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 FROM THE 
 
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 THE GIFT OF 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 arV11776 
 
 The foundations of the republic. 
 
 3 1924 031 447 141 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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The 
 Foundations of the Republic 
 
EJDWARD KVKRKTT HAI^E, D.D., I^I^.D., 
 
 Chaplain of the United States Senate, 
 
 Author of "The Man Without a Country," etc. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REPUBLIC 
 
 "The State is the realization of the moral idea." 
 
 — Hegel 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT HALE 
 
 Author of " The Man Without a Country" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JAMES POTT & COMPANY 
 1906 
 
 T 
 
Copyright, 1906 
 By Jambs Pott & Co. 
 
 Firet Impression April, 1906 
 
NOTE 
 
 The directors of the Brooklyn Institute in- 
 vited me kindly in 1903 and 1905 to deliver 
 the introductory addresses of their courses 
 on goveinment and sociology. I was of 
 course very glad to do so. 
 
 The two addresses really belong together, 
 and the reader finds them both in this volume. 
 The first was delivered on the evening of No- 
 vember 4, 1905, the other on the evening of 
 November 4, 1903. 
 
I 
 
 The Foundations 
 
 THE success of the American Republic 
 is due to the empire of the Moral 
 Forces. In our new century the Moral Forces 
 are to control the physical forces of America. 
 We have created these giants which we call 
 power stations or engines or dynamos, and 
 they are to serve us. They will serve us ; they 
 will have to obey God and man. God and 
 Man are the Moral Forces. They are to con- 
 trol the new century. 
 
 The attacks on universal suffrage, whether 
 
 from the bully Carlyle or the dainty Matthew 
 
 Arnold, all center in the true statement that, 
 
 in the long run, the decisions of universal 
 
 [7] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 suiFrage are made by the average man. They 
 are not made by the most learned man ; they 
 are not made by the brightest man ; they are 
 made by the average man. In what I am to 
 say to you, I shall admit that this statement is 
 true. I hope to show you at the same time that 
 that decision will be governed and directed by 
 the MOEAL FoacEs. I hope to show you that 
 what men seek at bottom is good government. 
 They are glad to have wise government, they 
 are glad to have showy and dignified govern- 
 ment, they are glad to have aesthetic govern- 
 ment. But more than wisdom, and better 
 than wisdom, better even than beauty is good- 
 ness. Good government, — ^let us remember 
 that that is what we are seeking for. 
 
 I cannot state this so well as it was stated 
 by your great Leader on Thursday. 
 
 "You people of New York, you want your 
 boy to be good. You don't want him a milk- 
 sop, but you want him good. When your 
 girl grows up you want for her husband a 
 [8] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 young man who has faith in something, who 
 trusts something, who goes right back to 
 these old moralities." 
 
 Simply, gentlemen and ladies, in every 
 great crisis, you are forced back inevitably on 
 the Moral Forces. 
 
 Now your central question in a republic 
 like ours is this : How can we keep the aver- 
 age man up to the divine standard? The 
 baby is born a child of God. That is Saint 
 John's great phrase. The boy is a "son of 
 God," the girl is a daughter of God. For the 
 first seven years, for the second seven years, 
 and the third seven years, — ^the first three 
 "climacterics" of the old writers, we choose to 
 say, probably rightly, that the boy is not de- 
 veloped. He cannot fight ; he shall not vote. 
 But at twenty-one he enters into the gov- 
 ernment. We give him vmiversal suffrage. 
 It is universal. Can we preserve, — ^how can 
 we preserve, the divine characteristics with 
 which he is bom? He was a "son of God" 
 [91 
 
The Foundations 
 
 twenty-one years ago. Is he a "son of God" 
 to-day? Can we trust to an average man the 
 moral duties of a citizen? Does the average 
 man want justice in the courts? Does the 
 average man want freedom to choose his own 
 hours of rest and of action? Does the aver- 
 age man wish that his daughter shall be pure 
 and his son temperate? What is the moral 
 training and what is the moral status in the 
 average man from his twenty-first year to his 
 hundredth? 
 
 I am to use the hour in which you have 
 permitted me to speak in illustrations of the 
 propositions with which I began. I am not 
 to prove them logically. I am going to begin 
 at the other end. I shall begin by two para- 
 bles, thus using the method which from the 
 beginning of the book of Genesis to this hour 
 has proved most efficient in establishing 
 Truth. What is popularly called the demon- 
 stration follows afterward. 
 
 For Parable Number One, we will imagine 
 [10] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 a fine young fellow of a good stature, per- 
 sonal bearing, education, and wealth. Let 
 him be the average man of this assembly. 
 That is to say, he is handsome, he is light of 
 limb, he is five feet eleven inches and a half 
 high; he has a decent education, though he 
 does not quite know the difference between 
 the optative and the subjunctive, and he never 
 knows where the e comes in the verb seize. 
 He obtained his degree last summer at your 
 imiversity. His father has said to him, 
 "John, I will place in your hands a hundred 
 thousand dollars, and you are to establish 
 yourself. You will never come to me for any 
 money again and you will go to that part of 
 the world which on the whole you like best." 
 Or simply, "You will do what you choose." 
 This young man starts on that great adven- 
 ture. 
 
 He goes into the Astor Library and with 
 the assistance of Dr. Billings he studies the 
 geography of the world. He stumbles on 
 [11] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 Waddington's Travels in Edom, the country 
 east of the Jordan. It is the country where 
 that young man dwelt who "had great pos- 
 sessions," to whom our Saviour made the cen- 
 tral remark of practical life. It is fertile ; it 
 has rain enough and not too much ; the oaks 
 of Bashan have been proverbial for four mil- 
 lenniums; the cattle of Bashan had a name 
 before men had heard of Wyoming or Mon- 
 tana or of Texas, or of Aldemey or Jersey. 
 John Stuyvesant, we will call him, opens 
 credit with the Barings, he sails from New 
 York and takes a Man Friday with him. He 
 takes a Mediterranean steamer and lands at 
 Beyrout or Jaffa in Syria. He contracts 
 with a dragoman there and goes to Edom. 
 He finds it all that Mr. Waddington has said. 
 He makes real all that the Bible has said; he 
 makes interesting excursions eastward, north- 
 ward, and southward. And after all this, at 
 the end of six weeks he returns to America 
 and he establishes himself within a thousand 
 [12] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 or two miles of Columbia University, where 
 he graduated. 
 
 Why does he turn his back upon that most 
 beautiful of lands ? Why do not the bulls of 
 Bashan or the oaks of Edom attract him? 
 Why does he prefer the waters of Kentucky 
 or Minnesota or the Yellowstone or Oregon 
 to the Abana and Fharpar, to the Jordan and 
 the streams which water Edom? 
 
 It is because even on the very frontier of 
 American civilization he finds Law. But un- 
 der the oaks of Edom there is no law. For 
 he would not be established in Edom three 
 months in his new bungalow, with the mingled 
 comforts of the East and West, or as I say, 
 the luxuries of a palace and the comforts of a 
 log cabin, before some Arab sheik would come 
 down upon him, would steal his Jersey cattle 
 and his Angora sheep, and he would have no 
 remedy. But on the other hand, in Montana, 
 in Wyoming, in Manitoba he would be under 
 the empire of Law. 
 
 [IS] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 My second parable shall be this: Twenty 
 or thirty miles from Munich in Bavaria, sixty 
 years ago or thereabout, there were bom fine 
 twins. The oldest was named Hermann and 
 the youngest was named Emerich. Their 
 father was a German farmer and they grew 
 up in the open air in the work of a farm. The 
 custom of that country gave the precedence 
 to the older of the twins as they grew in years. 
 When they became eighteen both of them 
 served in the Bavarian army for the three 
 years which were enough to make them ac- 
 complished soldiers, and at twenty-one they 
 had their destiny before them. Hermann re- 
 solved to stay at home. Emerich kissed his 
 father and mother and came to America. 
 
 The day he landed at New York, a gentle- 
 man acting for a Western railroad company 
 met him on the pier, laid before him a plot of 
 land in Illinois, and explained to him that this 
 company would sell him a farm and that he 
 might have ten years in which to pay for it. 
 [14] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 To which Emerich replied that he had but ten 
 dollars in the world and that he could not 
 buy it. But the gentleman encouraged him, 
 gave him a free pass to that Western paradise, 
 let him live in a freight car there for two 
 months while he was building for himself 
 a log cabin, put him in connection with a 
 man of five years' experience, and rather to 
 Emerich's surprise, at the end of a year, he 
 found he was able to make his first payment 
 on his new farm. Oh, well, it is all of twenty 
 years ago, when a man who knew him told me 
 this story. Emerich was then living in a 
 charming house — shall I say a palace — over- 
 looking a charming series of fields which ran 
 down to a beautiful river. On the one side 
 of him was a young forest of which he had 
 planted the acorns and cones. On the other 
 side were beautiful orchards of which he had 
 planted the trees and seeds. His sons and his 
 daughters were around him, with everything 
 that modem civilization can accumulate for 
 [15] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 interest in music, in art, or in literature. One 
 of them for aught I know is here in Columbia 
 in his studies. Once in a year Emerich wrote 
 a letter to Hermann and at the expiration 
 of a month or two he had from Hermann a 
 reply. 
 
 Hermann after waiting for ten years had 
 married the woman whom he loved. They 
 also had a family of children, every one of 
 whom was a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
 water. They lived still in the Bavarian cabin, 
 half of mud and half of stone, which was 
 believed to have been built by their great- 
 grandfather's grandfather in the days of 
 Barbarossa, and Hermann felt some anxiety, 
 at the last accounts, of what would come to 
 the grandchildren who begin to appear upon 
 the scene. 
 
