Misgovernment defined—Athens, China, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.—Is not in itself a sufficient cause for the ruin of nations.
Misgovernment defined—Athens, China, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.—Is not in itself a sufficient cause for the ruin of nations.
I am aware of the difficulty of the task I have undertaken in attempting to establish a truth, which by many of my readers will be regarded as a mere paradox. That good laws and good government exert a direct and powerful influence upon the well-being and prosperity of a nation, is an indisputable fact, of which I am fully convinced; but I think that history proves that they are not absolute conditions of the existence of a community; or, in other words, that their absence is not necessarily productive of ruin. Nations, like individuals, are often preyed upon by fearful diseases, which show no outward traces of the ravages within, and which, though dangerous, are not always fatal. Indeed, if they were,few communities would survive the first few years of their formation, for it is precisely during that period that the government is worst, the laws most imperfect, and least observed. But here the comparison between the body political and the human organization ceases, for while the latter dreads most the attack of disease during infancy, the former easily overcomes it at that period. History furnishes innumerable examples of successful contest on the part of young communities with the most formidable and most devastating political evils, of which none can be worse than ill-conceived laws, administered in an oppressive or negligent manner.[48]
Let us first define what we understand by bad government. The varieties of this evil are as various as nations, countries, and epochs. It were impossible to enumerate them all. Yet, by classing them under four principal categories, few varieties will be omitted.
A government is bad, when imposed by foreign influence. Athens experienced this evil under the thirty tyrants. Yet she shook off the odiousyoke, and patriotism, far from expiring, gained renewed vigor by the oppression.
A government is bad, when based upon absolute and unconditional conquest. Almost the whole extent of France in the fourteenth century, groaned under the dominion of England. The ordeal was passed, and the nation rose from it more powerful and brilliant than before. China was overrun and conquered by the Mongol hordes. They were ejected from its territories, after having previously undergone a singular transformation. It next fell into the hands of the Mantchoo conquerors, but though they already count the years of their reign by centuries, they are now at the eve of experiencing the same fate as their Mongol predecessors.
A government is especially bad, when the principles upon which it was based are disregarded or forgotten. This was the fate of the Spanish monarchy. It was based upon the military spirit of the nation, and upon its municipal freedom, and declined soon after these principles came to be forgotten. It is impossible to imagine greater political disorganization than this country represented. Nowhere was the authority of the sovereign more nominal and despised; nowhere did the clergy lay themselves more open to censure. Agriculture and industry, following the samedownward impulse, were also involved in the national marasmus. Yet Spain, of whom so many despaired, at a moment when her star seemed setting forever, gave the glorious example of heroic and successful resistance to the arms of one who had hitherto experienced no check in his career of conquest. Since that, the better spirit of the nation has been roused, and there is, probably, at this time, no European state with more promising prospects, and stronger vitality.[49]
A government is also very bad, when, by its institutions, it authorizes an antagonism either between the supreme power and the nation, or among the different classes of which it is composed. This was the case in the Middle Ages, when the kings of France and England were at war with their great vassals, and the peasants in perpetual feud with the lords. In Germany, the first effects of the liberty of thought, were the civil wars of the Hussites, Anabaptists, and othersectaries. Italy, at a more remote period, was so distracted by the division of the supreme authority for which emperor, pope, nobles, and municipalities contended, that the masses, not knowing whom to obey, in many instances finished by obeying neither. Yet in the midst of all these troubles, Italian nationality did not perish. On the contrary, its civilization was at no time more brilliant, its industry never more productive, its foreign influence never greater.
If communities have survived such fearful political tempests, it cannot well be said that national ruin is a necessary cause of misgovernment. Besides, wise and happy reigns are few and far between, in the history of every nation; and these few are not considered such by all. Historians are not unanimous in their praise of Elizabeth, nor do they all consider the reign of William and Mary as an epoch of prosperity for England. Truly this science of statesmanship, the highest and most complicated of all, is so disproportionate to the capacity of man,[50]and so various are the opinions concerning it, that nations have early and frequent opportunities of learning to accommodatethemselves to misgovernment, which, in its worst forms, is still preferable to anarchy. It is a well-proved fact, which even a superficial study of history will clearly demonstrate, that communities often perish under the best government of a long series that came before.[51]
DEFINITION OF THE WORD DEGENERACY—ITS CAUSE.
Skeleton history of a nation—Origin of castes, nobility, etc.—Vitality of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest—China, Hindostan—Permanency of their peculiar civilizations.
Skeleton history of a nation—Origin of castes, nobility, etc.—Vitality of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest—China, Hindostan—Permanency of their peculiar civilizations.
If the spirit of the preceding pages has been at all understood, it will be seen that I am far from considering these great national maladies, misgovernment, fanaticism, irreligion, and immorality, as mere trifling accidents, without influence or importance. On the contrary, I sincerely pity the community which is afflicted by such scourges, and think that no efforts can be misdirected which tend to mitigate or remove them. But I repeat, that unless these disorganizing elements are grafted upon another more destructive principle, unless they are the consequences of a greater, though concealed, evil; we may rest assured that their ravages are not fatal, and that society, after ashorter or longer period of suffering, will escape their toils, perhaps with renewed vigor and youth.
