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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #50755 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50755)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way
-to Its Permanent Overthrow, by Andrew Dickson White
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: The Most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way to Its Permanent Overthrow
-
-Author: Andrew Dickson White
-
-Release Date: December 23, 2015 [EBook #50755]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOST BITTER FOE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Donald Cummings, Bryan Ness, Diane Monico, and
-the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
-images of public domain material from the Google Books
-project.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way to its
-Permanent Overthrow.
-
-
-AN
-
-ADDRESS,
-
-DELIVERED BEFORE THE
-
-PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY,
-
-AT
-
-YALE COLLEGE, JULY 25, 1866,
-
-BY
-
-ANDREW D. WHITE.
-
-
-NEW HAVEN:
-THOMAS H. PEASE, 323 CHAPEL STREET.
-T. J. STAFFORD, PRINTER.
-
-1866.
-
-
-
-
- NEW HAVEN, _July 26, 1866_.
-
-DEAR SIR,
-
-The undersigned have been appointed by the PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY a
-Committee to render you the cordial thanks of the Society for your
-admirable Address, delivered last evening, and to request a copy for
-the Press.
-
- Respectfully and truly yours,
-
- A. C. TWINING,
-
- G. P. FISHER.
-
-Professor WHITE.
-
-
- STATE OF NEW YORK,
-
- _Senate Chamber_,
-
- _Albany, Aug. 30th, 1866_.
-
-GENTLEMEN,
-
-Accept my thanks for the very kind expressions regarding the Address
-which, in accordance with the request conveyed by you, I forward
-herewith.
-
- With great respect,
-
- Very truly yours,
-
- A. D. WHITE.
-
-Professors A. C. TWINING and
- G. P. FISHER.
-
-
-
-
-ADDRESS.
-
-
-In this sacred struggle and battle of so many hundred years,--this
-weary struggle of truths to be recognized,--this desperate battle
-of rights to be allowed;--in this long, broad current toward more
-truth and more right, in which are seen the hands of so many good and
-bad and indifferent men,--and in the midst of all, and surrounding
-all, the hand of very God,--what political institution has been most
-vigorous against this current,--what political system has been most
-noxious to political truth and right?--in short, what foe, in every
-land, have right and liberty found it hardest to fight or outwit?
-
-Is it Ecclesiasticism?--is it Despotism?--is it Aristocracy?--is it
-Democracy?
-
-The time allotted me this evening I shall devote to maintaining the
-following Thesis:
-
- OF ALL SYSTEMS AND INSTITUTIONS, THE MOST VIGOROUS IN
- BATTLING LIBERTY,--THE MOST NOXIOUS IN ADULTERATING
- RIGHT,--THE MOST CORROSIVE IN EATING OUT NATIONALITY, HAS
- BEEN AN ARISTOCRACY BASED UPON HABITS OR TRADITIONS OF
- OPPRESSION.
-
-I shall also attempt to deduce from the proofs of this a corollary,
-showing _the only way in which such an Aristocracy ever has been or
-ever can be fought successfully and put down permanently_.
-
-Let me first give this Thesis precision.
-
-I do not say that Aristocracy, based upon habits and traditions
-of oppression, is the foe which takes deepest hold;--Despotism
-and Ecclesiasticism are dragons which get their claws far deeper
-into the body politic;--for Despotism clutches more temporal, and
-Ecclesiasticism more eternal interests.
-
-Nor do I say that Aristocracy is the enemy most difficult to find and
-come at. Demoralization in Democracy is harder to find and come at;
-for demoralization in Democracy is a disease, and lurks,--Aristocracy
-is a foe, and stands forth--bold; Demoralization is latent, and
-political doctors disagree about it,--Aristocracy is patent, and men
-of average sense soon agree about it.
-
-But the statement is that Aristocracy, based upon oppression, is, of
-all foes to liberty the most vigorous, of all foes to rights the most
-noxious, and of all foes to nationality the most corrosive.
-
-Other battles may be longer;--but the battle with Aristocracy is the
-sharpest which a nation can be called upon to wage,--and as a nation
-uses its strength during the contest--and _as it uses its wits after
-the contest_--so shall you find its whole national life a success or a
-failure.
-
-For my proofs I shall not start with _a priori_ reasoning:--that
-shall come in as it is needed in the examination of historical
-facts. You shall have the simple, accurate presentation of facts
-from history--and plain reasoning upon these facts--and from Ancient
-History, rich as it is in proofs, I will draw nothing!--all shall be
-drawn from the history of modern States--the history of men living
-under the influence of great religious and political ideas which are
-active to-day--and among ourselves.
-
-Foremost among the examples of the normal working of an Aristocracy
-based upon the subjection of a class, I name SPAIN. I name her
-first--not as the most striking example, but as one of those in which
-the evil grew most naturally, and went through its various noxious
-phases most regularly.
-
-The fabric of Spanish nationality had much strength and much beauty.
-The mixture of the Barbarian element with the Roman, after the Roman
-downfall, was probably happier there than in any other part of Europe.
-The Visigoths gave Spain the best of all the barbaric codes. Guizot
-has shown how,[1] as by inspiration, some of the most advanced ideas
-of modern enlightened codes were incorporated into it.
-
-The succeeding history of the Spanish nation was also, in its main
-sweep, fortunate. There were ages of endurance which toughened the
-growing nation,--battles for right which ennobled it;--disasters which
-compacted manliness and squeezed out effeminacy.
-
-This character took shape in goodly institutions. The city growth
-helped the growth of liberty, not less in Spain than in her sister
-nations. Cities and towns became not merely centres of prosperity, but
-guardians of freedom.[2]
-
-Then came, perhaps, the finest growth of free institutions in Mediæval
-Europe.
-
-The Cortes of Castile was a representative body nearly a hundred years
-before Simon de Montfort laid the foundations of English parliamentary
-representation at Leicester.[3] The Commons of Arragon had gained yet
-greater privileges earlier.
-
-Statesmen sat in these--statesmen who devised curbs for monarchs,
-and forced monarchs to wear them. The dispensing power was claimed
-at an early day by Spanish Kings as by Kings of England;--but Hallam
-acknowledges[4] that the Spaniards made a better fight against this
-despotic claim than did the English. The Spanish established the
-Constitutional principle that the King cannot dispense with statutes
-centuries before the English established it by the final overthrow of
-the Stuarts.
-
-Many sturdy maxims, generally accounted fruit of that early English
-boldness for liberty, are of that earlier Spanish period. "No taxation
-without representation" was a principle asserted in Castile early,
-often and to good purpose. In Arragon no war could be declared,--no
-peace made,--no money coined without consent of the Cortes.[5]
-
-The "Great Privilege of Saragossa" gave quite as many, and quite as
-important liberties to Arragon as were wrested from King John for
-England in the same century.
-
-Such is a meagre sketch of the development of society at large. As
-regards the other development which goes to produce civilization--the
-development of individual character, the Spanish peninsula was not
-less distinguished. In its line of monarchs were Ferdinand III.,
-Alfonso X., James II., and Isabella;--in its line of statesmen were
-Ximenes and Cisneros--worthy predecessors of that most daring of all
-modern statesmen, Alberoni. The nation rejoiced too in a noble line of
-poets and men of letters.[6]
-
-Still more important than these brilliant exceptions was the tone of
-the people at large. They were tough and manly.[7]
-
-No doubt there were grave national faults. Pride--national and
-individual--constantly endangered quiet. Blind submission to
-Ecclesiastical authority was also a fearful source of evil! Yet,
-despite these, it is impossible not to be convinced, on a careful
-reading of Spanish history, that the influence which tore apart
-States,--which undermined good institutions,--which defeated
-justice,--which disheartened effort,--which prevented resistance to
-encroachments of Ecclesiasticism and Despotism--nay, which made such
-encroachments a _necessity_--came from the _nobility_.
-
-The Spanish nobility had risen and become strong in those long
-wars against the intruding Moors,--they had gained additional
-strength in the wars between provinces. They soon manifested
-necessary characteristics. They kept Castile in confusion by
-their dissensions,--they kept Arragon in confusion by their
-anti-governmental unions.
-
-Accustomed to lord it over inferiors, they could brook no
-opposition,--hence all their influence was Anarchic; accustomed to no
-profitable labor of any sort, their influence was for laziness and
-wastefulness;--accustomed to look on public matters as their monopoly,
-they devoted themselves to conjuring up phantoms of injuries and
-insults, and plotting to avenge them.
-
-Every Aristocracy passes through one, and most Aristocracies through
-both of two historic phases.
-
-The first may be called the _Vitriolic_,--the period of intense,
-biting, corrosive activity,--the period in which it gnaws fiercely
-into all institutions with which it comes into contact,--the period in
-which it decomposes all elements of nationality.
-
-In Spain this first period was early developed and long continued.
-Grandees and nobles bit and cut their way into the Legislative
-system,--by brute force, too, they crushed their way through the
-Judicial system,--by judicious mixtures of cheating and bullying they
-often controlled the Executive system.
-
-Chapter after chapter of Mariana's history begins with the story of
-their turbulence, and ends with the story of its sad results;--how
-the nobles seized King James of Arragon;--how the Lara family usurped
-the Government of Castile;--how the houses of Lara, Haro, Castro and
-their peers are constantly concocting some plot, or doing some act to
-overthrow all governmental stability.
-
-But their warfare was not merely upon Government and upon each
-other;--it was upon the people at large. Out from their midst comes a
-constant voice of indignant petitions. These are not merely petitions
-from serfs. No! history written in stately style has given small place
-to their cries;--but the great flood of petitions and remonstrances
-comes from the substantial middle class, who saw this domineering
-upper class trampling out every germ of commercial and manufacturing
-prosperity.
-
-Such was the current of Spanish history. I now single out certain
-aristocratic characteristics bedded in it which made its flow so
-turbulent.
-
-Foremost of these was that first and most fatal characteristic of all
-aristocracies based on oppression--_the erection of a substitute for
-patriotism_.
-
-Devotion to caste, in such circumstances, always eats out love of
-country. A nobility often fight for their country--often die for
-it;--but in any supreme national emergency,--at any moment of moments
-in national history the rule is that you are sure to find them
-asking--not "What is my duty to my country?" but "_What is my duty to
-my order?_"
-
-Every crisis in Spanish history shows this characteristic,--take one
-example to show the strength of it.
-
-Charles the Fifth was the most terrible of all monarchic foes to the
-old Spanish institutions. The nobles disliked him for this. They also
-disliked him still more as a foreigner. Most of all they disliked him
-because the tools he used in overturning Spain were foreigners.
-
-Against this detested policy the cities of the kingdom planned a
-policy thoughtful and effectual. Cardinal Cisneros favored it,--the
-only thing needed was the conjunction of the nobles. They seemed
-favorable--but at the supreme moment they wavered. The interest of the
-country was clear;--but _how as to the interests of their order_? They
-began by fearing encroachments of the people;--they ended by becoming
-traitors, allowed the battle of Villalar to be lost--and with it the
-last chance of curbing their most terrible enemy.[8]
-
-Another characteristic was _the development of a substitute for
-political morality_.
-
-These nobles were brave. The chronicles gave them plentiful supply of
-chivalric maxims, and they carried these out into chivalric practices.
-Their quickness in throwing about them the robes of chivalry was only
-excelled by their quickness in throwing off the garb of ordinary
-political morality. They could die for an idea, yet we constantly see
-among them acts of bad faith--petty and large--only befitting savages.
-
-John Alonzo de la Cerda, by the will of the late King, had been
-deprived of a certain office; he therefore betrays the stronghold
-of Myorga to the new King's enemies.[9] Don Alonzo de Lara had
-caused great distress by his turbulence. Queen Berengaria writes an
-account of it to the King. Don Alonzo does not scruple to waylay the
-messenger, murder him, and substitute for the true message a forgery,
-containing an order in the Queen's hand for the King's murder.[10]
-Of such warp and woof is the history of the Spanish aristocracy--the
-history of nobles whose boast was their chivalry.
-
-How is this to be accounted for? Mainly by the fact, I think, that the
-pride engendered by lording it over a subject class lifts men above
-ordinary morality. If commonplace truth and vulgar good faith fetter
-that morbid will-power which serf-owning gives, truth and good faith
-must be rent asunder.
-
-The next characteristic was _the erection of a theory of easy treason
-and perpetual anarchy_.
-
-Prescott calls this whimsical; he might more justly have called it
-frightful.
-
-For this theory, which they asserted, maintained, and finally brought
-into the national notion and custom was, that in case they were
-aggrieved--_themselves being judges_--they could renounce their
-allegiance, join the bitterest foes of king and nation,--plot and
-fight against their country,--deluge the land in blood,--deplete the
-treasury; and yet that the King should take care of the families they
-left behind, and in other ways make treason pastime.
-
-Spanish history is black with the consequences of this theory. Mariana
-drops a casual expression in his history which shows the natural
-result, when he says: "The Castro family were _much in the habit_ of
-revolting and going over to the Moors."[11]
-
-The absurdity of this theory was only equaled by its iniquity.
-
-For it involved three ideas absolutely fatal to any State--_the right
-of peaceable secession--the right of judging in their own cause, and
-the right of committing treason with impunity_. Now, any nation which
-does not, when stung by such a theory, throttle it, and stamp the life
-out of it, is doomed.
-
-Spain did not grapple with it. She tampered with it, truckled to it,
-compromised with it.
-
-This nursed another characteristic in her nobility, which is sure to
-be developed always under like circumstances. This characteristic was
-_an aristocratic inability to appreciate concessions_.
-
-The ordinary sort of poor statesmanship which afflicts this world
-generally meets the assumptions and treasons of a man-mastering caste
-by concessions. The commercial and manufacturing classes love peace
-and applaud concessions. But concessions only make matters worse.
-Concessions to a caste, based upon traditions of oppression, are
-but fuel to fire. The more privileges are given, the higher blazes
-its pride, and pride is one of the greatest causes of its noxious
-activity. Concessions to such a caste are sure to be received as
-tributes to its superiority. Such concessions are regarded by it not
-as favors but as rights, and no man ever owed gratitude for a right.
-
-There remained then but one way of dealing with it,--that was by
-overwhelming force; and at the end of the Fifteenth Century that force
-appeared. The encroachments upon regular central government produced
-the same results in Spain as in the rest of Europe at about the same
-time.
-
-To one not acquainted with previous history, but looking thoughtfully
-at the fifteenth century, it must seem strange that just at that
-time--as by a simultaneous and spontaneous movement--almost every
-nation in Europe consolidated power in the hands of a monarch.
-In France, in England, in Italy, as well as in Spain, you see
-institutions, liberties, franchises, boundaries sacrificed freely
-to establish despotism. You see Henry VII. in England, Louis XI.
-in France, Charles V., a little later, in Germany and Italy,
-Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain--almost all utterly unlovely and
-unloved--allowed to build up despotisms in all cases severe, and
-in most cases cruel. Why? Because the serf-owning caste had become
-utterly unbearable; because one tyrant is better than a thousand.
-
-Then the Spanish nobility went into the next phase. Ferdinand, Charles
-the Fifth, Philip the Second--three of the harshest tyrants known
-to history,--having crushed out the boldness and enterprise of the
-aristocracy it passed from what I have called the _Vitriolic_ into
-what might be called the _Narcotic period_.
-
-A period this was in which the noble became an agent in stimulating
-all evil tendencies in the monarch, and in stupefying all good
-tendencies in the people.
-
-The caste spirit was a drug infused into the body politic, rendering
-inert all its powers for good. Did Charles the Fifth insult and depose
-Ximenes,--the nation sleepily permitted it; did Philip the Second lay
-bigot plans which brought the kingdom to ruin,--the nation lazily
-fawned upon him for it;[12] did Philip III. and his successors allow
-the nation to sink into contempt,--there was no voice to raise it.
-
-Do you say that this resulted from Ecclesiasticism? I answer that
-the main reason why Ecclesiasticism became so strong was because it
-sheltered the lower class from the exactions of the Aristocracy. Do
-you say that it resulted from Despotism? I answer that Despotism
-became absolute in order to save the nation from the turbulence of the
-Aristocracy.[13]
-
-No single Despotism, either in Church or State, could by itself
-have broken that well-knit system of old Spanish liberties. It was
-the growth of an oppressive caste, who by their spirit of disunion
-made Despotism possible, and by their spirit of turbulence made it
-necessary.
