Equality, Page 3

  CHAPTER III.

  I ACQUIRE A STAKE IN THE COUNTRY.

  On going into breakfast the ladies met us with a highly interesting pieceof intelligence which they had found in the morning's news. It was, infact, nothing less than an announcement of action taken by the UnitedStates Congress in relation to myself. A resolution had, it appeared,been unanimously passed which, after reciting the facts of myextraordinary return to life, proceeded to clear up any conceivablequestion that might arise as to my legal status by declaring me anAmerican citizen in full standing and entitled to all a citizen's rightsand immunities, but at the same time a guest of the nation, and as suchfree of the duties and services incumbent upon citizens in general exceptas I might choose to assume them.

  Secluded as I had been hitherto in the Leete household, this was almostthe first intimation I had the public in my case. That interest, I wasnow informed, had passed beyond my personality and was already producinga general revival of the study of nineteenth-century literature andpolitics, and especially of the history and philosophy of the transitionperiod, when the old order passed into the new.

  "The fact is," said the doctor, "the nation has only discharged a debt ofgratitude in making you its guest, for you have already done more for oureducational interests by promoting historical study than a regiment ofinstructors could achieve in a lifetime."

  Recurring to the topic of the congressional resolution, the doctor saidthat, in his opinion, it was superfluous, for though I had certainlyslept on my rights as a citizen rather an extraordinary length of time,there was no ground on which I could be argued to have forfeited any ofthem. However that might be, seeing the resolution left no doubt as to mystatus, he suggested that the first thing we did after breakfast shouldbe to go down to the National Bank and open my citizen's account.

  "Of course," I said, as we left the house, "I am glad to be relieved ofthe necessity of being a pensioner on you any longer, but I confess Ifeel a little cheap about accepting as a gift this generous provision ofthe nation."

  "My dear Julian," replied the doctor, "it is sometimes a little difficultfor me to quite get your point of view of our institutions."

  "I should think it ought to be easy enough in this case. I feel as if Iwere an object of public charity."

  "Ah!" said the doctor, "you feel that the nation has done you a favor,laid you under an obligation. You must excuse my obtuseness, but the factis we look at this matter of the economic provision for citizens from anentirely different standpoint. It seems to us that in claiming andaccepting your citizen's maintenance you perform a civic duty,whereby you put the nation--that is, the general body of yourfellow-citizens--under rather more obligation than you incur."

  I turned to see if the doctor were not jesting, but he was evidentlyquite serious.

  "I ought by this time to be used to finding that everything goes bycontraries in these days," I said, "but really, by what inversion ofcommon sense, as it was understood in the nineteenth century, do you makeout that by accepting a pecuniary provision from the nation I oblige itmore than it obliges me?"

  "I think it will be easy to make you see that," replied the doctor,"without requiring you to do any violence to the methods of reasoning towhich your contemporaries were accustomed. You used to have, I believe, asystem of gratuitous public education maintained by the state."

  "Yes."

  "What was the idea of it?"

  "That a citizen was not a safe voter without education."

  "Precisely so. The state therefore at great expense provided freeeducation for the people. It was greatly for the advantage of the citizento accept this education just as it is for you to accept this provision,but it was still more for the interest of the state that the citizenshould accept it. Do you see the point?"

  "I can see that it is the interest of the state that I should accept aneducation, but not exactly why it is for the state's interest that Ishould accept a share of the public wealth."

  "Nevertheless it is the same reason, namely, the public interest in goodgovernment. We hold it to be a self-evident principle that every one whoexercises the suffrage should not only be educated, but should have astake in the country, in order that self-interest may be identified withpublic interest. As the power exercised by every citizen through thesuffrage is the same, the economic stake should be the same, and so yousee we come to the reason why the public safety requires that you shouldloyally accept your equal stake in the country quite apart from thepersonal advantage you derive by doing so."

  "Do you know," I said, "that this idea of yours, that every one who votesshould have an economic stake in the country, is one which our rankestTories were very fond of insisting on, but the practical conclusion theydrew from it was diametrically opposed to that which you draw? They wouldhave agreed with you on the axiom that political power and economic stakein the country should go together, but the practical application theymade of it was negative instead of positive. You argue that because aneconomic interest in the country should go with the suffrage, all whohave the suffrage should have that interest guaranteed them. They argued,on the contrary, that from all who had not the economic stake thesuffrage should be taken away. There were not a few of my friends whomaintained that some such limitation of the suffrage was needed to savethe democratic experiment from failure."

