AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.
ADDRESS delivered before the Societies of the University of Virginia, June 25, 1889.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In thanking you for this cordial—this Virginia—welcome, let me say that it satisfies my heart to be with you to-day. This is my alma mater. Kind, in the tolerant patience with which she winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights that she might find for me the grain of knowledge and of truth, and in the charity with which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger my brief but stormy career within these walls. Kinder yet, that her old heart has turned lovingly after the lapse of twenty years to her scapegrace son in a distant State, and recalling him with this honorable commission, has summoned him to her old place at her knees. Here at her feet, with the glory of her presence breaking all about me, let me testify that the years have but deepened my reverence and my love, and my heart has owned the magical tenderness of the emotions first kindled amid these sacred scenes. That which was unworthy has faded—that which was good has abided. Faded the memory of the tempestuous dyke and the riotous kalathump—dimmed the memory of that society, now happily extinct, but then famous as “The Nippers from Peru”—forgotten even the glad exultation of those days when the neighboring mountaineer in the pride of his breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear to give battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all these follies, and let us hope forgiven. But, enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless splendor of those golden days—the deep and pure inspiration of these academic shades—the kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters—the generous ardor of our mimic contests—and that loving comradeship that laughed at separation and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring and hallowed, blessed be God, the strange and wild ambitions that startled my boyish heart as amid these dim corridors, oh! my mother, the stirring of unseen wings in thy mighty past caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals of thy future were revealed to my wondering sight.
Gentlemen of the literary societies—I have no studied oration for you to-day. A life busy beyond its capacities has given scanty time for preparation. But from a loving heart I shall speak to you this morning in comradely sympathy of that which concerns us nearly.
Will you allow me to say that the anxiety that always possesses me when I address my young countrymen is to-day quickened to the point of consecration. For the first time in man’s responsibility I speak in Virginia to Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories that made it matchless among States, its later martyrdom has made it the Mecca of my people. It was on these hills that our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to heroism, and advanced the world in honor! It is in these valleys that our dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appomattox, where on every ragged gray cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His imperishable knighthood. Beyond is Petersburg, where he whose name I bear, and who was prince to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the people among whom my father died—sacred to me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood. From a heart stirred by these emotions and sobered by these memories, let me speak to you to-day, my countrymen—and God give me wisdom to speak aright and the words wherewithal to challenge and hold your attention.
We are standing in the daybreak of the second century of this Republic. The fixed stars are fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain light. Strange shapes have come with the night. Established ways are lost—new roads perplex, and widening fields stretch beyond the sight. The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro—but Doubt stalks amid the confusion, and even on the beaten paths the shifting crowds are halted, and from the shadows the sentries cry: “Who comes there?” In the obscurity of the morning tremendous forces are at work. Nothing is steadfast or approved. The miracles of the present belie the simple truths of the past. The church is besieged from without and betrayed from within. Behind the courts smoulders the rioter’s torch and looms the gibbet of the anarchists. Government is the contention of partisans and the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the grasp of monopoly, and commerce shackled with limitation. The cities are swollen and the fields are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle, and squalor crouches in the home. The universal brotherhood is dissolving, and the people are huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist disturbs the covert, and the roar of the mob murmurs along the highway. Amid it all beats the great American heart undismayed, and standing fast by the challenge of his conscience, the citizen of the Republic, tranquil and resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral currents, and calmly awaits the full disclosures of the day.
Who shall be the heralds of this coming day? Who shall thread the way of honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall cry aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic? You, my countrymen, you! The university is the training camp of the future. The scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon over-ran Europe with drum-tap and bivouac—the next Napoleon shall form his battalions at the tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford—Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her colleges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles amid his students as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The farmer has learned that brains mix better with his soil than the waste of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory of his harvest. A button is pressed by a child’s finger and the work of a million men is done. The hand is nothing—the brain everything. Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The lion-hearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat is absurd, for even Gog and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from their closets and look not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. Science is everything! She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of the sky with the shadow of his wing.
Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of the Republic—and you its chosen athletes. It is yours then to grapple with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos; whether 60,000,000 men are capable of self-government, or whether liberty shall be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the world’s liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the human race. Blot out the beacon that lights the portals of this Republic and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the nations of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal liberty. Let one who loves this Republic as he loves his life, and whose heart is thrilled with the majesty of its mission, speak to you now of the dangers that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the means by which they may be honorably averted.
The unmistakable danger that threatens free government in America, is the increasing tendency to concentrate in the Federal government powers and privileges that should be left with the States, and to create powers that neither the State nor Federal government should have. Let it be understood at once that in discussing this question I seek to revive no dead issue. We know precisely what was put to the issue of the sword, and what was settled thereby. The right of a State to leave this Union was denied and the denial made good forever. But the sovereignty of the States in the Union was never involved, and the Republic that survived the storm was, in the words of the Supreme Court, “an indissoluble Union of indestructible States.” Let us stand on this decree and turn our faces to the future!
It is not strange that there should be a tendency to centralization in our government. This disposition was the legacy of the war. Steam and electricity have emphasized it by bringing the people closer together. The splendor of a central government dazzles the unthinking—its opulence tempts the poor and the avaricious—its strength assures the rich and the timid—its patronage incites the spoilsmen and its powers inflame the partisan.
And so we have paternalism run mad. The merchant asks the government to control the arteries of trade—the manufacturer asks that his product be protected—the rich asks for an army, and the unfortunate for help—this man for schools and that for subsidy. The partisan proclaims, amid the clamor, that the source of largess must be the seat of power, and demands that the ballot-boxes of the States be hedged by Federal bayonets. The centrifugal force of our system is weakened, the centripetal force is increased, and the revolving spheres are veering inward from their orbits. There are strong men who rejoice in this unbalancing and deliberately contend that the center is the true repository of power and source of privilege—men who, were they charged with the solar system, would shred the planets into the sun, and, exulting in the sudden splendor, little reck that they had kindled the conflagration that presages universal nights! Thus the States are dwarfed and the nation magnified—and to govern a people, who can best govern themselves, the central authority is made stronger and more splendid!
Concurrent with this political drift is another movement, less formal perhaps, but not less dangerous—the consolidation of capital. I hesitate to discuss this phase of the subject, for of all men I despise most cordially the demagogue who panders to the prejudice of the poor by abuse of the rich. But no man can note the encroachment in this country of what may be called “the money power” on the rights of the individual, without feeling that the time is approaching when the issue between plutocracy and the people will be forced to trial. The world has not seen, nor has the mind of man conceived of such miraculous wealth-gathering as are every-day tales to us. Aladdin’s lamp is dimmed, and Monte Cristo becomes commonplace when compared to our magicians of finance and trade. The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses that of Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown in this simple republic. What shall the full fruitage be? I do not denounce the newly rich. For most part their money came under forms of law. The irresponsibilities of sudden wealth is in many cases steadied by that resolute good sense which seems to be an American heritage, and under-run by careless prodigality or by constant charity. Our great wealth has brought us profit and splendor. But the status itself is a menace. A home that costs $3,000,000 and a breakfast that cost $5000 are disquieting facts to the millions who live in a hut and dine on a crust. The fact that a man ten years from poverty has an income of $20,000,000—and his two associates nearly as much—from the control and arbitrary pricing of an article of universal use, falls strangely on the ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-handed, while children cry for bread. The tendency deepens the dangers suggested by the status. What is to be the end of this swift piling up of wealth? Twenty years ago but few cities had their millionaires. To-day almost every town has its dozen. Twenty men can be named who can each buy a sovereign State at its tax-book value. The youngest nation, America, is vastly the richest, and in twenty years, in spite of war, has nearly trebled her wealth. Millions are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling mass grows and grows, while in its shadow starvation and despair stalk among the people, and swarm with increasing legions against the citadels of human life.
