Part 50 (1/2)
Sir, if there be any aristocrats in Ma.s.sachusetts, the people are all aristocrats; because I do not believe there is on earth, in a highly civilized society, a greater equality in the condition of men than exists there. If there be a man in the State who maintains what is called an equipage, has servants in livery, or drives four horses in his coach, I am not acquainted with him. On the other hand, there are few who are not able to carry their wives and daughters to church in some decent conveyance. It is no matter of regret or sorrow to us that few are very rich; but it is our pride and glory that few are very poor. It is our still higher pride, and our just boast, as I think, that all her citizens possess means of intelligence and education, and that, of all her productions, she reckons among the very chiefest those which spring from the culture of the mind and the heart.
Mr. President, one of the most striking characteristics of this age in the extraordinary progress which it has witnessed in popular knowledge.
A new and powerful impulse has been acting in the social system of late, producing this effect in a most remarkable degree. In morals, in politics, in art, in literature, there is a vast accession to the number of readers and to the number of proficients. The present state of popular knowledge is not the result of a slow and uniform progress, proceeding through a lapse of years, with the same regular degree of motion. It is evidently the result of some new causes, brought into powerful action, and producing their consequences rapidly and strikingly. What, Sir, are these causes?
This is not an occasion, Sir, for discussing such a question at length; allow me to say, however, that the improved state of popular knowledge is but the necessary result of the improved condition of the great ma.s.s of the people. Knowledge is not one of our merely physical wants. Life may be sustained without it. But, in order to live, men must be fed and clothed and sheltered; and in a state of things in which one's whole labor can do no more than procure clothes, food, and shelter, he can have no time nor means for mental improvement. Knowledge, therefore, is not attained, and cannot be attained, till there is some degree of respite from daily manual toil and never-ending drudgery. Whenever a less degree of labor will produce the absolute necessaries of life, then there come leisure and means both to teach and to learn.
If this great and wonderful extension of popular knowledge be the result of an improved condition, it may, in the next place, well be asked, What are the causes which have thus suddenly produced that great improvement?
How is it that the means of food, clothing, and shelter are now so much more cheaply and abundantly procured than formerly? Sir, the main cause I take to be the progress of scientific art, or a new extension of the application of science to art. This it is which has so much distinguished the last half-century in Europe and in America, and its effects are everywhere visible, and especially among us. Man has found new allies and auxiliaries in the powers of nature and in the inventions of mechanism.
The general doctrine of political economy is, that wealth consists in whatever is useful or convenient to man, and that labor is the producing cause of all this wealth. This is very true. But, then, what is labor?
In the sense of political writers, and in common language, it means human industry; in a philosophical view, it may receive a much more comprehensive meaning. It is not, in that view, human toil only, the mere action of thews and muscles; but it is any active agency which, working upon the materials with which the world is supplied, brings forth products useful or convenient to man. The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fas.h.i.+ons them to human use. Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at work by the force of natural powers. To this end these natural powers, princ.i.p.ally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken into human employment. Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and workshops, are but so many laborers. They are usually denominated labor-_saving_ machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-_doing_ machines. They are made to be active agents; to have motion, and to produce effect; and though without intelligence, they are guided by laws of science, which are exact and perfect, and they produce results, therefore, in general, more accurate than the human hand is capable of producing. When we look upon one of these, we behold a mute fellow-laborer, of immense power, of mathematical exactness, and of ever-during and unwearied effort. And while he is thus a most skilful and productive laborer, he is a non-consumer, at least beyond the wants of his mechanical being. He is not clamorous for food, raiment, or shelter, and makes no demands for the expenses of education. The eating and drinking, the reading and writing, and the clothes-wearing world, are benefited by the labors of these co-operatives, in the same way as if Providence had provided for their service millions of beings, like ourselves in external appearance, able to labor and to toil, and yet requiring little or nothing for their own consumption or subsistence; or rather, as if Providence had created a race of giants, each of whom, demanding no more for his support and consumption than a common laborer, should yet be able to perform the work of a hundred.
