Men like the two just sent away; women like Mrs. Peete (whether she be guilty of murder or not) are the products of a generation that has torn itself away from its old anchors of religion, of duty and responsibility and has not yet set up a new standard to true its conduct. State and church, with all their will to do and their efforts and expenditure of means, can never take the place of right-minded parents and homes where children are taught by example and by word their true relations to God and to their fellow-men. Crooked minds can only be prevented by heritage from men and women, who understand their responsibility to God and to their country, and who start their sons and daughters out upon the journey of life with a chance, at least, for decency and uprightness.
New York Tribune, April 22, 1921.
MACAULAY ON AMERICA
"Your Constitution Is All Sail and No Anchor"
The subjoined letter from the historian Macaulay to Henry S. Randall, of Cortland, N.Y., is taken from an old file of The Cortland Standard. It was published originally in Harper's Magazine.
Holly Lodge, Kensington,
London, May 23, 1857.
Dear Sir: The four volumes of the Colonial History of New York reached me safely. I assure you that I shall value them highly. They contain much to interest an English as well as an American reader. Pray accept my thanks and convey them to the Regents of the University.
You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson, and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I never wrote a line, and that I never, in Parliament, in conversation, or even on the hustings—a place where it is the fashion to court the populace—uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a state ought to be intrusted to the majority of citizens told by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of society.
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both. In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost instantaneous. What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness.