A Book of American Literature

unfortunate than the very Algerines
themselves, because they do not know
and will not know till the destruction
of their over-swollen power, which I
believe very near, whether they are
monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy,
and wish to play the part of all three."
England has not been obliging enough
to fulfil the Bailli's prophecy, and per-
haps it was this very carelessness about 10 their growing more enormous.
the name, and concern about the sub-
stance of popular government, this
skill in getting the best out of things
as they are, in utilizing all the motives
which influence men, and in giving one
direction to many impulses, that has
been a principal factor of her great-
ness and power. Perhaps it is fortu-
nate to have an unwritten Constitu-
tion, for men are prone to be tinker-
ing the work of their own hands,
whereas they are more willing to let
time and circumstance mend or modify
what time and circumstance have made.
All free governments, whatever their
name, are in reality governments by
public opinion, and it is on the quality
of this public opinion that their pros-
perity depends. It is, therefore, their
first duty to purify the element from 30
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. Democracy in its best sense
is merely the letting in of light and
air. Lord Sherbrooke, with his usual 40
epigrammatic terseness, bids you edu-
cate 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.
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 50
of danger to the existing order of things.
is not democracy (which, properly un-
derstood, is a conservative force), but
the Socialism which may find a ful-

crum in it. If we cannot equalize con-
ditions 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, per-
haps, do something to correct those
methods and influences that lead to
enormous inequalities, and to prevent

It is

all very well to pooh-pooh Mr. George
and to prove him mistaken in his poli-
tical economy. I do not believe that
land should be divided because the
quantity of it is limited by nature.
Of what may this not be said? A
fortiori, we might on the same princi-
ple insist on a division of human wit,
for I have observed that the quantity
of this has been even more inconven-
iently limited. Mr. George himself
has an inequitably large share of it.
But he is right in his impelling mo-
tive; right, also, I am convinced, in
insisting that humanity makes a part,
by far the most important part, of
political economy; and in thinking man
to be of more concern and more con-
vincing than the longest column of fig-
ures in the world. For unless you in-
clude human nature in your addition,
your total is sure to be wrong and your
deductions from it fallacious.
munism means barbarism, but Social-
ism means, or wishes to mean, co-
operation and community of interests,
sympathy, the giving to the hands not
so large a share as to the brains, but
a larger share than hitherto in the
wealth they must combine to produce
-means, in short, the practical appli-
cation of Christianity to life, and has
in it the secret of an orderly and be-
nign reconstruction. State Socialism
would cut off the very roots in per-
sonal character-self-help, forethought,
and frugality-which nourish and sus-
tain the trunk and branches of every
vigorous Commonwealth.

Com

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 gaol.

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 small-pox 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 elements 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.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892)

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

Champion of those who groan beneath
Oppression's iron hand:

In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,

In the steadfast strength of truth, In manhood sealing well the vow And promise of thy youth.

Go on, for thou hast chosen well;

On in the strength of God! Long as one human heart shall swell Beneath the tyrant's rod. Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, As thou hast ever spoken, Until the dead in sin shall hear,

The fetter's link be broken!