Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

hardly count on the efficient support of the free states, corrupted as they are by the corner-grocery democracy, and fearful of losing a market for their produce or their manufactures.

But whatever may be the measures or the temporary success of the new administration, we fear the Union is virtually dissolved, not to be re-formed till after years of conflict and suffering. Our experiment, for the present at least, has failed, and as the attempt to repeat it will be made by pushing still further the democratic principle which has caused its failure, we fear it will turn out to have failed for good. The failure is due neither to Southern slavery nor to Northern abolitionism, but to democracy expressed by universal suffrage. The present state of the Union proves that with universal suffrage as the basis of the political order and sectarianism for the religious order, a free government is impracticable, because there cannot be secured wisdom and virtue enough in the people to sustain it, as we have for seventeen years steadily maintained in the pages of this Review. On this point the South is sharper-sighted and politically wiser than the North. It separates from the North on this very question of universal suffrage, and founds the republic. on slavery as did pagan Greece and Rome. It fears the universal-suffrage of the North, because universal suffrage mocks at constitutional rights, and can be stayed by no constitutional barriers. It fears not Mr. Lincoln, it fears not the Chicago platform; but it fears democracy, real, genuine, universal-suffrage democracy, that prevails in the free states, and for the first time comes into power in the Federal government. Against that democracy the South feels it has and can have no guaranty, not even in states' rights, and therefore it secedes.

This aspect of the question has been overlooked by our politicians. The Republican party, as to its avowed policy, is in the main constitutional and unobjectionable, but in order to rise to power it has been obliged to appeal to the most ultra democratic sentiment of the country; it has outbid the so-called Democratic party in its democracy, and can continue in power only by exaggerating the popular power. Its first serious attempt to be conservative and to emancipate itself from the mob, will insure its permanent defeat. To remain in power, it must carry into its Federal policy the radical democracy which has already triumphed in the free states, and so must any party that henceforth

1

would gain the suffrages of the people of these states. Here is the grave evil, which no possible statesmanship can avert. We cannot abolish universal suffrage and introduce a restricted suffrage, because men will not vote to disfranchise themselves, and because the general equality or non-distinction of classes in the free states deprives us of all intelligible ground or reason for restricting it. Yet with universal suffrage, and without a permanent aristocratic element limiting the democratic element, experience proves that a free yet efficient government in either state or nation is impracticable. In the seceding states there is an aristocratic element politically available, and these states are in a better condition, so far as the white man is concerned, to maintain government, than the great democratic states of the North and the North-west. With or without permanent. secession, it is evident to the clear-sighted statesman that our democratic system has virtually exploded, and that ere long we shall be forced to resort to a military despotism to save us from absolute anarchy.

Yet we do not absolutely despair of the republic. We had hoped that the breaking up of our system could be staved off till the influence of religion could be brought to bear in creating the virtues and forming the characters necessary to save and carry on political society, and thus be prevented altogether. In this hope we own we have been disappointed. Thus far democracy has had more influence in corrupting our Catholic population than Catholicity has had in forming the people to sentiments and habits of virtue. It has come too late to prevent the catastrophe. But it is here, and through it there is hope of redemption. We have fallen low, but we have not fallen lower than Europe was at the overthrow of the Western Roman Empire, and the work of redemption and regeneration is not greater or more difficult than that which was effected from St. Benedict to St. Bernard by the old Monks of the West and the great Popes and Prelates formed under the austere discipline of the monastery. Our hope is under God in the new Monks of the West.

The work necessary to be done cannot be done by statesmen, for they can operate only with the people as they are, the materials existing to their hand. The proper materials are wanting. The people themselves are, corrupt. We must begin at the bottom and provide for the production of a higher order of virtue than they now aspire to. There

is hope for us only in moral courage, love of truth and justice, detachment from the world, self-denial, and the power of sacrifice-virtues which can be learned only in the school of Christ, and from professors who have themselves acquired them, whose own lives prove that they live above the world, and have through grace obtained the victory over the pas sions and the senses. Hitherto we have ridiculed such professors, and regarded the school of Christ as the school of folly and superstition. The great mass of us will continue to do the same for some time to come; but the inevitable consequences of our errors now staring us in the face, and the chastisements of a wise and good God now beginning will ultimately it is to be hoped bring us to our senses.

The destruction of our commerce and manufactures, the decay of our towns and cities, the violence and anarchy, the general poverty and untold miseries which are sure to follow the breaking up of the Union and our present system of public and private economy, will gradually humble our pride, disabuse us of old prejudices, destroy our confidence in the popular idols we have hitherto worshipped, convince us that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, dispose us to listen to the words of truth and wisdom, and to submit to the moral and spiritual discipline necessary to prepare us alike for earth or heaven. We have been ruined by our prosperity, and till our material prosperity is clean gone we cannot be made to respect and obey religion. Men will not, as a general rule, turn to heaven till they begin to despair of the earth. But when we become deeply impressed with the instability and transitoriness of all earthly goods, we are prepared to have our minds and hearts directed to those heavenly goods which are unchangeable, unfailing, and eternal.

We see the effects of neglecting spiritual discipline and culture; the effects of neglecting natural discipline and culture are not quite so bad, but they are bad enough. A pious but ignorant people is to be preferred to a highly polished and educated people without religion; but neither is what the Christian desires. Where the natural discipline and culture are neglected, piety is apt to degenerate into mere sensible emotion or outward observance, faith into credulity and superstition, and morality into weakness, tameness, and, servility, as we see in all those countries where the secular power will not suffer the people to be educated, and confines the ministers of religion to the ad

ministration of the Sacraments, or where the clergy, through indolence, false theories on the subject, or real inability, suffer the populations to remain age after age in secular ignorance. Those populations are usually found to be tame and feeble, wanting in all the strong and masculine virtues, incapable of resisting the tyrant, or making an effective stand either for their rights or their religion.

Yet let it not be supposed that we are demanding the Gentile virtues instead of the Christian. We deny that the tame, weak, timid, imbecile, lack-a-daisical character has any affinity with the Christian character; we demand, after our author, the strong, noble, energetic, masculine, and heroic virtues, but these virtues are founded in humility, and spring from love. The stoical virtues are built on pride, and the Stoic faces danger or scorns praise because he has a lofty opinion of himself, and holds that it would be beneath him to do otherwise. Yet he has no true moral courage, and in the moment of real trial, when a real sacrifice is to be made, his heart fails him, and he takes his own life-the act of supreme cowardice. He has only his own strength, and can go only its length; when that fails him, all fails him. Not so with the Christian. Hie virtues spring not from his lofty opinion of himself and confidence in his own strength, but from his love of God and forgetfulness of self. Of all the forces of nature love is the strongest. We see it in the love of the wife for her husband, of the mother for her child, of the lover for the mistress of his heart. It pauses before no obstacles, recoils from no dangers, shrinks from no suffering, and is invincible and irresistible. No man who has never truly loved has any conception of human power.

Now direct the natural power of love to God, exalt, purify, and invigorate it by supernatural grace, and you have the love of the saint-a love that overcometh the world, and gives to feeble man the strength and energy of heaven. Nothing can overcome it. It is proof against all trial, and easily triumphs over the wrath of men and the rage of hell. It fears only to lose the beloved. Whatever is pleasing to the beloved, it is its pleasure to do. The more it can do, the more it can suffer for the beloved, the greater its joy, and never is its joy more complete than when it can make a complete sacrifice of itself to the beloved one. Hence the invincible power and heroic character of all really Christian virtue. Understand now that the

Christian sees God, the Beloved, in his neighbor, in his country, in the poor, the needy, wherever there is a truth to be asserted, a right to be defended, a wrong to be redressed, a moral good to be obtained, and you will see wherefore the Christian virtues are as necessary and as effectual in making society what it should be, as in endearing us to God, and securing us the beatitude of heaven. These virtues we as a people have lacked; these virtues the age generally has lacked; and these virtues, though they may be attained to by people in the world, yet in the ordinary providence of God cannot be diffused and sustained in a nation without a discipline and culture of which we find the best specimens in the monastery.

But we must bring our remarks to a close. We have done very inadequate justice to the masterly volumes before us. We have hardly given our readers a taste of the rich instruction to be derived from them; but we trust we shall be able to return to them soon. In the mean time we thank the author for the portion of the work he has already pub lished, and earnestly pray God that his life may be spared, and that he may have the health and strength to complete it. It will be a noble monument to his genius and faith, to his science and his piety. It will prove that in defending the cause of the monks, he has not been defending a "desperate cause."

[ocr errors]

ART. VI.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1. Negroes and Negro Slavery; the First an Inferior Race, and the Latter its Normal Condition. By J. H. VAN EVRIE, M.D. New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co. 1861. 12mo. pp. 339.

THE design of this book is to prove that negroes are a distinct and inferior race, and a race designed by the Creator to be the slaves of the white race. Whether the author regards them as human or as purely animal, as created with souls and redeemed by our Lord or not, we are unable to say. If they are men they are of the same race, genus, or species as the whites; if they are not men their nature was not assumed by the Word in the womb of the Virgin, and they have no direct part or lot in the Redemption, and it would be as absurd to preach the Gospel to them as to an ox or a horse, a monkey or an orang-outang. Difficulties of this sort, however, weigh not with Dr. Evrie, who seems destitute of the slightest belief in Christianity.

« ElőzőTovább »