In fact, the negroes are our fellows and our equals much more than we imagine; they adapt themselves better than the Indians to our civilization. They seek to be instructed, and not only do the free blacks of the English islands hasten, as we have seen, to provide themselves with teachers, but even those of the United States, crushed as they are by contemptuous treatment, neglect no means of introducing their children into the schools, where is found one-ninth of their total number. In Liberia, they have shown themselves. .h.i.therto very capable of ruling. In Hayti, since their deliverance from the ridiculous and odious yoke of Soulouque, they have advanced rapidly, it is affirmed, in the way of true progress; legal marriages increase, popular instruction is becoming established, religious liberty is respected.
Lastly, in the negro colony of Buxton, in Canada, the fugitive slaves have become industrious landholders, and are respected by all.
Let us not say that prejudice of skin is indestructible; the suppression of slavery may modify it profoundly. What degrades the free negro to-day, is the existence of the negro slave. To be respectable, we all need to be respected. The poor, free negro is ashamed of himself; he dares not aspire to any thing n.o.ble and great; he preserves, besides, as the legacy of slavery, the idea that labor is dishonoring, that idleness is a sign of independence. This is enough to make him remain a stranger to honorable occupations, and confine himself to the practice of vile trades. When slavery shall have disappeared, the situation of the free blacks will become quite different: they will be numerous; they will have an appreciable share in the regulation of national affairs; their vote will count, and, thenceforth, we may be tranquil, no one will be afraid to treat them with respect, and perhaps to pay court to them.
The law of New York, as well as the Supreme Court of that State, has already admitted that color exercises no influence over the rights of citizens. The time draws near when the North will no longer contest the intervention of free negroes at the ballot-box. This will be a great step in advance. Let us remark, moreover, that, after general emanc.i.p.ation, the black population, while exercising its share of influence, will never be able, through the number of suffrages at its disposal, to alarm the jealous susceptibility of the whites; the latter, in fact, will be continually recruited by European immigration, and the day will come when the few negroes of the United States will be scarcely perceptible in the heart of a gigantic nation.
The honor of the North is at stake; it belongs to it to give an example at this time, and to show, by the reform of its own habits, that it has the right to combat the crime of the South. It must set to work seriously, resolutely, to resolve the problem of the coexistence of races, while the South resolves, willing or unwilling, the problem of emanc.i.p.ation. Liberty in the South, equality in the North; the one is no less necessary than the other; it may even be said that one great obstacle to the idea of emanc.i.p.ation is this other idea that blacks and whites cannot live together, but that one must some day exterminate the other.
Why suffer the establishment of this lying axiom which checks all progress? Why not cast our eyes on the neighboring colonies where the prejudice of color reigned supremely before emanc.i.p.ation, and where it has since become rapidly effaced. The United States have a lofty end to attain; let them beware how they take too low an aim! They will not have more than they need, with the efforts of all, the charity of all, the sacrifices of all, the earnest endeavors by which all can elevate themselves above vulgar prejudices, to accomplish a task at once the most difficult and most glorious that has ever been proposed to a great people.
The North, I repeat, is bound to give a n.o.ble example by obtaining a shining victory over itself. Let it say to itself that coexistence is not amalgamation; the question is not to marry negroes, but to treat them with justice. The fear of amalgamation once vanished, many things will change in appearance. Why, in fact, is the prejudice of race stronger in the free States than in the slave States? Because the latter know that slavery is a sufficient line of demarcation, and because they have not to dread amalgamation. Now, this is and will be nowhere to be dreaded; the instinct of both races will prevent such mingling, and the blacks are as anxious to remain separate from the whites as the whites are to avoid alliance with the blacks. As I have said, nothing but slavery, and the perverse habits that it engenders, could have succeeded in some sort in breaking down this barrier. If the cla.s.s of mullattoes thus formed rule in some republics of South America, it proceeds from the absence of a numerous and powerful white race, like that which is covering the United States with its continually increasing population.