-
-The next nation in which I would show the working of a caste with
-traditions of oppression is ITALY.
-
-Man-owners had cost Italy dear already. Roman serf-culture had
-withered all prosperity in the country; slave service had eaten out
-all manliness from the city.
-
-It is one of the most pregnant facts in history, and one which, so
-far as I know, has never been noted, that whereas the multitude who
-have written upon the subject have assigned innumerable causes for the
-decline and downfall of the Roman nation, _not one of any note has
-failed to name, as a cause, Roman slavery_. As to other causes they
-disagree--on this alone all agree.
-
-The philosophers Montesquieu[14] and Gibbon,[15] the economist
-Sismondi,[16] the _doctrinaire_ Guizot,[17] the republican
-Michelet,[18] the eclectic Schlosser,[19] high tory Alison,[20]
-moderate Merivale,[21] democrat Bancroft,[22] _quasi_ conservative,
-_quasi_ liberal Charles Kingsley,[23] wide apart as the poles on all
-else, agree to name as a cause of Roman ruin the system of forced
-labor.
-
-But after the Roman downfall the straggle of Italy with her upper
-caste seems singularly fortunate. At an early day her cities by
-commerce became rich and strong. Then in the natural course of
-things--first, free ideas, next, free institutions, next, war upon the
-nobles to make them respect these ideas and institutions.
-
-The war of municipalities against nobles was successful. Elsewhere
-in Europe cities sheltered themselves behind lords; in Italy lords
-sheltered themselves in cities. Elsewhere the lord dwelt in the castle
-_above_ the city; in Italy the lord was forced to dwell in his palace
-_within_ the city.[24]
-
-The victory of freedom seemed complete. The Italian republics were
-triumphant; the nobility were, to all appearance, subdued.
-
-But those republics made a fearful mistake. They had a great chance
-to destroy caste and lost it. They allowed the old caste spirit to
-remain, and that evil leaven soon renewed its work. The republics
-showed generalship in war, but in peace they were outwitted.
-
-First, the nobles insisted on pretended rights within the city, and
-stirred perpetual civil war to make these rights good.[25]
-
-Beaten at this they had yet a worse influence. Those great free
-cities would not indeed allow the nobles to indulge in private wars,
-but gradually the cities caught the infection from the nobles. The
-cities caught their aristocratic spirit of jealousy,--took nobles as
-leaders,--ran into their modes of plotting and fighting, and what I
-have called the _Vitriolic_ period set in.
-
-Undoubtedly some of this propensity came from other causes, but the
-main cause was this domineering aristocracy in its midst, giving tone
-to its ideas. Free cities in other parts of Europe disliked each
-other,--a few fought each other,--but none with a tithe of the insane
-hate and rage shown by the city republics of Italy.[26]
-
-Hence arose that political product sure to rise in every nation where
-an aristocracy shape policy, the _Spirit of Disunion_. Its curse has
-been upon Italy for five hundred years. Dante felt it when he sketched
-the torments of Riniero of Corneto and Riniero Pazzo,[27] and the
-woes brought on Florence by the feuds of the Neri and Bianchi.[28]
-Sismondi felt it when his thoughts of Italian disunion wrung from
-his liberty-loving heart a longing for Despotism.[29] All Italy felt
-it when Genoa, in these last years, solemnly restored to Pisa the
-trophies gained in those old civil wars, and hung them up in the Campo
-Santo behind the bust of Cavour.
-
-No other adequate reason for the chronic spirit of disunion in Italy
-than the oppressive aristocratic spirit can be given. Italy was
-blest with every influence for unity;--a most favorable position and
-conformation, boundaries sharply defined on three sides by seas and on
-the remaining side by lofty mountains, a great devotion to trade, a
-single great political tradition, a single great religious tradition,
-both drawing the nation toward one great central city.
-
-Had Italy been left to herself without the disturbing influence of
-this chivalric, uneasy, plotting, fighting caste, who can doubt that
-petty rivalries would have been extinguished and all elements fused
-into a great, strong Nationality?
-
-Turn from this history and construct such a society with your own
-reason. You shall find it all very simple. Put into energetic free
-cities or states a body of men accustomed to lord it over an inferior
-caste, whose main occupation is to brood over wrongs and to hatch
-revenges, and you ensure disunion between that state and sister states
-speedily. To such men every movement of a sister state is cause for
-suspicion, every betterment cause for quarrel.
-
-But you ensure more than that. Under such circumstances _disunion is
-always followed by disintegration_. They are two inevitable stages
-of one disease. In the first stage the idea of country is lost; in
-the second, the idea of government is lost; disintegration is closely
-followed by Anarchy, and Despotism has generally been the only remedy.
-
-To Italy in this strait despotism was the remedy. Disunion between
-_all_ Italian Republics was followed by disintegration between
-factions in _each_ Italian Republic. A multitude of city tyrants rose
-to remedy disintegration,--a single tyrant rose above all to remedy
-disunion.
-
-These were welcomed because they at least mitigated anarchy. If a
-Visconti or a Sforza was bad at Milan, he was better than a multitude
-of tyrants. If the Scala were severe at Verona, they were less severe
-than the crowd of competitors whom they put down. If Rienzi was
-harsh at Rome, he was milder than the struggles of the Colonna and
-Orsini,--if the Duke of Athens was at once contemptible and terrible
-at Athens, he was neither so contemptible nor so terrible as the
-feuds of the Cerchi and Donati.
-
-And when, at last, Charles the Fifth crushed all these seething
-polities into a compact despotism, that was better than disunion,
-disintegration and anarchy.
-
-This compression of anarchic elements ended the Vitriolic period of
-Italian Aristocracy, but it brought on the Narcotic period. It was the
-most fearful reign of cruelty, debauchery and treachery between the
-orgies of Vitellius and De Sade.
-
-Yet those debaucheries and murders among the Borgias and later Medici,
-and so many other leading families, were but types of what this second
-phase of an oppressive aristocracy _must_ be.
-
-For the domineering caste-spirit immediately on its repression breaks
-out in cruelty. This is historical, and a moment's thought will show
-you that it is logical. The development of the chivalric noble into
-the cruel schemer is very easily traced.
-
-Given such a lordling forced to keep the peace, and you have a
-character which, if it resigns itself, sinks into debauchery--which,
-if it resists, flies into plotting. Now both the debauchee and the
-plotter regard bodies and souls of inferiors as mere counters in their
-games,--hence they _must_ be cruel.[30]
-
-I turn now to another nation where the serf-mastering spirit wrought
-out its fearful work in yet a different manner, and on a more gigantic
-scale,--in a manner so brilliant that it has dazzled the world for
-centuries, and blazoned its faults as virtues;--on a scale so great
-that it has sunk art, science, literature, education, commerce and
-manufactures,--brought misery upon its lower caste,--brought death
-upon its upper caste,--and has utterly removed its nation from modern
-geography, and its name from modern history. I point you to POLAND.
-
-Look at Polish history as painted by its admirers,--it is noble and
-beautiful. You see political scenes, military scenes, and individual
-lives which at once win you.
-
-Go back three centuries, stand on those old towers of Warsaw,--look
-forth over the Plains of Volo. The nation is gathered there. Its King
-it elects. The King thus elected is limited in power so that his
-main function is to do justice. The whole voting body are _equals_.
-Each, too, is _free_. No King, no Noble, is allowed to trench upon
-his freedom. So free is each that no will of the majority is binding
-upon him, except by his own consent. Here is equality indeed! Equality
-pushed so far that each man is not only the equal of every other--but
-of all others together;--the equal of the combined nation.
-
-These men are brave, hardy, and, as you have seen, free, equal, and
-allowed more rights than the citizens of any republic before or
-since.[31]
-
-But leave now this magnificent body--stretching over those vast plains
-beyond eye-reach. Tear yourselves away from the brave show--the flash
-of jeweled sabres and crosiers--the glitter of gilded trappings--the
-curvetings of noble horses between tents of silk and banners of
-gold-thread. Go out into the country from which these splendid freemen
-come.
-
-Here is indeed a revelation! Here is a body of men whom history
-has forgotten. Strangely indeed--for it is a body far larger than
-that assembled upon the plains of Volo. _There_ were, perhaps, a
-hundred thousand; _here_ are millions. These millions are Christians,
-but they are wretchedly clad and bent with labor. They are indeed
-stupid,--unkempt,--degraded,--often knavish,--but they love their
-country,--toil for her,--suffer for her.
-
-To them, in times of national struggles, all the weariness,--to them,
-in times of national triumphs, none of the honor.
-
-These are the _serfs_ of those brilliant beings prancing and
-caracoling and flashing on yonder plain of Volo--to the applauding
-universe.
-
-Evidently then, there has been a mistake here. History and poetry have
-forgotten to mention a fact supremely important.
-
-The _people_ of Poland are, after all, _not_ free--_not_ equal. The
-voting is not voting by the _people_. Freedom and the suffrage are for
-_serf-owners_,--equality is between _them_.
-
-No one can deny that in this governing class were many, very many
-noble specimens of manhood--yielding ease and life for ideas--readily.
-
-Emperor Henry the Fifth of Germany had tried in vain to overcome them
-by war. When the Polish ambassador came into his presence, the Emperor
-pointed to his weapon, and said, "I could not overcome your nobility
-with _these_;"--then pointing to an open chest filled with gold, he
-said, "but I will conquer them with _this_." The ambassador wore the
-chains and jewels befitting his rank. Straitway he takes off every
-ornament, and flings all into the Emperor's chest together.
-
-Yet myriads of such men could not have averted ruin. Polish history
-proved it day by day.
-
-It was not that these nobles were especially barbarous,--it was not
-that they were effeminate. _It was simply that they maintained one
-caste above another--allowing a distinction in civil and political
-rights._ The system gave its usual luxuriant fruitage of curses.
-
-_First_ in the _material_ condition. Labor and trade were despised.
-If, in the useful class, a genius arose, the first exercise of his
-genius was to get himself out of the useful class. Labor was left to
-serfs; trade was left to Jews. Cities were contemptible in all that
-does a city honor. Villages were huddles. The idea thus implanted
-remains. Of all countries, called civilized, Poland seems to-day,
-materially, the most hopeless.[32]
-
-It may be said that this results from Russian invasions;--but it was
-so _before_ Russian invasions. It may be said that it results from
-Russian oppression,--but the great central districts of Russia are
-just as much under the Czar, and they are thriving. It may be said
-that Poland has been wasted by war;--but Belgium and Holland and the
-Rhine Palatinate have been far more severely wasted, yet their towns
-are hives, and their country districts gardens.
-
-Next, as to the _Political_ condition.
-
-A man-mastering caste necessarily develops the individual will
-morbidly and intensely. The most immediate of political consequences
-is, of course, a clash between the individual will and the general
-will.
-
-Trouble then breaks forth in different forms in different countries.
-In Spain we saw it take shape in _Secession_;--in Italy we saw it lead
-to fearful territorial _Disunion_;--in Poland it first took the form
-of _Nullification_.
-
-The nullifying spirit naturally crystallized into an institution. That
-institution was the _Liberum Veto_.
-
-By this, in any national assemblage--no matter how great, no matter
-how important,--the veto of a single noble could stop all proceedings.
-Every special interest of every petty district or man had power of
-life and death over the general interest. The whim, or crotchet, or
-spite of a single man could and did nullify measures vital to the
-whole nation. In 1652, Sizinski, a noble sitting in the national diet,
-when great measures were supposed to be unanimously determined upon,
-left his seat, signifying his dissent. The whole vast machinery was
-stopped, and Poland made miserable.[33]
-
-Closely allied to this was another political consequence.
-
-Constant, healthful watchfulness over rights is necessary in any
-republic; but there is a watchfulness which is not healthful; it is
-the morbid watchfulness--the jealousy which arises in the minds of a
-superior caste, _living generally in contact with inferiors, and only
-occasionally in contact with equals_.
-
-The Polish citizen lived on his estate. About him were
-inferiors,--beings who were not citizens--depending on him--doing him
-homage. But when the same citizen entered that Assembly on the Plains
-of Volo all this was changed. There he met his equals. Pride then
-clashed with pride,--faction rose against faction.
-
-The result I will not state in my own words, for fear it may be
-thought I warp facts to make a historical parallel. I shall translate
-word for word from Salvandy:
-
- "_Confederations_ were now formed--armed leagues of a
- number of nobles who chose for themselves a Marshal or
- President, and opposed decrees to decrees, force to force;
- contending diets which raised leader against leader, and
- had the King sometimes as chief, sometimes as captive;
- an institution deplorable and insensate, which opened to
- all discontented men a legal way to set their country on
- fire."[34]
-
-From the political causes I have named logically flowed another.
-
-In that perpetual anarchy, some factions must be beaten. But a class
-with traditions and habits of oppression is very different, when
-beaten, from a society swayed by manufacturing, commercial, and legal
-interests. These last try to make some arrangement. They yield, and
-fit matters to the new conditions. They are anxious to get back to
-their work again. But a class with habits of domineering has its own
-peculiar pride to deal with. It has leisure to brood over defeat, to
-whine over lost advantages, to fret over lost consideration, and you
-generally find it soon plotting more insidiously than before.
-
-So it was with Poland. The beaten factions did what fighting
-aristocracies always do when fearful of defeat, or embittered by
-it,--the vilest thing they can do, and the most dangerous--_they
-intrigued for foreign intervention_.
-
-Of all things, this is most fatal to nationality. Going openly over
-to the enemy is bad; but intrigues with foreign powers, hostile by
-interest and tradition, are unutterably vile.
-
-Yet there is not a nation where a class pursuing separate and distinct
-rights is tolerated, where such intrigues have not been frequent. More
-than this, such intrigues have generally been timed with diabolic
-sagacity.
-
-The time chosen is generally some national emergency--when the nation
-is writhing in domestic misfortunes, or battling desperately against
-foreign foes. The Spanish nobles chose their time for intriguing with
-the Moors for their intervention, when the Spanish nation were in the
-most desperate struggle--not merely for temporal power, but even for
-the existence of their religion.
-
-In France, the nobles chose such periods as those when Richelieu was
-leading the nation against all Europe and a large part of France. In
-Poland, the nobles chose the times when the nation was struggling
-against absolute annihilation.[35]
-
-History, to one not blinded by Polish bravery, is clear here. The real
-authors of the partition of Poland were not Frederick of Prussia, and
-Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine of Prussia, but those proud
-nobles who drew surrounding nations to intervene in Polish politics.
-
-The _Social_ condition was also affected naturally. Poland went into
-the inevitable narcotic phase. Her court during the reigns of its
-later Kings was a brothel, and her nobles its worthy tenants.
-
-What followed was natural. When the light of the last century streamed
-in upon this corrupt mass, Zamoiski and men like him tried to purify
-it,--to enfranchise the subordinate caste,--to work reforms. The
-Polish Republic refused. Then Providence began a work radical and
-terrible.
-
-It is sad to see those brave citizen-nobles crushed beneath brute
-force of Russians, and Austrians, and Prussians. But it was well.
-One Alexander the First _would have_ done, one Alexander the Second
-_has_ done more good for Poland than ages of citizen serf-masters
-flourishing on the Plains of Volo.
-
-The next nation to which I direct you is FRANCE.
-
-Of all modern aristocracies, hers has probably been the most
-hated.[36] Guizot, in some respects its apologist, confesses this.
-Eugenie de Guerin--the most angelic soul revealed to this age--herself
-of noble descent--declares that the sight even of a ruined chateau
-made her shudder[37] But all that history, rich as it is in
-illustrations of the noxious qualities of an oppressive aristocracy,
-I will pass, save as it presents the _dealing of statesmen with it_,
-their attempts to thwart it and crush it.
-
-A succession of monarchs and statesmen kept up these attempts during
-centuries. Philip Augustus, Louis VI. and Louis VII., Suger, St.
-Louis, Philip the Long, all wrought well at this.
-
-The great thing to notice in that mediaeval French statesmanship is
-that _they attacked the domineering caste in the right way_. Every
-victory over it was followed not merely by setting serfs free, but by
-giving them civil rights, and, to some extent, political rights. When
-one of the Kings I have named gave a Charter of Community, he did not
-merely make the serf a nominal freedman; he also gave him rights, and
-thus wrought him into a bulwark between the central power and the rage
-of the former master.[38]
-
-So far all was good. The great difficulty was that none of those
-monarchs or statesmen obtained physical power enough to enforce this
-policy throughout France. It was mainly confined to towns.
