THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA

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THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
BY
HENRY VAN DYKE

Professor of English at Princeton University
Hyde Lecturer, University of Paris, 1908-9
Hon. LL.D., University of Geneva
Hon. F.R.S.L., London
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1912
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.
Reprinted March, October, 1910; February, 1912.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO MADAME
ELISABETH SAINTE-MARIE PERRIN, NÉE BAZIN

To inscribe your name upon this volume, dear Madame, is to recall delightful memories of my year in France. Your sympathy encouraged me in the adventurous choice of a subject so large and simple for a course of lectures at the Sorbonne. While they were in the making, you acted as an audience of one, in the long music-room at Hostel and in the forest of St. Gervais, and gave gentle counsels of wisdom in regard to the points likely to interest and retain a larger audience of Parisians in the Amphithéâtre Richelieu. Then, the university adventure being ended without mishap, your skill as a translator admirably clothed the lectures in your own lucid language, and sent them out to help a little in strengthening the ties of friendship between France and America. Grateful for all the charming hospitality of your country, which made my year happy and, I hope, not unfruitful, I dedicate to you this book on the Spirit of America, because you have done so much to make me understand, appreciate, and admire the true Spirit of France.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

PREFACE

This book contains the first seven of a series of twenty-six conférences, given in the winter of 1908-1909, on the Hyde Foundation, at the University of Paris, and repeated in part at other universities of France. They were delivered in English, and afterward translated into French and published under the title of Le Génie de l’Amérique. In making this American edition it has not seemed worth while to attempt to disguise the fact that these chapters were prepared as lectures to be given to a French audience, and that their purpose, in accordance with the generous design of the founder of the chair, was to promote an intelligent sympathy between France and the United States. If the book finds readers among my countrymen, I beg them, as they read, to remember its origin. Perhaps it may have an interest of its own, as a report, made in Paris, of the things that seem vital, significant, and creative in the life and character of the American people.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

There is an ancient amity between France and America, which is recorded in golden letters in the chronicles of human liberty. In one of the crowded squares of New York there stands a statue of a young nobleman, slender, elegant, and brave, springing forward to offer his sword to the cause of freedom. The name under that figure is La Fayette. In one of the broad avenues of Paris there stands a statue of a plain gentleman, grave, powerful, earnest, sitting his horse like a victor and lifting high his sword to salute the star of France. The name under that figure is Washington.

It is well that in both lands such a friendship between two great peoples should be

“Immortalized by art’s immortal praise.”

It is better still that it should be warmed and strengthened by present efforts for the common good: that the world should see the two great republics standing together for justice and fair play at Algeciras, working together for the world’s peace at the Congress of the Hague.

But in order that a friendship like this should really continue and increase, there must be something more than a sentimental sympathy. There must be a mutual comprehension, a real understanding, between the two peoples. Romantic love, the little Amor with the bow and arrows, may be as blind as the painters and novelists represent him. But true friendship, the strong god Amicitia, is open-eyed and clear-sighted. So long as Frenchmen insist upon looking at America merely as the country of the Sky-scraper and the Almighty Dollar, so long as Americans insist upon regarding France merely as the home of the Yellow Novel and the Everlasting Dance, so long will it be difficult for the ancient amity between these two countries to expand and deepen into a true and vital concord.

France and America must know each other better. They must learn to look each into the other’s mind, to read each the other’s heart. They must recognize each other less by their foibles and more by their faiths, less by the factors of national weakness and more by the elements of national strength. Then, indeed, I hope and believe they will be good and faithful friends.

It is to promote this serious and noble purpose that an American gentleman, Mr. James Hazen Hyde, has founded two chairs, one at the University of Paris, and one at Harvard University, for an annual interchange of professors, (and possibly of ideas,) between France and America. Through this generous arrangement we have had the benefit of hearing, in the United States, MM. Doumic, Rod, de Régnier, Gaston Deschamps, Hugues Le Roux, Mabilleau, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Millet, Le Braz, Tardieu, and the Vicomte d’Avenel. On the same basis Messrs. Barrett Wendell, Santayana, Coolidge, and Baker have spoken at the Sorbonne and at the other French Universities. This year Harvard has called me from the chair of English Literature at Princeton University, and the authorities of the Sorbonne have graciously accorded me the hospitality of this Amphithéâtre Richelieu, to take my small part in this international mission.

Do you ask for my credentials as an ambassador? Let me omit such formalities as academic degrees, professorships, and doctorates, and present my claims in more simple and humble form. A family residence of two hundred and fifty years in America, whither my ancestors came from Holland in 1652; a working life of thirty years which has taken me among all sorts and conditions of men, in almost all the states of the Union from Maine to Florida and from New York to California; a personal acquaintance with all the Presidents except one since Lincoln; a friendship with many woodsmen, hunters, and fishermen in the forests where I spend the summers; an entire independence of any kind of political, ecclesiastical, or academic partisanship; and some familiarity with American literature, its origins, and its historical relations,—these are all the claims that I can make to your attention. They are small enough, to be sure, but such as they are you may find in them a partial explanation of the course which these lectures are to take.

You will understand that if I have chosen a subject which is not strictly academic, it is because the best part of my life has been spent out of doors among men. You will perceive that my failure to speak of Boston as the centre of the United States may have some connection with the accident that I am not a Bostonian. You will account for the absence of a suggestion that any one political party is the only hope of the Republic by the fact that I am not a politician. You will detect in my attitude towards literature the naïve conviction that it is not merely an art existing for art’s sake, but an expression of the inner life and a factor in the moral character. Finally, you will conclude, with your French logicality of mind, that I must be an obstinate idealist, because I am going to venture to lecture to you on The Spirit of America. That is as much as to say that I believe man is led by an inner light, and that the ideals, moral convictions, and vital principles of a people are the most important factors in their history.

All these things are true. They cannot be denied or concealed. I would willingly confess them and a hundred more, if I might contribute but a little towards the purpose of these lectures: to help some of the people of France to understand more truly the real people of America,—a people of idealists engaged in a great practical task.

I
THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE

THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA

I
THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE

There is a proverb which affirms that in order to know a man you have only to travel with him for a week. Almost all of us have had experiences, sometimes happy and sometimes the reverse, which seem to confirm this saying.

A journey in common is a sort of involuntary confessional. There is a certain excitement, a confusion and quickening of perceptions and sensations, in the adventures, the sudden changes, the new and striking scenes of travel. The bonds of habit are loosened. Impulses of pleasure and of displeasure, suddenly felt, make themselves surprisingly visible. Wishes and appetites and prejudices which are usually dressed in a costume of words so conventional as to amount to a disguise now appear unmasked, and often in very scanty costume, as if they had been suddenly called from their beds by an alarm of fire on a steamboat, or, to use a more agreeable figure, by the announcement in a hotel on the Righi of approaching sunrise.

There is another thing which plays, perhaps, a part in this power of travel to make swift disclosures. I mean the vague sense of release from duties and restraints which comes to one who is away from home. Much of the outward form of our daily conduct is regulated by the structure and operation of the social machinery in which we quite inevitably find our place. But when all this is left behind, when a man no longer feels the pressure of the neighbouring wheels, the constraint of the driving-belt which makes them all move together, nor the restraint of the common task to which the collective force of all is applied, he is “outside of the machine.”

The ordinary sight-seeing, uncommercial traveller—the tourist, the globe-trotter—is not usually a person who thinks much of his own responsibilities, however conscious he may be of his own importance. His favourite proverb is, “When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do.” But in the application of the proverb, he does not always inquire whether the particular thing which he is invited to do is done by the particular kind of Roman that he would like to be, if he lived in Rome, or by some other kind of Roman quite different, even contrary. He is liberated. He is unaccountable. He is a butterfly visiting a strange garden. He has only to enjoy himself according to his caprice and to accept the invitations of the flowers which please him most.

This feeling of irresponsibility in travel corresponds somewhat to the effect of wine. The tongue is loosened. Unexpected qualities and inclinations are unconsciously confessed. A new man, hitherto unknown, appears upon the scene. And this new man often seems more natural, more spontaneous, more vivid, than our old acquaintance. “At last,” we say to ourselves, “we know the true inwardness, the real reality of this fellow. He is not acting a part now. He is coming to the surface. We see what a bad fellow, or what a good fellow, he is. In vino et in viatore veritas!”

But is it quite correct, after all, this first impression that travel is the great revealer of character? Is it the essential truth, the fundamental truth, la vraie verité, that we discover through this glass? Or is it, rather, a novel aspect of facts which are real enough, indeed, but not fundamental,—an aspect so novel that it presents itself as more important than it really is? To put the question in brief, and in a practical form, is a railway train the place to study character, or is it only a place to observe characteristics?

There is, of course, a great deal of complicated and quarrelsome psychology involved in this seeming simple question,—for example, the point at issue between the determinists and libertarians, the philosophers of the unconscious and the philosophers of the ideal,—all of which I will prudently pass by, in order to make a very practical and common-sense observation.

Ordinary travel usually obscures and confuses quite as much as it reveals in the character of the traveller. His excitement, his moral detachment, his intellectual dislocation, unless he is a person of extraordinary firmness and poise, are apt to make him lose himself much more than they help him to find himself. In these strange and transient experiences his action lacks meaning and relation. He is carried away. He is uprooted. He is swept along by the current of external novelty. This may be good for him or bad for him. I do not ask this question. I am not moralizing. I am observing. The point is that under these conditions I do not see the real man more clearly, but less clearly. To paraphrase a Greek saying, I wish not to study Philip when he is a little exhilarated, but Philip when he is sober: not when he is at a Persian banquet, but when he is with his Macedonians.

Moreover, if I mistake not, the native environment, the chosen or accepted task, the definite place in the great world-work, is part of the man himself. There are no human atoms. Relation is inseparable from quality. Absolute isolation would be invisibility. Displacement is deformity. You remember what Emerson says in his poem, Each and All:—

“The delicate shells lay on the shore:
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home,
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.”

So I would see my man where he belongs, in the midst of the things which have produced him and which he has helped to produce. I would understand something of his relation to them. I would watch him at his work, the daily labour which not only earns his living but also moulds and forms his life. I would see how he takes hold of it, with reluctance or with alacrity, and how he regards it, with honour or with contempt. I would consider the way in which he uses its tangible results; to what purpose he applies them; for what objects he spends the fruit of his toil; what kind of bread he buys with the sweat of his brow or his brain. I would trace in his environment the influence of those who have gone before him. I would read the secrets of his heart in the uncompleted projects which he forms for those who are to come after him. In short, I would see the roots from which he springs, and the hopes in which his heart flowers.

Thus, and thus only, the real man, the entire man, would become more clear to me. He might appear more or less admirable. I might like him more, or less. That would make no difference. The one thing that is sure is that I should know him better. I should know the soul of the man.

If this is true, then, of the individual, how much more is it true of a nation, a people? The inward life, the real life, the animating and formative life of a people is infinitely difficult to discern and understand.

There are a hundred concourses of travel in modern Europe where you may watch “the passing show” of all nations with vast amusement,—on the Champs-Elysées in May or June, in the park of Aix-les-Bains in midsummer, at the Italian Lakes in autumn, in the colonnade of Shepherd’s Hotel at Cairo in January or February, on the Pincian Hill at Rome in March or April. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, at this continuous performance, this international vaudeville, and observe British habits, French manners, German customs, American eccentricities, whatever interests you in the varied entertainment. But do not imagine that in this way you will learn to know the national personality of England, or France, or Germany, or America. That is something which is never exported.

Some drop of tincture or extract of it, indeed, may pass from one land to another in a distinct and concentrated individuality, as when a Lafayette comes to America, or a Franklin to France. Some partial portrait and imperfect image of it, indeed, may be produced in literature. And there the reader who is wise enough to separate the head-dress from the head, and to discern the figure beneath the costume, may trace at least some features of the real life represented and expressed in poem or romance, in essay or discourse. But even this literature, in order to be vitally understood, must be interpreted in relation to the life of the men who have produced it and the men for whom it was produced.

Authors are not algebraic quantities,—X, Y, Z, &c. They express spiritual actions and reactions in the midst of a given environment. What they write is in one sense a work of art, and therefore to be judged accurately by the laws of that art. But when this judgment is made, when the book has been assigned its rank according to its substance, its structure, its style, there still remains another point of view from which it is to be considered. The book is a document of life. It is the embodiment of a spiritual protest, perhaps; or it is the unconscious confession of an intellectual ambition; or it is an appeal to some popular sentiment; or it is the expression of the craving for some particular form of beauty or joy; or it is a tribute to some personal or social excellence; or it is the record of some vision of perfection seen in

“The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet’s dream.”

In every case, it is something that comes out of a heritage of ideals and adds to them.

The possessor of this heritage is the soul of a people. This soul of a people lives at home.

It is for this reason that America has been imperfectly understood, and in some respects positively misunderstood in Europe. The American tourists, who have been numerous (and noticeable) on all the European highways of pleasure and byways of curiosity during the last forty years, have made a vivid impression on the people of the countries which they have visited. They are recognized. They are remembered. It is not necessary to inquire whether this recognition contains more of admiration or of astonishment, whether the forms which it often takes are flattering or the reverse. On this point I am sufficiently American myself to be largely indifferent. But the point on which I feel strongly is that the popular impression of America which is derived only or chiefly from the observation of American travellers is, and must be, deficient, superficial, and in many ways misleading.

If this crowd of American travellers were a hundred times as numerous, it would still fail to be representative, it would still be unable to reveal the Spirit of America, just because it is composed of travellers.

I grant you that it includes many, perhaps almost all, of the different types and varieties of Americans, good, bad, and mediocre. You will find in this crowd some very simple people and some very complicated people; country folk and city folk; strenuous souls who come to seek culture and relaxed souls who come to spend money; millionnaires and school-teachers, saloon-keepers and university professors; men of the East and men of the West; Yankees, Knickerbockers, Hoosiers, Cavaliers, and Cowboys. Surely, you say, from such a large collection of samples one ought to be able to form an adequate judgment of the stuff.

But no; on the contrary, the larger the collection of samples, seen under the detaching and exaggerating conditions of travel, the more confused and the less sane and penetrating your impression will be, unless by some other means you have obtained an idea of the vital origin, the true relation, the common inheritance, and the national unity of these strange and diverse travellers who come from beyond the sea.

Understand, I do not mean to say that European scholars and critics have not studied American affairs and institutions to advantage and thrown a clear light of intelligence, of sympathy, of criticism, upon the history and life of the United States. A philosophical study like that of Tocqueville, a political study like that of Mr. James Bryce, a series of acute social observations like those of M. Paul Bourget, M. André Tardieu, M. Paul Boutmy, M. Weiller, an industrial study like that of M. d’Avenel, or a religious study like that of the Abbé Klein,—these are of great value. But they are quite apart, quite different, from the popular impression of America in Europe, an impression which is, and perhaps to some extent must naturally be, based upon the observations of Americans en voyage, and which by some strange hypnotism sometimes imposes itself for a while upon the American travellers themselves.

I call this the international postal-card view of America. It is often amusing, occasionally irritating, and almost always confusing. It has flashes of truth in it. It renders certain details with the accuracy of a kodak. But, like a picture made by the kodak, it has a deficient perspective and no atmosphere. The details do not fit together. They are irrelevant. They are often contradictory.

For example, you will hear statements made about America like the following:—

‘The Americans worship the Almighty Dollar more than the English revere the Ponderous Pound or the French adore les beaux écus sonnants. Per contra, the Americans are foolish spendthrifts who have no sense of the real value of money.’

‘America is a country without a social order. It is a house of one story, without partitions, in which all the inhabitants are on a level. Per contra, America is the place where class distinctions are most sharply drawn, and where the rich are most widely and irreconcilably separated from the poor.’

‘The United States is a definite experiment in political theory, which was begun in 1776, and which has succeeded because of its philosophical truth and logical consistency. Per contra, the United States is an accident, a nation born of circumstances and held together by good fortune, without real unity or firm foundation.’

‘The American race is a new creation, aboriginal, autochthonous, which ought to express itself in totally new and hitherto unheard-of forms of art and literature. Per contra, there is no American race, only a vast and absurd mélange of incongruous elements, cast off from Europe by various political convulsions, and combined by the pressure of events, not into a people, but into a mere population, which can never have a literature or an art of its own.’

‘America is a lawless land, where every one does what he likes and pays no attention to the opinion of his neighbour. Per contra, America is a land of prejudice, of interference, of restriction, where personal liberty is constantly invaded by the tyranny of narrow ideas and traditions, embodied in ridiculous laws which tell a man how many hours a day he may work, what he may drink, how he may amuse himself on Sunday, and how fast he may drive his automobile.’

‘Finally, America is the home of materialism, a land of crude, practical worldliness, unimaginative, irreverent, without religion. But per contra, America is the last refuge of superstition, of religious enthusiasm, of unenlightened devotion, even of antique bigotry, a land of spiritual dreamers and fanatics, who, as Brillat-Savarin said, have “forty religions and only one sauce.”’

Have I sharpened these contrasts and contradictions a little? Have I overaccented the inconsistencies in this picture postal-card view of America?

Perhaps so. Yet it is impossible to deny that the main features of this incoherent view are familiar. We see the reflection of them in the singular choice and presentation of the rare items of American news which find their way into the columns of European newspapers. We recognize them in the talk of the street and of the table-d’hôte.

I remember very well the gravity and earnestness with which a learned German asked me, some years ago, whether, if he went to America, it would be a serious disadvantage to him in the first social circles to eat with his knife at the dinner-table. He was much relieved by my assurance that no one would take notice of it.

I recall also the charming naïveté with which an English lady inquired, “Have you any good writers in the States?” The answer was: “None to speak of. We import most of our literature from Australia, by way of the Cape of Good Hope.”

Sometimes we are asked whether we do not find it a great disadvantage to have no language of our own; or whether the justices of the Supreme Court are usually persons of good education; or whether we often meet Buffalo Bill in New York society; or whether Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw is most read in the States. To such inquiries we try to return polite answers, although our despair of conveying the truth sometimes leads us to clothe it in a humorous disguise.

But these are minor matters. It is when we are seriously interrogated about the prospect of a hereditary nobility in America, created from the descendants of railway princes, oil magnates, and iron dukes; or when we are questioned as to the probability that the next President, or the one after the next, may assume an imperial state and crown, or perhaps that he may abolish the Constitution and establish communism; or when we are asked whether the Germans, or the Irish, or the Scandinavians, or the Jews are going to dominate the United States in the twentieth century; or when we are told that the industrial and commercial forces which created the republic are no longer coöperant but divisive, and that the nation must inevitably split into several fragments, more or less hostile, but certainly rival; it is when such questions are gravely asked, that we begin to feel that there are some grave misconceptions, or at least that there is something important lacking, in the current notion of how America came into being and what America really is.

I believe that the thing which is lacking is the perception of the Spirit of America as the creative force, the controlling power, the characteristic element of the United States.

The republic is not an accident, happy or otherwise. It is not a fortuitous concourse of emigrants. It is not the logical demonstration of an abstract theory of government. It is the development of a life,—an inward life of ideals, sentiments, ruling passions, embodying itself in an outward life of forms, customs, institutions, relations,—a process as vital, as spontaneous, as inevitable, as the growth of a child into a man. The soul of a people has made the American nation.

It is of this Spirit of America, in the past and in the present, and of some of its expressions, that I would speak in these conferences. I speak of it in the past because I believe that we must know something of its origins, its early manifestations, its experiences, and its conflicts in order to understand what it truly signifies.

The spirit of a people, like the spirit of a man, is influenced by heredity. But this heredity is not merely physical, it is spiritual. There is a transmission of qualities through the soul as well as through the flesh. There is an intellectual paternity. There is a kinship of the mind as well as of the body. The soul of the people in America to-day is the lineal descendant of the soul of the people which made America in the beginning.

Just at what moment of time this soul came into being, I do not know. Some theologians teach that there is a certain point at which the hidden physical life of an infant receives a donum of spiritual life which makes it a person, a human being. I do not imagine that we can fix any such point in the conception and gestation of a people. Certainly it would be difficult to select any date of which we could say with assurance, “On that day, in that year, the exiles of England, of Scotland, of Holland, of France, of Germany, on the shores of the new world, became one folk, into which the Spirit of America entered.” But just as certainly it is clear that the mysterious event came to pass. And beyond a doubt the time of its occurrence was long before the traditional birthday of the republic, the 4th of July, 1776.

The Declaration of Independence did not create—it did not even pretend to create—a new state of things. It simply recognized a state of things already existing. It declared “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

The men who framed this declaration were not ignorant, nor careless in the use of words. When practically the same men were called, a few years later, to frame a constitution for the United States, they employed quite different language: “We, the people of the United States, ... do ordain and establish this Constitution.” That is the language of creation. It assumes to bring into being something which did not previously exist. But the language of the Declaration of Independence is the language of recognition. It sets forth clearly a fact which has already come to pass, but which has hitherto been ignored, neglected or denied.

What was that fact? Nothing else than the existence of a new people, separate, distinct, independent, in the thirteen American colonies. At what moment in the troubled seventeenth century, age of European revolt and conflict, the spirit of liberty brooding upon the immense wilderness of the New World, engendered this new life, we cannot tell. At what moment in the philosophical eighteenth century, age of reason and reflection, this new life began to be self-conscious and to feel its way toward an organic unity of powers and efforts, we cannot precisely determine. But the thing that is clear and significant is that independence existed before it was declared. The soul of the American people was already living and conscious before the history of the United States began.

I call this fact significant, immensely significant, because it marks not merely a verbal distinction but an essential difference, a difference which is vital to the true comprehension of the American spirit in the past and in the present.

A nation brought to birth by an act of violence, if such a thing be possible,—or let us rather say, a nation achieving liberty by a sharp and sudden break with its own past and a complete overturning of its own traditions, will naturally carry with it the marks of such an origin. It will be inclined to extreme measures and methods. It will be particularly liable to counter-revolutions. It will often vibrate between radicalism and reactionism.

But a nation “conceived in liberty,” to use Lincoln’s glorious phrase, and pursuing its natural aims, not by the method of swift and forcible change, but by the method of normal and steady development, will be likely to have another temperament and a different history. It will at least endeavour to practice moderation, prudence, patience. It will try new experiments slowly. It will advance, not indeed without interruption, but with a large and tranquil confidence that its security and progress are in accordance with the course of nature and the eternal laws of right reason.

Now this is true in the main of the United States. And the reason for this large and tranquil confidence, at which Europeans sometimes smile because it looks like bravado, and for this essentially conservative temper, at which Europeans sometimes wonder because it seems unsuitable to a democracy,—the reason, I think, is to be found in the history of the soul of the people.

The American Revolution, to speak accurately and philosophically, was not a revolution at all. It was a resistance.

The Americans did not propose to conquer new rights and privileges, but to defend old ones.

The claim of Washington and Adams and Franklin and Jefferson and Jay and Schuyler and Witherspoon was that the kings of England had established the colonies in certain liberties which the Parliament was endeavouring to take away. These liberties, the Americans asserted, belonged to them not only by natural right, but also by precedent and ancient tradition. The colonists claimed that the proposed reorganization of the colonies, which was undertaken by the British Parliament in 1763, was an interruption of their history and a change in the established conditions of their life. They were unwilling to submit to it. They united and armed to prevent it. They took the position of men who were defending their inheritance of self-government against a war of subjugation disguised as a new scheme of imperial legislation.

Whether they were right or wrong in making this claim, whether the arguments by which they supported it were sound or sophistical, we need not now consider. For the present, the point is that the claim was made, and that the making of it is one of the earliest and clearest revelations of the Spirit of America.

No doubt in that struggle of defence which we are wont to call, for want of a better name, the Revolution, the colonists were carried by the irresistible force of events far beyond this position. The privilege of self-government which they claimed, the principle of “no taxation without representation,” appeared to them, at last, defensible and practicable only on the condition of absolute separation from Great Britain. This separation implied sovereignty. This sovereignty demanded union. This union, by the logic of events, took the form of a republic. This republic continues to exist and to develop along the normal lines of its own nature, because it is still animated and controlled by the same Spirit of America which brought it into being to embody the soul of the people.