Now, Sir, turn back to the Ma.s.sachusetts tables of production, and you will see that it is these automatic allies and co-operators, and these powers of nature, thus employed and placed under human direction, which have come, with such prodigious effect, to man's aid, in the great business of procuring the means of living, of comfort, and of wealth, and which have so swollen the products of her skilful industry. Look at these tables once more, Sir, and you will see the effects of labor, united with and acting upon capital. Look yet again, and you will see that credit, mutual trust, prompt and punctual dealings, and commercial confidence, are all mixed up as indispensable elements in the general system.
I will ask you to look yet once more, Sir, and you will perceive that general competence, great equality in human condition, a degree of popular knowledge and intelligence nowhere surpa.s.sed, if anywhere equalled, the prevalence of good moral sentiment, and extraordinary general prosperity, are the result of the whole. Sir, I have done with Ma.s.sachusetts. I do not praise the old ”Bay State” of the Revolution; I only present her as she is.
Mr. President, such is the state of things actually existing in the country, and of which I have now given you a sample. And yet there are persons who constantly clamor against this state of things. They call it aristocracy. They excite the poor to make war upon the rich, while in truth they know not who are either rich or poor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and the pernicious influence of acc.u.mulated wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and all the means by which small capitals become united, in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on a mad hostility against all established inst.i.tutions. They would choke up the fountains of industry, and dry all its streams.
In a country of unbounded liberty, they clamor against oppression. In a country of perfect equality, they would move heaven and earth against privilege and monopoly. In a country where property is more equally divided than anywhere else, they rend the air with the shouting of agrarian doctrines. In a country where the wages of labor are high beyond all parallel, and where lands are cheap, and the means of living low, they would teach the laborer that he is but an oppressed slave.
Sir, what can such men want? What do they mean? They can want nothing, Sir, but to enjoy the fruits of other men's labor. They can mean nothing but disturbance and disorder, the diffusion of corrupt principles, and the destruction of the moral sentiments and moral habits of society. A licentiousness of feeling and of action is sometimes produced by prosperity itself. Men cannot always resist the temptation to which they are exposed by the very abundance of the bounties of Providence, and the very happiness of their own condition; as the steed, full of the pasture, will sometimes throw himself against its enclosures, break away from its confinement, and, feeling now free from needless restraint, betake himself to the moors and barrens, where want, erelong, brings him to his senses, and starvation and death close his career.
REMARKS ON THE POLITICAL COURSE OF MR. CALHOUN, IN 1838.
FROM THE SAME SPEECH.
Having had occasion, Mr. President, to speak of nullification and the nullifiers, I beg leave to say that I have not done so for any purpose of reproach. Certainly, Sir, I see no possible connection, myself, between their principles or opinions, and the support of this measure.[1] They, however, must speak for themselves. They may have intrusted the bearing of their standard, for aught I know, to the hands of the honorable member from South Carolina; and I perceived last session what I perceive now, that in his opinion there is a connection between these projects of government and the doctrines of nullification.
I can only say, Sir, that it will be marvellous to me, if that banner, though it be said to be tattered and torn, shall yet be lowered in obeisance, and laid at the footstool of executive power. To the sustaining of that power, the pa.s.sage of this bill is of the utmost importance. The administration will regard its success as being to them, what Cromwell said the battle of Worcester was to him, ”a crowning mercy.” Whether gentlemen, who have distinguished themselves so much by their extreme jealousy of this government, shall now find it consistent with their principles to give their aid in effecting this consummation, remains to be seen.
The next exposition of the honorable gentleman's sentiments and opinions is in his letter of the 3d of November.
This letter, Sir, is a curiosity. As a paper describing political operations, and exhibiting political opinions, it is without a parallel.
