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morality; that if the seeds of a constitution are not, so to speak, disseminated in their customs, in their sentiments, in their memories, in their traditions, the work of organizing it is unrealizable; that the legislator is not called upon to create an organic law, or to adapt that of other countries to his, but to know the instincts, needs, interests, all that forms the intellectual, moral, and physical life of the people he represents, and proclaim them and formulate them in a law; and that legislators must only be those who combine the highest capacity and noblest virtue with the most complete knowledge of the spirit and demands of the nation.
From here it also arises that if the legislator is conscious of his duty, before examining which form of government would be preferable, he must find out whether the people are in a fit condition to be ruled by a constitution, and if this is the case offer them not the best and most perfect constitution in theory, but that which is best adapted to their condition.
“I have given the Athenians not the best laws,” said Solon,15 “but those which they are in a fit state to receive.”
From this it can be inferred that when public reason is not ripe, the constituent legislator has no mission whatsoever, and as he cannot be conscious of his dignity, or of the importance of the role he represents, he is part of a farce that he himself does not understand, and passes or copies laws with the same ease as he would the briefs of his legal practice or the accounts of his business.
From this, in short, we can deduce the need to prepare the legislator before entrusting to him the work of a constitution.
The legislator will not be prepared if the people are not. How can the legislator do the right thing if the people are ignorant of what is good? If they do not appreciate the advantages of liberty? If they prefer inertia over activity? Their habits over innovations? What they know and can touch over what they do not know and view from afar?
For this reason, to prepare the people and the legislator it is vital to draw up first the subject of the law, that is, to spread the ideas that should be embodied in the legislators and realized in the laws, making them circulate, giving them popularity, incorporating them into the public spirit.
It is necessary, in a word, to enlighten the reason of the people and
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that of the legislator on political questions before proceeding to constitute the nation.
Only on this condition will we achieve what we all earnestly desire, that a future legislator or a national representation may appear capable of understanding and remediating the ills that beset society, of satisfying its desires and laying the foundation of an unshakeable and permanent social order.
As long as the public spirit is not sufficiently mature, the constitutions will do no more than fuel anarchy and foster in all spirits the scorn of all law, of all justice, and of the most sacred principles.
As democracy is the government of the people by itself, it requires the constant action of all of man’s faculties and cannot be made firm without the assistance of enlightenment and morality.
Democracy, arising from the principle of class equality, seeks to take root in the ideas, customs, and sentiments of the people and elaborates its laws and institutions so that they might extend and strengthen its predominance.
All the efforts of our governments and legislators must be directed toward fulfilling the aims of democracy.
The Association of the Young Argentine Generation believes that the seed of democracy exists in our society; its mission is to preach, to spread its spirit, and to devote the action of its faculties so that one day democracy will be established in the Republic.
It knows that many obstacles will be placed in its path by certain aristocratic remnants, certain retrograde traditions and laws, the lack of enlightenment and of morality.
The Association knows that the work of organizing democracy is not done in a day; that constitutions are not improvised; that liberty can be based only on the foundations of enlightenment and customs; that a society is not enlightened and moralized at a single stroke; that the reason of a people aspiring to be free can ripen only with time; but, having faith in the future and believing that the high aims of the revolution were not only to bring down the former social order, but also to rebuild a new order, will work with the full extent of its faculties so that the generations to come, reaping the fruit of its labor, may have in their hands better elements than us to organize and constitute Argentine society on the unshakeable foundation of equality and democratic liberty.
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| 3 | DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO Civilization and Barbarism: The Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga: 1 Introduction to the 1845 Edition * |
Je demande à l’historien l’amour de l’humanité ou de la liberté; sa justice impartiale ne doit pas être impassive. Il faut, au contraire, qu’il souhaite, qu’il espère, qu’il souffre, ou soit heureux de ce qu’il raconte.—Villemain, Cours de littérature2
I will evoke you, dread shadow of Facundo, so that, shaking off the bloodstained dust that covers your ashes, you may rise up to explain the secret life and internal convulsions tearing at the innards of a noble people! You hold the secret: reveal it to us! Ten years after your tragic death, the man of the cities and the gaucho of the Argentine plains, when taking different trails through the desert, would say: “No, he is not dead! He is still alive! He will return!”
True! Facundo is not dead; he is alive in the popular traditions, in the politics and revolutions of Argentina; in Rosas, his heir, his complement: his soul has passed into this other, more finished, more perfect mold; and what was in him merely instinct, beginning, tendency, became in Rosas system, effect, and end. Rustic, colonial, barbaric nature changed in this metamorphosis into art, system, and regular policy capable of presenting itself to the face of the world as the way of being
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of a people embodied in one man who has aspired to take on the airs of a genius dominating events, men, and things.
Facundo, provincial, barbaric, courageous, bold, was replaced by Rosas,3 the son of cultured Buenos Aires, without being so himself; by Rosas, false, cold-hearted, calculating mind, who does evil without passion and slowly organizes despotism with all the intelligence of a Machiavelli. A tyrant without rival today on Earth, why do his enemies want to deny him the title of Great, which his courtiers lavish on him? Yes, great and very great he is, to the glory and shame of his homeland, for if he has found thousands of degraded beings to yoke themselves to his wagon and haul it over corpses, there are also thousands of generous souls who, in fifteen years of bloody combat, have not given up hope of vanquishing the monster presented to us by the enigma of the political organization of the Republic. A day will finally come when they will solve it; and the Argentine Sphinx, half cowardly woman, half bloodthirsty tiger, shall die at their feet, giving the Thebes of the Plate the elevated rank that is its due among the nations of the New World.
It is necessary, however, to untie this knot that the sword has been unable
