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omnipotence of majorities. No wish is so mighty as to transform the eager boy into a full-grown man. If our agricultural societies should vote that henceforth the earth would need no more culture, but would yield spontaneously all desirable fruits though by ever so strong a majority-they would not make it so. And if they acted on the faith of their vote they might starve the next season. In a perfect state of society penal laws and strong governmental restraints would not be necessary; but they are excellent schoolmasters to lead us to it. That state of society is best which demands the least government, but hence it by no means follows, that that government is best which governs least.

But our radical tendencies assume no more fearful form than that of the overshadowing, paralyzing despotism of "Public Opinion," which threatens to banish all free and manly thought from among us. In a perfect state of society, public opin ion would be a safe guide; but at certain stages of progress it may be most fatal. In the midst of general ignorance and corruption this is too manifest to need an argument. And by what magic does it happen that, in a mixed state, the opinions of the enlightened and virtuous should be rendered more just and authoritative by being averaged with vulgar prejudice and vicious predilections? Now those who are most busy in the apotheosis of public opinion are precisely those who most decry and contemn authority. Public opinion is the average opinion of the mass. Authority is the opinion of the more enlightened few. With the terms thus defined we hesitate not to prefer authority to public opinion. When public opinion urges upon us its domineering claims, threatening odium and disgrace, social ostracism or political disfranchisement if we refuse obedience, we hurl back its demands on the submission of our free spirit with defiance and contempt, while we yield a profound reverence to the unarmed, persuasive dictates of authority. Look at the accredited organs and exponents of this infallible public opinion. Who and what are they? A host of paltry newspapers which, like the army of locusts seen in prophetic vision, darken the land, and threaten to destroy and devour every bud, shoot and germ of civilization amongst us. Men who have an abundant command of slang, but could hardly write a respecta bie paragraph of good, manly, sober Eng

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lish; or who, if not destitute of considerable capacity and intelligence, yet know no higher principle than man-pleasing and party-success; men who are as innocent of any effort or thought to promote the general cause of civilization and humanity, in any high and noble sense, as the new-born infant-such men, from the editorial chairs of thousands of city and village newspapers, assume to announce the decisions and decrees of this great invisible, omnipotent, sovereign public opinion. Of course we do not mean that there are no exceptions to this character among the corps editorial. There certainly are exceptions-honorable and splendid exceptions; the more honorable because they are few. newspaper editor occupies a noble and responsible station, if he but fill it worthily. We boast of the unshackled freedom of our press; and well we may. It is a priceless boon won for us by the blood and treasure of our fathers. Shame on us, their degenerate sons, that we can make no better use of it. We wish no harm to any newspaper editor or proprietor, but believe it would be an occasion for hearty rejoicing, if seven-tenths of all the newspaper presses in the country were broken up forthwith, those employed about them provided with more lucrative occupation, and those who now exercise the boasted faculty of knowing how to read in scarcely anything else but eagerly conning all their scurrilities and gossipings, were sent back to study their neglected Bible, and read the standard works of wise, virtuous and cultivated men.

If now you ask, how we shall distinguish good authority from bad-how we shall determine who are the intelligent and gifted few that have a right to influence our opinions? again we have no particular answer to give. What we insist upon is, that a man in forming his opinions should recognize not the claims of a domineering public sentiment, but the authority of the wise and honest. He must first recognize that a distinction exists, and then endeavor to find it for himself as well as he can. Of course there is no compulsion about the matter, nor any infallible tribunal to decide for all. Each man decides for himself; and, with these conditions, as a free and rational being, he must decide for himself. In this sense we would strenuously maintain the right of private judgment-private judgment formed with a due regard

to authority-not a blind but an enlightened deference to authority. While the lawless exercise of private judgment, severed from and defying all authority, almost infallibly ends in the despotism of the opinions of the mass-a despotism which, being raised above all responsibility, may generally be assumed to be immeasurably worse, more dangerous, more false and more degrading, than any tyranny of authority. Some people seem to forget that the case may sometimes be not authority versus reason," but authority versus ignorant presumption.

