As the effervescence of new wine brings all impurities to the surface, casting off those noxious superfluities whose presence is pollution to the liquid and disease and death to the partaker, so the present war is but the effervescence of our as yet new and unpurified political system, whereby all errors and impurities are thrown to the surface of society, ready to be skimmed off by the hand of the people, who are themselves the vintners and the rectifiers. No system of government is without radical defects, and it was not to be expected that our own would be free from error, founded as it is upon a principle new to the world, or only known as having totally failed in the past through the clumsiness of its originators and subsequent custodians—a system which had little aid from the experiences of the past, and must necessarily grope in the darkness which surrounds all new experiments of this kind, lighted only by the few, meagre, à priori truths of deductive reasoning. Our ancestors, hampered as they were by the lack of this great experience of social life, legislated for the men and circumstances of their time; and though they had ever an eye to the future, yet, conscious of the fallibility of human wisdom and foresight, they themselves did not expect their work to stand unchanged for all time. New circumstances would arise—the people themselves would change with time, and with them must necessarily change the laws that govern their actions. Law and government must keep pace with the progress of humanity, else the nation itself becomes effete, superannuated, deteriorated. Many errors there doubtless are in our system, taking their rise as well in the very commencement of our existence as from the fluctuations of society. Of these, some have hitherto lain inert and concealed, from the very lack of circumstances to induce their development, and from the lack of a field of action. Others have worked so slowly and insidiously as to have remained totally concealed from our view, as well from the fact of their never having as yet been productive of any decided and palpable evil effect, as from our becoming gradually accustomed to them and their workings, and from the preoccupation of the public mind with more exciting questions. But in all times of popular excitement and tumult, of revolutionary ideas and attempted violent reform, errors spring forth in dazzling brightness from the darkness of the past, like Minerva from the brain of Jove, armed with the full panoply of destructive war, clothed in the garb of maturity, and endowed with gigantic strength. Such has been the case in our day. As the early spring sun, warming the long-frozen soil and heating the foul moistures of the earth, brings to life and to the surface of the ground swarming myriads of noxious insects and reptiles, who, during the long winter months, have slept silent and torpid far down within the oozy depths, and hatches the thrice-told myriads of eggs deposited in seasons passed away, and which have long waited for his life-giving influence to pour forth their swarming millions to the upper air; even so this war has hatched the eggs of error, and brought forth the torpid defects of long gone-by decades, affording them a broad field of operation in their work of destruction; while it has at the same time torn away the veil which has hitherto blinded our eyes, and shown us, in the disasters of to-day, the culmination of the evil effects of causes which have for long years been working secretly at the very core of the body politic. But not alone has it brought forth error and corruption; for the same harsh influence has also revivified the seeds of virtue and awakened the sleeping lion of justice, uprightness, and national honor, which shall act as healthful counterbalances to all the evil, and supplant the monsters of destructive error.
For in the γνωθι σεαυτον of the Greek philosopher lies the secret of all reform. To know one's faults is already one half the battle to correct them. He who becomes conscious that health of body and mind are steadily yielding to the inroads of an insidious foe, is worse than a fool if he do not at once apply the knife to the seat of disease, however painful may be the operation. And though to-day we hear but little of reform, and all parties seem striving which shall display the most devotion to the cause of the past, the most affection for the unchanged and unchangeable status quo ante bellum in all things, yet is the popular mind not the less earnestly though silently working. To-day we have a task which occupies all our attention, absorbs all our powers and resources, and there is no time for reform: the all-absorbing and vital question being the establishing of things upon the old footing. But, peace restored, and the deathblow given to treason, the work of reform will commence. Then will become manifest the workings of the great mind of the nation during all this trying and bloody war. To acknowledge our defects and miscomings now, is but to give a handle to the enemies of our cause: but, this danger removed, the axe will at once be laid at the root of those evils which have come nigh to working our destruction; all the unsightly excrescences which have for years been accumulating upon the trunk of our goodly tree will be carefully pruned away, and the result will be a healthier and more abundant fruit in the days to come. And these reforms will be brought about quietly, yet with a firm and vigorous hand, and in a manner that will show to the world our determination henceforth to leave no loophole for the entrance of the destroyer.
