either with liberalism or with socialism. Democracy, as Brownson understood it, was incompatible with forward-looking programs of this kind; it left little room for "improvement." It presupposed a simple markei society, the "simple kind of liberty of which Carlyle speaks, to buy where we can cheapest, to sell where dearest." It presupposed the abolition of the "paper money system," although "men on [the stock exchange] will no doubt smile at our simplicity," Brownson admitted, "in demanding a purely metallic currency." It presupposed economic independence; any type of collectivism threatened it at its source.

Independence did not imply solitude. If Brownson resisted a fuller development of the market, it was not because he feared that it would compromise his self-sufficiency. He was no Thoreau, opposed to improvement on the grounds that an elaboration of his wants, beyond the level of subsistence, would entangle him in a web of sociability. On the contrary, he valued sociability far more highly than most individualists, and he rejected the culture of philanthropy and "improvement" precisely on the grounds that it would replace the fellowship of friends and neighbors with the vague and watery fellowship of humanity in general. "Your men from whom all traces of their native land are obliterated, who have that enlarged philanthropy which overlaps all geographical distinctions, and grasps with equal affection all lands, races, and individuals, are quite too refined and transcendental for daily use." Cosmopolitanism represented a higher form of solitude, as Brownson saw it. In developing this argument, he rested his case, as always, on assertions about the nature and destiny of man—that is, about the ends proper to his existence:

The nature of man is to live by means of an uninterrupted communion, with other men and with nature, under the three precise and definite forms of family, country and property. His destiny, that is, the design of his Creator in his constitution, is not, then, to place himself physically, sentimentally, and intellectually in communion with all men, and with all the beings of the universe. This were to annihilate him by the vast solitude of Sahara.

Brownson made these observations in the course of one of his many attacks on the "no-government" philosophy advocated by so many in

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