Decidedly, fears of amalgamation are puerile in such a country; and decidedly also, any other solution than the coexistence of races would be wrong. Doubtless, a natural concentration of the emanc.i.p.ated negroes will be some day effected; they will flock to those States where their relative number will ensure to them the most influence. Perhaps we may even obtain a glimpse of the time when, by the result of a providential compensation, the countries which have been the witnesses of their sufferings, and which they have watered with their tears, these countries where they, better than any others, can devote themselves to labor, will belong to them in great part. Are the Antilles and the regions of the Gulf of Mexico destined to become the refuge and almost the empire of Africans torn from their own continent? It is possible, but not certain. In any case, this geographical repart.i.tion of the races would be wrought peaceably; the effort to effect it by violent measures would justly arouse the conscience of the human race. So long as we talk of transporting the blacks to Africa, to St. Domingo, or elsewhere, so long as the peaceable coexistence of the races be not accepted, the barbarous proceedings which dishonor America will not cease, the Northern States will maltreat their free negroes, and the South will cling to slavery as to the only means of preventing a struggle for extermination.
At the North as well as the South, men need to accustom themselves in fine to the idea of coexistence. Yes, there will be whites and free blacks in various parts of the Union; yes, it is certain that in some parts, the black population will be possessed of influence; it may even happen that, in one or two points of the extreme South, it will come to rule. If this hypothesis, improbable in my opinion, should ever be realized, it would not be a cause of shame, but of glory, to the Union.
It is said that the great Indian tribes of the Southwest think of forming a State, which will demand admission into the Union, and which has a chance to obtain it. Why should there not be, at need, a negro State by the side of an Indian State? This reparation would be fully due to the oppressed race, and America would be honored in treading her repugnance under foot, and in showing to the whole world that her so much vaunted liberty is not a vain word.
She would show, at the same time, that her Christian faith is not a vain formality. If the desire of avoiding amalgamation has legitimate grounds, the antipathy of race is simply abominable. Words cannot be found severe enough to censure the conduct of those _Christians_ who, pursuing with their indignation the slavery of the South, refuse to fulfil the simplest duties of kindness, or even of common equity, towards the free negroes of the North.
But I hope that the Gospel, accustomed to work miracles, will also work this. Let us be just; we have already seen the pious ladies of Philadelphia lavishing their cares on black and white without distinction at the time of the cholera invasion. They washed and dressed with their own hands, in the hospital which they had founded, the children rendered orphans by the scourge, without taking account of the differences of color. This is a sign of progress, and I could cite several others; I could name cities, Chicago, for instance, where the schools are opened by law to the blacks as well as the whites. There is a power in the United States which will overthrow the obstacle of the North as well as that of the South, which will abolish both slavery and prejudice of skin.
This power has shown in the Antilles what it can do. There, pastors and missionaries, schools, works of charity pursued in common, have placed on a level the blacks and the whites, devoted to the same cause, and ransomed by the same Saviour. In the United States; likewise, the Christian faith will raise up the one, and will teach the others to humble themselves; it will destroy the vices of the negro, and will break the detestable pride of the Anglo-Saxon. The real influence of faith on both--this is the true solution, this is the true bond of the races. Through this, will be established relations of mutual love and respect. What a mission is reserved for the churches of the United States! Checked hitherto by enormous difficulties, which it would be unjust not to take into account, they have not acted the part in the recent struggle against slavery which reverted to them of right. They have done a great deal, whatever may be said; they are disposed to do still more, and their att.i.tude has improved visibly within a year. But this cannot suffice; there are two problems to resolve instead of one; the question is now, to approach both face to face. True equality is founded, under the eye of G.o.d, through the community of hopes and of repentance, through close a.s.sociation in worship, in prayer, in action; and this equality has nothing in common with the jealous spirit of levelling which suffers old grievances to subsist, and continually invents new; it is peaceable, forgetful of evil, confiding, truly fraternal. I do not dream, of course, of the universal conversion of the population of the United States, both black and white; I know only that the Gospel, though it deeply penetrates comparatively few hearts, extends its influence much further, and acts on those that it has not won. Let the Christians of America set to work, let them reject, for it is time, the scandals still presented here and there by their apologists for slavery, let them forbear to spare that which is culpable, to call good evil, or evil good, and they will render to their country a service which they alone can render it, and to which nothing on earth can be compared.