The examples I have alleged seem to me conclusive; their number, if necessary, might be increased to any extent. But the conviction has already gained ground, that these are but secondary evils, to which an undue importance has hitherto been attached, and that the law which governs the life and death of societies must be sought for elsewhere, and deeper. It is admitted that the germ of destruction is inherent in the constitution of communities; that so long as it remains latent, exterior dangers are little to be dreaded; but when it has once attained full growth and maturity, the nation must die, even though surrounded by the most favorable circumstances, precisely as a jaded steed breaks down, be the track ever so smooth.
Degeneracy was the name given to this cause of dissolution. This view of the question was a great step towards the truth, but, unfortunately, it went no further; the first difficulty proved insurmountable. The term was certainly correct, etymologically and in every other respect, but how is it with the definition. A people is said to be degenerated, when it is badly governed, abuses its riches, is fanatical, or irreligious; in short, when it has lostthe characteristic virtues of its forefathers. This is begging the question. Thus, communities succumb under the burden of social and political evils only when they are degenerate, and they are degenerate only when such evils prevail. This circular argument proves nothing but the small progress hitherto made in the science of national biology. I readily admit that nations perish from degeneracy, and from no other cause; it is when in that wretched condition, that foreign attacks are fatal to them, for then they no longer possess the strength to protect themselves against adverse fortune, or to recover from its blows. They die, because, though exposed to the same perils as their ancestors, they have not the same powers of overcoming them. I repeat it, the termdegeneracyis correct; but it is necessary to define it, to give it a real and tangible meaning. It is necessary to say how and why this vigor, this capacity of overcoming surrounding dangers, are lost. Hitherto, we have been satisfied with a mere word, but the thing itself is as little known as ever.[52]The step beyond, I shall attempt to make.
In my opinion, a nation is degenerate, when the blood of its founders no longer flows in itsveins, but has been gradually deteriorated by successive foreign admixtures; so that the nation,while retaining its original name, is no longer composed of the same elements. The attenuationof the original blood is attended by a modification of the original instincts, or modes of thinking; the new elements assert their influence, and when they have once gained perfect and entire preponderance, the degeneration may be considered as complete. With the last remnant of the original ethnical principle, expires the life of the society and its civilization. The masses, which composedit, have thenceforth no separate, independent, social and political existence; they are attracted to different centres of civilization, and swell the ranks of new societies having new instincts and new purposes.
In attempting to establish this theorem, I am met by a question which involves the solution of a far more difficult problem than any I have yet approached. This question, so momentous in its bearings, is the following:—
Is there, in reality, a serious and palpable difference in the capacity and intrinsic worth of different branches of the human family?
For the sake of clearness, I shall advance,à priori, that this difference exists. It then remains to show how the ethnical character of a nation can undergo such a total change as I designate by the termdegeneracy.
Physiologists assert that the human frame is subject to a constant wear and tear, which would soon destroy the whole machine, but for new particles which are continually taking the form and place of the old ones. So rapid is this change said to be, that, in a few years, the whole framework is renovated, and the material identity of the individual changed. The same, to a great extent, may be said of nations, only that, while the individualalways preserves a certain similarity of form and features, those of a nation are subject to innumerable and ever-varying changes. Let us take a nation at the moment when it assumes a political existence, and commences to play a part in the great drama of the world's stage. In its embryo, we call it a tribe.
