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+Project Gutenberg's 'Tis Sixty Years Since, by Charles Francis Adams
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+Title: 'Tis Sixty Years Since
+
+Author: Charles Francis Adams
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9996]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 6, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Afra Ullah, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+"TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE"
+
+ADDRESS OF
+
+CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
+
+
+
+FOUNDERS' DAY, JANUARY 16, 1913
+
+
+
+"'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE"
+
+In the single hour self-allotted for my part in this occasion there is
+much ground to cover,--the time is short, and I have far to go. Did I
+now, therefore, submit all I had proposed to say when I accepted your
+invitation, there would remain no space for preliminaries. Yet something
+of that character is in place. I will try to make it brief.[1]
+
+As the legend or text of what I have in mind to submit, I have given the
+words "'Tis Sixty Years Since." As some here doubtless recall, this is
+the second or subordinate title of Walter Scott's first novel,
+"Waverley," which brought him fame. Given to the world in 1814,--hard on
+a century ago,--"Waverley" told of the last Stuart effort to recover the
+crown of Great Britain,--that of "The '45." It so chances that Scott's
+period of retrospect is also just now most appropriate in my case,
+inasmuch as I entered Harvard as a student in the year 1853--"sixty
+years since!" It may fairly be asserted that school life ends, and what
+may in contradistinction thereto be termed thinking and acting life
+begins, the day the young man passes the threshold of the institution of
+more advanced education. For him, life's responsibilities then begin.
+Prior to that confused, thenceforth things with him become
+consecutive,--a sequence. Insensibly he puts away childish things.
+
+[1] Owing to its length, this "Address" was compressed in delivery,
+occupying one hour only. It is here printed in the form in which it was
+prepared,--the parts omitted in delivery being included.
+
+In those days, as I presume now, the college youth harkened to inspired
+voices. Sir Walter Scott belonged to a previous generation. Having held
+the close attention of a delighted world as the most successful
+story-teller of his own or any preceding period, he had passed off the
+stage; but only a short twenty years before. Other voices no less
+inspired had followed; and, living, spoke to us. Perhaps my scheme
+to-day is best expressed by one of these.
+
+When just beginning to attract the attention of the English-speaking
+world, Alfred Tennyson gave forth his poem of "Locksley Hall,"--very
+familiar to those of my younger days. Written years before, at the time
+of publication he was thirty-three. In 1886, a man of seventy-five, he
+composed a sequel to his earlier effort,--the utterance entitled
+"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." He then, you will remember, reviewed
+his young man's dreams,--dreams of the period when he
+
+
+" ... dip't into the future, far as human eye could see,
+Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be,"
+
+
+--threescore years later contrasting in sombre verse an old man's stern
+realities with the bright anticipations of youth. Such is my purpose
+to-day. "Wandering back to living boyhood," to the time when I first
+simultaneously passed the Harvard threshold and the threshold of
+responsible life, I propose to compare the ideals and actualities of the
+present with the ideals, anticipations and dreams of a past now
+somewhat remote.
+
+To say that in life and in the order of life's events it is the
+unexpected which is apt to occur, is a commonplace. That it has been so
+in my own case, I shall presently show. Meanwhile, not least among the
+unexpected things is my presence here to-day. If, when I entered Harvard
+in 1853, it had been suggested that in 1913, I,--born of the New England
+Sanhedrim, a Brahmin Yankee by blood, tradition and environment--had it
+been suggested that I, being such, would sixty years later stand by
+invitation here in Columbia before the faculty and students of the
+University of South Carolina, I should under circumstances then existing
+have pronounced the suggestion as beyond reasonable credence. Here,
+however, I am; and here, from this as my rostrum, I propose to-day to
+deliver a message,--such as it is.
+
+And yet, though such a future outcome, if then foretold, would have
+seemed scarcely possible of occurrence, there, after all, were certain
+conditions which would have rendered the contingency even at that time
+not only possible, but in accordance with the everlasting fitness of
+things. For, curiously enough, personal relations of a certain character
+held with this institution would have given me, even in 1853, a sense of
+acquaintance with it such as individually I had with no other
+institution of similar character throughout the entire land. It in this
+wise came about. At that period, preceding as it did the deluge about to
+ensue, it was the hereditary custom of certain families more especially
+of South Carolina and of Louisiana,--but of South Carolina in
+particular--to send their youth to Harvard, there to receive a college
+education. It thus chanced that among my associates at Harvard were not
+a few who bore names long familiarly and honorably known to Carolinian
+records,--Barnwell and Preston, Rhett and Alston, Parkman and Eliot; and
+among these were some I knew well, and even intimately. Gone now with
+the generation and even the civilization to which they belonged, I doubt
+if any of them survive. Indeed only recently I chanced on a grimly
+suggestive mention of one who had left on me the memory of a character
+and personality singularly pure, high-toned and manly,--permeated with a
+sense of moral and personal obligation. I have always understood he died
+five years later at Sharpsburg, as you call it, or Antietam, as it was
+named by us, in face-to-face conflict with a Massachusetts regiment
+largely officered by Harvard men of his time and even class,--his own
+familiar friends. This is the record, the reference being to a marriage
+service held at St. Paul's church in Richmond, in the late autumn of
+1862: "An indefinable feeling of gloom was thrown over a most auspicious
+event when the bride's youngest sister glided through a side door just
+before the processional. Tottering to a chancel pew, she threw herself
+upon the cushions, her slight frame racked with sobs. Scarcely a year
+before, the wedding march had been played for her, and a joyous throng
+saw her wedded to gallant Breck Parkman. Before another twelvemonth
+rolled around the groom was killed at the front."[2] Samuel Breck
+Parkman was in the Harvard class following that to which I belonged.
+Graduating in 1857, fifty-five years later I next saw his name in the
+connection just given. It recorded an incident of not infrequent
+occurrence in those dark and cruel days.
+
+It was, however, in Breck Parkman and his like that I first became
+conscious of certain phases of the South Carolina character which
+subsequently I learned to bear in high respect.
+
+So far as this University of South Carolina was concerned, it also so
+chanced that, by the merest accident, I, a very young man, was thrown
+into close personal relations with one of the most eminent of your
+professors,--Francis Lieber. Few here, I suppose, now personally
+remember Francis Lieber. To most it gives indeed a certain sense of
+remoteness to meet one who, as in my case, once held close and even
+intimate relations with a German emigrant, distinguished as a publicist,
+who as a youth had lain, wounded and helpless, a Prussian recruit, on
+the field above Namur. Occurring in June, 1815, two days after Waterloo,
+the affair at Namur will soon be a century gone. Of those engaged in
+it, the last obeyed the fell sergeant's summons a half score years ago.
+It seems remote; but at the time of which I speak Waterloo was
+appreciably nearer those in active life than are Shiloh and Gettysburg
+now. The Waterloo campaign was then but thirty-eight years removed,
+whereas those last are fifty now; and, while Lieber was at Waterloo, I
+was myself at Gettysburg.
+
+[2] DeLeon, "Belles, Beaux and Brains of the Sixties," p. 158.
+
+Subsequently, later in life, it was again my privilege to hold close
+relations with another Columbian,--an alumnus of this University as it
+then was--in whom I had opportunity to study some of the strongest and
+most respect-commanding traits of the Southern character. I refer to one
+here freshly remembered,--Alexander Cheves Haskell,--soldier, jurist,
+banker and scholar, one of a septet of brothers sent into the field by a
+South Carolina mother calm and tender of heart, but in silent suffering
+unsurpassed by any recorded in the annals whether of Judea or of Rome.
+It was the fourth of the seven Haskells I knew, one typical throughout,
+in my belief, of what was best in your Carolinian development. With him,
+as I have said, I was closely and even intimately associated through
+years, and in him I had occasion to note that almost austere type
+represented in its highest development in the person and attributes of
+Calhoun. Of strongly marked descent, Haskell was, as I have always
+supposed, of a family and race in which could be observed those virile
+Scotch-Irish and Presbyterian qualities which found their
+representative types in the two Jacksons,--Andrew, and him known in
+history as "Stonewall." To Alec Haskell I shall in this discourse again
+have occasion to refer.
+
+Thus, though in 1853, and for long years subsequent thereto, it would
+not have entered my mind as among the probabilities that I should ever
+stand here, reviewing the past after the manner of Tennyson in his
+"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," yet if there was any place in the
+South, or, I may say, in the entire country, where, as a matter of
+association, I might naturally have looked so to stand, it would have
+been where now I find myself.
+
+But I must hasten on; for, as I have said, if I am to accomplish even a
+part of my purpose, I have no time wherein to linger.
+
+Not long ago I chanced, in a country ramble, to be conversing with an
+eminent foreigner, known, and favorably known, to all Americans. In the
+course of leisurely exchange of ideas between us, he suddenly asked if I
+could suggest any explanation of the fact that not only were the
+publicists who had the greatest vogue in our college days now to a large
+extent discredited, but that almost every view and theory advanced by
+them, and which we had accepted as fixed and settled, was, where not
+actually challenged, silently ignored. Nor did the assertion admit of
+denial; for, looking back through the vista of threescore years, of the
+principles of what may be called "public polity" then advanced as
+indisputable, few to-day meet with general acceptance. To review the
+record from this point of view is curious.
+
+When in 1853 I entered Harvard, so far as this country and its polity
+were concerned certain things were matters of contention, while others
+were accepted as axiomatic,--the basic truths of our system. Among the
+former--the subjects of active contention--were the question of Slavery,
+then grimly assuming shape, and that of Nationality intertwined
+therewith. Subordinate to this was the issue of Free Trade and
+Protection, with the school of so-called American political economy
+arrayed against that of Adam Smith. Beyond these as political ideals
+were the tenets and theories of Jeffersonian Democracy. That the world
+had heretofore been governed too much was loudly acclaimed, and the
+largest possible individualism was preached, not only as a privilege but
+as a right. The area of government action was to be confined within the
+narrowest practical limits, and ample scope was to be allowed to each to
+develop in the way most natural to himself, provided only he did not
+infringe upon the rights of others. Materially, we were then reaching
+out to subdue a continent,--a doctrine of Manifest Destiny was in vogue.
