"Emerson, Ralph W. - The Young American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

railroads, we know not for what or for whom; but one thing is
certain, that we who build will receive the very smallest share of
benefit. Benefit will accrue; they are essential to the country, but
that will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. We do the
like in all matters: --

"Man's heart the Almighty to the Future set By secret and
inviolable springs."

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we
make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote
generations. We should be mortified to learn that the little benefit
we chanced in our own persons to receive was the utmost they would
yield.

The history of commerce, is the record of this beneficent
tendency. The patriarchal form of government readily becomes
despotic, as each person may see in his own family. Fathers wish to
be the fathers of the minds of their children, and behold with
impatience a new character and way of thinking presuming to show
itself in their own son or daughter. This feeling, which all their
love and pride in the powers of their children cannot subdue, becomes
petulance and tyranny when the head of the clan, the emperor of an
empire, deals with the same difference of opinion in his subjects.
Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive. An
empire is an immense egotism. "I am the State," said the French
Louis. When a French ambassador mentioned to Paul of Russia, that a
man of consequence in St. Petersburg was interesting himself in some
matter, the Czar interrupted him, -- "There is no man of consequence
in this empire, but he with whom I am actually speaking; and so long
only as I am speaking to him, is he of any consequence." And
Nicholas, the present emperor, is reported to have said to his
council, "The age is embarrassed with new opinions; rely on me,
gentlemen, I shall oppose an iron will to the progress of liberal
opinions."

It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family management
gets to be rather troublesome to all but the papa; the sceptre comes
to be a crowbar. And this unpleasant egotism, Feudalism opposes, and
finally destroys. The king is compelled to call in the aid of his
brothers and cousins, and remote relations, to help him keep his
overgrown house in order; and this club of noblemen always come at
last to have a will of their own; they combine to brave the
sovereign, and call in the aid of the people. Each chief attaches as
many followers as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts; and as
long as war lasts, the nobles, who must be soldiers, rule very well.
But when peace comes, the nobles prove very whimsical and
uncomfortable masters; their frolics turn out to be insulting and
degrading to the commoner. Feudalism grew to be a bandit and
brigand.