Reform and Politics, Part 2, From Vol. VII,
J >>
John Greenleaf Whittier >> Reform and Politics, Part 2, From Vol. VII,
This eBook was produced by David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
REFORM AND POLITICS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ITALIAN UNITY
INDIAN CIVILIZATION
READING FOR THE BLIND
THE INDIAN QUESTION
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
OUR DUMB RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
REFORM AND POLITICS
UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.
THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
an old poet has quaintly described:--
"The citizens like pounded pikes;
The lesser feed the great;
The rich for food seek stomachs,
And the poor for stomachs meat."
This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They
are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough
alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good
old-fashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making
the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains
it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical
wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be
impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, _Utopian._
The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
could
"Forerun his age and race, and let
His feet millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."
Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are
now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be
expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the
exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands
for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want
of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no
doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an
admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a
government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following
extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than
folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:--
"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
him as true."
Passing by the "Telemachus" of Fenelon, we come to the political romance
of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell. "Oceana" is the name by
which the author represents England; and the republican plan of
government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would
have recommended for adoption in case a free commonwealth had been
established. It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet
the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who,
after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole,
with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman
need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had
won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."
Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon
government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir
Thomas More, in after life, fell into the very practices of intolerance
and bigotry which he condemned. When in the possession of the great seal
under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to
the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a
gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his
presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical
opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with
merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the
chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith,
"if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past
life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a
permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and
conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of
one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his
own doctrines."
Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel,
held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith. He
published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably
from the numerous attacks made upon it. Regarded as too dangerous an
enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of
Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of
St. Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial
derangement, from which he never recovered.
Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has
found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment,
entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without
priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the
pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country,
and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such
persons as servants. The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau
during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in
which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and
intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society,
comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from
the real to the imaginary. Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de
Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy
world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,--gladly
escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and
happiness,--at once misanthropes and philanthropists,--amused and solaced
themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which
the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught;
where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to
prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try,
and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and
luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or
gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid
plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in
desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity. Religion
was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature. Death was
no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open
through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be
equally an object of desire.
The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young
Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of
benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of
carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on
his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is
entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from
whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of
Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully
exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his
daughter. This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly.
Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian
Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its
pastoral descriptions. The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's
upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising
and the singing of birds:--
"Tyrteus conducted his guests to an adjoining chamber. It had a window
shut by a curtain of rushes, through the crevices of which the islands of
the Alpheus might be seen in the light of the moon. There were in this
chamber two excellent beds, with coverlets of warm and light wool.
"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of
the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the
shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none
worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the
next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as
happy as this sequestered family. Converse so delightful might have
charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been
invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the
window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant
noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount
Lyceum."
The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal
republic. Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as
the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner. Bacon's college, in
his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford. More's
"Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the
vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics. The merciless wits,
clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II. regarded Harrington's
romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule. The gay
dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the
prose pastoral of St. Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to
his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural
society.
The world had its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their
theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the
political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
"such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Rounded with sleep."
They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been
fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
What is the moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should
look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the
political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture
upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider
that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another
generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now
seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society have been
measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the
Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although
quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper
application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general
suffering? Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or
hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope
for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply
those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political,
and industrial relations of the race. If it is not permitted us to
believe all things, we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and
death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds
good, "We are saved by hope."
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS.
[1851.]
BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country
neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and
monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp. "Rather,"
he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering
man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find
a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly
and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope
of those who love God and their fellow-men."
We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist--a wish even
yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.--
by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of
the State of Massachusetts. They indicate, in our view, the real glory
of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's
definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the
description of an existing fact,--"a huge Christian personage, a mighty
growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of
God and of mankind."
Some years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the suggestion of
several benevolent gentlemen whose attention had been turned to the
subject, appointed a commission to inquire into the condition of the
idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their numbers, and whether
anything could be done in their behalf.
The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known
for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington,
and Dr. Gilman Kimball. The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman,
who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical
adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his
varied schemes of benevolence. On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a
full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor,
accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns
had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five
hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered.
These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as
mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw
light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection
in the creation of God. The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be
found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and
disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the
parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers. Out of 420 cases of
idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the
progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one
or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way
departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or
predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried
with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual
excesses.
Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy
afterwards. Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age,
and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement. Of those above twenty-five
years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental
condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of
the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in
the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public
charge in almshouses. A large proportion of them were found to be given
over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly
sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.
Those in private houses were found, if possible, in a still more
deplorable state. Their parents were generally poor, feeble in mind and
body, and often of very intemperate habits. Many of them seemed scarcely
able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of
ordinary children. It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility
teaching imbecility. Some instances of the experiments of parental
ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr.
Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their
heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish
parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his
ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering
lessons. In other cases, finding that the child could not be made to
comprehend anything, the sagacious heads of the household, on the
supposition that its brain was too hard, tortured it with hot poultices
of bread and milk to soften it. Others plastered over their children's
heads with tar. Some administered strong doses of mercury, to "solder up
the openings" in the head and make it tight and strong. Others
encouraged the savage gluttony of their children, stimulating their
unnatural and bestial appetites, on the ground that "the poor creatures
had nothing else to enjoy but their food, and they should have enough of
that!"
In consequence of this report, the legislature, in the spring of 1848,
made an annual appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, for three
years, for the purpose of training and teaching ten idiot children, to be
selected by the Governor and Council. The trustees of the Asylum for the
Blind, under the charge of Dr. Howe, made arrangements for receiving
these pupils. The school was opened in the autumn of 1848; and its first
annual report, addressed to the Governor and printed by order of the
Senate, is now before us.
Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of
muscular motion,--the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile
will. Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions;
others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were
without any power of locomotion.
One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the
day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could
scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of
touch. He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would
lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed. He could not feed
himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an
infant. His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no
affections. A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have
been selected.
A year of patient endeavor has nevertheless wrought a wonderful change in
the condition of this miserable being. Cold bathing, rubbing of the
limbs, exercise of the muscles, exposure to the air, and other appliances
have enabled him to stand upright, to sit at table and feed himself, and
chew his food, and to walk about with slight assistance. His habits are
no longer those of a brute; he observes decency; his eye is brighter; his
cheeks glow with health; his countenance, is more expressive of thought.
He has learned many words and constructs simple sentences; his affections
begin to develop; and there is every prospect that he will be so far
renovated as to be able to provide for himself in manhood.
In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been
equally remarkable. The gentleman who first called attention to him, in
a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his
present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic
demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of
communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing
with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining
what I gave him,--and when I see him already selecting articles named by
his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,--
improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is
creation; it is making him anew."
All the pupils have more or less advanced. Their health and habits have
improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the
close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful
as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated. Dr. Howe has
been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has
devoted his whole time to the pupils. Of the nature and magnitude of
their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter
listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his
attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to
impressions. All his senses are dulled and perverted. Touch, hearing,
sight, smell, are all more or less defective. His gluttony is
unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,--the most savory viands
and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him. His
mental state is still worse than his physical. Thought is painful and
irksome to him.
His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud,
earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of
some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders,
and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned
into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the
teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must
sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet
the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress,
slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest. Step by step, often
compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the
idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his
sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of
death, breath as from the Almighty--is breathed into him, and he becomes
a living soul.