Charles Francis Adams

“ Local representation through choice by numerical majorities within given confines, geographically and mathematically fixed, is a system so rooted and intrenched in the convictions and traditions of the American community that even to question its wisdom evinces a lack of political common-sense. It in fact resembles nothing so much as the attempt to whistle down a strongly prevailing October wind from the West. The attempt so to do is not practical politics! ”

“ Yet the ills of the body politic, too, are complicated. Indeed, far more intricate in their processes and more deceitful in their aspects, they more deeply affect the general well-being and happiness than any ill or epidemic which torments the physical being, even the mosquito malaria. Yet the ills of the body politic, the complications which surround us on every side,—for these the unfailing panacea is said to lie in universal suffrage, that remedy which is immediately and of course laughed out of court if suggested in case of the simpler ills of the flesh. ”

“ None the less, the existence of a monopolist class calls for no proof at the bar of public opinion. Not so the other and even more privileged class,—the so-called "wage-earner"; for, disguise it as the trades-unionist will, angrily deny it as he does, the fact remains that to-day under the operation of our jury system and of our laws, the Wage-earner and the member of the Trades-Union has become, as respects the rest of the community, himself a monopolist and, moreover, privileged as such. ”

“ On the other hand, wherever in this country protection has been most completely applied, I insist that if its results are analyzed in an unprejudiced spirit, it will be pronounced to have worked unmitigated evil,--an unhealthy, because artificially stimulated and too rapid, growth. Let Lawrence, in Massachusetts, serve as an example. Look at the industrial system there introduced in the name of Protection against the Pauper Labor of Europe! No growth is so dangerous as a too rapid growth ”

“ As factors in development, it is safe to say that those three tremendous agencies--Steam, Electricity, Chemistry--have, so to speak, worked all their noticeable results within the lifetime of the generation born since we celebrated the Centennial of Independence. The manifestations now resulting and apparent to all are the natural outcome of the use of these modern appliances, become in our case everyday working tools in the hands of the most resourceful, adaptive, ingenious and energetic of communities, developing a virgin continent of undreamed-of wealth. ”

“ Gladstone who, years ago, made the often-quoted assertion that the Constitution of the United States was "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." I do not think he was far wrong; though we, of course, realize that the Federal Constitution was a growth and in no degree an inspiration. That Constitution has through a century and a quarter stood the test of time and stress of war, during a period of almost unlimited growth of the community for which it was devised. ”

“ With a Union established on the principle of absolutely unrestricted commercial intercourse, you here in South Carolina, and more especially in Columbia, are to-day making it, so to speak, uncomfortable for the cotton manufacturer in New England; and I am glad of it! A sharp competition is a healthy incentive to effort and ingenuity, and the brutal injunction, "Root hog or die!" is one from which I in no way ask to have New England exempt. When Massachusetts is no longer able to hold its own industrially in a free field, the time will, in my judgment, have come for Massachusetts to go down. ”

“ In the discussions of Aristotle, the problem in view was, how to bring about government by the wisest,--that is, the most observant and expert. In other words, government, the object of politics, was by Aristotle treated in a scientific spirit. And this is as it should be. Take, for example, any problem,--I do not care whether it is legal or medical or one of engineering: How successfully dispose of it? Uniformly, in one way. Those problems are successfully solved, if at all, only when their solution is placed in the hands of the most proficient. ”

“ In this country, it was the period of the equality of man and individuality in the development of the type. It was generally believed that the world had hitherto been governed too much,--that the day of caste, and even class, was over and gone; and finally, that America was a species of vast modern melting-pot of humanity, in which, within a comparatively short period of time, the characteristics of all branches of Indo-Aryan origin would resolve themselves. A new type would emerge,--the American. These theories were also in their consequences far-reaching. ”

“ Such is my purpose to-day. "Wandering back to living boyhood," to the time when I first simultaneously passed the Harvard threshold and the threshold of responsible life, I propose to compare the ideals and actualities of the present with the ideals, anticipations and dreams of a past now somewhat remote.
To say that in life and in the order of life's events it is the unexpected which is apt to occur, is a commonplace. ”

“ Hence this popular demand for immediate legislation by the People,--this twentieth-century appeal to the Agora and Forum methods which antedate the era of Christ. It is true the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded; but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we are assured, is changed! The heart is no longer on the right-hand side of the body. To secure desired results it is only necessary to start quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience. ”

“ I, therefore, confidently here submit a doubt whether human ingenuity could devise any system calculated to lead to a greater waste of parliamentary ability, or more effectually keep from the front and position of influence that legislative superiority which was the arm of Aristotle to secure. "Cant-patriotism," as your Francis Lieber termed it; and, on this score, he waxed eloquent. "Do we not live in a world of cant," he wrote from Columbia here to a friend at the North seventy-five years ago, "that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within the State confines only. ”

