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Brownson's Search for the Kingdom of God: The Social Thought of an American Radical
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
In 1815 the rulers and political leaders of Europe—men who had known the terror of witnessing the violent destruction of their social and political institutions—finished their work at the Congress of Vienna, work designed to prevent the resurgence of revolutionary threats. State and Church—and on the continent this meant the Catholic Church—cooperated in this conservative and reactionary task. The task was doomed, for the vision of a free, equal and fraternal society throbbed with all the more compelling radiance in the world of privilege and inequality which the Congress of Vienna restored. Later industrial changes propelled the revolutionary tide, and waves of liberalism and socialism beat against the old order, menacing not only the governments of Europe but the Church. To those captivated by the vision of a better or perfect society on earth, conservative Catholic admiration for the past and reverence for the order and treasures of the present seemed peculiarly obscurantist, obstinate blindness to the cause of progress.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1954
References
* This is the first of a series of papers read at a Symposium, sponsored by The Archives of the University of Notre Dame on October 7, 1953, honoring the One Hundred and Fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Orestes Augustus Brownson. Additional studies will appear in subsequent issues of this Review.
1 “Not in seeking to save my soul, to please God, or to have the true religion [was] I led to the Catholic Church, but to obtain the means of gaining the earthly happiness of mankind.” “The Convert” in The Works of Orestes A Brownson, edited by Brownson, Henry F. (Detroit, 1882–1887), V, p. 102Google Scholar. This collection will hereafter be referred to as Works.
2 This subject has received little critical scrutiny. Theodore Maynard's important study, Orestes Brownson, Yankee, Radical, Catholic (New York, 1943)Google Scholar, is not based on any considerable study of the early Brownson. Schlesinger, A. M. in Orestes A. Brownson; A Pilgrim's Progress (Boston, 1939)Google Scholar revealed a warm sympathy with Brownson's youthful radicalism. A careful reading of Brownson's two articles on “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review, III (1840)Google Scholar, suggests that Schlesinger attached exaggerated importance to the election of 1840 in Brownson's approach to religious orthodoxy. SisterCorrigan, M. Felicia, Some Social Principles of Orestes A. Brownson (Washington, 1939)Google Scholar deals with Brownson's Catholic period. The most useful recent literature includes the original and searching essay by Caponigri, A. Robert “Brownson and Emerson: Nature and History,” New England Quarterly, XVIII (1945), 368–390CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Perry's excellent anthology, The Transcendentalists (Cambridge [Mass.], 1950)Google Scholar. Gabriel, R. H., The Course of American Democratic Thought (New York, 1940)Google Scholar deals inadequately with Brownson, and Kirk, Russell in The Conservative Mind (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar is provocative but Kirk's just plea for further study of Brownson is weakened by his repetition of Gabriel's mistaken reference to Brownson's magazine as the Democratic Review.
3 Brownson delivered some of the most eloquent and elevated Fourth of July orations, a ceremony of democratic self-dedication which continues to exist but in a near-moribund state. On Independence Day, 1834, Brownson declared: “The cause in question, fifty-eight years ago this day, was that of the human race, the principle then declared was the equality of mankind.” Address (Dedham, 1834), p. 5.Google Scholar
4 Brownson himself referred to this union of Christianity and democracy in his second article on “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review, IV (1840)Google Scholar. There is an eloquent reference to it in Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam's History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party (New York, 1842), p. 189Google Scholar: “But Loco-Focoism did not die. It lives forever in Christian Democracy, that Democracy, which, while it concedes to the majority the powers of government, does not allow to it the right to do wrong, but restrains it by constitutions drawn from the paramount laws of God, and the principles of Christianity.”
5 The Gospel Advocate, 06 27, 1829Google Scholar, quoted in Works, V, p. 43.Google Scholar
6 Free Enquirer, 11 28, 1829.Google Scholar
7 Free Enquirer, 02 6, 1830.Google Scholar
8 Leopold, Richard William, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography (Cambridge [Mass.], 1940)Google Scholar; and Waterman, W. R., Frances Wright (New York, 1924).Google Scholar
9 The New Harmony Gazette, 10 1, 1825, and 07 12, 1826.Google Scholar
10 Many newspaper comments on Fanny's lecturing echoed Dr. Johnson's remarks about women-preachers and dogs standing on their hind legs. See, for example, the New York Post, 01 10, 1829Google Scholar. Such sentiments as the following explain why Fanny was considered by many as a socialist Jezebel: “The People at War! What a season of deep interest is the present. What distinguishes the present from every other struggle in which the human race has been engaged, is, that the present is evidently, openly and acknowledgedly, a war of class, and that this war is universal … it is labor rising against idleness, industry, against money, justice, against law and privilege.” Free Enquirer, 11 27, 1830.Google Scholar
11 For the vast and still inadequate literature on the Saint-Simonians see Evans, David Owen, Social Romanticism in France, 1830–1848 (Oxford, 1951).Google Scholar
12 Reprinted in Blau, Joseph (editor), American Philosophic Addresses, 1700–1900 (New York, 1946), p. 570.Google Scholar
13 Brownson, , “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus” in Works, IV, p. 141.Google Scholar
14 In a letter, Nov. 15, 1836, Brownson expressed his debt to Cousin: “Your works, sir, found me sunk in a vague sentimentalism, no longer a sceptic, but unable to find any scientific basis for my belief in Nature, in God and Immortality and I thank you again and again for the service you have done me.” Notre Dame Archives photostat of original in Sorbonne.
15 Memoir of William Ellery Channing, II (London, 1850), pp. 177–178, 193–194, 203, 205.Google Scholar
17 The Christian Examiner, XXII (1837).Google Scholar
16 The Christian Examiner, XX (1836).Google Scholar
18 The Christian Examiner, No. LXIV (09 1834).Google Scholar
19 The Christian Examiner, (1835).Google Scholar
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21 Sermon, July 10, 1837 in Brownson, H. F., The Early Life of Orestes A. Brownson (Detroit, 1898), p. 156.Google Scholar
22 The Unitarian, I (1834).Google Scholar
23 Memoir of William Ellery Channing, II (London, 1850), pp. 167–169Google Scholar. Emerson's comment on Eclecticism is very characteristic: “It looks as if it had all truth, in taking all the systems and had nothing to do but to sift and wash and strain, and the gold and diamonds would remain in the last colander. But truth is such a fly-away, such a sly-boots, so untransportable, unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as hard to catch as light.” Quoted by Riley, Woodbridge, American Thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism (New York, 1941), p. 391Google Scholar. Brownson himself directed three incisive articles against “transcendentalism” in Works, VI, pp. 1–112.Google Scholar
24 “Brownson gets $1,600 a year so long as his master, Van Buren, reigns.” Imaginary dialogue in Norton, A. B., The Great Revolution of 1840 (New York, 1840), p. 350.Google Scholar
25 Boston Quarterly Review, III (1840), pp. 409–420.Google Scholar
26 Letter printed in Mackenzie, William L., The Life and Times of Martin Van Buren (Boston, 1846), pp. 143–144 note.Google Scholar
27 The remarks about consolidation are similar to the views of Calhoun and R. B. Rhett. The preceding paragraphs are paraphrases of Brownson's Fourth of July Oration before the Democracy of Worcester and vicinity (Boston, 1840).
28 “The Laboring Classes” in Boston Quarterly Review, III (1840).Google Scholar
29 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, X (Philadelphia, 1876), pp. 344–345.Google Scholar
30 Boston Quarterly Review, III (1840), p. 370.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., pp. 430–432.