We May Dislike
Americans Personally, We May Find Ourselves Uncomfortable When
There, And Unable To Sympathize With Them When Away.
We may believe
them to be ambitious, unjust, self-idolatrous, or irreligious; but
unless we throw our judgment altogether overboard, we cannot believe
them to be a weak people, a poor people, a people with low spirits
or with idle hands.
Now to what is it that the government of a
country should chiefly look? What special advantages do we expect
from our own government? Is it not that we should be safe at home
and respected abroad - that laws should be maintained, but that they
should be so maintained that they should not be oppressive? There
are, doubtless, countries in which the government professes to do
much more than this for its people - countries in which the
government is paternal; in which it regulates the religion of the
people, and professes to enforce on all the national children
respect for the governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters.
But that is not our idea of a government. That is not what we
desire to see established among ourselves or established among
others. Safety from foreign foes, respect from foreign foes and
friends, security under the law and security from the law, this is
what we expect from our government; and if I add to this that we
expect to have these good things provided at a fairly moderate cost,
I think I have exhausted the list of our requirements. I hardly
think that we even yet expect the government to take the first steps
in the rudimentary education of the people. We certainly do not
expect it to make the people religious, or to keep them honest.
And if the Americans with their form of government have done for
themselves all that we expect our government to do for us; if they
have with some fair approach to general excellence obtained respect
abroad and security at home from foreign foes; if they have made
life, liberty, and property safe under their laws, and have also so
written and executed their laws as to secure their people from legal
oppression, - I maintain that they are entitled to a verdict in their
favor, let us object as we may to universal suffrage, to four years'
Presidents and four years' presidential cabinets. What, after all,
matters the theory or the system, whether it be king or president,
universal suffrage or ten-pound voter, so long as the people be free
and prosperous? King and president, suffrage by poll and suffrage
by property, are but the means. If the end be there, if the thing
has been done, king and president, open suffrage and close suffrage,
may alike be declared to have been successful. The Americans have
been in existence as a nation for seventy-five years, and have
achieved an amount of foreign respect during that period greater
than any other nation ever obtained in double the time. And this
has been given to them, not in deference to the statesmanlike craft
of their diplomatic and other officers, but on grounds the very
opposite of those. It has been given to them because they form a
numerous, wealthy, brave, and self-asserting nation. It is, I
think, unnecessary to prove that such foreign respect has been given
to them; but were it necessary, nothing would prove it more strongly
than the regard which has been universally paid by European
governments to the blockade placed during this war on the Southern
ports by the government of the United States. Had the nation been
placed by general consent in any class of nations below the first,
England, France, and perhaps Russia would have taken the matter into
their own hands, and have settled for the States, either united or
disunited, at any rate that question of the blockade. And the
Americans have been safe at home from foreign foes; so safe, that no
other strong people but ourselves have enjoyed anything approaching
to their security since their foundation. Nor has our security been
at all equal to theirs, if we are to count our nationality as
extending beyond the British Isles. Then as to security under their
laws and from their laws! Those laws and the system of their
management have been taken almost entirely from us, and have so been
administered that life and property have been safe, and the subject
also has been free, under the law. I think that this may be taken
for granted, seeing that they who have been most opposed to American
forms of government have never asserted the reverse. I may be told
of a man being lynched in one State, or tarred and feathered in
another, or of a duel in a third being "fought at sight." So I may
be told also of men garroted in London, and of tithe proctors buried
in a bog without their ears in Ireland. Neither will seventy years
of continuance, nor will seven hundred, secure such an observance of
laws as will prevent temporary ebullition of popular feeling, or
save a people from the chance disgrace of occasional outrage.
Taking the general, life and limb and property have been as safe in
the States as in other civilized countries with which we are
acquainted.
As to their personal liberty under their laws, I know it will be
said that they have surrendered all claim to any such precious
possession by the facility with which they have now surrendered the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It has been taken from
them, as I have endeavored to show, illegally, and they have
submitted to the loss and to the illegality without a murmur! But
in such a matter I do not think it fair to judge them by their
conduct in such a moment as the present. That this is the very
moment in which to judge of the efficiency of their institutions
generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of
the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a
storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to
her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even
though the mainmast should go by the board.
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