buried beneath the everlasting snows,
so time in its revolutions heaves up to the view of the world, one by
one, the great facts of the buried past, to be carefully laid away in
the graveyard of memory, with a towering monument above them to mark to
all succeeding ages the spot where they have wrought in the interest of
humanity.
Another evil effect of this same foreign view is to lead the world to
expect of us, the descendants of an old and polished civilization, more
than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the
capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises
from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every
side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent
knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human
advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but
little wonder that, excited by our past successes, and stimulated to an
inordinate degree as their ideas of progress have become through the new
truths which our efforts have brought to light, the friends of human
freedom all over the world should expect from us more astonishing
developments, more rapid progress, than is compatible with the frailties
and fallibilities of our humanity. Hence in the light of this morbid
view our greatest successes are looked upon as somewhat below the
standard which our advantages demand.
With the foreign view we, as a nation, have nothing to do. We must be
content to act entirely independently of the opinions of the outside
world, being only careful steadfastly to pursue the path of right,
leaving to future ages to vindicate our ideas and our motives. So only
can we possess that true national independence which is the foundation
of all national dignity and worth, and the source of all progress. We
must free ourselves from all the hampering influences of old-time dogmas
and worn-out theories of social life, content to submit to the
aspersions of Old-World malice, confident that time will prove the
correctness of our policy. So only can we throw wide open the doors of
investigation, and give free scope to those truths which will not fail
to follow the earnest strivings of a great people for the purest right
and the highest good.
In estimating any civilization at its true value, the law of God is
obviously the highest standard. Yet in these days of divided opinion and
extended scepticism, when scarcely any two hold exactly the same
religious views, and when all manner of beliefs are professedly founded
on Holy Writ, such a comparison would only result in as many different
estimates as there are reflecting minds, and the investigation would be
in no degree advanced. Even the moral sense of our own community is so
divided upon the distinctions of abstract right, that the application of
such a standard to our civilization would only open endless fields of
useless because interested and bigoted discussions.
There are two other and more feasible methods of conducting such an
investigation; the first of which is that of comparing our own
civilization with that of Europe; marking the differences, and judging
of them according to our knowledge of human nature and the light of past
experience and analogy. Yet such a course presents the serious objection
of preventing an impartial judgment through the strong temptation to
self-laudation, which is in itself the blinding of reason as well as the
counteraction of all aspirations for a still higher good.
The third and last method is that which takes cognizance of the most
obvious and deeply felt evils connected with our own system, and
reasoning from universally conceded principles of abstract right, and
from the highest moral standard of our own society, to study how they
may best be remedied and errors most successfully combated. From such a
course of investigation truth cannot fail to be evolved, and the moral
appreciation of the thinker to be heightened. For such a method presents
less danger of partiality from local prejudices, religious bias, or
national antipathy. And such is the method which we shall endeavor to
pursue.
Judging from mankind's sense of right, of justice, and of that moral
nobility which each individual's spiritual worthiness seems to demand, a
pure democracy is the highest and most perfect form of government. But
such a system presupposes a _perfect_ humanity as its basis, a humanity
which no portion of the earth has yet attained or is likely to attain
for many ages to come. Hence the vices as well as the weaknesses of
human nature render certain restraints necessary, which are more or
less severe according as the nation is advanced in moral excellence and
intellectual cultivation, and which must gradually disappear as the race
progresses, giving place to others newer and more appropriate to the
changing times and conditions of men. Under this view that progress in
the science of government is alone healthy which keeps exact pace with
the moral progress of the nation, and tends toward a pure democracy in
exactly the degree in which the people become fitted to appreciate, to
rationally enjoy, and faithfully guard the blessings of perfect liberty.
Too rapid progress leads to political anarchy by stimulating, to a
degree unsustained by their acquirements and natural ability, the
aspirations of the ambitious and the reckless, thereby begetting and
nationalizing a spirit of lawlessness which grasps continually at
unmerited honors, and strives to make all other and higher
considerations bend to that of individual advancement and personal
vanity. The truth of this position is seen in the utter failure of all
attempted democratic systems in the past, which may be traced to this
too eager haste in the march of human freedom, ending invariably in the
blackest of despotism, as well as from the fact in our own history that
every era of unusual political corruption and reckless strife for
position and power, has followed close upon the moral abrogation of some
one of those safeguards which the wisdom of our fathers threw around our
political system.
On the other hand, advancement which does not keep pace with the
expansion of thought, the intellectual development, and consequent
capacity of the people for self-government, not only offers no
encouragement to effort, but actually discourages all striving, and
blunts the appetites of the searchers for truth. It fossilizes the
people, retards the march of intellect by its reactionary force, and
rolls backward the wheels of all progress, till the nation becomes a
community of dull, contented plodders, fixed in the ruts of a bygone
age, suffering all its energy and life to rust away, day by day, in
inaction. Such we find to be the case with those nations of the Old
World which are still ruled by the effete systems of a feudal age. The
governmental policy and the intellectual status of the masses mutually
react upon each other, effectually neutralizing all progress, whether
moral or physical.
For these reasons that nicely graduated mean between political
recklessness and national old fogyism, which alone guarantees an
enduring progress, is the object of search to all disinterested
political reformers. For only by following such a golden mean, in which
political reform shall keep even pace with intellectual and moral
advancement, can physical and mental progress be made mutually to
sustain each other in the onward march. Yet this mean is extremely
difficult to find, for though we be guided by all the experience of the
past, and earnestly and sincerely endeavor to profit by the failures as
well as the successes of those who have gone before us, the paths of
experiment are so infinite and the combinations of method so boundless,
that the wisest may easily be led astray. Hence the failures of the
republics of the past, however pure the motives and lofty the aims of
their founders, may be attributed to a leaning to one side or the other
of this strait and narrow way, which lies so closely concealed amid the
myriad ramifications of the paths of method. The slightest divergence,
if it be not corrected, like the infinitesimal divergence of two
straight lines, goes on increasing to all time, till that which was at
first imperceptible, becomes at last a boundless ocean of intervening
space, which no human effort can bridge.