The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny

by Orestes Augustus Brownson

In the several States themselves there are many things to prevent the socialistic tendency from becoming exclusive. In the States that seceded socialism has never had a foothold, and will not gain it, for it is resisted by all the sentiments, convictions, and habits of the Southern people, and the Southern people will not be exterminated nor swamped by migrations either from the North or from Europe. They are and always will be an agricultural people, and an agricultural people are and always will be opposed to socialistic dreams, unless unwittingly held for a moment to favor it in pursuit of some special object in which they take a passionate interest. The worst of all policies is that of hanging, exiling, or disfranchising the wealthy landholders of the South, in order to bring up the poor and depressed whites, shadowed forth in the Executive proclamation of the 29th of May, 1865. Of course that policy will not be carried out, and if the negroes are enfranchised, they will always vote with the wealthy landholding class, and aid them in resisting all socialistic tendencies. The humanitarians will fail for the want of a good social grievance against which they can declaim.

In the New England States the humanitarian tendency is strong as a speculation, but only in relation to objects at a distance. It is aided much by the congregational constitution of their religion; yet it is weak at home, and is resisted practically by the territorial division of power. New England means Massachusetts, and nowhere is the subdivision of the powers of government carried further, or the constitution of the territorial democracy more complete, than in that State. Philanthropy seldom works in private against private vices and evils: it is effective only against public grievances, and the farther they are from home and the less its right to interfere with them, the more in earnest and the more effective for evil does it become. Its nature is to mind every one's business but its own. But now that slavery is abolished, there is nowhere in the United States a social grievance of magnitude enough to enlist any considerable number of the people, even of Massachusetts, in a movement to redress it. Negro enfranchisement is a question of which the humanitarians can make something and they will make the most of it; but as it is a question that each State will soon settle for itself, it will not serve their purpose of prolonged agitation. They could not and never did carry away the nation, even on the question of slavery itself, and abolitionism had comparatively little direct influence in abolishing slavery; and the exclusion of negro suffrage can never be made to appear to the American people as any thing like so great a grievance as was slavery.

Besides, in all the States that did not secede, Catholics are a numerous and an important portion of the population. Their increasing numbers, wealth, and education secure them, as much as the majority may dislike their religion, a constantly increasing influence, and it is idle to leave them out in counting the future of the country. They will, in a very few years, be the best and most thoroughly educated class of the American people; and, aside from their religion, or, rather, in consequence of their religion, the most learned, enlightened, and intelligent portion of the American population; and as much as they have disliked the abolitionists, they have, in the army and elsewhere, contributed their full share to the victory the nation has won. The best things written on the controversy have been written by Catholics, and Catholics are better fitted by their religion to comprehend the real character of the American constitution than any other class of Americans, the moment they study it in the light of their own theology. The American constitution is based on that of natural society, on the solidarity of the race, and the difference between natural society and the church or Christian society is, that the one is initial and the other teleological. The law of both is the same; Catholics, as such, must resist both extremes, because each is exclusive, and whatever is exclusive or one-sided is uncatholic. If they have been backward in their sympathy with the government, it has been through their dislike of the puritanic spirit and the humanitarian or socialistic elements they detected in the Republican party, joined with a prejudice against political and social negro equality. But their church everywhere opposes the socialistic movements of the age, all movements in behalf of barbarism, and they may always be counted on to resist the advance of the socialistic democracy. If the country has had reason to complain of some of them in the late war, it will have, in the future, far stronger reason to be grateful; not to them, indeed, for the citizen owes his life to his country, but to their religion, which has been and is the grand protectress of modern society and civilization.

From the origin of the government there has been a tendency to the extension of suffrage, and to exclude both birth and private property as bases of political rights or franchises. This tendency has often been justified on the ground that the elective franchise is a natural right; which is not true, because the elective franchise is political power, and political power is always a civil trust, never a natural right, and the state judges for itself to whom it will or will not confide the trust; but there can be no doubt that it is a normal tendency, and in strict accordance with the constitution of American civil society, which rests on the unity of the race, and public instead of private property. All political distinctions founded on birth, race, or private wealth are anomalies in the American system, and are necessarily eliminated by its normal developments. To contend that none but property-holders may vote, or none but persons of a particular race may be enfranchised, is unamerican and contrary, to the order of civilization the New World is developing. The only qualification for the elective franchise the American system can logically insist on is that the elector belong to the territorial people—that is, be a natural-born or a naturalized citizen, be a major in full possession of his natural faculties, and unconvicted of any infamous offence. The State is free to naturalize foreigners or not, and under such restrictions as it judges proper; but, having naturalized them, it must treat them as standing on the same footing with natural-born citizens.

