This train of thought is tempting, and suggests a great variety of illustrations, but we can not dwell on them. If the man who should maliciously cause the destruction of a splendid cathedral, who should set fire to St. Peter's or St. Paul's, or who should wantonly mar a master-piece of Power or Canova—if such a one, we say, would justly be visited with the execration of the civilized world, of how much sorer punishment should he be thought worthy who should traitorously conspire the death of our American Union, or even think of applying the torch to the glorious structure of our Federal Constitution? Even to speak lightly of its value should be regarded as no ordinary treason. But let us come down to what many would regard a more practical and utilitarian view of the matter.
as an example to the world.—What arithmetic shall estimate the value of our Union and of our political institutions in this respect? This is the second element in our computation; although in view of the present condition of mankind it might even seem entitled to the first and highest place. Between the wild surgings of radicalism and the iron-bound coast of despotism, what hope for the nations if the fairest and strongest ship of constitutional liberty part her anchors, only to be engulfed in the yawning vortex on the one side, or dashed to pieces against the rocks on the other? When will the experiment ever be tried under fairer auspices? When may we again expect such a combination of favoring circumstances, propitious providences, moral and religious influences, formative ideas, and historical training as have all concurred in building up the fabric which some would so recklessly destroy? If after the preparation of centuries—if after all our claims to a higher Christianity, a higher civilization, a higher science—if after all our boasts of progress, and of the Press, and of the capacity of man for self-government—the result of it all should be a dissolution of our political and national existence before one generation of its founders had wholly passed away, what can we expect—we earnestly ask every serious reader deeply to ponder this most plain and practical question—what can we expect of the frivolous French infidelity, or the deeper, and therefore far more dangerous German pantheism, or the untaught serfdom of Austria and Russia? It may, perhaps, be said, that the mere dissolution of our Union would not involve any such eventful issue. It is only a temporary expedient (it might be maintained), not belonging to the essence of our nationality, and the real sovereignty, or sovereignties would not be impaired by its loss. Our State governments would remain, and other lesser confederacies might be formed, if political exigencies should require them. This suggests the third aspect under which we would consider the problem that has presented itself for our editorial contemplations.
The Value of our Union as the key-stone of state authority, and of all that may be legitimately included under the idea of State sovereignty. Who shall estimate it in this respect? We are too much inclined to regard our general government, as in some respects, a foreign one, as something outside of our proper nationality, as an external band, or wrapper, that may be loosened without much danger, rather than what it really is, or, at least has become in time, a con-necting, interweaving, all-pervading principle, constituting not merely a sum of adjacent parts, but a whole of organic membership; so that a severance would not leave merely disintegrated fractions, possessing each the same vitality it would have had, or might once have had, if there had never been such membership. The wound could not be inflicted without a deep, and, perhaps, deadly injury, not only to the life of the whole, as a whole, but to the vital forces through which the lower and smaller sections of each several member may have been respectively bound into political unities. It is true, our general government had a peculiar origin, and stands, in time, subsequent to the State authorities. It might seem, therefore, to some, to derive its life from them, instead of being itself a proper fountain of vitality. This is chronologically true; but such an inference from it would be logically false, and could only proceed from a very superficial study of the law of political organisms. Whatever may have been the origin of the parts, or the original circumstances of their union, we must now regard the body that has grown out of them as a living organic whole, which can not suffer without suffering throughout. It is alive all over, and you can put the amputating knife in no place without letting out some of the life-blood that flows in each member, and in every fibre of each member. It had, indeed, its origin in the union of the parts, but its vital principle has modified the parts, and modified their life, so that you can not now hurt it, or kill it, without producing universal pain and universal death. Nor was such union either arbitrary or accidental. Our general political organization was as naturally born out of the circumstances in which we were placed, as our several State polities grew out of the union of the feeble and varied sources in which they had their historical origin. The written Constitution declarative of the national coalescence (or growing together) only expressed an effect, instead of constituting a cause.
To change our metaphor, for the sake of varied and easy illustration, we may say, that the Federal Constitution, though last in the actual order of construction, has come to be the key-stone of the whole arch. It can not now be taken out but at the risk of every portion crumbling into atoms. The State interest may have been predominant in the earlier periods, but generations have since been born under the security of this arch, and a conservative feeling of nationality has been growing up with it. In this way our general government, our State governments, our county or district governments, our city corporations, the municipal authorities of our towns and villages, have become cemented together into one grand harmonious whole, whose coherence is the coherence of every part, and in which no part is the same it would, or might have been, had no such interdependent coherence ever taken place. It becomes, therefore, a question of the most serious moment—What would be the effect of loosening this key of the arch? Could we expect any stone to keep its place, be it great or small? In other words, have we any reason to believe that such an event would be succeeded by two, or three, or a few confederacies, still bound together, or might we not rather expect a universal dissolution of our grand national system?
