PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. VOL. XVII. RICHMOND, MAY, 1851. GREELEY ON REFORMS.* NO. 5. the weekly issues of European Book Catalogues, or to look over the Advertisements in the successive numbers of the Journal des Economistes, to perceive not only the exuberant speculation the great problem of the re-invigoration of civiwhich is actively engaged in attempting to solve lized society, but also the hot haste, the rash con It is not the least significant symptom of the disease and disorder of our times, that every scribbler, who, by painful diligence and long mechanic practice, has learnt to string words together into an intelligible, or apparently intelli-jecture, the disregard of immutable facts, the renunciation of all study, the abnegation of patient gible sentence, deems himself specially called upon to re-organize society-to remodel the thought, the arrogant dogmatism, and the wretchlaws imposed by the Creator upon humanity-ed incompetence, which characterize the greater and to re-arrange and improve the whole order proportion of such efforts. We did, indeed, entertain a faint hope that the people and the auof social and political existence. Pour parler il thors of the United States would not suffer themfaut penser, ou à peu près, says Voltaire, and we should have thought that the prescription was selves to be washed away by the turbid stream even more applicable to writing than speaking the Old World, but would be content to remain of revolutionary speculation which is inundating especially when the subject was at once so intricate and so delicate as the amelioration of soci- as patient spectators on the bank, watching the direction and noting the phenomena of the torety. It would almost appear from the never ending issues of the press-the true signs of the rent, and learn in the happy security of their own favored condition, by seeking for the subterracan causes which had poured forth this fearful deluge, to avert similar dangers at a future time from their own shores. We have been more disappointed than deceived; our hopes were weak; our fears were strong; and naturally enough the old adage-the Poet's verse-has times--that we have been under a mistake. It is no longer the learned, the experienced, and the reflecting, who, after years of diligent investigation, timidly propound their suggestions for social amendments, which always require cautious handling, but all—“the saint, the savage, and the sage"-force madly into print their futile been realized once more: Fools will rush in where angels fear to tread. nostrums for the resuscitation of a disorganized world. Adam Smith devoted the seclusion of ten years at Kirkaldy to the elaboration of his theory of the Wealth of Nations, which had been While the studious, the sober, and the medifor at least twelve years previously the subject tative-the statesman and the philosopher-both of his frequent meditations. and even of his in Europe and America, have been carefully academic lectures; and it is only after the lapse studying the characteristics and the seat of preof more than eighty years that we are beginning sent social distemper, and endeavoring to disto discover the true limits within which that the cover such remedies or palliatives as may promory is scientifically correct and safely applicable. ise, by their conformity with the fixed and unBut instead of such patient preparation, Mr. changeable laws of human nature, and their Greeley steps forward as the confident evangelist adaptation to the special ills to be redressed, to be of a new Saturnian age on the strength of a series of effectual at least in affording temporary relief; Lectures" written in the years from 1842 to 1848 others, less competent to prescribe medicaments, inclusive, each in haste, to fulfil some engage- ignorant alike of the constitution of the patient, ment already made, for which preparation had and the properties and action of their medicines, been delayed, under the pressure of seeming ne- not cognizant of the difficulties which impede a cessities, to the latest moment allowable." Yet correct solution of the problem, ignoring or conMr. Greeley is far from being the hastiest or the tradicting the established laws of humanity, releast discreet of these reformation-mongers, who deform our times. It is only necessary to inspect nouncing the slow and unwelcome process of accurate investigation, impatient to logical reflection, and intolerant of doubt or dissent, have rudely forced upon the attention of the world, the *HINTS TOWARD REFORMS, IN LECTURES, ADDRESSES, and other WritINGS. By Horace Greeley. New York. wild chimeras and crude reveries, which are so Harper & Brothers. 82 Cliff Street. 1850. 