 I first heard of them thirty years age at 
 a dinner of the Forefathers' Society in the 
 City yonder, when William Evarts was speak- 
 ing. In fewer words than I have used 
 [16] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 Evarts described the contrast of the two 
 brothers and then he said, "Gentlemen, what 
 makes the diflFerence between the lot of one 
 twin and the lot of the other? The difference 
 is this . . . Emerich has the privileges 
 of an American citizen. Hermann has the 
 privileges of a Bavarian subject. Yes; and 
 why should not the hard-working Bavarian 
 farmer fare as well as the American? " He 
 made a pause for thirty seconds before he 
 replied, and then he said, "It is because the 
 Bavarian through his whole life has been 
 carrying a soldier on his back." 
 
 This is precisely true, gentlemen of the 
 Moral Forces. In the paradise where Eme- 
 rich had established himself he scarcely knew 
 that he was taxed. In the paradise in which 
 Hermann was bom he spent one or two 
 tithes of his income in the payment of his 
 taxes. And as his five sons grew up, instead 
 of sending them to the university or en- 
 joying their company and their service on 
 [17] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 the farm, he was obliged to send them into 
 the army. 
 
 Of which differences the result in present 
 history is that Germany is Germany; Bava- 
 ria is Bavaria ; and America is America. 
 
 As you know, I might recite hundreds of 
 such stories. I will be satisfied with these. 
 The lesson is always the same, — ^is this : 
 
 The success or the prosperity of America is 
 due to the Moral Forces at work in America. 
 The Moral Forces at work in America are two. 
 Most simply stated they are God and Man. 
 
 You can take longer words and use what 
 you call philosophical language ; you can say, 
 "the Power which works for Righteousness," 
 as Mr. Arnold says, if you like to use what 
 I call the polysyllabic language. You can 
 say "the science of history" if you like, where 
 I prefer to say Man. But whether you use 
 long words or short, the truth is the same, 
 that physical America has never done much 
 [18] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 by physical methods for itself. The geolog- 
 ical physical series of strata of rock and 
 gravel which we call eozoic, oligozoic, ter- 
 tiary, primary, or by any other good long 
 Latin or Greek name, has never done much 
 by physical methods for America. Thus 
 there is not on record that any ingot of cop- 
 per on the side of Lake Superior ever made 
 itself into a percussion cap. There is not on 
 record that any prairie in North Dakota of 
 itself produced wheat, which of itself turned 
 into flour, and of itself went to the Hebrides 
 or to Ceylon or to Tasmania to feed a hungry 
 family or to answer their daily prayer for 
 daily bread. The flour has gone from North 
 Dakota to Tasmania, but the Moral Forces 
 carried it, not the physical. Or speaking in 
 two words of three letters each, the flour was 
 created and carried there by God and Man. 
 This seems a simple thing to say. Perhaps 
 you think it idle to say it. But you do not 
 read a newspaper, you do not read a partisan 
 [19] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 platform which does not give this credit some- 
 where else. 
 
 When I was a little boy of eight studying 
 history, I found in the school history of the 
 United States the statement that on a certain 
 night in August, 1776, the Providence of 
 God so arranged the affairs of this world that 
 in a dense fog Washington was able to retire 
 from Brooklyn to New York City without 
 the knowledge of the English Greneral Howe, 
 who was here on Long Island. With the piti- 
 less criticism of childhood, — ^pitiless because 
 simple, I wondered then, where the Providence 
 of Grod had been in the two hundred and 
 eighty-four years between Coliunbus and 
 1776, and in these other years which had 
 followed between 1776 and 1830. The his- 
 tory in my hand recognized His interest in 
 America in one night of August, but so far 
 as that book went for the rest of that time, 
 he was as Elijah said to the priest of Baal, 
 [20J 
 
The Foundations 
 
 "gone upon a journey." A great many peo- 
 ple talk so now. The precision, if you will 
 call it so, or the daintiness, or idiocy, if you 
 will call it so, of half the writers of the press 
 to-day, of half the public speakers on the 
 Fourth of July, of one in ten of the gentlemen 
 who barter in stocks on Wall Street, leads 
 them to a similar expression and to similar 
 silence resulting in praise of physical agen- 
 cies. We are told that Mr. So-and-So ad- 
 vanced America thus and thus by smelting 
 iron in the proper way; — or we are told 
 that Mr. What-You-May-Call-Him advanced 
 America thus and thus by an invention which 
 he made in a certain gravel scoop. But it 
 does not seem worth while to the writer or the 
 speaker to mention the much more impor- 
 tant truth that somebody somewhere, — some 
 "power which makes for righteousness," 
 chose to lay some copper loose on the ground 
 on the shore of Lake Superior, or some iron 
 loose on the ground by its side. We are not 
 [21] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 reminded that some power, somewhere, some- 
 how, chose to leave in the prairie of Dakota 
 the protoplasm and the alkalies and the other 
 agents and reagents, which when somebody 
 somehow brought them together and sepa- 
 rated them in the right way resulted in a loaf 
 of bread on a table in Tasmania. But really, 
 when one is tracing things to their origin, it 
 is as well to remember that certain physical 
 forces have existed since this world came into 
 being and before, which in our time have been 
 co-operating together. And it does not hurt 
 us to acknowledge that we ourselves are good 
 for something or are good for nothing, in 
 proportion as we acknowledge that we are of 
 the nature of that Power who makes for 
 righteousness. If we be of the short word 
 kind, we say as the apostles said and the Mas- 
 ter said, that "Man is a Son of God," that 
 God is our Father, — we say, he shares God's 
 nature if he will. You say, as Paul said, 
 that when you choose "to will and to do of 
 [22] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 God's good pleasure," God is working with 
 you. 
 
 Let us take our story of Emerich and Her- 
 mann and strip it to pieces. Let us see what 
 is the thread which holds together the difFer- 
 ent beads of its embroidery. The prairie on 
 which Emerich established himself was a 
 prairie when Columbus on the eleventh of Oc- 
 tober, 1492, ran the Scmta Maria up as near 
 the beach as he dared to come on a sand key 
 in the Bahamas. It had been a prairie since 
 the last ice wave receded ; Dr. McKay will tell 
 you how many thousand years before. It had 
 produced prairie grass. It had been tram- 
 pled over by buffaloes. It had produced 
 prairie grass again. It had been trampled 
 over by buffaloes again. But no cotter in the 
 Scotch Highlands, no Buddhist in Ceylon had 
 been fed by the bread which it sent to the 
 harvest. 
 
 No, on that happy day when Columbus 
 landed at San Salvador, America was white 
 [23 ] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 paper. This region which we call the United 
 States was a region of woods, of prairies, of 
 meadows, of lakes, and rivers. Men tell us, 
 in round numbers, that there were six or seven 
 million square mUes here as there are now. 
 The people who know tell us on those seven 
 million square nules there roamed or slept or 
 starved about two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand redskins, — ^men, women and children, of 
 what we please to call the Indian races, — 
 about as many as there are now, they say. 
 It is an easy sum in division, there was one 
 of these red men, women, children or babies, 
 on each twenty-eight thousand square miles. 
 For instance, they say that nobody lived in 
 the State of Vermont, — ^that Mohawks and 
 Mohegans went up there to kill deer or sal- 
 mon, but went back again to their homes. 
 For instance, again, when Coronado strayed 
 from the Seven Cities of Arizona with his gal- 
 lant cavaliers in 1546 to explore the Missis- 
 sippi Valley, they rode and they rode and they 
 [24] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 rode, eastward and eastward, hoping to find 
 the Atlantic; and they met no man. They 
 met bufiPaloes, they met antelopes, but no man. 
 The sun rose and set, and there was no man. 
 Day passed after day, week after week, and 
 they saw no man. Month passed after month, 
 and they rode and every night they rubbed 
 down their horses, tethered them, and went 
 to sleep, and woke again ; and again rode east- 
 ward ; and there was no man. These were the 
 regions which we call Colorado, Kansas and 
 Nebraska, but still there was no man. They 
 were brave men, those fellows with Coronado, 
 but at last they were frightened. Had God 
 made a land where you could speak to no- 
 body? 
 
 At the present moment, as you know, those 
 same regions are sending bread to Europe 
 and Asia and Africa, yet for three himdred 
 and fifty years after Columbus landed they 
 were as desolate as that. Now they are cov- 
 ered with happy homes. I am speaking very 
 [36] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 likelj to cultivated gentlemen and ladies who 
 come here from that land of schools and col- 
 leges and libraries. Or it happens very likely 
 that as you and I ate the biscuit which was 
 on this morning's breakfast table, it was bis- 
 cuit from that wilderness. 
 
 What works this change? This works it: 
 Within the last fifty years some men and 
 women have come into that region who knew 
 they were children of God. They knew they 
 could share his onmipotence. The Red Men 
 of Columbus's time had not known this. They 
 were afraid of Nature, they were afraid of 
 Grod, and they did not work with God. But 
 the men and women bom to our inheritance 
 know they are partakers of the Divine Nature. 
 They do not express it in those words of Saint 
 Peter, but in their lives they live up to that 
 rule. Is there lightning? They are not 
 afraid of lightning; it is their lightning; it 
 is their Father's lightning, who has given it 
 to them. Is there tempest? It is their tem- 
 [26] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 pest ; it is their Father's tempest, and He bids 
 them shackle it. Is there a storm cloud? 
 Does it rise upon the mountains? It is to 
 distill into the rivers, flowing into the sea. It 
 is His storm cloud, and it is theirs. Man, the 
 Child of God, takes up his Father's work. 
 Where he finds the cataract flowing, he chains 
 the cataract and puts in his turbines. He 
 handles the electricity which God has left 
 loose for him. He bids it go and work in his 
 place at the forge or in the miU ; he becomes 
 a f eUow worker with his Father. This is the 
 privilege which comes to people whose daily 
 prayer asserts their origin and their destiny. 
 "OuE Father who art . . . " 
 
 Give such a word to such people, and they 
 become the fellow workers of the conscious 
 God. "They mount on wings as eagles, they 
 rxm and they are not weary; they walk, but 
 they are not faint." His is the harvest field 
 and into that harvest field they enter children 
 with the Father, Father with the children. 
 [27] 
 
The Fotmdations 
 
 He prepares the prairie and His child 
 ploughs the prairie. His child scatters the 
 wheat; He produces the harvest. Is it His 
 work? Is it their work? They do not know. 
 They ought not care. It is one work, the 
 work of the Father and the child. It is aU 
 in the family. "Man also is a creative force." 
 