The simplest and most natural political institution is that of tribes. It is the only form of government known to rude and savage nations. Civilization is the result of a great concentration of powerful physical and intellectual forces,[53]which, in small and scattered fragments, is impossible. The first step towards it is, therefore, undoubtedly, the union of several tribes by alliance or conquest. Such a coalescence is what we call a nation or empire. I think it admits of an easydemonstration, that in proportion as a human family is endowed with the capacity for intellectual progress, it exhibits a tendency to enlarge the circle of its influence and dominion. On the contrary, where that capacity is weak, or wanting, we find the population subdivided into innumerable small fragments, which, though in perpetual collision, remain forever detached and isolated. The stronger may massacre the weaker, but permanent conquest is never attempted; depredatory incursions are the sole object and whole extent of warfare. This is the case with the natives of Polynesia, many parts of Africa, and the Arctic regions. Nor can their stagnant condition be ascribed to local or climatical causes. We have seen such wretched hordes inhabiting, indifferently, temperate as well as torrid or frigid zones; fertile prairies and barren deserts; river-shores and coasts as well as inland regions. It must therefore be founded upon an inherent incapacity of progress. The more civilizable a race is, the stronger is the tendency for aggregation of masses. Complex political organizations are not so much the effect as the cause of civilization.[54]A tribe with superior intellectualand physical endowments, soon perceives that, to increase its power and prosperity, it must compel its neighbors to enter into the sphere of its influence. Where peaceful means fail, war is resorted to. Territories are conquered, a division into classes established between the victorious and the subjugated race; in one word, a nation has made its appearance upon the theatre of history. The impulse being once given, it will not stop short in the career of conquest. If wisdom andmoderation preside in its councils, the tracks of its armies will not be marked by wanton destruction and bloodshed; the monuments, institutions, and manners of the conquered will be respected; superior creations will take the place of the old, where changes are necessary and useful;—a great empire will be formed.[55]At first, and perhaps for a long time, victors and vanquished will remain separated and distinct. But gradually, as the pride of the conqueror becomes less obtrusive, and the bitterness of defeat is forgotten by the conquered; as the ties of common interest become stronger, the boundary line between them is obliterated. Policy, fear, or natural justice, prompts the masters to concessions; intermarriages take place, and, in the course of time, the various ethnical elements are blended, and the different nations composing the state begin to consider themselvesas one. This is the general history of the rise of all empires whose records have been transmitted to us.[56]An inferior race, by falling into the handsof vigorous masters, is thus called to share a destiny, of which, alone, it would have been incapable. Witness the Saxons by the Norman conquest.[57]But, if there is a decided disparity inthe capacity of the two races, their mixture, while it ennobles the baser, deteriorates the nobler; a new race springs up, inferior to the one, though superior to the other, and, perhaps, possessed of peculiar qualities unknown to either. The modification of the ethnical character of the nation, however, does not terminate here.
Every new acquisition of territory, by conquest or treaty, brings an addition of foreign blood. The wealth and splendor of a great empire attract crowds of strangers to its capital, great inlandcities, or seaports. Apart from the fact that the conquering race—that which founds the empire, and supports and animates it—is, in most cases, inferior in numbers to the masses which it subdued and assimilated; the conspicuous part which it takes in the affairs of the state, renders it more directly exposed to the fatal results of battles, proscriptions, and revolts.[58]In some instances,also, it happens that the substratum of native populations are singularly prolific—witness the Celts and Sclaves. Sooner or later, therefore, the conquering race is absorbed by the masses which its vigor and superiority have aggregated. The very materials of which it erected its splendor, and upon which it based its strength, are ultimately the means of its weakness and destruction. But the civilization which it has developed, may survive for a limited period. The forward impulse, once imparted to the mass, will still propel it for a while, but its force is continually decreasing. Manners,laws, and institutions remain, but the spirit which animated them has fled; the lifeless body still exhibits the apparent symptoms of life, and, perhaps, even increases, but the real strength has departed; the edifice soon begins to totter, at the slightest collision it will crumble, and bury beneath its ruins the civilization which it had developed.
If this definition of degeneracy be accepted, and its consequences admitted, the problem of the rise and fall of empires no longer presents any difficulty. A nation lives so long as it preserves the ethnical principle to which it owes its existence; with this principle, it loses theprimum mobileof its successes, its glory, and its civilization: it must therefore disappear from the stage of history. Who can doubt that if Alexander had been opposed by real Persians, the men of the Arian stock, whom Cyrus led to victory, the issue of the battle of Arbela would have been very different. Or if Rome, in her decadence, had possessed soldiers and senators like those of the time of Fabius, Scipio, and Cato, would she have fallen so easy a prey to the barbarians of the North?
It will be objected that, even had the integrity of the original blood remained intact, a time must have come when they would find their masters. They would have succumbed under a series ofwell-combined attacks, a long-continued overwhelming pressure, or simply by the chances of a lost battle. The political edifice might have been destroyed in this manner, not the civilization, not the social organization. Invasion and defeat would have been reverses, sad ones, indeed, but not irremediable. There is no want of facts to confirm this assertion.
In modern times, the Chinese have suffered two complete conquests. In each case they have imposed their manners and their institutions upon the conquerors; they have given them much, and received but little in return. The first invaders, after having undergone this change, were expelled; the same fate is now threatening the second.[59]Inthis case the vanquished were intellectually and numerically superior to their victors. I shall mentionanother case where the victors, though intellectually superior, are not possessed of sufficient numerical strength to transform the intellectual and moral character of the vanquished.
The political supremacy of the British in Hindostan is perfect, yet they exert little or no moral influence over the masses they govern. All that the utmost exertion of their power can effect upon the fears of their subjects, is an outward compliance. The notions of the Hindoo cannot be replaced by European ideas—the spirit of Hindoo civilization cannot be conquered by any power, however great, of the law. Political forms may change, and do change, without materially affecting the basis upon which they rest; Hyderabad, Lahore, and Delhi may cease to be capitals: Hindoo society will subsist, nevertheless. A time must come, sooner or later, when India will regain a separate political existence, and publicly proclaimthose laws of her own, which she now secretly obeys, or of which she is tacitly left in possession.