Let the choice of civil rules, and all matters which chiefly or solely regard mere external well-being and present expediency-banks, tariffs, and the likewhen they come up for practical decision, be left to the judgment and decision of the mass. In respect to these things their own contentment and happiness is the highest end. If they err, they themselves suffer the immediate consequences. But higher ideas of morality, justice, theology, theories of government, should by no means be considered proper subjects to be decided by the popular vote. In these things the common mind should be accustomed to recognize an authority above it. And in the other matters, a little modesty on the part of the less informed would do no harm, though they are of course the last to be expected to have it. Many seem to think that questions not only of practice but of theory-not only of public preference but of private character-not only what shall actually be done but what ought to be done-may be decided by a vote of the majority. They know no worse stigma, no deeper disgrace, no greater sin, than to be in the minority. They look upon the minority as so many condemned criminals. But who got the majority of votes when the question was propounded to the multitude," Will ye have this man or Barabbas?" Who shouted against the Son of God, "Crucify him! crucify him!" And can men still without shuddering echo back " Vox populi, vox Dei?" Yet multitudes do it, if not in those very words, yet in plain English or still plainer actions.

But while we would thus rebuke the insolence of majorities, we are desirous of not being misunderstood. Wilful misinterpretation it is impossible to guard against if we would; but we are bound to endeavor to make ourselves intelligible to those who honestly would know

what we mean. We will say, therefore

there are certain applications of the phrase, "Vox populi, vox Dei," where we admit and maintain its truth and propriety; but the trivial and flippant senses in which it is often applied we think little less than blasphemous. They imply either a deification of the people or a popularization of God-and probably both. We are making these explanations, not because we feel that we should have any dispute with reasonable men of any party, who reflect upon the subject, and hold independent opinions based upon their own convictions-but precisely because we feel we should have no such dispute when our own views are distinctly understood.

We heartily sympathize with those statesmen and patriots who, fresh from some great struggle for liberty, and still quivering with its excitement, have burst forth in the hyperbolical exlamationVox populi, vox Dei." But it is no new or extraordinary thing in the history of the world, that the rhetorical flourishes of one age become the doctrinal formulas of others.

We believe in the literal truth of this formula, as far as it implies the validity of arguments drawn from the universal or quasi-universal and uncontradicted consent of mankind-as indicating the laws of man's spiritual and moral nature, and sometimes even the facts of his history. We believe in the sentiment, so far as it implies the general correctness of the instinct of a people in regard to their own interests and rights-if it be really an instinct, general and spontaneous. We believe in the sentiment, so far as it implies that in governments which are so constituted that the people are sovereign, the people are sovereign-to the extent to which the constitution makes them so; and more than this, we believe, in general, that looking at the question theoretically and à priori, the people have, under God, a better right to the sovereignty than any other party, person or power whatsoever. Sovereign power must be lodged somewhere, and wherever that sovereign power is lodged its voice is practically the voice of God-it is the voice of destiny. But supremacy and infallibility are two ideas so utterly distinct that they ought not to be, as they too often are, confounded. The people may be supreme, yet not infallible. Their voice may be the fiat of destiny, yet not the sentence of truth or right. In the

same sense, the decision of a judge, the ukase of the Russian Autocrat and the firman of the Grand Seignior, are alike the voice of God. They are so, in a very important sense, to the parties affected by such utterances. It is no more true that the sovereign people can do no wrong than that the sovereign king can do no wrong. Yet we believe, finally, that as a matter of fact, the voice of the people uttering itself, not upon a sudden call through the ballot-box, but spontaneously, yet quietly and gradually, through the thousand intelligent organs which nature and society have furnished, will, in the long run, and on the whole, be fair, just and right. Further than this reason and facts forbid us to go.

mine what is a major part, it is necessary to determine the bounds of the whole-a point which, it seems to us, is almost always forgotten or purposely avoided by radical theorists. At the time of our Revolution we were in the minority. The majority of the British Empire of the great political society of which we acknowledged ourselves a part was against us. Were our fathers therefore in the wrong? Perhaps some may think that a majority of the people of the British Empire, if the question had been left to them, would have voted in favor of American claims. We think decidedly otherwise. It was rather the people of the mother country who were pressing the government to impose a part of their burdens on the colonies. But be that as it may, we are sure that the patriots of America would have had too much good sense to have staked the decision of their rights and liberties on the result of such a vote.

In another particular the Fathers of American Freedom gave the lie to the sentiment that the voice of the majority is the voice of God; and we believe all the conventions who have subsequently framed constitutions for our different political communities have followed the precedent thus set them, by inserting in all their constitutions of government that something more than a bare majority should be required to change the fundamental law; that two-fifths of the people, for example, if against change, should prevail over three-fifths demanding it. But, certainly, they would not have had the arrogance and impiety to set up their imperfect constitutions against the express voice of God.