 To SFEAE in elementary language and to 
 apply this central truth to the illustrations 
 with which I began, we find the reason why 
 our young friend John Stuyvesant places his 
 home where it is, somewhere within two thou- 
 sand miles of us, — ^which, as I believe I said, 
 imited the luxuries of a palace with the com- 
 forts of a log cabin. He could not stay in 
 Edom, but he could live on the Western Re- 
 serve, or in Nebraska, or in Minnesota. There 
 were better oaks in Bashan than there were in 
 Minnesota. The feed for his Alderneys was 
 quite as good in Edom as he found in Ken- 
 tucky. But here he found law; and there he 
 [28] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 found none. Here he was in a land where 
 men had found out, by hook or by crook if 
 you please, but by the training of nineteen 
 centuries, that Law is the daughter of the 
 voice of God. And he found that those men 
 had highly determined that they would live 
 under a government of Law. Philosophically 
 stated, I suppose, we may say that with 
 Habeas Corpus and whoever introduced Ha- 
 beas Corpus, our American Christian homes 
 began. Was it Alfred, was it the Barons of 
 King John, was it the Constitutions of Clar- 
 endon, was it by the Constitution of 1787? 
 No matter. By giving to every man his per- 
 sonal freedom, unless the Law obstructed 
 it, — ^I suppose then and there the beginning 
 was made of our American Christian homes. 
 After a little the first sequence follows. A 
 man's house is his castle ; even Law shall not 
 disturb him in that castle unless by the sacred 
 methods which the Law itself lays down. 
 A great soldier once said to me, half in 
 [29] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 joke, that I should never find constitutional 
 liberty south of the Tropic of Cancer. "No 
 home," he said, "no constitution. No fire- 
 side, no home. If a man can sleep and wake 
 and eat, and sleep again under a banana tree, 
 and if nobody ever summon him to fight for 
 his altars and his fires, he will never have a 
 home, wiU never have law, wiU never have a 
 country, and will never have a constitution." 
 This epigram is false, as epigrams are apt to 
 be, but it contains the kernel of eternal truth, 
 which is worth remembering. For we are apt 
 to think that Habeas Corpus, this right of a 
 man to himself, this right of a man to his 
 family life, is something, of course, because it 
 is central. It is central; but every one does 
 not enjoy it. Such men as Egbert and Alfred 
 and Cromwell's men and the men of our Revo- 
 lution asserted for you and me this infinite 
 privilege, and because of that privilege Min- 
 nesota is a place of homes while Edom is a 
 stalking ground for bandits. 
 [30] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 Or take the second of my parables, — ^the 
 parable of Emerich and Hermann. Why does 
 this Bavarian carry a soldier on his back and 
 why does the citizen of Illinois fight in his own 
 battles if there is fighting to be done without 
 any soldier on his back? The answer is sim- 
 ply another statement of the Moral Forces, — 
 that We the People have established this Con- 
 stitution. What does this mean? It means 
 that in the course of ages We the People have 
 found out that we are the children of God. 
 We are not totally depraved, we are not chil- 
 dren of the devil, we are not born in sin and 
 conceived in iniquity. We all dare say. Our 
 Father who Art here. We dare claim the 
 companionship with the great ruler. We 
 dare adapt his law to our purposes. We 
 know that his reign is here, — ^is indeed at 
 hand, and we mean to live in his kingdom. 
 We dare borrow from his omnipotence. With 
 the great lesson of the American Revolution, 
 the people of this coimtry found out what 
 [81] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 this sonship and this fatherhood meant. "It 
 is a great thing," as Saint John says, that 
 "we should be called the sons of God." It is 
 great ; it is wonderful, but teue. It is some- 
 times said that the experience of soldiers cor- 
 rupted the Revolutionary veterans. Not so ! 
 If you compelled every man to go out "agin' 
 Burgoyne," as you did, you granted every 
 man universal suffrage though you did not 
 know it. He knew that he was a part of the 
 nation. So it is that the farmer in Illinois has 
 not to pay his quota for any army of sixty 
 thousand soldiers which shall keep the royal 
 family of Illinois upon the throne. But poor 
 Hermann in Bavaria, alas, has to pay his 
 quota for seventy thousand men in Bavaria. 
 No ! the great central moral law of the uni- 
 verse is established on the Western prairie. 
 There is no need of an army to keep the Gov- 
 ernor of Illinois in his seat. He does not have 
 an escort of cavalry when he goes from his 
 boarding-house to the state house. There 
 [32] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 is no necessity for providing a palace and an 
 establishment for each of his children or his 
 grandchildren. Why, the Governor is not 
 even the ruler of Illinois, The people of Illi- 
 nois rule Illinois, and the Governor is simply 
 their highest servant. In Bavaria, Hermann 
 finds a very different state of things. Her- 
 mann's sons for three years have to be pre- 
 senting arms and carrying a musket at right 
 shoulder shift, for fear some insurrection in 
 Munich should throw a crazy king from his 
 throne. But when the People assume the 
 directorate in the government of the People, 
 for the People, by the People, thfere is no 
 need of such machinery. 
 
 We are, then, to examine the foundations 
 of democratic government. The attack on 
 democratic government, whether led by the 
 bully Carlyle or a dainty critic like Matthew 
 Arnold, is always the same attack. It was 
 that of the Dutch Governor in Knicker- 
 [33] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 bocker. The Governor said, "You would not 
 give your watch to be mended to one of this 
 crowd of people in the streets. Why should 
 you give to a man so ignorant as that the 
 charge of the state?" To the nice "Remnant" 
 people, as Mr. Arnold calls them, the dainty 
 people, the people who do know about the cor- 
 relation of forces and evolution and the atomic 
 theory, — ^the people who do know the differ- 
 ence between seize and sieze, — ^the people 
 who read a newspaper only once a week and 
 read a pessimistic one at that, — ^they join in 
 the same cynical question. Phi Beta orations, 
 even valedictories at Commencement, are apt 
 to be tainted that way. Why, I remember 
 hearing the venerable Dr. McCosh explain to 
 his hearers that the educated men of America 
 are a sort of House of Lords of America, and 
 that America would do well if she let this 
 House of Lords govern her. As for "this 
 people, they know not the Law," this is what 
 the Dutch Governor said, as it had been said 
 [34] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 eighteen centuries before him by people of his 
 class. 
 
 All this grows very naturally and not fool- 
 ishly out of the consecrated wish to "get the 
 best." That is a fine American motto. I see 
 it is applied to the choice of dictionaries. I 
 do not read the advertising sheets of a maga- 
 zine through without being solicited to "get 
 the best." Would it not be very fine, it is 
 natural to ask, if the President of Princeton 
 or Columbia or of Harvard could select, you 
 know, well, much as Plato would have had 
 them, you know, a set of fine strong fellows 
 with good principles and good instincts, and, 
 well, could teach them everything that gov- 
 ernors ought to know, — Aristotle's ethics, 
 Conf ucius's maxims, the Vedas, say, with their 
 Bibles, — then would it not be quite fine if In 
 Phi Beta Kappa, or in the annual convocation 
 of our university, we could select one who did 
 know about government? Did know how 
 Pericles did it, and how Charlemagne did it, 
 [35] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 and how it ought to be done, and how it ought 
 not to be done? No ! It is not true that our 
 elegant friends of the "renmant" are satis- 
 fied when a man knows the difference between 
 the optative and the subjunctive, whether he 
 knows about Lachesis and LacAesis. No! 
 They really want to have him commissioned 
 by some sort of divine law of selection, the 
 wise and learned men who know the best 
 things. Is it not very fine when a nation finds 
 such a director? Yes! it is very fine. But, 
 on the other hand, the world has learned that 
 it is not very fine when a system which gave 
 you such a director gives you a Caligula or a 
 Borgia, or a Louis XVIII or a George IV. 
 Men find out first of all that the wars and 
 jealousy which result in the selection of such 
 rulers are themselves an evil which the best 
 ruler cannot control. And democracy, uni- 
 versal suffrage, is able to say for itself, "I 
 give the election of the officers of government 
 to the majority of the people, because I am 
 [361 
 
The Foundations 
 
 sure of domestic Peace while I do so." The 
 party which Tammany has beaten is willing 
 to wait two years that it may defeat Tam- 
 many. Or when the Democrats are turned 
 out, they instantly begin to say, "See what 
 we will do next time." Whatever else govern- 
 ment by universal suffrage cannot claim, it 
 can claim this, that men had rather contend 
 by ballots than by buUets, and that it secures 
 internal freedom and peace. The Illinois 
 farmer does not have to take his sharp- 
 shooter to kill his neighbor on the other side 
 of the river. He simply subscribes for an- 
 other copy of the county newspaper and rides 
 over to see the editors and tells them what 
 they must do before the next time. 
 