+Beyond this, however, and most important now to be borne in mind,
+compared with the present the control of man over natural agencies and
+latent forces was scarcely begun. Not yet had the railroad crossed the
+Missouri; electricity, just bridled, was still unharnessed.
+
+I have now passed in rapid review what may perhaps without exaggeration
+be referred to as an array of conditions and theories, ideals and
+policies. It remains to refer to the actual results which have come
+about during these sixty years as respects them, or because of them;
+and, finally, to reach if possible conclusions as to the causes which
+have affected what may not inaptly be termed a process of general
+evolution. Having thus, so to speak, diagnosed the situation, the
+changes the situation exacts are to be measured, and a forecast
+ventured. An ambitious programme, I am well enough aware that the not
+very considerable reputation I have established for myself hardly
+warrants me in attempting it. This, I premise.
+
+Let us, in the first place, recur in somewhat greater detail to the
+various policies and ideals I have referred to as in vogue in the
+year 1853.
+
+First and foremost, overshadowing all else, was the political issue
+raised by African slavery, then ominously assuming shape. The clouds
+foreboding the coming tempest were gathering thick and heavy; and,
+moreover, they were even then illumined by electric flashes, accompanied
+by a mutter of distant thunder. Though we of the North certainly did not
+appreciate its gravity, the situation was portentous in the extreme.
+
+Involved in this problem of African slavery was the incidental issue of
+Free Trade and Protection,--apparently only economical and industrial in
+character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay
+the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the
+conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the
+fundamental law, but nationality also,--the right of a Sovereign State
+to withdraw from the Union created in 1787, and developed through two
+generations.
+
+These may be termed concrete political issues, as opposed to basic
+truths generally accepted and theories individually entertained. The
+theories were constitutional, social, economical. Constitutionally, they
+turned upon the obligations of citizenship. There was no such thing then
+as a citizen of the United States of and by itself. The citizen of the
+United States was such simply because of his citizenship of a Sovereign
+State,--whether Massachusetts or Virginia or South Carolina; and, of
+course, an instrument based upon a divided sovereignty admitted of
+almost infinitely diverse interpretation. It is a scriptural aphorism
+that no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and
+love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
+And in the fulness of time it literally with us so came about. The
+accepted economical theories of the period were to a large extent
+corollaries of the fundamental proposition, and differing material and
+social conditions. Beyond all this, and coming still under the head of
+individual theories, was the doctrine enunciated by Thomas Jefferson in
+the Declaration of Independence,--the doctrine that all men were created
+equal,--meaning, of course, equal before the law. But the theorist and
+humanitarian of the North, accepting the fundamental principle laid down
+in the Declaration, gave to it a far wider application than had been
+intended by its authors,--a breadth of application it would not bear.
+Such science as he had being of scriptural origin, he interpreted the
+word "equal" as signifying equal in the possibilities of their
+attributes,--physical, moral, intellectual; and in so doing, he of
+course ignored the first principles of ethnology. It was, I now realize,
+a somewhat wild-eyed school of philosophy, that of which I myself was a
+youthful disciple.
+
+But, on the other hand, beside these, between 1850 and 1860 a class of
+trained and more cautious thinkers, observers, scientists and
+theologians was coming to the front. Their investigations, though we did
+not then foresee it, were a generation later destined gently to subvert
+the accepted fundamentals of religious and economical thought, literary
+performance, and material existence. The work they had in hand to do was
+for the next fifteen years to be subordinate, so far as this country was
+concerned, to the solution of the terrible political problems which were
+first insistent on settlement; yet, as is now apparent, an initial
+movement was on foot which foreboded a revolution world-wide in its
+nature, and one in comparison with which the issues of slavery and
+American constitutionality became practically insignificant,--in a word,
+local and passing incidents.
+
+Finally, it remains to consider specifically the political theories
+then in vogue in their relation to the individual. In this country, it
+was the period of the equality of man and individuality in the
+development of the type. It was generally believed that the world had
+hitherto been governed too much,--that the day of caste, and even class,
+was over and gone; and finally, that America was a species of vast
+modern melting-pot of humanity, in which, within a comparatively short
+period of time, the characteristics of all branches of Indo-Aryan origin
+would resolve themselves. A new type would emerge,--the American. These
+theories were also in their consequences far-reaching. Practically, 1853
+antedates all our present industrial organizations so loudly in
+evidence,--the multifarious trades-unions which now divide the
+population of the United States into what are known as the "masses" and
+the "classes." As recently as a century ago, it used to be said of the
+French army under the Empire, that every soldier carried the baton of
+the Field-Marshal in his knapsack. And this ideal of equality and
+individuality was fixed in the American mind.
+
+Not that I for a moment mean to imply that in my belief the middle of
+the last century, or the twenty years anterior to the Civil War, was a
+species of golden age in our American annals. On the contrary, it was,
+as I remember it, a phase of development very open to criticism; and
+that in many respects. It was crude, self-conscious and self-assertive;
+provincial and formative, rather than formed. Socially and materially
+we were, compared with the present era of motors and parlor-cars, in the
+"one-hoss shay" and stove-heated railroad-coach stage. Nevertheless,
+what is now referred to as "predatory wealth" had not yet begun to
+accumulate in few hands; much greater equality of condition prevailed;
+nor was the "wage-earner" referred to as constituting a class distinct
+from the holders of property. Thus the individual was then
+encouraged,--whether in literature, in commerce, or in politics. In
+other words, there being a free field, one man was held to be in all
+respects the equal of the rest. Especially was what I have said true of
+the Northern, or so-called Free States, as contrasted with the States of
+the South, where the presence of African slavery distinctly affected
+individual theories, no matter where or to what extent entertained.
+
+Such, briefly and comprehensively stated, having been the situation in
+1853, it remains to consider the practical outcome thereof during the
+sixty years it has been my fortune to take part, either as an actor or
+as an observer, in the great process of evolution. It is curious to note
+the extent to which the unexpected has come about. In the first place,
+consider the all-absorbing mid-century political issue, that involving
+the race question, to which I first referred,--the issue which divided
+the South from the North, and which, eight years only after I had
+entered college, carried me from the walks of civil life into the
+calling of arms.
+
+And here I enter on a field of discussion both difficult and dangerous;
+and, for reasons too obvious to require statement, what I am about to
+say will be listened to with no inconsiderable apprehension as to what
+next may be forthcoming. Nevertheless, this is a necessary part of my
+theme; and I propose to say what I have in mind to say, setting forth
+with all possible frankness the more mature conclusions reached with the
+passage of years. Let it be received in the spirit in which it
+is offered.
+
+So far, then, as the institution of slavery is concerned, in its
+relations to ownership and property in those of the human species,--I
+have seen no reason whatever to revise or in any way to alter the
+theories and principles I entertained in 1853, and in the maintenance of
+which I subsequently bore arms between 1861 and 1865. Economically,
+socially, and from the point of view of abstract political justice, I
+hold that the institution of slavery, as it existed in this country
+prior to the year 1865, was in no respect either desirable or
+justifiable. That it had its good and even its elevating side, so far at
+least as the African is concerned, I am not here to deny. On the
+contrary, I see and recognize those features of the institution far more
+clearly now than I should have said would have been possible in 1853.
+That the institution in itself, under conditions then existing, tended
+to the elevation of the less advanced race, I frankly admit I did not
+then think. On the other hand, that it exercised a most pernicious
+influence upon those of the more advanced race, and especially upon
+that large majority of the more advanced race who were not themselves
+owners of slaves,--of that I have become with time ever more and more
+satisfied. The noticeable feature, however, so far as I individually am
+concerned, has been the entire change of view as respects certain of the
+fundamental propositions at the base of our whole American political and
+social edifice brought about by a more careful and intelligent
+ethnological study. I refer to the political equality of man, and to
+that race absorption to which I have alluded,--that belief that any
+foreign element introduced into the American social system and body
+politic would speedily be absorbed therein, and in a brief space
+thoroughly assimilated. In this all-important respect I do not hesitate
+to say we theorists and abstractionists of the North, throughout that
+long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the 1861 clash of arms,
+were thoroughly wrong. In utter disregard of fundamental, scientific
+facts, we theoretically believed that all men--no matter what might be
+the color of their skin, or the texture of their hair--were, if placed
+under exactly similar conditions, in essentials the same. In other
+words, we indulged in the curious and, as is now admitted, utterly
+erroneous theory that the African was, so to speak, an Anglo-Saxon, or,
+if you will, a Yankee "who had never had a chance,"--a fellow-man who
+was guilty, as we chose to express it, of a skin not colored like our
+own. In other words, though carved in ebony, he also was in the image
+of God.
+
+Following out this theory, under the lead of men to whom scientific
+analysis and observation were anathema if opposed to accepted cardinal
+political theories as enunciated in the Declaration as read by them, the
+African was not only emancipated, but so far as the letter of the law,
+as expressed in an amended Constitution, would establish the fact, the
+quondam slave was in all respects placed on an equality, political,
+legal and moral, with those of the more advanced race.
+
+I do not hesitate here,--as one who largely entertained the theoretical
+views I have expressed,--I do not hesitate here to say, as the result of
+sixty years of more careful study and scientific observation, the
+theories then entertained by us were not only fundamentally wrong, but
+they further involved a problem in the presence of which I confess
+to-day I stand appalled.
+
+It is said,--whether truthfully or not,--that when some years ago John
+Morley, the English writer and thinker, was in this country, on
+returning to England he remarked that the African race question, as now
+existing in the United States, presented a problem as nearly, to his
+mind, insoluble as any human problem well could be. I do not care
+whether Lord Morley made this statement or did not make it. I am
+prepared, however, to say that, individually, so far as my present
+judgment goes, it is a correct presentation. To us in the North, the
+African is a comparatively negligible factor. So far as Massachusetts,
+for instance, or the city of Boston more especially, are concerned, as
+a problem it is solving itself. Proportionately, the African infusion is
+becoming less--never large, it is incomparably less now than it was in
+the days of my own youth. Thus manifestly a negligible factor, it is
+also one tending to extinction. Indeed, it would be fairly open to
+question whether a single Afro-American of unmixed Ethiopian descent
+could now be found in Boston. That the problem presents itself with a
+wholly different aspect here in Carolina is manifest. The difference too
+is radical; it goes to the heart of the mystery.