The United States do not know how great will be the transformation of their internal condition, and the increase of their good renown abroad, when their churches, their schools, their public vehicles, their ballot-boxes, shall be widely accessible to persons of color, when equality and liberty shall have become realities on their soil; they do not know how great will be their peace and their prosperity. Let the two inseparable problems of slavery and the coexistence of races be resolved among them under the ruling influence of the Gospel, and they will witness the birth of a future far better than the past. No more fears, no more rivalries, no more separations in perspective, their conquests will become accomplished of themselves; and, no longer destined to swell the domain of servitude, they will win the applause of the entire world.
And all this will not be purchased, as men seem to believe, by the sacrifice of the cotton culture. At the present time, this culture incurs but one serious risk: the momentary triumph of a party that dreams of a slavery propaganda; it will be saved alone by the progress of liberty. On the day when emanc.i.p.ation shall be achieved, if wrought by the action of moral agents and social necessities, instead of by that of civil wars and insurrections, the cultivation of cotton in the Southern States will receive the impetus to a magnificent development.
The emanc.i.p.ated negroes make large quant.i.ties of sugar in the Antilles; why should they not make cotton on firm ground? If affranchis.e.m.e.nt produced the destruction of planting in St. Domingo, we know now the reason. It is a proved fact that negroes who do not owe their liberty to insurrection, remain disposed to devote themselves to labor in the fields.
With slavery, observe, disappear, one after the other, the obstacles in the way of agricultural progress. The capital which no one dares risk to-day in the Southern States, will flow into them emulously as soon as slavery shall be abolished; I say more: as soon as its progressive abolition shall be no longer doubtful in the sight of all. European immigration, the current of which turns aside with so much circ.u.mspection, avoiding a territory accursed and given over to calamities, will flock towards those countries more beautiful, more fertile, and broader than those of the Far West. Machinery will come, to more than fill up the void caused by the pa.s.sing diminution of the number of laborers. The slaves can be intrusted with none but the simplest implements: every one knows that the plough, introduced originally into our French colonies, disappeared to make room for the hoe as soon as Colbert had authorized the slave trade. Ploughs have reappeared there since emanc.i.p.ation. Their agricultural and industrial progress date from the same epoch: to-day, our colonists understand the use of manures, and make improvements in manufacture. A new era is dawning, in fine; what will it be in the United States, among that people which seems destined to surpa.s.s all others in the application of mechanics to agriculture?
Still, I have made one concession too much in admitting the diminution of the number of laborers. Supposing that a few negroes quit the field, many whites will come to take their place. White labor is fully possible in the majority of the slave States, and immigrants from Europe will not hesitate to engage in it. Wherever slavery reigns, it is that, and not the climate, that must be arraigned if the whites fold their hands; labor has become there a servile act--it is blighted, as it were, in its essence. A competent writer said the other day: "If Algeria had been subjected to the sway of slavery, cultivation there would have been reputed impracticable for the French, and examples of mortality would not have been wanting." The whites have labored in the Antilles; the whites can labor, not only in all the slave States of the intermediate region, but in Louisiana. Cotton is already produced in Texas, thanks to its German settlers. The question is only, to go on in this way. Slavery once abolished, the small proprietors, who at present carry all the criminal extravagancies of the South further than any others, will be compelled to set their hands to work. This will be an advantage both to the country and themselves. Who will not pray for the coming of the time when so considerable a part of the population will cease to possess slaves which it is incapable of feeding, when it will be transformed into the middle cla.s.s, and thus escape the real servitude which embitters it?
Moreover, let us not forget new cultures, that of the vine among others, which are fitted to become introduced into these new countries, or to develop there, and which lack nothing but liberty in order to flourish.
