soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics. President Lincoln defined democracy to be "the government of the people by the people for the people." This is a sufficiently compact statement of it as a political arrangement. Theodore Parker said that "Democracy meant not 'I'm as good as you are,' but 'You're as good as I am."" And this is the ethical conception of it, necessary as a complement of the other; a conception which, could it be made actual and practical, would easily solve all the riddles that the old sphinx of political and social economy who sits by the roadside has been proposing to mankind from the beginning, and which mankind have shown such a singular talent for answering wrongly. In this sense Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekker said he was the first true gentleman. The characters may be easily doubled, so strong is the likeness between them. All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion, and it is on the quality of his public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life. With the growth of democracy grows also the fear, if not the danger, that this atmosphere may be corrupted with poisonous exhalations from lower and more malarious levels, and the question of sanitation becomes more instant and pressing. mocracy in its best sense is merely the letting in of light and air. Lord Sherbrooke, with his usual epigrammatic terseness, bids you educate your future rulers. But would this alone be a sufficient safeguard? To educate the intelligence is to enlarge the horizon of its desires and wants. De And it is well that this should be so. But the enterprise must go deeper and prepare the way for satisfying those desires and wants in so far as they are legitimate. What is really ominous of danger to the existing order of things is not democracy (which, properly understood, is a conservative force), but the Socialism which may find a fulcrum in it. If we cannot equalize conditions and fortunes any more than we can equalize the brains of men and a very sagacious person has said that "where two men ride on a horse one must ride behind" we can yet, perhaps, do something to correct those methods and influences that lead to enormous inequalities, and to prevent their growing more enormous. I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. Things in possession have a very firm grip. One of the strongest cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir. The rule will always hold good that you must Be your own palace or the world's your jail. But for artificial evils, for evils that spring from want of thought, thought must find a remedy somewhere. There has been no period of time in which wealth has been more sensible of its duties than now. It builds hospitals, it establishes missions among the poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages of accumulated wealth, and of the leisure it renders possible, that people have time to think of the wants and sorrows of their fellows. But all these remedies are partial and palliative merely. It is as if we should apply plasters to a single pustule of the smallpox with a view of driving out the disease. The true way is to discover and to extirpate the germs. As society is now constituted these are in the air it breathes, in the water it drinks, in things that seem, and which it has always believed, to be the most innocent and healthful. The evil element it neglects corrupt these in their springs and pollute them in their courses. Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. The world has outlived much, and will outlive a great deal more, and men have contrived to be happy in it. It has shown the strength of its constitution in nothing more than in surviving the quack medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity. V. DEMOCRACY AND LIFE A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT1 ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) Is there for honest poverty That hings his head, an' a' that? Our toils obscure, an' a' that, What though on hamely fare we dine, Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine- For a' that, an' a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that: The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, 1 The largest element in the population of colonial America, next to that of the English, was that contributed by the Scotch and Scotch-Irish. Driven from home by economic pressure and political oppression, these people were scattered throughout all the colonies and took a notable part in the Revolution. The democratic sentiment to which they were ardently devoted was nowhere better expressed than in this the best-known poem of their beloved bard. It thus constitutes in a true and peculiar way an expression of the American spirit. From "The Edinburgh Book of Scottish Verse," published by Meiklejohn and Holden, London, 1910. 'An English gold piece worth about $5.00. 'Gold. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd "a lord," For a' that, an' a' that, His riband, star,1 an' a' that, A prince can mak' a belted knight, Their dignities an' a' that, The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Then let us pray that come it may, That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, For a' that, an' a' that, It's comin' yet, for a' that, That man to man, the world o'er, Shall brithers be for a' that. 1 Reference to the badges of the various orders of nobility. 2 Above. • Win the honor or a prize, a phrase from the language of chivalry. |