1 vol. 12 mo. easily generated in brains vacant of information, VOL. XVII-33 and in minds rendered presumptuous by that Hints toward Reforms, which are scarcely worth complacent assurance which ignorance and van-revision, we would commend to his attention and ity habitually inspire. There is, indeed, some excuse for this premature publication in Europe, and especially in France, where the uncertain changes of the hour prompt the excited minds of political dreamers to hurried utterance, and the pressing miseries of the times urge the consideration of quack remedies, since the old procedure has proved inefficient and no matured or available remedies have as yet claimed acceptance. But certainly no such pressure compelled the publication of crude reveries in this country, careful meditation Lord Bacon's suggestions upon the general policy of Reform, which have ever been regarded as among the most just and the most profound views promulgated by that mighty intellect. He would derive profitable instruction from that severe teacher, who would check the aberrations of flippaut haste, and be found very different from the easy pedagogues of crude Socialisın. In these strictures on the recent Literature of Reform, which has been hatched into life by the vivifying fires of Revolution, we would by no means extend them to all the speculations which Whose only grievance is excess of ense, have been published of late years; nor would Freedom our pain, and plenty our disease! we apply them in their full severity even to Mr. Notwithstanding the dangerous ulcers which Greeley, though many might think that the judgwere beginning to fester in the body of Northern ment would not be too harsh, were we even to society, its general condition was still sufficiently do so. But among the various lucubrations on healthy to allow time for the careful preparation this text which have fallen immediately under and gradual introduction of remedial changes; our notice-scarcely a tithe of those littered by yet, the fact that such a demand exists at the the press-we have met with works of nearly North for Mr. Greeley's declamatious as would every degree of excellence, and of every shade justify their publication by the prudent house of of extravagance, dulness, and error. Of some the Harpers, furnishes a strong indication that few we would be disposed to speak in terms of disease has penetrated more deeply into the the highest commendation, though this class for frame-work of society there than we had con- the most part confines itself to the discussion of ceived possible. The fever of Abolitionism was isolated evils, and to the application of partial symptomatic of a typhoid habit; but the atmos- remedies. Others, though obviously and grievphere, it would now appear, must be charged ously erroneous in their general conclusions, are, with other poisons. We need hardly say that nevertheless, marked with the most indubitable Mr. Greeley's Fourierite philosophy is better impress of genius and acumen, and many of calculated to aggravate than relieve existing dis- them are replete with the most exuberant learnorders; that it tends to disseminate delusive no-ing, and are characterized by the most patient, tious, and to beget delusive hopes, which can the most elaborate, and the most symmetrical only hurry on the disease it professes to cure to an earlier and more fatal termination. It is not by arraying class against class-by dividing a a house against itself—by introducing schism into the bosom of society-by breeding "envy, malice, and all uncharitableness"-that evils in the political organization can be eradicated. The work must be commenced by allaying such antipathies, by assuaging malignant irritations, by inducing mutual patience and toleration, and by extinguishing inordinate and visionary hopes. True reformation is a slow and painful process, it is no holiday frolic; even in the best constituted society there will still be suffering, anguish, and unending endeavour, for life is an ordeal and not even Mr. Greeley's manipulations can convert it into a pastime. treatment of the whole subject. Others again, such as the Messianisme of Höené Wronski, exhibit the most erratic jumble of various erudition and great special ability with the wildest and most impalpable chimeras. Nearly all the rest are "but leather and prunella": A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed, We need not say that the work under review does not belong to one of the first three classes; it is not professedly destructive, but rather conHe is, indeed, confident structive, in its character; we are unwilling to that he can remodel the society around him by refer it deliberately to the last species. It is a stroke of the magician's wand. But he is not certainly hasty, slipshod, and slovenly enough; Prospero, nor are modern communities as plastic in point of inatter as of form it is too truly a rude and obedient as the subjects whom Prospero and undigested mass; but we are able to pay it commanded in "the airy fabric of a dream." If the dubious compliment of saying that it is less Mr. Greeley should ever condescend to revise his bad than might have been expected, and that we have seen many worse of late years on similar and we can examine it in its several parts and subjects. It seems to us we can even discover in their connection. The heads of the hydra are in it more literary merit than Mr. Greeley, with all reduced to one, and if that he effectually that modesty, which is too frequently the mask crushed and seared, our task is over. It is, inof impudence, is disposed to claim; but its prac-deed, a thankless task to refute plausible error— tical and philosophical merits we certainly value but it is written, "answer a fool according to his at a much lower estimate than he does himself. folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit;" and There is a freshness and vigour of expression, the importance rendered thereby