Physical Force In Politics

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Title:     Physical Force In Politics
Author: Edwin Lawrence Godkin [More Titles by Godkin]

The late discussion on the possibility or expediency of maintaining governments at the South which had no physical force at their disposal has not failed to attract the attention of the friends of woman suffrage. They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.," in a late number of the Woman's Journal, endeavors to show that what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the woman suffragists. His argument is in substance this: You (the opponents) have always maintained as the great objection to the admission of women to the franchise, that if women voted, cases might arise in which the physical force of the community would be in the hands of one party and the legal authority in those of the other, and we should then witness the great scandal of a majority government unable to execute the laws. We have just seen at the South, however, that the possession of physical force is not always sufficient to put the majority even of the male voters in possession of the Government. In South Carolina and Louisiana the Government has been seized and successfully held by a minority, in virtue of their greater intelligence and self-confidence. To use his own language:

"The present result in South Carolina is not a triumph of bodily strength over weakness, but, on the contrary, of brains over bodily strength. And however this reasoning affects the condition of South Carolina--which is not here my immediate question--it certainly affects, in a very important degree, the argument for woman suffrage. If the ultimate source of political power is muscle, as is often maintained, then woman suffrage is illogical; but if the ultimate source of political power is, as the Nation implies, 'the intelligence, sagacity, and the social and political experience of the population,' then the claims of women are not impaired. For we rest our case on the ground that women equal men on these points, except in regard to political experience, which is a thing only to be acquired by practice.

"So the showing of the Nation is, on the whole, favorable to women. It looks in the direction of Mr. Bagehot's theory, that brains now outweigh muscle in government. Just in proportion as man becomes civilized and comes to recognize laws as habitually binding, does the power of mere brute force weaken. In a savage state the ruler of a people must be physically as well as mentally the strongest; in a civilized state the commander-in-chief may be physically the weakest person in the army. The English military power is no less powerful for obeying the orders of a queen. The experience of South Carolina does not vindicate, but refutes, the theory that muscle is the ruling power. It shows that an educated minority is more than a match for an ignorant majority, even though this be physically stronger. Whether this forbodes good or evil to South Carolina is not now the question; but so far as woman suffrage is concerned, the moral is rather in its favor than against it."

What is singular in all this is, that the writer is evidently under the impression that the term "physical force" in politics means muscle, or, to put the matter plainly, that the fact that the South Carolina negroes, who unquestionably surpass the whites in lifting power, could not hold their own against them, shows that government has become a mere question of brains, and that as women have plenty of brains, though they can lift very little, they could perfectly well carry on, or help to carry on, a government which has only moral force on its side.

Now, as a matter of fact, there has been no recent change in the meaning attached to "physical force" in political nomenclature. It does not mean muscle or weight now, as we see in South Carolina; and it has never meant muscle or weight since the dawn of civilization. The races and nations which have made civilization and ruled the world have done so by virtue of their possessing the very superiority, in a greater or less degree, which the Carolina whites have shown in their late struggle with the blacks. The Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, the English, the French, and the Germans have all succeeded in government--that is, in seizing and keeping power--not through superiority of physical force which consists in muscle, but through the superiority which consists in the ability to organize and bring into the field, and reinforce large bodies of men, with the resolution to kill and be killed in order to have their own way in disputes. No matter how much intelligence a people may have, unless they are able and willing to apply their intelligence to the art of war, and have the personal courage necessary to carry out in action the plans of their leaders, they cannot succeed in politics. Brains are necessary for political success, without doubt, but it must be brains applied, among other things to the organization of physical force in fleets and armies. An "educated minority," as such, is no more a match for a "physically stronger ignorant majority" than a delicate minister for a pugilist in "condition," unless it can furnish well-equipped and well-led troops. The Greeks were better educated than the Romans, but this did not help them. The Romans of the Empire were vastly more intelligent and thoughtful than the Barbarians, but they could not save the Empire. The Italians of the Middle Ages were the superiors of the French and Germans in every branch of culture, and yet this did not prevent Italy being made the shuttlecock of northern politicians and free-booters. The French overran Germany in the beginning of the present century, and the Germans have overrun France within the last ten years, not in either case owing to superiority in lifting or boxing, or in literary "culture," but to superiority in the art of fighting-- that is, of bringing together large bodies of armed men who will not flinch, and will advance when ordered on the battle-field.