-
-But in the middle of the Fifteenth Century came the most persistent
-man of all--Louis the Eleventh. He gained power throughout the
-kingdom. If a noble became turbulent, he hunted him; if this failed,
-he entrapped him. Cages, dungeons, racks, gibbets, he used in
-extinguishing this sort of political vermin; and he used them freely
-and beneficially.
-
-His policy seems cruel. Our weak women of both sexes, with whom
-the tears of a murderer's mistress outweigh the sufferings of a
-crime-ridden community, will think so. It was really merciful. Louis
-was, probably, a scoundrel; but he was not a fool, and he saw that the
-greatest cruelty he could commit would be to make concessions and try
-to _win over_ the nobility. His hard, sharp sense showed him--what
-all history shows--that an oppressive caste can be crushed, but that
-wheedled and persuaded it cannot be.
-
-But Louis forgot one thing, and that the most important. Merely
-to _defeat_ an aristocracy was not enough. _He forgot to provide
-guarantees for the lower classes_--he forgot to put rights into their
-hands which should enable them forever to check and balance the upper
-class when his hand was removed. You see that this mistake is just the
-reverse of that committed by previous statesmen.
-
-Of course then, after the death of Louis, France relapsed into her
-old anarchy. Occasionally a strong King or city put a curb upon the
-nobles; but, in the main, it was the old bad history with variations
-ever more and more painful.
-
-Over a hundred years more of this sort went by, and the rule of the
-nobles became utterly unbearable. The death of Henry the Fourth, in
-1610, left on the throne a weak child as King, and behind the throne
-a weak woman as Regent. The nobles wrought out their will completely.
-They seized fortifications, plundered towns, emptied the treasury,
-domineered over the monarch, and impoverished the people. Curiously
-enough, too, to one who has not seen the same fact over and over
-in history, the nobles, during all these outrages of theirs, were
-declaiming, and groaning, and whining over their grievances and want
-of rights.[39]
-
-Compromise after compromise was made, and to no purpose. No sooner
-were compromises made than they were broken. Finally, a great
-statesman, recognizing the futility of compromises, gave the
-aristocracy battle. This statesman was Richelieu.
-
-The nobles tried all their modes of working I have shown in other
-countries. They tried nullification, secession, disunion. They
-intrigued for the intervention of Spain. They preferred caste to
-country, and attempted to desert France at the moment of her sorest
-need--at the siege of La Rochelle.
-
-But Richelieu was too strong for them. His victories were magnificent.
-While he lived France had peace.[40]
-
-Yet he makes the same mistake which Louis XI. had made. He defeats the
-upper caste; but he guarantees no rights to the lower caste; therefore
-he gives France no barrier against that old flood of evils--save his
-own hand, and when death removes that, chaos comes again.
-
-Mazarin now grapples with them. They give him a fearful trial. They
-throw France into civil war. They pretend zeal for liberty, and form
-an anarchic alliance with the poor old stupid Parliament of Paris.
-They make Mazarin miserable. They throw filth upon him, then light him
-up with their fireworks of wit, and set the world laughing at him.
-Then they drive him out of France; but he is keen and strong, and
-finally throws his nets over them, and France has another breathing
-time.
-
-But the nobility if quiet are not a whit more beneficial--they are
-virulent and cynical as ever. Mazarin commits the same fault which
-Louis XI. and Richelieu had committed before him.
-
-His mind was keen always, bold sometimes--yet never keen enough to
-see, or bold enough to try the policy of giving France a guarantee
-of perpetual peace, by raising up that lower class, and giving
-them rights, civil and political, which should attach them to the
-legitimate government, and make them a balancing body against the
-aristocracy.
-
-It is wonderful! Great men, fighting single-handed against thousands,
-clear in foresight and insight, quick in planning, vigorous in
-executing, finding every path to advantage, hurling every weighty
-missile, seeing everything, daring everything, except that one simple,
-broad principle in statesmanship which could have saved France from
-anarchy then and from revolution afterwards.
-
-Gentlemen, it is a great lesson and a plain one. Diplomacy
-based on knowledge of the ordinary motives of ordinary men is
-strong,--statesmanship based on close study of the interests and
-aims of states and classes is strong;--but there is a Diplomacy and
-a Statesmanship infinitely stronger. Infinitely stronger are the
-Diplomacy and Statemanship whose master is a _heart_,--a heart with an
-instinct for truth and right;--a heart with a faith that on truth and
-right alone can peace be fitly builded.
-
-Your common-place Cavour, with his deep instinct for Italian Liberty
-and Unity;--your uncouth Lincoln, with his deep instinct for American
-Liberty and Unity, are worth legions of compromise builders and
-conciliation mongers.
-
-Mazarin delivered France into the hands of Louis XIV., and Louis
-brought them permanently into the narcotic phase. He stupefied them
-with sensuality,--attached them to his court,--made his palace the
-centre of their ambition,--gave scope to their fancy, by setting
-them at powdering and painting and frizzing,--gave scope to their
-activity by keeping them at gambling and debauchery,--weaned them from
-turbulence by stimulating them to decorate their bodies and to debase
-their souls.[41]
-
-The central power was thus saved;--the people went on suffering as
-before.
-
-Under the Regency of Louis XV. the nobility went from bad to worse.
-Their scorn for labor made them despise not merely those who toiled in
-Agriculture and Manufactures--it led them logically to openly neglect,
-and secretly despise professions generally thought the most honorable.
-When Racine ridiculed lawyers,[42] and when Moliere ridiculed
-physicians[43] and scholars,[44] they but yielded to this current.
-
-Wise men saw the danger. Laws were passed declaring that commerce
-should not be derogatory to nobility. Abbé Coyer wrote a book to
-entice nobles into commerce. It had a captivating frontispiece,
-representing a nobleman elegantly dressed going on board a handsome
-merchant ship.[45] All in vain. The serf-mastering traditions were too
-strong.
-
-The Revolution comes. The nobles stand out against the entreaties
-of Louis XVI.--the statesmanship of Turgot, the financial skill of
-Necker,--the keenness of Sieyes,--the boldness of Mirabeau. The very
-existence of France is threatened; but they have erected, as nobles
-always do, their substitute for patriotism. They stand by their order.
-Royalty yields to the third estate,--the clergy yield, the nobility
-will not.
-
-They are at last scared into momentary submission to right and justice
-and the spirit of the age. On the memorable Fourth of August they
-renounce their most hideous oppressions.
-
-There is no end of patriotic speeches by these converts to liberty.
-The burden of all is the same. They are anxious to give up their
-oppressions. It is of no use to struggle longer, they are beaten, they
-will yield to save France.[46] Artists illustrate the great event,
-some pathetically, some comically.[47] The millennium seems arrived, a
-_Te Deum_ is appointed. Yet plain common sense Buchez notes one thing
-in all this not so pleasant. In these "transports and outpourings,"
-(_transports et l'effusion de sentiments genereux_,) one very
-important thing has been forgotten. _The nobles forget to give, and
-the people forget to take--guarantees._[48]
-
-Woe to the people who trust merely the word of an upper caste
-habituated to oppression! Woe to the statesmen who do not at once
-crystallize such promises into constitutional and legislative acts!
-
-These nobles shortly regretted their concessions and sought to evade
-them.[49] The aristocrats whom they represented soon denied the right
-of their deputies to make these concessions, and soon after repudiated
-them.[50]
-
-How could it be otherwise? When you speak of concessions by a caste
-habituated to oppression, you do not mean that they give away a
-single, simple, tangible thing, and that _that_ is the end of it;--not
-at all. You mean that they give up old habits of thought,--habits
-of action. You mean that every day of their lives thereafter they
-are to give up a habit, or a fancy, or a comfort. No mere promises
-of theirs to do this can be trusted. There must be guarantees fixed
-immutably, bedded into the constitution,--clamped into the laws. That
-same anchoring of liberties, and not "_transports et l'effusion de
-sentiments genereux_," is statesmanship.
-
-These concessions were not thus secured. The old habits of oppression
-again got the upper hand. The upper class became as hostile to liberty
-and peace as ever.
-
-Then thundered through France the Revolution. It _must_ come;--that
-great and good French Revolution which did more to advance mankind in
-ten years than had been done politically in ten centuries,--which cost
-fewer lives to establish great principles than the Grand Monarque had
-flung away to gratify his whimsies! The right hand of the Almighty was
-behind it.
-
-I refuse at the will of English Tory historians to lament more
-over the sufferings that besotted caste of oppressors brought upon
-themselves during those three years, than over the sufferings they
-brought upon the people during three times three centuries.[51]
-
-The great thing was now partially done which Louis XI. and Richelieu
-had left entirely undone. The lower class were not merely freed from
-serfdom; they received guarantees of full civil rights.[52]
-
-So far all was well, but at another point the constituent assembly
-stumbled. They were not bold enough to give full _political_ rights.
-They thought the peasantry too ignorant--too much debased by a long
-servitude, to be entrusted with political rights,--therefore they
-denied them, and invented for them "passive citizenship."[53]
-
-It was skillfully devised, but none the less fatal. The denial
-of political rights to the enfranchised was one of the two great
-causes of the destruction of the Constitution of 1791, and of the
-inauguration of the Reign of Terror.
-
-Political rights could not be refused long. As they could not be
-obtained in peace the freed peasantry never allowed France rest until
-it gained them by long years of bloodshed and anarchy. Revolution
-after revolution has failed of full results. Dynasty after dynasty has
-failed to give quiet until a great statesman in our own time, Napoleon
-III., has been bold enough to make suffrage universal.
-
-Whatever the first French Revolution failed to do, it failed to do
-mainly by lack of bold faith in giving _political_ rights;--whatever
-it succeeded in doing, it succeeded by giving full _civil_ rights.
-
-When Louis XVIII. was brought back by foreign bayonets, the nobility
-also came back jubilant; all seemed about to give France over to
-her old caste of oppressors. The revolution was gone, its great
-theories were gone, its great men were swept away by death and by
-discouragement worse than death.
-
-But one barrier stood between France and all her old misery. That
-barrier stood firm; it was the enfranchised peasantry--possessing
-civil rights and confiscated property in land. Against these the whole
-might of the nobility beat in vain.
-
-Peace came, and with peace prosperity. France had been fearfully
-shattered by ages of evil administration and false political economy;
-she had been devastated by wars without and within; she had been
-plundered of an immense indemnity by the allies; the best of her
-people had been swept off by conscriptions; but under the distribution
-of lands to the former serfs, and the full guarantee of civil rights
-and the germs of political rights, the nation showed an energy in
-recuperation and a breadth of prosperity never before known in all
-her history.
-
-There are other nations which, did time allow, might be summoned
-before us to aid our insight into the tendencies of castes habituated
-to oppression.
-
-I might show from the annals of Germany how such a caste, having
-dragged the country through a thousand years of anarchy, have left
-it in chronic disunion,--the loss of all natural consideration, and
-oft-recurring civil wars, one of which is now devastating her.[54]
-
-I might show from the history of Russia how the despotism of the
-Autocrat has been made necessary to save the empire from a worse
-foe--from a serf-mastering aristocracy. And I might go further and
-show how the statesmanship which has emancipated the lower class in
-Russia has recognized the great truth that the nation is not safe
-against the aristocracy--that no barrier can stand against them except
-the enfranchised endowed with rights and lands.[55]
-
-But I am aware that an objection to this estimate of the noxious
-activity of an Aristocracy may be raised from the history of England.
-
-It may be said that there the course of the nobles has been
-different--that some of the hardest battles against tyrants have been
-won by combination of nobles, that they have laid the foundations
-of free institutions, that, under monarchs who have hated national
-liberty, nobles have been among the foremost martyrs.
-
-Let us look candidly at this.
-
-It is true that the Earl of Pembroke and the Barons of England led
-the struggle for Magna Charta; it is true that the Earl of Leicester
-and his associate barons summoned the first really representative
-Parliament;[56] it is true that Surrey and Raleigh and Russell
-suffered martyrdom at the hands of tyrants.
-
-It is true, moreover, that English nobles have not generally been so
-turbulent in what I have called the Vitriolic period, nor so debased
-in the Narcotic period, as most other European Aristocracies. They
-were, indeed, very violent in the wars of the Roses,--many of them
-were very debased under Charles the Second, and again under the first
-and last Georges, and it is quite likely will be again under that very
-unpromising ruler, Albert Edward, who seems developing the head of
-George the Third and the heart of George the Fourth[57]--but they have
-never been quite so violent or debased as the Continental nobles at
-similar periods.
-
-But all this, so far from weakening the thesis I support, strengthens
-it--nay, clenches it.
-
-For the nobility of England, less than any other in Europe, was based
-upon the oppression of a subject class. From the earliest period
-when law begins to be established in England we find that the serf
-system begins to be extinguished. The courts of law quietly adopted
-and steadily maintained the principle that in any question between
-lord and serf the presumption was in favor of the inferior's right to
-liberty rather than the superior's right to property.[58] The whole
-current set that way, and we find growing in England that middle
-class, steady and sturdy by the possession of rights, which won
-Agincourt and Crecy and Marston Moor and Worcester,--which made her
-country a garden and her cities marts for the world.[59]
-
-It is because England had so little of a serf-ruling caste in her
-history that she has been saved from so many of the calamities which
-have befallen other nations.
-
-And there is another great difference between England and other
-nations, a difference of tremendous import. She has not stopped after
-making her lower classes nominally free. She has given them full civil
-rights and a constantly increasing share of political rights. Thus she
-has made them guardians of freedom. This is the great reason why her
-nobility have not destroyed her. This enfranchised class has been a
-barrier against aristocratic encroachment.
-
-And yet in so far as the upper caste of England have partaken of
-traditions and habits of oppression they have deeply injured their
-country. Not a single great modern measure which they have not
-bitterly opposed.
-
-The Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Abolition of Tests, the Reform Bill,
-the improvement of the Universities--these and a score more of great
-measures nearly as important, they have fought to the last.[60]
-
-To them is mainly due that grasping of lands which has brought so much
-misery on the working class.[61]
-
-To them is due that cold-blooded dealing with Lafayette and Bailly and
-other patriots of the French Revolution, which finally resulted in the
-Brunswick Manifesto and the Reign of Terror.
-
-To them and their followers is due that most stupid crime which any
-nation ever committed in its foreign policy--the bitter, cowardly
-injustice toward our own Republic in its recent struggle.
-
-This is what the _remnant_ of caste-spirit in England has
-accomplished, and it is only because it has not been habituated to
-oppression by serf-owning, and because it was held in check by a lower
-class possessing civil and political rights, that it was not frightful
-in turbulence and debauchery.
-
-So stands modern history as it bears upon the thesis I have proposed.
-
-It shows a man-mastering caste, even when its man-mastering has passed
-from a fact into a tradition, to be the most frequent foe and the most
-determined with which nations have to grapple. By its erection of a
-substitute for patriotism, it is of all foes the most intractable;
-by its erection of a substitute for political morality, the most
-deceptive; by its proneness to disunion and disintegration, the most
-bewildering; by its habit of calling for the intervention of foreign
-powers, the most disheartening; by its morbid sensitiveness over
-pretended rights, the most watchful; in its unscrupulousness, the most
-determined; by its brilliancy, the most powerful in cheating the world
-into sympathy.
-
-But history gives more than this. To the thesis I have advanced it
-gives, as you have seen, a corollary. Having shown what foe to right
-and liberty is most vigorous and noxious, it shows how alone that foe
-can be conquered and permanently dethroned. The lesson of failures and
-successes in the world's history points to one course, and to that
-alone.
-
-Here conquest cannot do it; spasmodic severity cannot do it; wheedling
-of material interests, orating up patriotic interests, cannot do it.
-History shows just one course. _First, the oppressive caste must be
-put down at no matter what outlay of blood and treasure; next, it
-must be kept dethroned by erecting a living, growing barrier against
-its return to power, and the only way of erecting that barrier is by
-guaranteeing civil rights in full, and political rights at least in
-germ, to the subject class._
-
-Herein is written the greatness or littleness of nations--herein
-is written the failure or success of their great struggles. In all
-history, those be the great nations which have boldly grappled with
-political dragons, and not only put them down but _kept_ them down.
