All the corrupt practices that are prevalent in the various parts of the governing process are possible only because the professions and practices of government are not in harmony. The professions of government relate to principles; the practices to its limits and sphere. Therefore, in the present article, the practices will be dealt with. In dealing with them it will come within the intended limits to examine the machinery by which government is administered, and to determine what movements within the body of society should be under its general control, so that all its movements may be made in harmony. Were any other branch of government than that relating to society being examined, its limits and sphere would be found so plainly determined there would be no possibility of even apparent departure by the governing control from them; for in all these the divine power is that control, and consequently is perfect. In society, the divine power, though the controlling element, is maintained over human minds, which are finite and imperfect representatives of the divine power, and are thereby incompetent to so arrange and order subservient circumstances, that harmony shall be the only result of the combinations formed to secure consecutive order.
The government of this country is selected for analysis because, as a system, it is the latest production of the social order of things, and, consequently, the highest in the scale of evolution. It represents a greater “coherent heterogeneity” in its construction than any other, and its “constituent units” are more “distinctly individuated,” which demonstrates that it is the highest order of government yet attained on the globe. The fault in its construction is, that the powers of the constituent units are not harmoniously related to the central power, nor to each other, discord being the natural consequence of such inequality. Though the constituent parts of society are in themselves imperfect, their relations to each other and to the governing power may be so well defined and regulated that their imperfections shall not have power to mar the harmony of action proceeding from the central power. And this is the point which is sought.
LIMITS AND SPHERE OF GOVERNMENT.
[Revised from the New York Herald of June 4, 1870.]
GRAVELY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION AND ITS ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT, AS VIEWED AND REVIEWED BY ONE OF THE FIRM OF FEMALE BROKERS OF WALL STREET.
There are a variety of operations, natural and artificial, by which the proper limits and sphere of government may be illustrated. It is desirable that some of them be presented, so as to convey a correct idea of a perfect controlling power, which bears the same relations to the parts controlled as government should to the people under it.
The cotton mills of New England are good artificial representatives of government. In them all the various parts are compelled into unity of action by the controlling power evolved from coal or transformed from water. The crude cotton is first taken and freed from all foreign substances by “the picker;” the pure remainder is then formed into a homogeneous mass by “the cards;” this mass is then divided and subdivided into the different degrees of heterogeneity required, and these are more distinctly individuated into “the webbing and filling” by “the jacks and mules,” and are then reunited by “the webber and loom” into cotton cloth, the ultimate result. Every part of this process forms points of resistance more or less easily compelled into unity of purpose. Every bobbin, spindle, shuttle and card are so many different experiences which are required to be gone through with before the result can be reached, while all parts of the process are going on at the same time. The power is the government; the operatives its administrators; the various pieces and parts of the machinery are the people working in the several parts of the process; the cloth is the attained civilization, while the different degrees of fineness are its progressive steps.
Thus it should be with human government. It is the power resident in the central part which should control all the processes by which the people are guided to produce the ultimate result. It should be of such character as to take the people in the homogeneous mass, and, by picking, carding, spinning and weaving, compel them into a unit of action for divine use. Every operation in nature, if analyzed, presents the same process and similar results. A central power competent for its purposes, through various means and avenues, controls the materials into perfected productions, each one of which is perfect of its kind. The sphere of this government is to produce the legitimate result; and its limits are only bounded by the necessities of the power that the result shall flow; but flow it must and does always.
It is then predicated, that a power, competent to produce harmony in that over which it reigns, must be sufficient to control all the different parts to one end; whatever individual or combined points of resistance may be raised to its edicts must yield to the general purpose, even to the extinction of their resistance. It is necessary, therefore, that the governing power must be invested by the governed with the necessary control, to compel them into harmonious action, so that no antagonism may arise, to divert the tendency to unity of purpose. It must not be supposed that a self-constituted, absolute power is argued for; but this power should be one fashioned and organized by and with the consent of the people, who, knowing their weakness and acknowledging it in their sober and wiser moments, shall recognize the necessity of it, to compel them, if need be, to act with the general whole for the general good, even if it seemingly militate against their individual good, and which shall be of sufficient strength and diffusiveness to regulate all the movements within the body of society.
We will now proceed to the analysis of the various operations of government, to find to what the inharmonious relations between the governing power and the resistance are attributable, and thereby be able to determine the required remedy. Wherever this may lead, whatever “infallible” political dogmas it may destroy, or cherished forms and privileges disprove, it will be pursued as relentlessly—unmercifully if you will—as the crucible and the flame proceed to disorganize material compounds and separate their constituent elements into the poisonous, the nutritious and the useful, that the former may be put away and the remainder appropriated to promote the general good.