Reform and Politics, Part 2, from Volume VII, - The Works of Whittier: the Conflict with Slavery, Politics - and Reform, the Inner Life and Criticism
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892
English
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Below is a summary of Reform and Politics, Part 2, from Volume VII, - The Works of Whittier: the Conflict with Slavery, Politics - and Reform, the Inner Life and Criticism
This eBook was produced by David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
REFORM AND POLITICS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ITALIAN UNITY
INDIAN CIVILIZATION
READING FOR THE BLIND
THE INDIAN QUESTION
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
OUR DUMB RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
REFORM AND POLITICS
UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.
THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
an old poet has quaintly described:--
"The citizens like pounded pikes;
The lesser feed the great;
The rich for food seek stomachs,
And the poor for stomachs meat."
This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They
are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough
alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good
old-fashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making
the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains
it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical
wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be
impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, _Utopian._
The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
could
"Forerun his age and race, and let
His feet millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."
Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
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