of beautiful mountain country against tourists or artists is to the ordinary American almost incredible. Such things are to him marks of a land still groaning under feudal tyranny.

The characteristics of the American people which I have passed in review, though not all due to democratic government, have been strengthened by it, and contribute to its solidity and to the smoothness of its working. As one sometimes sees an individual man who fails in life because the different parts of his nature seem unfitted to each other, so that his action, swayed by contending influences, results in nothing definite or effective, so one sees nations whose political institutions are either in advance of or lag behind their social conditions, so that the unity of the body politic suffers, and the harmony of its movements is disturbed. America is not such a nation. There have, no doubt, been two diverse influences at work on the minds of men. One is the conservative English spirit, brought from home, expressed, and (if one may say so) intrenched in those fastnesses of the Federal Constitution, and (to a less degree) of the state constitutions, which reveal their English origin. The other is the devotion to democratic equality and popular sovereignty, due partly to Puritanism, partly to abstract theory, partly to the circumstances of the Revolutionary struggle. But since neither of these two streams of tendency has been able to overcome the other, they have at last become so blent as to form a definite type of political habits, and a self-consistent body of political ideas. Thus it may now be said that the country is made all of a piece. Its institutions have become adapted to its economic and social conditions and are the due expression of its character. The new wine has been poured into new bottles: or to adopt a metaphor more appropriate to the country, the vehicle has been built with a lightness, strength, and elasticity which fit it for the roads it has to traverse.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN A

DEMOCRACY1

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

[Charles Evans Hughes (1862- ) was educated at Brown University and first came into prominence by his fearless investigation of insurance companies in New York City. He has served as Governor of New York and as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. In 1916 he was the Republican candidate for President. The present selection is part of the first of three addresses delivered at Yale in 1910, and vigorously restates in terms of to-day "the public duty of educated men."]

When one is about to loose the ties of delightful' association in college and to face a world of competitive efforts, he naturally asks himself, "What is to be my lot in life?" "Where shall I find a chance to prove what I can do?" "How shall I win for myself a place of security protected by my energy or ingenuity or thrift from the possible assaults of misfortune?" "How can I achieve a competence or a fortune, or distinction?" For many, perhaps most, young men, the pressure of necessity is so strong, or ambition is so keen or the vision of opportunity is so alluring that these questions seem to transcend all others and too frequently suggest the dominant motive.

But there is another question, too rarely defined in conscious self-discipline, yet urged by a myriad of voices whose appeal dimly heard in the medley and confusion of the market place sounds the deep tone of democracy, "What shall be my attitude toward the community?" "How shall I relate myself to that struggling, achieving mass of humanity, - the people 1 From "Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government." Copyright, 1910, by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission.

of this great country?" "What part shall I play, not as a unit fighting other units for individual advantage, but as a citizen of a Republic?"

Probably every one of you has been impressed with the forces of progress. I do not refer merely to those represented in production and exchange, significant as are these activities of an energetic and talented people. The large success and expansion of industry, the increase of wants and the ability to supply them, the extraordinary development in facilities of communication, are a sufficient answer to any who would speak of decadence in energy or will. But even more significant are the multiplying indications of earnest desire for the betterment of community life. I refer to the fine endeavors that are being made to extend and perfect the means of education; to improve conditions of labor; to secure better housing and sanitation; to stay the ravages of communicable disease; to provide proper care for the afflicted and defective in body and mind; to increase reformatory agencies and to improve penal methods to the end that society may protect itself without the travesty of making its prisons schools of crime; to secure higher standards of public service and a higher sense of loyalty to the common weal.

Slight consideration of the course of these endeavors emphasizes the lesson that progress is not a blessing conferred from without. It merely expresses the gains of individual efforts in counteracting the sinister and corrupting influences which, if successful, would make democratic institutions impossible. Gratifying as is the vast extent and variety of our accomplishment, one cannot be insensible to the dangers to which we are exposed. No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. We are a young nation and nothing can be taken for granted. If our institutions are maintained in their integrity, and if change shall mean improvement, it will be because the intelligent and the worthy constantly generate the motive power which, distributed over a thousand lines of

communication, develops that appreciation of the standards of decency and justice which we have delighted to call the common sense of the American people.

Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are the unconscious, instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. Free speech voices the appeals of hate and envy as well as those of justice and charity. A free press is made the instrument of cunning, greed, and ambition, as well as the agency of enlightened and independent opinion. How shall we preserve the supremacy of virtue and the soundness of the common judgment? How shall we buttress Democracy? The peril of this nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!

The causes of indifference to the obligations of citizenship may be traced in part to the optimistic feeling that nothing can go seriously wrong with us. This may indeed spring from belief in the intelligence and moral worth of the people, but that belief has ground only as there are predominant evidences of a growing sense of the duties imposed by democratic government, of an appreciation of responsibility enlarging apace with the seductions that are incident to material advancement. There is also the difficulty of realizing that government is not something apart from us, or above us, that it is we ourselves organized in a grand coöperative effort to protect mutual· rights and to secure common opportunity and improvement. More potent still is the feeling of helplessness in the presence of organized agencies which, with their effective combinations based upon mutual interest, seem to make of slight consequence the efforts of citizens who are not members of inner

circles of power. But no organized agency and no combination, however strong, can outrage the rights of any community, if the community sees fit to assert them. The character of the agencies of the community, its instruments of expression, the forms of its organized effort are simply what it may desire or tolerate. Whatever evil may exist in society or politics simply points the question to the individual citizen, "What are you doing about it?”

Before we deal with particular problems and relations, I desire to consider the fundamental question of attitude and the principles of action which must be regarded as essential to the faithful discharge of the civic duties.

It is of first importance that there should be sympathy with democratic ideals. I do not refer to the conventional attitude commonly assumed in American utterances and always taken on patriotic occasions. I mean the sincere love of Democracy. As Montesquieu says: "A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of equality."

It would be difficult to find an association in which wealth, or family, or station are of less consequence, and in which a young man is appraised more nearly at his actual worth than in an American college. Despite the increase of luxury in college living, the number of rich men's sons who frequent these institutions, and the amount of money lavishly and foolishly expended, our colleges are still wholesomely democratic. A young man who is decent, candid, and honorable in his dealings will not suffer because he is poor, or his parents are obscure, and the fact that he may earn his living in humble employment in order to pay for his education will not cost him the esteem of his fellows. He will be rated, as the rich man's son will be rated, at the worth of his character, judged by the standards of youth which maintain truth and fair dealing and will not tolerate cant or sham. This is so largely true that it may be treated as the rule, and regrettable departures from it as the exception.