I hold that if it be true—if it be true—that in this country fishers and plowmen and choppers are to constitute a State, it must be true that they shall be permitted to impose their ideas of common justice, of common decency, upon their public servants, and that the public servants are in very fact the servants and not the masters of the community. [Applause.]
THE BATTLE FOR JUSTICE.
Now, friends, I ask you of Massachusetts to stand in the front of the battle for justice and for righteousness as I have outlined. I wish that I could make the men who are best off in the community—the big corporation men, the big bankers, merchants, railroad men—understand that in this fight for justice we ought to have the right to expect them to lead.
FOR THE RIGHT.
Surely, friends, surely men of Massachusetts, if we are true to the Massachusetts ideals of the past, we will expect those to whom much has been given to take the lead in striving to get justice for their fellows to whom less has been given. [Applause.]
I want the men who are well off to give justice now because it is right, and not to wait till they have given justice simply because they fear longer to deny it. Justice! Let it come, because we believe in it. Let it not be forced upon us because we are afraid to deny it.
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, and the proper way to conserve all of the present system of our civilization that is best worth conserving is to alter that which causes a heavy strain to come upon the rest.
I ask, at least, that we decline to commit ourselves to a policy of foolish Bourbonism; that instead of denying the need of any change in our laws, in our social and industrial system, to meet the changing needs of the times, we take the lead in making every change that is necessary in order to make our constitutions and the body of our law enacted under the Constitution instruments for justice as between man and man, instruments for getting justice for the average citizenship of the American Republic. [Applause.]
Friends, now you have heard me to-night and you can judge for yourselves. Am I preaching anarchy? Am I preaching socialism? [Cries of “No.”]