to the mass of which are peculiarly agreeable, notwithstanding right-minded but unreflecting men may amply their violation of Attic taste; and there is a ge- compensate us for the hours devoted to the exnial abandon which may atone in some degree posure of current or proselyting sophisms. We for constant extravagance and rhodomontade, shall deal gently and fairly with Mr. Greeley, and even win forgiveness for occasional gram- though he denies the jurisdiction of the court, matical inaccuracies. He professes, however, treats it with contempt, and stands in contumasuch a vain-glorious spirit of defiance to the ciam. The Editor of the Tribune has yet to praise or censure of those who are alone com- learn that in the Republic of Letters all rebelpetent to judge of its literary value-if the edu- lion, sooner or later, breeds its own punishment. cation which he advocates for all be in truth de- We have already remarked that Mr. Greeley's sirable—that it would be a hopeless task, so far doctrines are presented to the public in a less exas his own amendment is concerned, to point out travagant form than we might have reasonably the defects or the excellences which we have no- anticipated. His virulence and ultraism in the ticed in his style of writing. And yet, correct utterance of the dogmas of Socialism are by no taste and graceful expression are so intimately means so great as we feared they would be. In associated with just views and sound judgment; most cases, indeed, he exhibits the most laudaand there is so much danger of the thoughtless ble moderation; perhaps, he only reserves the being led to the adoption of pernicious doctrines full blaze of his political revelation, of which he by the meretricious fascinations of tinsel rhetoric has most needlessly constituted himself Apostle and the seductions of sophistry, that we deem it to the Gentiles, for eyes already purified or beonly proper to put in our caveat against Mr.wildered by the cordial acceptance of the new Greeley's being regarded as an elegant, accurate, faith. Much extravagance, in comparison with or forcible writer. The series of Papers com- the sobriety of sound philosophy, there is, of prised in this Volume are, indeed, by his own course. When the mind becomes fevered by the confession, hasty productions-a fact, which sudden access of a solitary and exclusive idea, inmight palliate his indiscretions if the subject less tellectual fanaticism is the inevitable result. Mr. imperatively demanded caution and study, but Greeley's conception of the character of present could in no case heighten their worth. They social disease is, like that of the whole School, in consist of Lectures, Addresses. Orations, Edito- all its Proteau forms, incomplete and distorted; rials, and other nondescript Writings, and are and his dreams of the future regeneration of huneither much better nor much worse than thou-manity are founded upon a most erroneous and sands of such ephemeral productions auuually Utopian estimate of men and of society. Yet issued from the press in all parts of the country. we confess that there is something infectious in Trivial. however, as they are in themselves, we this visionary and sauguine enthusiasm in respect are glad that, if such opinions must be promul- to the supposed capabilities and possibilities of gated on our side of the Atlantic, Mr. Greeley human existence, and though it is a grievous has collected his oracles into one volume, The retrogression to return to Condorcet's exploded dispersed leaves were less tangible, his views theory of the perfectibility of man, yet Mr. Greecould not be so readily or so publicly arraigned; ley's flights of unchecked fancy please for a monor could he himself have been so appropriately ment by hurrying us away from the real world indicted for the whole corpus delicti. While his of pain and anguish, of toil and suffering, of sordoctrines were flying about in their disconnected row and tears, of stern necessities and stubborn form. like the disorderly leaves of the Sibyl, they impediments, into an ideal region where breathes were calculated to spread mischief and poison a purer air, and the storms of earth are hushed: where neither remedy nor antidote could follow them, for the sheets of the Tribune frequent only such haunts as are unvisited by the messengers of wisdom and sobriety. Now these doctrines appear “in such a questionable shape," that we will stop to question them. We have Mr Gree-It may be good for us to ascend thither occaley's whole publicly avowed dream before us, sionally in our dreams, and to refresh the droop locos lætos, et amæna vireta, Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque bentas, Largior hic campos æther, et lumine vestit Purpureo, Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. ing wings of the spirit with the breezes of that, be recognized as a profound political axiom, celestial air; but our daily abode and conversa- whether Mr. Greeley and his clan believe or distion must be amid the tangled thickets of this believe the divinity of our Saviour and the insublunary world, and not in the Atlantis of Pla-spiration of the Gospel. to, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney, the Oceana Though we shall deal kindly with our Author's of Harrington, the Icaria of Cabet, or the Pha- delusions, (notwithstanding our recollections of lanx of Fourier, Greeley & Co. "Powers eter- the Slievengammon hoax) and shall honestly pronal! such names mingled!"—we ask the pardon claim our acceptance of so much of his doctrines of our readers for the offence. as we can think to be true, there need be no apIn proposing and advocating social reforms we prehension of any leaning on our part to his should remember that their operation must take School. We are, in fact, too far removed from effect amid the troubled realities of life, and not any such possibility to entertain the fear of susin the midst of the shadows of a phantom-land.picion on that score. It is related by Herodotus We must adapt our vessels to the stormy waters that one man only, Callias, the Alemæonid, on which they are to sail, and not hope to stem could venture to buy the property of the exiled the angry tempests of the ocean with the frail Peisistratidæ, when it was offered for sale, beand gaudy pleasure-boats which fancy may de- cause he alone was wholly exempted by his vise. It requires no great effort of intellect to known sentiments from the possibility of being evoke from the imagination conjectural reforms suspected to be their friend. We feel a similar of the social state, but other and higher powers security ourselves in regard to the various social are demanded for practicable and beneficent delusions which characterize and infest our times. ameliorations. Employing the term Socialism, in its widest ap We are rejoiced to see, notwithstanding the plication, as embracing Owenism, Fourierism, loose play of a heated fancy, that Mr. Greeley's St. Simonism, Proudhonism, Cabetism, GreeSocialism approximates more closely to the le- leyism, et omne quod exit in ism, we believe it to gitimate agrarianism of the Gracchi than to the be under all its various and fantastic forms a insane and disorganizing reveries of Anacharsis pure chimera in theory, and in attempted praeClootz and Proudhon. There is, indeed, one tice an unmitigated Pandemonium. Neverthelameutable exception to the general moderation less, we can neither conceal from ourselves, nor of his heresies. The empty and ignorant decla- hesitate to acknowledge candidly, that the Somation about Slavery, in regard to which it may cialists, contemned and decried as on many be necessary to say a few words hereafter, is grounds they have justly been, were the first to neither harmless in itself, nor in accordance with apprehend distinctly, and still recognize in its the duties and requirements of one who professes utmost intensity, an important and vital truth, to war against prejudices, and preaches patience to wit: that the wants of modern societies have and temperance. We purposely defer-if possi- outgrown received formulas; that the existing ble we will decline-all comment on Horace elements of social organization have in conseGreeley's fanaticism in this respect; we are un-quence been thrown into fatal anarchy and diswilling to mingle with the good-humoured refu- cord; and that not merely the well-being, but tation of philosophical delusions the indignant the very conservation of society demands the reprehension of the immoral and disorganizing speedy re-establishment of harmony between incendiarism, which is now endangering the sta- them, by the application of suitable remedies, bility of the Union, and is still the subject of ac- and the restoration of the true relations between rimonious political warfare. If we dwelt upon capital and labour. The necessity is, indeed, imthis subject we could not spare the lash; while perative at this time only in Europe; but the in our notice of Mr. Greeley's Fourierism we seeds of like disorder are already germinating in can afford to be gentle and indulgent. We be- the States, and especially in the large cities of lieve that the errors of his own and the other the North; and prudence requires us to arrest kindred schools have sprung from the really the disease, if possible, in its inception. Thanknoble desire of ameliorating the condition of the ful, indeed, are we, that the institution of Slavery less fortunate classes of society, and of restor-shields the people of the Southern States both ing harmony between the constituent mem- from the approach of such dangers, and also bers of civilized communities. They have been from the acceptance of such doctrines as Mr. betrayed into gross enormities, and have sadly Greeley proposes for the incantations by which mistaken the true remedies to be employed, they are to be charmed away. A great mistake in their unreflecting zeal to produce an immedi- has, however, been committed by the sober thinkate and complete cure. They have ignored or ers both in Europe and America; they have sufdenied the truth of the saying: "Ye have the fered themselves to be repelled by the mass of poor always with you;" yet this maxim must errors contained in Socialist writings from the examination and reception of the few but valua- another, perhaps a greater Bacon-will in all ble grains of truth which they contain; their eyes probability be produced by some heresiarch of have been hurt and dimmed by the vast volumes their School. Indeed Auguste Comte-the faof smoke which envelope the altar of the social-voured pupil of St. Simou, on whom the aged ists, and they have failed to perceive the feeble