The arts and manufactures also have their place; independently of the tillers of the soil, properly called, the Southern States will have need of workmen in manufactories, and of managers of agricultural machines; large plantations will often, become divided, as has happened in the Antilles, and we shall witness the appearance of the small estate, that essential basis of social order. There will be employment for all, and the rich Southern cultures will be less neglected than before.
Whoever has descended the Ohio has involuntarily compared its two banks: here, the State of Ohio, whose prosperity advances with rapid strides; there, the State of Kentucky, no less favored by Nature, yet which languishes as if abandoned. Why? Because slavery blights all that it touches. Could not the whites of Kentucky and Virginia labor as well as those of Ohio? The comparative poverty of these slave States reminds me of the dest.i.tution of our colonies and those of England before emanc.i.p.ation: mortgaged estates, plantations burdened with expenses, the complete destruction of credit--such was their position. We must read American statistics to form an idea of the truly unheard-of extent of this fact--impoverishment by slavery. With a larger extent and much richer lands, the slave States possess neither agricultural growth, nor industrial growth, nor advance of population, which can be compared far or near with that which is found in the free States. A book by Mr.
Hinton Rowan Helper, _The Impending Crisis of the South_, expresses these differences in figures so significant that it is impossible to contest them.
The Southern States, therefore, are certain to increase their cultures, and to found their lasting prosperity by entering the path that leads to emanc.i.p.ation. But if they take the contrary road, they will hasten to their destruction, and with strange rapidity. Already, their violent acts of secession, and the monstrous plans which are necessarily attached to them, have had the first effect, easily foreseen, of dealing a most dangerous blow to American cotton. In a few weeks, they have done themselves more harm than the North, supposing its hostility as great as it is little, could have done them in twenty years. The meeting of Manchester has replied to the manifestoes of Charleston; England has said to herself, that, from men so determined to destroy themselves, she should count on nothing; and, having taken her resolution, she will proceed with it speedily; let the Southern States take care. English India can produce as much cotton as America; before long, if the Carolinians persist, they will have obtained the glorious result of despoiling their country of its chief resource; they will have killed the hen that laid the golden eggs. The matter is serious; I ask them to reflect on it. As England, under pain of falling into want and riots, cannot dispense with cotton for a single day, she will act energetically. Cotton grows marvellously in many countries; in the Antilles, where it has been produced already; in Algeria, where the plantations are about to be increased; on the whole continent of Africa, in fine, where it enters perhaps into the plans of G.o.d thus to make a breach in indigenous slavery by the faults committed by slaveholders in America.
CHAPTER X.
THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSt.i.tUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.
It remains for me to inquire what influence the present crisis may exert on the inst.i.tutions of the United States. It is at the expense of these inst.i.tutions that the slave States, inferior in strength, in numbers, in progress of every kind, would reestablish their fatal and growing preponderance. Here again, therefore, my thesis subsists: the victories of the South had compromised every thing, the resistance of the North is about to save every thing; the election of Mr. Lincoln is a painful but salutary crisis, it is the first effort of a great people rising.
The party of slavery had introduced into the heart of American democracy, a permanent cause of debas.e.m.e.nt and corruption. In this respect, also, it was leading the Confederation to its death by the most direct and speedy way. I wish to show how it developed the worst sides of the democratic system. I hope to be impartial towards this system; although persuaded that the government of which England offers us the model is better suited to guaranty public liberties and to second true progress in every thing, I am not of those who place the shadow before the substance, and who condemn democracy without appeal. Are we destined some day to pa.s.s into its hands? Have we already begun to glide down the descent that leads to it? It is possible. In any case, it would be unjust to hate America on account of it, as is too often done. America has had no choice; in virtue of its origin and its history, it could be nothing else than a democracy. If it has the faults of democracy, the unamiable rudeness, the violent proceedings, the levelling pa.s.sions, I am scarcely surprised at it. I ask myself rather if it has known how to find a basis of support against the temptations of such a system, if it has prevented the subjugation of individuals by the ma.s.s, the absorption of consciences by the State, the subst.i.tution of the sovereignty of the end for that of the people. These are the shoals of democracy; have they been shunned by the United States? Have they been able to avoid transforming it either into tyranny or socialism? We shall see that, if it has not succ.u.mbed to the temptation, this has not been the fault of the party of slavery. Thanks to it, the corruption of democratic inst.i.tutions was rapidly advancing; a single adversary, constantly the same, has combated the progress of this work of destruction. We shall encounter again, upon the ground of political inst.i.tutions, the fundamental antagonism of the Gospel and slavery.