But the abuse of this amazing power of consolidated wealth is its bitterest result and its pressing danger. When the agent of a dozen men, who have captured and control an article of prime necessity, meets the representatives of a million farmers from whom they have forced $3,000,000 the year before, with no more moral right than is behind the highwayman who halts the traveler at his pistol’s point, and insolently gives them the measure of this year’s rapacity, and tells them—men who live in the sweat of their brows, and stand between God and Nature—that they must submit to the infamy because they are helpless, then the first fruits of this system are gathered and have turned to ashes on the lips. When a dozen men get together in the morning and fix the price of a dozen articles of common use—with no standard but their arbitrary will, and no limit but their greed or daring—and then notify the sovereign people of this free Republic how much, in the mercy of their masters, they shall pay for the necessaries of life—then the point of intolerable shame has been reached.
We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine who from their castles sent a shot across the bow of every passing craft, and descending as hawks from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered the voyagers until their greed was glutted, or the strength of their victims spent. Shall this shame of Europe against which the world revolted, shall it be repeated in this free country? And yet, when a syndicate or a trust can arbitrarily add twenty-five per cent. to the cost of a single article of common use, and safely gather forced tribute from the people, until from its surplus it could buy every castle on the Rhine, or requite every baron’s debauchery from its kitchen account—where is the difference—save that the castle is changed to a broker’s office, and the picturesque river to the teeming streets and the broad fields of this government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? I do not overstate the case. Economists have held that wheat, grown everywhere, could never be cornered by capital. And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop in his handkerchief, and held it until a sewing-woman in my city, working for ninety cents a week, had to pay him twenty cents tax on the sack of flour she bore home in her famished hands. Three men held the cotton crop until the English spindles were stopped and the lights went out in 3,000,000 English homes. Last summer one man cornered pork until he had levied a tax of $3 per barrel on every consumer, and pocketed a profit of millions. The Czar of Russia would not have dared to do these things. And yet they are no secrets in this free government of ours! They are known of all men, and, my countrymen, no argument can follow them, and no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men who toiling, yet suffer—who hunger at their work—and who cannot find food for their wives with which to feed the infants that hang famishing at their breasts. Mr. Jefferson foresaw this danger and he sought to avert it. When Virginia ceded the vast Northwest to the government—before the Constitution was written—Mr. Jefferson in the second clause of the articles of cession prohibited forever the right of primogeniture. Virginia then nobly said, and Georgia in the cession of her territory repeated: “In granting this domain to the government and dedicating it to freedom, we prescribe that there shall be no classes in the family—no child set up at the expense of the others, no feudal estates established—but what a man hath shall be divided equally among his children.”
We see this feudal tendency, swept away by Mr. Jefferson, revived by the conditions of our time, aided by the government with its grant of enormous powers and its amazing class legislation. It has given the corporation more power than Mr. Jefferson stripped from the individual, and has set up a creature without soul or conscience or limit of human life to establish an oligarchy, unrelieved by human charity and unsteadied by human responsibility. The syndicate, the trust, the corporation—these are the eldest sons of the Republic for whom the feudal right of primogeniture is revived, and who inherit its estate to the impoverishment of their brothers. Let it be noted that the alliance between those who would centralize the government and the consolidated money power is not only close but essential. The one is the necessity of the other. Establish the money power and there is universal clamor for strong government. The weak will demand it for protection against the people restless under oppression—the patriotic for protection against the plutocracy that scourges and robs—the corrupt hoping to buy of one central body distant from local influences what they could not buy from the legislatures of the States sitting at their homes—the oligarchs will demand it—as the privileged few have always demanded it—for the protection of their privileges and the perpetuity of their bounty. Thus, hand in hand, will walk—as they have always walked—the federalist and the capitalist, the centralist and the monopolist—the strong government protecting the money power, and the money power the political standing army of the government. Hand in hand, compact and organized, one creating the necessity, the other meeting it; consolidated wealth and centralizing government; stripping the many of their rights and aggrandizing the few; distrusting the people but in touch with the plutocrats; striking down local self-government and dwarfing the citizens—and at last confronting the people in the market, in the courts, at the ballot box—everywhere—with the infamous challenge: “What are you going to do about it?” And so the government protects and the barons oppress, and the people suffer and grow strong. And when the battle for liberty is joined—the centralist and the plutocrat, entrenched behind the deepening powers of the government, and the countless ramparts of money bags, oppose to the vague but earnest onset of the people the power of the trained phalanx and the conscienceless strength of the mercenary.
