The late discussion on the possibility or expediency of maintaining
governments at the South which had no physical force at their
disposal has not failed to attract the attention of the friends of
woman suffrage. They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have
seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in
certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled
them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a
very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the
practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.,"
in a late number of the _Woman's Journal_, endeavors to show that
what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the
woman suffragists. His argument is in substance this: You (the
opponents) have always maintained as the great objection to the
admission of women to the franchise, that if women voted, cases
might arise in which the physical force of the community would be in
the hands of one party and the legal authority in those of the
other, and we should then witness the great scandal of a majority
government unable to execute the laws. We have just seen at the
South, however, that the possession of physical force is not always
sufficient to put the majority even of the male voters in possession
of the Government. In South Carolina and Louisiana the Government
has been seized and successfully held by a minority, in virtue of
their greater intelligence and self-confidence. To use his own
language:
"The present result in South Carolina is not a triumph of bodily
strength over weakness, but, on the contrary, of brains over bodily
strength. And however this reasoning affects the condition of South
Carolina--which is not here my immediate question--it certainly
affects, in a very important degree, the argument for woman
suffrage. If the ultimate source of political power is muscle, as is
often maintained, then woman suffrage is illogical; but if the
ultimate source of political power is, as the Nation implies, 'the
intelligence, sagacity, and the social and political experience of
the population,' then the claims of women are not impaired. For we
rest our case on the ground that women equal men on these points,
except in regard to political experience, which is a thing only to
be acquired by practice.
"So the showing of the _Nation_ is, on the whole, favorable to
women. It looks in the direction of Mr. Bagehot's theory, that
brains now outweigh muscle in government. Just in proportion as man
becomes civilized and comes to recognize laws as habitually binding,
does the power of mere brute force weaken. In a savage state the
ruler of a people must be physically as well as mentally the
strongest; in a civilized state the commander-in-chief may be
physically the weakest person in the army. The English military
power is no less powerful for obeying the orders of a queen. The
experience of South Carolina does not vindicate, but refutes, the
theory that muscle is the ruling power. It shows that an educated
minority is more than a match for an ignorant majority, even though
this be physically stronger. Whether this forbodes good or evil to
South Carolina is not now the question; but so far as woman suffrage
is concerned, the moral is rather in its favor than against it."
What is singular in all this is, that the writer is evidently under
the impression that the term "physical force" in politics means
muscle, or, to put the matter plainly, that the fact that the South
Carolina negroes, who unquestionably surpass the whites in lifting
power, could not hold their own against them, shows that government
has become a mere question of brains, and that as women have plenty
of brains, though they can lift very little, they could perfectly
well carry on, or help to carry on, a government which has only
moral force on its side.
Now, as a matter of fact, there has been no recent change in the
meaning attached to "physical force" in political nomenclature. It
does not mean muscle or weight now, as we see in South Carolina; and
it has never meant muscle or weight since the dawn of civilization.
The races and nations which have made civilization and ruled the
world have done so by virtue of their possessing the very
superiority, in a greater or less degree, which the Carolina whites
have shown in their late struggle with the blacks. The Greeks, the
Romans, the Turks, the English, the French, and the Germans have all
succeeded in government--that is, in seizing and keeping power--not
through superiority of physical force which consists in muscle, but
through the superiority which consists in the ability to organize
and bring into the field, and reinforce large bodies of men, with
the resolution to kill and be killed in order to have their own way
in disputes. No matter how much intelligence a people may have,
unless they are able and willing to apply their intelligence to the
art of war, and have the personal courage necessary to carry out in
action the plans of their leaders, they cannot succeed in politics.
Brains are necessary for political success, without doubt, but it
must be brains applied, among other things to the organization of
physical force in fleets and armies. An "educated minority," as
such, is no more a match for a "physically stronger ignorant
majority" than a delicate minister for a pugilist in "condition,"
unless it can furnish well-equipped and well-led troops. The Greeks
were better educated than the Romans, but this did not help them.
The Romans of the Empire were vastly more intelligent and thoughtful
than the Barbarians, but they could not save the Empire. The Italians
of the Middle Ages were the superiors of the French and Germans in
every branch of culture, and yet this did not prevent Italy being
made the shuttlecock of northern politicians and free-booters.