I say first, that it is rarely that names are altogether fortuitous, and do not correspond to things. It has often given rise to astonishment that the party of slavery should have taken the name of the democratic party; notwithstanding, nothing was more natural. How could slavery have been defended if not by exaggerating democracy? It was necessary, in such a cause, to deny the notions of right, of truth, and of justice; it was necessary that the greater number should become right, truth, and justice.
Something more even was needed. The _sovereignty of the end_ must yield, if necessary, before the sovereignty of numbers. A cause like that of slavery is only defended in the heart of a democratic nation, by teaching it contempt of scruples, and the stifling of the conscience.
Every thing is allowable, every thing is good, provided that we succeed in our ends! This is the rule which it designs shall prevail in political contests. A single question, seeing nothing but itself, determined to spare nothing, offering itself to parties, whoever they may be, who seek a change, creating fact.i.tious majorities to effect the ends of base ambition, taking account neither of honor nor country, and attaining its end through every thing--this is enough to vitiate profoundly inst.i.tutions and morals. The sovereignty of the idea, when it has laid hands on the sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws are trodden under foot, a struggle without pity or remorse begins, a struggle of life and death. Social pa.s.sions easily acquire a degree of perversity which political pa.s.sions do not possess; the former are without conscience and without compa.s.sion; they will be satisfied, cost what it may; triumph is in their eyes an absolute, an inexorable necessity. Rather than not conquer, they will rend the country.
What the regular working of inst.i.tutions becomes under such a pressure, every one can divine. For some years past, in proportion as the pretensions of the slavery party had increased, we had seen public morals become tainted in the United States. Indifference to means had made alarming progress, and had been felt even in the habits of commerce, and the relations of private life. The spirit of enterprise had come to be exalted even in its most dishonorable acts; respect for bankrupts seemed almost to be propagated. It is a fact, that men like Mr. Jefferson Davis, the present President of the revolted South, were not afraid to recommend the repudiation of debts. In the school of slavery, a disembarra.s.sed and unscrupulous manner of acting had given its stamp to the general manner of the nation. Affairs were going on rapidly, the liberties of America were on the high road to ruin; it was time that the reaction of liberal and honorable sentiments should make itself felt. The election of 1860 marked the stopping-place.
I wonder that they could have stopped; such a fact demands an explanation, for ordinarily the declivities of democratic decline are never remounted. The natural tendency there being to deny the right of the minority, (the most precious of all,) to sink the man entire in the ballot, to lay violent hands on the private portion of his life, and to force even his conscience into the social contract, it follows that governments arise in which the question of limitation becomes effaced by the question of origin. In the face of such a power, nothing is left standing; no more rights, no more principles, no more of those solid and resisting blocks which serve to stem the popular current; the province of the State becomes indefinite.
And how much more irresistible and more perverse is this tendency, when a profound cause of corruption, such as slavery, adds its action to the strength of such democracies! It is no longer, in such cases, the sovereign majority alone before which the right may be forced to bow, it is a party determined to attain its ends, which penetrates with violence into that domain of conscience where human laws should not enter; a party which sets about regulating sometimes the belief, sometimes the thought, sometimes the speech. Such has been the influence exercised in the United States by the inst.i.tution of slavery; it has forbidden authors to write, clergymen to preach, and almost individuals to think any thing that displeased it; it has invented the right of secession, in order to have at its disposal a formidable means of intimidation, and to place a threat behind each of its demands. To yield, to descend, to descend still further, to obey a continued impulse of democratic debas.e.m.e.nt, such is the course to which it has impelled the whole Confederation.
