In his blind and brutal scramble for social recognition in Europe, the traveling American toady and impostor has many chances of success: he is commonly unknown even to ministers and consuls of his own country, and these complaisant gentlemen, rather than incur the risk of erring on the wrong side, take him at his own valuation and push him in where, his obscurity being again in his favor, he is treated with kindly toleration and sometimes a genuine hospitality to which he has no shadow of right nor title, and which, if he were a gentleman, he would not accept if it were voluntarily proffered. It should be said in mitigation that all this delirious abasement in no degree tempers his rancor against the system of which the foreign notable is the flower and fruit. He keeps his servility sweet by preserving it in the salt of vilification. In the character of blatant blackguard the American snob is so happily disguised that he does not know himself.
An American newspaper once printed a portrait of her whom the irreverent Briton had a reprehensible habit of designating colloquially as “The Old Lady.” But the editor in question did not so designate her—his simple American manhood and republican spirit would not admit that she was a lady. So he contented himself with labeling the portrait “Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.” This incident raises an important question.
Important Question Raised by This Incident: Is it better to be a subject and a man, or a citizen and a flunkey?—to own the sway of a “gory tyrant” and retain one’s self-respect, or dwell, a “sovereign elector,” in the land of liberty and disgrace it?
However it may be customary for English newspapers to designate the British sovereign, they are at least not addicted to sycophancy in designating the rulers of other countries than their own. They would not say “his Abracadabral Humptidumptiness Emperor William,” nor “his Pestilency the Speaker of the American House of Representatives.” They would not think of calling even the most ornately self-bemedaled American sovereign elector “his Badgesty.” Of a foreign nobleman they do not say “his lordship;” they will not admit that he is a lord; nor when speaking of their own noblemen do they spell “lord” with a capital L, as we do. In brief, when mentioning foreign dignitaries, of whatever rank in their own countries, the English press is simply and serviceably descriptive: the king is a king, the queen a queen, the jack a jack.
At the foundation of our political system lies the denial of hereditary and artificial rank. Our fathers created this government as a protest against all that, and all that it implies. They virtually declared that kings and noblemen could not breathe here, and no American loyal to the principles of the Revolution which made him one will ever say in his own country “your majesty” or “your lordship”—the words would choke him, and they ought.
There are a few of us who keep the faith, who do not bow the knee to Baäl, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that “illimited inane” where their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good standing. In view of this general recreancy and treason to the principles that our fathers established by the sword—having in constant observation this almost universal hospitality to the solemn nonsense of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, my faith in practical realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as elsewhere; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable and that of the public more so; that the law’s majesty is a dream and its failure a fact—hearing everywhere the footfalls of disorder and the watchwords of anarchy, I despair of the republic, and catch in every breeze that blows “a cry prophetic of its fall.”
I have seen a vast crowd of Americans change color like a field of waving grain, as it uncovered to do such base homage to a petty foreign princess as in her own country she had never received. I have seen full-grown, self-respecting American citizens tremble and go speechless when spoken to by an Emperor of Brazil. I have seen a half-dozen American gentlemen in evening clothes trying to outdo one another in the profundity of their bows in the presence of a nigger King of Hawaii. I have not seen a Chinese “earl” borne in a chair by four Americans officially detailed for the disgraceful service, but it was done, and did not evoke a hiss of disapproval. And I did not—thank Heaven!—observe the mob of American “simple republicans” that dogged the heels of a disreputable little Frenchman who is a count by courtesy only, and those of an English duke quietly attending to his own business of making a living by being a married man. The republican New World is no less impested with servility than the monarchical Old. One form of government may be better than another for this purpose, or for that; all are alike in the futility of their influence upon human character. None can affect man’s instinctive abasement in the contemplation of power and rank.
Not only are we no less sycophantic than the people of monarchical countries; we are more so. We grovel before their exalted personages, and perform in addition a special prostration at the clay feet of our own idols—which they do not revere. The typical subject, hat-in-hand to his sovereign and his nobleman, is a less shameful figure than the citizen executing his genuflexion before the public of which he is himself a part. No European court journal, no European courtier, was ever more abject in subservience to the sovereign than are the American newspaper and the American politician in flattery of the people. Between the courtier and the demagogue I see nothing to choose. They are moved by the same sentiment and fired by the same hope. Their method is flattery, and their purpose profit. Their adulation is not a testimony to character, but a tribute to power, or the shadow of power. If this country were governed by its criminal idiots we should have the same attestations of their goodness and wisdom, the same competition for their favor, the same solemn doctrine that their voice is the voice of God. Our children would be brought up to believe that an Idiotocracy is the only natural and rational form of government. And for my part I’m not at all sure that it would not be a pretty good political system, as political systems go. I have always, however, cherished a secret faith in Smithocracy, which seems to combine the advantages of both the monarchical and the republican idea. If all the offices were held for life by Smiths—the senior John being President—we should have a settled and orderly succession to allay all fears of a perilous interregnum and a sufficiently wide eligibility to feed the fires of patriotic ambition. All could not be Smiths, but many could marry into the family.
II
The Harrison “progress” (notable as precursor to many another) left its heritage of shame, whereof each abaser would gladly have washed the hands of him in his neighbor’s basin. All this was in due order of nature, and was to have been expected. It was a phenomenon of the same character as, in the loves of the low, the squabbling consequent upon satiety and shame. We could not slink out of sight; we could not deny our sycophancy, albeit we might give it another name; but we could somewhat medicine our impaired self-esteem by dealing damnation round on one another. The blush of shame turns easily to the glow of indignation, and many a hatred is kindled at the rosy flame of self-contempt. Persons conscious of having dishonored themselves are doubly sensitive to any indignity put upon them by others. The vices and follies of human nature are interdependent; they are not singly roused to activity.