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faith of the country. Is it not time, then, to ask ourselves, and very seriously too, if, with this faith active. and dominant, it is possible, in the nature of things, to maintain a fixed and permanent order in either Church or State? Have we seen the worst? Have we reached the lowest deep? Are not, in point of fact, matters growing worse each year? Is not law losing its hold on our affections? Are not principles boldly avowed, and bravely defended, in high places as well as in low places, which make no distinction, intelligible or possible, between the acts of the mob and the acts of the State? Who will question, that, in the recent disturbances in Philadelphia, the majority of the citizens sympathized with the rioters? On what principle, then, can an advocate of the doctrine set up by Mr. Dorr and his friends condemn them? On what principle can our nogovernment men, our Come-outers, either those who hold to the absolute supremacy of the majority, or those who hold to the supremacy of the individual, justify the authorities in calling out the military to suppress them? And where is this matter to end?

There are two great doctrines which in their nature are opposed one to the other, and one or other of these we must take. A compromise between them may be attempted, often is attempted, with serious and praiseworthy motives, but never with success. One or the other must predominate, and we must have the courage to accept one or the other, and to accept it with all its legitimate consequences. Either we must accept the conservative doctrine, and give to authority the sole right to take the initiative in all reforms, and suffer the individual to work only under and through law; or else we must accept pure and absolute individualism, proclaim the absolute freedom and independence of individual reason, individual conscience, individual whim or caprice, and individual action, leaving each individual to answer to his God for his entire life, as best he may, which is simple, unadulterated Come-outerism.

Now, here is our difficulty. We will as a people adopt, simply and entirely, neither the one nor the other.

Some of us will be strict conservatives in politics, but absolute Come-outers in religion and morals; others, strict conservatives in religion and morals, but absolute Come-outers in politics. We affirm a principle, follow it to a certain extent, in regard to certain things, and condemn all who, believing in the soundness of the principle, would carry it out in all its legitimate consequences. Now, this is miserable folly and poltroonery. Either your principle is sound, or it is not. If it is sound, you have no right to stop short of its legitimate consequences; you have no right to say to us, "Thus far, but no farther." If it is unsound, you have no right to act on it at all. But be it one or the other, you need not flatter yourselves that you can restrain the mass who adopt it within your prescribed limits. Logic is invincible; and, in spite of all your wise saws about extremes, all your preaching of moderation, and the imprudence of pushing matters too far, they will carry out the principle, and go to the very extreme it demands. There is no such thing as pushing a sound principle too far. If your principle will not bear pushing to its extreme, you may know that it is false, and that the error is, not in pushing it too far, but in adopting it at all.

But, in our folly and timidity, we deny this. The good people of the country, the practical people, the worshippers of common sense, the via-media folks, who believe the panacea for all ills is compounded of equal doses of truth and falsehood, courage and cowardice, wisdom and folly, consistency and inconsistency, will admit nothing of all this. They will permit us to condemn results, when we must not touch causes; the consequences, when we must respect the principle. When the principle goes a little farther than the mass are prepared to go, but still in the direction they are going, we may condemn the extreme, but not it. We may declaim against Come-outerism, we may denounce or ridicule the Come-outers, show up their follies and extravagances, and the great multitude will applaud; but let us trace Come-outerism to its principle, let us condemn that principle, and set forth and defend, in

opposition to it, the only principle on which we can logically or consistently combat Come-outerism, and forthwith we ourselves are condemned. The very multitude, who applauded us to the echo, turn upon us and say, "Why, friend, we did not mean that. This is carrying the matter to extremes, and all extremes are dangerous, and your extreme seems to us no less so than the one you are opposing."

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Nor is this all. It is impossible to make up the true issue before the public. If you take the conservative side of the question, and resolutely resist the radical tendency of the day, you are instantly declared to be an enemy of the people, an enemy of reform, the enemy of progress, the advocate of the stand-still policy, the friend of old and superannuated institutions, of crying abuses, of iniquitous privileges, one, in fact, who would war against the laws of God, resist the whole tendency of the universe, and stay the mighty tide of improvement. You are overwhelmed with obloquy; you are driven from the field by the hoots and hisses of a whole army of popular declaimers. He who speaks for law and order, he who demands submission to authority, and forbids impatient zeal, impatient benevolence, to move, till it has received a commission from authority, can bring no echo to his words. The heart of the multitude does not thrill at the sound of his voice, or respond to his eloquence. In consequence of this, through fear of being misapprehended, of being placed in a false position, of being accused of opposing that for which their hearts are burning, and, through a natural diffidence, a distrust of their own judgments which is produced by their very principles, many, who see the evil, keep silent, shrink from the task of interposing themselves before the multitude, and of doing their best to arrest what they see and feel to be a ruinous tendency. On the other hand, he who takes the radical tendency, provided he does not leap too far at a single bound, who calls out for liberty, for reform, for progress; who speaks out for man, for humanity; declaims against tyrants and oppressors; paints in the glowing

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tints of a fervid eloquence the wrongs and outrages of which man is both the cause and the victim; denounces the State, defies authority, sneers at the Church and its pretensions, at fat and lazy monks and priests, with their doctrines of submission, and mulish lessons of patience and resignation, touches a chord that vibrates through the universal heart. He has at his command all the materials of the most effective eloquence. The young, the ingenuous, the ardent, the enthusiastic are kindled. Mass after mass ignites, and the whole nation flames out in a universal conflagration. In a country like ours, he can enlist all passions, good as well as bad, and render himself irresistible. All the inducements are, therefore, on the side of radicalism; whoever would coöperate with his countrymen, whoever would lead the multitude or use them for good purposes or evil, must espouse it, and support it with all his energy. We have but to proclaim the supremacy of man, to call out for freedom, and demand the institution of the worship of humanity, and thousands hang breathless on our words and respond to our tones. Change our ground, take the conservative side, and he, who yesterday was the master spirit of his age and country, speaks only to listless ears; his power is gone; there is no eloquence in his voice, no magic in his words. The few who may applaud, who may hope to use him for their own purposes, half despise him, and he sinks into insignificance. Hence, all conspires to push on radicalism to its legitimate results. Christianity gives place to Socialism, and the everblessed Son of God, to your Owens, Fouriers, or SaintSimons.

Now, here we are; the great mass of us, unwilling to accept, to accept fully and unconditionally, the conservative method, countenancing the radical method in its principle, and opposing it only in its results; while all the active and energetic tendencies of the country conspire to swell its force and consolidate its dominion. What is to be done? What is our resource? Where is our safety? One or the other of the two principles must predominate, must become supreme; and the ad

vantage is now all on the side of the radical tendency, however much it may be decried in colleges and saloons; and not only with us, but throughout Christendom. The great active causes in Europe are working in harmony with it, and even the conservative press of England is beginning to be affected by the socialist tendency, and the young Catholics of France and Germany are, in but too many instances, carried away by it. Is it not time to pause, and make up our minds to accept bravely one tendency or the other? Peace between the two is out of the question. The human race aspires to unity, and society cannot, and will not, consent to be torn for ever by this destructive dualism.

For ourselves, we have made our choice. We began our career with the radical tendency. We accepted it in good faith, and followed it till we saw where it must necessarily lead. We recoiled from its consequences, and sought, by an impotent eclecticism, to reconcile the two principles, to harmonize authority and the independence of the subject, till we found our speech confounded, and saw the attempt was as idle as that of the builders in the Plain of Shinar, who would build a tower that should connect earth with heaven. Nothing remained but to take our stand on the conservative side, and submit ourselves to authority, and take the ground that reforms are never to be attempted in opposition to established authorities; that is, on individual responsibility alone. We abandon no love of progress, we give up no hope of improvement, but hold that improvement is to come from high to low, not from low to high. It is God that descends to man, the Word that becomes flesh; not man that ascends to God, not humanity that becomes Divinity.

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The question is, no doubt, a grave one; it has, no doubt, two sides, and men may honestly differ in their decisions. But to one decision or the other they must come, and that right early, or it may be too late. have wished to state the question, and show that this Come-outerism, which so many condemn, and, in our judgment, so justly condemn, is in reality only the le

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