+
+As I have already said, the universal "melting-pot" theory in vogue in
+my youth was that but seven, or at the most fourteen, years were
+required to convert the alien immigrant--no matter from what region or
+of what descent--into an American citizen. The educational influences
+and social environment were assumed to be not only subtle, but
+all-pervasive and powerful. That this theory was to a large and even
+dangerous extent erroneous the observation of the last fifty years has
+proved, and our Massachusetts experience is sadly demonstrating to-day.
+It was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, years ago, when asked by an anxious
+mother at what age the education of a child ought to begin, remarked in
+reply that it should begin about one hundred and fifty years before the
+child is born. It has so proved with us; and the fact is to-day in
+evidence that this statement of Dr. Holmes should be accepted as an
+undeniable political aphorism. So far from seven or fourteen years
+making an American citizen, fully and thoroughly impregnated with
+American ideals to the exclusion of all others, our experience is that
+it requires at least three generations to eliminate what may be termed
+the "hyphen" in citizenship. Not in the first, nor in the second, and
+hardly in the third, generation, does the immigrant cease to be an
+Irish-American, or a French-American, or a German-American, or a
+Slavonic-American, or yet a Dago. Nevertheless, in process of tune,
+those of the Caucasian race do and will become Americans. Ultimately
+their descendants will be free from the traditions and ideals, so to
+speak, ground in through centuries passed under other conditions. Not so
+the Ethiopian. In his case, we find ourselves confronted with a
+situation never contemplated in that era of political dreams and
+scriptural science in which our institutions received shape. Stated
+tersely and in plain language, so far as the African is concerned--the
+cause and, so to speak, the motive of the great struggle of 1861 to
+1865--we recognize the presence in the body politic of a vast alien mass
+which does not assimilate and which cannot be absorbed. In other words,
+the melting-pot theory came in sharp contact with an ethnological fact,
+and the unexpected occurred. The problem of African servitude was solved
+after a fashion; but in place of it a race issue of most uncompromising
+character evolved itself.
+
+A survivor of the generation which read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it week
+by week appeared,--fresh to-day from Massachusetts with its Lawrence
+race issues of a different character, I feel a sense of satisfaction in
+discussing here in South Carolina this question and issue in a spirit
+the reverse of dogmatic, a spirit purely scientific, observant and
+sympathetic. And in this connection let me say I well remember
+repeatedly discussing it with your fellow-citizen and my friend, Colonel
+Alexander Haskell, to whom I have already made reference. Rarely have I
+been more impressed by a conclusion reached and fixed in the mind of one
+who to the study of a problem had obviously given much and kindly
+thought. As those who knew him do not need to be told, Alexander Cheves
+Haskell was a man of character, pure and just and thoughtful. He felt
+towards the African as only a Southerner who had himself never been the
+owner of slaves can feel. He regarded him as of a less advanced race
+than his own, but one who was entitled not only to just and kindly
+treatment but to sympathetic consideration. When, however, the question
+of the future of the Afro-American was raised, as matter for abstract
+discussion, it was suggestive as well as curious to observe the fixed,
+hard expression which immediately came over Haskell's face, as with
+stern lips, from which all suggestion of a smile had faded away, he
+pronounced the words:--"Sir, it is a dying race!" To express the thought
+more fully, Colonel Haskell maintained, as I doubt not many who now
+listen to me will maintain, that the nominal Afro-American increase, as
+shown in the figures of the national census, is deceptive,--that in
+point of fact, the Ethiop in America is incurring the doom which has
+ever befallen those of an inferior and less advanced race when brought
+in direct and immediate contact, necessarily and inevitably competitive,
+with the more advanced, the more masterful, and intellectually the more
+gifted. In other words, those of the less advanced race have a fatal
+aptitude for contracting the vices, both moral and physical, of the
+superior race, in the end leading to destruction; while the capacity for
+assimilating the elevating qualities and attributes which constitute a
+saving grace is denied them. Elimination, therefore, became in Haskell's
+belief a question of time only,--the law of the survival of the fittest
+would assert itself. The time required may be long,--numbered by
+centuries; but, however remotely, it nevertheless would come. God's mill
+grinds slowly, but it grinds uncommon small; and, I will add, its
+grinding is apt to be merciless.
+
+The solution thus most pronouncedly laid down by Colonel Haskell may or
+may not prove in this case correct and final. It certainly is not for
+me, coming from the North, to undertake dogmatically to pass upon it. I
+recur to it here as a plausible suggestion only, in connection with my
+theme. As such, it unquestionably merits consideration. I am by no means
+prepared to go the length of an English authority in recently saying
+that "emancipation on two continents sacrificed the real welfare of the
+slave and his intrinsic worth as a person, to the impatient vanity of
+an immediate and theatrical triumph."[3] This length I say, I cannot go;
+but so far as the present occasion is concerned, with such means of
+observation as are within my reach, I find the conclusion difficult to
+resist that the success of the abolitionists in effecting the
+emancipation of the Afro-American, as unexpected and sweeping as it was
+sudden, has led to phases of the race problem quite unanticipated at
+least. For instance, as respects segregation. Instead of assimilating,
+with a tendency to ultimate absorption, the movement in the opposite
+direction since 1865 is pronounced. It has, moreover, received the final
+stamp of scientific approval. This implies much; for in the old days of
+the "peculiar institution" there is no question the relations between
+the two races were far more intimate, kindly, and even absorptive than
+they now are.
+
+That African slavery, as it existed in the United States anterior to the
+year 1862, presented a mild form of servitude, as servitude then existed
+and immemorially had almost everywhere existed, was, moreover,
+incontrovertibly proven in the course of the Civil War. Before 1862, it
+was confidently believed that any severe social agitation within, or
+disturbance from without, would inevitably lead to a Southern servile
+insurrection. In Europe this result was assumed as of course; and,
+immediately after it was issued, the Emancipation Proclamation of President
+[3] Bussell's (Dr. F.W.) "Christian Theology and Social Progress."
+Bampton Lectures, 1905. Lincoln was denounced in unmeasured terms by
+the entire London press. Not a voice was raised in its defence. It was
+regarded as a measure unwarranted in civilized warfare, and a sure and
+intentional incitement to the horrors which had attended the servile
+insurrections of Haiti and San Domingo; and, more recently, the
+unspeakable Sepoy incidents of the Indian mutiny. What actually occurred
+is now historic. The confident anticipations of our English brethren
+were, not for the first time, negatived; nor is there any page in our
+American record more creditable to those concerned than the attitude
+held by the African during the fierce internecine struggle which
+prevailed between April, 1861, and April, 1865. In it there is scarcely
+a trace, if indeed there is any trace at all, of such a condition of
+affairs as had developed in the Antilles and in Hindustan. The attitude
+of the African towards his Confederate owner was submissive and kindly.
+Although the armed and masterful domestic protector was at the front and
+engaged in deadly, all-absorbing conflict, yet the women and children of
+the Southern plantation slept with unbarred doors,--free from
+apprehension, much more from molestation.
+
+Moreover, as you here well know, during the old days of slavery there
+was hardly a child born, of either sex, who grew up in a Southern
+household of substantial wealth without holding immediate and most
+affectionate relations with those of the other race. Every typical
+Southern man had what he called his "daddy" and his "mammy," his
+"uncle" and his "aunty," by him familiarly addressed as such, and who
+were to him even closer than are blood relations to most. They had cared
+for him in his cradle; he followed them to their graves. Is it needful
+for me to ask to what extent such relations still exist? Of those born
+thirty years after emancipation, and therefore belonging distinctly to a
+later generation, how many thus have their kindly, if humble, kin of the
+African blood? I fancy I would be safe in saying not one in twenty.
+
+Here, then, as the outcome of the first great issue I have suggested as
+occupying the thought and exciting the passions of that earlier period,
+is a problem wholly unanticipated,--a problem which, merely stating,
+I dismiss.
+
+Passing rapidly on, I come to the next political issue which presented
+itself in my youth,--the constitutional issue,--that of State
+Sovereignty, as opposed to the ideal, Nationality. And, whether for
+better or worse, this issue, I very confidently submit, has been
+settled. We now, also, looking at it in more observant mood, in a spirit
+at once philosophical and historical, see that it involved a process of
+natural evolution which, under the conditions prevailing, could hardly
+result in any other settlement than that which came about. We now have
+come to a recognition of the fact that Anglo-Saxon nationality on this
+continent was a problem of crystallization, the working out of which
+occupied a little over two centuries. It was in New England the process
+first set in, when, in 1643, the scattered English-speaking settlements
+under the hegemony of the colony of Massachusetts Bay united in a
+confederation. It was the initial step. I have no time in which to
+enumerate successive steps, each representing a stage in advance of what
+went before. The War of Independence,--mistakenly denominated the
+Revolutionary War, but a struggle distinctly conservative in character,
+and in no way revolutionary,--the War of Independence gave great impetus
+to the process, resulting in what was known as Federation. Then came the
+Constitution of 1787 and the formation of the, so called, United States
+as a distinct nationality. The United States next passed through two
+definite processes of further crystallization,--one in 1812-1814, when
+the second war with Great Britain, and more especially our naval
+victories, kindled, especially in the North, the fire of patriotism and
+the conception of nationality; the other, half a century later,
+presented the stern issue in a concrete form, and at last the complete
+unification of a community--whether for better or for worse is no
+matter--was hammered by iron and cemented in blood. It is there now; an
+established fact. Secession is a lost cause; and, whether for good or
+for ill, the United States exists, and will continue to exist, a unified
+World Power. Sovereignty now rests at Washington, and neither in
+Columbia for South Carolina nor in Boston for Massachusetts. The State
+exists only as an integral portion of the United States. That issue has
+been fought out. The result stands beyond controversy; brought about by
+a generation now passed on, but to which I belonged.
+
+Meanwhile, the ancient adage, the rose is not without its thorn,
+receives new illustration; for even this great result has not been
+wrought without giving rise to considerations suggestive of thought.