I am quite sure that there are few, even among Americans, who appreciate the literal truth and the full meaning of this last statement. It is common to assume that the Spirit of 1776 is an affair of the past; that the native American stock is swallowed up and lost in our mixed population; and that the new United States, beginning, let us say, at the close of the Civil War, is now controlled and guided by forces which have come to it from without. This is not true even physically, much less is it true intellectually and morally.

The blended strains of blood which made the American people in the beginning are still the dominant factors in the American people of to-day. Men of distinction in science, art, and statesmanship have come from abroad to cast their fortunes in with the republic,—men like Gallatin and Agassiz and Guyot and Lieber and McCosh and Carl Schurz,—and their presence has been welcomed, their service received with honour. Of the total population of the United States in 1900 more than 34 per cent were of foreign birth or parentage. But the native stock has led and still leads America.

There is a popular cyclopædia of names, called Who’s Who in America, which contains brief biographies of some 16,395 living persons, who are supposed to be more or less distinguished, in one way or another, in the various regions in which they live. It includes the representatives of foreign governments in the United States, and some foreign authors and business men. It is not necessary to imagine that all who are admitted to this quasi-golden book of “Who’s-who-dom” are really great or widely famous. There are perhaps many of whom we might inquire, Which is who, and why is he somewhat? But, after all, the book includes most of the successful lawyers, doctors, merchants, bankers, preachers, politicians, authors, artists, and teachers,—the people who are most influential in their local communities and best known to their fellow-citizens. The noteworthy fact is that 86.07 per cent are native Americans. I think that a careful examination of the record would show that a very large majority have at least three generations of American ancestry on one side or the other of the family.

Of the men elected to the presidency of the United States there has been only one whose ancestors did not belong to America before the Revolution,—James Buchanan, whose father was a Scotch-Irish preacher who came to the New World in 1783. All but four of the Presidents of the United States could trace their line back to Americans of the seventeenth century.

But it is not upon these striking facts of physical heredity that I would rest my idea of an American people, distinct and continuous, beginning a conscious life at some time antecedent to 1764 and still guiding the development of the United States. I would lay far more stress upon intellectual and spiritual heredity, that strange process of moral generation by which the qualities of the Spirit of America have been communicated to millions of immigrants from all parts of the world.

Since 1820 about twenty-six million persons have come to the United States from foreign lands. At the present moment, in a population which is estimated at about ninety millions, there are probably between thirteen and fifteen millions who are foreign-born. It is an immense quantity for any nation to digest and assimilate, and it must be confessed that there are occasional signs of local dyspepsia in the large cities. But none the less it may be confidently affirmed that the foreign immigration of the past has been thoroughly transformed into American material, and that the immigration of the present is passing through the same process without any alarming interruption.

I can take you into quarters of New York where you might think yourself in a Russian Ghetto, or into regions of Pennsylvania which would seem to you like Hungarian mining towns. But if you will come with me into the public schools, where the children of these people of the Old World are gathered for education, you will find yourself in the midst of fairly intelligent and genuinely patriotic young Americans. They will salute the flag for you with enthusiasm. They will sing “Columbia” and “The Star Spangled Banner” with more vigour than harmony. They will declaim Webster’s apostrophe to the Union, or cry with Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

What is more, they will really feel, in some dim but none the less vital way, the ideals for which these symbols stand. Give them time, and their inward allegiance will become clearer, they will begin to perceive how and why they are Americans. They will be among those wise children who know their own spiritual fathers.

Last June it fell to my lot to deliver the commencement address at the College of the City of New York, a free institution which is the crown of the public school system of the city. Only a very small proportion of the scholars had names that you could call American, or even Anglo-Saxon. They were French and German, Polish and Italian, Russian and Hebrew. Yet as I spoke on the subject of citizenship, suggested by the recent death of that great American, ex-President Grover Cleveland, the response was intelligent, immediate, unanimous, and eager. There was not one of that crowd of young men who would have denied or surrendered his right to trace his patriotic ancestry, his inherited share in the Spirit of America, back to Lincoln and Webster, Madison and Jefferson, Franklin and Washington.

Here, then, is the proposition to which I dedicate these conferences.

There is now, and there has been since before the Revolution, a Spirit of America, the soul of a people, and it is this which has made the United States and which still animates and controls them.

I shall try to distinguish and describe a few, four or five of the essential features, qualities, ideals,—call them what you will,—the main elements of that spirit as I understand it. I shall also speak of two or three other traits, matters of temperament, perhaps, more than of character, which seem to me distinctly American. Then because I am neither a politician nor a jurist, I shall pass from the important field of civil government and national institutions, to consider some of the ways in which this soul of the American people has expressed itself in education and in social effort and in literature.

In following this course I venture to hope that it may be possible to correct, or at least to modify, some of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the popular view of America which prevails in some quarters of Europe. Perhaps I may be able to suggest, even to Americans, some of the real sources of our national unity and strength.

“Un Américain” says André Tardieu, in his recent book, “est toujours plus proche qu’on ne croit d’un contradicteur Américain.”

Why?

That is what I hope to show in these lectures. I do not propose to argue for any creed, nor to win converts for any political theory. In these conferences I am not a propagandist, nor a preacher, nor an advocate. Not even a professor, strictly speaking. Just a man from America who is trying to make you feel the real spirit of his country, first in her life, then in her literature. I should be glad if in the end you might be able to modify the ancient proverb a little and say, Tout comprendre, c’est un peu aimer.

II
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC

II
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC

The other day I came upon a new book with a title which seemed to take a good ideal for granted: The New American Type.

The author began with a description of a recent exhibition of portraits in New York, including pictures of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. He was impressed with the idea that “an astonishing change had taken place in men and women between the time of President Washington and President McKinley; bodies, faces, thoughts, had all been transformed. One short stairway from the portraits of Reynolds to those of Sargent ushered in changes as if it had stretched from the first Pharaoh to the last Ptolemy.” From this interesting text the author went on into an acute and sparkling discussion of the different pictures and the personalities whom they presented, and so into an attempt to define the new type of American character which he inferred from the modern portraits.

Now it had been my good fortune, only a little while before, to see another exhibition of pictures which made upon my mind a directly contrary impression. This was not a collection of paintings, but a show of living pictures: a Twelfth Night celebration, in costume, at the Century Club in New York. Four or five hundred of the best-known and most influential men in the metropolis of America had arrayed themselves in the habiliments of various lands and ages for an evening of fun and frolic. There were travellers and explorers who had brought home the robes of the Orient. There were men of exuberant fancy who had made themselves up as Roman senators or Spanish toreadors or Provençal troubadours. But most of the costumes were English or Dutch or French of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The astonishing thing was that the men who wore them might easily have been taken for their own grandfathers or great-grandfathers.

There was a Puritan who might have fled from the oppressions of Archbishop Laud, a Cavalier who might have sought a refuge from the severities of Cromwell’s Parliament, a Huguenot who might have escaped from the pressing attentions of Louis XIV in the Dragonnades, a Dutch burgher who might have sailed from Amsterdam in the Goede Vrouw. There were soldiers of the Colonial army and members of the Continental Congress who might have been painted by Copley or Stuart or Trumbull or Peale.

The types of the faces were not essentially different. There was the same strength of bony structure, the same firmness of outline, the same expression of self-reliance, varying from the tranquillity of the quiet temperament to the turbulence of the stormy temperament. They looked like men who were able to take care of themselves, who knew what they wanted, and who would be likely to get it. They had the veritable air and expression of their ancestors of one or two hundred years ago. And yet, as a matter of fact, they were intensely modern Americans, typical New Yorkers of the twentieth century.

Reflecting upon this interesting and rather pleasant experience, I was convinced that the author of The New American Type had allowed his imagination to run away with his judgment. No such general and fundamental change as he describes has really taken place. There have been modifications and developments and degenerations, of course, under the new conditions and influences of modern life. There have been also great changes of fashion and dress,—the wearing of mustaches and beards,—the discarding of wigs and ruffles,—the sacrifice of a somewhat fantastic elegance to a rather monotonous comfort in the ordinary costume of men. These things have confused and misled my ingenious author.

He has been bewildered also by the alteration in the methods of portraiture. He has mistaken a change in the art of the painters for a change in the character of their subjects. It is a well-known fact that something comes into a portrait from the place and the manner in which it is made. I have a collection of pictures of Charles Dickens, and it is interesting to observe how the Scotch ones make him look a little like a Scotchman, and the London ones make him look intensely English, and the American ones give him a touch of Broadway in 1845, and the photographs made in Paris have an unmistakable suggestion of the Boulevards. There is a great difference between the spirit and method of Reynolds, Hoppner, Latour, Vanloo, and those of Sargent, Holl, Duran, Bonnat, Alexander, and Zorn. It is this difference that helps to conceal the essential likeness of their sitters.

I was intimately acquainted with Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandson, a surgeon in the American navy. Put a fur cap and knee breeches on him, and he might easily have sat for his great-grandfather’s portrait. In character there was a still closer resemblance. You can see the same faces at any banquet in New York to-day that Rembrandt has depicted in his “Night-Watch,” or Franz Hals in his “Banquet of the Civic Guard.”

But there is something which interests me even more than this persistence of visible ancestral features in the Americans of to-day. It is the continuance from generation to generation of the main lines, the essential elements, of that American character which came into being on the Western continent.

It is commonly assumed that this character is composite, that the people who inhabit America are a mosaic, made up of fragments brought from various lands and put together rather at haphazard and in a curious pattern. This assumption misses the inward verity by dwelling too much upon the outward fact.

Undoubtedly there were large and striking differences between the grave and strict Puritans who peopled the shores of Massachusetts Bay, the pleasure-loving Cavaliers who made their tobacco plantations in Virginia, the liberal and comfortable Hollanders who took possession of the lands along the Hudson, the skilful and industrious Frenchmen who came from old Rochelle to New Rochelle, the peaceful and prudent Quakers who followed William Penn, the stolid Germans of the Rhine who made their farms along the Susquehanna, the vigorous and aggressive Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who became the pioneers of western Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the tolerant Catholics who fled from English persecution to Lord Baltimore’s Maryland. But these outward differences of speech, of dress, of habits, of tradition, were, after all, of less practical consequence than the inward resemblances and sympathies of spirit which brought these men of different stocks together as one people.

They were not a composite people, but a blended people. They became in large measure conscious of the same aims, loyal to the same ideals, and capable of fighting and working together as Americans to achieve their destiny.

I suppose that the natural process of intermarriage played an important part in this blending of races. This is an affair to which the conditions of life in a new country, on the frontiers of civilization, are peculiarly favourable. Love flourishes when there are no locksmiths. In a community of exiles the inclinations of the young men towards the young women easily overstep the barriers of language and descent. Quite naturally the English and Scotch were united with the Dutch and French in the holy state of matrimony, and the mothers had as much to do as the fathers with the character-building of the children.

But apart from this natural process of combination there were other influences at work bringing the colonists into unity. There was the pressure of a common necessity—the necessity of taking care of themselves, of making their own living in a hard, new world. There was the pressure of a common danger—the danger from the fierce and treacherous savages who surrounded them and continually threatened them with pillage and slaughter. There was the pressure of a common discipline—the discipline of building up an organized industry, a civilized community in the wilderness.

Yet I doubt whether even these potent forces of compression, of fusion, of metamorphosis, would have made one people of the colonists quite so quickly, quite so thoroughly, if it had not been for certain affinities of spirit, certain ideals and purposes which influenced them all, and which made the blending easier and more complete.

Most of the colonists of the seventeenth century, you will observe, were people who in one way or another had suffered for their religious convictions, whether they were Puritans or Catholics, Episcopalians or Presbyterians, Quakers or Anabaptists.

The almost invariable effect of suffering for religion is to deepen its power and to intensify the desire for liberty to practise it.

