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CHAPTER XXIV.

INCHOATE POLITICS.

"Do not make the Buck Gardener !"--Old Proverb.

THE science of politics relates to the formation and enforcement of the public will, and it distinguishes between different stages thereof; as, for instance, between the partially-formed, the immature or selfish, and the perfected, mature, and truespirited public will. Inchoate politics exist where it is in the stages first described, and where, consequently, the rightful public will is more or less suppressed.

In all countries and under all kinds of social conditions are there contests between personages, classes, and interests that seek to impose their selfish wills upon the body-politic; and good social order reigns only there, where these are properly counteracted and harmonized. To do so is indeed the true object of all healthy political action. It makes no difference in principle, whether a king's egotism, or that of a class, or a special race, or of a particular party, or of some great interest, or of a multitude, is to be corrected and converted into a rightful public will; the ever-incumbent social and political duty of all is to assist in all movements that tend to this purpose. If it is neglected, or worse yet, if selfishness is enabled to make its will the law of the land, or to dictate to the country its dynastic, pecuniary, partisan, or social policy; then there is misgovernment either actually in power, or in close proximity of it. Might then goes for right, and it does not lie in the mouths of those, whose lack of resistance to wrong has brought about this pernicious state of things to complain and lament; for they but testify to their own remissness in the discharge of their public duties. People who propose to make the politics of their country a running fight, and get beat at it, have nobody to blame but themselves. They can get right only by making their government a counteracting agency of wrong, and a harmonizer between conflicting interests.

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The most serious question before any human society is, therefore, always: what processes and organisms are in action among the people for evolving a public will, that has a right to be enforced, because it embodies a lawful public spirit; or, what amounts to the same thing, because it counteracts an unlawful public spirit? That the United States have on paper, and by constitutional theory, public functionaries, political bodies, and popular mediums, which are to form, at the right time and place, an intelligent, virtuous, and wise public will, cannot be denied; but equally indisputable is it, that in practice these several authorities have been, if not set aside, yet jostled out of their appropriate functions. Our politics are, from this cause, but the embodiment of perpetual conflicts between the respective selfishnesses, which claim the right to war upon each other and society for ever. This claim is, indeed, put forth, by a distinguished writer, in the modest garb: "that if let alone politically, conflicting interests will neutralize themselves, and thus bring eternal harmony out of eternal strife." This doctrine was also expressed by Bastiat in the phrase "Harmonies economiques." It is undoubtedly true, if to the words italicized it were added: "provided they are not armed with political power to self-perpetuate themselves." A private interest, whose will is law, is a standing public danger, while an interest subject to law may be, yea is, a constant incentive to produce its own and others' welfare.

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The question thus recurs: What political action has a right to call itself law? All admit the rightfulness of the natural laws as found by science, but are they political laws? Certainly And why not? Because social interhabitation causes the "necessary relations between persons and things," whose reason is not nature, but the perennial welfare of society. And this requires that both the Past-being the cause of many existing conditions; and the Present-being the cause of future events should be taken into account, and formulated into public action under the guidance of experience, present motive, and future policy. The salus publica furnishes the ethical or moral incentive; while individual welfare supplies the egoistic stimulant. Neither dare be ignored in legislation; on the contrary, we cannot, as Roscher says: understand any phase of social life exhaustively unless we understand the whole; nor can we comprehend it without a knowledge of its main phases." The natural laws do not determine the civil marriage relations for persons living in society, nor those of heirships, nor of property, nor of roads, nor of inter-state commerce, and, least of all, of the

protection necessary to the weak, the young, and the aged. The natural laws prompt man to nothing beyond the use of whatever force and strength, both offensive and defensive, there may be in each individual. But social and political laws offer him those manifold opportunities and capacities, which he needs to enhance his existence; that is to say: to cease to be a mere animal, and to become a social being. Once that, and the necessity of constituting human society into an organism so as to secure human progress (civilization) becomes imperative. A measurement of rights and duties follows next, and ultimately attains permanence as an ever-renewed remeasurement of rightful relations. They are rightfully enacted into laws, if made with the comprehensiveness advocated by Roscher. That is done when the right of all to urge their desires and interests and to pursue their happiness, is intelligently, virtuously, and wisely measured by the standard of the perennial welfare of society.

