But the people whom you teach to consider as themselves individually possessed of a portion of the sovereign power, and (as they will think) so far sovereigns, have mostly no other idea of sovereignty than the absolute right to have their own will and way in any way. Regarding their political rights as their own, inherent, personal possession and property, and not as public trusts, they are not likely to feel themselves limited in the manner of exercising them by any sense of duty to the state. The stronger this false notion of rights, the feebler the sense of moral obligation in the exercise of them. Woe to the people to whom rights are everything and duties nothing, or to whom the standing for their own rights is the highest and most sacred political duty! Among such a people, in times of high excitement, springs up a political fanaticism far less respectable in its origin, and far more dangerous to the public welfare, than the philanthropic fanaticism which you denounce in language so nearly bordering on fanatic violence.
I am sorry to have been obliged to insist at such length upon the simplest elements of political science and the theory of our Government. But you have made it needful. You have put forth notions radically false and practically mischievous on fundamental questions; and you have done it in the way most calculated to impose on the minds of the ignorant and unthinking—by quietly assuming their truth. One wonders to see you apparently so unconscious of the utter contradiction between that which you take for granted and that which, in the general consent of respectable writers and thinkers, is held to be settled beyond debate. There is one at least among your associates (if I mistake not) who would be ashamed to stand godfather to your assumptions in regard to sovereignty and sovereign rights.
It is important for one who is so fond as you are of making distinctions, to see to it that they are just and valid. It is of immense moment that one who builds so much on words should rest his structure on the solid foundation of a correct and exact conception of them. Words are often things, and sometimes things of tremendous consequence, and none more so than those which enter into the grounding principles, of politics. No theoretical error but works practical mischief. No one should be more aware of this than he who undertakes the 'diffusion of political knowledge' among the people of this country. The false notions on sovereignty and sovereign rights which you have put forth, are precisely the ones to take root and bear evil fruit among the least instructed and least thoughtful, the most passionate and unscrupulous of our people. In short, it is among the lowest and worst elements of our social life—among the sort of persons that swelled the majorities in the Sixth Ward of Sodom—that you win find your most numerous disciples and readiest coadjutors in your bad work of opposing the constituted authorities of the state; and this at a time when every good man and true patriot should think much more of duties than of rights, and be more willing to forego personal rights for his country's good, than by factious assertion of them to weaken the arm of public power struggling to save the national existence.
I shall go on in another letter to consider your utterances on the distinction between the Government and the Administration, and your special pleas for hostility to the constituted authorities.
LETTER II.
GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION—CONSTITUTIONALITY.
Dear Sir: I now proceed to consider your letter to Mr. Crosby, which I cannot help regarding as fitted to excite sentiments of mortification as well as grief in the minds of all intelligent men and good patriots who in time past have known and honored you. What such as have not known or cared for you will be apt to think, I shall not undertake to say.
One of Mr. Crosby's questions was this: 'What appears to you the sufficient reason for a Christian citizen to ally himself with others for the extreme and radical purpose of undermining and paralyzing the power of the Government at a crisis when unanimity of support is plainly essential not only to the welfare but to the very life of the nation?'
This is a plain question, and one may well wonder how it was possible for you to suppose that you were fairly meeting it and effectually rebutting the charge it implies by raising the distinction you make between the Government and the Administration. The sense in which Mr. Crosby used the word Government is perfectly obvious; and if he had a right to use it in that sense—as he undoubtedly had—it seems to me it was for you to answer it in its plain meaning; to answer the question he asked, and not another, which he did not ask. But you preferred to go into critical analysis and to make sharp distinctions of words. Let us look at the work you have made of it.
You tell Mr. Crosby that he has 'fallen into the prevalent error of confounding the Government with the Administration of the Government,' and that 'they are not the same.' Now, they are the same, when both words are used to signify the same thing.