The mere accident of conquest cannot destroy the principle of vitality in a people. At most, it may suspend for a time the exterior manifestations of that vitality, and strip it of its outward honors. But so long as the blood, and consequently the culture of a nation, exhibit sufficiently strong traces of the initiatory race, that nation exists; and whether it has to deal, like the Chinese, with conquerors who are superior only materially; or whether, like the Hindoos, it maintains a struggle of patience against a race much superior in every respect; that nation may rest assured of its future—independence will dawn for it one day. On the contrary, when a nation has completely exhausted the initiatory ethnical element, defeat is certain death; it has consumed the term of existence which Heaven had granted it—its destiny is fulfilled.[60]
I, therefore, consider the question as settled, which has been so often discussed, as to whatwould have been the result, if the Carthaginians, instead of succumbing to the fortune of Rome,had conquered Italy. As they belonged to the Phenician family, a stock greatly inferior to the Italian in political capacity, they would have been absorbed by the superior race after the victory, precisely as they were after the defeat. The final result, therefore, would have been the same in either case.
The destiny of civilizations is not ruled by accident; it depends not on the issue of a battle,a thrust of a sword, the favors or frowns of fickle fortune. The most warlike, formidable, and triumphant nations, when they were distinguished for nothing but bravery, strategical science, and military successes, have never had a nobler fate than that of learning from their subjects, perhaps too late, the art of living in peace. The Celts, the nomad hordes of Central Asia, are memorable illustrations of this truth.
The whole of my demonstration now rests upon one hypothesis, the proof of which I have reserved for the succeeding chapters:the moral and intellectual diversities of the various branches of the human family.
THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF RACES IS NOT THE RESULT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.
Antipathy of races—Results of their mixture—The scientific axiom of the absolute equality of men, but an extension of the political—Its fallacy—Universal belief in unequal endowment of races—The moral and intellectual diversity of races not attributable to institutions—Indigenous institutions are the expression of popular sentiments; when foreign and imported, they never prosper—Illustrations: England and France—Roman Empire—European Colonies—Sandwich Islands—St. Domingo—Jesuit missions in Paraguay.
The idea of an innate and permanent difference in the moral and mental endowments of the various groups of the human species, is one of the most ancient, as well as universally adopted, opinions. With few exceptions, and these mostly in our own times, it has formed the basis of almost all political theories, and has been the fundamental maxim of government of every nation, great or small. The prejudices of country have no other cause; each nation believes in its own superiorityover its neighbors, and very often different parts of the same nation regard each other with contempt. There seems to exist an instinctive antipathy among the different races, and even among the subdivisions of the same race, of which none is entirely exempt, but which acts with the greatest force in the least civilized or least civilizable. We behold it in the characteristic suspiciousness and hostility of the savage; in the isolation from foreign influence and intercourse of the Chinese and Japanese; in the various distinctions founded upon birth in more civilized communities, such as castes, orders of nobility and aristocratic privileges.[61]Not even a common religion can extinguishthe hereditary aversion of the Arab[62]to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria; or the bitter hostility of the Magyar and Sclave, who, without intermingling, have inhabited the samecountry for centuries. But as the different types lose their purity and become blended, this hostility of race abates; the maxim of absolute and permanent inequality is first discussed, then doubted. A man of mixed race or caste will not be apt to admit disparity in his double ancestry. The superiority of particular types, and their consequent claims to dominion, find fewer advocates. This dominion is stigmatized as a tyrannical usurpation of power.[63]The mixture of castes gives rise to the political axiom that all men are equal, and, therefore, entitled to the same rights. Indeed, since there are no longer any distinct hereditary classes, none can justly claim superior merit and privileges. But this assertion, which is true only where a complete fusion has taken place, is applied to the whole human race—to all present, past, and future generations. The political axiom of equality which, like the bag of Æolus, contains so many tempests, is soon followed by the scientific. It issaid—and the more heterogeneous the ethnical elements of a nation are, the more extensively the theory gains ground—that, "all branches of the human family are endowed with intellectual capacities of the same nature, which, though in different stages of development, are all equally susceptible of improvement." This is not, perhaps, the precise language, but certainly the meaning. Thus, the Huron, by proper culture, might become the equal of the Englishman and Frenchman. Why, then, I would ask, did he never, in the course of centuries, invent the art of printing or apply the power of steam; why, among the warriors of his tribe, has there never arisen a Cæsar or a Charlemagne, among his bards and medicine-men, a Homer or a Hippocrates?
These questions are generally met by advancing the influence of climate, local circumstances, etc. An island, it is said, can never be the theatre of great social and political developments in the same measure as a continent; the natives of a southern clime will not display the energy of those of the north; seacoasts and large navigable rivers will promote a civilization which could never have flourished in an inland region;—and a great deal more to the same purpose. But all these ingenious and plausible hypotheses are contradicted by facts.The same soil and the same climate have been visited, alternately, by barbarism and civilization. The degraded fellah is charred by the same sun which once burnt the powerful priest of Memphis; the learned professor of Berlin lectures under the same inclement sky that witnessed the miseries of the savage Finn.
