The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC.

“What do men mean when they predict the immortality of any thing earthly?

“The first Napoleon was one day walking through the galleries of the Louvre, filled with the wonders of art which he had stolen from the conquered capitals of Europe. As he passed the marvelous picture of Peter Martyr, one of the seven masterpieces of the world, he overheard an enthusiastic artist exclaim: ‘Immortal work!’ Turning quickly upon his heel, the Emperor asked: ‘What is the average life of an oil-painting?’ ‘Five hundred years,’ answered the artist. ‘Immortal!’ the Corsican scornfully repeated as he passed on, thinking doubtless of Austerlitz and Marengo. Six years ago the wonderful picture of Peter Martyr was dissolved in the flames of a burning church at Venice, and, like Austerlitz, is now only a memory and a dream.

“When the great lyric poet of Rome ventured to predict immortality for his works, he could think of no higher human symbol of immortality than the Eternal City and her institutions, crowded with seven centuries of glorious growth; and so Horace declared that his verses would be remembered as long as the high-priest of Apollo and the silent vestal virgin should climb the steps of the Capitol. Fifteen centuries ago the sacred fires of Vesta went out, never to be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo has had no shrine, no priest, no worshiper on the earth. The steps of the Capitol, and the temples that crowned it, live only in dreams, and to-day the antiquary digs and disputes among the ruins, and is unable to tell us where on the Capitoline hill the great citadel of Rome stood.

“There is much in the history of dead empires to sadden and discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. But a deeper study reveals the fact that nations have perished only when their institutions have ceased to be serviceable to the human race; when their faith has become an empty form, and the destruction of the old is indispensable to the growth of the new. Growth is better than permanence; and permanent growth is better than all. Our faith is large in time; and we—

“‘Doubt not through the ages, an increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.’

“It matters little what may be the forms of national institutions, if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured. To save the life of a nation, it is sometimes necessary to discard the old form and make room for the new growth; for—

“‘Old decays but foster new creations;

Bones and ashes feed the golden corn;

Fresh elixirs wander every moment

Down the veins through which the live part feeds its child, the life unborn.’

“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression. The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.

“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?

“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper, unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are, and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers.

“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...

“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means of intercommunion. For political and industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than ever before, a strong band of nationality.

“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”

In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.

“With all my heart I repel that letter as false. My first answer is this: No man who has not lived among us can understand one thing about our institutions; no man who has been born and reared under monarchical governments can understand the vast difference between theirs and ours. How is it in monarchical governments? Their society is one series of caste upon caste. Down at the bottom, like the granite rocks in the crust of the earth, lie the great body of laboring men. An Englishman told me not long ago that in twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural class of England, he had never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen. That is a most terrible sentence, that three millions of people should lie at the bottom of society, with no power to rise. Above them the gentry, the hereditary capitalist; above them, the nobility; above them, the royalty; and, crowning all, the sovereign—all impassable barriers of caste.

“No man born under such institutions can understand the mighty difference between them and us in this country. Thank God, and thank the fathers of the Republic who made, and the men who carried out the promises of the Declaration, that in this country there are no classes, fixed and impassable. Here society is not fixed in horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great New England man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad, deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom may rise through all the waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light of American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of society, and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State.

“Again, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of universal education. He contemplates the government delivered over to a vast multitude of ignorant, vicious men, who have learned no self-control, who have never comprehended the national life, and who will wield the ballot solely for personal and selfish ends. If this were indeed the necessary condition of Democratic communities, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape the logic of Macaulay’s letter. And here is a real peril—the danger that we shall rely upon the mere extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard. We can not safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the quality of the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.

---

“Our faith in the Democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that in the distribution of political power it is safe to follow the maxim, ‘Each for all, and all for each.’ We confront the dangers of the suffrage by the blessings of universal education.”

We present next a brief extract from an address delivered February 11, 1879,