The want of a clear understanding of our relative position vitiates all our dealings with that ancient empire. The Chinese has heard of our discordant opinions, of our intolerance toward those who differ in ideas from us, of our worship of wealth, and the honor we pay to birth; he has heard that we sometimes commit political power to men who are so little above the animals that they can neither read nor write; that we hold military success in esteem, and regard the profession of arms as the only suitable occupation for a gentleman. It is so long since his ancestors thought and acted in that manner that he justifies himself in regarding us as having scarcely yet emerged from the barbarian stage. On our side, we cherish the delusion that we shall, by precept or by force, convert him to our modes of thought, religious or political, and that we can infuse into his stagnating veins a portion of our enterprise.

A trustworthy account of the present condition of China would be a valuable gift to philosophy, and also to statesmanship. On a former page I have remarked that it demands the highest policy to govern populations living in great differences of latitude. Yet China has not only controlled her climatic strands of people; she has even made them, if not homogeneous, yet so fitted to each other that they all think and labor alike. Europe is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may see what we shall be like when we are old.

A great community, aiming to govern itself by intellect rather than by coercion, is a spectacle worthy of admiration, even though the mode by which it endeavors to accomplish its object is plainly inadequate. Brute force holds communities together as an iron nail binds pieces of wood by the compression it makes a compression depending on the force with which it has been hammered in. It also holds more tenaciously if a little rusted with age. But intelligence binds like a screw. The things it has to unite must be carefully adjusted to its thread. It must be gently turned, not driven, and so it retains the consenting parts firmly together.

Notwithstanding the imperfections of a system founded on such a faulty basis, that great community has accomplished what many consider to be the object of statesmanship. They think that it should be perma nence in Institutions. But permanence is only, in an apparent sense, the object of good statesmanship; progression, in accordance with the natural tendency, is the real one. The successive steps of such a progression follow one another so imperceptibly that there is a delusive appearance of permanence. Man is so constituted that he is never aware of continuous motion. Abrupt variations alone impress his attention.

Forms of government, therefore, are of moment, though not in the manner commonly supposed. Their value increases in proportion as

they permit or encourage the natural tendency for development to be satisfied.

While Asia has thus furnished an example of the effects of a national organization of intellect, Europe, on a smaller scale, has presented an illustration of the same kind. The papal system opened, in its special circumstances, a way for talent. It maintained an intellectual organization for those who were within its pale, irrespective of wealth or birth. It was no objection that the greatest churchman frequently came from the lowest walks of life. And that organization sustained it in spite of the opposition of external circumstances for several centuries after its supernatural and ostensible basis had completely decayed away.

Whatever may be the facts under which, in the different countries of Europe, such an organization takes place, or the political forms guiding it, the basis it must rest upon is universal, and, if necessary, compulsory education. In the more enlightened places the movement has already nearly reached that point. Already it is an accepted doctrine that the state, as well as the parent, has rights in a child, and that it may insist on education; conversely, also, that every child has a claim upon the government for good instruction. After providing in the most liberal manner for that, free countries have but one thing more to do for the accomplishment of the rest.

That one thing is to secure intellectual freedom as completely as the rights of property and personal liberty have been already secured. Philosophical opinions and scientific discoveries are entitled to be judged of by their truth, not by their relation to existing interests. The motion of the earth round the sun, the antiquity of the globe, the origin of species, are doctrines which have had to force their way in the manner described in this book, not against philosophical opposition, but opposition of a totally different nature. And yet the interests which resisted. them so strenuously have received no damage from their establishment beyond that consequent on the discredit of having so resisted them.

There is no literary crime greater than that of exciting a social, and especially a theological, odium against ideas that are purely scientific, none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own. dignity to tolerate no longer offences of that kind.

To such an organization of their national intellect, and to giving it a political control, the countries of Europe are thus rapidly advancing. They are hastening to satisfy their instinctive tendency. The special form in which they will embody their intentions must, of course, depend to a great degree on the political forms under which they have passed their lives, modified by that approach to homogeneousness which arises from increased intercommunication. The canal system, so wonderfully

developed in China, exerted no little influence in that respect—an influence, however, not to be compared with that which must be the result of the railway system of Europe.

In an all-important particular the prospect of Europe is bright. China is passing through the last stage of civil life in the cheerlessness of Buddhism; Europe approaches it through Christianity. Universal benevolence cannot fail to yield a better fruit than unsocial pride. There is a fairer hope for nations animated by a sincere religious sentiment, who, whatever their political history may have been, have always agreed in this, that they were devout, than for a people who dedicate themselves to a selfish pursuit of material advantages, who have lost all belief in a future, and are living without any God.

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.

[Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America. 1865.]

ONE of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, Plato, held that in a

political sense men are to be considered, not as men, but as elements of the state; thus carrying to its extreme consequence the idea of that public relation just referred to. In America, the principle of individual independence being thoroughly admitted, that independence can only be secured by political organization; and hence, the Platonic idea being accepted, individuals must be considered as existing for the state. To it they owe whatever they have, even life.

The fabric of the Republic arose from the spontaneous coalescence of such elements. The first immigrants necessarily maintained purely democratic relations, with only such subordination as their existing needs required. When, in the course of time, colony began to establish connections with colony, the principle of equality was never for a moment forgotten. From the union of individuals towns arose; from the union of towns, states; from the union of states, the Republic. This coalescence of individuals was and is still greatly facilitated by a certain sameness of habits among all classes, arising from their issuing from a common origin. Temporary differences of wealth are of little moment: the poor of to-day may be the rich of to-morrow.

The modes of life of various classes being more similar than in Europe, individuals fall more readily into place, and more easily assume a fitting association with one another. From this arises that sentiment of equality which curbs and checks the sentiment of individual independence.

The Republic may therefore be regarded as a restrained association of

free individuals, voluntarily surrendering a part of their personal independence for the common good, yet all the time conscious and jealous of that surrender. They have bartered a portion of their liberty for security. Labor is its essential basis. In America, every one, even though he may be rich, must have some ostensible occupation. A healthy public sentiment makes it disreputable to be idle.

Liberty, therefore, is always, if such a paradox may be excused, liberty under restraint. It appertains not to the position an individual occupies; it is inherent in humanity.

Elsewhere nations are governed too much; here no restraint is admissible beyond that necessary for the well-being and life of the body politic. But in that maxim much is embraced. Coercion, more energetic and more formidable than that ever felt in the most absolute monarchies, becomes justifiable, if necessary to preserve the national life. The individual must not for an instant stand in the way of the public good.

There are singular advantages arising from a personal acknowledgment of this force of public authority, and of the inevitable direction its action will take. In foreign countries there is no definitely visible path in which it is clear that the nation will advance; here every one sees plainly what the course of progress must inevitably be. The popular phrase, "manifest destiny," marks out this recognition. There hence arises a concert of action, which adds prodigiously to the public power. The momentum of the whole population is felt in a definite direction.

Placed in such circumstances, a democracy will exhibit an instinct of cohesion in all its parts. Herein is the explanation of the remark so often made by observing statesmen respecting the essential difference between democracies in Europe and America-that the former are destructive, the latter constructive.

This constructiveness is strikingly seen in new-settled American states. Where, but a short time before, there was an untrodden wilderness, population began to converge-a village formed. In an incredibly short time, organization of the infant community might be observed; its outward signs, the school-house, the town hall, the church, the newspaper. These differentiations from the growing body spontaneously issued from the people; they required no stimulus from above. The village rapidly grew into a town. All round it, in precisely like manner, other towns were emerging. The instinct of cohesion I have referred to combined them together; an organized territory, a state, is the result. Constructive affinity still continues to be manifested, and the new state merges into and becomes an acknowledged part of the Republic. It loses forever, if indeed it ever possessed, the attribute of independent sovereignty.

Throughout this process of events self-government is perpetually manifest. Each individual bears a conscious share in each of the stages of procedure and in the final result. Hence arises a property of such a democracy unfortunately not understood in Europe. In monarchical countries war and peace are easily made. The people are rarely penetrated by a just appreciation of the points in dispute. The conflicting authorities, sovereigns or royal houses, compose their quarrel; the community acquiesces.

Not so in a self-conscious democracy. A public injury, perpetrated by a foreign power, is at once accepted by each individual as his personal affair. When the English government conceded belligerent rights to the insurgent states, there was not an American who did not personally appropriate the offence. Such a sensitiveness is often imputed, by those who have not considered the peculiarities of democratic life, to the youth of the nation or to other transitory causes. It arises, however, from a very different, and, it may be added, a far more dangerous condition. A course that might be pursued with impunity by one royal house toward another, cannot wisely be pursued toward a self-conscious democracy; for it has a retentive memory, and is, in virtue of its very constitution, unforgiving.

The instinct of self-government, so characteristic of the American democracy, thus leads to the formation of villages, towns, counties, territories, states-nay, even to the expansion of the Republic itself. So far from centralization and self-government standing in opposition to each other, as some authors have supposed, the former necessarily issues out of the latter. Self-government, instead of conveying the idea of absolute freedom, conveys, in reality, the idea of restraint-restraint spontaneously imposed. If, as must be the case in self-conscious communities, that restraint is organized by those who are intending to submit to its rule, centralization is the necessary result.

Moreover, the instinct of self-government implies an instinct for enlightenment-an insatiable thirst for information. This is recognized in all directions in America. It satisfies itself by the creation of great educational establishments, and descends even to amusing details. Yankee converses in questions.

The

Every one is penetrated with the conviction that for social advancement to pursue the right direction, and to be pressed forward at the highest speed, it must be controlled by intelligence. Hence the public prosperity is considered to depend on education. There can be no doubt that this is a very high and noble conception. It establishes an intrinsic difference between the people of Europe and the people of America.

In Europe the attempt has been made to govern communities through their morals alone. The present state of that continent, at the close of