CHAPTER XIX. DO WE RESPECT OUR FREEDOM? First. Do we respect the freedom which we have inherited? tion of April 30, 1889. On the 30th of April, 1889, the writer, in a great city lying in the border-land between North and South, watched the passing of a vast procession. The celebraThus the people had chosen, upon the centenary of the inauguration of Washington and of the going into operation of the Federal Constitution, to do honor to our chief hero, and to the ordered Anglo-Saxon freedom which he fought to sustain. It was a city which at the time of the celebration was, and for many years before had been, a house divided against itself. Sharp race-conflicts between black and white, bitter religious feuds, discord between capitalist and laborer, between the drinker and prohibitionist, between Northerner and Southerner, quarrels of many kinds proceeding sometimes beyond recrimination to bloodshed, - had for years found in that city an arena. On that day, however, was presented a remarkable spectacle of harmony. Over each division of the marching column, everywhere from house-tops and windows, waved the stars and stripes. A division of schoolboys followed a division of gray-beards. Catholic and Protestant stepped for once to the same music; so, too, the Knights of St. Patrick and the Society of St. George; the negro and the master whose authority the Civil War had broken; Bohemians and Hungarians with a noisome flavor of anarchy in their somewhat sullen lines, and the solid representatives of the mart and of the bank; Confederate veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic. For the moment all was harmony; disputes were hushed; the "plain people was at one as regarded paying honor to the great instrument upon which our polity rests, and the great soldier and magistrate who was its main establisher and upholder, —at one in respect for our AngloSaxon freedom. Saxon free dom. There can be no doubt that in England, too, the "plain people," however much reluctance the priviThe people's leged class might show, would be equally love of Anglo- harmonious, if similar occasion were given; nor can there be any doubt as regards the universal zeal for democratic freedom of each great English dependency. Nor is it the "plain people " alone who stand strongly for democracy. However it may be here and there eyed askance, and its inevitable progress toward supreme power regarded as a calamity, it is not the sentiment of the scholars and thinkers best worth following. Andrew CarView of An- negie, a generous representative of capital, glorifies "Triumphant Democracy"; but there are voices better worth heeding than that of the fluent, quick-minded Scotch iron-master, that have spoken strongly, in well-weighed words, their faith. Says J. Toulmin Smith,2 treating of the kind drew Carne gie. 1 See Dilke on this point, Problems of Greater Britain, p. 490. 2 Local Self-Government and Centralization. London, J. Chapman, 1851, p. 40. of sense most useful in state affairs, with a confidence which many will think excessive: "It is well worthy of remark that it is not the mass of the folk and people who are insensible to sound argument and reason. This is a Of J. Toulcharge often made by those who imagine min Smith. themselves superior to their neighbors. The truth is, however, that the most really ignorant classes, and the most incapable of comprehending sound argument and reason, are often found to be those who are commonly called the educated classes. The cause of this is very simple. What is now called 'education,' and what many are anxious to enforce by a national system, is nothing but putting a certain artificial mould upon the mind, which, instead of developing its powers, does but serve to wrap it in prejudices and bind it to conventionalisms. The artisan classes, at least equally called upon by external circumstances to exercise the native powers of mind, have fewer prejudices to block the way to the sober entertainment of argument and reason. "For Anglo-Saxon freedom, we must have, indeed, educated men, but it is not reading and writing, science and arts, that ever did or ever can make the educated man. Engrossing the attention with these may indeed be made the most effective means of preventing the man from becoming truly educated. Of this, Prussia offers a striking example: with a nominal education, a state education of great elaborateness, the result is, as it was intended to be, a people incapable of dealing with their own wants and conditions, and submitting to be dealt with as herds of animals, who exist only for the behoof of kings. An observ ant and thoughtful writer, speaking of the Prussian system, so ignorantly held up as a system to be adopted in this country, well describes that people, as being the most superintended, the most interfered with, the most destitute of civil freedom and political rights,— in a word, the most enslaved people in Western Europe; and the most educated, that is in what is conventionally called education, — the drilling of the mind, not its development. This testimony is confirmed by all who thoroughly, and not merely superficially, have understood and watched the system, and who have not been deluded by meaningless statistics of schools." 1 Shall we accept this without qualification? Forty years have passed since the words just quoted were written. Much history has been made by Prussia in the intervening time. Under able leaders she has shown herself marvellously powerful. As regards the people, however, what the world has had occasion to notice particularly is the docility with which they have suffered themselves to be led. The initiative has been from the ruling dynasty and its great servants. The Court has supplied the plan of action, the brains and the energy for carrying it out, using the resources and mighty strength of an unresisting people to secure objects undoubtedly adapted to promote the well-being of the people (who can doubt the blessing coming to the Germans from a united Germany?); nevertheless, objects whose value the people did not at all appreciate till they were gained, and which they were quite incompetent to secure if they had appreciated them. It has been said that 1 Local Self-Government and Centralization, p. 321. the Germans of to-day are cheated by a mere counterfeit of representative institutions, while real freedom is far away from them. To some extent the remark is true. Though the German Parliament debates and votes, the power of the dynasty is very great, and not diminishing. Docility is still the most marked characteristic of the German nation, as it was in the time some decades since, when Matthew Arnold spoke of their "Corporalism," their obsequiousness before those in authority, a trait resembling the obsequiousness of the subaltern before his superior officer, a quality which Matthew Arnold found marked in a man even so supreme as Goethe. Nowhere at the same time is "education" so elaborate and so allembracing. Not a youth or maiden can escape the inevitable drill. That in a thousand ways the drill is valuable, who will doubt? There is, however, a discipline gained at the bench, the forge, and the counter, in the wrestle of affairs, more than all a discipline gained in the perfectly unfettered discussion and action of a free people. As a qualification for citizenship in a really free land, it cannot be doubted that the discipline of business and political activity is superior to that of the schools, — that the plain carpenter, blacksmith, and shopkeeper, with wits keen from their bread-winning, and also from the argument at the corner, in the store, alas! also in the saloon, — can judge about a multitude of public questions as well as, or better than, the man trained in books only. - This point is so interesting, it is well worth while to dwell upon it more at length. As regards the progress of freedom, the history Of Bryce. |