The French overran Germany in the beginning of the present century,
and the Germans have overrun France within the last ten years,
not in either case owing to superiority in lifting or boxing, or
in literary "culture," but to superiority in the art of fighting--
that is, of bringing together large bodies of armed men who will
not flinch, and will advance when ordered on the battle-field.
It is skill in this art which is meant by the term "physical force"
in politics, and it is this physical force which lies behind all
successful government. The superiority of the North in numbers,
wealth, machinery, literature, and common schools would have
profited it nothing, and the American Republic would have
disappeared from the map if it had not been possible, thirty years
ago, to apply a vast amount of intelligence to the purposes of
destruction, and to find large numbers of men willing to fight under
orders. In quiet times, under a government in which the numerical
majority and the intelligence and property of the community are on
the same side, and take substantially the same views of public
polity, and the display of coercive force, except for ordinary
police purposes, is not called for, we not unnaturally slide readily
into the pleasant belief that government is purely a moral agency,
and that people obey the law through admiration of intellectual
power and the dread of being "cornered" in argument, or of being
exposed as selfish or lawless.
Such occurrences as the late civil war and the recent deadlock at
the South are very useful in uncovering the secret springs of
society, and reminding people of the tremendous uncertainties and
responsibilities by which national as well as individual life is
surrounded, reminding the voter, in short, that he may not always be
able to discharge his duty to the country by depositing his ballot
in the box; that he may have to make the result sure by putting
everything he values in the world at stake. The poor negroes in
South Carolina have not been deposed simply because they are
ignorant; the Russian peasants who fought at Borodino were grossly
ignorant. How many of the English hinds who stood rooted in the soil
at Waterloo could read and write? The Carolinian majority failed
because it did not contain men willing to fight, or leaders capable
of organization for military purposes, or, in other words, did not
possess what has since the dawn of civilization been the first and
greatest title to political power. The Carolinian minority did not
drive their opponents out of the offices by simply offering the
spectacle of superior intelligence of self-confidence, but by the
creation of a moral certainty that, if driven to extremities, they
would outdo the Republicans in the marshalling, marching,
provisioning, and manoeuvring of riflemen.
If this be true, it will be readily seen that the lesson of the
South Carolina troubles, far from containing encouragement for the
friends of female suffrage, is full of doubt and difficulty. Those
who believe that women voters would constitute a new and valuable
force in politics must recognize the possibility that they would at
some time or other constitute the bulk of a majority claiming the
government, and they must also recognize the probability that the
male portion of this majority would be composed of the milder and
less energetic class of men, people with much brains and but little
physical courage, ready to go to the stake for a conviction, but not
ready to shoulder a musket or assault a redoubt. If under these
circumstances the minority, composed exclusively of men, inferior if
you will, to the majority in the purity of their motives, the
breadth of their culture, and in capacity for drawing constitutions
and laws and administering charities, should refuse to obey the
majority, and should say that its government was a ridiculous
"fancy" government, administered by crackbrained people, and likely
to endanger property and the public credit, and that it must be
abolished, what would the women and their "gentlemen friends" do?
They would doubtless remonstrate with the recusants and show them
the wickedness of their course, but then the recusants would be no
more moved by this than Wade Hampton and his people by Mr.
Chamberlain's eloquent and affecting inaugural address. They would
tell the ladies that their intelligence was doubtless of a high
order, and their aims noble, but that as they were apparently unable
to supply policemen to arrest the persons who disobeyed their laws,
their administration was a farce and its disappearance called for in
the interest of public safety. Accordingly it would be removed to
the great garret of history, to lie side by side with innumerable
other disused plans for human improvement.
The cause of much of the misconception about the part played by
physical force in modern society now current in reformatory circles
is doubtless to be found in the disappearance of sporadic and
lawless displays of it, such as, down to a very recent period,
seriously disturbed even the most civilized communities. The change
that has taken place, however, consists not in the total disuse of
force as a social agency, but in the absorption of all force by the
government, making it so plainly irresistible that the occasions are
rare when anything approaching to organized resistance or defiance
of it is attempted. When it lays its commands on a man he knows that
obedience will, if necessary, be enforced by an agency of such
tremendous power that he does not think of revolt. But it is not the
high intelligence of those who carry it on that he bows to; it is to
their ability to crush him like an egg-shell. Of course, it is not
surprising that his submissiveness should at meetings of
philanthropists be ascribed to the establishment of a consensus
between his mind and the mind of the law-giver, or in other words,
the subjection of society to purely moral influences; but it is
perhaps well that complications like those of South Carolina should
now and then occur to infuse sobriety into speculation and explain
the machinery of civilization.
