BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.
The standard represented by popular institutions will seldom be higher, and as time goes on may become lower, than that set for themselves by the majority of the people who established and are intrusted with the duty of maintaining them. They may represent noble aims and point to high ideals, but the extent of their duration and salutary influence must always be dependent upon a sufficient manifestation of the spirit which called them into being.
Institutions and laws, however perfect in other respects, cannot, therefore, safely omit from their functions provisions for the fostering and developing of the spirit which gave them birth. This spirit, it is to be remembered, may, and too often does, without extinguishment, actually become a thing so much apart from the machinery which it has established, as to have little appreciable influence in controlling its operation.
The institutions and laws of the United States, in their inception, represented the spirit of a people who were actuated by the highest concepts of human duty, and who sought to establish a political system which should realize the highest ideals. The possibilities of the system have been demonstrated by the experience of more than a hundred years. Functionally considered this experience has made painfully evident the failures which have attended the system in its operation. It is evident to every intelligent student of American history that these failures have been chiefly due to the fact that the spirit which gave life to the American Republic has too often and too far been supplanted in the control of its affairs by a spirit utterly hostile to that which it was intended to be, and which, if the partial or complete failure of the system is to be averted, must, everywhere and always, be dominant. It is undoubtedly true that citizens whose character and ability fit them for the service necessary for the proper control of political affairs, constitute a sufficient number in the voting population to assure the ascendency of right ideas if their efforts can be united for the purpose. The fact that intelligent and controlling convictions of duty are absent, and that they do not thus unite, however explained, clearly accounts for the subversion of the spirit which founded our institutions, and the ascendency of a spirit of chicanery, greed, and corruption.
It is also evident that the political evils which challenge our attention are primarily due, not to faults in our institutions themselves, but to failures in the assertion of the spirit of true Americanism by which they are intended to be controlled. How to secure ascendency for this spirit and thus to restore, in every part of the republic, the sovereignty of highest manhood, is the most pressing problem which can engage the attention of patriotic and intelligent American citizens.
For more than fifteen years this question has been a matter of profound interest to the writer. The fact that ordinary uprisings against political evils fail to accomplish permanent results, seemed to him to afford convincing evidence that attention must be given to the roots and not confined to the branches; and that this foundation work must represent patient, persistent, and unselfish efforts for the promotion everywhere of the basic virtues of true patriotism, intelligence, integrity, and fidelity in citizenship relations. Believing that this work could be best accomplished through a permanent national institution which should invite and command the coöperation of good citizens everywhere, regardless of party, creed, sex, or class, he sought the advice and coöperation of a few distinguished men in the preparation of plans for such an institution. The assistance sought was willingly extended by such citizens as Morrison R. Waite, William Strong, and S. F. Miller, then respectively Chief Justice and Justices of the United States Supreme Court; by Theodore Woolsey, Noah Porter, F. A. P. Barnard, Mark Hopkins, Julius H. Seeley, and Theodore W. Dwight, among educators; and by such other eminent Americans as U. S. Grant, William Fitzhugh Lee, Robert C. Winthrop, Hugh McCulloch, John J. Knox, Orlando B. Potter, A. H. Colquitt, George Bancroft, Hannibal Hamlin, John Jay, Right Reverend William I. Kip, David Swing, and Phillips Brooks.
The result of conferences and correspondence with these and other citizens of like character led to the founding, in 1885, of the American Institute of Civics, which was subsequently chartered under the laws of Congress, and was dedicated to the service of promoting the qualities in citizenship which Washington sought to promote by his latest labors and final bequests, and which he, in common with Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, believed to be necessary “to the security of a free constitution,” and to the welfare of the government and people of the United States. Its distinctive purposes are succinctly set forth in its charter as follows:
1. To promote on the part of youths and adults generally, without reference to the inculcation of special theories or partisan views, a patient and conscientious study of the most essential facts relating to affairs of government and citizenship, to the end that every citizen may be qualified to act the part of an intelligent and upright juror in all affairs submitted to the decision of the ballot.