The American Republic | Page 7

the means of its
actualization in space and time.
Every living nation has an idea given it by Providence to realize, and
whose realization is its special work, mission, or destiny. Every nation
is, in some sense, a chosen people of God. The Jews were the chosen
people of God, through whom the primitive traditions were to be
preserved in their purity and integrity, and the Messiah was to come.
The Greeks were the chosen people of God, for the development and
realization of the beautiful or the divine splendor in art, and of the true
in science and philosophy; and the Romans, for the development of the
state, law, and jurisprudence. The great despotic nations of Asia were
never properly nations; or if they were nations with a mission, they
proved false to it--, and count for nothing in the progressive
development of the human race. History has not recorded their mission,
and as far as they are known they have contributed only to the
abnormal development or corruption of religion and civilization.
Despotism is barbaric and abnormal.
The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is
chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not
only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to
accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will
prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and
philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the state, in law, in jurisprudence,
it must continue and surpass Rome. Its idea is liberty, indeed, but

liberty with law, and law with liberty. Yet its mission is not so much
the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the state,
which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the
individual--the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and
individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to
bring out in its life the dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the
natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman
republics asserted the state to the detriment of individual freedom;
modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the
detriment of the state. The American republic has been instituted by
Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other.
The real mission of the United States is to introduce and establish a
political constitution, which, while it retains all the advantages of the
constitutions of states thus far known, is unlike any of them, and
secures advantages which none of them did or could possess. The
American constitution has no prototype in any prior constitution. The
American form of government can be classed throughout with none of
the forms of government described by Aristotle, or even by later
authorities. Aristotle knew only four forms of government: Monarchy,
Aristocracy, Democracy, and Mixed Governments. The American form
is none of these, nor any combination of them. It is original, a new
contribution to political science, and seeks to attain the end of all wise
and just government by means unknown or forbidden to the ancients,
and which have been but imperfectly comprehended even by American
political writers themselves. The originality of the American
constitution has been overlooked by the great majority even of our own
statesmen, who seek to explain it by analogies borrowed from the
constitutions of other states rather than by a profound study of its own
principles. They have taken too low a view of it, and have rarely, if
ever, appreciated its distinctive and peculiar merits.
As the United States have vindicated their national unity and integrity,
and are preparing to take a new start in history, nothing is more
important than that they should take that new start with a clear and
definite view of their national constitution, and with a distinct
understanding of their political mission in the future of the world. The

citizen who can help his countrymen to do this will render them an
important service and deserve well of his country, though he may have
been unable to serve in her armies and defend her on the battle-field.
The work now to be done by American statesmen is even more difficult
and more delicate than that which has been accomplished by our brave
armies. As yet the people are hardly better prepared for the political
work to be done than they were at the outbreak of the civil war for the
military work they have so nobly achieved. But, with time, patience,
and good-will, the difficulties may be overcome, the errors of the past
corrected, and the Government placed on the right track for the future.
It will hardly