CONSERVATIVE ADDRESS AND RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE CONVENTION HELD IN LOUISVILLE, FEBRUARY, 1859 .................................. 171 DEDICATION. TO THE HON. JOHN STUART MILL, OF ENGLAND, AUTHOR OF TREATISES ON "LIBERTY AND "REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT." IN affording myself the gratification of making you the small compliment of this dedication, it is not merely as a tribute of respect to the profoundest, most enlightened political thinker of Europe, but as a mode of acknowledging the great gratification received from finding such singular coincidence of thought between us as to great essentials, though differing much as to minor matters. This coincidence has also struck others who are acquainted with my political writings of the last twenty-five years, and serves to show that difference of country and education does not necessarily cause difference of opinion as to the fundamentals of good government. Sincere thinkers have long agreed that a government of law is the desideratum, and the true method of best securing such government was the great problem to be solved. We Americans confidently believed and arrogantly boasted that our institutions, as developed in their practical working, were a most successful solution of the problem. The more intelligent and considerate among us no longer make that boast. The dearbought experience of the last four years has undeceived us. Nothing is more common than for intelligent Americans frankly to recant the cherished delusion of a lifetime, and avow their opinions that all the great essentials of liberty are better secured in England than in this country; that is, hers is a much nearer (vii) approach than ours to a true, practical government of law, giving better security to all personal private rights, and affording much the better chance for wise, uncorrupt administration of the government. This is a most mortifying confession for an American to make to an Englishman, and to no one of my fellow-citizens can it be more acutely so than to myself. No one participated more largely in the almost universal marvel among even the thinking, informed men here, that with the light of our successful experiment on a Representative Republic the intelligence of England could so patiently endure hereditary rule. While the inconsiderate are exulting with unstinted joy over our military success over the detestable rebellion, most of our worth and intelligence are moaning over the probable permanent destruction of constitution-secured liberty. The coincidence of opinion between us extends even to the extreme point of giving suffrage to women. This has been a cherished creed with me for more than fifteen years. It has, however, resulted from no latitudinary democracy. Though a born child and educated son of that school, and still believing that every white person in a Republic who pays a tax, however small, ought to have a right to vote, yet I have long been convinced that we were very wrong in having no restriction to the right and in conferring it so recklessly upon unprepared foreigners. This, however, is past remedy and cannot now be changed. In seeking a counteracting check to the evil, the conservative element of woman's suffrage occurred to me, as it probably did to you, as the only practical, because the only attainable remedy. It seems to look like a mere extension of the democratic principle, and therefore may obtain popular assent, while it will never be given to any other remedy that I can devise. That it would prove highly conservative, there can be no doubt. Women generally are lovers of order and quiet. As a class they are on the average much more moral than men, and much more under the influence of religion-that great conservative element of our society. The objection that it would practically give two votes to married men has no proper validity, for it would not be an alteration for the worse to require every voter to be either a husband or a father. Society has a right to demand at least that amount of prima facie evidence of conservatism, and it would be much less ob noxious to popular prejudice and ultra democracy than a property qualification. If you took the trouble of looking into the first volume of my Essays, which was sent you, the title of the chapter in which the coincidence of our opinions is most apparent will probably have caused it to escape your notice. It is the chapter on "The New Constitution of Kentucky." The subject caused an attempted theoretical development of some of the main fundamentals of republican government, and the discussion of topics that have since been handled with so much ability by yourself. But, sir, the true motive for the obtrusion of these remarks is the desire I have felt to give a public expression of my congratulations to you and other workers of England in the conservative cause of liberty, for your bold, novel plan of electing members of Parliament, the better to insure a practical protection and representation to minorities. That protection was the main idea upon which our written Constitutions were made. But, as Madison foresaw, the want of some such practical power of selfprotection, some extraneous power to cause the Constitution to be obeyed, has caused its supposed ample security to prove a mere delusion in the very hour of its utmost need. Our dearbought experience of the last four years has fully proved that you cannot well do too much in that direction; that is, you cannot be too solicitous about bridling and curbing the arbitrary will of your majorities. This is all the more essential for you, as your judiciary have no veto power over the omnipotence of your Parliament. Such omnipotence anywhere in terrestrial government is what we Americans have been taught to view with abhorrence. If you will excuse me for saying so, we contemplate your nation as in the unenviable position of enjoying freedom only by the permission of its own servants. To enjoy it as we shall have to do in all the long future only by the permission of the majority, or rather of the majority party, is a degradation of the same character, only somewhat less perhaps in degree. To every enlightened lover of true civil liberty either is sufficiently degrading to the manhood of those who make the proud boast of being freemen. That such is our present degraded condition is a most melancholy fact. All the guarantees of our Constitution in favor of liberty, free speech, free press, free ballot, jury trial, habeas cor |