When, therefore, the sentiment in question is appealed to-and it sometimes is -as implying that the decision of a bare majority of votes given at the polls, on any question however sudden, however exciting, is the voice of God-in any higher sense than as a practical determination of the question submitted to them -we demur: for that majority may be determined by the vote of a single city, and the vote of that city may be determined by processes of combination and corruption, such as were described in an early number of this Review. Men should pause before they lay such things to the charge of their Maker. Besides, when the decision is made by a bare majority, the voice of the people very nearly contradicts itself, and may vary, in its judgment upon the same point, from year to year: do truth and right vary with it? The annexation of Texas, for example, may be unconstitutional in Massachusetts and constitutional in South Carolina; constitutional to a majority of the union this year, unconstitutional the next. When and where is the voice of God uttered in such a case? We suppose the voice of God is binding on the conscience. Is the minority, then, bound to give up its intimate convictions and cherished doctrines to the majority of one, and acknowledge on its knees, with Galileo, that opinions of whose truth it has ocular demonstration, are damnable heresies? If the majority may be sometimes right and sometimes wrong, who shall determine the cases? Shall each one say the majority is right when he is with it, and wrong when he is against it? This Perhaps it will be said, it was not the must be the practical result. But what people who were in fault in these cases, becomes, then, of this boasted "Vox but the demagogues that perverted them Dei?" And then, before we can deter--that the people, if left to themselves,

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Did Aaron, the high-priest, obey the voice of God when he made the golden calf? Did the people of Israel utter the voice of God when they demanded a king? The whole history of this people is a most striking commentary on the doctrine in question; and yet this is the only people in connection with whose history the voice of God has been independently and distinctly revealed. Was it the voice of God which banished Aristides from Athens, the people being weary of hearing him continually called the Just? Was it the voice of God which clamored for the condemnation of Socrates?

would have decided aright. "Aye, there's the rub!"-if left to themselves! But how are they to be left to themselves? Who does not know that the very essence the fundamental principle of demagoguism is, first to pervert the popular mind, and then to appeal to it as authority? It was, indeed, at the instigation of the chief priests and rulers that the Jewish people preferred a murderer to the innocent man whom, but a few days before, they had been very attentive to hear. But this view of the case, so far from relieving the deifiers of the voice of the people, only adds the last insupportable weight to their burden.

We are not wanting in faith in the people. If questions could be fairly got before the minds of a community generally so intelligent and virtuous as ours, we should have almost unlimited confidence in the correctness of their practical decisions. But, unfortunately, the good people are not only fallible, but gullible; and there are sharp-witted men enough who know how to make their account of it. The mischief is, that while the people too often reject and hate those who warn them of their ignorance, and tell them wholesome but unwelcome truths, they are prone to love and follow those who flatter only to betray; who persuade them to despise all authority only that themselves may profit by their consequent self-conceit; who promise them liberty only as a cloak to their own ambition, while they themselves are the servants of corruption. The first step towards true wisdom and perfect freedom on the part of the people, must be, not to cast off all guidance, but to be more circumspect in selecting their leaders. Until they have learned to do this, they have not learned to lead themselves.

Let no enemies of popular liberty-let no foreign abettors (domestic, we trust, there are none) of the despotism of one, or of the insolence of the few, pervert what we have said to the purpose of showing that the people are unable and unfit to govern themselves. By a similar course of argument it might, with far greater facility, be proved that a monarch or an aristocracy are unable and unfit to govern human society. How then is it to be governed? But we utterly deny that any such inference against the capacity of the people for self-government can reasonably be drawn from the positions we have taken. And when foreigners officiously intermeddle in our do

mestic differences, they will learn that the old adage about quarreling man and wife is applicable to other social relations. On the other hand, let no professed friend of popular rights accuse us of having assailed them. We repel the charge with our soul's intensest energy. We hold the rights and liberties of the people sacred-we enshrine them in our heart of hearts; but are the people therefore gods to be adored and worshiped? For ourselves we would neither adore the Roman people nor the Roman Emperor. Let those flatter who seek for favor. Those who seek to benefit others must, now as of old, be even ready to sacrifice themselves. And as we would not abase ourselves to flatter a sovereign king or a sovereign aristocracy, so will we not abase ourselves to flatter the sovereign people. It is precisely because the American people are sovereign, and because we rejoice in that sovereignty, that we would have them think on their duties and their dangers. It is because we earnestly desire to have that sovereignty not only continued but practically enlarged and completed that we would have the people reminded of their exposures and defects; that thus they may be led to avoid and remedy them, and self-government may be established among us so firmly, so beautifully and gloriously that the mouths of gainsayers may be forever stopped, and we may become the envy and the exemplar of the world.

The other class of dangers and deficiencies connected with our civilization may be rather loosely grouped under the designation of extravagant utilitarian tendencies. The useful Arts, and especially the higher forms of the Mechanic Artsto which American genius is too exclusively devoted-do indeed contribute towards the progress of civilization; both directly, by exercising the intellects of men and giving them a sense of elevation and control over matter and the powers of nature, and indirectly, as a means of obtaining wealth and leisure. Yet utilitarianism and practicalness may get such exclusive possession of the general mind as to prove the most serious obstacle in the way of a higher and nobler culture. The more of the ideal there is thrown around life and all its affairs, the more of true refinement and genuine culture will prevail. Refined taste looks, perhaps, with the highest pleasure on those things which have no use for us but to be beautiful.

There is among the mass of our population more of a glorying in rudenessa rudeness often put on and cherished of set purpose-than, perhaps, among any other people in the world. On the other hand, the hauteur and contemptuousness, which too often accompany what refinement there is, betray an upstart character, a narrow-mindedness, a " Little-Pedlingtonism," which render such superficial village-squire refinement little, if at all, preferable to a proud and sturdy rudeness. Perhaps in this we are not more guilty than all others at least we may claim our English cousins as participes criminis.

If we compare the social character and condition of our common people with that of the same class in France, we shall find much more comfort, mental activity and useful knowledge among us, but vastly less refinement of feeling and manners. Good manners are restricted to no particular class in France; but every Frenchman seems to be endowed with an easy politeness of address and a nameless delicacy of sensibility and social tact by virtue of his birth. How these little matters throw a charm around social life and give it an air of refinement and elevation, of which, with all our more solid requirements and enjoyments, we are quite unaware. We may despise these things if we will, because we see no use in them; but, so far as we are destitute of them, we are wanting in one of the elements-though an external rather than an essential element-of civilization.

Compare one of our farmers or mechanics with an Italian in a similar position. The snug and thrifty life of the American finds no counterpart with the Italian. But the refinement of the tastes and sensibilities of the latter is equally wanting in the former. Introduce the American into the presence of the Apollo di Belvedere; and he sees nothing but the figure of a naked man cut in dingy marble, fractured, scarred and defaced in sundry places, which, if he thought he could make a good speculation out of it, he would consider worth buying-otherwise he can see no use in it. Place the Italian before the same statue; and, though he may be poor and ignorant and perhaps never read a newspaper in his life, his bosom swells with irrepressible emotions, his eyes brighten and his soul seems going forth to commune with the glorious ideal of beauty and majesty

which for him is embodied in that same dingy marble. And say, which of the two minds is the more cultivated and refined? which is the more truly civilized? Both are men. Both have the same nature, and in that nature the same sensibilities and principles of taste. But in the American these are completely overlaid and smothered by the accumulation of exclusively practical habits. This second nature has so annihilated the first, that he looks upon the Italian's enthusiasm with mingled incredulity and contempt. But again, we may prefer our thrift to the Italian's taste as much as we please; yet let us not therefore claim to be more civilized.

Grecian civilization may be characterized as æsthetic-the civilization of taste and genius; the Roman as politico-ethical-the civilization of jurisprudence and the state; the Jewish as theocratic-popular-the civilization of religion and the tribe; that of the mediaval Italian cities as commercial-luxurious;-that of modern Europe is a combination of all, with the addition of the economic or utilitari element. In its forming period the religious or theocratic element predominated; subsequently the classical element; in later times the economic-practical.

A barbarian element is sometimes reckoned among the constituent principles of modern civilization. But this, if not a barbarism, is at least a solecism. All that can really be meant, is, that our forefathers, the barbarians of the North of Europe, furnished Christianity and the genius of classic culture with materials of a certain character to be civilized; and the character of the materials has naturally modified the character of the result-for man, when civilized, has other characters besides that of being civilized. Respect for woman, and the sense of personal independence, which have been assigned to a barbarian origin, are, in their normal state, the natural offspring of Christianity. It is true, in their extravagance, they show an unmistakeable affinity with barbarism. That this is the case with the latter is plain; and if the modern theory of the rights of women is connected with the former, that tends equally to barbarism; for, whether the story of the Amazons be true or fabulous, it is certain they were always and justly considered as the most anomalous of savages.

Historically speaking, the Grecian element was engrafted on the Roman, and

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