seer designed that the mantle of Elijah should but living flame which was burning thereon. fall-has in his Cours de Philosophie Positive, The consequence has been that they have too and more recently in his Republique Occidentale, unceremoniously rejected the whole gospel of so nearly unveiled the mysteries of the great Communism, and they have thus embittered its social problems of the times, that it is wonderful acolytes, and left them untaught to follow rash that he has missed their complete solution. He guidance, while many have been driven into their has been misled by the prevalent error-a fatal ranks from the consciousness of this injustice, one-of hasty, immature, and purely conjectural and the inability to distinguish between the true reconstruction. After laboriously following the and the false in the socialist communion. Even rigid chain of strict experimental induction at this eleventh hour it is not too late to recall through all the sciences and all their subdivisions; some of the wavering—and they are among the after having rejected Logic, Metaphysics and Thechoice intellects of the age-and to form withology-religious faith and the science of reasonthem an impartial intermediate body, which may rather than admit the influence or existence of the be able to winnow the chaff from the wheat, to intangible, the unseen, or the uudemonstrated; accept from the Socialist that which is true- after having borrowed a name for his Philosophy their aims rather than their doctrines-and at from this exclusion of everything but experience the same time retain their hold ou the landmarks and induction, he dropped the last link just when which the wisdom of great minds and the expe- the guiding thread was most required, and on the rience of former ages have left to guide us solid foundation which with such dry severity he along dangerous shores. It is always difficult to had rivetted and compacted together he raised a hold the balance steady between the deficiencies lofty superstructure, scarcely consulting any of ancient dogmas and the excesses of new architect but fancy, and trusting for his plan to creeds; it is most peculiarly difficult to do so the wild fever of a singularly vivid imagination. under the pressure and excitement of the present | The union of such dissimilar powers each in such times. The human mind has a natural appe- admirable amplitude, is most singular; but teucy for systematized doctrines, and will readily scarcely more so than the contrast between the swallow a bushel of chaff, without much solici- spirit in which he prepared and that in which he tude about the quantity or quality of the grain, to completed his system. But though it is easy to escape from that state of philosophic suspense, discover Comte's aberrations from the truth and which affords the only means of discovering truth his near attainment of it, it is not so easy to adamid the noisy contentions of opposing theories. minister the true corrections to his errors, and to Yet we do not despair; we think that enough of do what he has barely failed to achieve. No those who discover the defects of present institu- philosopher since the days of Bacon has exhibitions and are meditating enrolment under other ted such strong evidences of a claim to being restandards, and enough of those who have too garded as his legitimate successor; but the same hastily been tolled away by the imposing pre-causes have prevented Comte from becoming the tences of new social schemes, may be united together in the diligent investigation of our present condition, and the impartial appreciation of both the old and the new, to save society from the impending deluge without leaving it to rot under the continued mould of insufficient or effete dog-philosophiæ circulum mutare, et philosophiam dare no matism. true Coryphæus of the XIXth century, which snatched from the outstretched hand of Giordano Bruno,* the laurels and trophies reserved for the *Primus, quantum quidem nobis constat, qui totum vam eamque abstrusissimam enisus est, fuit Jordanus Brunus, a patria Nolanus dictus. Brucker Hist. Crit. Phil, Per. iii. Ps. ii. lib. i. cap. ii. § i. tom. v, p. 12. But see tom.vi. p. 809, where this honor is assigned, perhaps too rashly, to Bodinus, concerning whom, see Dug. Stewart. Diss. Suppl. Encycl. Britan. Having thus indicated our disposition to go full justice to the Socialistic Schools, we may ask the indulgence of their proselytes when we take issue with them most uncompromisingly in regard “Prima autem, quæ in eo vigebat, imaginationis vis fuit, to the mode of redressing present evils. Never- adeo effusa et extra orbitam rapta, ut nisi nos omnia faltheless, we recognize that they have been, almost lant, vix simile vagantis per innumeras easque mire inter alone, probing the wounds of society to the bot-se connexas complicatasque imagines ingenii exemplum tom; that amongst them are still to be discovered invenire liceat. Brucker. tom. v. p. 29, x. This pasthe most diligent and profound social specula-sage might be justly applied without alteration to Comte, and especially to his République Occidentale. It is of tors of the day; and that the Novum Organon course unnecessary to illustrate the want of religious faith of Social Philosophy-the work reserved for of either the Nolan or the Parisian philosopher. |