The government is made for the man, and not the man for the government. Government is as the prop for the growing plant; at first the young shoot stands alone, then in its rapid advancement for a time it requires support, after which it is able again to stand alone. What we term the evils of government are rather its necessities, and are, indeed, no evils at all. The heavy bit which controls the mouth of an untamed horse is to that horse an evil, yet to the driver a necessity which may be laid aside as the temper of the animal is subdued. So despotism, feudalism, slavery, are evils to those under their dominion, yet are they as necessary for the prevention of anarchy, for the restraint of unbridled passions, as the powerful bit to the horse, and will as surely be laid aside when no longer required. Shallow-minded politicians talk of kingcraft, arbitrary rule, tyrants, the down-trodden masses, the withholding of just rights; as though the government was some independent, adverse element, wholly foreign to the character of the people; as though one man was stronger than ten thousand; as though, if these phases of society were not the fittest, they would be tolerated for a moment. The days of rigorous rule were ever the best days of France and Spain, and so it will be until the people become stronger than the strength of rulers. Republicanism is as unfit for stupid and unintellectual populations, as despotism would be for the advanced ideas and liberal institutions of Anglo-Saxon America. The subject of a liberal rule sneeringly crying down to the subject of an absolute rule his form of government, is like the ass crying to the tiger: Leave blood and meat; feed on grass and thistles, the only diet fit for civilized beasts! Our federal government is the very best for our people, when it is not so it will speedily change; it fits the temper of American intelligence, but before it can be planted in Japan or China the traditions and temper of the Asiatics must change.
We of to-day are undergoing an important epoch in the history of civilization. Feudalism, despotism, and fanaticism have had each its day, have each accomplished its necessary purpose, and are fast fading away. Ours is the age of democracy, of scientific investigation, and freedom of religious thought; what these may accomplish for the advancing intellect remains to be seen. Our ancestors loved to dwell upon the past, now we all look toward the future.
LATTER-DAY PROGRESSION.
The sea of ice, over which our forefathers glided so serenely in their trustful reliance, is breaking up. One after another traditions evaporate; in their application to proximate events they fail us, history ceases to repeat itself as in times past. Old things are passing away, all things are becoming new; new philosophies, new religions, new sciences; the industrial spirit springs up and overturns time-honored customs; theories of government must be reconstructed. Thus, says experience, republicanism, as a form of government, can exist only in small states; but steam and electricity step in and annihilate time and space. The Roman republic, from a lack of cohesive energy, from failure of central vital power sufficient to send the blood of the nation from the heart to the extremities, died a natural death. The American republic, covering nearly twice the territory of republican Rome in her palmiest days, is endowed with a different species of organism; in its physiological system is found a new series of veins and arteries, the railway, the telegraph, and the daily press,—through which pulsates the life's blood of the nation, millions inhaling and exhaling intelligence as one man. By means of these inventions all the world, once every day, are brought together. By telegraphic wires and railroad iron men are now bound as in times past they were bound by war, despotism, and superstition. The remotest corners of the largest republics of to-day, are brought into closer communication than were the adjoining states of the smallest confederations of antiquity. A united Germany, from its past history held to be an impossibility, is, with the present facilities of communication, an accomplished fact. England could as easily have possessed colonies in the moon, as have held her present possessions, three hundred years ago. Practically, San Francisco is nearer Washington than was Philadelphia when the foundations of the Capitol were laid. What is to prevent republics from growing, so long as intelligence keeps pace with extension? The general of an army may now sit before his maps, and manœuvre half a score of armies a hundred or a thousand miles apart, know hourly the situation of every division, the success of every battle, order an advance or a retreat, lay plots and make combinations, with more exactness than was once possible in the conduct of an ordinary campaign.
MORALS, MANNERS, AND FASHION.
A few words about morals, manners, and fashion, will further illustrate how man is played upon by his environment, which here takes the shape of habit. In their bearing on civilization, these phenomena all come under the same category; and this, without regard to the rival theories of intuition and utility in morals. Experience teaches, blindly at first yet daily with clearer vision, that right conduct is beneficial, and wrong conduct detrimental; that the consequences of sin invariably rest on the evil-doer; that for an unjust act, though the knowledge of it be forever locked in the bosom of the offender, punishment is sure to follow; yet there are those who question the existence of innate moral perceptions, and call it all custom and training. And if we look alone to primitive people for innate ideas of morality and justice I fear we shall meet with disappointment. Some we find who value female chastity only before marriage, others only after marriage,—that is, after the woman and her chastity both alike become the tangible property of somebody. Some kindly kill their aged parents, others their female infants; the successful Apache horse-thief is the darling of his mother, and the hero of the tribe; often these American Arabs will remain from home half-starved for weeks, rather than suffer the ignominy of returning empty-handed. Good, in the mind of the savage, is when he steals wives; bad, is when his own wives are stolen. Where it is that inherent morality in savages first makes its appearance, and in what manner, it is often difficult to say; the most hideous vices are everywhere practiced with unblushing effrontery.
Take the phenomena of Shame. Go back to the childhood of our race, or even to our own childhood, and it will be hard to discover any inherent quality which make men ashamed of one thing more than another. Nor can the wisest of us give any good and sufficient reason why we should be ashamed of our body any more than of our face. The whole man was fashioned by one Creator, and all parts equally are perfect and alike honorable. We cover our person with drapery, and think thereby to hide our faults from ourselves and others, as the ostrich hides its head under a leaf, and fancies its body concealed from the hunter. What is this quality of shame if it be not habit? A female savage will stand unblushingly before you naked, but strip her of her ornaments and she will manifest the same appearance of shame, though not perhaps so great in degree, that a European woman will manifest if stripped of her clothes. It is well known how civilized and semi-civilized nations regard this quality of propriety. Custom, conventional usage, dress and behavior, are influences as subtle and as strong as any that govern us, weaving their net-work round man more and more as he throws off allegiance to other powers; and we know but little more of their origin and nature than we do of the origin and nature of time and space, of life and death, of origin and end.
Every age and every society has its own standard of morality, holds up some certain conduct or quality as a model, saying to all, Do this, and receive the much-coveted praise of your fellows. Often what one people deem virtue is to another vice; what to one age is religion is to another superstition; but underlying all this are living fires, kindled by Omnipotence, and destined to burn throughout all time. In the Spartan and Roman republics the moral ideal was patriotism; among mediæval Churchmen it took the form of asceticism; after the elevation of woman the central idea was female chastity.
In this national morality, which is the cohesive force of the body social, we find the fundamental principle of the progressional impulse, and herein is the most hopeful feature of humanity; mankind must progress, and progress in the right direction. There is no help for it until God changes the universal order of things; man must become better in spite of himself; it is the good in us that grows and ultimately prevails.
As a race we are yet in our nonage; fearful of the freedom given us by progress we cling tenaciously to our leading-strings; hugging our mother, Custom, we refuse to be left alone. Liberty and high attainments must be meted out to us as we are able to receive them, for social retchings and vomitings inevitably follow over-feedings. Hence it is, that we find ourselves escaped from primeval and mediæval tyrannies only to fall under greater ones; society is none the less inexorable in her despotisms because of the sophistry which gives her victims fancied freedom. For do we not now set up forms and fashions, the works of our own hands, and bow down to them as reverently as ever our heathen ancestors did to their gods of wood and stone? Who made us? is not the first question of our catechism, but What will people say?