The latter
will always take care of themselves--the danger being that they
rapidly tend to ossify us. The former is to be treated with
indulgence, and even with respect. As circulation to air, so is
agitation and a plentiful degree of speculative license to political
and moral sanity. Indirectly, but surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of
the very best,) follow freedom. These, to democracy, are what the keel
is to the ship, or saltness to the ocean.
The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be
a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general
comfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the human
frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kept
together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity,
exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality,
occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the
principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling
property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as
it may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy
looks with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the
ignorant, and on those out of business. She asks for men and women
with occupations, well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash
in the bank--and with some cravings for literature, too; and must
have them, and hastens to make them. Luckily, the seed is already
well-sown, and has taken ineradicable root.
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