Even after you have succeeded in getting your ordinance passed, you may have trouble in having it enforced. Worst of all, the clever rascals on the other side may manage to get your hard-won law repealed,—and there is your long task all to do over again.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty just as much now as ever. Look across the ocean, and you see what it is costing the nations of to-day. You think that our fathers gained it for us in the Revolution, and that, however others may have to fight for it, it is secure for us; and all that we have to do is to sit back and enjoy it. On the contrary, some form of tyranny is always just around the corner, waiting to devour us. It is not impossible that a wrong issue of this war may force us to fight on our own soil again for it.
In any case, there are plenty of social and commercial tyrants only waiting to lay hands on us. Sometimes it is a rich corporation, stretching out shrewd tentacles to entrap us. Its managers may be philanthropic and courteous, even religious, tyrants,—but despots none the less. It may be a company of racetrack gamblers, defeated for a while by a fearless governor, but stealing back to power as soon as his back is turned. Different states may have different tyrants,—or an arrogant party of socialists may "tie up" the whole country. There is almost every minute some movement going on, calculated, if it succeeds, to hamper or destroy our liberty. Mr. D. L. Moody once said, when he was commenting upon this phase of our national life: "Anything that is going to hurt this nation we ought to fight. Anything that is going to undermine this grand republic or tear out its foundation, you and I ought to guard against with our tears and our prayers and our efforts."
Explain this often to your children. It will strengthen their determination to defend their country.
One of our young reformers in a public address lately pleaded for a wider recognition among the people of the good work of honest officials.
"There are enough among us to find fault when things are not done right," he said, "but there are few who will take the trouble to commend the man who does well. He keeps on with his efforts, whether he gets any praise for it or not, but he is often immensely cheered and refreshed by an appreciative word. If his morality is not of the heroic kind, he may fall away and cease to put forth any special effort to do his work well, just for lack of encouragement."
He illustrated his point with the story of the small boy who was sweeping the sidewalk when some ladies appeared to call upon his mother. One of them asked pleasantly, "Is your mother at home?"
His rather rude reply was laden with significance.
"Do you suppose," he growled, while a slight twinkle broke through his scowling eye, "that I would be sweeping here if she wasn't at home?"
In spite of the fact that a well-fed, well-clothed and well-educated people, like the Germans, for instance, will bear an autocratic government, which kindly does everything for them, but gives little opportunity for individual initiative; it cannot be compared, in its salutary effect upon its citizens, with one which calls forth the powers of judgment and decision in every one, and feeds self-respect, discouraging toadyism and caste, like a republic. An autocracy, if wisely administered, undoubtedly means greater order and efficiency, until the democracy has mastered its new problems and its people have become thoroughly educated. Rough working of new machinery is almost inevitable; and the modern democratic idea has not, even in our own country, in the absence of the votes of half the people, been allowed proper space for expansion, though England, France and Switzerland are hewing at it also. A hundred years longer will show what it can do, if demagogues do not overturn it. If our republic fails, another will arise upon its ashes, for the noble principles upon which it was founded are the highest yet conceived by man, and are immortal.