The American Republic [127]
henceforth belongs to the United States, and she will have 390 a potent voice in adjusting the balance of power even in Europe. To maintain this position, which is imperative on her, she must always have a large armed force, either on foot or in reserve, which she can call out and put on a war footing at short notice. The United States must henceforth be a great military and naval power, and the old hostility to a standing army and the old attempt to bring the military into disrepute must be abandoned, and the country yield to its destiny.
Of the several tendencies mentioned, the humanitarian tendency, egoistical at the South, detaching the individual from the race and socialistic at the North, absorbing the individual in the race, is the most dangerous. The egoistical form is checked, sufficiently weakened by the defeat of the rebels; but the social form believes that it has triumphed, and that individuals are effaced in society, and the States in the Union. Against this, more especially should public opinion and American statesmanship be now directed, and territorial democracy and the division of the powers of government be asserted and vigorously maintained. The danger is that while this socialistic form of democracy is conscious of itself, the territorial democracy has not yet arrived, as the Germans 391 say, at self consciousness--selbsbewusstseyn--and operates only instinctively. All the dominant theories and sentimentalities are against it, and it is only Providence that can sustain it.
392 CHAPTER XV.
DESTINY-POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
It has been said in the Introduction to this essay that every living nation receives from Providence a special work or mission in the progress of society, to accomplish which is its destiny, or the end for which it exists; and that the special mission of the United States is to continue and complete in the political order the Graeco-Roman civilization.
Of all the states or colonies on this continent, the American Republic alone has a destiny, or the ability to add any thing to the civilization of the race. Canada and the other British Provinces, Mexico and Central America, Columbia and Brazil, and the rest of the South American States, might be absorbed in the United States without being missed by the civilized world. They represent no idea, and the work of civilization could go on without them as well as with them. If they keep up with the progress of civilization, it is all that can be expected of them. France, England, Germany, and Italy might absorb the rest of Europe, and 393 all Asia and Africa, without withdrawing a single laborer from the work of advancing the civilization of the race; and it is doubtful if these nations themselves can severally or jointly advance it much beyond the point reached by the Roman Empire, except in abolishing slavery and including in the political people the whole territorial people. They can only develop and give a general application to the fundamental principles of the Roman constitution. That indeed is much, but it adds no new element nor new combination of preexisting elements. But nothing of this can be said of the United States.
In the Graeco-Roman civilization is found the state proper, and the great principle of the territorial constitution of power, instead of the personal or the genealogical, the patriarchal or the monarchical; and yet with true civil or political principles it mixed up nearly all the elements of the barbaric constitution. The gentile system of Rome recalls the patriarchal, and the relation that subsisted between the patron and his clients has a striking resemblance to that which subsists between the feudal lord and his retainers, and may have had the same origin. The three tribes, Ramnes, Quirites, and Luceres, into which the Roman 394 people were divided before the rise of the plebs, may have been, as Niebuhr contends, local, not genealogical, in their origin, but they were not
Of the several tendencies mentioned, the humanitarian tendency, egoistical at the South, detaching the individual from the race and socialistic at the North, absorbing the individual in the race, is the most dangerous. The egoistical form is checked, sufficiently weakened by the defeat of the rebels; but the social form believes that it has triumphed, and that individuals are effaced in society, and the States in the Union. Against this, more especially should public opinion and American statesmanship be now directed, and territorial democracy and the division of the powers of government be asserted and vigorously maintained. The danger is that while this socialistic form of democracy is conscious of itself, the territorial democracy has not yet arrived, as the Germans 391 say, at self consciousness--selbsbewusstseyn--and operates only instinctively. All the dominant theories and sentimentalities are against it, and it is only Providence that can sustain it.
392 CHAPTER XV.
DESTINY-POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
It has been said in the Introduction to this essay that every living nation receives from Providence a special work or mission in the progress of society, to accomplish which is its destiny, or the end for which it exists; and that the special mission of the United States is to continue and complete in the political order the Graeco-Roman civilization.
Of all the states or colonies on this continent, the American Republic alone has a destiny, or the ability to add any thing to the civilization of the race. Canada and the other British Provinces, Mexico and Central America, Columbia and Brazil, and the rest of the South American States, might be absorbed in the United States without being missed by the civilized world. They represent no idea, and the work of civilization could go on without them as well as with them. If they keep up with the progress of civilization, it is all that can be expected of them. France, England, Germany, and Italy might absorb the rest of Europe, and 393 all Asia and Africa, without withdrawing a single laborer from the work of advancing the civilization of the race; and it is doubtful if these nations themselves can severally or jointly advance it much beyond the point reached by the Roman Empire, except in abolishing slavery and including in the political people the whole territorial people. They can only develop and give a general application to the fundamental principles of the Roman constitution. That indeed is much, but it adds no new element nor new combination of preexisting elements. But nothing of this can be said of the United States.
In the Graeco-Roman civilization is found the state proper, and the great principle of the territorial constitution of power, instead of the personal or the genealogical, the patriarchal or the monarchical; and yet with true civil or political principles it mixed up nearly all the elements of the barbaric constitution. The gentile system of Rome recalls the patriarchal, and the relation that subsisted between the patron and his clients has a striking resemblance to that which subsists between the feudal lord and his retainers, and may have had the same origin. The three tribes, Ramnes, Quirites, and Luceres, into which the Roman 394 people were divided before the rise of the plebs, may have been, as Niebuhr contends, local, not genealogical, in their origin, but they were not