"COURT CIRCLES"
The passionate excitement created in Canada by the arrival of a
daughter of the Queen, and the prospect of the establishment of
"a court" in Ottawa which will have the appearance of a real
Court--that is, a court with blood royal in it, instead of a court
held merely by the queen's legal representatives--is a phenomenon of
considerable interest. It affords a fresh illustration of that
growth of reverence for royalty which all the best observers agree
has for the last forty years been going on in England, side by side
with the growth of democratic feeling and opinion in politics--that
is, the sovereign has more than gained as a social personage what
she has lost as a political personage. The less she has had to do
with the government the more her drawing-rooms have been crowded,
and the more eager have people become for personal marks of her
favor.
The reason of this is not far to seek. It lies in the enormous
increase during that period in the size of the class which is not
engaged in that, to the heralds, accursed thing--trade, and has
money enough to bear the expense of "a presentation," and of living
or trying to live afterward in the circle of those who might be
invited to court, or might meet the Prince of Wales at dinner. The
accumulation of fortunes since the Queen's accession has been very
great, and they have, however made, come into possession now of a
generation which has never been engaged in any occupation frowned on
by the Lord Chamberlain, and which owns estates, or at all events
possesses all outward marks of gentility, when it has been received
by the Queen, and has got into Burke's Dictionary at the end of an
interesting though perhaps apocryphal genealogy. This reception is
the crown of life's struggle, a sort of certificate that the hero or
heroine of it is fit company for anybody in the world. It is, in
fact, a social graduation. When you get somebody who is himself a
graduate to agree to present you, and the Lord Chamberlain, after
examining your card, makes no objection to you, he virtually
furnishes you with a sort of diploma which guarantees you against
what may be called authorized snubs. People may afterward decline
your invitations on the ground that they do not like you, or that
your entertainments bore them, but not on the ground that your
social position is inferior to their own.
That the struggle for this diploma in a wealthy and large society
should be great and increasing is nothing wonderful. The desire for
it among the women especially, to whose charge the creation and
preservation of "position" are mainly committed, is very deep. It
inflames their imagination in a way which makes husbands ready for
anything in order to get it, and in fact makes it indispensable to
their peace of mind and body that they should get it as soon as
their pecuniary fortune seems to put it within their reach. Since
the Queen ascended the throne the population has risen from
20,000,000 to 35,000,000, and the number of great fortunes and
presentable people has increased in a still greater ratio, and the
pressure on the court has grown correspondingly; but there remains
after all only one court to gratify the swarm of new applicants. The
colonies, too, have of late years contributed largely to swell the
tide. Every year London society and the ranks of the landed gentry
are reinforced by returned Australians and New Zealanders and
Cape-of-Good-Hopers and China and India merchants, who feel that
their hard labors and long exile have left life empty and joyless
until they see the names of their wives and daughters in the
_Gazette_ among the presentations at a drawing-room or levee.
In the colonies, and especially in Canada, where there is so little
in the local life to gratify the imagination, the court shines with
a splendor which the distance only intensifies. To a certain class
of Canadians, who enjoy more frequent opportunities than the
inhabitants of the other great colonies of renewing or fortifying
their love of the competition of English social life, and of the
marks of success in it, the court, as the fountain of honor, apart
from all political significance, is an object of almost fierce
interest. In England itself the signs of social distinction are not
so much prized. This kind of Canadian is, in fact, apt to be rather
more of an Englishman than the Englishman himself in all these
things. He imitates and cultivates English usages with a passion
which takes no account of the restrictions of time or place. It is
"the thing" too in Canadian society, as in the American colony in
Paris, to be much disgusted by the "low Americans" who invade the
Dominion in summer, and to feel that even the swells of New York and
Boston could achieve much improvement in their manners by faithful
observation of the doings in the Toronto and Ottawa drawing-rooms.
