This, to be sure, is but one side of the picture; there is another and a brighter side. The period I speak of has been athrill with intense activity, for good as well as evil. If vice has been active, so have the agencies of virtue. Churches, colleges, charitable and reform societies have sprung up and grown as never before. When the call to arms came last year it was answered on every hand—by the pampered favorites of wealth and luxury as well as by the sons of toil.
Patriotism has not been dead, but sleeping. In time of peril we have never lacked Deweys, Roosevelts, Funstons, Hobsons, to fulfill the traditions of the race. Our fault has been the absence of that patient, unsleeping vigilance which is the price of honest government—not in war but in the humdrum days of peace.
Perhaps it was only human that when the rebellion had been crushed and the Union restored, we should relax somewhat the strain of those four dreadful years and turn to long-neglected private fortunes. The field lay fallow; a vast public domain was opened; virgin forests awaited the axe. In the flush of general gratitude for the preservers of the Union the floodgates of public expenditure were opened wide, and its outpouring was not always watched with too keen an eye. Too often the Republic was generous before it was just.
Moreover—and this is the point I wish especially to make—we had no jealous or aggressive neighbors to vex our frontier. The powers of Europe tore a leaf from the experience of Napoleon III. when Mr. Seward warned that presumptuous monarch out of Mexico, and left us to enjoy in peace our new prosperity. The men who had been serving their country at the front came home to mind their own private concerns. Seeing the Republic preserved and safe from intrusion, they turned to money-making with the same ardor that had carried them to victory in war. Intent upon this new occupation, they left politics to the politicians. The latter were not slow to see their opportunity. Millions of immigrants, unused to the franchise, untrained in the duties of citizenship, came in at our open doors. Tens and hundreds of thousands settled in the cities, where they became the convenient tool of the "boss."
Under our system government is by parties, and parties imply the existence of the "machine," an institution which, like fire, is a good servant but may become a terrible master. So long as the machine is operated for the good of the party and the party for the state, the best results are possible. But when state or city become subservient to party and party to machine, such corruption is inevitable, as has been brought to light more than once in our metropolis. And New York is no worse than Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Cincinnati. All our large cities and some of our states are governed by irresponsible pirates, who marshal their perfectly organized bands of the ignorant and vicious, in defiance alike of law and of the plain will of the intelligent and well-intentioned majority; for these latter, we must assume, are in the majority. It is only because they have been absorbed in their private affairs that they have allowed the sacred prerogative of government, the delicate machinery of the state, to become the special privileges of unscrupulous men whom they would scarcely trust inside their houses. This dreadful price we have paid for thirty years of "peaceful isolation."
It is the theory of democratic government that the majority rules. Sixty-five years ago, de Tocqueville after his memorable tour through our country recorded his "firm belief" that for the Republic to be virtuous and progressive, we had "but to will it." "It depends upon themselves," he wrote, "whether the principle of equality is to lead them to knowledge or barbarism, servitude or freedom, prosperity or wretchedness." The French philosopher spoke truly, and it is true now. If we have sunk into an ignoble servitude to the baser elements of society, it is because those of the better sort have "willed it"—not designedly, but through a no less reprehensible apathy and blindness in respect of their obligations to the state.
I may be sadly in error, but I believe the present low tone of our internal politics to be due to the long and peaceful isolation of the Republic. So I hold the comparative cleanliness of English politics, and especially of the government of their cities, such as London, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, etc., to be a natural result of England's activity in the high politics of the world. The continual danger, in theory at least, of encroachment or invasion upon the limitless frontier of that vast empire acts as a stimulant to patriotism and invests even the petty politics of city and parish with an interest beyond that of spoils. It is said that England is never wholly at peace. In every continent her standard is raised. Her nerves of sensibility and self-interest run to the uttermost parts of the earth. They are rooted in the hearts of her bravest and best, as well as of the lowliest and most unworthy, and all join in common patriotism reaching from pole to pole, not only of the material world but of the social fabric. Therein is England's strength. Kipling's lines are apropos:
"What should they know of England
Who only England know?"
We have no need to follow abjectly in the footsteps of England; I would not have the Republic walk behind any other nation. We must work out our own salvation. And we can. Latent in the heart of our people is the spirit and the power for greater things than the world has ever seen. Our place is in the vanguard of civilization. We have but to take it. I have tried to show that self-interest in material things pulls us in the same direction as does that higher, spiritual interest, the aim and desire to be great of heart as well as body; to be clean, dignified—a power for good. We have suffered from what may well be called the perils of too great security. In our engrossing pursuit of wealth we have neglected higher things. I venture to quote the words of a South Carolina judge, delivered in a recent lynching case, which seem to me to touch the heart of the matter.
"We have made improvements," said he, "in our manufactures; our railway systems have been improved; we have spent money on our schools. But with what result? Swiftly moving railways, whirling machinery, crowded factory towns and schools—all these are infinitely inadequate to the glory and civilization of the people. Is our moral fibre growing weaker? The law has lost its sanctity during the past forty years, and the essential foundation of all civilization is respect for the law.... We can all do something, but first of all we must recognize and humbly confess our shortcomings—the sooner the better. We can have no real civilization until we turn our faces to the light."