Sir, I wish the words of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” were inscribed upon every gatepost within the limits of this Republic. From this principle the Revolutionary Fathers derived their claim to independence; upon this they founded the institutions of this country, and the whole structure was to be the living incarnation of this idea. This principle contains the programme of our political existence. It is the most progressive, and at the same time the most conservative one; the most progressive, for it takes even the lowliest members of the human family out of their degradation, and inspires them with the elevating consciousness of equal human dignity; the most conservative, for it makes a common cause of individual rights. From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor’s rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. And when the rights of one cannot be infringed without finding a ready defence in all others who defend their own rights in defending his, then, and only then, are the rights of all safe against the usurpation of governmental authority.
This general identity of interests is the only thing that can guarantee the stability of democratic institutions. Equality of rights, embodied in general self-government, is the great moral element of true democracy; it is the only reliable safety-valve in the machinery of modern society. There is the solid foundation of our system of government; there is our mission; there is our greatness; there is our safety; there, and nowhere else! This is true Americanism, and to this I pay the tribute of my devotion.
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
Edwin Lawrence Godkin was born of English ancestry at Moyne, County Wicklow, Ireland, on October 2, 1831. His father, the Rev. James Godkin, a Presbyterian minister of literary talents, after being forced from his pulpit for espousing the cause of Young Ireland, became a journalist of some distinction. The son received his preparatory education at Armagh, and at Silcoates School, Wakefield, Yorkshire. In 1846 he entered Queen’s College, Belfast. After graduating from this institution in 1851, he went to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn. After some journalistic experience in the Crimea and in Belfast, he came to America in 1856 and settled in New York. His real career began with the founding of The New York Nation in 1865. His connection with this journal was both long and distinguished, and his efforts for the encouragement of a sound and enlightened public opinion have recently been appropriately recognized in the semi-centenary volume, “Fifty Years of American Idealism,” edited by Gustav Pollak. He contributed many incisive essays on political and economic subjects to various magazines. The most important of these have been collected in three volumes, “Reflections and Comments,” “Problems of Modern Democracy,” and “Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy.” It is from the opening essay of the second that the following selection is taken.
Wendell Phillips Garrison, his associate, said of him: “As no American could have written Bryce’s ‘American Commonwealth’ or Goldwin Smith’s ‘History of the United States,’ so it may be doubted if any native of this country could have erected the standard of political independence which Mr. Godkin set up in The Nation and maintained in The Evening Post. He did this, however, not as a foreigner, but as an American to the core. A utilitarian of the school of Bentham, an economist of the school of John Stuart Mill, an English Liberal to whom America, with all its flagrant inconsistency of slaveholding, was still the hope of universal democracy, he cast in his lot with us, became a naturalized citizen, took an American wife—gave every pledge to the land of his adoption except that of being a servile follower of party.” Brilliant, thoughtful, questioning, he was keenly sensible of the many evil tendencies in modern democracy; yet with philosophic insight he rejected the unsound comparisons drawn by many political thinkers between ancient aristocratic democracies and modern democracy, which he viewed as a new experiment and therefore to be tested by new principles and new conditions.
AN IMMIGRANT’S FAITH IN DEMOCRACY[4]
If, indeed, the defects which foreign observers see, and many of which Americans acknowledge and deplore, in the politics and society of the United States were fairly chargeable to democracy,—if “the principle of equality” were necessarily fatal to excellence in the arts, to finish in literature, to simplicity and force in oratory, to fruitful exploration in the fields of science, to statesmanship in the government, to discipline in the army, to grace and dignity in social intercourse, to subordination to lawful authority, and to self-restraint in the various relations of life,—the future of the world would be such as no friend of the race would wish to contemplate; for the spread of democracy is on all sides acknowledged to be irresistible. Even those who watch its advance with most fear and foreboding confess that most civilized nations must erelong succumb to its sway. Its progress in some countries may be slower than in others, but it is constant in all; and it is accelerated by two powerful agencies,—the Christian religion and the study of political economy.
The Christian doctrine that men, however unequal in their condition or in their gifts on earth, are of equal value in the eyes of their Creator, and are entitled to respect and consideration, if for no other reason, for the simple one that they are human souls, long as it has been preached, has, strange to say, only very lately begun to exercise any perceptible influence on politics. It led a troubled and precarious life for nearly eighteen hundred years in conventicles and debating clubs, in the romance of poets, in the dreams of philosophers and the schemes of philanthropists. But it is now found in the cabinets of kings and statesmen, on the floor of parliament houses, and in the most secret of diplomatic conferences. It gives shape and foundation to nearly every great social reform, and its voice is heard above the roar of every revolution.
And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its place and extending its influence in national councils from the rapid spread of the study of political economy, a science which is based on the assumption that men are free and independent. There is hardly one of its principles which is applicable to any state of society in which each individual is not master of his own actions and sole guardian of his own welfare. In a community in which the relations of its members are regulated by status and not by contract, it has no place and no value. The natural result of the study and discussion which the ablest thinkers have expended on it during the last eighty years has been to place before the civilized world in the strongest light the prodigious impulse which is given to human energy and forethought and industry, and the great gain to society at large, by the recognition in legislation of the capacity, as well as of the right, of each human being to seek his own happiness in his own way. Of course no political system in which this principle has a place can long avoid conceding to all who live under it equality before the law; and from equality before the law to the possession of an equal share in the making of the laws, there is, as everybody must see who is familiar with modern history, but a very short step.