In this way was a great revolution effected in the colony of the crater. At one time, the governor thought of knocking the whole thing in the head, by the strong arm; as he might have done, and would have been perfectly justified in doing. The Kannakas were now at his command, and, in truth, a majority of the electors were with him; but political jugglery held them in duress. A majority of the electors of the state of New York are, at this moment, opposed to universal suffrage, especially as it is exercised in the town and village governments, but moral cowardice holds them in subjection. Afraid of their own shadows, each politician hesitates to 'bell the cat.' What is more, the select aristocrats and monarchists are the least bold in acting frankly, and in saying openly what they think; leaving that office to be discharged, as it ever will be, by the men who—true democrats, and not canting democrats—willing to give the people just as much control as they know how to use, or which circumstances will allow them to use beneficially to themselves, do not hesitate to speak with the candour and manliness of their principles. These men call things by their right names, equally eschewing the absurdity of believing that nature intended rulers to descend from male to male, according to the order of primogeniture, or the still greater nonsense of supposing it necessary to obtain the most thrifty plants from the hotbeds of the people, that they may be transplanted into the beds of state, reeking with the manure of the gutters.
The governor submitted to the changes, through a love of peace, and ceased to be anything more than a private citizen, when he had so many claims to be first, and when, in fact, he had so long been first. No sovereign on his throne, could write Gratia Dei before his titles with stricter conformity to truth, than Mark Woolston; but his right did not preserve him from the ruthless plunder of the demagogue. To his surprise, as well as to his grief, Pennock was seduced by ambition, and he assumed the functions of the executive with quite as little visible hesitation, as the heir apparent succeeds to his father's crown.
It would be untrue to say that Mark did not feel the change; but it is just to add that he felt more concern for the future fate of the colony, than he did for himself or his children. Nor, when he came to reflect on the matter, was he so much surprised that he could be supplanted in this way, under a system in which the sway of the majority was so much lauded, when he did not entertain a doubt that considerably more than half of the colony preferred the old system to the new, and that the same proportion of the people would rather see him in the Colony House, than to see John Pennock in his stead. But Mark—we must call him the governor no longer—had watched the progress of events closely, and began to comprehend them. He had learned the great and all-important political truth, that the more a people attempt to extend their power DIRECTLY over state affairs, the less they, in fact, control them, after having once passed the point of naming lawgivers as their representatives; merely bestowing on a few artful managers the influence they vainly imagine to have secured to themselves. This truth should be written in letters of gold, at every corner of the streets and highways in a republic; for truth it is, and truth, those who press the foremost on another path will the soonest discover it to be. The mass may select their representatives, may know them, and may in a good measure so far sway them, as to keep them to their duties; but when a constituency assumes to enact the part of executive and judiciary, they not only get beyond their depth, but into the mire. What can, what does the best-informed layman, for instance, know of the qualifications of this or that candidate to fill a seat on the bench! He has to take another's judgment for his guide; and a popular appointment of this nature, is merely transferring the nomination from an enlightened, and, what is everything, a responsible authority, to one that is unavoidably at the mercy of second persons for its means of judging, and is as irresponsible as air.
At one time, Mark Woolston regretted that he had not established an opposition paper, in order to supply an antidote for the bane; but reflection satisfied him it would have been useless. Everything human follows its law, until checked by abuses that create resistance. This is true of the monarch, who misuses power until it becomes tyranny; of the nobles, who combine to restrain the monarch, until the throes of an aristocracy-ridden country proclaim that it has merely changed places with the prince; of the people, who wax fat and kick! Everything human is abused; and it would seem that the only period of tolerable condition is the transition state, when the new force is gathering to a head, and before the storm has time to break. In the mean time, the earth revolves, men are born, live their time, and die; communities are formed and are dissolved; dynasties appear and disappear; good contends with evil, and evil still has its day; the whole, however, advancing slowly but unerringly towards that great consummation, which was designed from the beginning, and which is as certain to arrive in the end, as that the sun sets at night and rises in the morning. The supreme folly of the hour is to imagine that perfection will come before its stated time.
Chapter XXX.
"This is thy lesson, mighty sea!
Man calls the dimpled earth his own,
The flowery vale, the golden lea;
And on the wild gray mountain-stone
Claims nature's temple for his throne!