-
-The work of saving a nation from an oligarchy then is two fold. It
-is not finished until both parts are completed. Nations forget this
-at their peril. Nearly every great modern revolution wherein has
-been gain to liberty has had to be fought over a second time. So it
-was with the English Revolution of 1642. So it was with the French
-Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. What has been gained by bravery has
-been lost by treachery. Nations have forgotten that vigorous fighting
-to gain liberty must be followed by sound planning to secure it.
-
-What is this sound planning? Is it superiority in duplicity? Not at
-all; it is the only planning which insists on frank dealing. Is it
-based on cupidity? Not at all; it is based on Right. Is it centered
-in Revenge? Not at all; its centre is Mercy and its circumference
-is Justice. It may say to the discomfited oppressor, you shall have
-Mercy; but it must say to the enfranchised, you shall have Justice.
-
-Acknowledging this, Suger and the great mediaeval statesmen succeeded;
-ignoring this, Louis. XI., Richelieu, and a host of great modern
-statesmen failed.
-
-To keep the haughty and turbulent caste of oppressors in their proper
-relations, the central authority in every nation has been obliged to
-form a close alliance with the down-trodden caste of workers. If these
-have been ignorant it has had to instruct them; if they have been
-wretched, it has had to raise them; and the simple way--nay, the only
-way to instruct and raise them has been to give them rights, civil and
-political, which will force them to raise and instruct themselves.
-
-But it may be said that some subject classes are _too low_ thus to be
-lifted--that there are some races too weak to be thus wrought into a
-barrier against aristocracy. I deny it. For history denies it. The
-race is not yet discovered in which the average man is not better and
-safer with rights than without them.
-
-Think you that _your_ ancestors were so much better than _other_
-subject classes? Look into any town directory. The names show an
-overwhelming majority of us descendants of European serfs and
-peasantry. I defy you to find any body of men more degraded and stupid
-than our ancestors.
-
-Do you boast Anglo-Saxon ancestry?--look at Charles Kingsley's picture
-in Hereward of the great banquet, the apotheosis of wolfishness and
-piggishness; or look at Walter Scott's delineation in Ivanhoe of Gurth
-the swine-herd, dressed in skins, the brass collar soldered about his
-neck like the collar of a dog, and upon it the inscription, "Gurth
-the born thrall of Cedric."
-
-Do you boast French ancestry?--look into Orderic Vital, or Froissart,
-or De Comines, and see what manner of man was your ancestor, "_Jacques
-Bonhomme_"--kicked, cuffed, plundered, murdered, robbed of the honor
-of his wife and the custody of his children, not allowed to wear good
-clothing,[62] not recognized as a man and a brother,[63] not indeed in
-early times recognized as a man at all.[64]
-
-Do you boast German ancestry?--look at Luther's letters and see how
-the unutterable stupidity of your ancestors vexed him.
-
-Yet from these progenitors of yours, kept besotted and degraded
-through centuries by oppression, have, by comparatively a few years of
-freedom, been developed the barriers which have saved modern states.
-
-Is it said that this bestowal of rights on the oppressed is dangerous?
-History is full of proofs that the faith in Heaven's justice which has
-led statesmen to solve great difficulties by _bestowing_ rights has
-proved far more safe than the attempt to evade great difficulties by
-_withholding_ rights.[65]
-
-Is it said that the anarchic tendencies of an oppressive caste can be
-overcome by compromise and barter? History shows that the chances in
-trickery and barter are immensely in their favor.
-
-Is it said that the era of such dangers is past--that _civilization_
-will modify the nature of oppressive castes? That is the most
-dangerous delusion of all. In all annals, a class, whether rough
-citizens as in Poland, or smooth gentlemen as in France, based on
-traditions or habits of oppression, has proved a _reptile caste_.
-Its coat may be mottled with romance, and smooth with sophistry, and
-glossy with civilization;--it may wind itself gracefully in chivalric
-courses; but its fangs will be found none the less venomous, its
-attacks none the less cruel, its skill in prolonging its reptile life,
-even after seeming death wounds, none the less deceitful.
-
-Is it said that to grapple with such a reptile caste is dangerous?
-History shows not one example where the plain, hardy people have
-boldly faced it and throttled it and not conquered it.
-
-The course is plain, and there it but one. Strike until the reptile
-caste spirit is scotched; then pile upon it a new fabric of civil and
-political rights until its whole organism of evil is crushed forever.
-
-For this policy alone speaks the whole history of man,--to this policy
-alone stand pledged all the attributes of God.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[Footnote 1: History of Civilization in Europe. Third Lecture.]
-
-[Footnote 2: Sempere, _Histoire des Cortes d'Espagne_, Chap. 6.]
-
-[Footnote 3: Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella. Introduction, p. 48.]
-
-[Footnote 4: Hallam's Hist. of Middle Ages, Vol. 2, p. 30.]
-
-[Footnote 5: Robertson's Introduction to Life of Charles V., Section
-3d; also Prescott.]
-
-[Footnote 6: What an effect this early liberty had in stimulating
-thought can be seen in a few moments by glancing over the pages of
-Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature.]
-
-[Footnote 7: For some statements as to hardy characteristics of
-Spanish peasantry, see Doblado's Letters from Spain. Letter 2.]
-
-[Footnote 8: Sempere, p. 205.]
-
-[Footnote 9: Mariana Hist. of Spain.]
-
-[Footnote 10: Mariana, History of Spain.]
-
-[Footnote 11: Mariana, History of Spain, XIII., 11.]
-
-[Footnote 12: "There probably never lived a prince who, during so long
-a period, was adored by his subjects as Philip II. was." Buckle, Vol.
-II., page 21. This explains the popularity of Henry VIII. of England
-better than all Froude's volumes, able as they are.]
-
-[Footnote 13: All this examination into Aristocratic agency in
-Spanish decline is left out of Buckle's Summary. He passes at once to
-Ecclesiasticism and Despotism; but the unprejudiced reader will, I
-think, see that this statement is supplementary to that. In no other
-way can any man explain the fatuity of the Spaniards in throwing away
-these old liberties.]
-
-[Footnote 14: _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_; English translation
-of 1784; pp. 109-10. Compare also _L'Esprit des Lois_, liv. xiv.,
-chap. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 15: Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, chap. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 16: Fall of Roman Empire, last part of chap. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 17: _Histoire de la Civilisation en France_, 2mc Leçon.]
-
-[Footnote 18: History of Roman Republic, Book III., chap. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 19: Schlosser, _Weltgeshichte für das Deutsche Volk_; vol.
-iv., xiv., 1.]
-
-[Footnote 20: Essay on the Fall of Rome; Essays, vol. iii., p. 445.]
-
-[Footnote 21: History of the Romans, vol. vii., pp. 480-81.]
-
-[Footnote 22: Bancroft's Miscellanies.]
-
-[Footnote 23: The Roman and the Teuton--Lectures delivered before the
-University of Cambridge, p. 20.]
-
-[Footnote 24: Guizot, _Civilisation en Europe, 10me Leçon_; also
-Trollope's History of Florence, vol. 1., chap. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 25: Trollope's History of Florence, as above.]
-
-[Footnote 26: Any historical student can easily satisfy himself of the
-truth of this statement by comparing the cases given by Barante in
-his _Hist. des Ducs de Bourgogne_ with those given by Sismondi in the
-_Hist. des Républiques Italiennes_.]
-
-[Footnote 27: _Inferno_; canto xii., 138.]
-
-[Footnote 28: _Ibid_; canto vi., 60.]
-
-[Footnote 29: _Histoire des Républiques Italiennes_, vol. x.]
-
-[Footnote 30: For the working out of this principle by French and
-English nobilities into cruelties more frightful and inexcusable than
-any known to the Inquisition, see Orderic Vital Liv. XII. and XIII.,
-also Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_.]
-
-[Footnote 31: For examples of the brilliant side of Polish history
-presented, and dark side forgotten, see Chodzko _La Pologne Historique
-Monumentale et Pittoresque_. For fair summaries, see Alison's Essay,
-and his chapter on Poland, in the History of Europe--the best chapter
-in the book. The main authorities I have followed are Rulhière and
-Salvandy.]
-
-[Footnote 32: This statement is based upon my own observations in
-Poland in the years 1855-6.]
-
-[Footnote 33: Rulhière, _Anarchie de Pologne_. Vol. I., page 47.]
-
-[Footnote 34: Salvandy, _Vie de Jean Sobieski_. Vol. I., page 115.]
-
-[Footnote 35: The effects of Polish anarchy at home and intrigue
-abroad are pictured fully in a few simple touches in the "_Journal du
-Voyage de Boyard Chérémétieff_." (_Bibliotheque Russe et Polonaise._)
-Vol. IV., page 13.]
-
-[Footnote 36: To understand the causes of this deep hatred, see
-Monteil, _Histoire des Français des divers Etats, Epitre 22_.]
-
-[Footnote 37: St. Beuve, _Causeries de Lundi_. Also Matthew Arnold's
-Essays.]
-
-[Footnote 38: Guizot, _Civilisation en France, 19me Leçon_; also
-_Hüllman's, Staedtewesen des Mittelalters_. Vol. III., Chapter 1.]
-
-[Footnote 39: For these preposterous complaints and claims see the
-_Cahiers de doléances_ quoted in Sir James Stephens' Lectures.]
-
-[Footnote 40: Some details of Richelieu's grapple with the aristocracy
-I have given in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. ix., page 611.]
-
-[Footnote 41: For samples of the _mental_ calibre of French nobility
-under this regime, see case of Baron de Breteuil, who believed that
-Moses wrote the Lord's Prayer. Bayle St. John's translation of St.
-Simon, Vol. I., p. 179. For sample of their _moral_ debasement, see
-case of M. de Vendome. _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 187.]
-
-[Footnote 42: In _Les Plaideurs_.]
-
-[Footnote 43: _In Le Médecin Malgré lui_, and other plays.]
-
-[Footnote 44: _In Le Marriage Forcé._]
-
-[Footnote 45: _La Noblesse Commerçante._ London, 1756.]
-
-[Footnote 46: For general account, see _Mignet_, or _Louis Blanc_,
-or _Thiers_. For speeches in detail, see _Buchez et Roux, Histoire
-Parlémentaire_, Vol. II., pp. 224-243.]
-
-[Footnote 47: _Challamel Histoire-Musée de la République Française_,
-Vol. I., pp. 72-75, where some of these illustrations can be found.]
-
-[Footnote 48: _Buchez and Roux_, Vol. II., p. 231.]
-
-[Footnote 49: _Mignet_, Vol. I.]
-
-[Footnote 50: _Histoire de la Révolution Française par Deux Amis de la
-Liberté_, Vol. II., p. 228.]
-
-[Footnote 51: Any American, whose ideas have been wrested Torywise by
-Alison, can satisfy himself of the utter inability of an English Tory
-to write any history involving questions of liberty, by simply looking
-at Chancellor Kent's notes attached to the chapter on America in the
-American reprint of Alison's History of Europe.]
-
-[Footnote 52: _Constitution de 1791, Titre Premier._]
-
-[Footnote 53: _Constitution de 1791_, Titre III., Sect. 2, Art. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 54: Any one wishing to see how that inevitable moral
-debasement came upon the German aristocracy, and in general what the
-oppressive caste came to finally, can find enough in the 2d vol. of
-Menzel's History of Germany.]
-
-[Footnote 55: Gerbertzoff, _Hist. de la Civilisation en Russie_.
-Haxthausen, _Etudes sur la Russie_. A full sketch of the Rise and
-Decline of the serf system in Russia I have attempted in the Atlantic
-Monthly, Vol. X., page 538.]
-
-[Footnote 56: _Creasy's History of English Constitution_;--but Hume
-says of Leicester's Parliament, that it was in the intention of
-reducing forever both the King and the people under the arbitrary
-power of a very narrow tyranny, which must have terminated either in
-anarchy or in violent usurpation and tyranny. Hist. of England, Chap.
-XII.]
-
-[Footnote 57: I perhaps do the last two Georges injustice. Neither of
-them would have publicly insulted men of letters and science as the
-Prince of Wales has several times done recently.]
-
-[Footnote 58: Creasy, Chap. IX.]
-
-[Footnote 59: Fischel on English Constitution, Chap. I., pp. 9, 11.
-Also Stephens' Edition of De Lolme.]
-
-[Footnote 60: For best account of this, see May's Constitutional
-History.]
-
-[Footnote 61: See Kay's Social Condition of English People.]
-
-[Footnote 62: Among the grievances put forth by the nobles at the
-States General of 1614, one was that the wives of the common people
-wore too good clothing; another was that an orator of the third
-estate had dared call the nobles their brothers. Sir James Stephens'
-Lectures.]
-
-[Footnote 63: Among the grievances put forth by the nobles at the
-States General of 1614, one was that the wives of the common people
-wore too good clothing; another was that an orator of the third
-estate had dared call the nobles their brothers. Sir James Stephens'
-Lectures.]
-
-[Footnote 64: For a very striking summary of this see Henri Martin's
-_Hist. de France_, vol. v., p. 193.]
-
-[Footnote 65: I know of but one plausible exception to this rule--that
-of the failure of Joseph II. in his dealings with the Rhine provinces.
-The case of Louis XVI. is no exception, for he was always taking back
-secretly what he had given openly.]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes
-
-
-Minor punctuation errors have been silently corrected. Footnotes have
-been reindexed with numbers and moved to the end of the document.
-
-In Footnote 17: "2mc" is a possible typo for "2me."
- (Orig: _Histoire de la Civilisation en France_, 2mc Leçon.)
-
-In Footnote 18: Changed "Boook" to "Book."
- (Orig: History of Roman Republic, Boook III., chap. 1.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way
-to Its Permanent Overthrow, by Andrew Dickson White
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-Title: The Most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way to Its Permanent Overthrow
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-Author: Andrew Dickson White
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-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 309px;">
-<img src="images/frontcover.jpg" width="309" height="500" alt="frontcover" />
-</div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 492px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="492" height="800" alt="cover" />
-</div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-<h1>
-The most Bitter Foe of Nations,<br />
-and the Way to its Permanent Overthrow.</h1>
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="ph4">AN</p>
-
-<p class="ph1">ADDRESS,</p>
-
-<p class="ph4">DELIVERED BEFORE THE</p>
-
-<p class="ph2">PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY,</p>
-
-<p class="ph4">AT</p>
-
-<p class="ph3">YALE COLLEGE, JULY 25, 1866,</p>
-
-<p class="ph4">BY</p>
-
-<p class="ph2">ANDREW D. WHITE.</p>
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<p class="ph4">NEW HAVEN:<br />
-THOMAS H. PEASE, 323 CHAPEL STREET.<br />
-<small>T. J. STAFFORD, PRINTER.</small></p>
-
-<p class="ph4">1866.