It is true that other motives, the love of adventure, the desire to attain prosperity in the affairs of this world, and in some cases the wish to escape from the consequences of misconduct or misfortune in the old country, played a part in the settlement of America. Nothing could be more absurd than the complacent assumption that all the ancestors from whom the “Colonial Dames” or the “Sons of the Revolution” delight to trace their descent were persons of distinguished character and fervent piety.

But the most characteristic element of the early emigration was religious, and that not by convention and conformity, but by conscience and conviction. There was less difference among the various colonies in this respect than is generally imagined. The New Englanders, who have written most of the American histories, have been in the way of claiming the lion’s share of the religious influence for the Puritans. But while Massachusetts was a religious colony with commercial tendencies, New Amsterdam was a commercial colony with religious principles.

The Virginia parson prayed by the book, and the Pennsylvania Quaker made silence the most important part of his ritual, but alike on the banks of the James and on the shores of the Delaware the ultimate significance and value of life were interpreted in terms of religion.

Now one immediate effect of such a ground-tone of existence is to increase susceptibility and devotion to ideals. The habit of referring constantly to religious sanctions is one that carries with it a tendency to intensify the whole motive power of life in relation to its inward conceptions of what is right and desirable. Men growing up in such an atmosphere may easily become fanatical, but they are not likely to be feeble.

Moreover, the American colonists, by the very conditions of natural selection which brought them together, must have included more than the usual proportion of strong wills, resolute and independent characters, people who knew what they wanted to do and were willing to accept needful risks and hardships in order to do it. The same thing, at least to some extent, holds good of the later immigration into the United States.

Most of the immigrants must have been rich in personal energy, clear in their conviction of what was best for them to do. Otherwise they would have lacked the force to break old ties, to brave the sea, to face the loneliness and uncertainty of life in a strange land. Discontent with their former condition acted upon them not as a depressant but as a tonic. The hope of something unseen, untried, was a stimulus to which their wills reacted. Whatever misgivings or reluctances they may have had, upon the whole they were more attracted than repelled by the prospect of shaping a new life for themselves, according to their own desire, in a land of liberty, opportunity, and difficulty.

We come thus to the first and most potent factor in the soul of the American people, the spirit of self-reliance. This was the dominant and formative factor of their early history. It was the inward power which animated and sustained them in their first struggles and efforts. It was deepened by religious conviction and intensified by practical experience. It took shape in political institutions, declarations, constitutions. It rejected foreign guidance and control, and fought against all external domination. It assumed the right of self-determination, and took for granted the power of self-development. In the ignorant and noisy it was aggressive, independent, cocksure, and boastful. In the thoughtful and prudent it was grave, firm, resolute, and inflexible. It has persisted through all the changes and growth of two centuries, and it remains to-day the most vital and irreducible quality in the soul of America,—the spirit of self-reliance.

You may hear it in its popular and somewhat vulgar form—not without a characteristic touch of humour—in the Yankee’s answer to the intimation of an Englishman that if the United States did not behave themselves well, Great Britain would come over and whip them. “What!” said the Yankee, “ag’in?” You may hear it in deeper, saner, wiser tones, in Lincoln’s noble asseveration on the battle-field of Gettysburg, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” But however or whenever you hear it, the thing which it utters is the same,—the inward conviction of a people that they have the right and the ability, and consequently the duty, to regulate their own life, to direct their own property, and to pursue their own happiness according to the light which they possess.

It is obvious that one may give different names to this spirit, according to the circumstances in which it is manifested and observed. It may be called the spirit of independence when it is shown in opposition to forces of external control. Professor Barrett Wendell, speaking from this chair four years ago, said that the first ideal to take form in the American consciousness was “the ideal of Liberty.” But his well-balanced mind compelled him immediately to limit and define this ideal as a desire for “the political freedom of America from all control, from all coercion, from all interference by any power foreign to our own American selves.” And what is this but self-reliance?

Professor Münsterberg, in his admirable book, The Americans, calls it “the spirit of self-direction.” He traces its influence in the development of American institutions and the structure of American life. He says: “Whoever wishes to understand the secret of that baffling turmoil, the inner mechanism and motive behind all the politically effective forces, must set out from only one point. He must appreciate the yearning of the American heart after self-direction. Everything else is to be understood from this.”

But this yearning after self-direction, it seems to me, is not peculiar to Americans. All men have more or less of it by nature. All men yearn to be their own masters, to shape their own life, to direct their own course. The difference among men lies in the clearness and the vigour with which they conceive their own right and power and duty so to do.

Back of the temper of independence, back of the passion for liberty, back of the yearning after self-direction, stands the spirit of self-reliance, from which alone they derive force and permanence. It was this spirit that made America, and it is this spirit that preserves the republic. Emerson has expressed it in a sentence: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

It is undoubtedly true that the largest influence in the development of this spirit came from the Puritans and Pilgrims of the New England colonies, bred under the bracing and strengthening power of that creed which bears the name of a great Frenchman, John Calvin, and trained in that tremendous sense of personal responsibility which so often carries with it an intense feeling of personal value and force. Yet, after all, if we look at the matter closely, we shall see that there was no very great difference among the colonists of various stocks and regions in regard to their confidence in themselves and their feeling that they both could and should direct their own affairs.

The Virginians, languishing and fretting under the first arbitrary rule of the London corporation which controlled them with military severity, obtained a “Great Charter of Privileges, Orders, and Laws” in 1618. This gave to the little body of settlers, about a thousand in number, the right of electing their own legislative assembly, and thus laid the foundation of representative government in the New World. A little later, in 1623, fearing that the former despotism might be renewed, the Virginia Assembly sent a message to the king, saying, “Rather than be reduced to live under the like government, we desire his Majesty that commissioners be sent over to hang us.”

In 1624 the Virginia Company was dissolved, and the colony passed under a royal charter, but they still preserved and cherished the rights of self-rule in all local affairs, and developed an extraordinary temper of jealousy and resistance towards the real or imagined encroachments of the governors who were sent out by the king. In 1676 the Virginians practically rebelled against the authority of Great Britain because they conceived that they were being reduced to a condition of dependence and servitude. They felt confident that they were able to make their own laws and to choose their own leaders. They were distinctly not conscious of any inferiority to their brethren in England, and with their somewhat aristocratic tendencies they developed a set of men like Lee and Henry and Washington and Bland and Jefferson and Harrison, who had more real power than any of the royal governors.

In New Amsterdam, where the most liberal policy in regard to the reception of immigrants prevailed, but where for a long time there was little or no semblance of popular government, the inhabitants rebelled in 1649 against the tyranny of the agents of the Dutch West India Company which ruled them from across the sea,—ruled them fairly well, upon the whole, but still denied free play to their spirit of self-reliance. The conflicts between the bibulous and dubious Director van Twiller and his neighbours, between the fiery and arbitrary William Kieft and his Eight Men, between the valiant, obstinate, hot-tempered, and dictatorial Peter Stuyvesant and his Nine Men, have been humorously narrated by Washington Irving in his Knickerbocker. But underneath the burlesque chronicle of bickerings and wranglings, complaints and protests, it is easy to see the stirrings of the sturdy spirit which confides in self and desires to have control of its own affairs.

In 1649 the Vertoogh or Remonstrance of the Seven Men representing the burghers of Manhattan, Brewckelen, Amersfoort, and Pavonia was sent to the States General of the Netherlands. It demanded first that their High Mightinesses should turn out the West India Company and take direct control of New Netherland; second, that a proper municipal government should be granted to New Amsterdam; and third, that the boundaries of the province should be settled by treaty with friendly powers. This document also called attention, by way of example, to the freedom of their neighbours in New England, “where neither patrouns, nor lords, nor princes are known, but only the people.” The West India Company was powerful enough to resist these demands for a time, but in 1653 New Amsterdam was incorporated as a city.

Ten years later it passed under English sovereignty, and the history of New York began. One of its first events was the protest of certain towns on Long Island against a tax which was laid upon them in order to pay for the repair of the fort in New York. They appealed to the principle of “no taxation without representation,” which they claimed had been declared alike by England and by the Dutch republic. For nearly twenty years, however, this appeal and others like it were disregarded, until at last the spirit of self-reliance became irresistible. A petition was sent to the Duke of York declaring that the lack of a representative assembly was “an intolerable grievance.” The Duke, it is said, was out of patience with his uneasy province, which brought him in no revenue except complaints and protests. “I have a mind to sell it,” said he, “to any one who will give me a fair price.” “What,” cried his friend William Penn, “sell New York! Don’t think of such a thing. Just give it self-government, and there will be no more trouble.” The Duke listened to the Quaker, and in 1683 the first Assembly of New York was elected.

The charters which were granted by the Stuart kings to the American colonies were for the most part of an amazingly liberal character. No doubt the royal willingness to see restless and intractable subjects leave England had something to do with this liberality. But the immediate effect of it was to encourage the spirit of self-reliance. In some of the colonies, as in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the people elected their own governors as well as made their own laws. When Governor Fletcher of New York found the people of Connecticut unwilling to comply with his demands in 1693, he wrote back to England angrily: “The laws of England have no effect in this colony. They set up for a free state.”

Even in those colonies where the governors and the judges were appointed by the crown, the people were quick to suspect and bitter to resent any invasion of their liberties or contradiction of their will as expressed through the popular assemblies; and these assemblies prudently retained, as a check upon executive authority, the right of voting, and paying, or not paying, the salaries of the governor and other officers.

The policy of Great Britain in regard to the American dependencies, while it vacillated somewhat, was, in the main, to leave them quite independent. Various motives may have played a part at different times in this policy. Indifference and a feeling of contempt may have had something to do with it. English liberalism and republican sympathy may have had something to do with it. A shrewd willingness to let them prosper by their own efforts, in their own way, in order that they might make a better market for English manufactures, may have had something to do with it. Thus Lord Morley tells us: “Walpole was content with seeing that no trouble came from America. He left it to the Duke of Newcastle, and the Duke left it so much to itself that he had a closet full of despatches from American governors, which had lain unopened for years.”

But whatever may have been the causes of this policy, its effect was to intensify and spread the spirit of self-reliance among the people of America. A group of communities grew up along the western shore of the Atlantic which formed the habit of defending themselves, of developing their own resources, of regulating their own affairs. It has been well said that they were colonies only in the Greek sense: communities which went forth from the mother-country like children from a home, to establish a self-sustaining and equal life. They were not colonies in the Roman sense, suburbs of the empire, garrisoned and ruled from the sole centre of authority.

They felt, all of them, that they understood their own needs, their own opportunities, their own duties, their own dangers and hopes, better than any one else could understand them. “Those who feel,” said Franklin, when he appeared before the committee of Parliament in London, “can best judge.” They issued money, they made laws and constitutions, they raised troops, they built roads, they established schools and colleges, they levied taxes, they developed commerce,—and this last they did to a considerable extent in violation or evasion of the English laws of navigation.

They acknowledged, indeed they fervently protested, for a long time, their allegiance to Great Britain and their loyalty to the crown; but they conceived their allegiance as one of equality, and their loyalty as a voluntary sentiment largely influenced by gratitude for the protection which the king gave them in the rights of internal self-government.

This self-reliant spirit extended from the colonies into the townships and counties of which they were composed. Each little settlement, each flourishing village and small city, had its own local interests, and felt the wish and the ability to manage them. And in these communities every man was apt to be conscious of his own importance, his own value, his own ability and right to contribute to the discussion and settlement of local problems.

The conditions of life, also, had developed certain qualities in the colonists which persisted and led to a general temper of personal independence and self-confidence. The men who had cleared the forests, fought off the Indians, made homes in the wilderness, were inclined to think themselves capable de tout. They valued their freedom to prove this as their most precious asset.

“I have some little property in America,” said Franklin. “I will freely spend nineteen shillings in the pound to defend the right of giving or refusing the other shilling; and, after all, if I cannot defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to furnish freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger.” It is rather startling to think of Franklin as gaining his living as a hunter or a fisherman; but no doubt he could have done it.

