OF FAMILY SPIRIT.
Such fatal and legalised iniquities as have been referred to have been
approved of by even the wisest men and practised by even the freest
republics, owing to their having regarded society rather as an aggregate
of families than as one of individuals. Suppose there to be 100,000
individuals, or 20,000 families, of five persons each, including its
representative head: if the association is constituted by families, it
will consist of 20,000 men and 80,000 slaves; if it be an association
of individuals, it will consist of 100,000 citizens, and not a single
slave. In the first case there will be a republic, formed of 20,000
little sovereignties; in the second the republican spirit will breathe,
not only in the market-places and meetings of the people, but also within
the domestic walls, wherein lies so great a part of human happiness or
misery. In the first case, also, as laws and customs are the result
of the habitual sentiments of the members of the republic—that is, of
the heads of families—the monarchical spirit will gradually introduce
itself, and its effects will only be checked by the conflicting interests
of individuals, not by a feeling that breathes liberty and equality.
Family spirit is a spirit of detail and confined to facts of trifling
importance. But the spirit which regulates communities is master of
general principles, overlooks the totality of facts, and combines them
into kinds and classes, of importance to the welfare of the greater
number. In the community of families sons remain in the power of the
head of the family so long as he lives, and are obliged to look forward
to his death for an existence dependent on the laws alone. Accustomed
to submission and fear in the freshest and most vigorous time of life,
when their feelings are less modified by that timidity, arising from
experience, which men call moderation, how shall they withstand those
obstacles in the way of virtue which vice ever opposes, in that feeble
and failing period of life when despair of living to see the fruit of
their labours hinders them from making vigorous changes?
When the community is one of individuals, the subordination that prevails
in the family prevails by agreement, not by compulsion; and the sons, as
soon as their age withdraws them from their state of natural dependence,
arising from their feebleness and their need of education and protection,
become free members of the domestic commonwealth, subjecting themselves
to its head, in order to share in its advantages, as free men do by
society at large. In the other condition the sons—that is, the largest
and most useful part of a nation—are placed altogether at the mercy of
their fathers; but in this one there is no enjoined connection between
them, beyond that sacred and inviolable one of the natural ministration
of necessary aid, and that of gratitude for benefits received, which is
less often destroyed by the native wickedness of the human heart than by
a law-ordained and ill-conceived state of subjection.
Such contradictions between the laws of a family and the fundamental
laws of a State are a fertile source of other contradictions between
public and private morality, giving rise consequently to a perpetual
conflict in every individual mind. For whilst private morality inspires
fear and subjection, public morality teaches courage and freedom; whilst
the former inculcates the restriction of well-doing to a small number
of persons indiscriminately, the latter inculcates its extension to all
classes of men; and whilst the one enjoins the constant sacrifice of self
to a vain idol, called ‘the good of the family’ (which is frequently not
the good of any single member that composes it), the other teaches men to
benefit themselves, provided they break not the laws, and incites them,
by the reward of enthusiasm, which is the precursor of their action, to
sacrifice themselves to the good of their country. Such contradictions
make men scorn to follow virtue, which they find so complicated and
confused, and at that distance from them, which objects, both moral
and physical, derive from their obscurity. How often it happens that
a man, in reflecting on his past actions, is astonished at finding
himself dishonest. The larger society grows, the smaller fraction of the
whole does each member of it become, and the more is the feeling of the
commonwealth diminished, unless care be taken by the laws to reinforce
it. Societies, like human bodies, have their circumscribed limits,
extension beyond which involves inevitably a disturbance of their
economy. The size of a State ought apparently to vary inversely with the
sensibility of its component parts; otherwise, if both increase together,
good laws will find, in the very benefit they have effected, an obstacle
to the prevention of crimes. Too large a republic can only save itself
from despotism by a process of subdivision, and a union of the parts into
so many federative republics. But how effect this, save by a despotic
dictator with the courage of Sylla and as much genius for construction
as he had for destruction? If such a man be ambitious, the glory of all
the ages awaits him; and if he be a philosopher, the blessings of his
fellow-citizens will console him for the loss of his authority, even
should he not become indifferent to their ingratitude. In proportion as
the feelings which unite us to our own nation are weakened, do those for
the objects immediately around us gain in strength; and it is for this
reason that under the severest despotism the strongest friendships are to
be found, and that the family virtues, ever of an exalted character, are
either the most common or the only ones. It is evident, therefore, how
limited have been the views of the great majority of legislators.