What is most curious is, that while the belief of equality may influence institutions and manners, there is not a nation, nor an individual but renders homage to the contrary sentiment. Who has not heard of the distinctive traits of the Frenchman, the German, the Spaniard, the English, the Russ. One is called sprightly and volatile, but brave; the other is sober and meditative; a third is noted for his gravity; a fourth is known by his coldness and reserve, and his eagerness of gain; a fifth, on the contrary, is notorious for reckless expense. I shall not express any opinion upon the accuracy of these distinctions, I merely point out that they are made daily and adopted by common consent. The same has been done in all ages. The Roman of Italy distinguished the Roman of Greece by the epithetGræculus, and attributed to him, as characteristic peculiarities, want of courage and boastful loquacity. He laughed at the colonist of Carthage, whom he pretended to recognize amongthousands by his litigious spirit and bad faith. The Alexandrians passed for wily, insolent, and seditious. Yet the doctrine of equality was as universally received among the Romans of that period as it is among ourselves. If, then, various nations display qualities so different; if some are eager for war and glory; others, lovers of their ease and comfort, it follows that their destinies must be very diverse. The strongest will act in the great tragedy of history the roles of kings and heroes, the weaker will be content with the humbler parts.
I do not believe that the ingenuity of our times has succeeded in reconciling the universally adopted belief in the special character of each nation with the no less general conviction that they are all equal. Yet this contradiction is very flagrant, the more so as its partisans are not behindhand in extolling the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons of North America over all the other nations of the same continent. It is true that they ascribe that superiority to the influence of political institutions. But they will hardly contest the characteristic aptitude of the countrymen of Penn and Washington, to establish wherever they go liberal forms of government, and their still more valuable ability to preserve them, when once established. Is notthis a very high prerogative allotted to that branch of the human family? the more precious, since so few of the groups that have ever inhabited the globe possessed it.
I know that my opponents will not allow me an easy victory. They will object to me the immense potency of manners and institutions; they will show me how much the spirit of the government, by its inherent and irresistible force, influences the development of a nation; how vastly different will be its progress when fostered by liberty or crushed by despotism. This argument, however, by no means invalidates my position.
Political institutions can have but two origins: either they emanate from the people which is to be governed by them, or they are the invention of a foreign nation, by whom they are imposed, or from whom they are copied.
In the former case, the institutions are necessarily moulded upon the instincts and wants of the people; and if, through carelessness or ignorance, they are in aught incompatible with either, such defects will soon be removed or remedied. In every independent community the law may be said to emanate from the people; for though they have not apparently the power of promulgating it, it cannot be applicable to them unless it is consonantwith their views and sentiments: it must be the reflex of the national character.[64]The wise law-giver, to whose superior genius his countrymen seem solely indebted, has but given a voice to the wants and desires of all. The mere theorist, like Draco, finds his code a dead letter, and destined soon to give place to the institutions of the more judicious philosopher who would give to his compatriots "not the best laws possible, but such only as they were capable of receiving." When Charles I., guided by the fatal counsels of the Earl of Strafford, attempted to curb the English nation under the yoke of absolutism, king and minister were treading the bloody quagmire of theories. But when Ferdinand the Catholic ordered those terrible, but, in the then condition of the nation, politically necessary persecutions of the Spanish Moors, or when Napoleon re-established religion and authority in France, and flattered the military spirit of the nation—both these potentates had rightly understood the genius of their subjects, and were building upon a solid and practical foundation.
False institutions, often beautiful on paper, are those which are not conformed to the national virtuesor failings, and consequently unsuitable to the country, though perhaps perfectly practicable and highly useful in a neighboring state. Such institutions, were they borrowed from the legislation of the angels, will produce nothing but discord and anarchy. Others, on the contrary, which the theorist will eschew, and the moralist blame in many points, or perhaps throughout, may be the best adapted to the community. Lycurgus was no theorist; his laws were in strict accordance with the spirit and manners of his countrymen.[65]The Dorians of Sparta were few in number, valiant, and rapacious; false institutions would have made them but petty villains—Lycurgus changed them into heroic brigands.[66]
The influence of laws and political institutions is certainly very great; they preserve and invigorate the genius of a nation, define its objects, and help to attain them; but though they may developpowers, they cannot create them where they do not already exist. They first receive their imprint from the nation, and then return and confirm it. In other words, it is the nation that fashions the laws, before the laws, in turn, can fashion the nation. Another proof of this fact are the changes and modifications which they undergo in the course of time.
I have already said above, that in proportion as nations advance in civilization, and extend their territory and power, their ethnical character, and, with it, their instincts, undergo a gradual alteration. New manners and new tendencies prevail, and soon give rise to a series of modifications, the more frequent and radical as the influx of blood becomes greater and the fusion more complete.