The wonderful prosperity and the amazing growth of the colonies fostered this spirit of self-reliance. Their wealth was increasing more rapidly, in proportion, than the wealth of England. Their population grew from an original stock of perhaps a hundred thousand immigrants to two million in 1776, a twenty-fold advance; while in the same period of time England had only grown from five millions to eight millions, less than twofold.

The conflicts with the French power in Canada also had a powerful influence in consolidating the colonies and teaching them their strength. The first Congress in which they were all invited to take part was called in New York in 1690 to coöperate in war measures against Canada. Three long, costly, and bloody French-Indian wars, in which the colonists felt they bore the brunt of the burden and the fighting, drew them closer together, made them conscious of their common interests and of their resources.

But their victory in the last of these wars had also another effect. It opened the way for a change of policy on the part of Great Britain towards her American colonies,—a change which involved their reorganization, their subordination to the authority of the British Parliament, and the “weaving” of them, as ex-Governor Pownall put it, into “a grand marine dominion consisting of our possessions in the Atlantic and in America united into one empire, into one centre where the seat of government is.” This was undoubtedly imperialism. And it was because the Americans felt this that the spirit of self-reliance rose against the new policy and stubbornly resisted every step, even the smallest, which seemed to them to lead in the direction of subjugation and dependency.

Followed ten years of acrimonious and violent controversy and eight years of war,—about what? The Stamp Act? the Paint, Paper, and Glass Act? the Tax on Tea? the Boston Port Bill?

No; but at bottom about the right and intention of the colonies to continue to direct themselves. You cannot possibly understand the American Revolution unless you understand this. And without an understanding of the causes and the nature of the Revolution, you cannot comprehend the United States of to-day.

Take, for example, the division of opinion among the colonists themselves,—a division far more serious and far more nearly equal in numbers than is commonly supposed. It was not true, as the popular histories of the Revolution used to assume, that all the brave, the wise, the virtuous, and the honest were on one side, and all the cowardly, the selfish, the base, and the insincere were on the other. There was probably as much sincerity and virtue among the loyalists as among the patriots. There was certainly as much intelligence and education among the patriots as among the loyalists. The difference was this. The loyalists were, for the most part, families and individuals who had been connected, socially and industrially, with the royal source of power and order, through the governors and other officials who came from England or were appointed there. Naturally they felt that the protection, guidance, and support of England were indispensable to the colonies. The patriots were, for the most part, families and individuals whose intimate relations had been with the colonial assemblies, with the popular efforts for self-development and self-rule, with the movements which tended to strengthen their confidence in their own powers. Naturally they felt that freedom of action, deliverance from external control, and the fullest opportunity of self-guidance were indispensable to the colonies.

The names chosen by the two parties—“loyalist” and “patriot”—were both honourable, and seem at first sight almost synonymous. But there is a delicate shade of difference in their inward significance. The loyalist is one who sincerely owns allegiance to a sovereign power, which may be external to him, but to which he feels bound to be loyal. The patriot is one who has found his own country, of which he is a part, and for which he is willing to live and die. It was because the patriotic party appealed primarily to the spirit of self-reliance that they carried the majority of the American people with them, and won the victory, not only in the internal conflict, but also in the war of independence.

I am not ignorant nor unmindful of the part which European philosophers and political theorists played in supplying the patriotic party in America with logical arguments and philosophic reasons for the practical course which they followed. The doctrines of John Locke and Algernon Sidney were congenial and sustaining to men who had already resolved to govern themselves. From Holland aid and comfort came in the works of Grotius. Italy gave inspiration and support in the books of Beccaria and Burlamaqui on the essential principles of liberty. The French intellect, already preparing for another revolution, did much to clarify and rationalize American thought through the sober and searching writings of Montesquieu, and perhaps even more to supply it with enthusiastic eloquence through the dithyrambic theories of Rousseau. The doctrines of natural law, and the rights of man, and the pursuit of happiness, were freely used by the patriotic orators to enforce their appeals to the people. It is impossible not to recognize the voice of the famous Genevese in the words of Alexander Hamilton: “The sacred rights of men are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased by mortal power.”

But it still remains true that the mainspring of American independence is not to be found in any philosophic system or in any political theory. It was a vital impulse, a common sentiment in the soul of a people conscious of the ability and the determination to manage their own affairs. The logic which they followed was the logic of events and results. They were pragmatists. The spirit of self-reliance led them on, reluctantly, inevitably, step by step, through remonstrance, recalcitrance, resistance, until they came to the republic.

“Permit us to be as free as yourselves,” they said to the people of Great Britain, “and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness.” “No,” answered Parliament. “Protect us as a loving father,” they said to the king, “and forbid a licentious ministry any longer to riot in the ruins of mankind.” “No,” answered the king. “Very well, then,” said the colonists, “we are, and of right ought to be, free and independent. We have governed ourselves. We are able to govern ourselves. We shall continue to govern ourselves, under such forms as we already possess; and when these are not sufficient, we will make such forms as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular and of America in general.”

This resolution of the Continental Congress, on May 10, 1776, gives the key-note of all subsequent American history. Republicanism was not adopted because it was the only conceivable, or rational, or legitimate, form of government. It was continued, enlarged, organized, consolidated, because it was the form in which the spirit of self-reliance in the whole people found itself most at home, most happy and secure.

The federal Union of the States was established, after long and fierce argument, under the pressure of necessity, because it was evidently the only way to safeguard the permanence and freedom of those States, as well as to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

The Amendments to the Constitution which were adopted in 1791 (and without the promise of which the original document never would have been accepted) were of the nature of a Bill of Rights, securing to every citizen liberty of conscience and speech, protection against arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, or deprivation of property, and especially reserving to the respective States or to the people all powers not delegated to the United States.

The division of the general government into three branches—legislative, executive, and judicial; the strict delimitation of the powers committed to these three branches; the careful provision of checks and counterchecks intended to prevent the predominance of any one branch over the others; all these are features against which political theorists and philosophers may bring, and have brought, strong arguments. They hinder quick action; they open the way to contests of authority; they are often a serious drawback in international diplomacy. But they express the purpose of a self-reliant people not to let the ultimate power pass from their hands to any one of the instruments which they have created. And for this purpose they have worked well, and are still in working order. For this reason the Americans are proud of them to a degree which other nations sometimes think unreasonable, and attached to them with a devotion which other nations do not always understand.

Do not mistake me. In saying that American republicanism is not the product of philosophical argument, of abstract theory, of reasoned conviction, I do not mean to say that Americans do not believe in it. They do.

Now and then you will find one of them who says that he would prefer a monarchy or an aristocracy. But you may be sure that he is an eccentric, or a man with a grievance against the custom-house, or a fond person who feels confident of his own place in the royal family or at least in the nobility. You may safely leave him out in trying to understand the real Spirit of America.

The people as a whole believe in the republic very firmly, and at times very passionately. And the vital reason for this belief is because it springs out of life and is rooted in life. It comes from that spirit of self-reliance which has been and is still the strongest American characteristic, in the individual, the community, and the nation.

It seems to me that we must apprehend this in order to comprehend many things that are fundamental in the life of America and the character of her people. Let me speak of a few of these things, and try to show how they have their roots in this quality of self-reliance.

Take, for example, the singular political construction of the nation,—a thing which Europeans find it almost impossible to understand without a long residence in America. It is a united country composed of States which have a distinct individual life and a carefully guarded sovereignty.

Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Texas, California, even the little States like Rhode Island and Maryland, are political entities just as real, just as conscious of their own being, as the United States, of which each of them forms an integral part. They have their own laws, their own courts, their own systems of domestic taxation, their own flags, their own militia, their own schools and universities. “The American citizen.” Professor Münsterberg rightly says, “in daily life is first of all a member of his special State.”

This distinction of local life is not to be traced to an original allegiance to different owners or lords, a duke of Savoy or Burgundy, a king of Prussia or Saxony. It is quite unlike the difference among the provinces of the French republic or the states of the German Empire. It is primarily the result of a local spirit of self-reliance, a habit of self-direction, in the people who have worked together to build up these States, to develop their resources, to give them shape and substance. This is the true explanation of State pride, and of the sense of an individual life in the different commonwealths which compose the nation.

Every one knows that this feeling was so strong immediately after the Revolution that it nearly made the Union impossible. Every one knows that this feeling was so strong in the middle of the nineteenth century that it nearly destroyed the Union. But every one does not know that this feeling is still extant and active,—an essential and potent factor in the political life of America.

The Civil War settled once for all the open and long-disputed question of the nature of the tie which binds the States together. The Union may be a compact, but it is an indissoluble compact. The United States is not a confederacy. It is a nation. Yet the local sovereignty of the States which it embraces has not been touched. The spirit of self-reliance in each commonwealth guards its rights jealously, and the law of the nation protects them.

It was but a little while ago that a proposal was made in Congress to unite the territories of Arizona and New Mexico and admit them to the Union as one State. But the people of Arizona protested. They did not wish to be mixed up with people of New Mexico, for whom they professed dislike and even contempt. They would rather stay out than come in under such conditions. The protest was sufficient to block the proposed action.

I have been reading lately a series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court, touching on various questions, like the right of one State to make the C.O.D. shipment of whiskey from another State a penal offence, or the right of the United States to interfere with the State of Colorado in the use of the water of the Arkansas River for purposes of irrigation. In all of these decisions, whether on whiskey or on water, I find that the great principle laid down by Chief Justice Marshall is clearly admitted and sustained: “The Government of the United States is one of enumerated powers.” Further powers can be obtained only by a new grant from the people. “One cardinal rule,” says Justice Brewer, “underlying all the relations of the States to each other is that of equality of right. Each State stands on the same level with all the rest. It can impose its own legislation on none of the others, and is bound to yield its own views to none.”

Now it is evident that this peculiar structure of the nation necessarily permits, perhaps implies, a constant rivalry between two forms of the spirit of self-reliance,—the local form and the general form.

Emphasize the one, and you have a body of public opinion which moves in the direction of strengthening, enhancing, perhaps enlarging, the powers given to the central government. Emphasize the other, and you have a body of public opinion which opposes every encroachment upon the powers reserved to the local governments, and seeks to strengthen the whole by fortifying the parts of which it is composed.

Here you have the two great political parties of America. They are called to-day the Republican and the Democratic. But the names mean nothing. In fact, the party which now calls itself Democratic bore the name of Republican down to 1832; and those who were called successively Federalists and Whigs did not finally take the name of Republicans until 1860. In reality, political opinion, or perhaps it would be more correct to say political feeling, divides on this great question of the centralization or the division of power. The controversy lies between the two forms of the spirit of self-reliance; that which is embodied in the consciousness of the whole nation and that which is embodied in the consciousness of each community. The Democrats naturally speak for the latter; the Republicans for the former.

Of course in our campaigns and elections the main issue is often confused and beclouded. New problems and disputes arise in which the bearing of proposed measures is not clear. The parties have come to be great physical organizations, with vested interests to defend, with an outward life to perpetuate. Like all human institutions, both of them have the instinct of self-preservation. They both try to follow the tide of popular sentiments. They both insert planks in their platforms which seem likely to win votes. Sometimes they both hit upon the same planks, and it is very difficult to determine the original ownership.

At present, for example, the great industrial and commercial trusts and corporations are very unpopular. The Democrats and the Republicans both declare their intention to correct and restrain them. Each party claims to be the original friend of the people, the real St. George who will certainly slay the Dragon of Trusts. Thus we have had the amusing spectacle of Mr. Bryan commending and praising Mr. Roosevelt for his conversion to truly Democratic principles and policies, and adding that the Democrats were the right men to carry them out, while Mr. Taft insisted that the popular measures were essentially Republican, and that his party was the only one which could be trusted to execute them wisely and safely.

But, in spite of these temporary bewilderments, you will find, in the main, that the Republicans have a tendency towards centralizing measures, and therefore incline to favour national banks, a protective tariff, enlargement of executive functions, colonial expansion, a greater naval and military establishment, and a consequent increase of national expenditure; while the Democrats, as a rule, are on the side of non-centralizing measures, and therefore inclined to favour a large and elastic currency, free trade or tariff for revenue only, strict interpretation of the Constitution, an army and navy sufficient for police purposes, a progressive income tax, and a general policy of national economy.

The important thing to remember is that these two forms of the spirit of self-reliance, the general and the local, still exist side by side in American political life, and that it is probably a good thing to have them represented in two great parties, in order that a due balance may be kept between them.

The tendency to centralization has been in the lead, undoubtedly, during the last forty years. It is in accord with what is called the spirit of the age. But the other tendency is still deep and strong in America,—stronger I believe than anywhere else in the world. The most valuable rights of the citizen (except in territories and colonies), his personal freedom, family relations, and property, are still protected mainly by the State in which he lives and of which he is a member,—a State which is politically unknown to any foreign nation, and which exists only for the other States which are united with it!

A curious condition of affairs! Yet it is real. It is historically accountable. It belongs to the Spirit of America. For the people of that country think with Tocqueville that “Those who dread the license of the mob, and those who fear absolute power, ought alike to desire the gradual development of provincial liberties.”

This is the way in which America was made. This is how Americans wish to keep it. An attempt of either party in power to destroy the principle for which the other stands would certainly fail. The day when it seemed possible to dissolve the Union is past. The day when the Union will absorb and obliterate the States is not in sight.

But it is not only in this relation of the States and the nation that you may see the workings of the spirit of which I am speaking. Within each State the spirit of self-reliance is developed and cherished in city, county, and township. Public improvements, roads and streets, police, education,—these are the important things which, as a rule, the State leaves to the local community. The city, the county, the township, attend to them. They must be paid for out of the local pocket. And the local talent of the citizens feels able and entitled to regulate them. Sometimes it is well done. Sometimes it is very badly done. But the doing of it is a privilege which a self-reliant people would be loath to resign.

Each man wishes to have his share in the discussion. The habit of argument is universal. The confidence in the ultimate judgment of the community is general. The assurance of ability to lead is frequent. And through the local office, the small task, the way lies open to larger duties and positions in the State and the nation.

It is not true that every native-born newsboy in America thinks that he can become President. But he knows that he may if he can; and perhaps it is this knowledge, or perhaps it is something in his blood, that often encourages him to try how far he can go on the way. I suppose it is true that there are more ambitious boys in America than in any other country of the world.

At the same time this spirit of self-reliance works in another and different direction. Within the seemingly complicated politics of nation, State, and town, each typical American is a person who likes to take care of himself, to have his own way, to manage his own affairs. He is not inclined to rely upon the State for aid and comfort. He wants not as much government as possible, but as little. He dislikes interference. Sometimes he resents control. He is an individual, a person, and he feels very strongly that personal freedom is what he most needs, and that he is able to make good use of a large amount of it.

Now it is evident that such a spirit as this has its weakness as well as its strength. It leads easily to overconfidence, to ignorant self-assurance, to rashness in undertaking tasks, and to careless haste in performing them.

It is good to be a person, but not good that every person should think himself a personage. It is good to be ready for any duty, but not good to undertake any duty without making ready for it.

There are many Americans who have too little respect for special training, and too much confidence in their power to solve the problems of philosophy and statesmanship extemporaneously.

No doubt there is a popular tendency to disregard exceptional powers and attainments, and to think that one man is as good as another. No doubt you can find in America some cases of self-reliance so hypertrophied that it amounts to impudence towards the laws of the universe. This is socially disagreeable, politically dangerous, and morally regrettable.

Yet we must not forget the other side. The spirit of self-reliance is not to be judged by its failures, but by its successes.

It has enabled America to assert an independence which the rest of the world, except France, thought impossible; to frame a government which the rest of the world, including France, thought impracticable; and to survive civil storms and perils which all the world thought fatal. It has animated the American people with a large and cheerful optimism which takes for granted that great things are worth doing, and tries to do them. It has made it easier to redeem a continent from the ancient wilderness and to build on new ground a civilized state sufficient to itself.

The spirit of self-reliance has fallen into mistakes, but it has shunned delays, evasions, and despairs. It has begotten explorers, pioneers, inventors. It has trained masters of industry in the school of action. It has saved the poor man from the fetters of his poverty, and delivered the lowly man from the prison of his obscurity.

Perhaps it has spoiled the worst material; but it has made the most of the average material; and it has bettered the best material. It has developed in such leaders as Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Lee, Grant, and Cleveland a very noble and excellent manhood, calm, steady, equal to all emergencies.

Somehow it has brought out of the turmoil of events and conflicts the soul of an adult people, ready to trust itself and to advance into the new day without misgiving.

III
FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY

III
FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY

It is no mistake to think of America as a democratic country. But if you wish to understand the nature and quality of the democracy which prevails there,—its specific marks, its peculiarities, and perhaps its inconsistencies,—you must trace it to its source in the spirit of fair play. Therefore it will be profitable to study this spirit a little more carefully, to define it a little more clearly, and to consider some illustrations of its working in American institutions, society, and character.

The spirit of fair play, in its deepest origin, is a kind of religion. It is true that religious organizations have not always shown it so that it could be identified by people outside. But this has been the fault of the organizations. At bottom, fair play is a man’s recognition of the fact that he is not alone in the universe, that the world was not made for his private benefit, that the law of being is a benevolent justice which must regard and rule him as well as his fellow-men with sincere impartiality, and that any human system or order which interferes with this impartiality is contrary to the will of the Supreme Wisdom and Love. Is not this a kind of religion, and a very good kind? Do we not instinctively recognize a Divine authority in its voice when it says: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them”?

But in its practical operation in everyday affairs this spirit is not always conscious of its deep origin. It is not usually expressed in terms of religion, any more than an ordinary weighing-machine is inscribed with the formula of gravitation. It appears simply as the wish to conduct trade with just weights and measures, to live in a State which affords equal protection and opportunity to all its citizens, to play a game in which the rules are the same for every player, and a good stroke counts, no matter who makes it.

The Anglo-Saxon race has fallen into the habit of claiming this spirit of fair play as its own peculiar property. The claim does not illustrate the quality which it asserts. Certainly no one can defend the proposition that the growth of this spirit in America was due exclusively, or even chiefly, to English influence. It was in New England and in Virginia that ecclesiastical intolerance and social exclusiveness were most developed. In the middle colonies like New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, where the proportion of colonists from Holland, France, and Germany was much larger, a more liberal and tolerant spirit prevailed.

But, after all, it must be acknowledged that in the beginning there was no part of America where the spirit of self-reliance really carried with it that necessary complement,—the spirit of fair play. This was a thing of much slower growth. Indeed, it was not until the American people, passionately desiring self-rule, were brought into straits where they needed the help of every man to fight for independence, that they began to feel the right of every man to share equally in the benefits and privileges of that self-rule.

I pass by the discussion of the reasons why this second trait in the soul of the people developed later than the first. I pass by the tempting opportunity to describe the absurd pretensions of colonial aristocracy. I pass by the familiar theme of the inflexible prejudices of Puritan theocracy, which led men to interpret liberty of conscience as the right to practise their own form of worship and to persecute all others. I pass by the picturesque and neglected spectacle of the violence of the mobs which shouted for liberty—a violence which reminds one of the saying of Rivarol that “the crowd never believes that it has liberty until it attacks the liberties of others.” All this I pass by for want of time, and come at once to the classic utterance of the spirit of fair play in America—I mean the Declaration of Independence.

If I must apologize for discussing a document so familiar, it is because familiarity, not being illuminated by intelligence, has bred in these latter days a certain kind of contempt. A false interpretation has led the enthusiastic admirers of the Declaration of Independence to complain that it has been abandoned, and its scornful despisers to say that it ought to be abandoned. The Declaration, in fact, has been as variously and as absurdly explained as the writings of St. Paul, of whom a French critic said that “the only man of the second century who understood St. Paul was Marcion, and he misunderstood him.”

Take the famous sentence from the beginning of that document. “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new form of government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Now what have we here? A defence of revolution, no doubt, but not a sweeping and unqualified defence. It is carefully guarded and limited by the condition that revolution is justified only when government becomes destructive of its own ends,—the security and the happiness of the people.

And what have we here in the way of political doctrine? An assertion of the common rights of man as derived from his Creator, no doubt, and an implication that the specific prerogatives of rulers are not of divine origin. But there is no denial that the institution of government among men has a divine sanction. On the contrary, such a sanction is distinctly implied in the statement that government is necessary for the security of rights divinely given. There is no assertion of the divinity or even the superiority of any particular form of government, republican or democratic. On the contrary, “just powers” are recognized as derivable from the consent of the people. According to this view, a happy and consenting people under George III or Louis XVI would be as rightly and lawfully governed as a happy people under a congress and a president.

And what have we here in the way of social theory? An assertion of equality, no doubt, and a very flat-footed and peremptory assertion. “All men are created equal.” But equal in what? In strength, in ability, in influence, in possessions. Not a word of it. The assertion of such a thing in an assembly which contained men as different as George Washington, with his lofty stature and rich estate, and Samuel Adams, for whose unimpressive person his friends were sometimes obliged to supply lodging and raiment, would have been a palpable absurdity.

“But,” says Professor Wendell, “the Declaration only asserts that men are created equal, not that they must remain so.” Not at all. It implies that what equality exists by creation ought to remain by protection. It is, and ought to be, inalienable.

But what is that equality? Not of person; for that would be to say that all men are alike, which is evidently false. Not of property; for that would be to say that all men are on a level, which never has been true, and, whether it is desirable or not, probably never will be true. The equality which is asserted among men refers simply to the rights which are common to men: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Here government must make no distinctions, no exceptions. Here the social order must impose no arbitrary and unequal deprivations and barriers. The life of all is equally sacred, the liberty of all must be equally secure, in order that the right of all to pursue happiness may be equally open.

Equality of opportunity: that is the proposition of the Declaration of Independence. And when you come to look at it closely, it does not seem at all unreasonable. For it proposes no alteration in the laws of the universe,—only a principle to be observed in human legislation. It predicts no Utopia of universal prosperity,—only a common adventure of equal risks and hopes. It has not the accent of that phrase, “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death,” which Chamfort translated so neatly, “Be my brother or I will kill you.” It proceeds rather upon the assumption that fraternity already exists. It says, “We are brothers; therefore let us deal squarely with one another.” It is, in fact, nothing more and nothing less than the voice of the spirit of fair play speaking gravely of the deepest interests of man. Here, in this game of life, it says, as we play it in America, the rules shall be the same for all. The penalties shall be the same for all. The prizes, so far as we can make it so, shall be open to all. And let the best man win.

This, so far as I can see it, or feel it, or comprehend it, is the sum total of democracy in America.

It is not an abstract theory of universal suffrage and the infallibility of the majority. For, as a matter of fact, universal suffrage never has existed in the United States and does not exist to-day. Each State has the right to fix its own conditions of suffrage. It may require a property qualification; and in the past many States imposed this condition. It may require an educational qualification; and to-day some States are imposing this condition. It may exclude the Chinese; and California, Oregon, and Nevada make this exclusion. It may admit only natives and foreigners who have been naturalized, as the majority of the States do. It may admit also foreigners who have merely declared their intention of becoming naturalized, as eleven of the States do. It may permit only men to vote, or it may expressly grant the suffrage to every citizen, male or female, as Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah do. The only thing that the law of the nation says upon the subject is that when citizenship is established, the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude.

It is entirely possible, therefore, that within this condition, suffrage should expand or contract in the United States according to the will of the people. Woman suffrage might come in next year without the change of a word in the Constitution. All that would be necessary would be a change in the mind of the women, the majority of whom at present do not want to vote, and would not do it if you paid them. On the other hand, educational and property qualifications might be proposed which would reduce the suffrage by a quarter or a third; but this, again, is not likely to happen. The point is that suffrage in America is not regarded as a universal and inalienable human right, but as a political privilege granted on the ground of fair play in order to make the rights of the people more secure.

The undeniable tendency has been to widen the suffrage; for Americans, as a rule, have a large confidence in the reasonableness of human nature, and believe that public opinion, properly and deliberately ascertained, will prove to be a wise and safe guide. But they recognize that a popular election may not always represent public opinion, that a people, like an individual, may and probably will need time to arrive at the best thought, the wisest counsel.

President Grover Cleveland, a confirmed and inflexible Democrat, but not an obstreperous or flamboyant one, often said to me, “You can trust the best judgment of the rank and file, but you cannot always reach that best judgment in a hurry.” James Russell Lowell said pretty much the same thing: “An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.” The long run,—that is the needful thing in the successful working of popular suffrage. And that the Americans have tried to gain by the division and distribution of powers, by the interposition of checks and delays, by lodging extraordinary privileges of veto in the hands of governors of States, and of the President of the United States. In short, by making swift action difficult and sudden action impossible, they have sought to secure fair play, even from the crowd, for every man and every interest.

There are some of us who think that this might have been done more easily and more certainly if the bounds of suffrage had not been made so wide. We doubt, for example, whether a group of day-labourers coming from Italy with their padrone are really protected in their natural rights by having the privilege of a vote before they can understand the language of the land in which they cast it. So far from being a protection, it seems to us like a danger. It exposes them to the seductions of the demagogue and to the control of the boss.

The suffrage of the ignorant is like a diamond hung round the neck of a little child who is sent out into the street: an invitation to robbers. It is like a stick of dynamite in the hands of a foolish boy: a prophecy of explosion.

There are some of us who think that “coming of age” might be measured by intelligence as well as by years; that it would be easier to get at the mind of the people if the vote were cast by the people who have minds; that a popular election would come nearer to representing public opinion if there were some way of sifting out at least a considerable part of those electors who can neither read nor write, nor understand the Constitution under which they are voting.

But whatever may be the thoughts and wishes of the more conservative Americans upon this subject, two things are certain. One is that the privilege of voting is a thing which is easy to give away and very hard to take back. The other sure thing is that the Spirit of America will never consent to any restriction of the suffrage which rests upon artificial distinctions, or seems to create ranks and orders and estates within the body politic. If any conditions are imposed, they must be the same for all. If the privilege should be in any way narrowed, it must still be open alike to all who will make the necessary effort to attain it. This is fair play; and this, so far as the suffrage and popular sovereignty are concerned, is what American democracy means. Not that every man shall count alike in the affairs of state, but that every man shall have an equal chance to make himself count for what he is worth.

Mark you, I do not say that this result has been fully accomplished in the United States. The machinery of parties interferes with it. The presentation of men and of measures from a purely partisan point of view interferes with it. In any national election it is reasonably sure that either the Republican party or the Democratic party will win. The policies and the candidates of both have been determined in committee or caucus, by processes which the ordinary citizen does not understand and cannot touch. But what if he does not like the results on either side? What if neither party seems to him clear or consistent or satisfactory? Still he must go with one or the other, or else be content to assert his individuality and lose his electoral efficiency by going in with one of the three or four little parties which stand for moral protest, or intellectual whim, or political vagary, without any possible chance of carrying the election.

A thoughtful man sometimes feels as if he were almost helpless amid the intricacies of the system by which his opinion on national affairs is asked. He sits with his vote in his hand as if it were some strange and antiquated instrument, and says to himself, “Now what, in heaven’s name, am I going to do with this?”

In the large cities, especially, this sense of impotence is likely to trouble the intelligent and conscientious American. For here a species of man has developed called the Boss, who takes possession of the political machinery and uses it for his own purposes. He controls the party through a faction, and the faction through a gang, and the gang through a ring, and the ring by his own will, which is usually neither sweet nor savoury. He virtually owns the public franchises, the public offices, the public payroll. Like Rob Roy or Robin Hood, he takes tribute from the rich and distributes it to the poor,—for a consideration; namely, their personal loyalty to him. He leads his followers to the polls as a feudal chief led his retainers to battle. And the men whom he has chosen, the policies which he approves, are the ones that win.

What does this mean? The downfall of democracy? No; only the human weakness of the system in which democracy has sought to reach its ends; only the failure in duty, in many cases, of the very men who ought to have watched over the system in order to prevent its corruption.

It is because good men in America too often neglect politics that bad men sometimes control them. And, after all, when the evil goes far enough, it secretes its own remedy,—popular discontent, a reform movement, a peaceful revolution. The way is open. Speech is free. There is no need of pikes and barricades and firebrands. There is a more powerful weapon in every man’s hand. Persuade him to use it for his own good. Combine the forces of intelligence and conscience, and the city which sees its own interest will find out how to secure it.

But the trouble, with such a mass of voters, is to produce this awakening, to secure this combination of better forces. It is a trouble which Americans often feel deeply, and of which they sometimes complain bitterly. But after all, if you can get down to the bottom of their minds, you will find that they would rather take their trouble in this form than in any other. They feel that there is something wholesome and bracing in the idea that people must want good government before they can get it. And for the sake of this they are willing, upon the whole, and except during intervals, to give that eternal vigilance which is the price of fair play.

It is not, however, of democracy as it has taken shape in political forms that I would speak; but rather of democracy as a spirit, a sentiment existing in the soul of the American people. The root of it is the feeling that the openings of life, so far as they are under human control, ought to be equal for all. The world may be like a house of many stories, some higher, some lower. But there shall be no locked doors between those stories. Every stairway shall be unbarred. Every man shall have his chance to rise. Every man shall be free to pursue his happiness, and protected in the enjoyment of his liberty, and secure in the possession of his life, so far as he does not interfere with others in the same rights.

This does not mean that all shall be treated alike, shall receive the same rewards. For, as Plato says, “The essence of equality lies in treating unequal things unequally.” But it means what the first Napoleon called la carrière ouverte aux talents. Nay, it means a little more than that. For it goes beyond the talents, to the mediocrities, to the inefficiencies, and takes them into its just and humane and unprejudiced account. It means what President Roosevelt meant when he spoke of “the square deal for everybody.” The soul of the American people answered to his words because he had expressed one of their dominant ideals.

You must not imagine that I propose to claim that this ideal has been perfectly realized in America. It is not true that every man gets justice there. It is not true that none are oppressed or unfairly treated. It is not true that every one finds the particular stairway which he wishes to climb open and unencumbered. But where is any ideal perfectly realized except in heaven and in the writings of female novelists? It is of the real desire and purpose, the good intention, the aim and temper of the American people, that I speak. And here I say, without doubt, the spirit of fair play has been, and still is, one of the creative and controlling factors of America.

If you should ask me for the best evidence to support this statement, I should at once name the Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States. Here is an original institution, created and established by the people at the very birth of the nation, peculiar in its character and functions, I believe, to America, and embodying in visible form the spirit of fair play.

The laws under which a man must live in America are of three kinds. There is first the common law, which prevails in all the States except Louisiana, which is still under the Napoleonic Code. The common law, inherited from England, is contained in the mass of decisions and precedents handed down by the duly established courts from generation to generation. It is supposed to cover the principles which are likely to arise in almost all cases. But when a new principle appears, the judge must decide it according to his conscience and create the legal right.

The second source of law is found in statutes of the United States enacted by Congress, in the constitutions of the different States, and in the statutes enacted by the State legislatures. Here we have definite rules and regulations, not arising out of differences or disputes between individuals, but framed on general principles, and intended to cover all cases that may arise under them.

The third source of law is the Constitution of the United States, which is supreme and sovereign over all other laws. It is the enactment of the whole people. Congress did not create it. It created Congress. No legislation, whether of a State or of the nation, can impair or contravene its authority. It can only be changed by the same power which made it,—the people of the United States, expressing their will, first through a two-thirds majority of the national House and Senate, and then directly through the vote of three-fourths of the forty-six States.

Any statute which conflicts with the Constitution is invalid. Any State constitution which fails to conform to it is, in so far forth, non-existent. Any judicial decision which contradicts it is of no binding force. Over all the complexities of legislation and the perplexities of politics in America stands this law above the laws, this ultimate guarantee of fair play.

The thing to be noted in the Constitution is this: brief as it is for the creative document of a great nation, it contains an ample Bill of Rights, protecting every man alike. The Constitution, as originally framed in 1787, had omitted to do this fully, though it prohibited the States from passing any law to impair the validity of contracts, from suspending the writ of habeas corpus in time of peace, and from other things contrary to the spirit of fair play. But it was evident at once that the Constitution would not be ratified by a sufficient number of the States unless it went much farther. Massachusetts voiced the Spirit of America in presenting a series of amendments covering the ground of equal dealing with all men in the matters most essential to individual freedom and security. In 1790 these amendments, numbered from I to X, were passed by Congress, and in 1791 they became part of the Constitution.

What do they do? They guarantee religious liberty, freedom of speech and of the press, and the right of popular assembly and petition. They protect every man, in time of peace, from criminal indictment except by a grand jury, from secret trial, from compulsion to testify against himself, from being tried again for an offence of which he has been once acquitted, and from the requisition of excessive bail and the infliction of cruel or unusual punishments. They guarantee to him the right to be tried by an impartial jury of his peers and neighbours in criminal cases and in all suits under common law when the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars in value. They protect his house from search except under legal and specific warrant, and his property from appropriation for public use without just compensation. They assure him that he shall not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

The remarkable thing about these provisions for fair play is not so much their nature as the place where they are put. In England there is a Bill of Rights, embodied in various enactments, which covers pretty much the same ground. But these, as Mr. James Bryce says, “are merely ordinary laws, which could be repealed by Parliament at any moment in exactly the same way as it can repeal a highway act or lower the duty on tobacco.” But in America they are placed upon a secure and lofty foundation, they are lifted above the passing storms of party politics. No State can touch them. No act of Congress can touch them. They belong to the law above laws.

Nor is this all. A supreme tribunal, coördinate with the national executive and legislature, independent and final in its action, is created by the Constitution itself to interpret and apply this supreme law. The nine judges who compose this court are chosen from the highest ranks of the legal profession, appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate. They hold office for life. Their court room is in the centre of the national Capitol, between the wings appropriated to the Senate and the House.

It is to that quiet chamber, so rich, so noble in its dignity and simplicity, so free from pomp and ostentation, so remote from turmoil and confusion, so filled with the tranquil glory of intelligence and conscience, so eloquent of confidence in the power of justice to vindicate itself,—it is to that room that I would take a foreigner who asked me why I believe that democracy in America has the promise of endurance. Those nine men, in their black judicial robes (the only officials of the nation who have from the beginning worn a uniform of office), are the symbols of the American conscience offering the ultimate guarantee of fair play. To them every case in law and equity arising under the Constitution, treaties and laws of the United States, every case of admiralty and marine jurisdiction, every case between citizens of different States, or between two States, every case in which the United States itself is a party, may be brought for final decision. For more than a hundred years this court has discharged its high functions without a suspicion of corruption or a shadow of reproach.

Twenty-one times it has annulled the action of Congress and declared it ultra vires. More than two hundred times it has found that State statutes were contrary to the Constitution and therefore practically non-existent. And these decisions are not made in the abstract, on theory, but in the concrete, on actual cases when the principle of fair play under the Constitution is at stake.

Let me illustrate this. In 1894 a law was passed by Congress taxing all incomes over a certain sum at certain rates. This was, in effect, not a tax based proportionally upon population, but a special tax upon a part of the population. It was also a direct tax levied by the national legislature. There was no necessity of discussing the abstract question of the wisdom or righteousness of such taxation. The only question was whether it was fair play under the Constitution. A citizen of New York refused to pay the tax; the case was brought to the Supreme Court and argued by Mr. Choate, the late American Ambassador to Great Britain. The court held that Congress had no power to impose such a tax, because the Constitution forbids that body to lay any direct tax, “unless in proportion to the census.” By this one decision the income-tax law became null, as if it had never been.

Again, a certain citizen had obtained from the State of Georgia a grant of land upon certain terms. This grant was subsequently repealed by the State by a general statute. A case arose out of the conveyance of this land by a deed and covenant, and was carried to the Supreme Court. The court held that the statute of the State which took the citizen’s land away from him was null, because it “impaired the obligation of a contract,” which the Constitution expressly forbids.

Again, in 1890, Congress passed a measure commonly called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, declaring “every contract, combination in the form of trusts or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States” to be illegal. This was undoubtedly intended to prevent the merger of railroads and manufacturing concerns into gigantic trusts with monopolistic powers. The American spirit has always understood liberty as including the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties, to live and work where he will, and in so doing to move freely from State to State. So far as the trusts were combinations in restraint of this right, the statute properly declared them illegal, and the Supreme Court so interpreted and applied it. But it soon became evident that combinations of labour might restrain trade just as much as combinations of capital. A strike or a boycott might paralyze an industry or stop a railroad. The Supreme Court did not hesitate to apply the same rule to the employees as to the employers. It held that a combination whose professed object is to arrest the operation of railroads whose lines extend from a great city into adjoining States until such roads accede to certain demands made upon them, whether such demands are in themselves reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, is certainly an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of commerce among the States.

Again and again the Supreme Court has interfered to prevent citizens of all the States from being deprived by the action of any State of those liberties which belong to them in common. Again and again its decisions have expressed and illustrated the fundamental American conviction which is summed up in the strong words of Justice Bradley: “The right to follow any of the common occupations of life is an inalienable right.”

I have not spoken of the other federal courts and of the general machinery of justice in the United States, because there is not time to do so. If it were possible to characterize the general tendency in a sentence, I would say that it lays the primary emphasis on the protection of rights, and the secondary emphasis on the punishment of offences. Looking at the processes of justice from the outside, and describing things by their appearance, one might say that in many parts of the continent of Europe an accused man looks guilty till he is proved innocent; in America he looks innocent until his guilt is established.

The American tendency has its serious drawbacks,—legal delays, failures to convict, immunity of criminals, and so on. These are unpleasant and dangerous things. Yet, after all, when the thoughtful American looks at his country quietly and soberly he feels that a fundamental sense of justice prevails there not only in the courts but among the people. The exceptions are glaring, but they are still exceptions. And when he remembers the immense and inevitable perils of a republic, he reassures himself by considering the past history and the present power of the Supreme Court, that great bulwark against official encroachment, legislative tyranny, and mobocracy,—that grave and majestic symbol of the spirit of fair play. A republic with such an institution at the centre of its national conscience has at least one instrument of protection against the dangers which lurk in the periphery of its own passions.

If you should ask me for a second illustration of the spirit of fair play in America, I should name religious liberty and the peaceful independence of the churches within the state. I do not call it the “Separation of Church and State,” because I fear that in France the phrase might carry a false meaning. It might convey the impression of a forcible rupture, or even a feeling of hostility, between the government and the religious bodies. Nothing of that kind exists in America. The state extends a firm and friendly protection to the adherents of all forms of religious belief or unbelief, defending all alike in their persons, in the possession of their property, and in their chosen method of pursuing happiness, whether in this world or in the next. It requires only that they shall not practise as a part of their cult anything contrary to public morality, such as polygamy, or physical cruelty, or neglect of children. Otherwise they are all free to follow the dictates of conscience in worshipping or in not worshipping, and in so doing they are under the shield of government.

This is guaranteed not only by the Constitution of the United States, but also by the separate State constitutions, so far as I know, without exception. Moreover, the general confidence and good-will of the state towards the churches is shown in many ways. Property used for religious purposes is exempted from taxation,—doubtless on the ground that these purposes are likely to promote good citizenship and orderly living. Religious marriage is recognized, but not required; and the act of a minister of any creed is, in this particular, as valid and binding as if he were a magistrate. But such marriages must be witnessed and registered according to law, and no church can annul them. It is the common practice to open sessions of the legislature, national and State, with an act of prayer; but participation in this act is voluntary. The President, according to ancient custom, appoints an annual day of national thanksgiving in the month of November, and his proclamation to this effect is repeated by the governors of the different States. But here, again, it is a proclamation of liberty. The people are simply recommended to assemble in their various places of worship, and to give thanks according to their conscience and faith.

The laws against blasphemy and against the disturbance of public worship which exist in most of the States offer an equal protection to a Jewish synagogue, a Catholic cathedral, a Buddhist temple, a Protestant church, and a Quaker meeting-house; and no citizen is under any compulsion to enter any one of these buildings, or to pay a penny of taxation for their support. Each religious organization regulates its own affairs and controls its own property. In cases of dispute arising within a church the civil law has decided, again and again, that the rule and constitution of the church itself shall prevail.

But what of the religious bodies which exist under this system? Do not imagine that they are small, feeble, or insignificant; that they are content to be merely tolerated; that they feel themselves in any way impotent or slighted. They include the large majority of the American people. Twelve millions are adherents of the Catholic Church. The adherents of the Protestant churches are estimated to number between forty and fifty millions. But neither as a whole, nor in any of their separate organizations, do the religious people of America feel that they are deprived of any real rights or robbed of any just powers.

It is true that the different churches are sometimes very jealous of one another. But bad as that may be for them, from a political point of view it is rather a safeguard.

It is true that ecclesiastics sometimes have dreams, and perhaps schemes, which look towards the obtaining of special privileges or powers for their own organization. But that is because ecclesiastics are human and fallible. In the main, you may say with confidence that there is no party or sect in America that has the slightest wish to see church and state united, or even entangled. The American people are content and happy that religion should be free and independent. And this contentment arises from three causes.

First, religious liberty has come naturally, peacefully, in a moderate and friendly temper, with consideration for the conscience and the rights of all, and at the same time, if I mistake not, with a general recognition that the essence of religion, personal faith in a spiritual life and a Divine law, is a purifying, strengthening, elevating factor in human society.

Second, the churches have prospered in freedom; they are well-to-do, they are active, they are able to erect fine edifices, to support their clergy, to carry on benevolent and missionary enterprises on an immense scale, costing many millions of dollars every year. The voluntary system has its great disadvantages and drawbacks,—its perils, even. But upon the whole, religious people in America, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike, feel that these are more than counterbalanced by the devotion which is begotten and nourished by the very act of making gifts and sacrifices, and by the sober strength which comes into a man’s faith when he is called to support it by his works.

Men value what they pay for. But this is true only when they pay for what they really want.

Third, and chiefly, religious liberty commends itself to the Americans because they feel that it is the very highest kind of fair play. That a man should have freedom in the affairs of his soul is certainly most vital to his pursuit of happiness. The noble example of tolerance which was set to the American colonies by the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Baptists of Rhode Island, and the Catholics of Maryland, prevailed slowly but surely over the opposite example of the Puritans of Massachusetts and the Anglicans of Virginia. The saying of William of Orange, “Conscience is God’s province,” has become one of the watchwords of America.

In a country which, as a matter of fact, is predominantly Christian and Protestant, there is neither establishment nor proscription of any form of faith. In the President’s cabinet (1908) I personally know a Jew, a Catholic, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Methodist. The President himself is a member of one of the smallest denominations in the country, the Dutch Reformed.

Nor is unfaith penalized or persecuted. A recent writer on America has said that “an avowed atheist is not received in any social circles above that of the ordinary saloon.” Well, an atheist avowed in definite and unmistakable terms, a man who positively affirms that there is no God, is a very difficult person to find in this world of mystery. But a positivist, a free-thinker, a Voltairean, a sceptic, an agnostic, an antisupernaturalist of any kind, has the same rights and privileges as any other man. In America, if his life is clean and his manners decent, he goes everywhere. You may meet him in the best clubs, and in social circles which are at the farthest remove from the saloon. This is not because people like his opinions, but because they feel he is entitled to form them for himself. They take it for granted that it is as impossible to correct unbelief by earthly penalties as it is to deprive faith of its heavenly rewards.

I do not say that this is the right attitude, the only reasonable attitude. I do not wish to persuade any one to adopt it. I say only that it is the characteristic attitude of the Americans, and that sincerely religious people hold it, in the Catholic Church and in the Protestant Church. It may be that the spirit of fair play has blinded them. It may be that it has enlightened them. Be that as it may, they have passed beyond the point of demanding freedom of conscience for themselves to that of conceding it to others. And in this they think that they are acting in accordance with the Divine will and example.

An anecdote will illustrate this attitude better than many paragraphs of explanation. In the older American colleges, which were independent of state control, the original course of study was uniform and prescribed, and chapel services were held which the students were required to attend. Elective studies came in. The oldest of the universities made attendance at chapel voluntary. “I understand,” said a critic to the president of the university, “that you have made God an elective in your college.” The President thought for a moment. “No,” said he, “we understand that He has made Himself elective everywhere.”

There are certain singular limitations in the spirit of fair play in America of which I must say a word in order to play fair. Chief among these is the way in which the people of the colonies and of the United States dealt for many years with the races which have not a white skin.

The American Indians, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, undoubtedly sinned as much as they were sinned against. They were treacherous, implacable, unspeakably cruel, horribly bloodthirsty. It is no wonder that the colonists regarded them as devils. It is no wonder that the feeling of mistrust and resentment persisted from one generation to another. But the strange thing is that when the Indians were subjugated and for the most part pacified, America still treated them from a hostile and alien point of view, denied them the rights of citizenship, took their property from them, and made it very difficult for them to pursue happiness in any reasonable form. For many years this treatment continued. It was so glaring that a book was written which described the Indian policy of the United States, not altogether unjustly, as A Century of Dishonor. To-day all this is changed. The scattered and diminished remnants of the red men are admitted to citizenship if they wish it, and protected in their rights, and private benevolence vies with government in seeking to better their condition.

The African race, introduced into America for industrial reasons, multiplied more rapidly there than in its native home, and soon became a large factor in the population. But it was regarded and treated from a point of view totally different from that which controlled the treatment of the white factors. It did not share in the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. It was an object of commerce, a source of wealth, a necessity of agriculture. The system of domestic slavery held practically all of the negroes in bondage (in spite of the fact that the Northern States abandoned it, and many of the best men in the South disliked it and protested against it) until the third quarter of the nineteenth century. It was approved, or at least tolerated, by the majority of the people until the Civil War did away with it. It has left as a legacy of retribution the most difficult and dangerous problem of America,—perhaps the greatest and most perplexing problem that any nation has ever had to face.

Nine millions of negroes, largely ignorant and naturally ill-fitted for self-government, are domiciled in the midst of a white population which in some sections of the South they outnumber. How to rule, protect, and educate this body of coloured people; how to secure them in their civil rights without admitting them to a racial mixture—that is the problem.

The Oriental races, recently coming to America in increasing numbers, receive from the people a welcome which cannot be described as cordial. The exclusion of the Chinese from citizenship, and in some States from immigration, is but a small symptom of the general situation. If any considerable number of Burmese or East Indians or Japanese should come, the situation would be the same, and it would be intensified with the increase of the numbers. They would not find the Americans inclined to make an open career for the Oriental talents.

Understand, I am not now condemning this state of affairs, nor am I defending it. That is not my business. I am simply trying to describe it. How is it to be reconciled with the spirit of fair play? I do not know. Perhaps reconciliation is impossible. But a partial understanding of the facts is possible, if you take into account the doctrine of inferior races.

This doctrine is not held or defended by all Americans. Some on religious grounds, some on philosophic grounds, would deny it. But on the mass of the people it has a firm, though in part an unrecognized, hold. They believe—or perhaps feel would be a better word—that the white race has an innate superiority to the coloured races. From this doctrine they have proceeded to draw conclusions, and curiously enough they have put them in the form of fair play. The Indians were not to be admitted to citizenship because they were the wards of the nation. The negroes were better off under slavery because they were like children, needing control and protection. They must still be kept in social dependence and tutelage because they will be safer and happier so. The Orientals are not fit for a share in American citizenship, and they shall not be let in because they will simply give us another inferior race to be taken care of.

I do not propose to discuss the philosophical consistency of such arguments. It is difficult to imagine what place Rousseau would have found for them in his doctrine of the state of nature and the rights of man.

The truth is that the Spirit of America has never been profoundly impressed with the idea of philosophical consistency. The Republic finds herself face to face not with a theory but with a condition. It is the immense mass of the African population that creates the difficulty for America. She means to give equal civil rights to her nine million negroes. She does not mean to let the black blood mix with the white. Whatever social division may be necessary to prevent this immense and formidable adulteration must be maintained intact.