"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."
Burns.
However widely men may differ as to the way to social perfection, all whose minds have turned in that direction agree as to the end. All agree that if the whole race could live as brethren, society would be in the most advanced state that can be conceived of. It is also agreed that the spirit of fraternity is to be attained, if at all, by men discerning their mutual relation, as "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole." The disputes which arise are about how these proportions are to be arranged, and what those qualifications should be by which some shall have an ascendancy over others.
This cluster of questions is not yet settled with regard to the inhabitants of any one country. The most advanced nations are now in a condition of internal conflict upon them. As for the larger idea,—that nations as well as individuals are "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole," it has hardly yet passed the lips or pen of any but religious men and poets. Its time will come when men have made greater progress, and are more at ease about the domestic arrangements of nations. As long as there are, in every country of the world, multitudes who cannot by any exertion of their own redeem themselves from hardship, and their children from ignorance, there is quite enough for justice and charity to do at home. While this is doing,—while the English are striving to raise the indigent classes of their society, the French speculating to elevate the condition of woman, and to open the career of life to all rational beings, the Germans waiting to throw off the despotism of absolute rulers, and the Americans struggling to free the negroes,—the fraternal sentiment will be growing, in preparation for yet higher results. The principle, acted upon at home, will be gaining strength for exercise abroad; and the more any society becomes like a band of brothers, the more powerful must be the sympathy which it will have to offer to other such bands.
Far off as may be the realization of such a prospect, it is a prospect. For many ages poets and philosophers have entertained the idea of a general spirit of fraternity among men. It is the one great principle of the greatest religion which has ever nourished the morals of mankind. It is the loftiest hope on which the wisest speculators have lived. Poets are the prophets, and philosophers the analysers of the fate of men, and religion is the promise and pledge of unseen powers to those who believe in them. That cannot be unworthy of attention, of hope, of expectation, which the poets and the analysers of the race, have reposed upon, and on which the best religion of the world (and that which comprehends all others) is based. That which has never, for all its splendour, been deemed absurd by the wisest of the race is now beginning to be realized. We have now something more to show for our hope than what was before enough for the highest minds. The fraternal spirit has begun to manifest itself by its workings in society. The helpless are now aided expressly on the ground of their helplessness,—not from the emotions of compassion excited by the spectacle of suffering in particular cases, but in a nobler and more abstract way. Classes, crowds, nations of sufferers are aided and protected by strangers, powerful and at ease, who never saw an individual of the suffering thousands, and who have none but a spiritual interest in their welfare. Since missions to barbarous countries, action against slavery, and the care of the blind, deaf and dumb, and paupers, have become labours of society, the fraternity of men has ceased to be a mere aspiration, or even prophecy and promise. It is not only that the high-placed watchmen of the world have announced that the day is coming,—it has dawned; and there is every reason to expect that it will brighten into noon.
The traveller must be strangely careless who, in observing upon the morals of a people, omits to mark the manifestations of this principle;—to learn what is its present strength, and what the promise of its growth. By fixing his observation on this he may learn, and no otherwise can he learn, whether the country he studies is advancing in wisdom and happiness, or whether it is stationary, or whether it is going back. The probabilities of its progress are wholly dependent upon this.—It will not take long to point out what are the signs of progression which he must study.
It is of great consequence whether the nation is insular or continental, independent or colonial. Though the time seems to be come when the sea is to be made a highway, as easy of passage as the land, such has not been the case till now. Even in the case of Great Britain,—the most accessible of islands, and the most tempting to access,—before the last series of wars, a much smaller number of strangers visited her than could have been supposed to come if they had only to pass land frontiers. During the wars, she was almost excluded from continental society. The progress that her people have made in liberality and humanity since communication has been rendered easy, is so striking that it is impossible to avoid supposing the enlarged commerce of mind which has taken place to be one of the chief causes of the improvement. It is probable that the advancement of the nation would have been still greater if the old geological state of junction with the continent had been restored for the last twenty years. She would then have been almost such a centre of influx as France has been, and by which France has so far profited that the French are now, it is believed, the most active-minded and morally progressive nation in the world. Much of the vigour and progression of France is doubtless owing to other causes; but much also to her rapid and extensive intercourse with the minds of many nations. The condition of the inhabitants of other islands is likely to be less favourable to progression than that of the British, in proportion as they have less intercourse. They are likely to have even more than the English proportion of self-satisfaction, dislike of foreigners, and reserve. Generally speaking, the inhabitants of islands are found to be to those of continental countries as villagers to citizens: they have good qualities of their own, but are behind the world. Malta has not the chance that she would have if we could annex her to the South of France; nor will the West India islands advance as they would do if we could throw them all into one, and intersect the whole with roads leading on either side from the great European and American cities.
Malta and the West India islands have, however, the additional disadvantage of being colonies. The moral progression of a people can scarcely begin till they are independent. Their morals are overruled by the mother-country,—by the government and legislation she imposes, by the rulers she sends out, by the nature of the advantages she grants and the tribute she requires, by the population she pours in from home, and by her own example. Accordingly, the colonies of a powerful country exhibit an exaggeration of the national faults, with only infant virtues of their own, which wait for freedom to grow to maturity, and among which an enlarged sympathy with the race is seldom found. This is a temper uncongenial with a confined, dependent, and imitative society; and the first strong symptoms of it are usually found in the persons of those whose mission it is to lead the colony out of its minority into independence.