The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. I, No. 6, August 1836)

CONDUCTED BY THE STUDENTS OF YALE COLLEGE .
“Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque Yalenses Cantabunt Soboles, unanimique Patres.”
NO. VI.
AUGUST, 1836.
NEW HAVEN: HERRICK & NOYES.
MDCCCXXXVI.
“The tie of mutual influence passes without a break from hand to hand, throughout the human family. There is no independence, no insulation, in the lot of man.”— Natural History of Enthusiasm.
There is a tendency to regard the commotions of society, which have taken place of late years, as the results of modern diplomacy, or of notions concerning human rights, which have received birth and risen to their present vigor within the last fifty years. Hence, it is argued, there is a liability to reaction. The bright lights may go out, and despotism triumph in the moral and political degeneracy. Yet this view of the matter is very superficial. It is regarding the trunk as the origin of the tree, overlooking the seed and the root. The truth is, the principles now developing have their origin with society. For, all sound political principles have a common foundation—the rights of man. His selfishness, especially his thirst for sway, aided by ignorance, has kept through force and fraud the true principles of human government from being understood and adopted. Still the ancient kingdoms, the world-empires and all, though now in their tombs, left inscriptions on their head-stones of diamond worth to the science of government. They are beacon-lights for the modern statesman. Their wisdom and their folly, both aid him to discover the true rules for human government, which have been buried up and concealed by folly and passion since the days of the Patriarchs, from whom all civil authority had its rise. Added to this light of experience, collected by by-gone nations, are other influences of a physical nature. The application of the magnet to purposes of navigation, was one of those master thoughts, which, from its vast importance, we are almost tempted to regard as an idea of directly divine origin. The influence of this on the whole family of man, can be best estimated by suffering one’s self to think what the state of the world would of necessity be, were it entirely unknown. Again, the application of steam to machinery, is not only changing the aspect of things in the New World and Europe, but this invention was a positive act for the moral and physical renovation of Asia and Africa—an act of such power as must hasten their new birth by centuries. British steamers are already on their way to explore the Niger. It is the operation and display of this vast physical force, which is to be a great means of starting into action the stagnated mind of this part of our race. These discoveries, it will readily be allowed, can never cease to operate. Entwined with political experience, they stand firm barriers to any relapse in the general well being of the human family; while, year after year, to these and others, which cannot be mentioned in the limits of a single article, are added the discoveries of physical and political science, as they occur, until their increasing light reveals to the common eye, one and another, and another, of the rights of man, which designing men, “tyrants, or tyrants’ slaves,” have striven to conceal. Almost every nation of the earth has had some of its dark places pierced by these accumulating rays. Despotic powers have been forced to yield up some part of the prerogatives of the crown, or to surround them with stronger guards. Constitutional governments have been compelled to adopt measures of reform, and to pursue a course of policy more uniformly liberal.