As far as admiration of courts and a deep desire for court-life and
a belief in the saving grace of contact with royalty can go,
therefore, there are Canadians fully prepared for the establishment
of a court "in their midst." The society of the province was, in
fact, in an imflammable eagerness to kiss hands, and back out from
the presence of royalty, and perform the various exercises
pertaining to admission to court circles, and in a proper state of
Jingo distrust of the wicked Czar and his minions--which in the
Colonies is now one of the marks of gentility--when the magician,
Lord Beaconsfield, determined to apply the match to it by sending
out a real princess. In spite of his contempt for the "flat-nosed
Franks," however, he can hardly have been prepared for the response
which he elicited. He cannot have designed to make monarchy and
royalty seem ridiculous, and yet the articles and addresses and
ceremonies with which the new Governor-General and his wife have
been received look as if the Minister had determined, before he
died, to have the best laugh of his farcical career over the
barbarians who have called him in to rule over them. A court is a
very delicate thing, and a strong capacity for enjoying it does not
of itself make good courtiers. In England the reasons which prevent
a man's being received at court--such as active prosecution of the
dry-goods business--are a thousand years old; in fact, they may be
said to have come down from the ancient world along with the Roman
law. They have, therefore, a certain natural fitness and force in
the eyes of the natives of that country. That is, it seems to "stand
to reason" that a trader should not go to court. Moreover, they can
be enforced in England and still leave an abundant supply of
spotless persons for the purposes of court society. The court-line
is drawn along an existing and well-marked social division.
In Canada this preparation for court gayeties does not exist. If the
persons soiled by commerce were to be excluded from the princess's
presence, she would lead a lonely and dismal life, and the court
would be substantially a failure. If, on the other hand, the court
is to be made up exclusively of rich traders, it will not only
excite the fiercest jealousies and bitterness among those who are
excluded, but it will be very difficult to provide a rule for
passing on claims for presentation when once the line of official
position is passed. But, it may be said, why not throw all
restrictions aside and admit everybody, as at White House
receptions? Nobody will ask this question who has mastered even the
rudiments of royalty, and we shall not take the trouble of answering
it fully. We are now discussing the question for the benefit of
persons of some degree of knowledge. Suffice it to say that any
laxity of practice at Ottawa would do a good deal of damage to the
monarchical principle itself, which, as Mr. Bagehot has pointed out,
owes much of its force and permanence even in England to its hold on
the imagination. The princess cannot go back to England receiving
Tom, Dick, and Harry in Canada without a certain loss of prestige
both for herself and her house.
Not the least curious feature of the crisis is the interest the
prospect of a Canadian court has excited in this country. Our
newspapers know what they are about when they give whole pages to
accounts of the voyage and the reception, including a history of the
House of Argyll and a brief sketch of the feelings of Captain the
Duke of Edinburgh, now on the Halifax Station, over his approaching
meeting with his sister. They recognize the existence of a deep and
abiding curiosity, at least among the women of our country, about
all that relates to royalty and its doings, in spite of the labor
expended for nearly a century by orators and editors in showing up
the vanity and hollowness of monarchical distinctions. In fact, if
the secrets of American hearts could be revealed, we fear it would
be found that the materials for about a million of each order of
nobility, from dukes down, exist among us under quiet republican
exteriors, and that if a court circle were set up among us no
earthly power could prevent its assuming unnatural and unmanageable
proportions. A prince like the late Emperor Maximilian, whose purse
was meagre but whose connection with a reigning house was
unquestioned and close, might find worse ways of repairing his
fortune than setting up an amateur court in some of the Atlantic
cities and charging a moderate fee for presentation, and drawing the
line judiciously so as to keep up the distinction without damaging
his revenues. To prevent cutting remarks on the members of the
circle, however, and too much ridicule of the whole enterprise, he
would have to give the editors high places about his person, and
provide offices for the reporters in his basement. If the scheme
were well organized and did not attempt too much, its value in
settling people's "position," and in giving the worthy their proper
place without the prolonged struggles they now have sometimes to
undergo, would be very great, and it would enable foreign students
of our institutions to pursue successfully certain lines of inquiry
into our manners and customs in which they are now too often
baffled.