Acknowledging this, Suger and the great mediaeval statesmen succeeded; ignoring this, Louis. XI., Richelieu, and a host of great modern statesmen failed.
To keep the haughty and turbulent caste of oppressors in their proper relations, the central authority in every nation has been obliged to form a close alliance with the down-trodden caste of workers. If these have been ignorant it has had to instruct them; if they have been wretched, it has had to raise them; and the simple way—nay, the only way to instruct and raise them has been to give them rights, civil and political, which will force them to raise and instruct themselves.
But it may be said that some subject classes are too low thus to be lifted—that there are some races too weak to be thus wrought into a barrier against aristocracy. I deny it. For history denies it. The race is not yet discovered in which the average man is not better and safer with rights than without them.
Think you that your ancestors were so much better than other subject classes? Look into any town directory. The names show an overwhelming majority of us descendants of European serfs and peasantry. I defy you to find any body of men more degraded and stupid than our ancestors.
Do you boast Anglo-Saxon ancestry?—look at Charles Kingsley's picture in Hereward of the great banquet, the apotheosis of wolfishness and piggishness; or look at Walter Scott's delineation in Ivanhoe of Gurth the swine-herd, dressed in skins, the brass collar soldered about his neck like the collar of a dog, and upon it the inscription, "Gurth the born thrall of Cedric."
Do you boast French ancestry?—look into Orderic Vital, or Froissart, or De Comines, and see what manner of man was your ancestor, "Jacques Bonhomme"—kicked, cuffed, plundered, murdered, robbed of the honor of his wife and the custody of his children, not allowed to wear good clothing,[62] not recognized as a man and a brother,[63] not indeed in early times recognized as a man at all.[64]
Do you boast German ancestry?—look at Luther's letters and see how the unutterable stupidity of your ancestors vexed him.
Yet from these progenitors of yours, kept besotted and degraded through centuries by oppression, have, by comparatively a few years of freedom, been developed the barriers which have saved modern states.
Is it said that this bestowal of rights on the oppressed is dangerous? History is full of proofs that the faith in Heaven's justice which has led statesmen to solve great difficulties by bestowing rights has proved far more safe than the attempt to evade great difficulties by withholding rights.[65]
Is it said that the anarchic tendencies of an oppressive caste can be overcome by compromise and barter? History shows that the chances in trickery and barter are immensely in their favor.