ridiculed as if it purported to teach what its framers never dreamed of.1 It asserts nothing whatever with reference to the physical, mental, moral, political, or spiritual qualities of men. It is one of the commonest observations of life that in all these respects men are created unequal. Men are unequal in physical stature, in mental powers, in moral emotions, in political aptitudes, in spiritual discernments. The "standard maxim of free society" which our fathers set up does not prevent the recognition of this elemental fact in life. It does not teach that government should attempt to make men equal in their natural qualities or attempt to disregard the natural inequalities in human society. It does not say that men should be made to live in society as equals or that "no law should recognize any inequality between human beings." It is clear that the 1 This maxim has been assailed as if it were intended to teach the equality of men in their merits and capacities. It is a waste of energy in the opponents of democracy to be thus continually slaying the slain. To remind us repeatedly of what every one knows, that men are created unequal in respect to their mental, moral, and political qualities is nothing to the point. But it is gravely used as ground for the denial and repudiation of the fundamental principle underlying the Republic by those who are unwilling to accept the results of manhood suffrage and democracy in our national life. It may be interesting, if not profitable, to notice a few of the labored utterances of some who have been unwilling to apply the logical conclusions of the principles of the Declaration of Independence in our politics. In the slavery controversy, the anti-slavery agitators persisted in calling to their support this original foundation-principle of the Republic, much to the annoyance of a government whose practice was belying its professions. Rufus Choate, the brilliant Whig orator, who cared nothing for the rights of the slave, referred to the maxim of the Declaration as “a beautiful and glittering generality." Charles Sumner, in the Senate Chamber in 1854, made this phrase from the Declaration of Independence the basis of his powerful arraignment of slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Senator Pettit, of Indiana, in answer to Sumner, took bolder ground than Choate : It is not only not a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, but it is a self-evident lie. In no one instance is there any color of truth in it. I speak what is true. I speak what is the judgment of all men, if they dare say it, that neither morally, mentally, socially, nor politically does equality doctrine of equality as a demand for a fair and equal chance in the State is unanswerable. But it is not true that the doctrine seeks to put him who uses his chance well on the same level with him who uses it ill. "Equality not only of right but equality of fact is the social goal," this may be according to the canons of socialism, but it is not in harmony with the spirit of American democracy,' which asserts only that no law or government should attempt to ordain, establish, and perpetuate an inequality that would not naturally and otherwise exist. Nobody should have any advantage over another save the advantage given him by his own mental, moral, or physical superiority. There should be "no legal barrier to prevent any man from acquiring the property and rights or rising to the position" to which another member of the community is entitled to attain. Accordingly, rank and privilege, political condition and exist in any country on the earth. It cannot exist in the nature of things. God Himself has not created them equal. It is not, therefore, a truism as Jefferson put it forth, but it is false in form and false in fact. God made exceptions as to political rights. He created a priesthood. He created kings and set them up over the people. It is His recorded and plainly written will that there is no such thing as equality among men." To this generation these seem like strange words from a disciple of democracy and a professed follower of Thomas Jefferson, uttered in our Senate halls only twenty-eight years after the sage of Monticello had been carried to his grave. Chief Justice Taney, speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case, in 1857, referring to the Declaration of Independence, said: "It is evident that the slave race were not intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument. The words would seem to embrace the whole human race, but that they were not so intended is too clear for dispute; in that case the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted, and instead of the sympathy of mankind to which they so confidently appealed they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation." The student who may be interested in other historical utterances touching this maxim is referred to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858. 1 Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. All the right to rule, "cannot be hereditary, but must be open to every person who, by his talent, diligence, and good fortune is capable of attaining to them." qualities and all inequalities should have fair play. This maxim of human equality, like the others to which we have referred, is to be studied in connection with what it opposes. It does not oppose or deny that Equal Rights will Recog- reward should be according to merit, or that nize Merit. there are differences of capacity for serving the community, or that high function should go with high faculty, or that a man's rights in politics are strictly limited to a right of the same protection for his own interests as is given to the interests of others. Our maxim, far from opposing these things, confronted very different ideas and practices. Is there a There have always been interests and parties in the state striving to inculcate the doctrine that there are classes born to rule, while others are born to service and subjection; that there is a natural superiority in this ruling class, and that all other classes are naturally inferior; that some were born booted and spurred ready for riding, while others were born for saddles and bridles, ready to be ridden; that these burdenbearers, the great masses of men, must be content with the laborious and obscure condition in which they were born, and that there must not be raised in their minds false ideals and vain expectations that doors of opportunity may be open also to them and their children, leading to education, learning, position, power, and fame. These were not for the common herd but for their God-appointed rulers. They who taught this false doctrine would therefore impose artificial restraints upon the many and confer special favors and privileges upon the few. The application of this doctrine in government invariably prevents the recognition of all true merit, of all natural 1 Lowell, Essays on Government, p. 176. ? See Morley's Rousseau. 2 and real superior ability and power for the service of the state. It was this doctrine and its consequences that confronted the young Republic in 1776. The men of '76 saw clearly that this had led to a superstitious and idolatrous reverence for royalty, to class government, to an artificial nobility with special privileges, to an aristocratic social caste claiming superior ancestral qualities with special hereditary rights, to artificial restraints and special favors, and to the denial of the rights of the people to interfere in politics. These were the Evils of an ideas and practices with which our fathers were confronted. The founders of the Republic were especially impressed with the undue influence in government of royal pageantry and parade, and with the social injustice and wrongs of an hereditary, artificial aristocracy. They therefore, when they came to make a National Constitution, wrote it in their fundamental law that no title of nobility should ever be granted in America by any government, State or National.' Artificial Aristocracy. Government In opposition to the polity of a ruling class with special favors, our fathers asserted their determination to erect another polity,—a self-governed republic in which the people may choose their rulers; in which, in respect not only to the legal protection and civil rights of the State, but to its honors, offices, opportunities, and emoluments, there should be a fair field and no favor; in which every 1 Const., Art. I., Secs. 9 and 10. and No Favor. The opinion of the founders of the American Republic, now an ingrained American conviction, as to the evils of an artificial aristocracy, has lately been expressed by a distinguished English scholar in writing on the British aristocracy: "The real evil of peers and peerages, of squires and squirarchy, lies in the substitution of a false and artificial inequality of birth and rank for the real and natural inequality of brains and faculties.—Nobody is anything by the side of a peer. The literary men, artists, thinkers, discoverers, scientists, poets, the prophets and seers of the race,-these can have but a small place in public estimation. How unimportant a great man should be the equal of every other in his right to pursue his happiness in his own way, subject to the common weal. This is not to assert the right of every man to be put into the possession of power which is not naturally and legitimately his own; it does not mean the equal right of every man to vote, to govern, to be a ruler, a governor, or a president; but, rather, an equal right to become able and fit to be a voter, a ruler, a governor, a president, every man to be equally and absolutely unrestrained by a single artificial barrier of government or civil society. The principle implies that this end will best be gained by manhood suffrage in a republican state. Our fathers were also confronting social and political conditions that called for protest and opposition, and it was their purpose to announce a principle which, if reduced to practice in the state, would produce fairer and more equitable conditions. Our Fathers Found "We may always be quite sure," says Mr. Morley, "that no set of ideas could ever have produced this resounding effect on opinion unless they contained something which the social or spiritual condition of men whom they inflamed made true for the time and true in a very urgent sense. 991 Mr. Morley here refers to the doctrine of equality the Result of Unjust Laws. announced in the Declaration of Independence. These writer, how important a fool with a title! Lord-worship, flunkeyism, snobbery, eat into the very heart and brain of the nation. Such a system makes the struggle of merit for recognition harder. It distracts the attention of the public from individualities and principles which might raise and widen it to individualities and principles which narrow and retard. It produces a universal reign of slavish snobbery ruinous to the manliness, the self-respect, the dignity, and the independence of the nation. The existence of a class which receives public attention on account of birth alone stands fatally in the way of the really superior class which deserves and struggles toward recognition in every direction. The artificial betterness eclipses the natural. The man-made inequality keeps from the service of humanity the God-made inequality that can best advance it.”—Grant Allen in The Cosmopolitan, April, 1901. 1 Essay on Rousseau. |