William H. Seward. (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)
The Basis of the American Constitution
"Happy," (said Washington, when announcing the treaty of peace to the army,) "thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who shall have contributed anything, who shall have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire on the broad basis of independency, who shall have assisted in protecting the Rights of Human Nature, and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions."
You remember well that the Revolutionary Congress in the declaration of independence placed the momentous controversy between the Colonies and Great Britain on the absolute and inherent equality of all men. It is not, however, so well understood that that body closed its existence on the adoption of the Federal Constitution with this solemn injunction, addressed to the people of the United States: "Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America, that the Rights for which she contended were the Rights of Human Nature."
No one will contend that our Fathers, after effecting the Revolution and the independence of their country, by proclaiming this system of beneficent political philosophy, established an entirely different one in the constitution assigned to its government. This philosophy, then, is the basis of the American Constitution.
It is, moreover, a true philosophy, deduced from the nature of man and the character of the Creator. If there were no supreme law, then the world would be a scene of universal anarchy, resulting from the eternal conflict of peculiar institutions and antagonistic laws. There being such a universal law, if any human constitution and laws differing from it could have any authority, then that universal law could not be supreme. That supreme law is necessarily based on the equality of nations, of races, and of men. It is a simple, self-evident basis. One nation, race, or individual, may not oppress or injure another, because the safety and welfare of each is essential to the common safety and welfare of all. If all are not equal and free, then who is entitled to be free, and what evidence of his superiority can he bring from nature or revelation? All men necessarily have a common interest in the promulgation and maintenance of these principles, because it is equally in the nature of men to be content with the enjoyment of their just rights, and to be discontented under the privation of them. Just so far as these principles practically prevail, the stringency of government is safely relaxed, and peace and harmony obtain. But men cannot maintain these principles, or even comprehend them, without a very considerable advance in knowledge and virtue. The law of nations, designed to preserve peace among mankind, was unknown to the ancients. It has been perfected in our own times, by means of the more general dissemination of knowledge and practice of the virtues inculcated by Christianity. To disseminate knowledge, and to increase virtue therefore among men, is to establish and maintain the principles on which the recovery and preservation of their inherent natural rights depend; and the State that does this most faithfully, advances most effectually the common cause of Human Nature.
For myself, I am sure that this cause is not a dream, but a reality. Have not all men consciousness of a property in the memory of human transactions available for the same great purposes, the security of their individual rights, and the perfection of their individual happiness? Have not all men a consciousness of the same equal interest in the achievements of invention, in the instructions of philosophy, and in the solaces of music and the arts? And do not these achievements, instructions, and solaces, exert everywhere the same influences, and produce the same emotions in the bosoms of all men? Since all languages are convertible into each other, by correspondence with the same agents, objects, actions, and emotions, have not all men practically one common language? Since the constitutions and laws of all societies are only so many various definitions of the rights and duties of men as those rights and duties are learned from Nature and Revelation, have not all men practically one code of moral duty? Since the religions of men, in their various climes, are only so many different forms of their devotion towards a Supreme and Almighty Power entitled to their reverence and receiving it under the various names of Jehovah, Jove, and Lord, have not all men practically one religion? Since all men are seeking liberty and happiness for a season here, and to deserve and so to secure more perfect liberty and happiness somewhere in a future world, and, since they all substantially agree that these temporal and spiritual objects are to be attained only through the knowledge of truth and the practice of virtue, have not mankind practically one common pursuit through one common way of one common and equal hope and destiny?
If there had been no such common Humanity as I have insisted upon, then the American people would not have enjoyed the sympathies of mankind when establishing institutions of civil and religious liberty here, nor would their establishment here have awakened in the nations of Europe and of South America desires and hopes of similar institutions there. If there had been no such common Humanity, then we should not ever, since the American Revolution, have seen human society throughout the world divided into two parties, the high and the low—the one perpetually foreboding and earnestly hoping the downfall, and the other as confidently predicting and as sincerely desiring, the durability of Republican Institutions. If there had been no such common Humanity, then we should not have seen this tide of emigration from insular and continental Europe flowing into our country through the channels of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Mississippi,—ebbing, however, always with the occasional rise of the hopes of freedom abroad, and always swelling again into greater volume when those premature hopes subside. If there were no such common Humanity, then the poor of Great Britain would not be perpetually appealing to us against the oppression of landlords on their farms and work-masters in their manufactories and mines; and so, on the other hand, we should not be, as we are now, perpetually framing apologies to mankind for the continuance of African slavery among ourselves. If there were no such common Humanity, then the fame of Wallace would have long ago died away in his native mountains, and the name even of Washington would at most have been only a household word in Virginia, and not as it is now, a watchword of Hope and Progress throughout the world.