+Speaking tersely and concentrating what is in my mind into the fewest
+possible words, I may say that in our national growth up to the year
+1830 the play of the centrifugal forces predominated,--that is, the
+necessity for greater cohesion made itself continually felt. A period of
+quiescence then followed, lasting until, we will say, 1865. Since 1865,
+it is not unsafe to say, the centripetal, or gravitating, force has
+predominated to an extent ever more suggestive of increasing political
+uneasiness. It is now, as is notorious, more in evidence than ever
+before. The tendency to concentrate at Washington, the demand that the
+central government, assuming one function after another, shall become
+imperial, the cry for the national enactment of laws, whether relating
+to marital divorce or to industrial combinations,--all impinge on the
+fundamental principle of local self-government, which assumed its
+highest and most pronounced form in the claim of State Sovereignty. I am
+now merely stating problems. I am not discussing the political ills or
+social benefits which possibly may result from action. Nevertheless,
+all, I think, must admit that the tendency to gravitation and
+attraction is to-day as pronounced and as dangerous, especially in the
+industrial communities of the North, as was the tendency to separation
+and segregation pronounced and dangerous seventy years ago in the South.
+
+To this I shall later return. I now merely point out what I apprehend to
+be a tendency to extremes--an excess in the swinging of our
+political pendulum.
+
+We next come to that industrial factor which I have referred to as the
+issue between the Free Trade of Adam Smith and Protection, as inculcated
+by the so-called American school of political economists. The phases
+which this issue has assumed are, I submit, well calculated to excite
+the attention of the observant and thoughtful. I merely allude to them
+now; but, in so far as it is in my power to make it so, my allusion will
+be specific. I frankly acknowledge myself a Free-Trader. A Free-Trader
+in theory, were it in my power I would be a Free-Trader in national
+practice. There has been, so far as I know, but one example of absolute
+free trade on the largest scale in world history. That one example,
+moreover, has been a success as unqualified as undeniable. I refer to
+this American Union of ours. We have here a country consisting of fifty
+local communities, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
+tropical Porto Rico to glacial Alaska, representing every conceivable
+phase of soil, climate and material conditions, with diverse industrial
+systems. With a Union established on the principle of absolutely
+unrestricted commercial intercourse, you here in South Carolina, and
+more especially in Columbia, are to-day making it, so to speak,
+uncomfortable for the cotton manufacturer in New England; and I am glad
+of it! A sharp competition is a healthy incentive to effort and
+ingenuity, and the brutal injunction, "Root hog or die!" is one from
+which I in no way ask to have New England exempt. When Massachusetts is
+no longer able to hold its own industrially in a free field, the time
+will, in my judgment, have come for Massachusetts to go down. With
+communities as with children, paternalism reads arrested development.
+One of the great products of Massachusetts has been what is generically
+known as "footwear." Yet I am told that under the operation of absolute
+Free Trade, St. Louis possesses the largest boot and shoe factory in its
+output in the entire world. That is, the law of industrial development,
+as natural conditions warrant and demand, has worked out its results;
+and those results are satisfactory. I am aware that the farmer of
+Massachusetts has become practically extinct; he cannot face the
+competition of the great West: but the Massachusetts consumer is greatly
+advantaged thereby. So far as agricultural products are concerned,
+Massachusetts is to-day reduced to what is known as dairy products and
+garden truck; and it is well! Summer vegetables manufactured under glass
+in winter prove profitable. So, turning his industrial efforts to that
+which he can do best, even the Massachusetts agriculturalist has
+prospered. On the other hand, wherever in this country protection has
+been most completely applied, I insist that if its results are analyzed
+in an unprejudiced spirit, it will be pronounced to have worked
+unmitigated evil,--an unhealthy, because artificially stimulated and too
+rapid, growth. Let Lawrence, in Massachusetts, serve as an example. Look
+at the industrial system there introduced in the name of Protection
+against the Pauper Labor of Europe! No growth is so dangerous as a too
+rapid growth; and I confidently submit that politically, socially,
+economically and industrially, America to-day, on the issues agitating
+us, presents an almost appalling example of the results of hot-house
+stimulation.
+
+Nor is this all, nor the worst. There is another article, and far more
+damaging, in the indictment. Through Protection, and because of it,
+Paternalism has crept in; and, like a huge cancerous growth, is eating
+steadily into the vitals of the political system. Instead of supporting
+a government economically administered by money contributed by the
+People, a majority of the People to-day are looking to the government
+for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly
+through some form of industrial paternalism. Incidentally, a profuse
+public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged.
+Jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. As the
+New York showman long since shrewdly observed: "The American people
+love to be fooled!"
+
+But I must pass on; I still have far to go. As respects legislation, I
+have said that sixty years ago, when my memories begin, the American
+ideal was the individual, and individuality. This, implied adherence to
+the Jeffersonian theory that heretofore the world had been governed too
+much. The great secret of true national prosperity, happiness and
+success was, we were taught, to allow to each individual the fullest
+possible play, provided only he did not infringe on the rights of
+others. How is it to-day? America is the most governed and legislated
+country in the world! With one national law-making machine perpetually
+at work grinding out edicts, we have some fifty provincial mills engaged
+in the same interesting and, to my mind, pernicious work. No one who has
+given the slightest consideration to the subject will dispute the
+proposition that, taking America as a whole, we now have twenty acts of
+legislation annually promulgated, and with which we are at our peril
+supposed to be familiar, where one would more than suffice. Then we
+wonder that respect for the law shows a sensible decrease! The better
+occasion for wonder is that it survives at all. We are both legislated
+and litigated out of all reason.
+
+Passing to the other proposition of individuality, there has been, as
+all men know and no one will dispute, a most perceptible tendency of
+late years towards what is known as the array of one portion of the
+community--the preponderating, voting portion--against another--the more
+ostentatious property-holding portion. It is the natural result, I may
+say the necessary as well as logical outcome, of a period of too rapid
+growth,--production apportioned by no rule or system other or higher
+than greed and individual aptitude for acquisition. I will put the
+resulting case in the most brutal, and consequently the clearest, shape
+of which I am capable. Working on the combined theories of individualism
+controlled and regulated by competition, it has been one grand game of
+grab,--a process in which the whole tendency of our legislation,
+national or state, has during the last twenty years been, first, to
+create monopolies of capital and, later, to bring into existence a
+counter, but no less privileged, class, known as the "wage-earner."
+
+Of the first class it is needless to speak, for, as a class, it is
+sufficiently pilloried by the press and from the hustings. Much in
+evidence, those prominent in it are known as the possessors of
+"predatory wealth"; "unjailed malefactors," they are subjects of
+continuous "grilling" in the congressional and legislative committee
+rooms. The effort to make them "disgorge" is as continual as it is
+noisy, and, as a rule, futile. It constitutes a curious and in some
+respects instructive exhibition of misdirected popular feeling and
+legislative incompetence. None the less, the existence of a monopolist
+class calls for no proof at the bar of public opinion. Not so the other
+and even more privileged class,--the so-called "wage-earner"; for,
+disguise it as the trades-unionist will, angrily deny it as he does, the
+fact remains that to-day under the operation of our jury system and of
+our laws, the Wage-earner and the member of the Trades-Union has become,
+as respects the rest of the community, himself a monopolist and,
+moreover, privileged as such. Practically, crimes urged and even
+perpetrated in behalf of so-called "labor" receive at the hands of
+juries, and also not infrequently of courts, an altogether excessive
+degree of merciful consideration. At the same time, both here and in
+Europe Organized Labor is instant in its demand that immunity, denied
+to ordinary citizens, and those whom it terms "the classes," shall by
+special exemption be conferred upon the Labor Union and upon the
+Wage-earner. The tendency on both sides and at each extreme to
+inequality in the legislature and before the law is thus manifest.
+
+Viewing conditions face to face and as they now are, no thoughtful
+observer can, in my judgment, avoid the conviction that, whether for
+good or ill, for better or for worse, this country as a community has,
+within the last thirty years--that is, we will say, since our centennial
+year, 1876--cast loose from its original moorings. It has drifted, and
+is drifting, into unknown seas. Nor is this true of English-speaking
+America alone. I have already quoted Lord Morley in another connection.
+Lord Morley, however, only the other day delivered, as Chancellor of
+Manchester University, a most interesting and highly suggestive
+address, in which, referring to conservative Great Britain, he thus
+pictured a phase of current belief: "Political power is described as
+lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, with scanty regard
+for tradition or history. Democracy, they say, is going to write its own
+programme. The structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing
+half-hidden, but serious alterations. Men discover a change of attitude
+towards law as law; a decline in reverence for institutions as
+institutions."
+
+While, however, the influences at work are thus general and the
+manifestations whether on the other side of the Atlantic or here bear a
+strong resemblance, yet difference of conditions and detail
+--constitutional peculiarities, so to speak--must not be
+disregarded. One form of treatment may not be prescribed for all. In our
+case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country
+and ourselves to the unforeseeable,--the navigation of uncharted waters;
+and this adaptation cannot be considered hi any correct and helpful,
+because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located.
+Surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. A
+physician, diagnosing the chances of a patient, must first correctly
+ascertain, or at least ascertain with approximate correctness, the seat
+of the trouble under which the patient is suffering. So, we.
+
+And here I must frankly confess to small respect for the
+politician,--the man whose voice is continually heard, whether from the
+Senate Chamber or the Hustings. There is in those of his class a
+continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as
+the _post ergo propter_ dispensation. With them, the eye is fixed on the
+immediate manifestation. Because one event preceded another, the first
+event is obviously and indisputably the cause of the later event. For
+instance, in the present case, the cause or seat of our existing and
+very manifest social, political and financial disturbances is attributed
+as of course to some peculiarity of legislation, either a subtreasury
+bill passed in the administration of General Jackson, or a tariff bill
+passed in the administration of Mr. Taft, or the demonetization of
+silver in the Hayes period,--that "Crime of the Century," the
+Crucifixion of Labor on the Cross of Gold! Once for all, let me say, I
+contemplate this school of politicians and so-called "thinkers" with
+sentiments the reverse of respectful. In plain language, I class them
+with those known in professional parlance as quacks and charlatans. Not
+always, not even in the majority of cases, does that which preceded bear
+to that which follows the relation of cause and effect. A marked example
+of this false attribution is afforded in more recent political history
+by the everlasting recurrence of the statement that American prosperity
+is the result of an American protective system. Yet in the Protectionist
+dispensation, this has become an article of faith. To my mind, it is
+undeserving of even respectful consideration.
