LETTER XXXIX.
Dear Charles,—I do not wince under your rebuke, for
my conscience acquits me of all intentional irreverence towards
our rulers. I cannot conceive how animadversion on
logical and moral principles in regard to the spirit and actions
of legislators, especially where it is in the abstract, and
none are named, comes under the prohibition you mention,
“that we must not speak evil of the rulers of the people.”
The scriptural prohibition certainly forbids all malevolent
railing and false accusation, and all studied insult and
purposed disobedience to laws properly enacted. It forbids
any endeavor to defeat or embarrass an administration on
mere party grounds, and every thing done to make measures
miscarry in order to prove ourselves right in prediction of
disastrous results. But surely we may point out errors, and
rebuke folly and impiety. Our very allegiance to heaven
renders this not only allowable, but imperative.
The pulpit and the press are altogether blameworthy,
if on suitable occasions they fail to admonish legislators of
their duty; to rebuke them sharply for their sins; and to
warn them most seriously of the weighty responsibility attending
the administration of the government.
Charles, if a man to whom we confidently intrust our
best earthly interests—our property—our life—our sacred
honor—and the lives of our sons and daughters—yea, and
the morals of the community,—if that man shall disregard
his high trust, and, obeying the clamorous voice of passion
or interest, shall jeopardize all—that man deserves to be
branded Traitor!
Men eagerly aspire after the honor of becoming legislators;
Charles, could they only see the far-reaching consequences
of their public conduct, it would seem impossible to
take a seat in the public halls of legislation without a deep
and solemn awe upon the spirit. There, to speak paradoxically,
one's own interest would make him abhor all selfishness.
But how little solemnity and disinterestedness there! The
hall of legislation is regarded as a mere theatre for the display
of talents; an arena for contests of jealousy and ambition;
often an elevated platform for political harlequins
to play off grotesque antics in the sight of the world! And
where folly and malevolence do not appear, how very often
does the sectional partisan, spouting his grandiloquence for
Bunkum, mistake himself for the patriot!—“rattling” only,
when he “thinks he thunders!”
The mere man of party—the man of a clique—filled to
the extent of his tiny capacity with one little idea with a
big name—chosen simply for his pre-eminent impudence
and unserupulous soul, with small reading, no reflection,
and without talent—would pass for a statesman and patriot!
What buffoonery, Charles, can equal that? And
the higher the elevation whence he exhibits, the more ridiculous,
the more pitiable the sight! But when the man
there essays to spout forth gall and venom—like a new candidate
on the stump, with a wallet full of certificates testifying
to his own excellency and his opponent's demerits—
all in the style of a political bully, and really mistakes his
“great swelling words of vanity” for arguments and patriotism—the
whole strut and inflation are essentially funny!
Such a man cannot be a good man, and, therefore,
neither a good citizen nor a patriot.
Can he be a patriot, Charles, who, under pretext of listening
to the voice of the people, advocates measures which
he knows are adverse to the best interests of the country?
Can he be a wise man who mistakes the clamors of party
for the voice of reason? Can he be a good man who has
ever or mainly in view, a “seat in the house;” and, therefore,
votes such measures as shall secure that seat?
Fully do I believe that in all political parties, are men of
sterling integrity, who most conscientiously advocate the
measures of their several parties; and fully aware am I
that many grave questions involving most important interests
are so complicated, that men of the keenest acumen see
only darkly, and are forced to enter on something like mere
experiment, intending thus to test principles by their results;
and yet it is also very certain that some senators and
legislators care little for the merits of a cause, and ever look
at the popularity, and the popularity only, of a measure,
affecting to believe that what is the voice of the people must
of necessity be right. With them the sole inquiry is,
“What do the people say? What do the people want?”
And when that question is satisfactorily answered, all trouble
of thought, and labor of reasoning, and regard for consequences
are at an end. The people for ever—and the
people right or wrong! and that whether the people order
them as sovereigns, or cry unto them with the squallings
of a rickety child or spoiled pet, resolving to have “the
moon and the eleven stars.”
Doubtless a vox populi exists that may not be safely disregarded
by lawgivers and administrators;—a vox populi in
which is heard the tones of wise and good men, sounding
from one end of the union to the other. For, while it may
be barely possible that one man may be right on some questions,
and all other men wrong, it is so highly improbable,
that a conscientious man might, without sin, step aside or
yield to the many. But he who affects to hear the vox dei
in the artificially excited clamors of ignorance and prejudice
and party, and then dares to act contrary to his own
deliberate judgment in yielding to and not resisting such a
vox populi, is—a base traitor! And if that man, in obedience
to that senseless outcry of folly, shall, either by voting
directly in its favor, or by a cowardly dodging, withdraw
the barrier of his name from resisting the evil, if that
base traitor shall in either way involve our country in unnecessary
war—upon his accursed head will rest the blood
of the land!
He may find it hard now to stand single-handed against
his party, and to bear their scoffs and sneers: he will find
it harder to endure the remorse of a dying hour. The
blood of slain men, and the cries of orphans, and the crushed
hearts of widowed mothers, and the despairing groans of
the battle-field, and the ruin of moral and domestic happiness—whatever
passion and revenge and the love of unholy
glory and ambition may now, in the excitement of health and
prosperity, say to the contrary, will all rise up and cry in
that hour, “the price of honor is too great!” There is
a voice of blood that shall come stealing into the silence of
that darkened chamber, and a form of terror that shall pass
before the glazing eyes of the traitor, unheard and unseen
by the attendants, but loud as pealing thunder, and appalling,
as the ghosts of the murdered to the dying!
In the strange light that shall then shine to the mental
eye—clearer and stronger as the light of this life is quenched—in
that light shall the smiles of his partisans look like
the distortions of scowling demons, and the applause of the
thoughtless and revengeful shall burst like howlings of
the lost! And in that hour of unspeakable and unavailing
anguish, how will the man, now a reckless, selfish advocate
of war, curse, even with gnashing of teeth, the folly and
madness that stood impiously forth in the halls of legislation,
and in the sight of the world cried out, “Nothing is too
dear for honor!”
Charles, let them, in the pride of statesmanship and
worldly wisdom, lay my honor in the dust—and let all the
lordly train of earth's sons pass by in the mighty pomp and
glorious pageantry of life, deeming me too base for their contempt—let
them all show their deep loathing and disgust as
they turn from what is deemed the “offscouring of this
world,”—yea! let all this pass by me—but oh! Charles! let
me not lie down in the death-struggle amidst the appalling
shrieks and terrific visions that ring out, and start from the
gory battle-fields, that were made by my thirst of power, or
mere heartless love of glory!
May the infinite mercy deliver me from the alarm of
William the Conqueror when he stood aghast on the very
verge of the eternal state:—“Laden with many and grievous
sins,” said he, “I tremble; and being ready to be taken
soon into the terrible examination of God, I am ignorant
what I should do. I have been brought up in feats of arms
from my childhood; I am greatly polluted with the effusion
of much blood; I can by no means number the evils I have
done these sixty years, for which I am now constrained, without
stay, to render an account to the just Judge.”
It is a solemn thing to stand in a high station: and it is
a solemn thing to be an American Senator or Congressman.