 "But that is horribly optimistic," men say. 
 So it is. It is so optimistic that you do not 
 dare say this to the King of Ashantee, you do 
 not dare say it to the autocracy of Russia. 
 The dainty people of the "remnant" say to 
 you what is true, that you are intrusting your 
 [371 
 
The Foundations 
 
 election to the average of your people. Thus 
 you do not choose Dr. McCosh President of 
 the Republic ; you do not choose Mr. Waldo 
 Emerson, or Louis Agassiz, or Cuthbert 
 Hall, or Dr. Vincent. And it is not simply 
 the President of the Republic about whom 
 you are agitated. You are practically con- 
 fiding to universal suffrage the appointment 
 of every street sweeper, every paver, every 
 weigher and ganger at the Custom House. 
 AU the machinery of your administration is 
 intrusted, in the last resort, to the decision 
 of the average man. Make peace between 
 factions as you please, but what sort of an 
 administration do you achieve? Are your 
 sidewalks as clean as those are in Buda Pesth? 
 Are your statues as good as they are in Ber- 
 lin.'' And is your tariff as wise as Adam 
 Smith would have made it, or Jeremy Ben- 
 tham, or Stuart Mill? That is a searching 
 question and the reply is deep down in ethics. 
 For we come to the Moral Forces again. 
 [38] 
 
The Foimdations 
 
 First, the world has learned in the last hun- 
 dred years that man cannot get into heaven by 
 the multiplication table. The world wants 
 good government more than wise government 
 or learned government. And our questions 
 are questions of the moral forces, and not 
 questions of mental acuteness or of well- 
 instructed memory. This "average man," as 
 you call him, not only reflects the average 
 of intelligence, but he reflects the average of 
 virtue, the average of truth, the average of 
 purity. 
 
 Now, you do not find honesty, purity, truth 
 to be especially gifts of those persons who 
 have passed their higher literary examina- 
 tions. Is the applause given to self-sacrifice 
 and virtue at the theater more enthusiastic 
 in the boxes than it is in the gallery? The 
 instincts of faith and hope and love are not 
 blunted because a man supports his family on 
 ten dollars a week; and are you sure that 
 those instincts are more pure when he speaks 
 [39] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 a dozen languages and belongs to half a dozen 
 clubs? Here is the first answer which uni- 
 versal suffrage urges in its defense. 
 
 But that answer is quite insufficient. Try 
 that answer in Ashantee or in Smolensk, and 
 it does not wholly fit. No, concede bravely as 
 in universal suffrage you have to concede, 
 that taking things through and through, 
 the average man has a power which autocrats 
 might envy him; and yet you are forced to 
 say what shall happen to the average man in 
 social order, in right before the law, in edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Now here is your central and final answer. 
 And if you accept the challenge your republic 
 will succeed. It will become prosperous be- 
 yond any old definition of prosperity. Your 
 republic will be great according to the high- 
 est standard of true greatness. 
 
 If you treat the last as the first you will 
 succeed. If you treat the cottage as you 
 treat the palace ; if you treat the beggar as 
 [40] 
 
TJie Foundations 
 
 you treat the prince born yesterday in the 
 purple, your republic will succeed. If you 
 take your Heavenly Father's advice and go 
 about His business in His way. If you arrange 
 the education of the people as He arranges 
 the dews and the sunshine for the prairie. If 
 you arrange justice in your courts for all 
 sorts and conditions of men as He rules, by 
 one universal law, which the prince cannot 
 escape nor the beggar, you will succeed. If 
 you dare to say "Our Father" as if all were 
 brothers. If you dare say that as the good 
 God of Heaven treats with an even hand every 
 child born into the world, you will give to 
 each all that the state has to bestow. The 
 draught of water in that beggar's cabin 
 shall be as pure and sweet as if it flowed from 
 a faucet at the White House. He shall be as 
 certain that he is fairly paid as if he were 
 cutting off his coupons. His child is pro- 
 tected from the tyrant of the factory, — ^nay, 
 his hands are held so that he shall not himself 
 [41] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 be the tyrant. And in every schoolroom the 
 state provides its best. 
 
 It does not follow that the man is grateful. 
 It does not follow that he takes the great gift 
 of universal education which this theory of 
 equality offers. But it does follow that you 
 can safely leave to the average man that 
 great decision which you are intrusting to 
 him. 
 
 Thus we found ourselves in the Civil War. 
 In his first message Abraham Lincoln said 
 coolly that there were single regiments, both 
 in the Northern and Southern armies, from 
 which a man could select persons competent 
 to fill every high office in the republic. I have 
 heard the remark ridiculed as buncombe by 
 men who did not know what they were talking 
 about. But a man who knows this republic 
 knows that that was true. And our verdict 
 on the curious questions of democracy and 
 universal suffrage will be made as we rightly 
 study the average man, the rank and file. 
 [42] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 The success of our republic or its failure 
 turns on the moral forces in the rank and file. 
 And on all serious occasions, — on such occa- 
 sions as this we have to ask first, what do we 
 know of this rank and file? and second, what 
 is the training which the State is giving 
 them? 
 
 The directors of education in this country 
 are alive just now, thank God, to the necessity 
 of training men's eyes and hands to what 
 they call the industrial callings. It shall be 
 a good horseshoe and not a bad horseshoe; 
 it shall be a pail that holds water and not a 
 pail that leaks. This is a step forward for 
 the man who is herding cattle in Montana. 
 It is better that he shall know how to shoe his 
 horse than that he can tell me about the con- 
 stitutions of Clarendon. So far as it goes, 
 that is very well. But for a republic we must 
 not stop there. That the cattle man shall 
 know how to say to Satan, "Get thee behind 
 me," — ^that should be the aim of his educa- 
 [43] 
 
The Foimdations 
 
 tion. You and I should be asking how the 
 stoker in the steamship shall know and love 
 his duty. How the fireman in a snowdrift on 
 the prairies blocked by the drift of a blizzard 
 for forty-eight hours shall stand at his post 
 and keep his engine alive. That man ought to 
 know, — thank God if he do know, — ^what it is 
 for a man to be his brother's keeper. How 
 often God only knows on the conduct of that 
 man turns the fortunes of a thousand others. 
 God has spread over the land with lavish hand 
 the copper and iron and silver and gold which 
 you and I are sending over the world. Who 
 are the men who are working with Him? Who 
 is he using in this distribution? 
 
 He is using men and women of honor and 
 truth; he is using men, — ^nay, children, of 
 faith and prayer. So far as he uses them 
 every one succeeds. From the good wheat 
 he creates the good flour; he sends the flour 
 across the nation; he sends it across the 
 ocean, and it answers the prayer for daily 
 [44 ] 
 
The Foundations 
 
 bread of the men and women who never heard 
 of the wheat fields of Dakota or Nebraska. 
 Yes, if the thousand children whom he is 
 sending about their business are willing to 
 die as Arnold Winkelreid died, or if in some 
 harder service of life, they are doing his will. 
 But alas, and alas, if this man shirk his work, 
 or if that woman shirks hers, — ^alas, if this 
 be a rotten bolt which is driven in the barge. 
 Alas, if this sleeper have been laid carelessly. 
 Alas, if that rivet were not rightly headed! 
 "Nothing but truth before his throne with 
 honor shall appear." 
 
 And so with the republic and its enginery. 
 We do not ask, as I said, that the average man 
 shall write Latin verses or tell us the use of 
 sheva vocal. But we do ask that he shall love 
 God and hate the devil, — ^we do ask that he 
 shall love purity and hate adultery. We do 
 ask that he shall walk in the Law of the Lord. 
 If he do our Republic prospers. If he do 
 not, no ; our Republic goes where the empire 
 [45 J 
 
The Foundations 
 
 of Caligua and Domitian went, where Car- 
 thage and Babylon went. Blessed are the un- 
 defiled in the way who walk in the Law of the 
 Lord. 
 
 The success of the American Republic is 
 due to the empire of the Moral Forces. In 
 our new century the Moral Forces are to con- 
 trol the physical forces of America. 
 
 We have created these giants which we call 
 engines and dynamos and they serve us. They 
 will have to serve us; they wiU have to obey 
 God and Man. God and Man are the Moral 
 Forces. They are to control the new cen- 
 tury. 
 
 [46] 
 
II 
 
 The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 WHEN our poet diplomatist, Lowell, 
 was at the prime of his hfe, he met, in 
 Paris, Guizot, the last Prime Minister of poor 
 Louis Philippe. If we painted historical pic- 
 tures now, here would be a subject for one. 
 LoweU, at the very height of his power, repre- 
 sents the young nation whose life scarcely 
 covers that of two generations of men, but it 
 is when men are beginning to look forward to 
 its growth in strength and prosperity. On 
 the other hand, Guizot, philosopher and his- 
 torian, represents the failure of the Feudal 
 System. They have done their best in France 
 with what they called the Charter to patch up 
 what they called constitutional monarchy; 
 [47] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 and the end of that was that in the Revolution 
 of 1848 Louis Philippe had fled to England, 
 and Gulzot with him. It is hardly fair, per- 
 haps, after half a century, to recollect that 
 the radical opposition of his day called him 
 the Walpole of France— "Valpoule." But 
 that is what he was, whether they called him 
 so or no. 
 
 When the French Republic was well estab- 
 lished, Guizot returned to France and there 
 and then he met Lowell. It is once more the 
 "old and the new face to face." 
 
 Guizot said to Lowell, "How long do you 
 think the American Republic will endure?" 
 That was naturally the question for a man 
 who had seen his own handiwork go to pieces. 
 And Lowell answered, "So long as the ideas 
 of its founders continue to be dominant." 
 