No race of thinkers can ever be enslaved. Hitherto we have been too unreflecting, too much governed by momentary impulses, too much carried away by party cries and unhealthy enthusiasm, and hence completely beneath the sway of designing demagogues. We have left the politicians to do our thinking for us, and accepted too unhesitatingly their interested dicta as our rules of political action. The press has hitherto led the people, and so mighty an engine of political power has been eagerly seized and controlled by party leaders as a means of accomplishing their ends. All this will be done away with. We shall do our thinking for ourselves, and those who shall hereafter be put forward as the prominent actors upon the great stage of politics will become, what they have never before been save in name, the servants of the people. The press of America, like that of England, must hereafter follow, not lead, the sentiments of the nation. And while true 'freedom of the press' will be religiously conserved, that unrestrained license which has always too much characterized it will be restrained and brought within its true limits, not by statutes or brute force, but by the much more powerful agency of public opinion—by the danger of tampering with the cherished and elevated sentiments of the reading masses.
And as a result of this newborn faculty of thought, we shall see the disappearance of extreme views and the birth of charity in our midst. Men will give due weight to the opinions and respect more the natural prejudices of their fellows. While ultra conservatism is the rust which eats away the nation's life, radicalism is the oxygen in which it consumes itself too rapidly away. Or perhaps, a better simile would be found in the components of atmospheric air—nitrogen and oxygen; the one a non-supporter of combustion, the other giving it a too dazzling brilliancy at the expense of the material upon which it feeds; yet both, properly combined, so as in a measure to neutralize each other, supporting the steady and enduring flame which gives forth a mild and cheering light and heat, neither dazzling nor scorching. So conservatism and radicalism, properly intermingled and exercising a restraining influence upon each other, are the very life of a great and free people. And never, in the history of the world, have these principles been more thoroughly demonstrated, more clearly manifested to the eyes of even the unlearned and humble, than in the present war, in which one or the other of these two great mental phases has been the originator of every great movement, to make no mention of the palpable effect, now appearing upon the face of society, of their action in the past. And hence, in the future, we shall see in a noble, far-reaching, broadly spreading, heaven-aspiring conservative radicalism the prevailing characteristic of American life and progress.
Hitherto the very prime principle of self-government, an intelligent cognizance of public affairs and a reflective insight into the fundamental principles of liberty, has been totally neglected in our land. And if the events of these years shall really teach our people to think—I care not how erroneously at first, for the very exercise of the God-given faculty will soon teach us to discriminate between true and false deductions, and restore Thought to her native empire,—then the blood and treasure we have so lavishly poured out, the trembling and the mourning, the trials, the toils, and the privations we have suffered, even the mighty shock which the society of the whole civilized world has received, will be but a small price to pay for the blessing we shall have gained, and our future prosperity will have been easily purchased even at so tremendous a cost. God grant it may be so.
There is no land on earth where treason may work with such impunity as in our own. And this is owing as well to the greater latitude conceded to political speculations by the very nature of our system, as to the fact that our ancestors, having, as they thought, effectually destroyed all those incentives to treason which exist in more despotic lands, and little anticipating the new motives which might with changing men and times spring up in our midst, neglected to ordain the preventives and remedies for a disease which they imagined could never flourish in our healthy atmosphere. And while they imposed an inadequate penalty, they at the same time made so difficult the proof of this the greatest of crimes, that when at last the monster reared its head and stalked boldly through the land, there was no power to check or destroy it. It will be ours to see, in the future, that this impunity is taken away from this worse than parricide, and that, while a more awful penalty is affixed to the crime, the plotter shall be as amenable to the law and as easy to be convicted as he who takes the murderous weapon in his hands.
