30

THE NATURE OF THAT CONFLICT.

demand a statesmanship that recognizes as its animating principle justice to all. On that alone can the vast structure of the future republic solidly stand.

Contemplating such various and colossal interests, each of which must be satisfied, we can not fail to remark how transitory all constitutional forms are liable to be, except in so far as they are pervaded by that immortal principle. While we view with veneration the political work of our forefathers, it is well for us to profit by their example. Their first attempt-the Confederation-was, in their own estimation, an acknowledged failure; their second attempt -the Constitution-we have outgrown. Wherever it compromised justice for the sake of expediency, it has proved to be an insufficient guide. A great nation must recognize principle, and not form, as its rule of life; as it gathers knowledge, it must not hesitate to modify its written Constitution according to its improving light.

They illustrate the dominion of Nature over man. Opinions of Mr. Webster and Mr. Seward.

Nature will dominate over man, and will constrain his actions. We need not flatter ourselves that we are to be any exception. The laws of the world are unswerving, unvarying in their operation. There is nothing privileged in the universe. It was such considerations as these that led Mr.Webster to declare in the Senate in 1850 that there is a law superior to those of the republic, a law settling things forever with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment-the law of Nature. "I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of Nature, nor to re-enact the will of God." Impressed with the events of the eight following years (1858), Mr. Seward, referring to the threatening antagonism of the times, declared, "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think it accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case

altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces."

Possibility of escaping from the consequences of

ences.

Then must we submit ourselves unresistingly to the tyranny of Nature, and accept things as they come with stoical indifference, or Mohammedsuch natural influ- an resignation? Shall we give up this Union because we see that it is threatened in all directions with dangers? Has not science taught us that we may deliver ourselves from such evils, and increase at once our happiness and power by a right interpretation of Nature-by availing ourselves of the unvarying operation of those laws which we can not directly resist? Opposing conditions we may reconcile; conflicts that are irrepressible we may manage; disasters we may avert, or even turn into blessings.

How numerous are the historical incidents to which we might refer in proof of our capability of delivering ourselves from the action of natural laws, though we can not modify their character nor arrest their operation. No portion of the annals of humanity is more melancholy

ines.

than the records of great famines and pesEscape from fam- tilences. A famine remotely depends on meteorological or other natural causesdroughts, or wet weather, or vegetable disease. When we read that in the famine A.D. 1030, so dire was the distress in Europe that cannibalism was resorted to, and human flesh was cooked and sold, shall we affirm that our forefathers were thus chastened by the ALMIGHTY for their sins, and considering that such inflictions have in modern society for the most part ceased, that He is more merciful to us? Or shall we not rather concede the inva riability of His decrees, and attribute our deliverance to our own industry, which, having developed modern commerce, compensates for the scarcity of one country by the plenty of another?

32

AVOIDANCE OF NATURAL INFLUENCES.

One of the latest events of this kind-it ought to have been the last in modern civilization—the famine in Ireland — instructively illustrates these principles. There were far-seeing men who had earnestly remonstrated against the improvidence of so numerous a community relying for support on the production of only one esculent. The disease that struck the potato left all the cereals untouched. It was not the anger of Heaven kindled against a people who, perhaps, were not more meet for the Destroyer than many others of our sinful raceit was a vicious system of agriculture that permitted the catastrophe and whose fault was that?

lences.

The history of great pestilences teaches us the same Escape from pesti- lesson with equal emphasis. The plague of Athens raged so frightfully that it absolutely broke the spirit and power of that capital. The plague that was brought to Rome by the army of Verus gave a death-blow to literature and art; the ancient world never recovered from it. Five thousand people died in one day in Rome; it destroyed many of the most illustrious men in the empire. A century later, half the population were carried off by the plague of Gallienus. The Latin language itself was corrupted. In the plague of Justinian, so awful was the devastation that the Greek pronunciation, and even the writing, changed. It was estimated that one third of the population of France died of the plague of 1348.

Do we, in modern times, submit in apathy to such appalling visitations? Even in antiquity there were learned men, far in advance of their age, who anticipated what slow experience has taught us, who serenely encountered a storm of misrepresentation and odium from their ignorant, interested, and superstitious contemporaries. Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Greek physician, Hippocrates, insisted that these calamities may

be prevented by rigorous cleanliness, fresh air, light, and other sanitary means; that they are not punishments inflicted by the vengeful gods, but incidents of Nature that men may avoid.

Necessity of the

to the statesman.

If, then, we can find deliverance from such devastating calamities as famine and pestilence, may we study of Nature not hope to abate the less obvious but not less fatal influences that are unceasingly acting upon us. We have only to study Nature in order to prevail over her. The progress of knowledge and that of civilization are proceeding with an equal step; but for full fruition we must wait for the noontide of science which is yet to come.

Let us trust, then, that the assertion of the irrepressible nature of our political conflict is not altogether correct. If the opposing conditions originate in physical causes that can be understood, the difficulty may come within the reach of human control. Especially is this to be hoped for in a nation in which personal freedom prevails, for the reasoning power of a community increases with its liberty. American civilization, operating through educational means, rests all its hopes on the development of reason. It trusts itself, without reserve, to what every day is making more and more apparent, that the tendency of knowledge is to produce unison of opinion by bringing men nearer and nearer to the truth. In the domains of science that are most advanced there is no dissent. In mathematics and astronomy there are neither heretics nor rebels. Error, though as intractable as adamant, may be dissipated by light converging upon it, though it can never be annihilated by blows, no matter how powerful they may be.

We may, then, trust for a solution of our future politMr. Calhoun's opin- ical difficulties in a philosophical study of ion on that point. their causes. A deep insight into this truth

34

CHARACTER OF AMERICAN STATESMANSHIP.

led Mr. Calhoun to declare that, in the discussion of our political problems, we must not deal with humanity alone, but must include Nature. And when we reflect on the comparatively isolated position of the republic, having no conterminous political rival, and in that respect differing widely from European powers, which are unceasingly pressing on each other, we may perceive that statesmanship here must necessarily assume a simple and yet a higher form, since it must deal more with Nature and less with humanity. In Europe statesmanship must tend to assume an empirical, in America a scientific character. We must admit that the former homogeneous condition of our nation is disturbed; that influclimate-changed ences have been in operation which have decomposed us into at least two separate people; and that this process of segmentation will be repeated. In vain shall we seek to recombine or to produce homogeneousness again. All efforts in that direction would be only time and labor wasted. We are constrained to accept this as an accomplished fact, and seek to produce concord out of the antagonism. In the social as in a physical machine, wheels that are engaged with one another may run with an opposing motion to their common point of contact, and yet agree in producing a harmonious result.

Co-ordination of

Americans.

To retard the future tendency to race-variety, or, if that be impossible, to bring into unison race-diversities, such is the problem for the American statesman to solve. Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, forcibly pointed out the stern necessity of our position. "We can not separate, we can not remove our respective sections from each other. We can not build an impassable wall between them. A husband and a wife may be di

Absolute necessity ·

of finding means

for such co-ordina- vorced, and go out of the presence and be yond the reach of each other, but the differ

tion.