+
+If I were asked the cause of that change, little short of
+revolutionary, if indeed in any respect short of it, which has occurred
+in the material condition of the American people, and consequently in
+all its theories and ideals, within the last thirty years, I should
+attribute it to a wholly different cause. Mr. Lecky some years ago, in
+his book entitled "Liberty and Democracy," made the following statement,
+in no way original, but, as he put it, sufficiently striking: "The
+produce of the American mines [incident to the discoveries made by
+Columbus] created, in the most extreme form ever known in Europe, the
+change which beyond all others affects most deeply and universally the
+material well-being of men: it revolutionized the value of the precious
+metals, and, in consequence, the price of all articles, the effects of
+all contracts, the burden of all debts."
+
+In other words, referring to the first half of the sixteenth
+century,--the sixty years, we will say, following the land-fall of
+Columbus,--the historian attributed the great change which then occurred
+and which stands forth so markedly in history, to the increased
+New-World production of the precious metals, combined with the impetus
+given to trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of
+the mastery of man over additional globe areas. Now, dismissing from
+consideration the so-called American protective system, likewise our
+currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of
+crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the last
+thirty years, I confidently submit that in the production of the results
+under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of
+consideration. The cause of the change which has taken place lies far
+deeper and must be sought in influences of a wholly different nature,
+influences developed into an increased and still ever increasing
+activity, over which legislation has absolutely no control. I refer, of
+course, to man's mastery over the latent forces of Nature. Of these
+Steam and Electricity are the great examples, which, because always
+apparent, at once strike the imagination. These, as tools, it is to be
+remembered, date practically from within one hundred years back. It may,
+indeed, safely be asserted that up to 1815, the end of the Wars of
+Napoleon and the time of your Professor Lieber, steam even had not as
+yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when
+not a terror, was as yet but a toy. Commerce was still exclusively
+carried on by the sailing ship and canal-boat. The years from the fall
+of Napoleon to our own War of Secession--from Waterloo to
+Gettysburg--were practically those of early and partial development. Not
+until well after Appomattox, that is, since the year 1870,--a period
+covering but little more than the life of a generation,--did what is
+known to you here as the Applied Sciences cover a range difficult to
+specialize. As factors in development, it is safe to say that those
+three tremendous agencies--Steam, Electricity, Chemistry--have, so to
+speak, worked all their noticeable results within the lifetime of the
+generation born since we celebrated the Centennial of Independence. The
+manifestations now resulting and apparent to all are the natural outcome
+of the use of these modern appliances, become in our case everyday
+working tools in the hands of the most resourceful, adaptive, ingenious
+and energetic of communities, developing a virgin continent of
+undreamed-of wealth. Naturally, under such conditions, the advance has
+been not only general and continuous, but one of ever increasing
+celerity. So Protection and the Currency become flies on the fast
+revolving wheel!
+
+But what has otherwise resulted?--An unrest, social, economical,
+political. Not contentment, but a lamentation and an ancient tale of
+wrong! We hear it in the continual cry over what is known as the
+increased cost of living, and feel its pressure in the higher standard
+of living. What was considered wealth by our ancestors is to-day hardly
+competence. What sufficed for luxury in our childhood barely now
+supplies what are known as the comforts of life. Take, for instance, the
+motor,--the automobile. I speak within bounds, I think, when I say there
+are many fold more motors to-day racing over the streets, the highways
+and the byways of America than there were one-horse wagons thirty-five
+years ago. Six hundred, I am told, are to be found within the immediate
+neighborhood of Columbia; and, since I have been here I have seen in
+your streets just one man on horse-back! These figures and that
+statement tell the tale. A few years only back, every Carolinian rode
+to town, and the motor was unknown. A single illustrative example, this
+could be duplicated in innumerable ways everywhere and in all walks
+of life.
+
+The result is obvious, and was inevitable. Entered on a new phase of
+existence, the world is not as it was in the days of Columbus, when a
+single new continent was discovered containing in it what we would now
+regard as a limited accumulation of the precious metals. It is, on the
+contrary, as if, in the language of Dr. Johnson, "the potentiality of
+wealth" had been revealed "beyond the dreams of avarice"; together with
+not one or two, but a dozen continents, the existence and secrets of
+which are suddenly laid bare. The Applied Sciences have been the
+magicians,--not Protection or the Currency.
+
+And still scientists are continually dinning in our ears the question
+whether this state of affairs is going to continue,--whether the era of
+disturbance has reached its limit! I hold such a question to be little
+short of childish. That era has not reached its limits, nor has it even
+approximated those limits. On the contrary, we have just entered on the
+uncharted sea. We know what the last thirty years have brought about as
+the result of the agencies at work; but as yet we can only dimly dream
+of what the next sixty years are destined to see brought about.
+Imagination staggers at the suggestion.
+
+What, then, has been of this the inevitable consequence,--the
+consequence which even the blindest should have foreseen? It has
+resulted in all those far-reaching changes suggested in the earlier part
+of what I have said to-day, as respects our ideals, our political
+theories, our social conditions. In other words, the old era is ended;
+what is implied when we say a new era is entered upon?
+
+To attempt a partial answer to the query implies no claim to a prophetic
+faculty. Whether we like to face the fact or not, far-reaching changes
+in our economical theories and social conditions are imminent, involving
+corresponding readjustments in our constitutional arrangements and
+political machinery. Tennyson foreshadowed it all in his "Locksley Hall"
+seventy years ago:--"The individual withers, and the world is more and
+more." The day of individualism as it existed in the American ideal of
+sixty years since is over; that of collectivism and possibly socialism
+has opened. The day of social equality is relegated to what may be
+considered a somewhat patriarchal past,--that patriarchal past having
+come to a close during the memory of those still in active life.
+
+And yet, though all this can now be studied in the political discussion
+endlessly dragging on, strangely and sadly enough that discussion
+carries in it hardly a note of encouragement. It is, in a word,
+unspeakably shallow. And here, having sufficiently for my present
+purpose though in hurried manner, diagnosed the situation,--located the
+seat of disturbance,--we come to the question of treatment. Involving,
+as it necessarily does, problems of the fundamental law, and a
+rearrangement and different allocation of the functions of government,
+this challenges the closest thought of the publicist. That the problem
+is here crying aloud for solution is apparent. The publications which
+cumber the counters of our book-stores, those for which the greatest
+popular call to-day exists--treatises relating to trade interests, to
+collectivism, to socialism, even to anarchism--tell the tale in part; in
+part it is elsewhere and otherwise told. Only recently, in once Puritan
+Massachusetts, processions paraded the streets carrying banners marked
+with this device, more suggestive than strange:--"No master and no God!"
+
+What are the remedies popularly proposed? In that important branch of
+polity known as Political Ethics, or, as he termed them, Hermeneutics,
+which your Professor Lieber sixty years ago endeavored to treat of, what
+advance has since his time been effected?--Nay! what advance has been
+effected since the time, over two thousand years, of his great
+predecessor, Aristotle? I confidently submit that what progress is now
+being made in this most erudite of sciences is in the nature of that of
+the crab--backwards! In the discussions of Aristotle, the problem in
+view was, how to bring about government by the wisest,--that is, the
+most observant and expert. In other words, government, the object of
+politics, was by Aristotle treated in a scientific spirit. And this is
+as it should be. Take, for example, any problem,--I do not care whether
+it is legal or medical or one of engineering: How successfully dispose
+of it? Uniformly, in one way. Those problems are successfully solved, if
+at all, only when their solution is placed in the hands of the most
+proficient. Judged by the discussions of to-day, what advance has in
+politics been effected? Do the _Outlook_ and the _Commoner_ imply
+progress since the Stagirite? Not to any noticeable extent. We are, on
+the contrary, fumbling and wallowing about where the Greek pondered and
+philosophized.
+
+Democracy, as it is called, is to-day the great panacea,--the political
+nostrum; as such it is confidently advocated by statesmen and professors
+and even by the presidents of our institutions of the advanced
+education. "Trust the People" is the shibboleth! "Let the People rule!"
+"The cure for too much Liberty is more Liberty!" To Democracy plain and
+simple--Composite Wisdom--I frankly confess I feel no call,--no call
+greater than, for instance, towards Autocracy or Aristocracy or
+Plutocracy. Taken simply, and applied as hitherto applied, all and each
+lead to but one result,--failure! And that result, let me here predict,
+will, in the future, be the same in the case of pure Democracy that, in
+the past, it was in the case of the pure Autocracy of the Caesars, or
+the case of the pure Aristocracy of Rome or of the so-called Republics
+of the Middle Ages. A political edifice on shifting sands.
+
+Yet, to-day what do we see and hear in America? Tell it not in Gath;
+publish it not in the streets of Askalon I Two thousand years after the
+time of Aristotle, we see a prevailing school working directly back to
+the condition of affairs which existed in the Athenian agora under the
+disapproving eyes of the father of political philosophy. Panaceas,
+universal cure-alls, and quack remedies--the Initiative, the Referendum,
+and the Recall are paraded as if these--nostrums of the mountebanks of
+the county fair--would surely remedy the perplexing ills of new and
+hitherto unheard-of social, economical, and political conditions.
+Democracy! What is Democracy? Democracy, as it is generally understood,
+I submit, is nothing but the reaching of political conclusions through
+the frequent counting of noses; or, as Macaulay two generations ago
+better phrased it, "the majority of citizens told by the head";--the
+only question at just this juncture being whether, in order to the
+arriving at more acceptable results, both sexes shall be "told," instead
+of one sex only. Moreover, I with equal confidence make bold to suggest
+that while conceded, and while men have even persuaded themselves that
+they have faith in it, and really do believe in this "telling" of noses
+as the best and fairest attainable means of reaching correct results,
+yet in so doing and so professing they simply, as men are prone to do,
+deceive themselves. In other words, victims of their own cant, they
+preach a panacea in which they really do not believe. Nor of this is
+proof far to seek. _Vox populi, vox Dei_! If you extend the application
+of this principle by a single step, its loudest advocates draw back in
+alarm from the inevitable. They seek refuge in the assertion--"Oh! That
+is different!" For instance, take a concrete case; so best can we
+illustrate.