England, where the ethnical changes have been slower and less considerable than in any other European country, preserves to this day the basis of the social system of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The municipal organization of the times of the Plantagenets and the Tudors flourishes in almost all its ancient vigor. There is the same participation of the nobility in the government, and the same manner of composing that nobility; the same respect for ancient families, united to an appreciation of those whose merits raise them above their class. Since the accession of James I.,and still more since the union, in Queen Anne's reign, there has indeed been an influx of Scotch and Irish blood; foreign nations have also, though imperceptibly, furnished their contingent to the mixture; alterations have consequently become more frequent of late, but without, as yet, touching the original spirit of the constitution.
In France, the ethnical elements are much more numerous, and their mixtures more varied; and there it has repeatedly happened that the principal power of the state passed suddenly from the hands of one race to those of another. Changes, rather than modifications, have therefore taken place in the social and political system; and the changes were abrupt or radical, in proportion as these races were more or less dissimilar. So long as the north of France, where the Germanic element prevailed, preponderated in the policy of the country, the fabric of feudalism, or rather its inform remains, maintained their ground. After the expulsion of the English in the fifteenth century, the provinces of the centre took the lead. Their efforts, under the guidance of Charles VII., had recently restored the national independence, and the Gallo-Roman blood naturally predominated in camp and council. From this time dates the introduction of the taste for military life and foreign conquests, peculiarto the Celtic race, and the tendency to concentrate and consolidate the sovereign authority, which characterized the Roman. The road being thus prepared, the next step towards the establishment of absolute power was made at the end of the sixteenth century, by the Aquitanian followers of Henry IV., who had still more of the Roman than of the Celtic blood in their veins. The centralization of power, resulting from the ascendency of the southern populations, soon gave Paris an overweening preponderance, and finally made it, what it now is, the sovereign of the state. This great capital, this modern Babel, whose population is a motley compound of all the most varied ethnical elements, no longer had any motive to love or respect any tradition or peculiar tendency, and, coming to a complete rupture with the past, hurried France into a series of political and social experiments of doctrines the most remote from, and repulsive to, the ancient customs and traditional tendencies of the realm.
These examples seem to me sufficient to prove that political institutions, when not imposed by foreign influence, take their mould from the national character, not only in the first place, but throughout all subsequent changes. Let us now examine the second case, when a foreign code is,nolens volens, forced upon a nation by a superior power.
There are few instances of such attempts. Indeed, they were never made on a grand scale, by any truly sagacious governments of either ancient or modern times. The Romans were too politic to indulge in such hazardous experiments. Alexander, before them, had never ventured it, and his successors, convinced, either by reason or instinct, of the futility of such efforts, had been contented to reign, like the conqueror of Darius, over a vast mosaic of nations, each of which retained its own habits, manners, laws, and administrative forms, and, at least so long as it preserved its ethnical identity, resembled its fellow-subjects in nothing but submission to the same fiscal and military regulations.
There were, it is true, among the nations subdued by the Romans, some whose codes contained practices so utterly repugnant to their masters, that the latter could not possibly have tolerated them. Such were the human sacrifices of the Druids, which were, indeed, visited with the severest penalties. But the Romans, with all their power, never succeeded in completely extirpating this barbarous rite. In the Narbonnese, the victory was easy, for the Gallic population hadbeen almost completely replaced by Roman colonists; but the more intact tribes of the interior provinces made an obstinate resistance; and, in the peninsula of Brittany, where, in the fourth century, a British colony re-imported the ancient instincts with the ancient blood, the population, in spite of the Romans, continued, either from patriotism or veneration for their ancient traditions, to butcher fellow-beings on their altars, as often as they could elude the vigilance of their masters. All revolts began with the restoration of this fearful feature of the national creed, and even Christianity could not entirely efface its traces, until after protracted and strenuous efforts. As late as the seventeenth century, the shipwrecked were murdered, and wrecks plundered in all the maritime provinces where the Kimric blood had preserved itself unmixed. These barbarous customs were in accordance with the manners of a race which, not being yet sufficiently admixed, still remained true to its irrepressible instincts.
One characteristic of European civilization is its intolerance. Conscious of its pre-eminence, we are prone to deny the existence of any other, or, at least, to consider it as the standard of all. We look with supreme contempt upon all nations that are not within its pale, and when they fall under our influence, we attempt to convert them to ourviews and modes of thinking. Institutions which we know to be good and useful, but which persuasion fails to propagate among nations to whose instincts they are foreign, we force upon them by the power of our arms. Where are the results? Since the sixteenth century, when the European spirit of discovery and conquest penetrated to the east, it does not seem to have operated the slightest change in the manners and mode of existence of the populations which it subjected.