It is skill in this art which is meant by the term "physical force" in politics, and it is this physical force which lies behind all successful government. The superiority of the North in numbers, wealth, machinery, literature, and common schools would have profited it nothing, and the American Republic would have disappeared from the map if it had not been possible, thirty years ago, to apply a vast amount of intelligence to the purposes of destruction, and to find large numbers of men willing to fight under orders. In quiet times, under a government in which the numerical majority and the intelligence and property of the community are on the same side, and take substantially the same views of public polity, and the display of coercive force, except for ordinary police purposes, is not called for, we not unnaturally slide readily into the pleasant belief that government is purely a moral agency, and that people obey the law through admiration of intellectual power and the dread of being "cornered" in argument, or of being exposed as selfish or lawless.

Such occurrences as the late civil war and the recent deadlock at the South are very useful in uncovering the secret springs of society, and reminding people of the tremendous uncertainties and responsibilities by which national as well as individual life is surrounded, reminding the voter, in short, that he may not always be able to discharge his duty to the country by depositing his ballot in the box; that he may have to make the result sure by putting everything he values in the world at stake. The poor negroes in South Carolina have not been deposed simply because they are ignorant; the Russian peasants who fought at Borodino were grossly ignorant. How many of the English hinds who stood rooted in the soil at Waterloo could read and write? The Carolinian majority failed because it did not contain men willing to fight, or leaders capable of organization for military purposes, or, in other words, did not possess what has since the dawn of civilization been the first and greatest title to political power. The Carolinian minority did not drive their opponents out of the offices by simply offering the spectacle of superior intelligence of self-confidence, but by the creation of a moral certainty that, if driven to extremities, they would outdo the Republicans in the marshalling, marching, provisioning, and manoeuvring of riflemen.

If this be true, it will be readily seen that the lesson of the South Carolina troubles, far from containing encouragement for the friends of female suffrage, is full of doubt and difficulty. Those who believe that women voters would constitute a new and valuable force in politics must recognize the possibility that they would at some time or other constitute the bulk of a majority claiming the government, and they must also recognize the probability that the male portion of this majority would be composed of the milder and less energetic class of men, people with much brains and but little physical courage, ready to go to the stake for a conviction, but not ready to shoulder a musket or assault a redoubt. If under these circumstances the minority, composed exclusively of men, inferior if you will, to the majority in the purity of their motives, the breadth of their culture, and in capacity for drawing constitutions and laws and administering charities, should refuse to obey the majority, and should say that its government was a ridiculous "fancy" government, administered by crackbrained people, and likely to endanger property and the public credit, and that it must be abolished, what would the women and their "gentlemen friends" do? They would doubtless remonstrate with the recusants and show them the wickedness of their course, but then the recusants would be no more moved by this than Wade Hampton and his people by Mr. Chamberlain's eloquent and affecting inaugural address. They would tell the ladies that their intelligence was doubtless of a high order, and their aims noble, but that as they were apparently unable to supply policemen to arrest the persons who disobeyed their laws, their administration was a farce and its disappearance called for in the interest of public safety. Accordingly it would be removed to the great garret of history, to lie side by side with innumerable other disused plans for human improvement.

The cause of much of the misconception about the part played by physical force in modern society now current in reformatory circles is doubtless to be found in the disappearance of sporadic and lawless displays of it, such as, down to a very recent period, seriously disturbed even the most civilized communities. The change that has taken place, however, consists not in the total disuse of force as a social agency, but in the absorption of all force by the government, making it so plainly irresistible that the occasions are rare when anything approaching to organized resistance or defiance of it is attempted. When it lays its commands on a man he knows that obedience will, if necessary, be enforced by an agency of such tremendous power that he does not think of revolt. But it is not the high intelligence of those who carry it on that he bows to; it is to their ability to crush him like an egg-shell. Of course, it is not surprising that his submissiveness should at meetings of philanthropists be ascribed to the establishment of a consensus between his mind and the mind of the law-giver, or in other words, the subjection of society to purely moral influences; but it is perhaps well that complications like those of South Carolina should now and then occur to infuse sobriety into speculation and explain the machinery of civilization.

[The end]
Edwin Lawrence Godkin's essay: Physical Force In Politics

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