Notwithstanding, the United States have resisted. I shall tell why; I shall show by virtue of what marvellous force Americans have escaped the absolute levelling which seemed destined to be produced by a complicated democracy of slavery. But I wish first to finish depicting the natural effects of such a system.
Suppose for a moment a nation (and such are not wanting) modelled after the antique. The Pagan principle reigns there supremely, the State absorbs every thing, souls are banded together and governed; a centralized power, a visible Providence, is subst.i.tuted for individual action; creeds have essentially the hereditary and national form; each one believes what the rest believe, each one does what the rest do, each one holds the opinions which are found in the ancient traditions of the country; truth is no longer a personal conviction, acquired at the price of earnest struggles, and worth much because it has cost much; it descends to the rank of customs to which it is fitting to conform, it has its marked place among social obligations, and forms part of the duties of the citizen.
Let democracy come to establish its empire in the heart of such a nation, and you will see with what rapidity every thing will disappear that bears the slightest resemblance to individual independence. The more effectual the levelling, the greater will seem the community; and the smaller the individual, the more, too, in face of the privileges of the whole, will the very idea of personal rights become effaced. The majority is held infallible, and the minority appears criminal if it takes the liberty of refusing to subject its thoughts (yes, its very thoughts) to that of the majority. In this innumerable host of like beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private; of all aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable. Men believe in the majority, in the ma.s.s, in the nation. We have no idea of the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on its road the obstacle of personal convictions; it disposes of the human soul, it creates an unlimited confidence in the judgment of public opinion, it heads a school of popular courtiers, and teaches each one the art of setting his watch by the clock of the market-place.
Intelligence, conscience, convictions--all bend, and what does not bend is broken. This happens, above all, we repeat without wearying, when a detestable cause like that of slavery perverts the working of democratic inst.i.tutions. Then, the tyranny of the majorities has no bounds; the majorities themselves are formed by means of ign.o.ble contracts and monstrous alliances. In the midst of lower pa.s.sions let loose, through banded parties, imperative mandates, and fact.i.tious organizations, which no longer leave the smallest outlet for the flight of the least independent wish, the perversities of corrupt and misled democracy have full scope.
In writing these pages, have I described American democracy? Yes and no.
Yes, for such are really the temptations to which America has been exposed, such are really the vices with which it might have often been reproached; no, for a principle of resistance has always revealed itself in the darkest moments, an irrepressible something has always remained.
In vain the heavy roller has pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed over the ground; it has always encountered blocks of granite that would not be broken. This is the point which I had at heart to signal out in closing this study, knowing that it forms its most essential part, and that whoever has not given it his attention cannot comprehend the United States. The extraordinary fact, much more extraordinary than is supposed, that, under the system of democracy ruled by slavery, men have been able to pause and retrace their steps, is only explained by the peculiar form which religious belief has put on in the United States. We have not before our eyes a Latin nation, a nation clad in the vestments of Greece or Rome, a nation having, according to the ancient mode, its religion and its usages universally but indolently admitted. This republic of the New World is by no means one of those slave republics of ancient times, in which the citizens took delight in conversing on public affairs, but in which no one had the bad taste to question his conscience with respect to the public creeds. The pagan life, with its obligatory worship, its common education, its suppression of the family and the individual in behalf of the State, its existence transported to the Forum; the pagan life, in which the citizen absorbs the individual, and in which the calm and serene uniformity of indifferent centuries ends, by giving to each one the national physiognomy, bears no resemblance to the moral and social life of the United States.
Among them, not the smallest trace is found of that system which seeks to make nations, and which forgets to make men. They were born, as we may say, of a protestation of the human conscience. A n.o.ble origin, which explains many things! It is, in fact, the revindication of religious independence against religious uniformity, and the established church which created it two hundred years ago. Of course, I have not to examine here the intrinsic value of the Puritan doctrines. I content myself with affirming that they landed in America in the name of liberty, that they were destined to establish liberty there, that they were destined to build there the true rampart against democratic tyranny.
