OBSERVATIONS ON DEMOCRACY.

After a century of insidious slander of democracy the American people as a mass are beginning to show a confused conception of the ideals of free institutions. To say that the people are too zealous of their own welfare to relinquish any substantial right is to utter a fine phrase and ignore the facts. They have already parted with substantial rights; they continue to part with them and new propositions to surrender others are met by united acquiescence and divided protest. The policy of giving state aid to the mercantilists and taxing all others to do it; of fondling the producer and smiting the consumer; of considering capital as something to be worshiped and labor as something quite common, quite as a matter of fact and quite subsidiary to capital, has brought its logical result at last. In spite of philosophy, in spite of its interpreters in the persons of our most distinguished statesmen; in spite of the examples and teachings of the fathers and the warnings of their faithful successors, and in spite of sad experiences of other people at other times; in spite of all that should have curbed the spirit so reactionary to the policy of a republic, the American people today find themselves bewildered over principles which no one assailed a generation ago.

For along with this repression and favoritism there has accumulated in the hands of a few great wealth

and great power. These influences instruct the young; they mould history and write it after it is moulded; they exalt and dethrone at will; they crown mediocrity and strike down merit; they have monopolized the means of intelligence; the girdles and the highways which circle the globe are theirs; the widow's oil and the farmer's salt are theirs; they have stolen all the weapons of caricature, satire and argument. And they have rapidly created a public sentiment which favors everything except the peccadilloes. The school histories, the accessible biographies are written with a view of prejudicing the young against popular institutions. Jefferson, Madison and Jackson are belittled in order to make room for the magnification of Hamilton and Marshall. With no patron saints but an astute bookkeeper and a complaisant judge they have enthroned themselves and demand attention. They fill the air with chattering panegyric over men who hated republican principles.

The important work of Jefferson, the most important ever performed by any statesman, which belongs not merely to the lower world of statecraft but has pierced into the rarer realm of philosophy, has been assaulted at its base for years, indoctrinating successive generations with a spirit of hatred for the memory of him whom the Olympus of judgment has placed above all Americans. And what is Jefferson charged with? Listen: Jefferson was not a warrior; he was a coward; he wrote anonymous letters; he did not walk straight; he did not look one in the eye. On the other hand Hamilton was a soldier; he was brave; he acknowledged his productions; he held his head erect;

his piercing glance abashed the most self-possessed. But it is not considered that he devised an anonymous system of indirect taxation, by which the earnings of one man can be transferred to the pockets of another man, pursuant to which the evils of today have largely come to pass. If Jefferson wrote the "Anas," Hamilton fathered the protective tariff which nearly everyone has discovered is a deception; if Jefferson did not walk erect, if he did not look his hearer in the eye, Hamilton planned to revolutionize the republic and to do it by subterfuge and chicane.

In this unequal struggle, unequal for fifty years at least, the ideals of democracy have ceased to present themselves clearly to the eyes of the American people. In the lust for wealth and power officials have forgotten that they are not in office for themselves, but for the people. General corruption has undermined faith in the administration of the law. This condition of feeling is very responsive to arguments of absolutism. How close we are to that now time alone can determine. But that there is a silent sentiment for it, especially in those portions of the country which fought democracy with the Hartford convention and by good luck expunged their infamy through this traduction already discussed, there can be no doubt.

What, then, of democracy do we hold fast to? Is it man's equality? But that is attacked, not by denying what it means, that all men have equal rights bebefore the law, but by saying that all men are not equal, because men differ in mental power and character, which it does not mean. Then it follows that every proposition of democracy must be again de

fended. All is upset which we thought secure.

All

is confusion where once was order. All that was done must be done again. A spirit of rude iconoclasm has swept over from the middle ages, and masquerading as progress goes about to tear down what was built so firmly centuries ago.

Do governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed? That was once the general tenet in this country. But now it is disputed. It is now held that there is a metaphysical substance called sovereignty not derived from the people, but which proceeds from the same source that originates the sovereignty of despotism, and is the same thing in degree and kind. It is the child of destiny and the voice of God. It is the recrudesence of Philip's power and it may send its duke of Alva anywhere in the world to subdue heresy and cow rebellion.

Is liberty an inalienable right? Yes, but-! It may be so, but-! Liberty, why of course, but-! Liberty must be carefully circumscribed or it will spread into license.

Is the pursuit of happiness an inalienable right? This is impugned by all our modern legislation. The government has surrendered to a marauding band of giant monopolies the sovereign power of taxation. For the power to destroy competition, and in its turn to fix prices at will, is an exercise of the taxing power, while every dollar taken from a man decreases his liberty to pursue his own way in life and weakens his capacity as a citizen. For along with such perversion of justice there is born the spirit of anarchy on one side and of socialism on the other; anarchy, which

would uproot all government, and socialism, which would make government of everything. And as discontent is heard in the land the only remedy suggested is the club, not to destroy the injustice, but to beat down discontent with the injustice. Thus we have government by injunction and expediency in legislation.

But democracy itself has been at fault. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as traditional democracy; it has no historic character to which the democratic party of today can turn for guidance. The democratic party has been for free trade and then for protection. It was on both sides of the bank question; it opposed and championed internal improvements. It was for hard money and it worshiped at the shrine of the greenback. And while its several opposing parties were equally vacillating it was natural that they should be so. They were seeking at all times to draw the government into the hands of a few men, which was a difficult process; while to keep the government in the hands of the people as a means to democratic ends was generally a popular creed. It found general acceptance and it should have been the objective point at all times.

The principles of democracy, therefore, cannot always be found in its platforms. All of its tenets can be deduced from the great outlines of the declaration of independence. They were written there out of the fullness of the human heart; their inspiration was the necessary logic of human life. What each desires are life and liberty and the privilege to seek his own; to have that which he earns and to surrender none of