+
+One of the greatest scientific triumphs reached in modern times--perhaps
+I might fairly say the greatest--is the discovery of the cause of yellow
+fever, and its consequent control. As a result of the studies, the
+patient experimentation and self-sacrifice of the wisest,--that is, the
+most observant and expert,--the amazing conclusion was reached that not
+only the yellow fever but the innumerable ills of the flesh known under
+the caption of "malarial," were due to causes hitherto unsuspected,
+though obvious when revealed,--to the existence in the atmosphere of a
+venomous insect, in comparison with the work of which the ravages on
+mankind of the entire carnivorous and reptile creation were of
+comparatively small account. The mosquito flew disclosed, the
+atmospheric viper,--a viper most venomous and deadly. How was the
+disclosure brought about? What was the remedy applied? Was the discovery
+effected through universal suffrage? Was the remedy sought for and
+decided upon by the Initiative, or through a Referendum at an election
+held on the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday of a certain month and
+year? Had recourse in this case been had to the panacea now in greatest
+political vogue, we all know perfectly well what would have followed.
+History tells us. The quarantine, as it is called, would have been
+decreed, and a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer appointed. The
+mosquito, quite ignored, would then have gone on in his deadly work. We
+all equally well know that the man, even the politician or the
+statesman, who had suggested a solution of that problem by a count of
+noses would have been effaced with ridicule. Even the most simple minded
+would have rejected that method of reaching a result. Yet the ilia of
+the body politic, too, are complicated. Indeed, far more intricate in
+their processes and more deceitful in their aspects, they more deeply
+affect the general well-being and happiness than any ill or epidemic
+which torments the physical being, even the mosquito malaria. Yet the
+ills of the body politic, the complications which surround us on every
+side,--for these the unfailing panacea is said to lie in universal
+suffrage, that remedy which is immediately and of course laughed out of
+court if suggested in case of the simpler ills of the flesh.
+
+This, I submit, is demonstration. The true remedy is not to be sought in
+that direction in the one case any more than the other.
+
+There is a considerable element of truth, though possibly a not
+inconsiderable one of exaggeration, in this statement from a paper I
+recently chanced upon in the issue of the sober and classical _Edinburgh
+Review_ for October last,--a paper entitled "Democracy and
+Liberalism":--"History testifies unmistakably and unanimously to the
+passion of democracies for incompetence. There is nothing democracy
+dislikes and suspects so heartily as technical efficiency, particularly
+when it is independent of the popular vote." But to-day, what is
+politically proposed by our senatorial charlatans and the mountebanks of
+the market-place? The Referendum, the constant and easy Recall, the
+everlasting Initiative are dinned into our ears as the cure-alls of
+every ill of the body politic. On the contrary, I submit that, while in
+the absence of any better method as yet devised and accepted, the
+process of reaching results by a count of the "majority told by the
+head" of the citizens then present and voting has certain political
+advantages, yet, for all this, as a final, scientific, political
+process, it is unworthy of consideration. A passing expedient, it in no
+degree reflects credit on twentieth-century intelligence.
+
+And now I come to the crux of my discussion. Thus rejecting results
+reached by the ballot as now in practical use, a query is already in the
+minds of those who listen. At once suggesting itself and flung in my
+face, it is asked as a political poser, and not without a sneer,--What
+else or better have I to propose? Would I advise a return to old and
+discarded methods,--Heredity, Caste, Autocracy, Plutocracy? I
+respectfully submit this is a question no one has a right to put, and
+one I am not called upon to answer. Again, let me take a concrete case.
+Once more I appeal to the yellow fever precedent. The first step towards
+a solution of a medical, as of a political, problem is a correct
+diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to
+observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the
+yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the
+nature of the disease and the manifest inadequacy of current theories
+and prevailing methods of prevention and treatment, do you think others
+would have had a right to turn upon him and demand that he instantly
+prescribe a remedy which should be not only complete, but at once
+recognized as such and so accepted? In the present case, as I have
+already observed, from the days of Aristotle down through two and twenty
+centuries, men had been experimenting in all, to them, conceivable ways,
+on the government of the body politic, exactly as they experimented on
+the disorders of the physical body. But only yesterday was the source of
+the yellow fever, for instance, diagnosed and located, and the proper
+means of prevention applied. The cancer and tuberculosis are to-day
+unsolved problems. By analogy, they are inviting subjects for an
+Initiative and a Referendum! Yet would any person who to-day, standing
+where I stand, expressed a disbelief, at once total and contemptuous, of
+such a procedure as respects them, be met by a demand for some other
+panacea of immediate and guaranteed efficiency? And so with the body
+politic. I here to-day am merely attempting a diagnosis, pointing out
+the disorders, and exposing as best I can the utter crudeness and
+insufficiency of the market-place remedies proposed. Have you a right,
+then, to turn on me, and call for some other prescription, warranted to
+cure, in place of the nostrums so loudly advertised by the sciolists and
+the dabblers of the day, and by me so contemptuously set aside? I
+confess I am unable to respond, or even to attempt a response to any
+such demand. I am not altogether a quack, nor is this a county fair.
+
+"Paracelsus," so denominated, was one of Robert Browning's earlier
+poems. In it he causes the fifteenth-century alchemist and forerunner of
+all modern pharmaceutical chemistry, to declare that as the result of
+long travel and much research
+
+
+"I possess
+Two sorts of knowledge: one,--vast, shadowy,
+Hints of the unbounded aim....
+The other consists of many secrets, caught
+While bent on nobler prize,--perhaps a few
+Prime principles which may conduct to much:
+These last I offer."
+
+
+So, _longo intervallo_, I have a few suggestions,--the result of an
+observation extending, as I said at the beginning, over the lives of two
+generations and a connection with many great events in which I have
+borne a part,--a part not prominent indeed, and more generally, I
+acknowledge, mistaken than correct. My errors, however, have at least
+made me cautious and doubtful of my own conclusions. I submit them for
+what they are worth. Not much, I fear.
+
+What, then, would I do, were it in my power to prescribe alterations and
+curatives for the ills of our American body politic, of which I have
+spoken; or, more correctly, the far-reaching disturbances manifestly due
+to the agencies at work, to which I have made reference? Let us come at
+once to the point, taking the existing Constitution of the United States
+as a concrete example, and recognizing the necessity for its revision
+and readjustment to meet radically changed conditions,--conditions
+social, material, geographical, changed and still changing.
+
+It was Mr. Gladstone who, years ago, made the often-quoted assertion
+that the Constitution of the United States was "the most wonderful work
+ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." I do
+not think he was far wrong; though we, of course, realize that the
+Federal Constitution was a growth and in no degree an inspiration. That
+Constitution has through a century and a quarter stood the test of time
+and stress of war, during a period of almost unlimited growth of the
+community for which it was devised. It has outlasted many nationalities
+and most of the dynasties in existence at the time of its adoption; and
+that, too, under conditions sufficiently trying. I, therefore, regard it
+with profound respect; and, so regarding it, I would treat it with a
+cautious and tender hand. Not lightly pronouncing it antiquated, what
+changes would I make in it if to-morrow it were given me to prescribe
+alterations adapting it to the altered conditions which confront us? I
+do not hesitate to say, and I am glad to say, the changes I would
+suggest would be limited; yet, I fancy, far-reaching.
+
+And, in the first place, let us have a clear conception of the end in
+view. That end is, I submit, exactly the same to-day which Aristotle had
+in view more than twenty centuries ago. It is, not to solve all
+political problems, but to put political problems as they arise in the
+hands of those whom he termed the "best,"--but whom we know as the most
+intelligent, observant and expert,--to be, through their agency, in the
+way of ultimate solution. If, adopting every ill-considered and
+half-fledged measure of so-called reform which might be the fancy of the
+day, we incorporated them in our fundamental law, but one thing could
+result therefrom,--ultimate confusion. The Constitution is neither a
+legislative crazy-quilt nor a receptacle of fads. To make it such is in
+every respect the reverse of scientific. The work immediately in hand,
+therefore, is to devise such changes in the fundamental law as will tend
+most effectually to bring about the solution of issues as they may
+arise, by the most expert, observant and reliable. This accomplished, if
+its accomplishment were only practicable, all possible would have been
+done; and the necessary and inevitable readjustment of things would, in
+politics as in medicine and in science, be left to solve itself as
+occasion arose. Provision cannot be made against every contingency.
+
+This premised, the Constitution of the United States is an instrument
+through which powers are delegated by several local communities to a
+central government. The instrument, it was originally held, should be
+strictly construed and the powers delegated limited; and in this
+respect, with certain alterations made obviously necessary to meet
+changed conditions, I would return to the fundamental idea of
+the framers.
+
+In saying this I feel confidence also that here in South Carolina at
+least I shall meet with an earnest response. The time is not yet remote
+when local self-government worked salvation for South Carolina, as for
+her sister States of the Confederacy. You here will never forget what
+immediately followed the close of our Civil War. As an historic fact,
+the Constitution was then suspended. It was suspended by act of an
+irresponsible Congress, exercising revolutionary but unlimited powers
+over a large section of the common country. You then had an
+illustration, not soon to be forgotten, of concentration of legislative
+power. An episode at once painful and discreditable, it is not necessary
+here to refer to it in detail. Appeal, however, was made to the
+principle of local self-government,--it was, so to speak, a recurrence
+to the theory of State Sovereignty. The appeal struck a responsive,
+because traditional, chord; and it was through a recurrence to State
+Sovereignty as the agency of local self-government that loyalty and
+contentment were restored, and, I may add, that I am here to-day.
+Ceasing to be a Military Department, South Carolina once more became a
+State. Not improbably the demand will in a not remote future be heard
+that State lines and local autonomy be practically obliterated. In that
+event, I feel a confident assurance that, recurring in memory to the
+evil days which followed 1865, the spirit of enlightened conservatism
+will assert itself here and in the sister States of what was once the
+Confederacy; and again it will prevail. In the future, as in the past,
+you in South Carolina at least will cling to what in 1876 proved the ark
+of your social and political salvation.