 He wrote to me afterwards, "In my con- 
 versation with Guizot, I naturally explained 
 that by ideas I meant also the traditions of 
 their race in government and morals." 
 [48] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 Lowell himself alluded to this conversation 
 and explained his view at some length in a 
 speech which he made in New York in 1890. 
 At that moment he was in one of his pessi- 
 mistic moods, and I should be loath to say 
 that that address of his represents his ulti- 
 mate view of the duration of the American 
 Republic. But the remark itself is pregnant. 
 It conveys to the world what the world is so 
 apt to forget, the true idea as to what the 
 foundations of a Commonwealth are. It is 
 not on this or that bit of paper, or this or 
 that parchment, that we build. A hundred 
 republics, a hundred monarchies, have tried 
 to build upon the model of the Constitution 
 of England, or the model of the Constitution 
 of America ; and they have already failed and 
 they have already fallen and are forgotten. 
 It is not by calling a king a president that 
 you make a Republic. It is not by calling an 
 Assembly a Congress that you make a Re- 
 public. The Republic is the government of 
 [491 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 the People, for the People, by the People. If 
 the Ideas on which you build it are the Eter- 
 nal Ideas, it will stand. If you forget them ; 
 if, as Paul says, you build on gold or silver 
 or precious stones, or wood or hay or stubble, 
 they last no longer than the gold lasts, or 
 the stubble. If a king sits upon bayonets, as 
 in the old phrase of Talleyrand, his seat will 
 be uncomfortable, and when the time comes 
 it will fall. If your Republic is really 
 founded on faith, hope, and love, — ^these are 
 the Eternities, — ^it will endure. It is with this 
 view that I remind you of Lowell's answer to 
 Guizot. It is as true now as it was then, and 
 I shall ask you to study with me for half an 
 hour the real foundations of the American 
 Republic. We are not here that I may amuse 
 you, or entertain you. We are here to renew, 
 as far as we can, in a few minutes, our memo- 
 ries of the ideas of the Fathers, on which the 
 American Republic was builded. 
 
 Let me repeat a prophecy of half a century 
 [60] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 ago which has curiously fulfilled itself as that 
 half century went by. 
 
 In April, 1848, the young enthusiasts of 
 America were wild with delight because the 
 people of Paris had driven Louis Philippe and 
 Guizot into exile. The newspapers and the 
 face to face talk of the day said with enthu- 
 siasm "They have burnt the throne, they 
 have burnt the throne !" and a Parisian mob 
 had done that very thing. 
 
 I was young enough to share in the confi- 
 dence and enthusiasm of young America, but 
 at that moment I met Lieber, himself an exile 
 who had been made an American when the 
 Holy Alliance turned such people out of Ger- 
 many. Lieber said to me what is in substance 
 the same thing which Guizot said to Lowell, 
 only it is the same statement backward, if you 
 please. 
 
 "Why are you so confident?" he said. 
 "What are you going to build upon.'' In 
 America you built upon the conscientious 
 [51] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 convictions which created the church of the 
 seventeenth century. In England you had 
 even the old customs, older than Egbert, older 
 than Alfred. Now in France you have de- 
 stroyed all religious convictions and religious 
 organizations; you have destroyed all rever- 
 ence for national institutions, you have noth- 
 ing to build upon but the army." 
 
 When within the year the little Napoleon 
 crowned himself, and when for twenty-three 
 years he administered the Empire while he sat 
 upon bayonets, we had constant cause to re- 
 member Lieber's prophecy. Up to the present 
 moment, indeed, what is called the French Re- 
 public is little more than a military despotism. 
 It is only just waking up to the feeling of 
 what government by the People means. The 
 students of modem life observe with a pa- 
 thetic interest that no officer of sense or of 
 genius is appointed to any high command in 
 the great French Army. 
 
 [52J 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 When we say the Fathers, we do not mean 
 merely the men who wrote the Constitution of 
 1787. Mr. Gladstone's remark holds: "The 
 American Constitution is, so far as I can see, 
 the most wonderful work ever struck off at a 
 given time by the brain and purpose of man." 
 But Mr. Gladstone knew, as all well-read men 
 know, that this was not the first foundation. 
 The historians vie with each other in trying 
 to show how early even the forms of some 
 of the constitutions may be found; and, as 
 Lowell said, we have to go back to the tradi- 
 tions of their race. 
 
 The first instance occurs to every one. It is 
 the tradition of equality which existed in the 
 practice of the eight Northern States, when 
 the Constitution of the United America was 
 made, — and which, fortunately for mankind, 
 existed in the theories of the five Southern 
 States. Gouvemeur Morris said to Josiah 
 Quincy, in the early part of the last century, 
 "Our mistake was in the beginning when we 
 [6S] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 allied eight republics with five oligarchies." 
 He meant, of course, by the five oligarchies, 
 the five slave states. That woidd have been a 
 mistake, as it was not, had not the leaders 
 of the five Southern States in the Convention 
 entertained the theory of equality, though 
 they denied it in practice. It is never to be 
 forgotten that the great words "all men are 
 bom free and equal" are the words of a Vir- 
 ginian. 
 
 And the severe practice of the Revolution- 
 ary War had brought into all men's notice 
 not simply equality of rights, but the equality 
 of duties. The Marquis de Chastellux, who 
 was the confidential aid of Rochambeau, in his 
 account of his journeys in America between 
 Newport and Yorktown, covering a period of 
 nearly two years, says squarely that he never 
 met in America any American of military 
 age who had not been in arms against the 
 King of England. This was in Rhode Island, 
 Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Dela- 
 [64] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 ware, Maryland, and Virginia. I do not sup- 
 pose he meant to include the blacks, but 
 granting that exception, here is distinct evi- 
 dence that the people had found out that if 
 you mean to have a country, every man in 
 that country has his duties. The first of 
 these duties is that he must die in the service 
 of his country, if it needs him. 
 
 I may say in passing, without wishing to 
 offend anybody, that it is the failure to ob- 
 serve this necessity which condemns all the 
 arguments of those who wish women to have 
 the ballot. Women will have the ballot as 
 soon as they appear with muskets in their 
 hands in the posse comitatus of the sheriff. 
 Until they take their share in maintaining the 
 force of the community, they will not be per- 
 mitted to express its wish. This, however, I 
 say only by the way. 
 
 Now, this equality of men's duties carries 
 with it the idea of the equality of their rights. 
 There are countries in Europe now, and in 
 [55] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 some of these countries they speak the Eng- 
 lish language, where a man may not have a 
 fire-arm in his house imless he has a license 
 from the government. In our states, on the 
 other hand, from a very early period, the 
 Legislature had a habit of ordering the citi- 
 zens to purchase and to keep fire-arms which 
 were necessary for the State service. The 
 Province of Massachusetts could order every 
 man between the ages of 16 and 55, in the 
 Valley of Connecticut, to buy a musket and 
 shoulder it and march out against Burgoyne. 
 What is more, it made them go. When these 
 men came back, it was impossible to say that 
 they should not have equal rights as citizens 
 and voters. In fact, the State did not say this 
 for many years afterwards, but gradually 
 the equality of men prevailed so far that now 
 every Northern and Western State in prac- 
 tice gives suflFrage to every man who bears 
 his share, by money or in arms, in maintain- 
 ing the vigor of the community. 
 [66] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 Indeed the equality of rights before the 
 law has gone so far as to affect even theolog- 
 ical controversy. The Calvinist supposition, 
 that only a few were elected to be saved, has 
 gradually given way in a nation which finds 
 that there is so much good in every man that 
 the State may use him in its service. 
 
 In speaking of the Ideas of the Fathers, 
 I do not care to go into much detail as to the 
 extent in which they govern us to-day. But 
 I will say that we see in the smaller coimtry 
 towns an adherence to this sense of equality 
 as, from the nature of the case, we cannot see 
 it in crowded cities. There is, indeed, some- 
 thing amusing in our history as it shows you 
 how soon the feeling of equality re-estab- 
 lished itself after the first settlers arrived 
 from Europe. John Winthrop thought that, 
 as iGrOvemor of Massachusetts, he was to be 
 attended by four men with halberds. When 
 the Court of Assistants would not vote him 
 the halberds, Winthrop made four of his own 
 [57] 
 
The Ideas of the Foimders 
 
 servants carry them. But Winthrop very 
 soon found what it is to be a servant of a 
 Republic. And he found that he was servant, 
 and not master. The halberds were relegated 
 to the museums, — ^I had almost said, in half 
 an hour. What does this mean? It means 
 that so soon as they were building log cabras, 
 one man who could swing an axe was in as 
 much demand as another. If the churl could 
 lift one end of the log as well as his master 
 who was at the other, the sentiment of equal- 
 ity was at once implied, and what men tell us 
 were the old habits of the Germanic forests 
 appeared again. 
 
 This matter of equality deserves to be first 
 spoken of, because it works itself into many 
 details of to-day's administration. Take 
 Public Education. You can make any feu- 
 dalist from the continent of Europe say he 
 approves of public education, — or any baron, 
 or squire, or knight of the shire from Eng- 
 land. But if this is in a club room in the 
 [58] 
 
TTie Ideas of the Founders 
 
 upper part of New York, it is a little apt to 
 be accompanied with the statement that pub- 
 lic education means the Three R's, reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic. "It is a good thing, 
 you know, for the man, you know, who carries 
 your carpet bag for you, you know, to be 
 able, you know, to read the address, you know. 
 Or it is a good thing for the butcher to be 
 able to add up the dollars and cents in his 
 account book." But this concession is accom- 
 panied with the other statement that for the 
 higher education, for what in practice gives 
 the infinite joys of education, the people of 
 wealth shall tax themselves, and what the 
 Pharisees called "this people" must go per- 
 ish without it. But this is all European. It 
 is absolutely un-American. When we say 
 equality of rights and privileges, we mean 
 equality in health of body, and mind, and 
 soul, — ^we mean equality of the right for pure 
 water and pure air, — and among other reali- 
 ties, we mean equality in training, so that 
 [59] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 Jenny Lind shall come out Jenny Lind, 
 though she be born in an attic. All laws 
 with regard to the labor of children come into 
 this demand; all laws with regard to health 
 come into it ; and, with the rest, the highest 
 education which the State knows how to give 
 must be offered freely to every boy or girl 
 born within her borders. I think that the 
 State would be wise if it forbade any hiring 
 for money of any boy or girl imder the age of 
 sixteen. The State has undoubtedly a right, 
 under the traditional definition of childhood, 
 to compel its boys and girls to attend any 
 schools it may choose to establish at any time 
 before they are of age. 
 