Its phrase is altogether military. It reads like a despatch, or a bulletin from head-quarters. It is full of attacks, a.s.saults, and repulses. It recounts movements and counter-movements; speaks of occupying one position, falling back upon another, and advancing to a third; it has positions to cover enemies, and positions to hold allies in check. Meantime, the celerity of all these operations reminds one of the rapidity of the military actions of the king of Prussia, in the Seven Years' war. Yesterday, he was in the South, giving battle to the Austrian; to-day he is in Saxony, or Silesia. Instantly he is found to have traversed the Electorate, and is facing the Russian and the Swede on his northern frontier. If you look for his place on the map, before you find it he has quitted it. He is always marching, flying, falling back, wheeling, attacking, defending, surprising; fighting everywhere, and fighting all the time. In one particular, however, the campaigns described in this letter are conducted in a different manner from those of the great Frederick. I think we nowhere read, in the narrative of Frederick's achievements, of his taking a position to cover an enemy, or a position to hold an ally in check. These refinements in the science of tactics and of war are of more recent discovery.
Mr. President, public men must certainly be allowed to change their opinions, and their a.s.sociations, whenever they see fit. No one doubts this. Men may have grown wiser; they may have attained to better and more correct views of great public subjects. It would be unfortunate, if there were any code which should oblige men, in public or private life, to adhere to opinions once entertained, in spite of experience and better knowledge, and against their own convictions of their erroneous character. Nevertheless, Sir, it must be acknowledged, that what appears to be a sudden, as well as a great change, naturally produces a shock. I confess that, for one, I was shocked when the honorable gentleman, at the last session, espoused this bill of the administration. And when I first read this letter of November, and, in the short s.p.a.ce of a column and a half, ran through such a succession of political movements, all terminating in placing the honorable member in the ranks of our opponents, and ent.i.tling him to take his seat, as he has done, among them, if not at their head, I confess I felt still greater surprise. All this seemed a good deal too abrupt. Sudden movements of the affections, whether personal or political, are a little out of nature.
Several years ago, Sir, some of the wits of England wrote a mock play, intended to ridicule the unnatural and false feeling, the _sentimentality_ of a certain German school of literature. In this play, two strangers are brought together at an inn. While they are warming themselves at the fire, and before their acquaintance is yet five minutes old, one springs up and exclaims to the other, ”A sudden thought strikes me! Let us swear an eternal friends.h.i.+p!” This affectionate offer was instantly accepted, and the friends.h.i.+p duly sworn, unchangeable and eternal! Now, Sir, how long this eternal friends.h.i.+p lasted, or in what manner it ended, those who wish to know may learn by referring to the play.
But it seerns to me, Sir, that the honorable member has carried his political sentimentality a good deal higher than the flight of the German school: for he appears to have fallen suddenly in love, not with strangers, but with opponents. Here we all had been, Sir, contending against the progress of executive power, and more particularly, and most strenuously, against the projects and experiments of the administration upon the currency. The honorable member stood among us, not only as an a.s.sociate, but as a leader. We thought we were making some headway. The people appeared to be coming to our support and our a.s.sistance. The country had been roused, every successive election weakening the strength of the adversary, and increasing our own. We were in this career of success carried strongly forward by the current of public opinion, and only needed to hear the cheering voice of the honorable member,
”Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!”
and we should have prostrated for ever this anti-const.i.tutional, anti-commercial, anti-republican, and anti-American policy of the administration. But instead of these encouraging and animating accents, behold! in the very crisis of our affairs, on the very eve of victory, the honorable member cries out to the enemy,--not to us, his allies, but to the enemy: ”Hollo! A sudden thought strikes me! I abandon my allies!
Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them, and now let _you and me_ swear an eternal friends.h.i.+p!” Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blus.h.i.+ng, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted where hearts are already known, the honorable gentleman takes his place among his new friends amidst greetings and caresses, and is already enjoying the sweets of an eternal friends.h.i.+p.