Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

exist; and has given the creditors access to them, which is all that can fairly be asked. But although States are merely larger municipalities and not entitled, by reason of their greater resources and proportions, to any exceptional exemption from the obligation to deal honestly with all men, the Government gives their creditors no such opportunity; on the contrary, it has taken it from them, after having been conferred by the men of an earlier period.

It is clear that the obligated States themselves will not provide for these debts. What, then, remains to be done? Our answer is: Let the Government, which has full power in the premises, and which can promptly act through a simple majority of Congress, at once take steps to assume and arrange for the settlement of the debts of the delinquent States on some basis equitable to all concerned. As a matter of fact, a comparatively small amount of money or obligations would make a satisfactory disposition of the whole business. For such a policy there are several most potent reasons.

The General Government, in fact, is the only power which possesses the moral as well as legal ability to satisfy these claims, which it can speedily do through the action of Congress and its control of the national purse. So long as it fails to do so, and furnishes no means of redress through its courts, the provision of the Constitution that it was created, among other things, "to establish justice," is a misstatement and carries a reproach that should be removed. Many of these repudiated bonds belong to citizens of other countries, and this country has largely got the benefit of the bonds in the construction of railroads and other public enterprises of national importance. The bonds known as the "carpet-bag" issues are more a creation of the General Government than of the States, having been put forth by direction of authorities representing the General Government rather than the people of the States.

Our General Government has been a party-almost a par ticeps criminis-to repudiation in several of the States. The President of the United States has freely given the patronage and countenance of his high office in behalf of the repudiation movement in Virginia; many Senators and Congressmen, representing non-defaulting States, have pursued a similar course. The Supreme Court of the United States has tipped the scales of justice in the same direction. As a sequence to the success of

the repudiation movement in Virginia, and the outside support it has received, there has been a violation of a solemn agreement entered into between the State of Tennessee and its creditors, and all efforts on the part of other defaulting States to arrange with their creditors, largely for the same reasons, have ceased. These are facts as indisputable as any known to history.

The Government should care for these debts; the twelve commonwealths that are in default contain one-fourth of the entire population of the country. The public morals demand it; the severest reproach to-day attaching to Americans, as a people, is their indifference to public obligations. The general financial interest of the country demands it; America is yet a borrowing country, and must remain such for many years to come. The national security demands it; our Government owes its life to the credit of its bonds. Bonds are, indeed, a surer defense than bayonets; they create bayonets. Without the means of raising money, the strongest of peoples in the hour of danger would be powerless. I have said enough, however, to demonstrate that the question of redeeming repudiated State obligations is not merely an affair between the delinquent communities and their creditors; and for the remedy suggested there are plenty of precedents. Twice already has the General Government assumed and satisfied heavy debts contracted by the States; once in the early history of the nation, and again at the conclusion of the war of the rebellion. The same can be said of the gift of millions of acres of the public lands to the States.

The question is, whether the Government of the United States, in this matter of repudiated State obligations, will do anything for the honor of the nation; for it is something that involves the honor of the whole people. If a number of our States will pursue toward their creditors, whose fair dealing is undisputed, a course more shameless than that of Turkey or Egypt, and the General Government is so powerless that through its courts and other agencies it can do nothing to bring them to justice, or so indifferent that, with an overflowing treasury and ample power, it makes no effort to remedy this wrong; if the President, and Senators, and other public functionaries will use the Government patronage to strengthen the hands of the repudiators, instead of taking the part of the innocent victims of their dishonesty; if our political parties will cater to the

wishes and ambitions of the wrong-doers, in the hope of securing their support for partisan measures and interests, particularly that party whose representatives have created the whole of the defaulted State bonds which are most peremptorily discarded, and which has professed to be especially zealous in behalf of all forms of public credit; if the great body of our people can look upon such things with unconcern, virtually giving them their sanction, and making no effort to compel their rulers and legislators to respect the public faith and maintain the public honor, then the inevitable and just verdict of the civilized world will be, that we are a nation of rascals.

JOHN F. HUME.

MAN AND BRUTE.

A FEW months ago I published a work entitled "Mental Evolution in Animals," in which I attempted to trace, as carefully and as thoroughly as I was able, the principles which have probably been concerned in the development of mind among the lower animals. This work, I believe, has already been reprinted in America; and seeing that under the existing state of matters with reference to copyright an author on this side of the Atlantic is precluded from securing any pecuniary interest in the sale of his work upon the other side, I am free to allude to this book as constituting the basis of the present paper. In other words, I shall assume it as established that the principles of evolution have been shown to apply to the phenomena of mind as we find them presented in the lower animals; so that throughout the whole range of the animal kingdom, with the exception of man, we have satisfactory evidence of these phenomena having all been due to processes of a natural and continuous development, the causation of which is now in a large measure ascertained.

Starting, then, from this position, I desire to render a brief epitome of the leading points in another work on which I am now engaged, and which is concerned with the attempt to prove, first, the fact of "mental evolution in man," and, secondly, the principles which, in this case, as in the case of the lower animals, have probably been concerned in the process. And here, I think, it is not too much to say that we have a problem which is, not merely the most interesting of those that have fallen within the scope of my own work, but perhaps the most interesting that has ever been submitted to the contemplation of our race. If it is true that "the proper study of mankind is man," assuredly the study of nature has never before reached a territory of thought so important in all its aspects as that which, in our own generation, it is now for the first time approaching. After

centuries of intellectual conquest in all regions of the phenomenal universe, man has at last begun to find that he may apply in a new and most unexpected manner the adage of antiquity, "Know thyself." For he has begun to perceive a strong probability, if not an actual certainty, that his own living nature is identical in kind with the nature of all other life, and that even the most amazing side of that nature-nay, the most amazing of all things within the reach of his knowledge-the human mind itself, is but the topmost inflorescence of one mighty growth, whose roots and stem and many branches are sunk in the abyss of planetary time.

The problem, therefore, which in this generation has now, for the first time, been presented to human thought, is the problem of how this thought itself has come to be. A question of the deepest importance to every system of philosophy has been raised by the study of biology, and it is the question whether the mind of man is essentially the same as the mind of the lower animals, or, having had, either wholly or in part, some other mode of origin, is essentially distinct, differing not only in degree, but in kind, from all other types of physical existence. Now, seeing that upon this great and deeply interesting question opinions are now much divided, even among those most eminent in the walks of science who agree in accepting the principles of evolution as applied to explain the corporeal constitution of man and the mental constitution of the lower animals, it is evident that the question must be a large one. How large it is, and into what matters of intricacy it leads, I need not here wait to show. I merely wish to observe that it is impossible to do it justice within the limits of a single article, and therefore that in this brief resumé of my own investigations concerning it, I shall avoid all side issues and matters of technical detail.

First, then, let us consider the question on purely à priori ground. In accordance with our original assumption, the process of organic and of mental evolution has been continuous throughout the whole region of life and of mind, with the one exception of the mind of man. On grounds of a very large analogy, therefore, we should deem it antecedently improbable that the process of evolution, elsewhere so uniform and ubiquitous, should be interrupted at its terminal phase; and I think that, looking to the very large extent of the analogy, this antecedent presumption is really so considerable that it could only

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »