“We are as devoted to the Union as any portion of the American people (I use the phrase as meaning the people of the Union); but we see in a national consolidated government evils innumerable to us. Admit us to be a Nation and not an Union, and where would we stand? We are in the minority.”[77]
Evidently, in that minority he saw the doom of Slavery.
Local self-government, whether in the town, county, or State, is of incalculable advantage, supplying the opportunities of political education, and also a local administration adapted precisely to local wants. On this account the system has been admired by travellers from abroad, who have found in our “town meetings” the nurseries of the Republic, and have delighted in local exemption from central supervisorship. De Tocqueville, who journeyed here, has recorded his authoritative praise,—and Laboulaye, who has visited us only in his remarkable studies, unites with De Tocqueville. Against that exacting centralization, absorbing everything, of which Paris is the example, I oppose the American system of self-government, which leaves the people to themselves, subject only to the paramount conditions of national life. But these conditions cannot be sacrificed. No local claim of self-government can for a moment interfere with the supremacy of the Nation, in the maintenance of Human Rights.
According to the wisdom of Plutarch, we must shun those pestilent persons who would “carry trifles to the highest magistrate,” and, in the same spirit, reject that pestilent supervisorship which asserts a regulating power over local affairs, and thus becomes a giant intermeddler. Let these be decided at home, in the States, counties, and towns to which they belong. Such is the genius of our institutions. This is the precious principle of self-government, which is at once educator and agency. In the former character, it is an omnipresent schoolmaster; in the latter, it is a suit of chain-armor, which, from flexibility, is adapted to the body of the nation, so that the limbs are free. Each locality has its own way in matters peculiar to itself. But the rights of all must be placed under the protection of all; nor can there be any difference in different parts of the country. Here the rule must be uniform, and it must be sustained by the central power radiating to every part of the various empire. This is according to the divine Cosmos, which in all its spaces is pervaded by one universal law. It is the rule of Almighty Beneficence, which, while leaving human beings to the activities of daily life and the consciousness of free-will, subjects all to the same commanding principles. Such centralization is the highest civilization, for it approaches the nearest to the heavenly example. Call it imperialism, if you please: it is simply the imperialism of the Declaration of Independence, with all its promises fulfilled. It is rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. Already by central power Slavery has been abolished. Already by central power all have been assured in the equality of civil rights.
“Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.”
It remains now that by central power all should be assured in the equality of political rights. This does not involve necessarily what is sometimes called the “regulation” of the suffrage by the National Government, although this would be best. It simply requires the abolition of any discrimination among citizens, inconsistent with Equal Rights. If not by Act of Congress, let it be by a new Amendment of the Constitution; but it must be at once. Until this is done, we leave undone what ought to be done, and, in pitiable failure to perform a national duty, justify the saying that “there is no health in us.” The preposterous pretension, that color, whether of the hair or of the skin, or that any other unchangeable circumstance of natural condition may be made the “qualification” of a voter, cannot be tolerated. It is shocking to the moral sense, and degrading to the understanding.
As in the Nation there can be but one sovereignty, so there can be but one citizenship. The unity of sovereignty finds its counterpart and complement in the unity of citizenship, and the two together are the tokens of a united people. Thus are the essential conditions of national life all resolved into three,—one sovereignty, one citizenship, one people.