-</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<p class="datesig">
-<span class="smcap">New Haven</span>, <em>July 26, 1866</em>.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,</p>
-
-<p>The undersigned have been appointed by the <span class="smcap">Phi Beta Kappa
-Society</span> a Committee to render you the cordial thanks of the Society for
-your admirable Address, delivered last evening, and to request a copy for
-the Press.</p>
-
-<p class="center">
-Respectfully and truly yours,</p>
-
-<p class="author">A. C. TWINING,</p>
-
-<p class="author">G. P. FISHER.</p>
-
-<p>Professor <span class="smcap">White</span>.<br />
-</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="datesig2"><span class="smcap">State of New York</span>,</p>
-
-<p class="datesig1"><em>Senate Chamber</em>,</p>
-
-<p class="datesig"><em>Albany, Aug. 30th, 1866</em>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
-
-<p>Accept my thanks for the very kind expressions regarding the
-Address which, in accordance with the request conveyed by you, I forward
-herewith.</p>
-
-<p class="center">
-With great respect,</p>
-
-<p class="datesig2">Very truly yours,</p>
-
-<p class="author">A. D. WHITE.</p>
-
-<p>Professors <span class="smcap">A. C. Twining</span> and<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;"><span class="smcap">G. P. Fisher</span>.</span><br />
-</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-
-<h2><a name="ADDRESS" id="ADDRESS">ADDRESS.</a></h2>
-
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<p>In this sacred struggle and battle of so many hundred years,&mdash;this
-weary struggle of truths to be recognized,&mdash;this desperate
-battle of rights to be allowed;&mdash;in this long, broad current
-toward more truth and more right, in which are seen the hands
-of so many good and bad and indifferent men,&mdash;and in the
-midst of all, and surrounding all, the hand of very God,&mdash;what
-political institution has been most vigorous against this current,&mdash;what
-political system has been most noxious to political
-truth and right?&mdash;in short, what foe, in every land, have
-right and liberty found it hardest to fight or outwit?</p>
-
-<p>Is it Ecclesiasticism?&mdash;is it Despotism?&mdash;is it Aristocracy?&mdash;is
-it Democracy?</p>
-
-<p>The time allotted me this evening I shall devote to maintaining
-the following Thesis:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Of all systems and institutions, the most vigorous in battling
-Liberty,&mdash;the most noxious in adulterating Right,&mdash;the
-most corrosive in eating out Nationality, has been an
-Aristocracy based upon habits or traditions of oppression.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>I shall also attempt to deduce from the proofs of this a corollary,
-showing <em>the only way in which such an Aristocracy ever
-has been or ever can be fought successfully and put down permanently</em>.</p>
-
-<p>Let me first give this Thesis precision.</p>
-
-<p>I do not say that Aristocracy, based upon habits and traditions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
-of oppression, is the foe which takes deepest hold;&mdash;Despotism
-and Ecclesiasticism are dragons which get their
-claws far deeper into the body politic;&mdash;for Despotism clutches
-more temporal, and Ecclesiasticism more eternal interests.</p>
-
-<p>Nor do I say that Aristocracy is the enemy most difficult to
-find and come at. Demoralization in Democracy is harder to
-find and come at; for demoralization in Democracy is a disease,
-and lurks,&mdash;Aristocracy is a foe, and stands forth&mdash;bold;
-Demoralization is latent, and political doctors disagree about it,&mdash;Aristocracy
-is patent, and men of average sense soon agree
-about it.</p>
-
-<p>But the statement is that Aristocracy, based upon oppression,
-is, of all foes to liberty the most vigorous, of all foes to rights
-the most noxious, and of all foes to nationality the most corrosive.</p>
-
-<p>Other battles may be longer;&mdash;but the battle with Aristocracy
-is the sharpest which a nation can be called upon to
-wage,&mdash;and as a nation uses its strength during the contest&mdash;and
-<em>as it uses its wits after the contest</em>&mdash;so shall you find its
-whole national life a success or a failure.</p>
-
-<p>For my proofs I shall not start with <em>a priori</em> reasoning:&mdash;that
-shall come in as it is needed in the examination of historical
-facts. You shall have the simple, accurate presentation
-of facts from history&mdash;and plain reasoning upon these facts&mdash;and
-from Ancient History, rich as it is in proofs, I will draw
-nothing!&mdash;all shall be drawn from the history of modern States&mdash;the
-history of men living under the influence of great religious
-and political ideas which are active to-day&mdash;and among
-ourselves.</p>
-
-<p>Foremost among the examples of the normal working of an
-Aristocracy based upon the subjection of a class, I name
-<span class="smcap">Spain</span>. I name her first&mdash;not as the most striking example,
-but as one of those in which the evil grew most naturally, and
-went through its various noxious phases most regularly.</p>
-
-<p>The fabric of Spanish nationality had much strength and
-much beauty. The mixture of the Barbarian element with the
-Roman, after the Roman downfall, was probably happier there
-than in any other part of Europe. The Visigoths gave Spain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
-the best of all the barbaric codes. Guizot has shown how,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> as
-by inspiration, some of the most advanced ideas of modern enlightened
-codes were incorporated into it.</p>
-
-<p>The succeeding history of the Spanish nation was also, in its
-main sweep, fortunate. There were ages of endurance which
-toughened the growing nation,&mdash;battles for right which ennobled
-it;&mdash;disasters which compacted manliness and squeezed
-out effeminacy.</p>
-
-<p>This character took shape in goodly institutions. The city
-growth helped the growth of liberty, not less in Spain than in
-her sister nations. Cities and towns became not merely centres
-of prosperity, but guardians of freedom.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
-
-<p>Then came, perhaps, the finest growth of free institutions in
-Mediæval Europe.</p>
-
-<p>The Cortes of Castile was a representative body nearly a
-hundred years before Simon de Montfort laid the foundations
-of English parliamentary representation at Leicester.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The
-Commons of Arragon had gained yet greater privileges earlier.</p>
-
-<p>Statesmen sat in these&mdash;statesmen who devised curbs for
-monarchs, and forced monarchs to wear them. The dispensing
-power was claimed at an early day by Spanish Kings as
-by Kings of England;&mdash;but Hallam acknowledges<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> that the
-Spaniards made a better fight against this despotic claim than
-did the English. The Spanish established the Constitutional
-principle that the King cannot dispense with statutes centuries
-before the English established it by the final overthrow of the
-Stuarts.</p>
-
-<p>Many sturdy maxims, generally accounted fruit of that early
-English boldness for liberty, are of that earlier Spanish period.
-"No taxation without representation" was a principle asserted
-in Castile early, often and to good purpose. In Arragon no war
-could be declared,&mdash;no peace made,&mdash;no money coined without
-consent of the Cortes.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The "Great Privilege of Saragossa" gave quite as many, and
-quite as important liberties to Arragon as were wrested from
-King John for England in the same century.</p>
-
-<p>Such is a meagre sketch of the development of society at
-large. As regards the other development which goes to produce
-civilization&mdash;the development of individual character, the
-Spanish peninsula was not less distinguished. In its line of
-monarchs were Ferdinand III., Alfonso X., James II., and
-Isabella;&mdash;in its line of statesmen were Ximenes and Cisneros&mdash;worthy
-predecessors of that most daring of all modern statesmen,
-Alberoni. The nation rejoiced too in a noble line of
-poets and men of letters.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
-
-<p>Still more important than these brilliant exceptions was the
-tone of the people at large. They were tough and manly.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
-
-<p>No doubt there were grave national faults. Pride&mdash;national
-and individual&mdash;constantly endangered quiet. Blind submission
-to Ecclesiastical authority was also a fearful source of
-evil! Yet, despite these, it is impossible not to be convinced,
-on a careful reading of Spanish history, that the influence
-which tore apart States,&mdash;which undermined good institutions,&mdash;which
-defeated justice,&mdash;which disheartened effort,&mdash;which
-prevented resistance to encroachments of Ecclesiasticism and
-Despotism&mdash;nay, which made such encroachments a <em>necessity</em>&mdash;came
-from the <em>nobility</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The Spanish nobility had risen and become strong in those
-long wars against the intruding Moors,&mdash;they had gained additional
-strength in the wars between provinces. They soon
-manifested necessary characteristics. They kept Castile in confusion
-by their dissensions,&mdash;they kept Arragon in confusion
-by their anti-governmental unions.</p>
-
-<p>Accustomed to lord it over inferiors, they could brook no
-opposition,&mdash;hence all their influence was Anarchic; accustomed
-to no profitable labor of any sort, their influence was for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
-laziness and wastefulness;&mdash;accustomed to look on public matters
-as their monopoly, they devoted themselves to conjuring
-up phantoms of injuries and insults, and plotting to avenge
-them.</p>
-
-<p>Every Aristocracy passes through one, and most Aristocracies
-through both of two historic phases.</p>
-
-<p>The first may be called the <em>Vitriolic</em>,&mdash;the period of intense,
-biting, corrosive activity,&mdash;the period in which it gnaws fiercely
-into all institutions with which it comes into contact,&mdash;the
-period in which it decomposes all elements of nationality.</p>
-
-<p>In Spain this first period was early developed and long continued.
-Grandees and nobles bit and cut their way into the
-Legislative system,&mdash;by brute force, too, they crushed their
-way through the Judicial system,&mdash;by judicious mixtures of
-cheating and bullying they often controlled the Executive
-system.</p>
-
-<p>Chapter after chapter of Mariana's history begins with the
-story of their turbulence, and ends with the story of its sad results;&mdash;how
-the nobles seized King James of Arragon;&mdash;how
-the Lara family usurped the Government of Castile;&mdash;how the
-houses of Lara, Haro, Castro and their peers are constantly concocting
-some plot, or doing some act to overthrow all governmental
-stability.</p>
-
-<p>But their warfare was not merely upon Government and
-upon each other;&mdash;it was upon the people at large. Out from
-their midst comes a constant voice of indignant petitions.
-These are not merely petitions from serfs. No! history written
-in stately style has given small place to their cries;&mdash;but the
-great flood of petitions and remonstrances comes from the substantial
-middle class, who saw this domineering upper class
-trampling out every germ of commercial and manufacturing
-prosperity.</p>
-
-<p>Such was the current of Spanish history. I now single out
-certain aristocratic characteristics bedded in it which made its
-flow so turbulent.</p>
-
-<p>Foremost of these was that first and most fatal characteristic
-of all aristocracies based on oppression&mdash;<em>the erection of a substitute
-for patriotism</em>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Devotion to caste, in such circumstances, always eats out
-love of country. A nobility often fight for their country&mdash;often
-die for it;&mdash;but in any supreme national emergency,&mdash;at
-any moment of moments in national history the rule is that you
-are sure to find them asking&mdash;not "What is my duty to my
-country?" but "<em>What is my duty to my order?</em>"</p>
-
-<p>Every crisis in Spanish history shows this characteristic,&mdash;take
-one example to show the strength of it.</p>
-
-<p>Charles the Fifth was the most terrible of all monarchic foes
-to the old Spanish institutions. The nobles disliked him for
-this. They also disliked him still more as a foreigner. Most
-of all they disliked him because the tools he used in overturning
-Spain were foreigners.</p>
-
-<p>Against this detested policy the cities of the kingdom planned
-a policy thoughtful and effectual. Cardinal Cisneros favored
-it,&mdash;the only thing needed was the conjunction of the nobles.
-They seemed favorable&mdash;but at the supreme moment they
-wavered. The interest of the country was clear;&mdash;but <em>how as
-to the interests of their order</em>? They began by fearing encroachments
-of the people;&mdash;they ended by becoming traitors,
-allowed the battle of Villalar to be lost&mdash;and with it the last
-chance of curbing their most terrible enemy.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
-
-<p>Another characteristic was <em>the development of a substitute
-for political morality</em>.</p>
-
-<p>These nobles were brave. The chronicles gave them plentiful
-supply of chivalric maxims, and they carried these out into
-chivalric practices. Their quickness in throwing about them
-the robes of chivalry was only excelled by their quickness in
-throwing off the garb of ordinary political morality. They
-could die for an idea, yet we constantly see among them acts
-of bad faith&mdash;petty and large&mdash;only befitting savages.</p>
-
-<p>John Alonzo de la Cerda, by the will of the late King, had
-been deprived of a certain office; he therefore betrays the
-stronghold of Myorga to the new King's enemies.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Don Alonzo
-de Lara had caused great distress by his turbulence. Queen
-Berengaria writes an account of it to the King. Don Alonzo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
-does not scruple to waylay the messenger, murder him, and
-substitute for the true message a forgery, containing an order
-in the Queen's hand for the King's murder.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> Of such warp and
-woof is the history of the Spanish aristocracy&mdash;the history of
-nobles whose boast was their chivalry.</p>
-
-<p>How is this to be accounted for? Mainly by the fact, I
-think, that the pride engendered by lording it over a subject
-class lifts men above ordinary morality. If commonplace
-truth and vulgar good faith fetter that morbid will-power
-which serf-owning gives, truth and good faith must be rent
-asunder.</p>
-
-<p>The next characteristic was <em>the erection of a theory of easy
-treason and perpetual anarchy</em>.</p>
-
-<p>Prescott calls this whimsical; he might more justly have
-called it frightful.</p>
-
-<p>For this theory, which they asserted, maintained, and finally
-brought into the national notion and custom was, that in case
-they were aggrieved&mdash;<em>themselves being judges</em>&mdash;they could renounce
-their allegiance, join the bitterest foes of king and
-nation,&mdash;plot and fight against their country,&mdash;deluge the land
-in blood,&mdash;deplete the treasury; and yet that the King should
-take care of the families they left behind, and in other ways
-make treason pastime.</p>
-
-<p>Spanish history is black with the consequences of this theory.
-Mariana drops a casual expression in his history which shows
-the natural result, when he says: "The Castro family were
-<em>much in the habit</em> of revolting and going over to the Moors."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
-
-<p>The absurdity of this theory was only equaled by its
-iniquity.</p>
-
-<p>For it involved three ideas absolutely fatal to any State&mdash;<em>the
-right of peaceable secession&mdash;the right of judging in their own
-cause, and the right of committing treason with impunity</em>.
-Now, any nation which does not, when stung by such a theory,
-throttle it, and stamp the life out of it, is doomed.</p>
-
-<p>Spain did not grapple with it. She tampered with it, truckled
-to it, compromised with it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>This nursed another characteristic in her nobility, which is
-sure to be developed always under like circumstances. This
-characteristic was <em>an aristocratic inability to appreciate concessions</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The ordinary sort of poor statesmanship which afflicts this
-world generally meets the assumptions and treasons of a man-mastering
-caste by concessions. The commercial and manufacturing
-classes love peace and applaud concessions. But concessions
-only make matters worse. Concessions to a caste, based
-upon traditions of oppression, are but fuel to fire. The more
-privileges are given, the higher blazes its pride, and pride is
-one of the greatest causes of its noxious activity. Concessions
-to such a caste are sure to be received as tributes to its superiority.
-Such concessions are regarded by it not as favors but
-as rights, and no man ever owed gratitude for a right.</p>
-
-<p>There remained then but one way of dealing with it,&mdash;that
-was by overwhelming force; and at the end of the Fifteenth
-Century that force appeared. The encroachments upon regular
-central government produced the same results in Spain as
-in the rest of Europe at about the same time.</p>
-
-<p>To one not acquainted with previous history, but looking
-thoughtfully at the fifteenth century, it must seem strange that
-just at that time&mdash;as by a simultaneous and spontaneous movement&mdash;almost
-every nation in Europe consolidated power in
-the hands of a monarch. In France, in England, in Italy, as
-well as in Spain, you see institutions, liberties, franchises, boundaries
-sacrificed freely to establish despotism. You see Henry
-VII. in England, Louis XI. in France, Charles V., a little
-later, in Germany and Italy, Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain&mdash;almost
-all utterly unlovely and unloved&mdash;allowed to build up
-despotisms in all cases severe, and in most cases cruel. Why?
-Because the serf-owning caste had become utterly unbearable;
-because one tyrant is better than a thousand.</p>
-
-<p>Then the Spanish nobility went into the next phase. Ferdinand,
-Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second&mdash;three of the
-harshest tyrants known to history,&mdash;having crushed out the
-boldness and enterprise of the aristocracy it passed from what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
-I have called the <em>Vitriolic</em> into what might be called the <em>Narcotic
-period</em>.</p>
-
-<p>A period this was in which the noble became an agent in
-stimulating all evil tendencies in the monarch, and in stupefying
-all good tendencies in the people.</p>
-
-<p>The caste spirit was a drug infused into the body politic,
-rendering inert all its powers for good. Did Charles the Fifth
-insult and depose Ximenes,&mdash;the nation sleepily permitted it;
-did Philip the Second lay bigot plans which brought the kingdom
-to ruin,&mdash;the nation lazily fawned upon him for it;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> did
-Philip III. and his successors allow the nation to sink into
-contempt,&mdash;there was no voice to raise it.</p>
-
-<p>Do you say that this resulted from Ecclesiasticism? I answer
-that the main reason why Ecclesiasticism became so
-strong was because it sheltered the lower class from the exactions
-of the Aristocracy. Do you say that it resulted from
-Despotism? I answer that Despotism became absolute in order
-to save the nation from the turbulence of the Aristocracy.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
-
-<p>No single Despotism, either in Church or State, could by
-itself have broken that well-knit system of old Spanish liberties.
