The American Empire - Scott Nearing

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in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final decision in large questions must belong to the public.[2]

      The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they, therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that governments should enjoy.

      Special privilege government was run by a special class—the hereditary aristocracy—in the interest and for the profit of that class. They held the wealth of the nation—the land—and lived comfortably upon its produce. They never worked—no gentleman could work and remain a gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court—sometimes well, sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one class.

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      The people were to be the source of authority in the new state. The citizen was to have a voice because he was an adult, capable of rendering judgment in the selection of public servants and in the determination of public policy.

      All through history there had been men into whose hands supreme power had been committed, who had carried this authority with an astounding degree of wisdom and integrity. For every one who had comported himself with such wisdom in the presence of supreme authority, there were a score, or more likely a hundred, who had used this power stupidly, foolishly, inefficiently, brutally or viciously.

      Few men are good enough or wise enough to keep their heads while they hold in their hands unlimited authority over their fellows. The pages of human experience were written full of the errors, failures, and abuses of which such men so often have been guilty.

      The new society, in an effort to prevent just such transgressions of social well being, placed the final power to decide public questions in the hands of the people. It was not contended, or even hoped that the people would make no mistakes, but that the people would make fewer mistakes and mistakes less destructive of public well-being than had been made under class government. At least this much was gained, that the one who abused power must first secure it from those whom he proposed to abuse, and must later exercise it unrestrained to the detriment of those from whom the power was derived and in whom it still resided.

      The citizen was to be the source of authority. His word, combined with that of the majority of his fellows, was final. He delegated authority. He assented to laws which were administered over all men, including himself. He accepts the authority of which he was the source.

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      This was the American tradition. This was the language of the new, free world. Life, liberty and happiness; popular sovereignty; equal opportunity. This, to the people of the old countries was the meaning of America. This was the promise of 1776.

      When President Wilson went to Europe, speaking the language of liberty that is taught in every American schoolroom, the plain people turned to him with supreme confidence. To them he was the embodiment of the spirit of the West.

      Native-born Americans hold the same idea. To them the Declaration of Independence was a final break with the old order of monarchical, imperial Europe. It was the charter of popular rights and human liberties, establishing once for all the principles of self-government and equal opportunity.

      The Statue of Liberty, guarding the great port of entrance to America, symbolizes the spirit in which foreigners and natives alike think of her—as the champion of the weak and the oppressed; the guardian of justice; the standard-bearer of freedom.

      This spirit of America is treasured to-day in the hearts of millions of her citizens. To the masses of the American people America stands to-day as she always stood. They believe in her freedom; they boast of her liberties; they have faith in her great destiny as the leader of an emancipated world. They respond, as did their ancestors, to the great truths of liberty, equality, and fraternity that inspired the eighteenth century.

      The tradition of America is a hope, a faith, a conviction, a burning endeavor, centering in an ideal of liberty and justice for the human race.

      Patrick Henry voiced this ideal when, a passionate appeal for freedom being interrupted by cries of "Treason, treason!" he faced the objector with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

      Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude," wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who felt a consuming passion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over the future and hoped grandly for the human race.

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [1] "It is, Sir, the people's constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."—Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, 1830. "Speeches and Orations." E. P. Whipple, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., p. 257.

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      A vast gulf yawns between the inspiring promise that a handful of men and women made to the world in 1776, and the fulfillment of that promise that is embodied in twentieth

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