  "That is to say," observed the doctor, "it was proposed to save thedemocratic experiment by abandoning it. It was an ingenious thought, butit so happened that democracy was not an experiment which could beabandoned, but an evolution which must be fulfilled. In what a strikingmanner does that talk of your contemporaries about limiting the suffrageto correspond with the economic position of citizens illustrate thefailure of even the most intelligent classes in your time to grasp thefull significance of the democratic faith which they professed! Theprimal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.That dignity, consisting in the quality of human nature, is essentiallythe same in all individuals, and therefore equality is the vitalprinciple of democracy. To this intrinsic and equal dignity of theindividual all material conditions must be made subservient, and personalaccidents and attributes subordinated. The raising up of the human beingwithout respect of persons is the constant and only rational motive ofthe democratic policy. Contrast with this conception that precious notionof your contemporaries as to restricting suffrage. Recognizing thematerial disparities in the circumstances of individuals, they proposedto conform the rights and dignities of the individual to his materialcircumstances instead of conforming the material circumstances to theessential and equal dignity of the man."

  "In short," said I, "while under our system we conformed men to things,you think it more reasonable to conform things to men?"

  "That is, indeed," replied the doctor, "the vital difference between theold and the new orders."

  We walked in silence for some moments. Presently the doctor said: "I wastrying to recall an expression you just used which suggested a widedifference between the sense in which the same phrase was understood inyour day and now is. I was saying that we thought everybody who votedought to have a property stake in the country, and you observed that somepeople had the same idea in your time, but according to our view of whata stake in the country is no one had it or could have it under youreconomic system."

  "Why not?" I demanded. "Did not men who owned property in a country--amillionaire, for instance, like myself--have a stake in it?"

  "In the sense that his property was geographically located in the countryit might be perhaps called a stake within the country but not a stake inthe country. It was the exclusive ownership of a piece of the country ora portion of the wealth in the country, and all it prompted the owner towas devotion to and care for that specific portion without regard to therest. Such a separate stake or the ambition to obtain it, far from makingits owner or seeker a citizen devoted to the common weal, was quite aslikely to make him a dangerous one, for his selfish interest was toaggrandize his separate stake at t
he expense of his fellow-citizens andof the public interest. Your millionaires--with no personal reflectionupon yourself, of course--appear to have been the most dangerous class ofcitizens you had, and that is just what might be expected from theirhaving what you called but what we should not call a stake in thecountry. Wealth owned in that way could only be a divisive and antisocialinfluence.

  "What we mean by a stake in the country is something which nobody couldpossibly have until economic solidarity had replaced the privateownership of capital. Every one, of course, has his own house and pieceof land if he or she desires them, and always his or her own income touse at pleasure; but these are allotments for use only, and, being alwaysequal, can furnish no ground for dissension. The capital of the nation,the source of all this consumption, is indivisibly held by all in common,and it is impossible that there should be any dispute on selfish groundsas to the administration of this common interest on which all privateinterests depend, whatever differences of judgment there may be. Thecitizen's share in this common fund is a sort of stake in the countrythat makes it impossible to hurt another's interest without hurting one'sown, or to help one's own interest without promoting equally all otherinterests. As to its economic bearings it may be said that it makes theGolden Rule an automatic principle of government. What we would do forourselves we must of necessity do also for others. Until economicsolidarity made it possible to carry out in this sense the idea thatevery citizen ought to have a stake in the country, the democratic systemnever had a chance to develop its genius."

  "It seems," I said, "that your foundation principle of economic equalitywhich I supposed was mainly suggested and intended in the interest of thematerial well-being of the people, is quite as much a principle ofpolitical policy for safeguarding the stability and wise ordering ofgovernment."

  "Most assuredly," replied the doctor. "Our economic system is a measureof statesmanship quite as much as of humanity. You see, the firstcondition of efficiency or stability in any government is that thegoverning power should have a direct, constant, and supreme interest inthe general welfare--that is, in the prosperity of the whole state asdistinguished from any part of it. It had been the strong point ofmonarchy that the king, for selfish reasons as proprietor of the country,felt this interest. The autocratic form of government, solely on thataccount, had always a certain rough sort of efficiency. It had been, onthe other hand, the fatal weakness of democracy, during its negativephase previous to the great Revolution, that the people, who were therulers, had individually only an indirect and sentimental interest in thestate as a whole, or its machinery--their real, main, constant, anddirect interest being concentrated upon their personal fortunes, theirprivate stakes, distinct from and adverse to the general stake. Inmoments of enthusiasm they might rally to the support of thecommonwealth, but for the most part that had no custodian, but was at themercy of designing men and factions who sought to plunder thecommonwealth and use the machinery of government for personal or classends. This was the structural weakness of democracies, by the effect ofwhich, after passing their first youth, they became invariably, as theinequality of wealth developed, the most corrupt and worthless of allforms of government and the most susceptible to misuse and perversion forselfish, personal, and class purposes. It was a weakness incurable solong as the capital of the country, its economic interests, remained inprivate hands, and one that could be remedied only by the radicalabolition of private capitalism and the unification of the nation'scapital under collective control. This done, the same economicmotive--which, while the capital remained in private hands, was adivisive influence tending to destroy that public spirit which is thebreath of life in a democracy--became the most powerful of cohesiveforces, making popular government not only ideally the most just butpractically the most successful and efficient of political systems. Thecitizen, who before had been the champion of a part against the rest,became by this change a guardian of the whole."