The American Republic [24]
more than all individuals. The social compact is an attempt to substitute for this real living solidarity, which gives to society at once unity of life and diversity of members, an artificial solidarity, a fictitious unity for a real unity, and membership by contract for real living membership, a cork leg for that which nature herself gives. Real government has its ground in this real living solidarity, and represents the social element, which is not individual, but above all individuals, as man is above men. But the theory substitutes a simple agency for government, and makes each individual its principal. It is an abuse of language to call this agency a government. It has no one feature or element of government. It has only an artificial unity, based on diversity; its authority is only personal, individual, and in no sense a public authority, representing a public will, a public right, or a public interest. In no country could government be adopted and sustained if men were left to the wisdom or justness of their theories, or in the general affairs of life, acted on them. Society, and government as representing society, has a real existence, life, facul- 67 ties, and organs of its own, not derived or derivable from individuals. As well might it be maintained that the human body consists in and derives all its life from the particles of matter it assimilates from its food, and which are constantly escaping as to maintain that society derives its life, or government its powers, from individuals. No mechanical aggregation of brute matter can make a living body, if there is no living and assimilating principle within; and no aggregation of individuals, however closely bound together by pacts or oaths, can make society where there is no informing social principle that aggregates and assimilates them to a living body, or produce that mystic existence called a state or commonwealth.
The origin of government in the Contrat Social supposes the nation to be a purely personal affair. It gives the government no territorial status, and clothes it with no territorial rights or jurisdiction. The government that could so originate would be, if any thing, a barbaric, not a republican government. It has only the rights conferred on it, surrendered or delegated to it by individuals, and therefore, at best, only individual rights. Individuals can confer only such rights as they have in the supposed state of nature. In that state there is 68 neither private nor public domain. The earth in that state is not property, and is open to the first occupant, and the occupant can lay no claim to any more than he actually occupies. Whence, then, does government derive its territorial jurisdiction, and its right of eminent domain claimed by all national governments? Whence its title to vacant or unoccupied lands? How does any particular government fix its territorial boundaries, and obtain the right to prescribe who may occupy, and on what conditions the vacant lands within those boundaries? Whence does it get its jurisdiction of navigable rivers, lakes, bays, and the seaboard within its territorial limits, as appertaining to its domain? Here are rights that it could not have derived from individuals, for individuals never possessed them in the so-called state of nature. The concocters of the theory evidently overlooked these rights, or considered them of no importance. They seem never to have contemplated the existence of territorial states, or the division of mankind into nations fixed to the soil. They seem not to have supposed the earth could be appropriated; and, indeed, many of their followers pretend that it cannot be, and that the public lands of a nation are open lands, and whoso chooses may occupy 69 them, without leave asked of the national authority or granted. The American people retain more than one reminiscence of the nomadic and predatory habits of their Teutonic or Scythian ancestors
The origin of government in the Contrat Social supposes the nation to be a purely personal affair. It gives the government no territorial status, and clothes it with no territorial rights or jurisdiction. The government that could so originate would be, if any thing, a barbaric, not a republican government. It has only the rights conferred on it, surrendered or delegated to it by individuals, and therefore, at best, only individual rights. Individuals can confer only such rights as they have in the supposed state of nature. In that state there is 68 neither private nor public domain. The earth in that state is not property, and is open to the first occupant, and the occupant can lay no claim to any more than he actually occupies. Whence, then, does government derive its territorial jurisdiction, and its right of eminent domain claimed by all national governments? Whence its title to vacant or unoccupied lands? How does any particular government fix its territorial boundaries, and obtain the right to prescribe who may occupy, and on what conditions the vacant lands within those boundaries? Whence does it get its jurisdiction of navigable rivers, lakes, bays, and the seaboard within its territorial limits, as appertaining to its domain? Here are rights that it could not have derived from individuals, for individuals never possessed them in the so-called state of nature. The concocters of the theory evidently overlooked these rights, or considered them of no importance. They seem never to have contemplated the existence of territorial states, or the division of mankind into nations fixed to the soil. They seem not to have supposed the earth could be appropriated; and, indeed, many of their followers pretend that it cannot be, and that the public lands of a nation are open lands, and whoso chooses may occupy 69 them, without leave asked of the national authority or granted. The American people retain more than one reminiscence of the nomadic and predatory habits of their Teutonic or Scythian ancestors