 Such Equality before the law is the first of 
 the ideas of the Fathers. 
 
 Second, and akin to this, is the instinct for 
 
 "Together," It belongs certainly to all the 
 
 Germanic tribes. In a way, it forms such 
 
 organizations as those of the Six Nations of 
 
 [60] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 New York, or the tribal homes of the South- 
 ern Cherokees, or the great Pueblo Villages 
 of the Southwest. At bottom, indeed, you 
 might say that "together" is the foundation 
 of all society, savage or civilized. 
 
 The English of it is that man is a gre- 
 garious animal, precisely as the bee is a 
 gregarious animal. The bee will die if you 
 put him into a greenhouse alone, even if you 
 surroimd him with honey and air and all the 
 carnal delights of a palace. So Robinson 
 Crusoe is really impossible. The mental, 
 moral, or spiritual development of Robinson 
 Crusoe in Defoe's romance, for twenty-eight 
 years in solitude, is simply impossible. He 
 would, in fact, have degenerated and become 
 a beast had he lived alone. 
 
 "Together," then, represents the second 
 point which we are to name among the ideas 
 of the Fathers. I suppose that frontier work 
 like theirs almost compels it. No one man 
 can build a log cabin. He is not strong 
 [61] 
 
The Ideas of the Fotmders 
 
 enough to lift a log. If he be strong enough, 
 he cannot be at both ends of the log at the 
 same time. He cannot, then, have a log cabin 
 unless he and some one else are together. In 
 practice no one man can make a road. Indeed, 
 he does not want any road unless he wants to 
 go to some other man. They two make the 
 road together; and in my study of political 
 economy, or social order, I find no finer illus- 
 tration of the foundation of our Common- 
 wealth, extending from ocean to ocean, than I 
 gain when in the spring I drive from the rail- 
 way to my summer home, and to my joy meet 
 with a circle of my friends and neighbors and 
 townsmen who are putting the road in order. 
 I am ashamed that I am not, with my own 
 brogans and Cardigan and oxen, out working 
 with the rest of them. But I stop and salute 
 them, and they stop and salute me. They 
 know that they are spending my money in the 
 adventure. I have paid my tax because I do 
 not join in this service, as I ought to. But 
 [62] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 they do it with their own oxen, they do it 
 with their own hands, they do it with their 
 own picks and shovels ; and they are glad to 
 have my money, but only to grease the wheels. 
 
 They illustrate for me the foundations of 
 American society. They have not asked any 
 knight or squire to make their road for them. 
 It is our road, and we build it for ourselves. 
 It is only by a certain dainty kid glove con- 
 venience, which I in my heart despise, that I 
 have myself paid my taxes for the pecuniary 
 part of this enterprise. One hundred years 
 ago I should be doing what my grandfather 
 did a himdred years ago, — I should be driving 
 up my own yoke of oxen, to take my own part 
 in the endeavor. 
 
 I am a New Englander. Let me speak of 
 the New England illustrations. If I were of 
 Dutch ancestry I should have others; but 
 they would mean the same thing. When we 
 New Englanders went into the fishery we went 
 in together, and to this hour the Marblehead 
 [63] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 or the Gloucester fisherman goes out to his 
 perilous duty, not as an individual, but as 
 one of a company. From the skipper of the 
 fishing-boat who commands, to the greenest 
 boy who comes to learn, they are working 
 on shares. Every one takes care of every 
 other. If the perilous voyage secures great 
 success, it is great success to each. If it is a 
 dead failure, it is a dead failure to each. 
 
 As long as our whale fishery lasted, from 
 the very beginning, we have carried it on in 
 the same way. This was no sentimental trans- 
 lation from the text of Fourier or Robert 
 Owen. It was the instinct of the New Eng- 
 land clan. According to me, it is pity of 
 pities that when a century ago we went into 
 the manufacture of cotton and woolen tex- 
 tiles by machinery, we did not work according 
 to these ideas of the Fathers. What did take 
 place, unfortunately, was that it was neces- 
 sary to send to England for the machines, or 
 for the drawings on which the new factories 
 [64] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 should be built. The traditions were the tra- 
 ditions of England. So a company of capi- 
 talists or a capitalist was to own the plant, 
 and to hire the workmen. That system has 
 continued imtil now. But a truer system 
 would have been that which we are beginning 
 to see renewed, that in which the capitalist 
 and the workmen are all in one venture, 
 "every man according to his ability," as the 
 Bible says. The millionaire who prefers to 
 be examining the Second Cataract of the Nile, 
 even while he leaves his princely yacht there 
 to copy the inscriptions of Rameses III, is in 
 his way at work with the middleman who is 
 studying dyes and markets and interesting 
 himself in a new machine ; and with that boy 
 who sweeps the floor or shovels the snow in 
 winter. 
 
 To the students of social order who talk of 
 
 the breach between capital and labor I have 
 
 to commend this tradition of the Fathers, the 
 
 tradition of Together. The small towns of 
 
 [65] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 America are still the object lessons for the 
 statesman. They are the towns in which each 
 traveler nods to the man he meets, whether he 
 knows his name or not. In their simple life, 
 I know if Tom, at the next door, has a cough, 
 and I send down the paregoric or the squills. 
 Tom, on his side, knows where the trout are 
 in the brooks, and he sends up to my boy to 
 say that he wiU take him a-fishing. I bear 
 Tom's burdens and he bears mine. Let the 
 sociologist remember that he wants to main- 
 tain such relationships in the large cities, as 
 well as in the pleasant intimacies of Tuxedo, 
 of Auburn, or of Arcadia. 
 
 A curious memorial of the days of mercan- 
 tile commerce survives in the care which we 
 take of sick or aged seamen. Under the old 
 law, enacted when most New Englanders went 
 to sea, a registered seaman to this hour pays 
 to the government of the United States a 
 fraction of his month's wages. His father did 
 before him, and his father did it before him, 
 [66] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 so that seaman takes it as a matter of course 
 that he should do it. And in return, the 
 United States Government provides for him a 
 hospital where it takes care of him without 
 charge to him, if he is disabled by disease or 
 by old age. When any of us venture to say 
 that the State ought to take such care of its 
 aged workmen in other callings, we are called 
 dreamers or fanatics. It is, therefore, worth 
 observing that the nation has done this for 
 more than a himdred years in its care of 
 people whose business is at sea. 
 
 I had the pleasure, last spring, of joining 
 with four or five hundred intelligent gentle- 
 men and ladies who are associated in the work 
 of the great piano factory of Chickering. 
 It was the celebration of the eightieth year 
 since Jonas Chickering built his first piano 
 in Boston, and we had it there with the latest 
 improved creation of the company, so that 
 one of the first musicians of the world might 
 compare the two. In eighty years of that 
 [67] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 organization there has been no serious jar be- 
 tween those who paid the wages and those who 
 received them. I have almost a right to say 
 that it was an ideal happy family. And when 
 I asked one of my teachers and sympathetic 
 friends who knew, "What is the secret?" he 
 said, "It is an open secret." He said, "Every 
 man, every woman, every boy in the five him- 
 dred, has a common interest in Music. There 
 is, therefore, a free and sympathetic inter- 
 course and interest between what we call the 
 employer and what we call the employed." 
 Free and sympathetic intercourse and in- 
 terest! Wholly apart from wages, wholly 
 apart from the mechanics of the thing, 
 there exists Music, — ^this central ground 
 in which they are at one with each other. 
 And my mentor answered, "Free and 
 sympathetic interest is what prevents any 
 friction between Capital and Labor." Carry- 
 ing this aphorism of his into the work of the 
 Town, of the County, of the State, free and 
 [68] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 sympathetic interest in the education, in the 
 law, in the health, in the intelligence, in the 
 happiness of the commimity, — there is your 
 open secret. 
 
 I know that I shall be told that in our city 
 life real intimacies are impossible. How shall 
 a man in Brooklyn pretend fellowship with 
 five himdred thousand people, some of whom 
 arrived in America yesterday. And, again, 
 we ministers are told that we have a special 
 advantage in this matter. It is the joy and 
 pride of our calling that from day to day we 
 mingle easily with all sorts and conditions of 
 men. 
 
 To all which the reply is simple. Nobody 
 wants you to know all Brooklyn or New York. 
 But we do want, every one of us, to know 
 twenty or thirty families, right and left of 
 us. It is as the teacher of a Public School, 
 if she is a consecrated woman, knows the 
 families of her children. These teachers are 
 the Ministers at large, as things stand, of our 
 [69] 
 
The Ideas of the Foimders 
 
 civilization. If they understand their duty, 
 they are the personal friends of their pupils. 
 If John is sick at home, the teacher knows 
 it. If John's mother has died, the teacher 
 is at the house with her sympathy and care. 
 There is no reason why every man of us 
 should not have his circle of such friends, 
 some of them from Russia, yes ; from Bohe- 
 mia, yes ; hewers of wood, yes. And somebody 
 who knew told us this when he said, "All ye 
 are brethren." ALL! 
 
 You must pardon a stranger who, you will 
 say, knows nothing of your affairs, if he say 
 that he suspects that it is in the cordial per- 
 sonal intercourse between the Boss and the 
 voter, which Tanraiany knows how to culti- 
 vate, that Tammany finds its strength, and 
 wins its victory. 
 
 Thied, Given the idea of equality, given 
 the Grospel idea of Together, and, almost of 
 course, you have another of the great Ideas of 
 [70] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 the Fathers, which I will name next, — the idea 
 of Local Government, Home Government, we 
 call it now, — the two are one and the same. 
 The Village of Manhattan had to govern 
 itself. There were six months at a time be- 
 fore they heard from Europe, and when they 
 did hear from Europe, it was from men who 
 knew nothing about them or their affairs. 
 Before they had landed an hour, they had 
 found out that all men must be equal. Before 
 their adventure had lasted a year, they had 
 foimd out that they must all work together. 
 Why.? Manhattan was independent of Fort 
 Orange, — which is now Albany. Fort Orange 
 was independent of Manhattan. Could those 
 good fellows, one hundred and fifty miles up 
 the river, wait for a schooner to drift and 
 tack for a fortnight in bringing them the 
 directions from the Governor at Manhattan.? 
 Not they! They had to govern themselves, 
 and they did. So in a Massachusetts town. 
 Was Faxton, fifty miles back in the moun- 
 [71] 
 
The Ideas of the Foimders 
 
 tains, to wait till they were instructed from 
 Boston as to the rights and wrongs of George 
 Third? Not a bit of it ! Paxton held a town 
 meeting, declared war against George Third, 
 ordered its selectmen to buy powder, bullets, 
 and the flints which were necessary to carry 
 on that war. 
 
 This is the instinct for Home Government. 
 I do not care a straw what the philosophers 
 call it. It is one of the foundations. You 
 may say you found it in the Germanic for- 
 ests, or that you found it in the inspirations 
 of Alfred. I do not care what you say. It 
 is the habit, so to speak, of our Fathers. And 
 in notable instances you find it now. 
 
 Since October came in I went to a country 
 town in Massachusetts of less than five thou- 
 sand people. The church, — ^as fine a church 
 as there is in Brooklyn, a better church than 
 I know in Boston, — ^had been built by the 
 People of the town. No Bishop told them to 
 build it ; no Presbytery told them to build it. 
 [72] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 They built it themselves. The church was 
 excellently lighted with Edison lights, as well 
 lighted as this building. And I said in my 
 dumb Cockney way, "Who owns the plant 
 which makes the electricity?" My friend 
 answered with a sort of surprise, "Why, the 
 Town of Reading owns it." "Who gave the 
 Town of Reading its authority?" "Author- 
 ity? The Town of Reading asked for no 
 authority. The Town of Reading wanted an 
 electric plant. They put it into the warrant 
 for the Town Meeting; they held the Town 
 Meeting, and they ordered the plant." Or 
 this clear, sparkling water which they gave 
 me at the elegant dinner where I sat. "How 
 do you get your water?" "The Town of 
 Reading brings it. The Town of Reading 
 found the wells were unequal. The Town of 
 Reading knew that every man was entitled to 
 good water. That old lady of ninety whom 
 you parted with just now, who Jives in her 
 house quite alone, was entitled to as good 
 [73] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 water as the gentleman who introduced you. 
 And the Town of Reading ordered that water 
 should be brought into her kitchen, as it has 
 ordered that the Edison Electric Light 
 should be brought to her, if she wanted to 
 read her Bible or her Ingersoll." "Who gave 
 the Town of Reading this authority ?" "Au- 
 thority? This is the authority: 'We, the 
 People of Reading, came together in Town 
 Meeting, we ordered the engineer to build us 
 the water works, we dammed the river, we 
 bought the patent from Mr. Edison, and we 
 lighted our town.' " 
 
 Compare that autocracy of the American 
 village with the circumlocution of the Feudal 
 system. Suppose a village in France needs a 
 bridge across the river. Who shall build it? 
 Why, the Pr^fet must be told that it is 
 needed. Who is aPrefet? I have looked it out 
 in the dictionary, and I learn that he is the 
 chief magistrate of a district called the Pre- 
 feture. Well, he is told that the people need 
 [74] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 a bridge. The Prefet must communicate 
 with somebody else, and he must communi- 
 cate with somebody else, and he must commu- 
 nicate with somebody else ; and he must obtain 
 the appointment of a commission of engineers, 
 appointed Heaven knows how and nobody 
 knows by whom. They must come down from 
 Paris to this brook, and see what is needed 
 and what is not needed. And they must re- 
 port to some other Board, they must report 
 to somebody else, and they must report to 
 somebody else; and after the son of the 
 grandson of the great-grandson of the man 
 who first petitioned is well in his grave, we 
 may hope that the Central Department of 
 Works in Paris has determined whether the 
 bridge shall be of iron or of steel or of cop- 
 per, and where it shall be and where it shall 
 not be. It is all "Quasha tell Quogga to tell 
 Sambo to pick up that pin." 
 
 Home Government, or Town Government, 
 or Local Government ! Call it as you choose, 
 [75] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 or do not call it at all, if you do not want to, 
 but remember that this is one of the founda- 
 tions of the American system. 
 
 The men who made the Constitution of 
 United America were from thirteen different 
 states which had been made independent by 
 the Treaty at Paris of 1783. In speaking of 
 the Fathers, however, we are not speaking of 
 the men of 1787 alone. We are speaking 
 of men, some of whom lived a hundred years 
 before them, as these different English plan- 
 tations on the seaboard of America were 
 growing into the independent states which had 
 defied the Enghsh king. The truth is that 
 virtually these states were independent from 
 the very beginning. The Atlantic Ocean un- 
 consciously rolling was a great factor in his- 
 tory, "Our imsubsidized ally." The Atlantic 
 Ocean made these states virtually independent 
 long before the Congress of 1776 declared 
 their independence. Observe, then, that it 
 [761 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 was the Declaration of Independence which 
 the forty-five fathers signed.* It was not a 
 petition for it, nor a claim. It was an asser- 
 tion, a declaration. Almost from the begin- 
 ning the men whom Mr. Lowell calls the 
 Fathers may be divided into two classes. 
 There was a school of equality at the North, 
 of which I have spoken. And by the end of 
 the eighteenth century there was another 
 school at the South, educated in an oligarchy, 
 where the white man considered himself the 
 superior of the black man and did not mean 
 to admit his equality. So great was this diver- 
 gence that there could have been no union, but 
 that the Southern leaders in these oligarchies, 
 in one school and another of politics, of senti- 
 ment, or of religion, had taken up the philo- 
 sophical theories of equality, whether they 
 had been used to it in practice, or no. 
 
 * A correspondent eager to abridge the documents 
 of history writes to me to say that the Declaration of 
 Independence may be abridged into these six letters: 
 O. C. U. C. Q. B. 
 
 [77] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 They had read their Voltaire and Rousseau 
 and D'Holbach, their Locke and their Hobbes. 
 They knew they were founding a state, and 
 most of them regarded the institution of 
 slavery as one of the transient and temporary 
 conditions which a generation or two would 
 brush away. Of such theorists Thomas Jef- 
 ferson is a good type ; and so he and they did 
 not hesitate to say in the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, "We hold these truths to be self- 
 evident, that all men are created equal." In- 
 deed, it was not imtil the cotton industry, 
 created by Eli Whitney's invention of the 
 cotton gin, revolutionized the agricultural 
 conditions of the five oligarchies, that such 
 dangerous words as these were looked upon 
 coldly in that section. As late as 1830, a Vir- 
 ginian writer says, "The disastrous effects of 
 slavery are in some degree appreciated in 
 Virginia, and the feeling of the rising genera- 
 tion is more strongly against it than that of 
 the past. . . . The greater part of the 
 [78] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 people would regard as their best benefactor 
 that man who devised a feasible method of 
 delivering them altogether from it." 
 
 But it goes without saying that the mere 
 physical condition of great agricultural 
 communities, where the farmer directs his 
 men but does not work with them, are foreign 
 to the notion of equahty which grows up, 
 almost of course, in such states as Ohio, or 
 New York, or Massachusetts. 
 
 Equality, Brotherhood, Home Government, 
 which is local government, these were condi- 
 tions of government quite as much matters of 
 course among the Fathers as the English lan- 
 guage in whose words they were written. And 
 with this all along, first, second, and last, the 
 undercurrent of them all, was the reUgious 
 character or disposition or training of the 
 Fathers. Of nine-tenths of them the Ameri- 
 can history was the history of emigration for 
 religion's sake. And of the other tenth, the 
 [79] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 custom, what jou might call the common law, 
 was bred in their habits of worship and of 
 ecclesiastical administration. You might 
 talk of a Presbytery, you might talk, as in 
 Maryland, of some form of reverence to 
 Rome; but in practice, every church was an 
 independent organization. Here comes in 
 that reverent acknowledgment of the Will of 
 God, and of the presence of God, which in the 
 minds of the Fathers is wrought in with all 
 they enact or do. Law is to them the voice 
 of infinite justice, it is not a temporary 
 arrangement made by a few neighbors with 
 each other. It is something eternal. 
 
 It is easy to see how this disposition is bred 
 in communities like the Presbyterian commu- 
 nities of New York, or the Congregational 
 communities of New England, where every 
 child as soon as he can lisp is taught that "the 
 chief end of man is to live to the glory of 
 God." This is not the glory of George First, 
 or George the Second, any more than it is the 
 [80] 
 
The Ideas of the Pounders 
 
 glory of Louis XV, or of Charles the Second. 
 It is God who has sent him out into the wil- 
 derness to fight the savage ; it is to the glory 
 of God that he breathes his last breath at 
 Bloody Brook. In our New England States, 
 the mere physical fact that the Town Meeting 
 was held in the Meeting House, that for two 
 hundred years the people would not call the 
 church by any other name than the name of 
 the Meeting House, in itself gave a hallowing 
 consecration to the work of the Town Meet- 
 ing. Those people of Paxton, of whom I 
 spoke, received the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper on Sunday, and on Monday, grouped 
 around their communion table, they declared 
 war against their king. Every boy and girl 
 of them at school, before he learned that a-b 
 spelt ab, joined in a prayer to the God of 
 Heaven who as a loving Father was in the 
 schoolroom. All this runs down through the 
 history, from the first meeting of choppers 
 and lumbermen on Manhattan yonder, to the 
 [81] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 moment when Ethan Allen took Fort Ticon- 
 deroga "in the name of God and the Conti- 
 nental Congress." Shall one say it lived in 
 history in the moment when the captain of one 
 of your war-ships, in the midst of victory, 
 cried out, "Don't cheer, boys, for they are 
 dying." When on the Lord's Day I ask 
 the congregation to sing Whittier's hymn, 
 marked with the name of Christianity in the 
 hymn books, I do not always say to them that 
 Whittier wrote it to be simg at a Democratic 
 Festival for the celebration of the Fourth of 
 July. But that is its history, and whoever 
 studies the Constitution, even up to the pres- 
 ent date, will find that in the Christian re- 
 ligion is the germ of everything of modem 
 government, of the government of the Peo- 
 ple, for the People, by the People. The 
 principle was laid down by the Saviour of 
 Men when he said, "Who is greatest among 
 you, shall be your bond-servant." Equality, 
 Union, Town Meeting, Home Rule, are all 
 [82] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 apparent in such words, — "all for each, each 
 for aU." 
 
