Principles and Issues of the American Struggle [pp. 410-432]

THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.
into a Slough of Despond, without attempting to avert the catastrophe. All they did was to shrug their shoulders, and express
opinions in private, which, if they had had the courage to express
in public, might have given a better direction to the national
thought, and changed the fortunes'of the Republic.
This corruption-let it be unequivocally stated-is inherent in
all republics founded upon universal suffrage, after the time when
society has outlived the agricultural and pastoral, or, as it may
be more correctly called, the patriarchal era. Switzerland itself
could scarcely remain a republic in the midst of the existing civilization of Europe, were it not for the jealousies of its neighbors,
each of which would willingly absorb and annex it, but is p?evented by the certain knowledge that its rivals for possession
would resist the attempt. In a, new country, where the population is sparse, hard-working, and virtuous; where the landowner
or planter lives "under the shadow of his own fig-tree, with none
to make him afraid;" where commerce, and more especially that
branch of it which may be called petty shopkeeping, with its
keen competitions and demoralizing influences, is at its minimum;
and where the proletairies and dangerous classes of older comllmunities have not made their appearance upon the scene-a republican form of government is not only the best in theory, but the
most convenient in practice. In point of fact, it is impossible,
for want of material, to establish any other. Such was the
American Government in the days of Washington, John Adams,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and even so late as those of John
Quincy Adams-men who were all respectable for their public
and private character, and some of them admirable for their
genius. In this early period the Republic offered the spectacle
of virtuous self-government; and the strangers not born on Americaln soil or trained in American principles, who were permitted
to enjoy the right of suffrage, were few in number, and exercised
no alien or disturbing influence on the politics of the States. But
a change for the worse was at hand. An immense immigration
from Ireland and Germany, from the filthy back-slums and
over-crowded human ant-hills of Europe, had rushed into America, bringing with them ideas and habits very different from
those of the native Americans of English descent. These crowds
founld no elbow-room in New England-bare, bleak, inhospitable, and thickly peopled; and, neither liking the warm climate
of the cotton and sugar States, nor competition in the labor market with negro slaves, they spread themselves over the more fertile middle and western States, or congregated in the cities of the
North. By degrees the republican simplicity and purity of the
olden time were impaired by this European element, and only
remained in their original strength and homogeneity among two
very different orders of men-the planters and slave-owners of
the South, and the Puritans and slavery-haters of New England.
By the time that Andrew Jackson-the first man not moving in
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