From the first day, the State was deprived of the direction of the intellectual and moral man. Despite that inevitable mixture of inconsistencies and hesitation which marks our first efforts in all things, the Puritan colonies, destined one day to become the United States, set out on the road which led to liberty of belief, of thoughts, of speech, of the press, of a.s.semblage, of instruction. The most considerable, most important rights were abstracted at the outset from the domain of democratic deliberations; insuperable bounds were set to the sovereignty of numbers; the right of minorities, that of the individual, the right of remaining alone against all others, the right of being of one"s own opinion, was reserved. Furthermore, they did not delay to break the bonds between the Church and the State entirely, in such a manner as to deprive the official superintendence of belief of its last pretext. Self-government was founded, that is, the most formal negation of subjugation by the democracy. While the latter tends to the maximum of government, the American Government tends to the minimum of government, that form _par excellence_ of liberalism. And it does not tend thither, as in the Middle Ages, by anarchy, by the absence of national ties, and moreover by despoiling the individual of his rights of conscience and thought, confiscated then more entirely for the benefit of a sovereign church than they have been since for the benefit of the State; no, American individualism proceeds differently: if it restrains with salutary vigor the province of governments, it is to enlarge that of the human soul.
This is a great conquest; the whole future of the modern world is contained in it. Destined as we are to submit, in a measure at least, to the action of democracy, the question whether we shall he slaves or free men is resolved in this: shall we, after the example of America, have our reserved tribunal, our closed domain in which the public power shall be permitted to see nothing? Shall there be things among us (the most important of all) which shall not be put to the vote? Shall our democracy have its boundaries, and beyond these boundaries shall a vast country be seen to extend--that of free belief, of free worship, of free thought, of the free home?
It is because American democracy has boundaries that its worst excesses have finally found chastis.e.m.e.nt. It is not installed alone in the United States; opposite it, another power which knows no fear, is occupied with resisting it. The entire history of America is explained by this double fact: the falling and the rising again, the servitudes and the liberties, the too long triumph of the slavery party, and the recent victory of Mr. Lincoln, the deadly peril so lately incurred, and the n.o.ble future that opens to-day.
Individualism is not isolation, individual convictions are not sectarian convictions; they found on the contrary the most powerful of the unities, moral unity. The thing which most actively dissolves societies while seeming to unite them, is the uniformity of national dogmas which, accepted as an inheritance, remain without action over the heart. What are, in fact, the great bonds on earth, if not duty and affection? Now, nothing but personal convictions, earnestly acquired by the sweat of our brow, can destroy selfishness in us. Without this strong cement of convictions at once individual and common, you will build nothing that will endure. The United States have in their heart strong convictions, which are also common convictions; through external diversities, we have seen that fundamental conformity is real, and all earnest appeal to Christian truths agitates this country, so divided in appearance, from one end to the other. National life is here a reality. I do not think that Socialism, which excuses us from believing ourselves, which places our soul under responsible administration, and preserves us, it is said, from the baleful disruptions engendered by individualism, succeeds as well in destroying selfishness and in diffusing ideas of devotion and duty. When democracy becomes socialistic, (and it never has been able to become so in the United States,) it grinds down and reduces souls to such a degree that nothing is left but a fine dust, a sort of intellectual and moral powder which, it is true, is an obstacle to nothing, but which creates nothing either. To build an edifice, stones are needed, sand will not suffice.
Christian individualism makes the stones, and the democratic party has just perceived it. In a country where independence of soul has acclimated independence in all its forms, men may indeed bow the head sometimes to democracy allied to slavery; but this debas.e.m.e.nt has a limit, and the time is coming when they will raise their heads. Strong beliefs are a strong rampart, the slaves of truth are free men, and true independence begins in the heart. To have convictions in order to have characters, to have believers in order to have citizens, to have energetic minds in order to have powerful nations, to have resistance in order to have support--such is the programme of individualism. Show me a country where men are proud enough not to bow before the majority, where they do not think themselves lost when they depart from, the beaten track, and jostle of received opinions; and I will admit that there it will be possible to practise democracy without falling into servitude.
