OUR GOVERNMENT AND THE BLACKS.

All thoughtful minds are profoundly conscious that the problems of war are not the last and most important to be solved in our national affairs. It is clear enough that this great convulsion must end; and end, too, in the total extinction of that stupendous system of iniquity in the interests of which it was projected. President Lincoln's Proclamation of emancipation throughout rebeldom, and the recent order to enlist the slaves throughout the Border States in military service to the Government, emancipating all thus enlisted, whether slaves of loyal or disloyal masters, with the certainty that there is to be no cessation to the grand achievements of our arms short of the completest success, all conspire to assure us that the dreadful disorder hitherto consuming our national vitals is to pass finally away in the convulsive disease of its last throes, so distressing to us all. It being thus certain that this consecrated crime is to be dismantled, dishonored, and abandoned forever, the question is forced upon us: 'What is to be done with the negroes?' Some four millions of human beings, doomed to remorseless servitude, denied the static force of social law, forbidden by positive law the rights of education, through which alone are attained the culture and refinement of real manhood—these are the 'freedmen' just emerging from the most insignificant nonage to the sublime personality of citizenship in a Government of the people. Such being practically their attitude, what are the real demands and needs in the case?

Reputed statesmen, journalists, public speakers, and politicians are all ready enough to determine the matter. 'Let them alone,' say they. 'They are needed where they are; and the respective wants of capital and labor will regulate the intercourse between these simple and uncultured people and the powerful and shrewd men who henceforth are to buy their service.' Such, in our humble opinion, is not the wisdom of sound, healthy statesmanship. Let us see.

We cannot get a complete handling of this matter without first determining the purpose and character of government as a principle; and we cannot determine this without a clear understanding of the laws of the human mind in its historic evolution. We must understand, then, that government is legitimately only an institution in the service of universal man. It is subjective, ministerial, instrumental always ways; aiming only at the interests of the governed; else it contains an element hostile to the Divine order that peacefully directs all movement, and must therefore be disturbed with a commotion that will either restore or destroy it.

We may not hereupon assume that government must necessarily assume only one form; for, being thus subservient to human use, to manly culture, to complete social state, it must infallibly assume forms precisely proportioned to the human conditions to which applied; hence, we must understand the laws of the human mind, which display its varied conditions in the course of its evolution from infancy to manhood, before we can have a clear, scientific conception of the principles, operations, and organic forms of human government. Let us, then, inquire briefly as to these laws.

Hereupon we find the mental conditions of the Grand Man—the human race at large—precisely analogous to those of the small man—the individual person. And by exhibiting the mental conditions with principles of government properly related, which rule in one sphere, we infallibly present the corresponding conditions and forms in the other sphere.

The human mind, then, is a three-fold form, each fold having its own distinct character, in consequence of which it is broadly and very definitely individualized. Childhood, youthhood, and manhood, constitute this triple form. The slightest consideration will readily confirm one as to the propriety of this analysis; for, one cannot fail to see that the distinct characteristics of each are broad and marked, and therefore necessarily discriminate to any completeness of thought upon this subject. Childhood is a form of total inexperience and unlimited dependence. Youthhood is a form of growth from the helplessness of the child to the strength and completeness of the man; involving the trials of experimental endeavor, attended with the numerous buffs and rebuffs so surely the witness of vital efforts toward fulness. Manhood is the form of fulness, completeness, maturity. It is the form of luscious juices ultimated in the perfectly rounded and glowing fruitage; juices that pressed the tender bud into the thousand charms of floral beauty, and thence moulded and urged the growing form to its crowning excellence.

Childhood, therefore, is a form in which activities are commanded from without; as the parent commands the child, knowing that the child's best interests—the ultimate realization of true, manly freedom—are only to be realized through such arbitrary tutelage. Youthhood is a form of rational freedom, wherein the subject's moral freedom is stimulated under various forms of appeal in behalf of right doing. Here the careful parent keeps the reins firmly in hand, but still slackens them to allow the plunging steed to determine his own career; overjoyed if he choose rightly and make his course with vigor and safety; sad and anxious if forced to draw rein and urge anew the proper direction. It is evident that the subject's activities here are partly self-determined or free, and partly coerced or outwardly imposed.