Against this tendency who shall protest? Those who believe that a central government means a strong government, and a strong government means repression—those who believe that this vast Republic, with its diverse interests and its local needs, can better be governed by liberty and enlightenment diffused among the people than by powers and privileges congested at the center—those who believe that the States should do nothing that the people can do themselves and the government nothing that the States and the people can do—those who believe that the wealth of the central government is a crime rather than a virtue, and that every dollar not needed for its economical administration should be left with the people of the States—those who believe that the hearthstone of the home is the true altar of liberty and the enlightened conscience of the citizen the best guarantee of government! Those of you who note the farmer sending his sons to the city that they may escape the unequal burdens under which he has labored, thus diminishing the rural population whose leisure, integrity and deliberation have corrected the passion and impulse and corruption of the cities—who note that while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, we are lessening that great middle class that, ever since it met the returning crusaders in England with the demand that the hut of the humble should be as sacred as the castle of the great, has been the bulwark and glory of every English-speaking community—who know that this Republic, which we shall live to see with 150,000,000 people, stretching from ocean to ocean, and almost from the arctic to the torrid zone, cannot be governed by any laws that a central despotism could devise or controlled by any armies it could marshal—you who know these things protest with all the earnestness of your souls against the policy and the methods that make them possible.
What is the remedy? To exalt the hearthstone—to strengthen the home—to build up the individual—to magnify and defend the principle of local self-government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to its glory—not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it—not to check the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased extremities.
The man who kindles the fire on the hearthstone of an honest and righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love mankind less who loves his neighbor most. George Eliot has said:
“A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blest.”
The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love Georgia—to love the soil that he stands on—the body of my old mother—the mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run with her rippling laughter. The love of home—deep rooted and abiding—that blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision of an old homestead amid green fields and clustering trees—that follows the busy man through the clamoring world, persistent though put aside, and at last draws his tired feet from the highway and leads him through shady lanes and well-remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his life and owns the soil his conqueror—this—this lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving principle of our government. We note the barracks of our standing army with its rolling drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength and protection. But the citizen standing in the doorway of his home—contented on his threshold—his family gathered about his hearthstone—while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes and sounds that are dearest—he shall save the Republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are exhausted.
This love shall not be pent up or provincial. The home should be consecrated to humanity, and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of the Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there—every sacrifice endured, and every victory won, should bring better joy and inspiration in the knowledge that it will deepen the glory of our Republic and widen the harvest of humanity! Be not like the peasant of France who hates the Paris he cannot comprehend—but emulate the example of your fathers in the South, who, holding to the sovereignty of the States, yet gave to the Republic its chief glory of statesmanship, and under Jackson at New Orleans, and Taylor and Scott in Mexico, saved it twice from the storm of war. Inherit without fear or shame the principle of local self-government by which your fathers stood! For though entangled with an institution foreign to this soil, which, thank God, not planted by their hands, is now swept away, and with a theory bravely defended but now happily adjusted—that principle holds the imperishable truth that shall yet save this Republic. The integrity of the State, its rights and its powers—these, maintained with firmness, but in loyalty—these shall yet, by lodging the option of local affairs in each locality, meet the needs of this vast and complex government, and check the headlong rush to that despotism that reason could not defend, nor the armies of the Czar maintain, among a free and enlightened people. This issue is squarely made! It is centralized government and the money power on the one hand—against the integrity of the States and rights of the people on the other. At all hazard, stand with the people and the threatened States. The choice may not be easily made. Wise men may hesitate and patriotic men divide. The culture, the strength, the mightiness of the rich and strong government—these will tempt and dazzle. But be not misled. Beneath this splendor is the canker of a disturbed and oppressed people. It was from the golden age of Augustus that the Roman empire staggered to its fall. The integrity of the States and the rights of the people! Stand there—there is safety—there is the broad and enduring brotherhood—there, less of glory, but more of honor! Put patriotism above partisanship—and wherever the principle that protects the States against the centralists, and the people against the plutocrats, may lead, follow without fear or faltering—for there the way of duty and of wisdom lies!
Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make himself self-respecting, self-reliant and responsible. Let him lean on the State for nothing that his own arm can do, and on the government for nothing that his State can do. Let him cultivate independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with its price. Let him neither surrender his individuality to government, nor merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fearless—a freeman born of freemen—sturdy in his own strength—dowering his family in the sweat of his brow—loving to his State—loyal to his Republic—earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of his household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost temple of its liberty.
Go out, determined to magnify the community in which your lot is cast. Cultivate its small economies. Stand by its young industries. Commercial dependence is a chain that galls every day. A factory built at home, a book published, a shoe or a book made, these are steps in that diffusion of thought and interest that is needed. Teach your neighbors to withdraw from the vassalage of distant capitalists, and pay, under any sacrifice, the mortgage on the home or the land. By simple and prudent lives stay within your own resources, and establish the freedom of your community. Make every village and cross-roads as far as may be sovereign to its own wants. Learn that thriving country-sides with room for limbs, conscience, and liberty are better than great cities with congested wealth and population. Preserve the straight and simple homogeneity of our people. Welcome emigrants, but see that they come as friends and neighbors, to mingle their blood with ours, to build their houses in our fields, and to plant their Christian faith on our hills, and honoring our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm the simple beliefs in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to our children. Stand by these old-fashioned beliefs. Science hath revealed no better faith than that you learned at your mother’s knee—nor has knowledge made a wiser and a better book than the worn old Bible that, thumbed by hands long since still, and blurred with the tears of eyes long since closed, held the simple annals of your family and the heart and conscience of your homes.
Honor and emulate the virtues and the faith of your forefathers—who, learned, were never wise above a knowledge of God and His gospel—who, great, were never exalted above an humble trust in God and His mercy!
Let me sum up what I have sought to say in this hurried address. Your Republic—on the glory of which depends all that men hold dear—is menaced with great dangers. Against these dangers defend her, as you would defend the most precious concerns of your own life. Against the dangers of centralizing all political powers, put the approved and imperishable principle of local self-government. Between the rich and the poor now drifting into separate camps, build up the great middle class that, neither drunk with wealth, nor embittered by poverty, shall lift up the suffering and control the strong. To the jangling of races and creeds that threaten the courts of men and the temples of God, oppose the home and the citizen—a homogeneous and honest people—and the simple faith that sustained your fathers and mothers in their stainless lives and led them serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to you that I am no pessimist as to this Republic. I always bet on sunshine in America. I know that my country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes—but I know that beyond the uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and bend down above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely said, “Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Providence in behalf of the human race.” And the Republic will endure. Centralism will be checked, and liberty saved—plutocracy overthrown and equality restored. The struggle for human rights never goes backward among English-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the sea have fought from despotism to liberty, and in the wisdom of local self-government have planted colonies around the world. This very day Mr. Gladstone, the wisest man that has lived since your Jefferson died—with the light of another world beating in his face until he seems to have caught the wisdom of the Infinite and towers half human and half divine from his eminence—this man, turning away from the traditions of his life, begs his countrymen to strip the crown of its last usurped authority, and lodge it with the people, where it belongs. The trend of the times is with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to see, I catch the vision of this Republic—its mighty forces in balance, and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children—chief among the federation of English-speaking people—plenty streaming from its borders, and light from its mountain tops—working out its mission under God’s approving eye, until the dark continents are opened—and the highways of earth established, and the shadows lifted—and the jargon of the nations stilled and the perplexities of Babel straightened—and under one language, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world hearkening to the American drum-beat and girding up their loins, shall march amid the breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths of righteousness and of peace!