America's serious mistake, now its chronic disease, has been, that it made the desires and interests of its individuals the standard of public conduct. This was safe, while the immensity of the landed area was in itself a limit to disproportioned personal aggrandizement, because there were no conflicts, which surroundings would not settle quicker and easier, than any social or political authority. Emigration was then the ever-ready resort as against the social inequalities and oppressions that would develop themselves in localities, and equally so against any political rule, that would be either imposed by Great Britain or arise in American society itself. But when the passion for real estate had to contend with a like passion within the same society; when to emigrate meant the deprivation of cherished comforts, of family support, and a remitter to a pioneer life, that had no other resource than that inherent in the individual, it presented a choice between natural freedom with comparative helplessness on the one side, and social order and assistance on the other. It was a choice between using the energy that was in each person in a struggle with the pursuits and interests of others, or using it in a dead struggle with nature. It was, in other words, a question of natural strength in the latter case, and one of social strength in the former. At first the choice was mostly for emigration; but year after year the number of these diminished, and those of permanent settlers increased. And of course this augmented and multiplied competitive existence in what may well be called, the home places; and this caused again more frequent and more intense necessities for measuring rights and duties, and for

doing it by a true standard. Unmeasured desires and interests could not be this for society; for, being only individual wills, they could not be public wills, nor the social and political laws of the land. They were inchoate politics, and meant not peace, but perpetual strife.

The American revolution was generally accepted as a political victory for making the unlimited desires of the individuals composing society the standard public will. But there were personages like Alexander Hamilton, Jay, Dickinson, and Livingstone, who questioned this both as a doctrine as well. as a fact. They saw, that however necessary it may have been for the purpose of overcoming a practical difficulty, to give in that emergency, the political power to the majority, because without it it could not be an actuality at all; that yet it was an inconsistency with the principle of constitutional law. The proceedings going on during the revolutionary war for the formation of a Constitution, were fostered or thwarted as popular instincts saw therein either an attempt to restrict their cherished right to control the action of government, or a wise forecast that perceived the necessity of regular public organs for the formation and enforcement of an authoritative public will. The Articles of Confederation were really a drawn-battle between them, and satisfied neither side. The fight was at once renewed after peace was declared, in fact it began before, on the question of raising revenues by taxation, and by 1787 the arena for the settlement of the question, was the constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia, May 14th, and completed its labors September 17th of that year. The result was a Constitution. that was meant to do away with inchoate politics in the United States, but it failed to accomplish this, from causes now to be explained.

The instrument embodied a much higher public organism, than the common politicians of the United States were capable of using in politics. They first thought of defeating it, but Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, with the understood approval of Washington, prevented that by timely publications. So, after it was adopted its opponents had no resource left but to smother it through a weak imitation of British party usages, which had in fact been practised in the Colonies, and were continued in the States. The trouble was, that the usages did not fit the Constitution, nor did it fit them. Both might have been better without the other. But there was after all too much real political good sense to set aside the Constitution altogether, and too much habitual partisanism to forego the usages; hence both were kept up much to the injury of truth. And thus something, which

nobody anticipated; and which no sane man, whether he was a rogue or a patriot, 'would have instituted, and no convention would have sanctioned-an irresponsible party government-developed piecemeal, and confounded American politics. We say: confounded; because this sort of government, though professedly supported, really never had the free good-will of any true American. By the middle of the nineteenth century both parties had grown so corrupt, that it was absolutely impossible for either of them to recoil and to evolve any sound principle, or to originate a thoroughly wholesome measure.

The patience of Washington, Knox, Hamilton, Madison, Morris, Jay and others, who wanted some public authority that would evolve ethics and correct unripe and corrupt public wills, was sorely tried during the war, and more still after peace was declared. Their sorrow was, that the demagogues, who wanted to fabricate private credit out of public credit with a view to abusing both, hid their nefarious designs behind misled public opinion, and used elections for their purposes. And there was no way to counteract these movements, except to create a federal government, and thus have some ethical developments independent of local public or private immoralities. The Commissioners of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia said in their joint report to their respective legislatures, September 14, 1786: "The situation of the United States is so delicate and critical, as to call for an exertion of the united virtue and wisdom of all the members of the Union." Hamilton, Madison, Dickinson, and Randolf were among these commissioners. There were hundreds of Daniel Shays in the States. Trade was deranged, the bills of credit issued by the state governments had grown worthless, and the legislatures catered to various so-called "relief measures," that were nothing but brutish tyrannies of bad men over good people. Men like Governor Livingstone in New Jersey, and the judges of the courts of Rhode Island, were hated and denounced by demagogues for their opposition to a false public will; and social and political anarchy seemed impending over all.

Luxurious living had grown up during the war in the seaports; the rich vied with each other in extravagance, and those of more limited means itched to imitate them. Even the country people had caught the infection from army officers that returned after the war, full of desires for an easy existence. The public will had, indeed, ceased to distinguish between right and wrong, and mistook lawlessness for liberty. Demagogues found instruments ready to their hands, in large numbers of malcontents, who were ever vociferating for "extending the rights of the people." That

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