Manhood is a form that repudiates all methods of external appliances, scales the bounds of parental dictation, and finds only life's fulness in a freedom all aglow with the soul's adoration. It knows no law but that of attraction; feels no impulse but that of love. Its activities are perfectly free or spontaneous. The human mind thus falling under this triple order of development, inevitably projects governmental forms strictly proportioned or related thereto. And this is true regarding any of its organized forms, from the individual to the human race at large: hence the infantile condition of a people or a nation demands a perfectly absolute, arbitrary, or commanding form of government; while the youthful condition demands a mixed form; wherein the ruled are partly free or self-determined, and partly subject or directed by the reigning authority; and the manly condition demands a system of pure self-government, wherein the law is written on the heart.

It must be borne in mind that government is solely instrumental or ministerial to human use; being designed to mould and fashion unfolding human powers to higher and still higher social conditions, tending all to that perfect ultimate wherein life and law are both spontaneous and exactly balanced, and nothing detrimental to the dearest interests of manhood can by possibility exist.

Government, then, of whatever kind, must always be administered with strict regard for the interests of the governed; and it is the endeavor to subvert and overcome this legitimate principle of government, through the mistaken selfishness of ruling powers, which attempt to administer in behalf of their own lusts and in violation of universal ends, which has kept and is keeping up now the convulsions that shake and try civil institutions to their utmost.

The theory or declaratory form of our Government stands out, boldly and distinctly, as that of the highest order. In theory it is the form proportionate to full manhood; planting and fostering institutions tending to promote the free play of all that is great and glorious in human character. It does not thus far practically realize its theory, because, without regard to this incongruous system of inhumanity, which, by its very nature, can find no harmony nor peace in connection, nations themselves wear the human form, and must, therefore, realize the various states of infancy, youthfulness, and manhood—of germ, growth, and fruitage. This is true of whatever national form. Nationalities founded upon the principles of absolutism, embody and express the same laws and conditions. Their principle of supreme external authority is first a condition of germination, then of growth or labored effort toward maturity, and lastly of fruitage, in which the whole form is matured in perfectly organic completeness, manifesting despotism in government, in orderly or scientific proportions.

Our nation, then, has not realized its highest conditions, because it is as yet only germinal, or the national child-man; or, at best, is but the vigorous blade, or national youth-man; while the corn, fully ripe in the ear—the national man-man—is reserved unto the glory of the approaching future, whose rays already dawn upon us and illustrate the clouds, that have hitherto hung over us and darkened our way, with the power and great glory of the coming of the Son of Man.

Let us now try to draw nearer to the mark at which we principally aimed in projecting this article. We said that the 'let-them-alone' system, concerning the nation's 'freedmen,' is not the system of sound statesmanship. Why not? Because they are a people in a state of infantile weakness and inexperience; whom, from the irrepressible laws and conditions of the human mind, we must govern and control, either wisely and beneficently or otherwise. To unloose the chains that have bound them, and set them adrift to contend and compete under our methods of individualism or isolated interests, is to doom them to conditions hardly to be preferred to those from which they are about to escape. This is certainly true with respect to a large majority. Witness the state of our weakest white laborers, particularly in all our large cities, and some few years back. See them by thousands and tens of thousands imploring for employment, and only too happy if they may find it at the most repulsive and unwholesome labor, sufficient to stay their famished frames and adjourn for a time the pangs of hunger and frosts. Driven in despairing hordes to beggary, prostitution, and crimes of every kind, how fearfully threatening are the neglected duties and obligations that confront us in their behalf! What, then, shall we say to those who propose to swell the frightful tide by turning loose millions more, weaker and more incompetent, it may be, besides being subject to the evils of the reigning prejudices against color? No, no; it must not be done. The Government must become the visible providence of these weak children. It must organize and direct their efforts and interests. It must, at least, organize them into industrial legions, and carefully direct all their educational interests. This work, too, must assume paternal form. Government is rightfully the foster parent of all its tender, weak, or by any means incompetent children; and unless it acknowledge and fulfil its functions as such, it is not Divinely administered, and stands accountable before Supreme Wisdom for all remissness. To meet all the demands, an especial commission must be established, and organized with a completeness that will meet all the educational and industrial needs of these dependent children. This commission must have a wise head and tender heart. It must be fully alive to the great issues involved, and must be healthy and vigorous in its extremities, where will come the immediate points of contact with, the great power it is to operate—the organized freedmen. The expense of this commission must not be a tax upon the Government, nor must Government derive any profit therefrom. Such an organized directory, with extremities all complete, may be amply paid from the freedmen's labors; at the same time, those labors being doubly remunerative to themselves, in consequence of the wise adjustment of the organized machinery of such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be organized and directed upon such humane and economical principles and according to the strictest method and order—an order amounting to definite science—will be practically demonstrated when the Government, in the full consciousness of its mission, calls to its aid competent men for this commission, and moves vigorously in the work. The principles of government which we have briefly suggested as the basis of movement in this matter, based upon the laws and consequently applying to the needs of the human mind, enable us infallibly to estimate the whole relations of Government and people. Our Government being in its theory the highest form—the form proportioned to manhood, or the human mind so matured as to have the intelligence to perceive and the virtue to execute the right—proceeds, of course, upon the declaration that 'all men are created free and equal;' but in the only practical sense of free or self-government, which, in its very nature, can only rest upon the virtue and intelligence of its subjects, men cannot be regarded as 'created' until they are made whole or complete in the crowning intelligence and virtue of the loftiest human attributes. But as government, of whatever kind, follows the laws of the human mind, is first a germ, then a growth, and then a fruitage—shoot, blade, and ear—our Government can only realize this greatness and perfection (unlimited intelligence and virtue) in its matured or organic state; when the declared principles of its form shall have become livingly combined or organized in institutions of unlimited excellence and power—institutions that will perpetually embody and express the exalted human force that inspired them. That our Government has thus far failed to exhibit such completeness, only argues that it has heretofore been in a formative condition—a condition of laborious trial, tuition, and growth, fitting it to realize ultimately its fullness, wherein it will stand related to previous conditions as the grand, symmetric beauty of the ear of grain stands related to its various formative states.

If now our Government is, as we fondly hope, approaching its third degree, its matured condition, with a race of dependent children emerging from the lowest condition, that of chattel slavery, it is plain enough what the relation of these people and the Government should be. They are simply minors, subjects of the Government, but not a part of the Government. The right of suffrage is not to be extended to them, because, from the nature and spirit of the Government, they are necessarily excluded from the highest prerogatives of citizenship. Their education and whole training are to proceed with a view to their becoming ultimately a function in the government.

If the principles thus stated amount to a science of government—and we unhesitatingly aver that they do—then it is clear enough that self-government—the highest form—does by no means necessitate, under all conditions, universal suffrage. In truth, its orderly development strictly forbids it. A government, founded and only healthily operated on virtue and intelligence, must apply itself studiously to develop these conditions in its subjects; thus, and only thus, may these subjects become a part of the governmental power in its full, harmonious development. Self-government must recognize the principle of universal suffrage, because it proceeds upon, and, in its ripest form, must come to that; but, as it is an operation or analytic before it is an ordered form or synthetic in its character, it will, while forming or growing, both restrict the rights of suffrage, and permit its subjects to a part in government when they are not fully qualified therefor. Our freedmen, then, are neither to be subjected contrary to the demands of their own highest good, nor are they to become an element in government in detriment to the public good. Hence they must not be controlled in any form of servitude to interested and selfish superiors, nor must they, by partaking of the elective franchise, become, at present, active participants in the government.

Our current national history must be regarded as singularly marked by beneficent Providential design. At the same time that a people hitherto despised and oppressed are emancipated from a dreadful thraldom, the conditions attending such emancipation are forcing upon the nation a system of industrial organization which we trust will not only prove effective in all that pertains to their future welfare, but will, at the same time, become the example of an organization that shall emancipate and enthrone labor everywhere and in all conditions. Seeing thus the light of day streaming in with unmarred radiance, dispelling every trace of darkness and gloom, we cannot but thank God for His wise dispensations, and with renewed hope and energy press onward toward the glowing east to greet the rising sun.