 For your life and mine, to-day, and to- 
 morrow, if we wish to maintain a Republic, 
 we must keep in mind our own part in living 
 up to the Ideas of the Fathers. This is not 
 because they were the ideas of the Fathers, 
 but because they are Infinite Ideas. They 
 represent the eternities, which are but three. 
 They represent Faith, Hope, and Love. If 
 you please to put it so, they rest on absolute 
 religion, the religion in which all men are of 
 one blood, every man is a son of God, every 
 man bears his brother's burdens. He who is 
 First of all is the Bond-Servant of all. 
 
 Thus you and I have to respect local pride, 
 we have to exhibit and encourage the pride of 
 the neighborhood, the pride which made the 
 people of that village hamlet insult and defy 
 their distant king. This President in the 
 White House, this Governor at Albany, they 
 are not my rulers, they are not in any sense 
 [83] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 the sovereigns, they are the highest servants 
 of this nation or this state. The sovereign is 
 the People. When on a fixed day of the week 
 my Kttle girl at school stands in her rank 
 and bows reverently when the flag of the na- 
 tion is displayed, when she lisps out the words 
 which show that she will be true to the 
 union and freedom of which that flag is the 
 emblem, I am teaching her at her home what 
 is the people's duty and the people's privi- 
 lege. When my neighbors and I meet to- 
 gether in a Ward Meeting, or the meeting of 
 the Precinct to compel the Gas Company to 
 keep their promises with us, we are asserting 
 the sovereignty of the People. If I really 
 care for good government, I do not leave to 
 some self-asserting busybody to discuss or 
 to carry into efl'ect the measures which give 
 to the policeman his baton, give to the scav- 
 enger his broom, give to the driver of the 
 water-cart his brief authority. I engage 
 myself in my place in that affair. We are 
 [84J 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 not living in the forest together, it is true. 
 I am no longer at one end of the log while 
 John or Bernard is at the other. But in the 
 most crowded street in Brooklyn, my neigh- 
 bor and I are responsible, shall I say, to each 
 other, that the ward is well administered, that 
 the pavement is clean, or that there is any 
 pavement. The decision in such things is not 
 made by a Prefect in Albany, or in Washing- 
 ton, — ^it is made by you and me, by Home 
 Government, Government by the People. 
 
 I do not assert this if I do not feel it. If 
 I do feel it, if I know that here is the strength 
 of America, I shall come round to know that 
 the weakness of America comes when I, and 
 men like me, withdraw into our libraries, or 
 our palaces, or into any sort of cloister or 
 hermit's cell, — as if we were unwilUng to soil 
 our hands by contact with other men. As the 
 sergeant says when he driUs us, we must 
 "touch elbows with the rank and file." No 
 trouble in this when I am fishing on the 
 [85] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 Rangeley Lake, or when I am arranging the 
 bark for my blind in the forests of Number 
 Four, in the Seventh Range on the frontier. 
 Whoever comes that way, he has a word for 
 me, and I have a word for him, whether he 
 wear the moccasin of the trapper or the 
 patent-leather boot of the tenderfoot ; he and 
 I have been introduced to each other by the 
 good God of heaven. We are glad to meet — 
 we two are one. 
 
 Now, I put much to risk when I throw 
 away that friendly attitude. What I need 
 and what the Republic insists upon, is that 
 between me and my next neighbor, east and 
 west of me, north and south of me, there shall 
 be a common sympathy and understanding 
 which shall make me know his language and 
 make him know mine. As my friend of the 
 pianoforte said, that the common love of 
 music brought about the tie between the boy 
 who packed the case and the artist who played 
 in the Symphony, so you and I are to be 
 [86] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 proud and glad of the sympathies which bind 
 us to the man who carries the mortar, or lays 
 the brick, or melts the lead, or digs the 
 sewer. We are not alone. We must bear 
 each other's burdens. 
 
 And here I must ask for a moment in which 
 to speak of the danger of losing this great 
 power for the Republic which it gained from 
 the local pride of the different states. There 
 were days when a Massachusetts man believed 
 in Massachusetts, a New Yorker believed in 
 New York, a Carolinian believed in Carolina. 
 Among many people that sort of pride exists 
 now. It is always wholesome. Just now it 
 needs to be specially cultivated. For all these 
 people who come from abroad know nothing 
 of it, — a million in a year! Many a man 
 arrived here yesterday who does not know, 
 strange to say, that there is any such State as 
 New Jersey or Connecticut. Indeed, he does 
 not know there is any New York as a State. 
 He only knows those words as the name of the 
 [87] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 City where he lands. Nineteen-twentieths of 
 the European emigrants know themselves as 
 belonging to the United States, but they care 
 nothing for the history of the State in which 
 they Hve. They know nothing of its law; 
 they have no pride in its prosperity. All this 
 is bad. And by whatever local arrangements 
 you and I can make, these men and our own 
 children must be trained to the habit of the 
 Fathers, which made Sam Adams really be- 
 lieve that the Province of Massachusetts 
 could beat the King of England, as it proved 
 in fact that it could. 
 
 We have a nation, thank Gbd for that! 
 We have a country, thank God for that ! But 
 as Paul said of the body, the country has 
 hands and feet and arms. The hands must 
 not say of the feet, "I have no need of thee." 
 No ! And the hand must not think that the 
 body has no need of the hand. Most of you 
 have forgotten about the Rebellion. Some 
 of you have forgotten that there was a Re- 
 [88] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 belHon. But those of us who remember, know 
 that the local pride of Indiana, the pride of 
 Maine, the pride of Massachusetts, were im- 
 mense factors in the strength of the United 
 States. I can name to you hundreds of men 
 in Massachusetts now who think that Massa- 
 chusetts was the only State of any great 
 account in the war. I can name as many 
 himdreds in Indiana who think the same thing 
 of Indiana. I can name as many hundreds 
 in Maine who think the same of Maine. Now, 
 that local pride, sometimes mistaken, if you 
 please, is at the same time a factor of very 
 great strength to the Union. The Union is a 
 Union. It is not a confederacy. The United- 
 States is to be written with a hyphen in the 
 middle, and the hyphen is to be a very black 
 one, and a very strong one. But aU the same, 
 the motto of the Union is, "One out of many," 
 E Pluribus wmim. That is the motto, I may 
 say, of the solar system and of the universe 
 of God. Yet I do not dare ask in this audi- 
 [89] 
 
The Ideas of the Fotmders 
 
 ence that those people shall raise their hands 
 who know the magnificent motto of the State 
 of New York in which they live. I am afraid 
 that half of you would not be able to reply. 
 
 OiTE special duties, then, are given to us in 
 the words. Equality of Rights, Together, 
 Local Government. And all along. He who 
 is greatest is to be your servant. And we are 
 to remember that these words imply duties. 
 Remember as well that there is no duty unless 
 there is a present recognition of the Present 
 God. 
 
 If Mr. Lowell had condensed into five words 
 his answer to Mr. Guizot, he would have said 
 that the Fathers succeeded because they be- 
 lieved God was with them, and that, therefore, 
 they were omnipotent. "Men find they can 
 because they think they can." And we may 
 say more than this here, for these men were 
 omnipotent because they asked for the 
 strength of the Almighty, and that strength 
 [901 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 was given to them. Now, just so far or so 
 fast as we do not "like to retain God in our 
 knowledge," so far and so fast do we fall 
 away from the eternal successes. We think 
 we are very grand, we think we are very in- 
 genious. We think we are very rich. Yes. 
 There is no harm in thinking so, if we really 
 know and make our children know from whom 
 comes our strength, from whom comes our 
 riches, whose law is our Law. If we forget 
 that, or if we are too proud to assert it, our 
 sun is gone down, our twilight begins, and 
 after twilight, midnight. 
 
 "God of our fathers, known of old, 
 Lord of our far-flung battle-line. 
 Beneath whose awful Hand we hold 
 Dominion over palm and pine — 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget — ^lest we forget ! 
 
 "The tumult and the shouting dies ; 
 The captains and the kings depart ; 
 [91] 
 
The Ideas of the Founders 
 
 Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
 
 An humble and a contrite heart. 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 
 
 "Far-called our navies melt away ; 
 
 On dune and hea,dland sinks the fire ; 
 Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
 
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre. 
 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
 Lest we forget — ^lest we forget ! 
 
 "If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe. 
 
 Such boastings as the Gentiles use. 
 Or lesser breeds without the Law ; 
 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. 
 
 Lest we forget-^ — ^lest we forget ! 
 
 "For heathen heart that puts her trust 
 
 In reeking tube and iron shard, 
 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust. 
 
 And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, 
 For frantic boast and foolish word — 
 Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord !" 
 
 Amen. 
 [92]