“ I refer to the political equality of man, and to that race absorption to which I have alluded,--that belief that any foreign element introduced into the American social system and body politic would speedily be absorbed therein, and in a brief space thoroughly assimilated. In this all-important respect I do not hesitate to say we theorists and abstractionists of the North, throughout that long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the 1861 clash of arms, were thoroughly wrong. ”

“ In utter disregard of fundamental, scientific facts, we theoretically believed that all men--no matter what might be the color of their skin, or the texture of their hair--were, if placed under exactly similar conditions, in essentials the same. In other words, we indulged in the curious and, as is now admitted, utterly erroneous theory that the African was, so to speak, an Anglo-Saxon, or, if you will, a Yankee "who had never had a chance,"--a fellow-man who was guilty, as we chose to express it, of a skin not colored like our own. ”

“ So far, then, as the institution of slavery is concerned, in its relations to ownership and property in those of the human species,--I have seen no reason whatever to revise or in any way to alter the theories and principles I entertained in 1853, and in the maintenance of which I subsequently bore arms between 1861 and 1865. Economically, socially, and from the point of view of abstract political justice, I hold that the institution of slavery, as it existed in this country prior to the year 1865, was in no respect either desirable or justifiable. ”

“ Through Protection, and because of it, Paternalism has crept in; and, like a huge cancerous growth, is eating steadily into the vitals of the political system. Instead of supporting a government economically administered by money contributed by the People, a majority of the People to-day are looking to the government for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. ”

“ Passing to the other proposition of individuality, there has been, as all men know and no one will dispute, a most perceptible tendency of late years towards what is known as the array of one portion of the community--the preponderating, voting portion--against another--the more ostentatious property-holding portion. It is the natural result, I may say the necessary as well as logical outcome, of a period of too rapid growth,--production apportioned by no rule or system other or higher than greed and individual aptitude for acquisition. ”

“ The United States next passed through two definite processes of further crystallization,—one in 1812–1814, when the second war with Great Britain, and more especially our naval victories, kindled, especially in the North, the fire of patriotism and the conception of nationality; the other, half a century later, presented the stern issue in a concrete form, and at last the complete unification of a community—whether for better or for worse is no matter—was hammered by iron and cemented in blood. It is there now; an established fact. ”

“ We next come to that industrial factor which I have referred to as the issue between the Free Trade of Adam Smith and Protection, as inculcated by the so-called American school of political economists. The phases which this issue has assumed are, I submit, well calculated to excite the attention of the observant and thoughtful. I merely allude to them now; but, in so far as it is in my power to make it so, my allusion will be specific. I frankly acknowledge myself a Free-Trader. A Free-Trader in theory, were it in my power I would be a Free-Trader in national practice. ”

“ What ought the character of the legislator to be? The very opposite, it seems to me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought to be well-informed and entirely devoid of prejudice." Taken as a whole, and a few striking individual exceptions apart, are those composing the Senate of the United States conspicuous in these respects? They certainly do not so impress the casual observer. That, as a body, they increasingly fail to command confidence and attention is matter of common remark. ”

“ Again, I, as a publicist, demur. It is the old issue, that between instant action and action on second thought, presented once more. Briefly, the experience of sixty years strongly inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as ill-advised as it is precipitate. Only in the field of politics is the expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results are at best but slowly thrashed out. ”

“ Working on the combined theories of individualism controlled and regulated by competition, it has been one grand game of grab,—a process in which the whole tendency of our legislation, national or state, has during the last twenty years been, first, to create monopolies of capital and, later, to bring into existence a counter, but no less privileged, class, known as the "wage-earner." ”

“ The tendency to concentrate at Washington, the demand that the central government, assuming one function after another, shall become imperial, the cry for the national enactment of laws, whether relating to marital divorce or to industrial combinations,--all impinge on the fundamental principle of local self-government, which assumed its highest and most pronounced form in the claim of State Sovereignty. I am now merely stating problems. I am not discussing the political ills or social benefits which possibly may result from action. ”

“ So far from seven or fourteen years making an American citizen, fully and thoroughly impregnated with American ideals to the exclusion of all others, our experience is that it requires at least three generations to eliminate what may be termed the "hyphen" in citizenship. Not in the first, nor in the second, and hardly in the third, generation, does the immigrant cease to be an Irish-American, or a French-American, or a German-American, or a Slavonic-American, or yet a Dago. Nevertheless, in process of tune, those of the Caucasian race do and will become Americans. ”

“ American was raised, as matter for abstract discussion, it was suggestive as well as curious to observe the fixed, hard expression which immediately came over Haskell's face, as with stem lips, from which all suggestion of a smile had faded away, he pronounced the words:—"Sir, it is a dying race!" ”

“ There is a considerable element of truth, though possibly a not inconsiderable one of exaggeration, in this statement from a paper I recently chanced upon in the issue of the sober and classical Edinburgh Review for October last,--a paper entitled "Democracy and Liberalism":--"History testifies unmistakably and unanimously to the passion of democracies for incompetence. There is nothing democracy dislikes and suspects so heartily as technical efficiency, particularly when it is independent of the popular vote." ”