And would it stop here? The charm once broken, would the wounded feeling of nationality find repose in our State governments, or would they, too, in their turn, feel the effects of the same dissolving and decomposing process? These, also, are but creations [pg 417] of law, and compacts, and historical events, and accidents of locality, in which none of the present generation had any share, and which have brought all the smaller political powers within certain boundaries to be members of one larger body politic, with all the irregularities and inequalities it may geographically present. What magic, then, in the bond that holds together the smaller parts composing New York, or Virginia, or Massachusetts, or South Carolina, which is not to be found in the national organization? What sacred immutability in the results giving rise to the one class of political wholes that does not exist in the other? Such questions are becoming already rife among us, and let the healthful charm of our greater nationality be once lost, they would doubtless multiply with a rapidity that might startle even the most radical. The doctrine may not be intended, but it would logically and inevitably result from much of our most popular oratory on the inherent right of self-government, that any part of any separate State might sever its connection with the whole, or might form a union with any contiguous territory, whenever it might seem to the majority of such part to be for their interest, or to belong to their abstract right to make such secession or annexation. There is, however, an extreme to which the principle may be carried, even beyond this. The tendency to what is called individualism, or the making all positive legislation dependent for its authority upon the higher law of the individual sanction, would soon give a practical solution to the most disorganizing theories that now exist as germs in the idea expressed by that barbarous but most expressive term come-outer-ism. And this suggests the next and closely related aspect of our important problem.
There is, in the fourth place, the value of the national Constitution as the grand conservator of all lower law, and of all lower political rights whatever. No law of the State, of the city, of the family, of the school, no contract between man and man, no prescriptive right, no title to property, no exclusive domain in land, no authority over persons, could fail to be weakened by a wound inflicted on the all-conserving law of our higher nationality. There are none of these but what are even now demoralized, and seriously affected in their most inner sanctions, by the increasing practice of speaking lightly of a bond so sacred. What right has he to the possession of his acres who counsels resistance to one law of the land, and, in so doing, strikes at the very life of the authority by which he holds all he calls his own? It must be true of human, as well as of the Divine law, that he who offends in one point is guilty of all. The severence of one link breaks the whole chain. There is no medium between complete submission to every constitutional ordinance, or rightful and violent revolution against the whole political system. But if such inconsistency can be charged on him who claims the right of property in land, although that, too, is beginning to be disputed, with how much more force does it press on the man who asserts property, or—if a less odious term is preferred—authority, in persons? We do not dispute his claim. It comes from the common source of all human authority, whether of man over man, or of man to the exclusion of man from a challenged domain. But certainly his title can have no other foundation than the political institutions of the country maintained in all their coherent integrity; and, therefore, he who asserts it should be very conservative, he should be very reverent of law in all its departments, he should be very tender of breaking Constitutions, he should hold in the highest honor the decisions of an interpreting judiciary. He should, in short, be the very last man ever to talk of revolution, or nullification, or secession, or of any thing else that may in the least impair the sacredness or stability of constitutional law.
Call government, then, what we will, social compact, divine institution, natural growth of time and circumstances—conceive of it under any form—still there is ever the same essential idea. It is ever one absolute, earthly, sovereign power, acting, within a certain territory, as the sanction and guaranty of all civil or political rights, in other words, of all rights that can not exist without it. There may be many intermediate links in the chain, but it is only by virtue of this, in the last appeal, that one man has the exclusive right to the house in which he lives, or to the land which he occupies. Hence alone, too, are all the civil rights of marriage and the domestic relations. The family is born of the state. On this account, says Socrates, may it be held that the law has begotten us, and we may be justly called its sons. There is the same idea in the maxim of Cicero, In aris et focis est respublica; and in this thought we find the peculiar malignity of that awful crime of treason. It is a breach of trust, and, in respect to government, of the most sacred trust. It is the foulest parricide. It is aiming a dagger at that civic life from which flows all the social and domestic vitality. The notion, in feudal times, had for its outward type the relation of lord and dependent—of service and obedience on the one hand, and protection on the other. The form has changed, but the essential idea remains, and ever must remain, while human government exists on earth. He who breaks this vital bond, he who would seek to have the protection to his person and his property, while he forfeits the tenure of citizenship, he is the traitor. And hence arises the essential difference between treason and mobbism. The man who is guilty of the former not only commits violence, but means by that violence to assail the very existence through which alone he himself may be said to exist as a citizen, or member of a living political organism. There is no more alarming feature of the times than the indifference with which men begin to look upon this foul, unnatural crime, and even to palliate it under the softened title of “political offenses,” or a mere difference in political opinions. To punish it is thought to savor only of barbarism and a barbarous age. If we judge, however, from the tremendous consequences which must result from its impunity, ordinary murder can not be named in the comparison. If he who takes a single life deserves the gallows, of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy who aims at the life of a nation—a nation, too, like our own, the world's last hope, the preservation of whose political integrity is the most effectual means of intervention we can employ in favor of true freedom in every other part of the globe.
And this brings us to our fifth measure of value, but we can only briefly state it. The world has seen enough of despotism. It is probable, too, that there will be no lack of lawless popular anarchy. In this view of things, how precious is every element of constitutional liberty! How important to have its lamp ever trimmed and burning, as a guide to the lost, a bright consolation of hope to the despairing! Only keep this light steadily shining out on the dark sea of despotism, and it will do more for the tossing and foundering nations than any rash means of help that, without any avail for good, may only draw down our own noble vessel into the angry breakers, and engulfing billows of the same shipwreck.