I have already adduced the example of British India. All the other European possessions present the same spectacle. The aborigines of Java, though completely subjugated by the Dutch, have not yet made the first step towards embracing the manners of their conquerors. Java, at this day, preserves the social regulations of the time of its independence. In South America, where Spain ruled with unrestrained power for centuries, what effect has it produced? The ancient empires, it is true, are no longer; their traces, even, are almost obliterated. But while the native has not risen to the level of his conqueror, the latter has been degraded by the mixture of blood.[67]In the North, a different method hasbeen pursued, but with results equally negative; nay, in the eyes of philanthropy, more deplorable;for, while the Spanish Indians have at least increased in numbers,[68]and even mixed with their masters, to the Red-Man of the North, the contact with the Anglo-Saxon race has been death. The feeble remnants of these wretched tribes are fast disappearing, and disappearing as uncivilized, as uncivilizable, as their ancestors. In Oceanica, the same observation holds good. The number of aborigines is daily diminishing. The European may disarm them, and prevent them from doing him injury, but change them he cannot. Where-ever he is master, they no longer eat one another, but they fill themselves with firewater, and this novel species of brutishness is all they learn of European civilization.
There are, indeed, two governments framed by nations of a different race, after our models: that of the Sandwich Islands, and that of St. Domingo. A glance at these two countries will complete theproof of the futility of any attempts to give to a nation institutions not suggested by its own genius.
In the Sandwich Islands, the representative system shines with full lustre. We there find an Upper House, a Lower House, a ministry who govern, and a king who reigns; nothing is wanted. Yet all this is mere decoration; the wheel-work that moves the whole machine, the indispensable motive power, is the corps of missionaries. To them alone belongs the honor of finding the ideas, of presenting them, and carrying them through, either by their personal influence over their neophytes, or, if need be, by threats. It may be doubted, however, whether the missionaries, if they had no other instruments but the king and chambers, would not, after struggling for a while against the inaptitude of their pupils, find themselves compelled to take a more direct, and, consequently, more apparent part in the management of affairs. This difficulty is obviated by the establishment of a ministry composed of Europeans, or half-bloods. Between them and the missionaries, all public affairs are prearranged; the rest is only for show. King Kamehameha III. is, it seems, a man of ability. For his own account, he has abandoned tattooing, and although he has not yet succeeded in dissuading all his courtiers from this agreeable practice,he enjoys the satisfaction of seeing their countenances adorned with comparatively slight designs. The mass of the nation, the country nobility and common people, persist upon this as all other points, in the ancient ideas and customs.[69]Still, a variety of causes tend to daily increase the European population of the Isles. The proximity of California makes them a point of great interest to the far-seeing energy of our nations. Runaway sailors, and mutineers, are no longer the only white colonists; merchants, speculators, adventurers of all sorts, collect there in considerable numbers, build houses, and become permanent settlers. The native population is gradually becoming absorbed in the mixture with the whites. It is highly probable that, ere long, the present representative form of government will be superseded by an administration composed of delegates from one or all of the great maritime powers.
Of one thing I feel firmly convinced, that these imported institutions will take firm root in the country, but the day of their final triumph, by a necessary synchronism, will be that of the extinction of the native race.
In St. Domingo, national independence is intact. There are no missionaries exercising absolute, though concealed, control, no foreign ministry governing in the European spirit; everything is left to the genius and inspiration of the population. In the Spanish part of the island, this population consists of mulattoes. I shall not speak of them. They seem to imitate, in some fashion, the simplest and easiest features of our civilization. Like all half-breeds, they have a tendency to assimilate with that branch of their genealogy which does them most honor. They are, therefore, capable of practising, in some degree, our usages. The absolute question of the capacity of races cannot be studied among them. Let us cross the mountain ridge which separates the republic of Dominica from the empire of Hayti.
There we find institutions not only similar to ours, but founded upon the most recent maxims of our political wisdom. All that, since sixty years, the voice of the most refined liberalism has proclaimed in the deliberative assemblies ofEurope, all that the most zealous friends of the freedom and dignity of man have written, all the declarations of rights and principles, have found an echo on the banks of Artibonite. No trace of Africa remains in thewrittenlaws, or theofficiallanguage; the recollections of the land of Ham areofficiallyexpunged from every mind; once more, the institutions are completely European. Let us now examine how they harmonize with the manners.
What a contrast! The manners are as depraved, as beastly, as ferocious as in Dahomey[70]or the country of the Fellatahs. The same barbarous love of ornament, combined with the same indifference to form; beauty consists in color, and provided a garment is of gaudy red, and adorned with imitation gold, taste is little concerned with useless attention to materials or fitness; and as for cleanliness, this is a superfluity for which no one cares. You desire an audience with some high functionary: you are ushered into the presence of an athletic negro, stretched on a wooden bench, his head wrapped in a dirty, tattered handkerchief, and surmounted by a three-cornered hat, profusely decorated withgold. The general apparel consists of an embroidered coat (without suitable nether-garments), a huge sword, and slippers. You converse with this mass of flesh, and are anxious to discover what ideas can occupy a mind under so unpromising an exterior. You find an intellect of the lowest order combined with the most savage pride, which can be equalled only by as profound and incurable a laziness. If the individual before you opens his mouth, he will retail all the hackneyed common-places that the papers have wearied you with for the last half century. This barbarian knows them by heart; he has very different interests, different instincts; he has no ideas of his own. He will talk like Baron Holbach, reason like Grimm, and at the bottom has no serious care except chewing tobacco, drinking spirits, butchering his enemies, and propitiating his sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.
