The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce | Page 3

are known, except by infrequent
report, to the archæologist only, and but dimly and uncertainly to him.
The brief and imperfect record of yesterdays which we call History is
like that traveling vine of India which, taking new root as it advances,
decays at one end while it grows at the other, and so is constantly

perishing and finally lost in all the spaces which it has over-passed.
From the few and precious writings that have descended to us from the
early period of the American republic we get a clear if fragmentary
view of the disorders and lawlessness affecting that strange and
unhappy nation. Leaving the historically famous "labor troubles" for
more extended consideration, we may summarize here a few of the
results of hardly more than a century and a quarter of
"self-government" as it existed on this continent just previously to the
awful end. At the beginning of the "twentieth century" a careful study
by trustworthy contemporary statisticians of the public records and
those apparently private ones known as "newspapers" showed that in a
population of about 80,000,000 the annual number of homicides was
not less than 10,000; and this continued year after year to increase, not
only absolutely, but proportionately, until, in the words of Dumbleshaw,
who is thought to have written his famous "Memoirs of a Survivor" in
the year 1908 of their era, "it would seem that the practice of suicide is
a needless custom, for if a man but have patience his neighbor is sure to
put him out of his misery." Of the 10,000 assassins less than three per
cent. were punished, further than by incidental imprisonment if unable
to give bail while awaiting trial. If the chief end of government is the
citizen's security of life and his protection from aggression, what kind
of government do these appalling figures disclose? Yet so infatuated
with their imaginary "liberty" were these singular people that the
contemplation of all this crime abated nothing of the volume and
persistence of their patriotic ululations, and affected not their faith in
the perfection of their system. They were like a man standing on a rock
already submerged by the rising tide, and calling to his neighbors on
adjacent cliffs to observe his superior security.
When three men engage in an undertaking in which they have an equal
interest, and in the direction of which they have equal power, it
necessarily results that any action approved by two of them, with or
without the assent of the third, will be taken. This is called--or was
called when it was an accepted principle in political and other
affairs--"the rule of the majority." Evidently, under the malign
conditions supposed, it is the only practicable plan of getting anything
done. A and B rule and overrule C, not because they ought, but because
they can; not because they are wiser, but because they are stronger. In

order to avoid a conflict in which he is sure to be worsted, C submits as
soon as the vote is taken. C is as likely to be right as A and B; nay, that
eminent ancient philosopher, Professor Richard A. Proctor (or
Proroctor, as the learned now spell the name), has clearly shown by the
law of probabilities that any one of the three, all being of the same
intelligence, is far likelier to be right than the other two.
It is thus that the "rule of the majority" as a political system is
established. It is in essence nothing but the discredited and
discreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life of
a republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen.
The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament of
counting noses and assenting without question to the result invests the
ordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as the
command of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. The
innumerable instances--such as the famous ones of Galileo and
Keeley--in which one man has been right and all the rest of the race
wrong, are overlooked, or their significance missed, and "public
opinion" is followed as a divine and infallible guide through every bog
into which it blindly stumbles and over every precipice in its fortuitous
path. Clearly, sooner or later will be encountered a bog that will
smother or a precipice that will crush. Thoroughly to apprehend the
absurdity of the ancient faith in the wisdom of majorities let the loyal
reader try to fancy our gracious Sovereign by any possibility wrong, or
his unanimous Ministry by any possibility right!
During the latter half of the "nineteenth century" there arose in the
Connected States a political element opposed to all government, which
frankly declared its object to be