+
+Taking another step in the discussion of changes, the Constitution is
+founded on that well-known distribution and allocation of powers first
+theoretically suggested by Montesquieu. There is a division, accompanied
+by a mutual limitation of authority, through the Judiciary, the
+Executive, and the Legislative. As respects this allocation, how would I
+modify that instrument? I freely say that the tendency of my thought,
+based on observation, is to conservatism. I have never yet in a single
+instance found that when the people of this or any other country
+accustomed to parliamentary government desired a thing, they failed to
+obtain it within a reasonable limit of time. Hasty changes are wisely
+deprecated; but I think I speak within limitation when I say that
+neither in the history of Great Britain,--the mother of Parliaments--nor
+in the history of the United States, has any modification which the
+people, on sober second thought, have considered to be for the best,
+long been deferred. Action, revolutionary in character, has not, as a
+rule, been needful, or, when taken, proved salutary. This is a record
+and result that no careful student of our history will, I take it, deny.
+
+Such being the case, so far as our Judiciary is concerned, I do not
+hesitate to say I would adhere to older, and, as I think, better
+principles, or revert to them where they have been experimentally
+abandoned. It took the Anglo-Saxon race two centuries of incessant
+conflict to wrest from a despotic executive, practically an autocracy,
+judicial independence. That was effected through what is known as a
+tenure during good behavior, as opposed to a tenure at the will of the
+monarch. This, then, for two centuries, was accepted as a fundamental
+principle of constitutional government. Of late, a new theory has been
+propounded, and by those chafing at all restraint--constitutionally
+lawless in disposition--it is said the Recall should also be applied to
+the Judiciary. Having, therefore, wrested the independence of the
+Judiciary from the hand of the Autocrat, we now propose to place it, in
+all trustfulness, in the hands of the Democrat. To me the proposition
+does not commend itself. It is founded on no correct principle, for the
+irresponsible democratic majority is even more liable to ill-considered
+and vacillating action than is the responsible autocrat. In that matter
+I would not trust myself; why, then, should I trust the composite
+Democrat? In the case of the Judiciary, therefore, I would so far as the
+fundamental law is concerned abide by the older and better considered
+principles of the framers.
+
+Next, the Executive. Again, we hear the demand of Democracy,--the
+Recall! Once more I revert to the record. This Republic has now been in
+working operation, and, taken altogether, most successful operation,
+for a century and a quarter. During that century and a quarter we have
+had, we will say, some five and twenty different chief magistrates.
+There is an ancient and somewhat vulgar adage to the effect that the
+proof of a certain dietary article is in its eating. Apply that homely
+adage to the matter under consideration. What is the lesson taught? It
+is simply this,--during a whole century and a quarter of existence there
+has not been one single chief executive of the United States to whom the
+arbitrary Recall could have been applied with what would now be agreed
+upon as a fortunate result. In the Andrew Johnson impeachment case was
+it not better that things were as they were? On the other hand, every
+one of the seven independent, self-respecting Senators who then by a
+display of high moral courage saved the country from serious prejudice
+would have been recalled out-of-hand had the Recall now demanded been in
+existence. Its working would have received prompt exemplification; as it
+was, the recall was effected in time, and after due deliberation. The
+delay occasioned no public detriment. In this life, experience is
+undeniably worth something; and the experience here referred to is
+fairly entitled to consideration. No political system possible to devise
+is wholly above criticism,--not open to exceptional contingencies or to
+dangers possible to conjure up. Such have from time to time arisen in
+the past; in the future such will inevitably arise. This consideration
+must, however, be balanced against a general average of successful
+working; and I confidently submit that, weighing thus the proved
+advantage of the system we have against the possibilities of danger
+which hereafter may occur, but which never yet have occurred, the scale
+on which are the considerations in favor of change kicks the beam.
+
+In view, however, of the growth of the country, the vastly increased
+complexity of interests involved, the intricacy and the cost of the
+election processes to which recourse is necessarily had, I would
+substitute for the present brief tenure of the presidential office--a
+tenure well enough perhaps in the comparatively simple days which
+preceded our Civil War--a tenure sufficiently long to enable the
+occupant of the presidential chair to have a policy and to accomplish at
+least something towards its adoption. As the case stands to-day, a
+President for the first time elected has during his term of four years,
+one year, and one year only, in which really to apply himself to the
+accomplishment of results. The first year of his term is necessarily
+devoted to the work of acquiring a familiarity with the machinery of the
+government, and the shaping of a policy. The second year may be devoted
+to a more or less strenuous effort at the adoption of the policy thus
+formulated. As experience shows, the action of the third and fourth
+years is gravely affected--if not altogether perverted from the work in
+hand--by what are known as the political exigencies incident to a
+succession. Manifestly, this calls for correction. The remedy, however,
+to my mind, is obvious and suggests itself. As the presidency is the
+one office under our Constitution national in character, and in no way
+locally representative, I would extend the term to seven years, and
+render the occupant of the office thereafter ineligible for reëlection.
+Seven years is, I am aware, under our political system, an unusual term;
+and here my ears will, I know, be assailed by the great "mandate"
+cackle. The count of noses being complete, the mind of the composite
+Democrat is held to be made up. It only remains to formulate the
+consequent decree; and, with least possible delay, put it in way of
+practical enforcement. Again, I, as a publicist, demur. It is the old
+issue, that between instant action and action on second thought,
+presented once more. Briefly, the experience of sixty years strongly
+inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that
+immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as
+ill-advised as it is precipitate. Only in the field of politics is the
+expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and
+literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results
+are at best but slowly thrashed out. As respects wisdom, the modern
+statute book does not loom, monumental. Its contemplation would indeed
+perhaps even lead to a surmise that reasonable delay in formulating his
+"mandate" might, in the case of the composite Democrat as in that of the
+individual Autocrat, prove a not altogether unmixed, and so in the end
+an intolerable, evil.
+
+Thus while a change of the Executive and Legislative branches of the
+government might not be always simultaneously effected, by selecting
+seven years as the presidential term the election would be brought
+about, as frequently as might be, by itself, uncomplicated by local
+issues connected with the fortunes or political fate of individual
+candidates for office, whether State, Congressional, or Senatorial; and
+during the seven years of tenure, four, at least, it might reasonably be
+anticipated, would be devoted to the promotion of a definite policy, in
+place of one year in a term of four, as now. If also ineligible for
+reelection, there is at least a fair presumption that the occupant of
+the position might from start to finish apply himself to its duties and
+obligations, without being distracted therefrom by ulterior personal
+ends as constantly as humanly held in view.
+
+Having thus disposed of the Judiciary and the Executive, we come to the
+Legislative. And here I submit is the weak point in our American
+system,--manifestly the weak point, and to those who, like myself, have
+had occasion to know, undeniably so. I am here as a publicist; not as a
+writer of memoirs: so, on this head, I do not now propose to dilate or
+bear witness. I will only briefly say that having at one period, and for
+more than the lifetime of a generation, been in charge of large
+corporate and financial interests, I have had much occasion to deal with
+legislative bodies, National, State and Municipal. That page of my
+experiences is the one I care least to recall, and would most gladly
+forget. I am not going to specify, or give names of either localities or
+persons; but, knowing what I know, it is useless to approach me on this
+topic with the usual good-natured and optimistic, if somewhat unctuous
+and conventional, commonplaces on general uprightness and the tendency
+to improved conditions and a higher standard. I know better! I have seen
+legislators bought like bullocks--they selling themselves. I have
+watched them cover their tracks with a cunning more than vulpine. I have
+myself been black-mailed and sandbagged, while whole legislative bodies
+watched the process, fully cognizant at every step of what was going on.
+This, I am glad to say, was years ago. The legislative conditions were
+then bad, scandalously bad; nor have I any reason to believe in a
+regeneration since. The stream will never rise higher than its source;
+but it generally indicates the level thereof. In this case, I can only
+hope that in my experience it failed so to do. Running at a low level,
+the waters of that stream were deplorably dirty.
+
+That the legislative branch of our government has fallen so markedly in
+public estimation is not, I think, open to denial. To my mind, under the
+conditions I have referred to, such could not fail to be the case. It
+has, consequently, lost public confidence. Hence this popular demand for
+immediate legislation by the People,--this twentieth-century appeal to
+the Agora and Forum methods which antedate the era of Christ. It is true
+the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded;
+but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we
+are assured, is changed! The heart is no longer on the right-hand side
+of the body. To secure desired results it is only necessary to start
+quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience.
+
+Such reasoning does not commend itself to my judgment. On the contrary,
+the failure of the American legislative to command an increasing public
+confidence, while both natural and obvious, is, if my observation guides
+me to conclusions in any degree correct, traceable to two reasons. So
+far as government is concerned, the law-making branch is assumed to be
+made up of the wisest and the most expert. Meanwhile, it is as a matter
+of fact chosen by the process I have not over-respectfully referred to
+as the counting of noses; and, moreover, by an unwritten law more
+binding than any in the Statute Book, that counting of noses is with us
+localized. In other words, when it comes to the choice of our
+law-makers, reducing provincialism to a system we make the local
+numerical majority supreme, and any one is considered competent to
+legislate. He can do that, even if by common knowledge he is incompetent
+or untrustworthy in every other capacity. Localization thus becomes the
+stronghold of mediocrity, the sure avenue to office of the second-and
+third-rate man,--he who wishes always to enjoy his share of a little
+brief authority, to have, he also, a taste of public life. In this
+respect our American system is, I submit, manifestly and incomparably
+inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in Great
+Britain, itself open to grave criticism. In Great Britain the public man
+seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency
+seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. The present Prime
+Minister of Great Britain, for instance, represents a small Scotch
+constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more
+than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively
+remained in public life. On the other hand, look at the waste and
+extravagance of the system now and traditionally in use with us. To get
+into public life a man must not only be in sympathy with the majority of
+the citizens of the locality in which he lives, but he must continue to
+be in sympathy with that majority; or, at any election, like Mr. Cannon
+in the election just held, where for any passing cause a majority of his
+neighbors in the locality in which he lives may fail to support him, he
+must go into retirement. I cannot here enlarge on this topic, vital as I
+see it; I have neither space nor time, and must, therefore, needs
+content myself with the "hints" of Paracelsus. I will merely say that as
+an outcome this localized majority system practically disfranchises the
+more intelligent and the more disinterested, the more individual and
+independent of every constituency. It reduces their influence, and
+negatives their action. It operates in like fashion everywhere. My
+field of observation has been at home, here in America; but it has been
+the same in France. For instance, while preparing this address I came
+across the following in that most respectable sheet, the London
+_Athenaum_. A very competent Frenchman was there criticising a recent
+book entitled "Idealism in France." Reference was by him made to what,
+in France, is known as the "_scrutin d'arrondissement,"_ or, in other
+words, the district representative system. The critic declares that this
+system has there "created a party machine which has brought the country
+under the sway of a sort of Radical-Socialist Tammany, and bound
+together the voter and the deputy by a tie of mutual corruption, the
+candidate promising Government favors to the elector in return for his
+vote, and the elector supporting the candidate who promises most. Hence
+a policy in which ideas and ideals are forgotten for personal and local
+interests, as each candidate strives to outbid his rivals in the bribes
+that he offers to his constituents. Hence, finally, a general lowering
+in the tone of French home politics, every question being made
+subservient by the deputies to that of their reëlection."
+
+I would respectfully inquire if the above does not apply word for word
+to the condition of affairs with which we are familiar in America.
+
+But let me here again cite a concrete case, still fresh in memory;
+nothing in abstract discussion tells so much. Take the late Carl
+Schurz. If there was one man in our public life since 1865 who showed a
+genius for the parliamentary career, and who in six short years in the
+United States Senate--a single term--displayed there constructive
+legislating qualities of the highest order, it was Carl Schurz. Yet at
+the end of that single senatorial term, for local and temporary reasons
+he failed to obtain the support of a majority, or the support of
+anything approaching a majority, of those composing the constituency
+upon which he depended. Consequently he was retired from that
+parliamentary position necessary for the accomplishment, through him, of
+best public results. Yet at that very time there was no man in the
+United States who commanded so large and so personal a constituency as
+Carl Schurz; for he represented the entire Germanic element in the
+United States. Distributed as that element was, however, with its vote
+localized under our law, unwritten as well as statutory, there was no
+possibility of any constituency so concentrating itself that Carl Schurz
+could be kept in the position where he could continue to render services
+of the greatest possible value to the country. I, therefore, confidently
+here submit a doubt whether human ingenuity could devise any system
+calculated to lead to a greater waste of parliamentary ability, or more
+effectually keep from the front and position of influence that
+legislative superiority which was the arm of Aristotle to secure.
+"Cant-patriotism," as your Francis Lieber termed it; and, on this
+score, he waxed eloquent. "Do we not live in a world of cant," he wrote
+from Columbia here to a friend at the North seventy-five years ago,
+"that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within
+the State confines only. The truer a nation is, the more essentially it
+is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the
+true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. Look at history and
+you find the proof. Look around you, where you are, and you find it
+now." And, were Lieber living to-day, he would find a striking
+exemplification of the consequences of a total and systematic disregard
+of this elementary proposition in studying the United States Senate from
+and through its reporters' gallery. The decline in the standards of that
+body, whether of aspect, intelligence, education or character, under the
+operation of the local primary has been not less pronounced than
+startling. The outcome and ripe result of "cant-patriotism," it affords
+to the curious observer an impressive object-lesson,--provincialism
+reduced to a political system; what a witty and incisive French writer
+has recently termed the "Cult of Incompetence." Speaking of conditions
+prevailing not here but in France, this observer says:--"Democracy in
+its modern form chooses its' delegates in its own image.... What ought
+the character of the legislator to be? The very opposite, it seems to
+me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought to be well-informed and
+entirely devoid of prejudice." Taken as a whole, and a few striking
+individual exceptions apart, are those composing the Senate of the
+United States conspicuous in these respects? They certainly do not so
+impress the casual observer. That, as a body, they increasingly fail to
+command confidence and attention is matter of common remark. Nor is the
+reason far to seek. It would be the same as respects literature, science
+and art, were their representatives chosen and results reached through a
+count of noses localized, with selection severely confined to
+home talent.
+
+I am well aware of the criticism which will at once be passed on what I
+now advance. Local representation through choice by numerical majorities
+within given confines, geographically and mathematically fixed, is a
+system so rooted and intrenched in the convictions and traditions of the
+American community that even to question its wisdom evinces a lack of
+political common-sense. It in fact resembles nothing so much as the
+attempt to whistle down a strongly prevailing October wind from the
+West. The attempt so to do is not practical politics! In reply, however,
+I would suggest that such a criticism is wholly irrelevant. The
+publicist has nothing to do with practical politics. It is as if it were
+objected to a physician who prescribed sanitation against epidemics that
+the community in question was by custom and tradition wedded to filth
+and surface-drainage, and could not possibly be induced to abandon them
+in favor of any new-fangled theories of soap-and-water cleanliness. So
+why waste time in prescribing such? Better be common-sensed and
+practical, taking things as they are. In the case suggested, and
+confronted with such criticism, the medical adviser simply shrugs his
+shoulders, and is silent; the alternative he knows is inescapable. After
+a sufficiency of sound scourgings the objecting community will probably
+know better, and may listen to reason; in a way, conforming thereto. So,
+also, the body politic. If Ephraim is indeed thus joined to idols, the
+publicist simply shrugs his shoulders, and passes on; possibly, after
+Ephraim has been sufficiently scourged, he may in that indefinite future
+popularly known as "one of these days" be more clear sighted and wiser.
+
+None the less, so far as our national parliamentary system is concerned,
+could I have my way in a revision of the Constitution, I would increase
+the senatorial term to ten years, and I would, were such a thing within
+the range of possibility, break down the system of the necessary
+senatorial selection by a State of an inhabitant of the State. If I
+could, I would introduce the British system. For example, though I never
+voted for Mr. Bryan and have not been in general sympathy with Mr.
+Roosevelt, yet few things would give me greater political satisfaction
+than to see Mr. Bryan, we will say, elected a Senator from Arizona or
+Oregon, Mr. Roosevelt elected from Illinois or Pennsylvania, President
+Taft from Utah or Vermont. They apparently best represent existing
+feelings and the ideals prevailing in those communities; why, then,
+should they not voice those feelings and ideals in our highest
+parliamentary chamber?
+
+As respects our House of Representatives, it would in principle be the
+same. I do not care to go into the rationale of what is known as
+proportional representation, nor have I time so to do; but, were it in
+my power, I would prescribe to-morrow that hereafter the national House
+of Representatives should be constituted on the proportional basis,--the
+choice of representatives to be by States, but, as respects the
+nomination of candidates, irrespective of district lines. Like many
+others, I am very weary of provincial nobodies, "good men" locally known
+to be such!
+
+As I have already said, in parliamentary government all depends in the
+end on the truly representative character of the legislative body. If
+that is as it should be, the rest surely follows. The objective of
+Aristotle is attained.
+
+Exceeding the limits assigned to it, my discussion has, however,
+extended too far. I must close. One word before so doing. Why am I here?
+I am here,--a man considerably exceeding in age the allotted threescore
+and ten--to deliver a message, be the value of the same greater or less.
+I greatly fear it is less. I would, however, impart the lessons of an
+experience stretching over sixty years,--the results of such observation
+as my intelligence has enabled me to exercise. I do so, addressing
+myself to a local institution of the advanced education. Why? Because,
+looking over the country, diagnosing its conditions as well as my
+capacity enables me, observing the evolution of the past and
+forecasting, in as far as I may, the outcome, I am persuaded that the
+future of the country rests more largely in the hands of such
+institutions as this than in those of any other agency or activity. Do
+not say I flatter; for, while I can hope for no advancement, I think I
+have not overstated the case; I certainly have not overstated my
+conviction. There has been no man who has influenced the course of
+modern thought more deeply and profoundly than Adam Smith, a Professor
+in a Scotch University of the second class. So here in Columbia seventy
+years ago, Francis Lieber prepared and published his "Manual of
+Political Ethics." Adam Smith and Francis Lieber were but
+prototypes--examples of what I have in mind. The days were when the
+Senate of the United States afforded a rostrum from which thinkers and
+teachers first formulated, and then advanced, great policies. Those
+days, and I say it regretfully, are past. Unless I am greatly mistaken,
+however, a new political force is now asserting itself. I have recently,
+at a meeting of historical and scientific associations in Boston, had my
+attention forcibly called to this aspect of the situation now shaping
+itself. I there met young men, many, and not the least noticeable of
+whom, came from this section. They inspired me with a renewed confidence
+in our political future. Essentially teachers,--I might add, they were
+publicists as well as professors. Observers and students, they actively
+followed the course of developing thought in Europe as in this country.
+Exact in their processes, philosophical and scientific in their methods,
+unselfish in their devotion, they were broad of view. It is for them to
+realize in a future not remote the University ideal pictured, and
+correctly pictured, from this stage by one who here preceded me a short
+six months ago. They, constituting the University, are the "hope of the
+State in the direction of its practical affairs; in teaching the lawyer
+the better standards of his profession, his duty to place character
+above money making; in teaching the legislator the philosophy of
+legislation, and that the constructive forces of legislation carefully
+considered should precede every effort to change an existing status; in
+teaching those in official life, executive and judicial, that demagogy,
+and theories of life uncontrolled by true principles, do not make for
+success, when final success is considered, but that, if they did lead to
+success, they should be avoided for their inherent imperfection.... The
+province of the University is to educate citizenship in the abstract."
+
+It is the presence of this class, to those composing which I bow as
+distinctly of a period superior to mine, that you owe my presence
+to-day,--whatever that presence may be worth. I regard their existence
+and their coming forward in such institutions as this University of
+South Carolina, as the arc of the bow of promise spanning the political
+horizon of our future.
+
+Through you, to them my message is addressed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's 'Tis Sixty Years Since, by Charles Francis Adams
+
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