The state is divided into two factions, not separated by incompatibility of politics, but of color—the negroes and the mulattoes. The latter, doubtless, are superior in intelligence, as I have already remarked with regard to the Dominicans. The European blood has modified the nature of the African, and in a community of whites, with good models constantly before their eyes, these menmight be converted into useful members of society. But, unfortunately, the superiority of numbers belongs at present to the negroes, and these, though removed from Africa by several generations, are the same as in their native clime. Their supreme felicity is idleness; their supreme reason, murder. Among the two divisions of the island the most intense hatred has always prevailed. The history of independent Hayti is nothing but a long series of massacres: massacres of mulattoes by the negroes, when the latter were strongest; of the negroes by the mulattoes, when the power was in their hands. The institutions, with all their boasted liberality and philanthropy, are of no use whatever. They sleep undisturbedly and impotently upon the paper on which they were written, and the savage instincts of the population reign supreme. Conformably to the law of nature which I pointed out before, the negro, who belongs to a race exhibiting little aptitude for civilization, entertains the most profound horror for all other races. Thus we see the Haytien negroes energetically repel the white man from their territory, and forbid him even to enter it; they would also drive out the mulattoes, and contemplate their ultimate extermination. Hostility to the foreigner is theprimum mobileof their local policy. Owingto the innate laziness of the race, agriculture is abandoned, industry not known even by name, commerce drivelling; misery prevents the increase of the population, while continual wars, insurrections, and military executions diminish it continually. The inevitable and not very remote consequence of such a condition of things is to convert into a desert a country whose fertility and natural resources enriched generations of planters, which in exports and commercial activity surpassed even Cuba.[71]
These examples of St. Domingo and the Sandwich Islands seem to me conclusive. I cannot, however, forbear, before definitely leaving the subject, from mentioning another analogous fact, the peculiar character of which greatly confirms my position. I allude to the attempts of the Jesuit missionaries to civilize the natives of Paraguay.[72]
These missionaries, by their exalted intelligence and self-sacrificing courage, have excited universal admiration; and the most decided enemies of their order have never refused them an unstinted tribute of praise. If foreign institutions have ever had the slightest chance of success with a nation, these assuredly had it, based as they were uponthe power of religious feelings, and supported and applied with a tact as correct as it was refined. The fathers were of the pretty general opinion that barbarism was to nations what childhood is to the individual, and that the more savage and untutored we find a people, the younger we may conclude them to be. To educate their neophytes to adolescence, they therefore treated them like children. Their government was as firm in its views and commands as it was mild and affectionate in its forms. The aborigines of the American continent have generally a tendency to republicanism; a monarchy or aristocracy is rarely found among them, and then in a very restricted form. The Guaranis of Paraguay did not differ, in this respect, from their congeners. By a happy circumstance, however, these tribes displayed rather more intelligence and less ferocity than their neighbors, and seemed capable, to some extent, of conceiving new wants and adopting new ideas. About one hundred and twenty thousand souls were collected in the villages of the missions, under the guidance of the fathers. All that experience, daily study, and active charity could teach the Jesuits, was employed for the benefit of their pupils; incessant efforts were made to hasten success, without hazarding it by rashness. In spite of all these cares,however, it was soon felt that the most absolute authority over the neophytes could hardly constrain them to persist in the right path, and occasions were not wanting that revealed the little real solidity of the edifice.[73]
When the measures of Count Aranda deprived Paraguay of its pious and skilful civilizers, the sad truth appeared in complete light. The Guaranis, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused all confidence in the lay directors sent them by the Spanish crown. They showed no attachment to their new institutions. Their taste for savage life revived, and at present there are but thirty-sevenlittle villages still vegetating on the banks of the Parana, the Paraguay, and Uraguay, and these contain a considerable nucleus of half-breed population. The rest have returned to the forest, and live there in as savage a state as the western tribes of the same stock, the Guaranis and Cirionos. I will not say that the deserters have readopted their ancient manners completely, but there is little trace left of the pious missionaries' labors, and this because it is given to no human race to be oblivious of its instincts, nor to abandon the path in which the Creator has placed them.
It may be supposed, had the Jesuits continued to direct their missions in Paraguay, that their efforts, assisted by time, would have been crowned with better success. I am willing to concede this, but on one condition only, always the same: that a group of Europeans would gradually have settled in the country under the protection of the Jesuit directors. These would have modified, and finally completely transformed the native blood, and a state would have been formed, bearing probably an aboriginal name, whose inhabitants might have prided themselves upon descending from autochthonic ancestors, though as completely belonging to Europe as the institutions by which they might be governed.
THIS DIVERSITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION.