1

Vol. XI.

MEMORY.

I often sit

And think a bit

Of other days,

When all my ways

THE father of Mr. W. G. Butler, our new teacher of stringed instruments, was one of the men who helped to make Kansas. He came to Atchison in 1859 and for four years was foreman on the Atchison Champion with Hon. John Martin. He relates that one evening he and a friend were in the Champion office when they heard a gang of pro-slavery outlaws coming down the street and knew that they were in danger. Both jumped into a chest, and though the crowd came two or three times to be sure that they were not in the office, it failed to look into the chest and so they were saved.

Professor M. A. BAILEY goes to Pittsburg to the Thanksgiving meeting of the S. E. K. T. Association. He is named on the program for a paper on "Ratio Method in Teaching Arithmetic."

No. 2

THE POLITICAL CONTEST-A STUDY.

BY MARY A. WHITNEY. [Concluded.]

For such slander, at the suggestion of Jefferson, the Justice was impeached but acquitted upon each of the eight articles preferred against him. An attempt was then made to provide for the removal of all judges in United States courts by the president upon joint address of both houses of congress. This was defeated.

* *

The failure of the supreme court to return a verdict of treason against Burr, gave the president a fourth opportunity for attack. "In what terms of decency can we speak of this? All the principles of law are to be perverted which would bear on the favorite offenders who endeavor to overturn this odious republic! All this, however, will work well. The nation will judge both the offender and the judges, for themselves. If a member of the executive or legislative branch does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove him. They will see then and amend the error in our constitution which makes any branch independent of the nation. They will see that one of the great coordinate branches of the government, setting itself in opposition to the other two and to the common sense of the nation, proclaims impunity to that class of offenders which endeavors to overturn the constitution and are protected in it by the constitution itself, for impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again. If their protection of Burr produces this amendment, it will do more good than his condemnation would have done, and if his punishment can be commuted now for a useful amendment to the constitution, I shall rejoice in it."

These four struggles but confirmed the president in his belief, that the complete separation of powers and absolute independence of each was the spirit of the constitution, and further that the supreme court was often actuated by purely selfish motives which alone could be obviated by direct dependence upon the people. He began to realize that the people was not any one nor all the departments officiating at Washington, and that this was a government of, for, and by the people, only as every department of that government was directly responsible to the voting population by whom they were directly or indirectly called into being. Unconsciously he was drifting toward the fact "the people" with whom sovereignty rests is the voting population.

Hence, as we follow Jefferson in his retirement to the quiet of private life at Monticello, we find him still keeping a vigilant watch upon his former enemy and availing himself of every opportunity for a verbal attack upon the same. It is in these years of freedom from public duty that we are able to read from his own pen his opinions upon judicial assumptions and relations to government in general. To Judge Roan he wrote: 66 * * In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Foederalist, of an opinion 'that the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in the relation of the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete suicide. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might

even a scare-crow.

* *

check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not The constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent is absolute also; in theory only at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people en masse."

The famous cases of Cohens vs. Virginia, Osborn vs. Bank of United States, Yazoo cases, and the Dartmouth College case, but increased Jefferson's belief in the utter abomination of the supreme court, and the distrust of their independence. He said: "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management. Try by this as a tally, every provision of our constitution and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Let us amend the constitution to have judges

elective or amovable."

From 1820 to the time of his death Jefferson seemed to breathe forth a spirit of pessimism in his great anxiety for the safety of the states and the people, and for the unwarranted encroachments of judicial jurisdiction. Citations from his correspondence will show this tendency: "It has long been my opinion,

*

that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of our federal judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today, and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until it shall be usurped from the states, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. It will be as in Europe, where every man must be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs are wares from the same workshop; made of the same materials and by the same hand. If the states look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by the rod of iron: and the blasphemers of men, as incapable of self-government become his true historians."

To William T. Barry, July 2, 1822, he speaks of the Revolution of 1801: "Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that will require unremitting vigilance. * *We already see the power installed for life, responsible to no authority (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow), advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions, for the annihilation of constitutional state rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which they themselves are to make a sovereign part. If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reformation

*

and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable. Before the canker is become inveterate, before its venum has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be applied. Let the future appointment of judges be for four or six years, and renewable by the president and senate. This will bring their conduct at regular intervals under revision and probation and may keep them in equipoise between the general and special governments. We have erred in this point by copying England, where certainly it is a good thing to have the judges independent of the king. But we have omitted to copy their caution, also, which makes a judge removable on the address of both legislative houses. That there should be public functionaries independent of the nation, whatever may be their demerit, is a solecism in a republic, of the first order of absurdity and inconsistency." "In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." This partial history of Jefferson's attitude toward the judiciary presents several facts. Prior to 1800, his faith in that department was unlimited. From 1800 to 1809, his relations with the members of the supreme bench aroused his fears. By the judiciary act of 1801, the federalists at the eleventh hour had intrenched themselves in the last department of government in which they might hope to remain a powerful factor. Thus did they seek to make the central government in at least one department as near as possible a self-perpetuating body and to remove sovereignty from the governed body to the gov erning body But Jefferson, fearing the tendency of federalistic principles, and finding impeachment, the only method of curtailing the actions of the members, insufficient to desired ends, led the way in a political struggle for what he deemed the rights of the governed body-in other words, to him this was an assured fact, that at no time should the governing body be in the least irresponsible to the governed body. Or, again, this being a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, meant a government of, for, and by the governed body through its representatives and not a government of, for, and by the people by their representatives. True, the struggle was not closed without Jefferson at the last, fighting the bench as a personal enemy, but this contest is an important link in the long succession of events which are working out the solution of the problem of self-government.

At this time it was indeed a source of congratulation that the tide of popular opinion was setting in strongly in favor of accepting the governed body as the people. But alas! within another short decade, this question which seemed so fortunately disposed of was productive of another question so vital as to plunge the nation itself into civil strife. The governed bodywhat was it-the people of the United States as one whole, or the people of the several states as separate political units? If the former, it was supposed to mean the re-establishment of overthrown federalism; if the latter, each state would be responsible for the preservation of its own rights. If the former, there could be but one will and that the will of the majority. If the latter, there could be as many wills as there were states holding different opinions. The former meant one people, one nation, one will, one government. The latter meant separate peoples, separate nations, separate wills, separate governments. With this issue were linked a score of others equally as essential to the nation's welfare. One of which from the first was so closely connected with the primary issue, as to be held by many of the older historians to be the real cause of the rebellion of '61. For many years this query had been intruding itself upon the honest, thinking minds of our nation. Can it be possible that human beings, created in the image of our Heav

enly Father, and wearing a skin of a color other than white, possess no personality? The answer to the first question must necessarily involve the answer to this. A struggle so momentous must produce results which would effect all succeeding generations. And so it did. By it two facts were established. First, this always has been, is, and always will be one governernment, of, for, and by one people; and, second, that white skin has no monopoly upon personality. In other words, the governed body is the people of the United States as one whole, composed of every age, sex, race, and previous condition of servitude."

So has the character of the American nation been established. Because of the acuteness of this people in apprehending great truths, to them has been committed a most precious charge. Theirs has been a princely heritage indeed; in their midst have been formulated questions of the most vital consequence; from them have come the broadest truth, the largest opportunity and the truest freedom.

What has been said of the political struggles which have marked our national progress, may be repeated in substance for every state in the Union. Not a star has projected itself upon the field of blue but at some great cost. No better example can be found than our own beloved state. Heroic has been her past. Marvelous are her opportunities for the future. As we turn our eyes east, west, north, or south, we behold sister states, whose land has been rent with civil strife and drenched in fraternal blood-and do we ask why? and for what? Because man has believed the promise of the Father: "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." Because man tried to put truth in place of error; intelligence in place of prejudice; steadiness of purpose in place of fickleness; peace and amity in place of pugnaciousness; liberality of soul for dwarfing selfishness. Because man believed in the eternal goodness of the verities.

Due to our peculiar political organization, these cotroversies are not confined to state and nation; every municipality passes through the same general experience. Why? For what? Not so easily do these questions find a ready answer. The reign of the demagogue, party spirit, and the political machine has so clouded and often obliterated the true purpose of the contention as to lead some of our foreign brothers to declare America's boasted freedom all a hoax. But the day is not far distant when such movements as the reform in city government inaugurated in New York and Chicago, will restore to local politics that spirit which has long actuated both state and national political life — a spirit that shall demand of the political contest, whether local, state, or national, the performance of its legitimate function. It is high time that the American people put an end to the tendency of political leaders seizing upon the political contest as a means of hoodwinking the masses for the attainment of purely party ends. There needs to be a return to the good old day when the political contest meant a contest of principle-a struggle for the finding of or maintainance of truth. Parties should oppose to each other principles,

not men.

It has been said: "Happy is that nation that has no history." That might do for the middle ages, but not for the world in the twentieth century. Such a state of inactivity as would be necessary for an entire absence of all national historical record, is as utterly impossible as to stay the force of gravitation or the movements of the solar system. The complexity of relations, municipal, state, national, and international, is such as demand almost hourly decisions fraught with gravest consequences. In a republican form of government, these decisions

can be reached only by the people, through their representatives, balancing facts in hand, known conditions and estimated results.

Thus are these decisions reached by what we are pleased to call political contest-a contest, because it is a matching of ideas-political, because it involves the administration of government in human society. The contestants are men possessed of these ideas and capable of utilizing all the forces of nature and the direction of wisdom from above, to the end, first, of the fullest understanding of what is best; and second, to the establishment of that which is best. As through the Hebrews was given to the world the highest form of spiritual government, so through this English-speaking race is being given to the world the highest form of human government.

Then men of principle, you must now be men of action. Be ye lifted up to the post of public duty, that the day of high and noble living and high and noble thinking may be ushered in; that you, through your struggle for truth and righteousness, may send our nation forward into a life which shall be unparallelled for its devotion to truth and honesty and uprightness; when the nations shall have peace within and dwell together in harmony and amity. Then will the political contest, that triune force of nature, man, and God, have its best opportunity for high development and teach all peoples how best to govern the nations of the earth. And the United States shall be the ideal teacher of free republican Cuba.

Character Studies from Love's Labor Lost. The characters of this early play of Shakespeare's are presented in four groups,-two in high life and two in low life. The former occupy the greater part of the play, and in them our interest centers. The inferior group serves as a foil for the others.

The most brilliant group is undoubtedly the Princess of France with her attendant ladies, Rosaline, Katharine, and Maria, and the courtier Boyet. Of these, Rosaline seems most prominent in the dialogue because of her bold repartee. The princess proves to be something of a diplomat, more successful perhaps because of her wit and vivacity.

Corresponding to these four ladies are the King of Navarre, and his attendant lords, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumam. In this group Berowne only seems to have elements of leadership, and with these, sense and humor. The king is an idealist dreaming of the impossible. He is brought back to the real world and practical life by the merry sallies and vivacious conversation of a piquant woman.

Of the subordinate groups, the ones used to satirize euphuism are illustrative of Shakespeare's broadest humor. Armado, the Spaniard, showy and deceitful, always interlarding his remarks with far fetched conceits and extravagances, so common in the language of high life in Shakespeare's day, is the very epitome of the fantastic. Costard, low and coarse, is ridiculous in his euphuisms. But Moth, keen, natural, seeing through all affec tation and pretense, sets off the absurdity of the others. The remaining group, with Holofernes for its center, was probably intended to satirize the pedantry of the age. Holofernes knows a little Latin and a few other things artificially, but if an idea had possibly found its way into his brain, it would have rattled around disconsolately from sheer loneliness, and made its escape. Like his shadow, appears Nathaniel the Curate, more shallow and more pedantic than Holofernes. And as a foil for these, making their affectations appear more ridiculous, appears Dull, the constable, stupid and pompous.

The drama shows the "prentice hand" of the poet. It can (Continued on page 28 )