There is but one country of individual belief, that could attempt the alliance, hitherto deemed impossible, of democracy and liberty. The theory in accordance with which the public liberties of England have the aristocracy for their essential basis, is admitted as an axiom; without contemning this element of social organization, it is advisable to mine deeper than this to discover the true foundation of liberty. Individual belief--this is the foundation. The more we reflect, the more we discover that the essential thing is not the forms of government, or even the relations of the different cla.s.ses, but the moral state of the community. Are men there? Have souls become masters of themselves? Are characters formed? Has the force of resistance appeared? Whoever shall have replied to these questions will have decided, knowingly or unknowingly, whether liberty be possible.
I do not know that any people should be excluded from liberty; only all are bound to pursue it by the path that leads to it, by earnestness of convictions, by internal affranchis.e.m.e.nt, which signifies by the Gospel.
We may seek in vain, we shall find no means comparable to this (I speak in the political point of view) when the question is to make citizens.
To place one"s self under the absolute authority of G.o.d and his word, is to acquire in the face of mere parties, majorities, general opinions, an independence that nothing can supply. The independence within is always translated without; he who is independent of men, in the domain of beliefs and of thoughts, will be equally so in the domain of public affairs. Thus democracy itself will not degenerate into socialism. No one has been able to point out the slightest symptom of socialism in the United States. Notwithstanding, democracy is fully complete there, and the election of Mr. Lincoln, once drover, once flatboatman, once rail-splitter, once clerk--of Mr. Lincoln, the son of his works, who has succeeded by his own powers in becoming a well-informed man and an orator, this election proves certainly that American equality is not menaced by the success of the republican party. It menaces only the evil democracy, which, under the guidance of the slavery party, sought to force the nation into the path of socialism. But it will not succeed in this; the question has just been decided. Between these two systems, which are to contend for contemporaneous communities, between socialism and individualism, the choice of the United States is made.
Before witnessing the affranchis.e.m.e.nt of the slaves, we shall, therefore, witness the affranchis.e.m.e.nt of American politics. They have endured a shameful yoke, and received sad lessons. Since Jefferson, the born enemy of true liberalism, founded the Democratic party, the United States had continued to descend the declivity of radicalism; a work of relentless levelling was thenceforth pursued, and the domain of the conscience became gradually invaded. The democratic party found its fulcrum in the South. The slave States forced the enclosure of the private tribunal, and confiscated in behalf of the State the inviolable rights of the individual: neither thought, the press, nor the pulpit, were free among them; the fundamental maxims of Puritan tradition were sacrificed by them one after the other. They did more: thanks to them, men were beginning to learn in the free States how to set to work to pervert their own consciences, and to subst.i.tute for it respect for sovereign majorities. Every day, crying iniquities were covered by the pretext: "If we were just, we should compromise the national unity, or we should risk losing the votes secured to our party." Violence, menace, brutality, and corruption, were boldly introduced into political struggles. Men became habituated to evil: the most odious crimes, the Southern laws reducing to legal slavery every free negro who should not quit the soil of the States, hardly raised a murmur of disapprobation; the United States seemed on the point of losing that faculty which nothing can survive--the faculty of indignation.
Behold in what school the democratic party had placed the American people--that n.o.ble people which, despite the grave faults with which it may be reproached, represents in the main many of the lofty principles which are allied to the future of modern communities. The reign of the Democratic party would form the subject of an inglorious history; in it we should see figure the glorification of servitude, piracy applied to international right, and, in conclusion, those facts of corruption and waste which served to crown its last Presidency. The most consistent champions of the doctrines and practices of the democratic party, are those men who have just declared that votes are valid only on condition of giving the majority to slavery, and that a regular election is a sufficient cause for separation.