The Life & Times of Mark Twain - 4 Biographical Works in One Edition. Марк Твен

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      CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. — IX.

      Table of Contents.

      [Dictated December 13, 1906.] As regards the coming American monarchy. It was before the Secretary of State had been heard from that the chairman of the banquet said:

      “In this time of unrest it is of great satisfaction that such a man as you, Mr. Root, is chief adviser of the President.”

      Mr. Root then got up and in the most quiet and orderly manner touched off the successor to the San Francisco earthquake. As a result, the several State governments were well shaken up and considerably weakened. Mr. Root was prophesying. He was prophesying, and it seems to me that no shrewder and surer forecasting has been done in this country for a good many years.

      He did not say, in so many words, that we are proceeding, in a steady march, toward eventual and unavoidable replacement of the republic by monarchy; but I suppose he was aware that that is the case. He notes the several steps, the customary steps, which in all the ages have led to the consolidation of loose and scattered governmental forces into formidable centralizations of authority; but he stops there, and doesn’t add up the sum. He is not unaware that heretofore the sum has been ultimate monarchy, and that the same figures can fairly be depended upon to furnish the same sum whenever and wherever they can be produced, so long as human nature shall remain as it is; but it was not needful that he do the adding, since any one can do it; neither would it have been gracious in him to do it.

      In observing the changed conditions which in the course of time have made certain and sure the eventual seizure by the Washington government of a number of State duties and prerogatives which have been betrayed and neglected by the several States, he does not attribute those changes and the vast results which are to flow from them to any thought-out policy of any party or of any body of dreamers or schemers, but properly and rightly attributes them to that stupendous power — Circumstance — which moves by laws of its own, regardless of parties and policies, and whose decrees are final, and must be obeyed by all — and will be. The railway is a Circumstance, the steamship is a Circumstance, the telegraph is a Circumstance. They were mere happenings; and to the whole world, the wise and the foolish alike, they were entirely trivial, wholly inconsequential; indeed silly, comical, grotesque. No man, and no party, and no thought-out policy said, “Behold, we will build railways and steamships and telegraphs, and presently you will see the condition and way of life of every man and woman and child in the nation totally changed; unimaginable changes of law and custom will follow, in spite of anything that anybody can do to prevent it.”

      The changed conditions have come, and Circumstance knows what is following, and will follow. So does Mr. Root. His language is not unclear, it is crystal:

      “Our whole life has swung away from the old State centres, and is crystallizing about national centres.”

      “ … The old barriers which kept the States as separate communities are completely lost from sight.”

      “ … That [State] power of regulation and control is gradually passing into the hands of the national government.”

      “Sometimes by an assertion of the inter-State commerce power, sometimes by an assertion of the taxing power, the national government is taking up the performance of duties which under the changed conditions the separate States are no longer capable of adequately performing.”

      “We are urging forward in a development of business and social life which tends more and more to the obliteration of State lines and the decrease of State power as compared with national power.”

      “It is useless for the advocates of State rights to inveigh against … the extension of national authority in the fields of necessary control where the States themselves fail in the performance of their duty.”

      He is not announcing a policy; he is not forecasting what a party of planners will bring about; he is merely telling what the people will require and compel. And he could have added — which would be perfectly true — that the people will not be moved to it by speculation and cogitation and planning, but by Circumstance — that power which arbitrarily compels all their actions, and over which they have not the slightest control.

      “The end is not yet.”

      It is a true word. We are on the march, but at present we are only just getting started.

      If the States continue to fail to do their duty as required by the people —

      “ … constructions of the Constitution will be found to vest the power where it will be exercised — in the national government.”

      I do not know whether that has a sinister meaning or not, and so I will not enlarge upon it lest I should chance to be in the wrong. It sounds like ship-money come again, but it may not be so intended.