-It was the growth of an oppressive caste, who by their
-spirit of disunion made Despotism possible, and by their spirit
-of turbulence made it necessary.</p>
-
-<p>The next nation in which I would show the working of a
-caste with traditions of oppression is <span class="smcap">Italy</span>.</p>
-
-<p>Man-owners had cost Italy dear already. Roman serf-culture
-had withered all prosperity in the country; slave service
-had eaten out all manliness from the city.</p>
-
-<p>It is one of the most pregnant facts in history, and one which,
-so far as I know, has never been noted, that whereas the multitude<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
-who have written upon the subject have assigned innumerable
-causes for the decline and downfall of the Roman nation,
-<em>not one of any note has failed to name, as a cause, Roman
-slavery</em>. As to other causes they disagree&mdash;on this alone
-all agree.</p>
-
-<p>The philosophers Montesquieu<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and Gibbon,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> the economist
-Sismondi,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> the <em>doctrinaire</em> Guizot,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> the republican Michelet,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>
-the eclectic Schlosser,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> high tory Alison,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> moderate Merivale,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
-democrat Bancroft,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> <em>quasi</em> conservative, <em>quasi</em> liberal
-Charles Kingsley,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> wide apart as the poles on all else, agree
-to name as a cause of Roman ruin the system of forced labor.</p>
-
-<p>But after the Roman downfall the straggle of Italy with her
-upper caste seems singularly fortunate. At an early day her
-cities by commerce became rich and strong. Then in the natural
-course of things&mdash;first, free ideas, next, free institutions,
-next, war upon the nobles to make them respect these ideas
-and institutions.</p>
-
-<p>The war of municipalities against nobles was successful.
-Elsewhere in Europe cities sheltered themselves behind lords;
-in Italy lords sheltered themselves in cities. Elsewhere the
-lord dwelt in the castle <em>above</em> the city; in Italy the lord was
-forced to dwell in his palace <em>within</em> the city.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
-
-<p>The victory of freedom seemed complete. The Italian republics
-were triumphant; the nobility were, to all appearance,
-subdued.</p>
-
-<p>But those republics made a fearful mistake. They had a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
-great chance to destroy caste and lost it. They allowed the
-old caste spirit to remain, and that evil leaven soon renewed
-its work. The republics showed generalship in war, but in
-peace they were outwitted.</p>
-
-<p>First, the nobles insisted on pretended rights within the city,
-and stirred perpetual civil war to make these rights good.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
-
-<p>Beaten at this they had yet a worse influence. Those great
-free cities would not indeed allow the nobles to indulge in private
-wars, but gradually the cities caught the infection from
-the nobles. The cities caught their aristocratic spirit of jealousy,&mdash;took
-nobles as leaders,&mdash;ran into their modes of plotting
-and fighting, and what I have called the <em>Vitriolic</em> period set in.</p>
-
-<p>Undoubtedly some of this propensity came from other causes,
-but the main cause was this domineering aristocracy in its
-midst, giving tone to its ideas. Free cities in other parts of
-Europe disliked each other,&mdash;a few fought each other,&mdash;but
-none with a tithe of the insane hate and rage shown by the
-city republics of Italy.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
-
-<p>Hence arose that political product sure to rise in every nation
-where an aristocracy shape policy, the <em>Spirit of Disunion</em>.
-Its curse has been upon Italy for five hundred years. Dante
-felt it when he sketched the torments of Riniero of Corneto and
-Riniero Pazzo,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> and the woes brought on Florence by the feuds
-of the Neri and Bianchi.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Sismondi felt it when his thoughts
-of Italian disunion wrung from his liberty-loving heart a longing
-for Despotism.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> All Italy felt it when Genoa, in these last
-years, solemnly restored to Pisa the trophies gained in those
-old civil wars, and hung them up in the Campo Santo behind
-the bust of Cavour.</p>
-
-<p>No other adequate reason for the chronic spirit of disunion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
-in Italy than the oppressive aristocratic spirit can be given.
-Italy was blest with every influence for unity;&mdash;a most favorable
-position and conformation, boundaries sharply defined on
-three sides by seas and on the remaining side by lofty mountains,
-a great devotion to trade, a single great political tradition,
-a single great religious tradition, both drawing the nation
-toward one great central city.</p>
-
-<p>Had Italy been left to herself without the disturbing influence
-of this chivalric, uneasy, plotting, fighting caste, who can
-doubt that petty rivalries would have been extinguished and
-all elements fused into a great, strong Nationality?</p>
-
-<p>Turn from this history and construct such a society with
-your own reason. You shall find it all very simple. Put into
-energetic free cities or states a body of men accustomed to lord
-it over an inferior caste, whose main occupation is to brood
-over wrongs and to hatch revenges, and you ensure disunion
-between that state and sister states speedily. To such men
-every movement of a sister state is cause for suspicion, every
-betterment cause for quarrel.</p>
-
-<p>But you ensure more than that. Under such circumstances
-<em>disunion is always followed by disintegration</em>. They are
-two inevitable stages of one disease. In the first stage the
-idea of country is lost; in the second, the idea of government
-is lost; disintegration is closely followed by Anarchy, and Despotism
-has generally been the only remedy.</p>
-
-<p>To Italy in this strait despotism was the remedy. Disunion
-between <em>all</em> Italian Republics was followed by disintegration
-between factions in <em>each</em> Italian Republic. A multitude of
-city tyrants rose to remedy disintegration,&mdash;a single tyrant
-rose above all to remedy disunion.</p>
-
-<p>These were welcomed because they at least mitigated anarchy.
-If a Visconti or a Sforza was bad at Milan, he was better
-than a multitude of tyrants. If the Scala were severe at
-Verona, they were less severe than the crowd of competitors
-whom they put down. If Rienzi was harsh at Rome, he was
-milder than the struggles of the Colonna and Orsini,&mdash;if the
-Duke of Athens was at once contemptible and terrible at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
-Athens, he was neither so contemptible nor so terrible as the
-feuds of the Cerchi and Donati.</p>
-
-<p>And when, at last, Charles the Fifth crushed all these seething
-polities into a compact despotism, that was better than
-disunion, disintegration and anarchy.</p>
-
-<p>This compression of anarchic elements ended the Vitriolic
-period of Italian Aristocracy, but it brought on the Narcotic
-period. It was the most fearful reign of cruelty, debauchery
-and treachery between the orgies of Vitellius and De Sade.</p>
-
-<p>Yet those debaucheries and murders among the Borgias and
-later Medici, and so many other leading families, were but types
-of what this second phase of an oppressive aristocracy <em>must</em> be.</p>
-
-<p>For the domineering caste-spirit immediately on its repression
-breaks out in cruelty. This is historical, and a moment's
-thought will show you that it is logical. The development
-of the chivalric noble into the cruel schemer is very easily
-traced.</p>
-
-<p>Given such a lordling forced to keep the peace, and you have
-a character which, if it resigns itself, sinks into debauchery&mdash;which,
-if it resists, flies into plotting. Now both the debauchee
-and the plotter regard bodies and souls of inferiors as mere
-counters in their games,&mdash;hence they <em>must</em> be cruel.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
-
-<p>I turn now to another nation where the serf-mastering spirit
-wrought out its fearful work in yet a different manner, and on
-a more gigantic scale,&mdash;in a manner so brilliant that it has dazzled
-the world for centuries, and blazoned its faults as virtues;&mdash;on
-a scale so great that it has sunk art, science, literature,
-education, commerce and manufactures,&mdash;brought misery upon
-its lower caste,&mdash;brought death upon its upper caste,&mdash;and has
-utterly removed its nation from modern geography, and its
-name from modern history. I point you to <span class="smcap">Poland</span>.</p>
-
-<p>Look at Polish history as painted by its admirers,&mdash;it is noble
-and beautiful. You see political scenes, military scenes,
-and individual lives which at once win you.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Go back three centuries, stand on those old towers of Warsaw,&mdash;look
-forth over the Plains of Volo. The nation is gathered
-there. Its King it elects. The King thus elected is limited
-in power so that his main function is to do justice. The whole
-voting body are <em>equals</em>. Each, too, is <em>free</em>. No King, no Noble,
-is allowed to trench upon his freedom. So free is each that no
-will of the majority is binding upon him, except by his own
-consent. Here is equality indeed! Equality pushed so far that
-each man is not only the equal of every other&mdash;but of all others
-together;&mdash;the equal of the combined nation.</p>
-
-<p>These men are brave, hardy, and, as you have seen, free,
-equal, and allowed more rights than the citizens of any republic
-before or since.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
-
-<p>But leave now this magnificent body&mdash;stretching over those
-vast plains beyond eye-reach. Tear yourselves away from the
-brave show&mdash;the flash of jeweled sabres and crosiers&mdash;the
-glitter of gilded trappings&mdash;the curvetings of noble horses between
-tents of silk and banners of gold-thread. Go out into
-the country from which these splendid freemen come.</p>
-
-<p>Here is indeed a revelation! Here is a body of men whom
-history has forgotten. Strangely indeed&mdash;for it is a body far
-larger than that assembled upon the plains of Volo. <em>There</em>
-were, perhaps, a hundred thousand; <em>here</em> are millions. These
-millions are Christians, but they are wretchedly clad and bent
-with labor. They are indeed stupid,&mdash;unkempt,&mdash;degraded,&mdash;often
-knavish,&mdash;but they love their country,&mdash;toil for her,&mdash;suffer
-for her.</p>
-
-<p>To them, in times of national struggles, all the weariness,&mdash;to
-them, in times of national triumphs, none of the honor.</p>
-
-<p>These are the <em>serfs</em> of those brilliant beings prancing and
-caracoling and flashing on yonder plain of Volo&mdash;to the applauding
-universe.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Evidently then, there has been a mistake here. History and
-poetry have forgotten to mention a fact supremely important.</p>
-
-<p>The <em>people</em> of Poland are, after all, <em>not</em> free&mdash;<em>not</em> equal. The
-voting is not voting by the <em>people</em>. Freedom and the suffrage
-are for <em>serf-owners</em>,&mdash;equality is between <em>them</em>.</p>
-
-<p>No one can deny that in this governing class were many,
-very many noble specimens of manhood&mdash;yielding ease and
-life for ideas&mdash;readily.</p>
-
-<p>Emperor Henry the Fifth of Germany had tried in vain to
-overcome them by war. When the Polish ambassador came
-into his presence, the Emperor pointed to his weapon, and said,
-"I could not overcome your nobility with <em>these</em>;"&mdash;then pointing
-to an open chest filled with gold, he said, "but I will conquer
-them with <em>this</em>." The ambassador wore the chains and
-jewels befitting his rank. Straitway he takes off every ornament,
-and flings all into the Emperor's chest together.</p>
-
-<p>Yet myriads of such men could not have averted ruin. Polish
-history proved it day by day.</p>
-
-<p>It was not that these nobles were especially barbarous,&mdash;it
-was not that they were effeminate. <em>It was simply that they
-maintained one caste above another&mdash;allowing a distinction in
-civil and political rights.</em> The system gave its usual luxuriant
-fruitage of curses.</p>
-
-<p><em>First</em> in the <em>material</em> condition. Labor and trade were despised.
-If, in the useful class, a genius arose, the first exercise
-of his genius was to get himself out of the useful class. Labor
-was left to serfs; trade was left to Jews. Cities were contemptible
-in all that does a city honor. Villages were huddles.
-The idea thus implanted remains. Of all countries, called
-civilized, Poland seems to-day, materially, the most hopeless.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
-
-<p>It may be said that this results from Russian invasions;&mdash;but
-it was so <em>before</em> Russian invasions. It may be said that it
-results from Russian oppression,&mdash;but the great central districts
-of Russia are just as much under the Czar, and they
-are thriving. It may be said that Poland has been wasted by
-war;&mdash;but Belgium and Holland and the Rhine Palatinate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
-have been far more severely wasted, yet their towns are
-hives, and their country districts gardens.</p>
-
-<p>Next, as to the <em>Political</em> condition.</p>
-
-<p>A man-mastering caste necessarily develops the individual
-will morbidly and intensely. The most immediate of political
-consequences is, of course, a clash between the individual will
-and the general will.</p>
-
-<p>Trouble then breaks forth in different forms in different
-countries. In Spain we saw it take shape in <em>Secession</em>;&mdash;in
-Italy we saw it lead to fearful territorial <em>Disunion</em>;&mdash;in Poland
-it first took the form of <em>Nullification</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The nullifying spirit naturally crystallized into an institution.
-That institution was the <em>Liberum Veto</em>.</p>
-
-<p>By this, in any national assemblage&mdash;no matter how great,
-no matter how important,&mdash;the veto of a single noble could
-stop all proceedings. Every special interest of every petty district
-or man had power of life and death over the general interest.
-The whim, or crotchet, or spite of a single man could and
-did nullify measures vital to the whole nation. In 1652, Sizinski,
-a noble sitting in the national diet, when great measures
-were supposed to be unanimously determined upon, left his seat,
-signifying his dissent. The whole vast machinery was stopped,
-and Poland made miserable.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
-
-<p>Closely allied to this was another political consequence.</p>
-
-<p>Constant, healthful watchfulness over rights is necessary in
-any republic; but there is a watchfulness which is not healthful;
-it is the morbid watchfulness&mdash;the jealousy which arises
-in the minds of a superior caste, <em>living generally in contact
-with inferiors, and only occasionally in contact with equals</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The Polish citizen lived on his estate. About him were inferiors,&mdash;beings
-who were not citizens&mdash;depending on him&mdash;doing
-him homage. But when the same citizen entered that Assembly
-on the Plains of Volo all this was changed. There he met
-his equals. Pride then clashed with pride,&mdash;faction rose against
-faction.</p>
-
-<p>The result I will not state in my own words, for fear it may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
-be thought I warp facts to make a historical parallel. I shall
-translate word for word from Salvandy:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"<em>Confederations</em> were now formed&mdash;armed leagues of a
-number of nobles who chose for themselves a Marshal or President,
-and opposed decrees to decrees, force to force; contending
-diets which raised leader against leader, and had the King
-sometimes as chief, sometimes as captive; an institution deplorable
-and insensate, which opened to all discontented men a
-legal way to set their country on fire."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>From the political causes I have named logically flowed
-another.</p>
-
-<p>In that perpetual anarchy, some factions must be beaten.
-But a class with traditions and habits of oppression is very different,
-when beaten, from a society swayed by manufacturing,
-commercial, and legal interests. These last try to make some
-arrangement. They yield, and fit matters to the new conditions.
-They are anxious to get back to their work again. But
-a class with habits of domineering has its own peculiar pride
-to deal with. It has leisure to brood over defeat, to whine over
-lost advantages, to fret over lost consideration, and you generally
-find it soon plotting more insidiously than before.</p>
-
-<p>So it was with Poland. The beaten factions did what fighting
-aristocracies always do when fearful of defeat, or embittered
-by it,&mdash;the vilest thing they can do, and the most dangerous&mdash;<em>they
-intrigued for foreign intervention</em>.</p>
-
-<p>Of all things, this is most fatal to nationality. Going openly
-over to the enemy is bad; but intrigues with foreign powers,
-hostile by interest and tradition, are unutterably vile.</p>
-
-<p>Yet there is not a nation where a class pursuing separate and
-distinct rights is tolerated, where such intrigues have not been
-frequent. More than this, such intrigues have generally been
-timed with diabolic sagacity.</p>
-
-<p>The time chosen is generally some national emergency&mdash;when
-the nation is writhing in domestic misfortunes, or battling
-desperately against foreign foes. The Spanish nobles
-chose their time for intriguing with the Moors for their intervention,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
-when the Spanish nation were in the most desperate
-struggle&mdash;not merely for temporal power, but even for the existence
-of their religion.</p>
-
-<p>In France, the nobles chose such periods as those when
-Richelieu was leading the nation against all Europe and a
-large part of France. In Poland, the nobles chose the times
-when the nation was struggling against absolute annihilation.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
-
-<p>History, to one not blinded by Polish bravery, is clear here.
-The real authors of the partition of Poland were not Frederick
-of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine of
-Prussia, but those proud nobles who drew surrounding nations
-to intervene in Polish politics.</p>
-
-<p>The <em>Social</em> condition was also affected naturally. Poland
-went into the inevitable narcotic phase. Her court during the
-reigns of its later Kings was a brothel, and her nobles its worthy
-tenants.</p>
-
-<p>What followed was natural. When the light of the last century
-streamed in upon this corrupt mass, Zamoiski and men
-like him tried to purify it,&mdash;to enfranchise the subordinate
-caste,&mdash;to work reforms. The Polish Republic refused. Then
-Providence began a work radical and terrible.</p>
-
-<p>It is sad to see those brave citizen-nobles crushed beneath
-brute force of Russians, and Austrians, and Prussians. But it
-was well. One Alexander the First <em>would have</em> done, one
-Alexander the Second <em>has</em> done more good for Poland than
-ages of citizen serf-masters flourishing on the Plains of Volo.</p>
-
-<p>The next nation to which I direct you is <span class="smcap">France</span>.</p>
-
-<p>Of all modern aristocracies, hers has probably been the most
-hated.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Guizot, in some respects its apologist, confesses this.
-Eugenie de Guerin&mdash;the most angelic soul revealed to this age&mdash;herself
-of noble descent&mdash;declares that the sight even of a
-ruined chateau made her shudder<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> But all that history, rich<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
-as it is in illustrations of the noxious qualities of an oppressive
-aristocracy, I will pass, save as it presents the <em>dealing of statesmen
-with it</em>, their attempts to thwart it and crush it.</p>
-
-<p>A succession of monarchs and statesmen kept up these attempts
-during centuries. Philip Augustus, Louis VI. and
-Louis VII., Suger, St. Louis, Philip the Long, all wrought well
-at this.</p>
-
-<p>The great thing to notice in that mediaeval French statesmanship
-is that <em>they attacked the domineering caste in the right
-way</em>. Every victory over it was followed not merely by setting
-serfs free, but by giving them civil rights, and, to some extent,
-political rights. When one of the Kings I have named gave a
-Charter of Community, he did not merely make the serf a
-nominal freedman; he also gave him rights, and thus wrought
-him into a bulwark between the central power and the rage of
-the former master.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
-
-<p>So far all was good. The great difficulty was that none of
-those monarchs or statesmen obtained physical power enough
-to enforce this policy throughout France. It was mainly confined
-to towns.</p>
-
-<p>But in the middle of the Fifteenth Century came the most
-persistent man of all&mdash;Louis the Eleventh. He gained power
-throughout the kingdom. If a noble became turbulent, he
-hunted him; if this failed, he entrapped him. Cages, dungeons,
-racks, gibbets, he used in extinguishing this sort of political
-vermin; and he used them freely and beneficially.</p>
-
-<p>His policy seems cruel. Our weak women of both sexes,
-with whom the tears of a murderer's mistress outweigh the
-sufferings of a crime-ridden community, will think so. It was
-really merciful. Louis was, probably, a scoundrel; but he was
-not a fool, and he saw that the greatest cruelty he could commit
-would be to make concessions and try to <em>win over</em> the
-nobility. His hard, sharp sense showed him&mdash;what all history
-shows&mdash;that an oppressive caste can be crushed, but that
-wheedled and persuaded it cannot be.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But Louis forgot one thing, and that the most important.
-Merely to <em>defeat</em> an aristocracy was not enough. <em>He forgot to
-provide guarantees for the lower classes</em>&mdash;he forgot to put rights
-into their hands which should enable them forever to check and
-balance the upper class when his hand was removed. You see
-that this mistake is just the reverse of that committed by previous
-statesmen.</p>
-
-<p>Of course then, after the death of Louis, France relapsed
-into her old anarchy. Occasionally a strong King or city put a
-curb upon the nobles; but, in the main, it was the old bad history
-with variations ever more and more painful.</p>
-
-<p>Over a hundred years more of this sort went by, and the
-rule of the nobles became utterly unbearable. The death of
-Henry the Fourth, in 1610, left on the throne a weak child as
-King, and behind the throne a weak woman as Regent. The
-nobles wrought out their will completely. They seized fortifications,
-plundered towns, emptied the treasury, domineered
-over the monarch, and impoverished the people. Curiously
-enough, too, to one who has not seen the same fact over and
-over in history, the nobles, during all these outrages of theirs,
-were declaiming, and groaning, and whining over their grievances
-and want of rights.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
-
-<p>Compromise after compromise was made, and to no purpose.
-No sooner were compromises made than they were broken.
-Finally, a great statesman, recognizing the futility of compromises,
-gave the aristocracy battle. This statesman was
-Richelieu.</p>
-
-<p>The nobles tried all their modes of working I have shown in
-other countries. They tried nullification, secession, disunion.
-They intrigued for the intervention of Spain. They preferred
-caste to country, and attempted to desert France at the moment
-of her sorest need&mdash;at the siege of La Rochelle.</p>
-
-<p>But Richelieu was too strong for them. His victories were
-magnificent. While he lived France had peace.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Yet he makes the same mistake which Louis XI. had made.
-He defeats the upper caste; but he guarantees no rights to the
-lower caste; therefore he gives France no barrier against that
-old flood of evils&mdash;save his own hand, and when death removes
-that, chaos comes again.</p>
-
-<p>Mazarin now grapples with them. They give him a fearful
-trial. They throw France into civil war. They pretend zeal
-for liberty, and form an anarchic alliance with the poor old
-stupid Parliament of Paris. They make Mazarin miserable.
-They throw filth upon him, then light him up with their fireworks
-of wit, and set the world laughing at him. Then they
-drive him out of France; but he is keen and strong, and
-finally throws his nets over them, and France has another
-breathing time.</p>
-
-<p>But the nobility if quiet are not a whit more beneficial&mdash;they
-are virulent and cynical as ever. Mazarin commits the same
-fault which Louis XI. and Richelieu had committed before
-him.</p>
-
-<p>His mind was keen always, bold sometimes&mdash;yet never keen
-enough to see, or bold enough to try the policy of giving France
-a guarantee of perpetual peace, by raising up that lower class,
-and giving them rights, civil and political, which should attach
-them to the legitimate government, and make them a balancing
-body against the aristocracy.</p>
-
-<p>It is wonderful! Great men, fighting single-handed against
-thousands, clear in foresight and insight, quick in planning,
-vigorous in executing, finding every path to advantage, hurling
-every weighty missile, seeing everything, daring everything,
-except that one simple, broad principle in statesmanship which
-could have saved France from anarchy then and from revolution
-afterwards.</p>
-
-<p>Gentlemen, it is a great lesson and a plain one. Diplomacy
-based on knowledge of the ordinary motives of ordinary men
-is strong,&mdash;statesmanship based on close study of the interests
-and aims of states and classes is strong;&mdash;but there is a Diplomacy
-and a Statesmanship infinitely stronger. Infinitely
-stronger are the Diplomacy and Statemanship whose master is
-a <em>heart</em>,&mdash;a heart with an instinct for truth and right;&mdash;a heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
-with a faith that on truth and right alone can peace be fitly
-builded.</p>
-
-<p>Your common-place Cavour, with his deep instinct for Italian
-Liberty and Unity;&mdash;your uncouth Lincoln, with his deep instinct
-for American Liberty and Unity, are worth legions of
-compromise builders and conciliation mongers.</p>
-
-<p>Mazarin delivered France into the hands of Louis XIV., and
-Louis brought them permanently into the narcotic phase. He
-stupefied them with sensuality,&mdash;attached them to his court,&mdash;made
-his palace the centre of their ambition,&mdash;gave scope to
-their fancy, by setting them at powdering and painting and
-frizzing,&mdash;gave scope to their activity by keeping them at gambling
-and debauchery,&mdash;weaned them from turbulence by stimulating
-them to decorate their bodies and to debase their
-souls.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
-
-<p>The central power was thus saved;&mdash;the people went on suffering
-as before.</p>
-
-<p>Under the Regency of Louis XV. the nobility went from
-bad to worse. Their scorn for labor made them despise not
-merely those who toiled in Agriculture and Manufactures&mdash;it
-led them logically to openly neglect, and secretly despise professions
-generally thought the most honorable. When Racine
-ridiculed lawyers,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> and when Moliere ridiculed physicians<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> and
-scholars,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> they but yielded to this current.</p>
-
-<p>Wise men saw the danger. Laws were passed declaring that
-commerce should not be derogatory to nobility. Abbé Coyer
-wrote a book to entice nobles into commerce. It had a captivating
-frontispiece, representing a nobleman elegantly dressed
-going on board a handsome merchant ship.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> All in vain. The
-serf-mastering traditions were too strong.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The Revolution comes. The nobles stand out against the
-entreaties of Louis XVI.&mdash;the statesmanship of Turgot, the
-financial skill of Necker,&mdash;the keenness of Sieyes,&mdash;the boldness
-of Mirabeau. The very existence of France is threatened;
-but they have erected, as nobles always do, their substitute for
-patriotism. They stand by their order. Royalty yields to the
-third estate,&mdash;the clergy yield, the nobility will not.</p>
-
-<p>They are at last scared into momentary submission to right
-and justice and the spirit of the age. On the memorable
-Fourth of August they renounce their most hideous oppressions.</p>
-
-<p>There is no end of patriotic speeches by these converts to
-liberty. The burden of all is the same. They are anxious to
-give up their oppressions. It is of no use to struggle longer,
-they are beaten, they will yield to save France.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Artists illustrate
-the great event, some pathetically, some comically.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> The
-millennium seems arrived, a <em>Te Deum</em> is appointed. Yet plain
-common sense Buchez notes one thing in all this not so pleasant.
-In these "transports and outpourings," (<em>transports et
-l'effusion de sentiments genereux</em>,) one very important thing
-has been forgotten. <em>The nobles forget to give, and the people
-forget to take&mdash;guarantees.</em><a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
-
-<p>Woe to the people who trust merely the word of an upper
-caste habituated to oppression! Woe to the statesmen who
-do not at once crystallize such promises into constitutional
-and legislative acts!</p>
-
-<p>These nobles shortly regretted their concessions and sought
-to evade them.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> The aristocrats whom they represented soon
-denied the right of their deputies to make these concessions,
-and soon after repudiated them.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
-
-<p>How could it be otherwise? When you speak of concessions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
-by a caste habituated to oppression, you do not mean that they
-give away a single, simple, tangible thing, and that <em>that</em> is the
-end of it;&mdash;not at all. You mean that they give up old habits
-of thought,&mdash;habits of action. You mean that every day of
-their lives thereafter they are to give up a habit, or a fancy, or
-a comfort. No mere promises of theirs to do this can be
-trusted. There must be guarantees fixed immutably, bedded
-into the constitution,&mdash;clamped into the laws. That same anchoring
-of liberties, and not "<em>transports et l'effusion de sentiments
-genereux</em>," is statesmanship.</p>
-
-<p>These concessions were not thus secured. The old habits of
-oppression again got the upper hand. The upper class became
-as hostile to liberty and peace as ever.</p>
-
-<p>Then thundered through France the Revolution. It <em>must</em>
-come;&mdash;that great and good French Revolution which did
-more to advance mankind in ten years than had been done
-politically in ten centuries,&mdash;which cost fewer lives to establish
-great principles than the Grand Monarque had flung away to
-gratify his whimsies! The right hand of the Almighty was
-behind it.</p>
-
-<p>I refuse at the will of English Tory historians to lament
-more over the sufferings that besotted caste of oppressors
-brought upon themselves during those three years, than over
-the sufferings they brought upon the people during three times
-three centuries.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
-
-<p>The great thing was now partially done which Louis XI. and
-Richelieu had left entirely undone. The lower class were not
-merely freed from serfdom; they received guarantees of full
-civil rights.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
-
-<p>So far all was well, but at another point the constituent assembly
-stumbled. They were not bold enough to give full
-<em>political</em> rights. They thought the peasantry too ignorant&mdash;too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
-much debased by a long servitude, to be entrusted with
-political rights,&mdash;therefore they denied them, and invented for
-them "passive citizenship."<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
-
-<p>It was skillfully devised, but none the less fatal. The denial
-of political rights to the enfranchised was one of the two
-great causes of the destruction of the Constitution of 1791, and
-of the inauguration of the Reign of Terror.</p>
-
-<p>Political rights could not be refused long. As they could
-not be obtained in peace the freed peasantry never allowed
-France rest until it gained them by long years of bloodshed and
-anarchy. Revolution after revolution has failed of full results.
-Dynasty after dynasty has failed to give quiet until a great
-statesman in our own time, Napoleon III., has been bold
-enough to make suffrage universal.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever the first French Revolution failed to do, it failed
-to do mainly by lack of bold faith in giving <em>political</em> rights;&mdash;whatever
-it succeeded in doing, it succeeded by giving full <em>civil</em>
-rights.</p>
-
-<p>When Louis XVIII. was brought back by foreign bayonets,
-the nobility also came back jubilant; all seemed about to give
-France over to her old caste of oppressors. The revolution
-was gone, its great theories were gone, its great men were swept
-away by death and by discouragement worse than death.</p>
-
-<p>But one barrier stood between France and all her old misery.
-That barrier stood firm; it was the enfranchised peasantry&mdash;possessing
-civil rights and confiscated property in land.
-Against these the whole might of the nobility beat in vain.</p>
-
-<p>Peace came, and with peace prosperity. France had been
-fearfully shattered by ages of evil administration and false political
-economy; she had been devastated by wars without and
-within; she had been plundered of an immense indemnity by
-the allies; the best of her people had been swept off by conscriptions;
-but under the distribution of lands to the former
-serfs, and the full guarantee of civil rights and the germs of
-political rights, the nation showed an energy in recuperation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
-and a breadth of prosperity never before known in all her
-history.</p>
-
-<p>There are other nations which, did time allow, might be
-summoned before us to aid our insight into the tendencies of
-castes habituated to oppression.</p>
-
-<p>I might show from the annals of Germany how such a caste,
-having dragged the country through a thousand years of anarchy,
-have left it in chronic disunion,&mdash;the loss of all natural
-consideration, and oft-recurring civil wars, one of which is now
-devastating her.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
-
-<p>I might show from the history of Russia how the despotism
-of the Autocrat has been made necessary to save the empire
-from a worse foe&mdash;from a serf-mastering aristocracy. And I
-might go further and show how the statesmanship which has
-emancipated the lower class in Russia has recognized the great
-truth that the nation is not safe against the aristocracy&mdash;that
-no barrier can stand against them except the enfranchised endowed
-with rights and lands.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
-
-<p>But I am aware that an objection to this estimate of the
-noxious activity of an Aristocracy may be raised from the history
-of England.</p>
-
-<p>It may be said that there the course of the nobles has been
-different&mdash;that some of the hardest battles against tyrants
-have been won by combination of nobles, that they have laid
-the foundations of free institutions, that, under monarchs who
-have hated national liberty, nobles have been among the foremost
-martyrs.</p>
-
-<p>Let us look candidly at this.</p>
-
-<p>It is true that the Earl of Pembroke and the Barons of England
-led the struggle for Magna Charta; it is true that the
-Earl of Leicester and his associate barons summoned the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
-really representative Parliament;<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> it is true that Surrey and
-Raleigh and Russell suffered martyrdom at the hands of
-tyrants.</p>
-
-<p>It is true, moreover, that English nobles have not generally
-been so turbulent in what I have called the Vitriolic period, nor
-so debased in the Narcotic period, as most other European Aristocracies.
