THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
follies or mistakes themselves and upon their own responsibility, they will be apt to profit by their own experience. If those mistakes were rectified by some superior authority, the people would be apt to run into the same mistakes again. If the people are left to correct the mistakes themselves, they will more surely progress in wisdom as well as in the sense of responsibility. Whatever stands upon the bottom of the popular intelligence, stands upon far firmer ground than that which rests merely upon superior authority.
“Here in America,” I wrote to my friend, “you can see daily how little a people needs to be governed. There are governments, but no masters; there are governors, but they are only commissioners, agents. What there is here of great institutions of learning, of churches, of great commercial institutions, lines of communication, etc., almost always owes its existence, not to official authority, but to the spontaneous co-operation of private citizens. Here you witness the productiveness of freedom. You see a magnificent church—a voluntary association of private persons has founded it; an orphan asylum built of marble—a wealthy citizen has erected it; a university—some rich men have left a large bequest for educational purposes, which serves as a capital stock, and the university then lives, so to speak, almost on subscriptions; and so on without end. We learn here how superfluous is the action of governments concerning a multitude of things in which in Europe it is deemed absolutely indispensable, and how the freedom to do something awakens the desire to do it.”
Although I am well aware of its crudities of expression, its inaccuracies of statement, and of the incompleteness of its presentation of American conditions, I quote this letter because it portrays fairly well the working of the mind of a
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