Let us now try to draw nearer to the mark at which we principally aimed in projecting this article. We said that the 'let-them-alone' system, concerning the nation's 'freedmen,' is not the system of sound statesmanship. Why not? Because they are a people in a state of infantile weakness and inexperience; whom, from the irrepressible laws and conditions of the human mind, we must govern and control, either wisely and beneficently or otherwise. To unloose the chains that have bound them, and set them adrift to contend and compete under our methods of individualism or isolated interests, is to doom them to conditions hardly to be preferred to those from which they are about to escape. This is certainly true with respect to a large majority. Witness the state of our weakest white laborers, particularly in all our large cities, and some few years back. See them by thousands and tens of thousands imploring for employment, and only too happy if they may find it at the most repulsive and unwholesome labor, sufficient to stay their famished frames and adjourn for a time the pangs of hunger and frosts. Driven in despairing hordes to beggary, prostitution, and crimes of every kind, how fearfully threatening are the neglected duties and obligations that confront us in their behalf! What, then, shall we say to those who propose to swell the frightful tide by turning loose millions more, weaker and more incompetent, it may be, besides being subject to the evils of the reigning prejudices against color? No, no; it must not be done. The Government must become the visible providence of these weak children. It must organize and direct their efforts and interests. It must, at least, organize them into industrial legions, and carefully direct all their educational interests. This work, too, must assume paternal form. Government is rightfully the foster parent of all its tender, weak, or by any means incompetent children; and unless it acknowledge and fulfil its functions as such, it is not Divinely administered, and stands accountable before Supreme Wisdom for all remissness. To meet all the demands, an especial commission must be established, and organized with a completeness that will meet all the educational and industrial needs of these dependent children. This commission must have a wise head and tender heart. It must be fully alive to the great issues involved, and must be healthy and vigorous in its extremities, where will come the immediate points of contact with, the great power it is to operate—the organized freedmen. The expense of this commission must not be a tax upon the Government, nor must Government derive any profit therefrom. Such an organized directory, with extremities all complete, may be amply paid from the freedmen's labors; at the same time, those labors being doubly remunerative to themselves, in consequence of the wise adjustment of the organized machinery of such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be organized and directed upon such humane and economical principles and according to the strictest method and order—an order amounting to definite science—will be practically demonstrated when the Government, in the full consciousness of its mission, calls to its aid competent men for this commission, and moves vigorously in the work. The principles of government which we have briefly suggested as the basis of movement in this matter, based upon the laws and consequently applying to the needs of the human mind, enable us infallibly to estimate the whole relations of Government and people. Our Government being in its theory the highest form—the form proportioned to manhood, or the human mind so matured as to have the intelligence to perceive and the virtue to execute the right—proceeds, of course, upon the declaration that 'all men are created free and equal;' but in the only practical sense of free or self-government, which, in its very nature, can only rest upon the virtue and intelligence of its subjects, men cannot be regarded as 'created' until they are made whole or complete in the crowning intelligence and virtue of the loftiest human attributes. But as government, of whatever kind, follows the laws of the human mind, is first a germ, then a growth, and then a fruitage—shoot, blade, and ear—our Government can only realize this greatness and perfection (unlimited intelligence and virtue) in its matured or organic state; when the declared principles of its form shall have become livingly combined or organized in institutions of unlimited excellence and power—institutions that will perpetually embody and express the exalted human force that inspired them. That our Government has thus far failed to exhibit such completeness, only argues that it has heretofore been in a formative condition—a condition of laborious trial, tuition, and growth, fitting it to realize ultimately its fullness, wherein it will stand related to previous conditions as the grand, symmetric beauty of the ear of grain stands related to its various formative states.
If now our Government is, as we fondly hope, approaching its third degree, its matured condition, with a race of dependent children emerging from the lowest condition, that of chattel slavery, it is plain enough what the relation of these people and the Government should be. They are simply minors, subjects of the Government, but not a part of the Government. The right of suffrage is not to be extended to them, because, from the nature and spirit of the Government, they are necessarily excluded from the highest prerogatives of citizenship. Their education and whole training are to proceed with a view to their becoming ultimately a function in the government.
If the principles thus stated amount to a science of government—and we unhesitatingly aver that they do—then it is clear enough that self-government—the highest form—does by no means necessitate, under all conditions, universal suffrage. In truth, its orderly development strictly forbids it. A government, founded and only healthily operated on virtue and intelligence, must apply itself studiously to develop these conditions in its subjects; thus, and only thus, may these subjects become a part of the governmental power in its full, harmonious development. Self-government must recognize the principle of universal suffrage, because it proceeds upon, and, in its ripest form, must come to that; but, as it is an operation or analytic before it is an ordered form or synthetic in its character, it will, while forming or growing, both restrict the rights of suffrage, and permit its subjects to a part in government when they are not fully qualified therefor. Our freedmen, then, are neither to be subjected contrary to the demands of their own highest good, nor are they to become an element in government in detriment to the public good. Hence they must not be controlled in any form of servitude to interested and selfish superiors, nor must they, by partaking of the elective franchise, become, at present, active participants in the government.
Our current national history must be regarded as singularly marked by beneficent Providential design. At the same time that a people hitherto despised and oppressed are emancipated from a dreadful thraldom, the conditions attending such emancipation are forcing upon the nation a system of industrial organization which we trust will not only prove effective in all that pertains to their future welfare, but will, at the same time, become the example of an organization that shall emancipate and enthrone labor everywhere and in all conditions. Seeing thus the light of day streaming in with unmarred radiance, dispelling every trace of darkness and gloom, we cannot but thank God for His wise dispensations, and with renewed hope and energy press onward toward the glowing east to greet the rising sun.
OUT OF PRISON.
From crowds that scorn the mounting wings,
The happy heights of souls serene,
I wander where the blackbird sings,
And over bubbling, shadowy springs,
The beech-leaves cluster, young and green.
I know the forest's changeful tongue
That talketh all the day with me:
I trill in every bobolink's song,
And every brooklet bears along
My greeting to the chainless sea!
The loud wind laughs, the low wind broods;
There is no sorrow in the strain!
Of all the voices of the woods,
That haunt these houseless solitudes,
Not one has any tone of pain.
In merry round my days run free,
With slender thought for worldly things:
A little toil sufficeth me;
I live the life of bird and bee,
Nor fret for what the morrow brings.
Nor care, nor age, nor grief have I,
Only a measureless content!
So time may creep, or time may fly;
I reck not how the years go by,
With Nature's youth forever blent.
They beckon me by day, by night,
The bodiless elves that round me play!
I soar and sail from height to height;
No mortal, but a thing of light
As free from earthly clog as they.
But when my feet, unwilling, tread
The crowded walks of busy men,
Their walls that close above my head
Beat down my buoyant wings outspread,
And I am but a man again.
My pulses spurn the narrow bound!
The cold, hard glances give me pain!
I long for wild, unmeasured ground,
Free winds that wake the leaves to sound,
Low rustles of the summer rain!
My senses loathe their living death—
The coffined garb the city wears!
I draw through sighs my heavy breath,
And pine till lengths of wood and heath
Blow over me their endless airs!
LIES, AND HOW TO KILL THEM.
'I said, in my haste, all men are liars.'—King David.