humble work to add my
contribution, small though it may be, to political science, and to
discharge, as far as I am able, my debt of loyalty and patriotism. I
would the book were more of a book, more worthy of my countrymen, and a
more weighty proof of the love I beat them, and with which I have
written it. All I can say is, that it is an honest book, a sincere
book, and contains my best thoughts on the subjects treated. If well
received, I shall be grateful; if neglected, I shall endeavor to
practise resignation, as I have so often done.

O. A. BROWNSON.

ELIZABETH, N. J., September 16, 1865.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The ancients summed up the whole of human wisdom in the maxim, Know
Thyself, and certainly there is for an individual no more important as
there is no more difficult knowledge, than knowledge of himself, whence
he comes, whither he goes, what he is, what he is for, what he can do,
what he ought to do, and what are his means of doing it.

Nations are only individuals on a larger scale. They have a life, an
individuality, a reason, a conscience, and instincts of their own, and
have the same general laws of development and growth, and, perhaps, of
decay, as the individual man. Equally important, and no less difficult
than for the individual, is it for a nation to know itself, understand
its own existence, its own powers and faculties, rights and duties,
constitution, instincts, tendencies, and destiny. A nation has a
spiritual as well as a material, a moral as well as a physical
existence, and is subjected to internal as well as external conditions
of health and virtue, greatness and grandeur, which it must in some
measure understand and observe, or become weak and infirm, stunted in
its growth, and end in premature decay and death.

Among nations, no one has more need of full knowledge of itself than
the United States, and no one has hitherto had less. It has hardly had
a distinct consciousness of its own national existence, and has lived
the irreflective life of the child, with no severe trial, till the
recent rebellion, to throw it back on itself and compel it to reflect
on its own constitution, its own separate existence, individuality,
tendencies, and end. The defection of the slaveholding States, and the
fearful struggle that has followed for national unity and integrity,
have brought it at once to a distinct recognition of itself, and forced
it to pass from thoughtless, care