And for the accomplishment of this and similar ends, doubtless greater power will be conceded by the States to the Federal Government. The day has gone by when the people were frightened at the bare idea of giving to the central Government the necessary power to maintain its own integrity. The pernicious doctrine of State sovereignty as paramount to the national, has in this war received its deathblow at the hands of those who have always been its most zealous supporters. The South, starting out upon the very basis of this greatest political heresy of our age, had no sooner taken the initiatory step in severing completely all the ties and bonds which held them to the Union, than they discarded the very doctrine which had been their strongest weapon in forcing their people to revolt: well knowing that no government founded upon such a basis could stand for a single year; that the upholding of such a principle was neither more nor less than political suicide. And though at the commencement of our struggle there were many at the North in whose minds the dogma had taken deep root, few are found to-day to uphold the pernicious doctrine, and those few men of more than questionable loyalty. And not this principle only, but every other which is inconsistent with republican ideas, antagonistic to the growth of the giant plant of human freedom, has come to its death at the hands of the god of war. Great commotions are the test of great ideas, and that principle either of government or of human action which can withstand the shock of such an upheaving as the present, and come unharmed through the war of such conflicting elements, may well claim our support as founded in eternal truth. The penetrating glance of human intellect, sharpened by the perilous exigencies of the times, and by the quick succession of startling events, even as the inventive faculties are said to be rendered more acute by the presence of danger, at such times sees clearly the fallacies which perhaps have blinded mankind for years, and recognizes, with unerring certainty, the misfortunes and disasters of to-day as the evil effects of theories which aforetime were only considered capable of good.
And with these theories must inevitably fall their supporters and promulgators. The men who have persistently misled the public mind and falsified the experience of the past as well as the deductions of abstract reasoning, and who, consequently, if not the originators, are at least the aggravators, of all our misfortunes, need expect no mercy at the hands of the people. They must share the fate of their doctrines, and consent to be quietly shelved, buried beyond the hope of a resurrection: and it is to be hoped that their places will be filled by good, earnest, and true men, who have proved themselves devoted to the cause of our country's advancement rather than to that of personal preferment. In this war, the men of the future must make their record, and whenever they shall come before the people for the posts of honor and distinction, they will be judged according as they have to-day sacrificed personal prejudices and partisan feeling upon the altar of unity and freedom. For years to come the first question concerning a candidate will be, Was he loyal in the troublous times? was he earnest and true? There will be no distinction between the truly loyal Democrat and the earnest Republican. Those who have to-day stood shoulder to shoulder in the common cause will, whatever may be their difference in shades of opinion, be sworn friends in the future; while he who has in these times been only noted for a carping, cavilling spirit, for activity in endeavors to hamper and thwart the constituted authorities in their efforts to restore and maintain the integrity of the Government, will to their dying day wear the damning mark of Cain upon their brows: their record will bear a stain which no subsequent effort can wipe away. And though in the days to come other exciting questions will arise to divide the people into strongly opposing parties, which, indeed, are necessary to all true national life, preserving the balance of political power, acting as a check upon injudicious and interested legislation, and, above all, evolving truths by the very attrition of conflicting ideas, yet the intimate association of the past, bringing about a thorough acquaintance with the virtues and patriotism of the great mass of those who profess radically different ideas and opinions, as well as the wearing off of the sharp corners of those ideas themselves by a closer and more impartial observation, will tend to smooth away the asperities of partisan conflict, and beget greater charity and more respect for the opposing opinions of others, based upon a knowledge of the purity of intention and loftiness of purpose of political opponents. The evils of sectional feeling and sectional legislation, so clearly manifested in present events, will be avoided in the future, as the Maelstrom current which sucks in the stoutest bark to inevitable destruction: and while we shall still retain that natural love of home which binds us most closely to the place of our abode, the principle will be recognized that the well-being of the whole can only lie in the soundness and prosperity of each particular part, and we shall know no dividing lines in our love of country, but all become members of one great brotherhood, citizens of one common and united country. The experience of the past will teach us to religiously avoid the snares and pitfalls that beset our path, the hidden rocks and shoals upon which our bark had wellnigh stranded; and the science of politics will henceforward have a broader sweep, a loftier appreciation of national responsibility, a purer benevolence, a sublimer philanthropy.
Among the influences which will greatly modify the future of American politics, not the least is the lately enacted banking law. Hitherto we have been divided in our finances as no nation ever was before. Every individual State has had not only its own system of banking, but its own separate and distinct currency; a currency oftentimes based upon an insufficient security, and possessing only a local par value. The traveller who would journey from one portion of the country to another was driven to the alternative of converting his funds into bills of exchange, or of shopping from broker to broker to procure the currency of the particular localities which he proposed to visit. Not to mention the inconvenience of such a state of things, it is productive of many dire evils, which it is not my purpose to enumerate, since they are already familiar to the majority of my readers. Suffice it to say that such a diversity in a point so vital to all enlightened nations, is antagonistic to the very spirit of our institutions, under a government whose existence depends upon the principle of unity, in a land whose prosperity depends upon the consolidation of all its constituent parts into one homogeneous whole. Not only is this diversity in the money market forever destroyed by the establishment of a uniform currency, but from the peculiar nature of the law, the stability of the Government is made a matter of direct self-interest to every individual citizen, than which no surer or more enduring bond of union can be devised. For self-interest, the Archimedean lever that moves the world, loses no jot of its influence when even honor and patriotism have withered away. Every dollar of the security upon which the currency is based must be deposited in the treasury vaults: in other words, the wealth of every individual citizen is under Government lock and key. Should, then, in the future, any misguided portion of our people see fit to withdraw from our communion, irretrievable ruin not only stares them in the face, but is actually upon them from the moment the bond is severed. On the one side is devotion to the country, and a firm, secure currency, which at any moment will bring its full value in gold; on the other, secession, with the inevitable attendant of a circulation, not depreciated, but utterly worthless, and that, too, with no other to fill its place, since the operation of the law must soon drive out of existence every dollar of the present local bank circulation: patriotism and prosperity arrayed against rebellion and ruin. The business men all see this, and in the event of any threatened disruption, they, the most influential part of community, because controlling that which is the representative of all value, will be found firm and unwavering on the side of the duly constituted authority. Thus we shall have all the benefits of a funded national debt, with none of its attendant evils. And what a bond of union is this!—a bond which involves our very meat and drink, a bond which there can be no possible motive to sever so powerful as the incentive to union and mutual coöperation.
Again, the financial crises with which our country has been afflicted at regular periods of her existence, lowering thousands at one moment from a condition of ease and comfort to one of the most pinching want, changing merchant princes to beggars, and spreading ruin far and wide, have owed their origin, not to a wild spirit of speculation, but to the over inflation of bank issues, which is itself the cause of that reckless speculation. This evil, too, will be done away with in the future, for the issue must and will be regulated by the demands of the community. The Government, in whose hands are the securities, and who furnish the circulation based thereon, will control this matter and restrain the issue to its proper bounds. And even if it should run beyond that point, there will be less danger, since there can be no spurious basis, every dollar being secured by a tangible deposit in the Government vaults. The only escape from this view is in open and barefaced fraud, which will be easy of conviction, and no more to be feared than the ordinary operations of counterfeiters, and which will be effectually provided against. So carefully drawn are the provisions of the bill that no loophole is left for speculation; and he who shall hereafter succeed in flooding the country with a 'wildcat' currency, will be a shrewder financier and a more accomplished villain than the world has yet seen. The people, too, will repose such a confidence in the banks as they have never done before. We shall hear little hereafter of 'runs upon the banks;' for the currency holders, well knowing that the Government holds in its hands the wherewithal to redeem the greater portion of the circulation of every bank in the land in the event of the closing of its doors, the only 'runs' will be upon the deposits, and this only in cases of the grossest and most patent fraud and mismanagement on the part of the banks themselves. Hence, in times of financial peril we shall see the people combining to sustain the banks of their own locality, rather than, as is the case to-day, hastening to accelerate the ruin of perfectly solvent institutions which, but for their ill-timed fright, might weather the storm. Again I say, there could be no greater element of union and strength than this, which has grown out of our necessities and tribulations. In spite of all the confusion and ruin and bloodshed, in spite of all the mourning, and suffering, and sundering of ties, and upheaving of the very foundations and apparent total disruption of American society, no greater blessing could have befallen us than this same war, which has roused us to a new life, to the consciousness of defects and determination of reform, thereby planting us firmly on the true road to prosperity and happiness and power.