The naturalization question is one of great national importance. The migration of foreigners hither has added largely to the national population, and to the national wealth and resources, but less, perhaps, to the development of patriotism, the purity of elections, or the wisdom and integrity of the government. It is impossible that there should be perfect harmony between the national territorial democracy and individuals born, brought up, and formed under a political order in many respects widely different from it; and there is no doubt that the democracy, in its objectionable sense, has been greatly strengthened by the large infusion of naturalized citizens. There can be no question that, if the laboring classes, in whom the national sentiment is usually the strongest, had been composed almost wholly of native Americans, instead of being, as they were, at least in the cities, large towns, and villages, composed almost exclusively of persons foreign born, the Government would have found far less difficulty in filling up the depleted ranks of its armies. But to leave so large a portion of the actual population as the foreign born residing in the country without the rights of citizens, would have been a far graver evil, and would, in the late struggle, have given the victory to secession. There are great national advantages derived from the migration hither of foreign labor, and if the migration be encouraged or permitted, naturalization on easy and liberal terms is the wisest, the best, and only safe policy. The children of foreign-born parents are real Americans.

Emigration has, also, a singular effect in developing the latent powers of the emigrant, and the children of emigrants are usually more active, more energetic than the children of the older inhabitants of the country among whom they settle. Some of our first men in civil life have been sons of foreign-born parents, and so are not a few of our greatest and most successful generals. The most successful of our merchants have been foreign-born. The same thing has been noticed elsewhere, especially in the emigration of the French Huguenots to Holland, Germany, England, and Ireland. The immigration of so many millions from the Old World has, no doubt, given to the American people much of their bold, energetic, and adventurous character, and made them a superior people on the whole to what they would otherwise have been. This has nothing to do with superiority or inferiority of race or blood, but is a natural effect of breaking men away from routine, and throwing them back on their own individual energies and personal resources.

Resistance is offered to negro suffrage, and justly too, till the recently emancipated slaves have served an apprenticeship to freedom; but that resistance cannot long stand before the onward progress of American democracy, which asserts equal rights for all, and not for a race or class only. Some would confine suffrage to landholders, or, at least, to property-holders; but that is inconsistent with the American idea, and is a relic of the barbaric constitution which founds power on private instead of public wealth. Nor are property-owners a whit more likely to vote for the public good than are those who own no property but their own labor. The men of wealth, the business men, manufacturers and merchants, bankers and brokers, are the men who exert the worst influence on government in every country, for they always strive to use it as an instrument of advancing their own private interests. They act on the beautiful maxim, "Let government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor," instead of the far safer maxim, "Let government take care of the weak, the strong can take care of themselves." Universal suffrage is better than restricted suffrage, but even universal suffrage is too weak to prevent private property from having an undue political influence.

The evils attributed to universal suffrage are not inseparable from it, and, after all, it is doubtful if it elevates men of an inferior class to those elevated by restricted suffrage. The Congress of 1860, or of 1862. was a fair average of the wisdom, the talent, and the virtue of the country, and not inferior to that of 1776, or that of 1789; and the Executive during the rebellion was at least as able and as efficient as it was during the war of 1812, far superior to that of Great Britain, and not inferior to that of France during the Crimean war. The Crimean war developed and placed in high command, either with the English or the French, no generals equal to Halleck, Grant, and Sherman, to say nothing of others. The more aristocratic South proved itself, in both statesmanship and generalship, in no respect superior to the territorial democracy of the North and West.

The great evil the country experiences is not from universal suffrage, but from what may be called rotation in office. The number of political aspirants is so great that, in the Northern and Western States especially, the representatives in Congress are changed every two or four years, and a member, as soon as he has acquired the experience necessary to qualify him for his position, is dropped, not through the fickleness of his constituency, but to give place to another whose aid had been necessary to his first or second election. Employes are "rotated," not because they are incapable or unfaithful, but because there are others who want their places. This is all bad, but it springs not from universal suffrage, but from a wrong public opinion, which might be corrected by the press, but which is mainly formed by it. There is, no doubt, a due share of official corruption, but not more than elsewhere, and that would be much diminished by increasing the salaries of the public servants, especially in the higher offices of the government, both General and State. The pay to the lower officers and employes of the government, and to the privates and non-commissioned officers in the army, is liberal, and, in general, too liberal; but the pay of the higher grades in both the civil and military service is too low, and relatively far lower than it was when the government was first organized.

The worst tendency in the country, and which is not encouraged at all by the territorial democracy, manifests itself in hostility to the military spirit and a standing army. The depreciation of the military spirit comes from the humanitarian or sentimental democracy, which, like all sentimentalisms, defeats itself, and brings about the very evils it seeks to avoid. The hostility to standing armies is inherited from England, and originated in the quarrels between king and parliament, and is a striking evidence of the folly of that bundle of antagonistic forces called the British constitution. In feudal times most of the land was held by military service, and the reliance of government was on the feudal militia; but no real progress was made in eliminating barbarism till the national authority got a regular army at its command, and became able to defend itself against its enemies. It is very doubtful if English civilization has not, upon the whole, lost more than it has gained by substituting parliamentary for royal supremacy, and exchanging the Stuarts for the Guelfs.