-They were, indeed, very violent in the wars of the
-Roses,&mdash;many of them were very debased under Charles the
-Second, and again under the first and last Georges, and it is
-quite likely will be again under that very unpromising
-ruler, Albert Edward, who seems developing the head of
-George the Third and the heart of George the Fourth<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>&mdash;but
-they have never been quite so violent or debased as the Continental
-nobles at similar periods.</p>
-
-<p>But all this, so far from weakening the thesis I support,
-strengthens it&mdash;nay, clenches it.</p>
-
-<p>For the nobility of England, less than any other in Europe,
-was based upon the oppression of a subject class. From the
-earliest period when law begins to be established in England
-we find that the serf system begins to be extinguished. The
-courts of law quietly adopted and steadily maintained the
-principle that in any question between lord and serf the presumption
-was in favor of the inferior's right to liberty rather
-than the superior's right to property.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> The whole current set
-that way, and we find growing in England that middle class,
-steady and sturdy by the possession of rights, which won Agincourt
-and Crecy and Marston Moor and Worcester,&mdash;which
-made her country a garden and her cities marts for the world.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It is because England had so little of a serf-ruling caste in
-her history that she has been saved from so many of the calamities
-which have befallen other nations.</p>
-
-<p>And there is another great difference between England and
-other nations, a difference of tremendous import. She has not
-stopped after making her lower classes nominally free. She
-has given them full civil rights and a constantly increasing
-share of political rights. Thus she has made them guardians
-of freedom. This is the great reason why her nobility have
-not destroyed her. This enfranchised class has been a barrier
-against aristocratic encroachment.</p>
-
-<p>And yet in so far as the upper caste of England have partaken
-of traditions and habits of oppression they have deeply injured
-their country. Not a single great modern measure which
-they have not bitterly opposed.</p>
-
-<p>The Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Abolition of Tests, the
-Reform Bill, the improvement of the Universities&mdash;these and
-a score more of great measures nearly as important, they have
-fought to the last.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
-
-<p>To them is mainly due that grasping of lands which has
-brought so much misery on the working class.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
-
-<p>To them is due that cold-blooded dealing with Lafayette and
-Bailly and other patriots of the French Revolution, which
-finally resulted in the Brunswick Manifesto and the Reign of
-Terror.</p>
-
-<p>To them and their followers is due that most stupid crime
-which any nation ever committed in its foreign policy&mdash;the bitter,
-cowardly injustice toward our own Republic in its recent
-struggle.</p>
-
-<p>This is what the <em>remnant</em> of caste-spirit in England has accomplished,
-and it is only because it has not been habituated
-to oppression by serf-owning, and because it was held in check
-by a lower class possessing civil and political rights, that it was
-not frightful in turbulence and debauchery.</p>
-
-<p>So stands modern history as it bears upon the thesis I have
-proposed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It shows a man-mastering caste, even when its man-mastering
-has passed from a fact into a tradition, to be the most frequent
-foe and the most determined with which nations have to
-grapple. By its erection of a substitute for patriotism, it is of
-all foes the most intractable; by its erection of a substitute for
-political morality, the most deceptive; by its proneness to disunion
-and disintegration, the most bewildering; by its habit of
-calling for the intervention of foreign powers, the most disheartening;
-by its morbid sensitiveness over pretended rights,
-the most watchful; in its unscrupulousness, the most determined;
-by its brilliancy, the most powerful in cheating the
-world into sympathy.</p>
-
-<p>But history gives more than this. To the thesis I have advanced
-it gives, as you have seen, a corollary. Having shown
-what foe to right and liberty is most vigorous and noxious, it
-shows how alone that foe can be conquered and permanently
-dethroned. The lesson of failures and successes in the world's
-history points to one course, and to that alone.</p>
-
-<p>Here conquest cannot do it; spasmodic severity cannot do
-it; wheedling of material interests, orating up patriotic interests,
-cannot do it. History shows just one course. <em>First, the
-oppressive caste must be put down at no matter what outlay of
-blood and treasure; next, it must be kept dethroned by erecting
-a living, growing barrier against its return to power, and
-the only way of erecting that barrier is by guaranteeing civil
-rights in full, and political rights at least in germ, to the subject
-class.</em></p>
-
-<p>Herein is written the greatness or littleness of nations&mdash;herein
-is written the failure or success of their great struggles.
-In all history, those be the great nations which have boldly
-grappled with political dragons, and not only put them down
-but <em>kept</em> them down.</p>
-
-<p>The work of saving a nation from an oligarchy then is two
-fold. It is not finished until both parts are completed. Nations
-forget this at their peril. Nearly every great modern
-revolution wherein has been gain to liberty has had to be
-fought over a second time. So it was with the English Revolution
-of 1642. So it was with the French Revolutions of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
-1789 and 1830. What has been gained by bravery has been
-lost by treachery. Nations have forgotten that vigorous fighting
-to gain liberty must be followed by sound planning to
-secure it.</p>
-
-<p>What is this sound planning? Is it superiority in duplicity?
-Not at all; it is the only planning which insists on frank dealing.
-Is it based on cupidity? Not at all; it is based on
-Right. Is it centered in Revenge? Not at all; its centre
-is Mercy and its circumference is Justice. It may say to the
-discomfited oppressor, you shall have Mercy; but it must say
-to the enfranchised, you shall have Justice.</p>
-
-<p>Acknowledging this, Suger and the great mediaeval statesmen
-succeeded; ignoring this, Louis. XI., Richelieu, and a host
-of great modern statesmen failed.</p>
-
-<p>To keep the haughty and turbulent caste of oppressors in
-their proper relations, the central authority in every nation has
-been obliged to form a close alliance with the down-trodden
-caste of workers. If these have been ignorant it has had to
-instruct them; if they have been wretched, it has had to raise
-them; and the simple way&mdash;nay, the only way to instruct and
-raise them has been to give them rights, civil and political,
-which will force them to raise and instruct themselves.</p>
-
-<p>But it may be said that some subject classes are <em>too low</em> thus
-to be lifted&mdash;that there are some races too weak to be thus
-wrought into a barrier against aristocracy. I deny it. For
-history denies it. The race is not yet discovered in which the
-average man is not better and safer with rights than without
-them.</p>
-
-<p>Think you that <em>your</em> ancestors were so much better than
-<em>other</em> subject classes? Look into any town directory. The
-names show an overwhelming majority of us descendants of
-European serfs and peasantry. I defy you to find any body of
-men more degraded and stupid than our ancestors.</p>
-
-<p>Do you boast Anglo-Saxon ancestry?&mdash;look at Charles
-Kingsley's picture in Hereward of the great banquet, the
-apotheosis of wolfishness and piggishness; or look at Walter
-Scott's delineation in Ivanhoe of Gurth the swine-herd,
-dressed in skins, the brass collar soldered about his neck like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
-the collar of a dog, and upon it the inscription, "Gurth the
-born thrall of Cedric."</p>
-
-<p>Do you boast French ancestry?&mdash;look into Orderic Vital, or
-Froissart, or De Comines, and see what manner of man was
-your ancestor, "<em>Jacques Bonhomme</em>"&mdash;kicked, cuffed, plundered,
-murdered, robbed of the honor of his wife and the custody
-of his children, not allowed to wear good clothing,<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> not
-recognized as a man and a brother,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> not indeed in early times
-recognized as a man at all.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
-
-<p>Do you boast German ancestry?&mdash;look at Luther's letters and
-see how the unutterable stupidity of your ancestors vexed him.</p>
-
-<p>Yet from these progenitors of yours, kept besotted and degraded
-through centuries by oppression, have, by comparatively
-a few years of freedom, been developed the barriers which have
-saved modern states.</p>
-
-<p>Is it said that this bestowal of rights on the oppressed is dangerous?
-History is full of proofs that the faith in Heaven's
-justice which has led statesmen to solve great difficulties by
-<em>bestowing</em> rights has proved far more safe than the attempt to
-evade great difficulties by <em>withholding</em> rights.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
-
-<p>Is it said that the anarchic tendencies of an oppressive caste
-can be overcome by compromise and barter? History shows
-that the chances in trickery and barter are immensely in their
-favor.</p>
-
-<p>Is it said that the era of such dangers is past&mdash;that <em>civilization</em>
-will modify the nature of oppressive castes? That is the
-most dangerous delusion of all. In all annals, a class, whether
-rough citizens as in Poland, or smooth gentlemen as in France,
-based on traditions or habits of oppression, has proved a <em>reptile</em><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
-<em>caste</em>. Its coat may be mottled with romance, and smooth
-with sophistry, and glossy with civilization;&mdash;it may wind itself
-gracefully in chivalric courses; but its fangs will be found none
-the less venomous, its attacks none the less cruel, its skill in
-prolonging its reptile life, even after seeming death wounds,
-none the less deceitful.</p>
-
-<p>Is it said that to grapple with such a reptile caste is dangerous?
-History shows not one example where the plain, hardy
-people have boldly faced it and throttled it and not conquered
-it.</p>
-
-<p>The course is plain, and there it but one. Strike until the
-reptile caste spirit is scotched; then pile upon it a new fabric of
-civil and political rights until its whole organism of evil is
-crushed forever.</p>
-
-<p>For this policy alone speaks the whole history of man,&mdash;to
-this policy alone stand pledged all the attributes of God.</p>
-
-<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> History of Civilization in Europe. Third Lecture.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Sempere, <em>Histoire des Cortes d'Espagne</em>, Chap. 6.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella. Introduction, p. 48.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Hallam's Hist. of Middle Ages, Vol. 2, p. 30.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Robertson's Introduction to Life of Charles V., Section 3d; also Prescott.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> What an effect this early liberty had in stimulating thought can be seen
-in a few moments by glancing over the pages of Ticknor's History of Spanish
-Literature.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> For some statements as to hardy characteristics of Spanish peasantry, see
-Doblado's Letters from Spain. Letter 2.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Sempere, p. 205.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Mariana Hist. of Spain.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Mariana, History of Spain.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Mariana, History of Spain, XIII., 11.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> "There probably never lived a prince who, during so long a period, was
-adored by his subjects as Philip II. was." Buckle, Vol. II., page 21. This explains
-the popularity of Henry VIII. of England better than all Froude's volumes,
-able as they are.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> All this examination into Aristocratic agency in Spanish decline is left
-out of Buckle's Summary. He passes at once to Ecclesiasticism and Despotism;
-but the unprejudiced reader will, I think, see that this statement is supplementary
-to that. In no other way can any man explain the fatuity of the
-Spaniards in throwing away these old liberties.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <em>Grandeur et Décadence des Romains</em>; English translation of 1784; pp.
-109-10. Compare also <em>L'Esprit des Lois</em>, liv. xiv., chap. 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, chap. 2.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Fall of Roman Empire, last part of chap. 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <em>Histoire de la Civilisation en France</em>, 2mc Leçon.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> History of Roman Republic, Book III., chap. 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Schlosser, <em>Weltgeshichte für das Deutsche Volk</em>; vol. iv., xiv., 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Essay on the Fall of Rome; Essays, vol. iii., p. 445.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> History of the Romans, vol. vii., pp. 480-81.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Bancroft's Miscellanies.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The Roman and the Teuton&mdash;Lectures delivered before the University
-of Cambridge, p. 20.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Guizot, <em>Civilisation en Europe, 10me Leçon</em>; also Trollope's History of
-Florence, vol. 1., chap. 2.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Trollope's History of Florence, as above.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Any historical student can easily satisfy himself of the truth of this
-statement by comparing the cases given by Barante in his <em>Hist. des Ducs de
-Bourgogne</em> with those given by Sismondi in the <em>Hist. des Républiques Italiennes</em>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <em>Inferno</em>; canto xii., 138.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>; canto vi., 60.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <em>Histoire des Républiques Italiennes</em>, vol. x.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> For the working out of this principle by French and English nobilities
-into cruelties more frightful and inexcusable than any known to the Inquisition,
-see Orderic Vital Liv. XII. and XIII., also Barante's <em>Histoire des Ducs de
-Bourgogne</em>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> For examples of the brilliant side of Polish history presented, and dark
-side forgotten, see Chodzko <em>La Pologne Historique Monumentale et Pittoresque</em>.
-For fair summaries, see Alison's Essay, and his chapter on Poland, in the
-History of Europe&mdash;the best chapter in the book. The main authorities I
-have followed are Rulhière and Salvandy.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> This statement is based upon my own observations in Poland in the years
-1855-6.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Rulhière, <em>Anarchie de Pologne</em>. Vol. I., page 47.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Salvandy, <em>Vie de Jean Sobieski</em>. Vol. I., page 115.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> The effects of Polish anarchy at home and intrigue abroad are pictured
-fully in a few simple touches in the "<em>Journal du Voyage de Boyard Chérémétieff</em>."
-(<em>Bibliotheque Russe et Polonaise.</em>) Vol. IV., page 13.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> To understand the causes of this deep hatred, see Monteil, <em>Histoire des
-Français des divers Etats, Epitre 22</em>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> St. Beuve, <em>Causeries de Lundi</em>. Also Matthew Arnold's Essays.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Guizot, <em>Civilisation en France, 19me Leçon</em>; also <em>Hüllman's, Staedtewesen
-des Mittelalters</em>. Vol. III., Chapter 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> For these preposterous complaints and claims see the <em>Cahiers de doléances</em>
-quoted in Sir James Stephens' Lectures.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Some details of Richelieu's grapple with the aristocracy I have given in
-the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. ix., page 611.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> For samples of the <em>mental</em> calibre of French nobility under this regime,
-see case of Baron de Breteuil, who believed that Moses wrote the Lord's
-Prayer. Bayle St. John's translation of St. Simon, Vol. I., p. 179. For sample
-of their <em>moral</em> debasement, see case of M. de Vendome. <em>Ibid.</em>, Vol. I.,
-p. 187.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> In <em>Les Plaideurs</em>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <em>In Le Médecin Malgré lui</em>, and other plays.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <em>In Le Marriage Forcé.</em></p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <em>La Noblesse Commerçante.</em> London, 1756.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> For general account, see <em>Mignet</em>, or <em>Louis Blanc</em>, or <em>Thiers</em>. For speeches
-in detail, see <em>Buchez et Roux, Histoire Parlémentaire</em>, Vol. II., pp. 224-243.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <em>Challamel Histoire-Musée de la République Française</em>, Vol. I., pp. 72-75,
-where some of these illustrations can be found.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <em>Buchez and Roux</em>, Vol. II., p. 231.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <em>Mignet</em>, Vol. I.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <em>Histoire de la Révolution Française par Deux Amis de la Liberté</em>, Vol. II.,
-p. 228.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Any American, whose ideas have been wrested Torywise by Alison, can
-satisfy himself of the utter inability of an English Tory to write any history
-involving questions of liberty, by simply looking at Chancellor Kent's notes
-attached to the chapter on America in the American reprint of Alison's History
-of Europe.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <em>Constitution de 1791, Titre Premier.</em></p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <em>Constitution de 1791</em>, Titre III., Sect. 2, Art. 1.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Any one wishing to see how that inevitable moral debasement came upon
-the German aristocracy, and in general what the oppressive caste came to
-finally, can find enough in the 2d vol. of Menzel's History of Germany.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Gerbertzoff, <em>Hist. de la Civilisation en Russie</em>. Haxthausen, <em>Etudes sur la
-Russie</em>. A full sketch of the Rise and Decline of the serf system in Russia I
-have attempted in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. X., page 538.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <em>Creasy's History of English Constitution</em>;&mdash;but Hume says of Leicester's
-Parliament, that it was in the intention of reducing forever both the King
-and the people under the arbitrary power of a very narrow tyranny, which
-must have terminated either in anarchy or in violent usurpation and tyranny.
-Hist. of England, Chap. XII.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> I perhaps do the last two Georges injustice. Neither of them would
-have publicly insulted men of letters and science as the Prince of Wales has
-several times done recently.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Creasy, Chap. IX.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Fischel on English Constitution, Chap. I., pp. 9, 11. Also Stephens' Edition
-of De Lolme.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> For best account of this, see May's Constitutional History.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> See Kay's Social Condition of English People.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Among the grievances put forth by the nobles at the States General of
-1614, one was that the wives of the common people wore too good clothing;
-another was that an orator of the third estate had dared call the nobles their
-brothers. Sir James Stephens' Lectures.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Among the grievances put forth by the nobles at the States General of
-1614, one was that the wives of the common people wore too good clothing;
-another was that an orator of the third estate had dared call the nobles their
-brothers. Sir James Stephens' Lectures.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> For a very striking summary of this see Henri Martin's <em>Hist. de France</em>,
-vol. v., p. 193.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> I know of but one plausible exception to this rule&mdash;that of the failure of
-Joseph II. in his dealings with the Rhine provinces. The case of Louis XVI.
-is no exception, for he was always taking back secretly what he had given
-openly.</p></div></div>
-<hr class="tb" />
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 309px;">
-<img src="images/backcover.jpg" width="309" height="500" alt="backcover" />
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="full" />
-<p class="transnote">Transcriber's Notes<br /><br />
-
-Minor punctuation errors have been silently corrected. Footnotes have
-been reindexed with numbers and moved to the end of the document.<br /><br />
-
-In Footnote 17: "2mc" is a possible typo for "2me."<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Orig: <em>Histoire de la Civilisation en France</em>, 2mc Leçon.)</span><br />
-<br />
-In Footnote 18: Changed "Boook" to "Book."<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Orig: History of Roman Republic, Boook III., chap. 1.)</span><br />
-</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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