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 The rights of man: 
 
 olin 
 
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Cornell University 
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 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032570172 
 
^oofcB ip Ipman abftott, D.2?. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. A Study in Twentieth- 
 Century Problems. Crown 8vo, $1.30 tut, post- 
 age extra. 
 
 THE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE AN- 
 CIENT HEBREWS. Crown 8vo, jli.oo. 
 
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 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 
 
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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, AND COMPANY, 
 Boston and New Yokk. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 IN TWENTIETH CENTURY PROBLEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 LYMAN ABBOTT 
 
 Democracy is one step in the march of destiny to- 
 ward an end unknown, and neither merits the praises 
 it has evoked nor the fears it has inspired. 
 
 Edmund Soheaeb. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
 4 
 

 P\.£0|003I 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 190I, BY LYMAN ABBOTT. 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
 Published November, igoi. 
 
 IL 
 
TO AUGUSTUS LOWELL. 
 
 At once a conservative and a liberal, loyal alike to 
 the best traditions of the past and the best hopes for 
 the future, he was peculiarly fitted to be a leader in an 
 original educational enterprise. His wise financial ad- 
 ministration conserved and increased the Lowell fund ; 
 his broad culture and liberal spirit conserved and 
 strengthened its intellectual power and promoted its 
 international reputation ; the disinterestedness of his 
 integrity, the catholicity of his sympathies, and the 
 warmth of his undemonstrative nature endeared him 
 to those whom, he admitted to his friendship. All who 
 know his work admire him ; all who knew him loved 
 him. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These lectures were given in the months of January 
 and February, 1901, before the Lowell Institute of Boston, 
 some of them in November and December preceding before 
 the Brooklyn Institute of Brooklyn, New York. Unlike my 
 previous courses before the Lowell Institute — " The Evolu- 
 tion of Christianity," and " The Life and Literature of the 
 Ancient Hebrews" — which were rewritten for publication 
 in book form, these lectures, taken down in short-hand, are 
 here published substantially as they were extemporaneously 
 delivered, although I have not hesitated to condense, to elim- 
 inate, to elaborate, or to rewrite whenever it seemed im- 
 portant to do so. Their object is sufficiently stated in the 
 opening paragraph of the first lecture. While they deal 
 with the problems which the country has been compelled 
 to confront anew during the past three years, they refer to 
 the specific aspects of these problems only incidentally and 
 by way of illustration. The first six lectures are devoted 
 wholly to a consideration of fundamental principles ; the 
 other six to a consideration of their applications to American 
 problems. 
 
 LYMAN ABBOTT. 
 
 CORNWAtL-ON-HuDSON, 
 
 September, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAfiE. 
 
 I. The Conflict op the Centuries. 
 
 The Struggle between Koman Imperialism 
 and Hebraic Democracy : the Overthrow 
 of Imperialism, the Triumph of Demo- 
 cracy 1 
 
 II. The- Growth of Democracy. 
 
 The development of the conception of life 
 as created and administered for the bene- 
 fit of the all, not of the few: in religion; 
 in education; in government; in indus- 
 try 32*^ 
 
 III. PoLrriCAL Rights. 
 
 The basis of government; its object and func- 
 tion; and the distinction between rights 
 which are natural and universal and those 
 which are artificial and acquired . . 62 
 
 IV. Industrial Rights. 
 
 The right of property; the causes which 
 produce the inequable distribution of 
 property; the advantages of a more equa- 
 ble distribution; and proper methods for 
 securing it ..... . 104 
 
 V. Educational Rights. 
 
 The object of education and the extent and 
 limitations of the duty of a democratic 
 state in providing it for the people . . 144 
 
 y 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 VI. Religious Eights. 
 
 The nature of religion and the reason why 
 neither state nor ehnrch may lawfully 
 interfere with the absolute religious lib- 
 erty of the individual, properly defined 171 
 
 VIL The Ameeicau Dbmoceact. 
 
 The distinguishing characteristic of the 
 American Kepublic as one embodying the 
 spirit of faith in man, hope for man, and 
 goodwill toward man .... 194 
 
 "V TTT. Amebican Domestic PkoSlems. 
 
 The Indian question; the Negro question; 
 the woman suffrage question; the question 
 of the relation of the political machine to 
 human liberty; the question of the rights 
 of the majority over the minority in a 
 free community ..... 216 
 
 IX. Amekicam Fokeign Problems. 
 
 The processes by which America has be- 
 come a world power, and the duties 
 which its development into a world power 
 devolve upon it 251 
 
 X. The Perils of Democracy. 
 
 Perils inherent to all democracies; perils 
 
 incidental to the American democracy . 278 
 
 XI. Safeguards. 
 
 The grounds for believing that democracy 
 in some form is the ultimate and perma- 
 nent form of government . . . 313 
 
 Xn. The Goal op Democracy. 
 
 To what extent and in what sense demo- 
 cracy and political Christianity are syn- 
 onomous ...... 336 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 (This list of books is purposely made brief, the object being to indicate 
 TOlumes or chapters which may be profitably read by the general reader in 
 connection with the lectures. Being called for in connection with the lectores 
 as given before the Lowell Institute, it is here reprinted as furnished for the 
 benefit of those who attended that course.) 
 
 I. The Conflict of the Centuries. 
 Hegel : « The Philosophy of History." 
 Borgeraud : " Rise of Moderri Democracy." 
 Pietro Orri : " Modern Italy." 
 W. H. Fitchett : " How England saved Europe." 
 Guizot : " History of Civilization." 
 
 Gibbon : " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap- 
 ters 1, 2, and 3. 
 James Bryce : "The Holy Roman Empire." 
 John Morley : " Rousseau." 
 Thomas Carlyle : " Essays, Vol. II. Voltaire." 
 MacKenzie : " The Nineteenth Century." 
 Thomas Erskine May : " Democracy in Europe." 
 
 II. The Growth of Democracy. 
 Benjamin Kidd : " Social Evolution." 
 Richard T. Ely : "The Labor Movement in America." 
 Lecky : " History of European Morals." 
 Lecky : " England in the Eighteenth Century," especially 
 
 chapters V., VII., and XIII. 
 Frederic Harrison : " The Meaning of History." 
 Geo. O. Trevelyan : "The American Revolution," Part I. 
 
 III. Political Rights. 
 Plato : " The Republic." 
 Hobbes : " The Leviathan." 
 Aristotle : " Politics." 
 
X BIBLIOGKAPHY 
 
 Maohiavelli : " The Prince." 
 
 W. W. Willoughby : "Social Justice." 
 
 Franklin H. Giddings : " Democracy and Empire." 
 
 A. Lawrence Lowell : "Essays on Government." 
 
 IV. Industrial Rights. 
 Herbert Spencer and others : " A Plea for Liberty." 
 Charles B. Spahr : « The Distribution of Wealth." 
 Sidney and Beatrice Webb : " History of Trade Unionism." 
 Emile De Lavelye : " Socialism of To-Day." 
 
 Thomas Kirkup : " An Inquiry into Socialism." 
 William Graham : " Socialism New and Old." 
 Thomas G. Shearman : " Natural Taxation." 
 Henry George : " Progress and Poverty." 
 
 V. Edtjoational Rights. 
 C. W. Eliot : "Educational Reform." 
 
 T. H. Huxley : " Essays, Science and Education." 
 Herbert Spencer : "Education." 
 
 J. L. Tadd : "New Methods iu Education," Book I., "First 
 Principles." 
 
 VI. RBLiaious Rights. 
 Macaulay : Essays, Vol. II., " Gladstone on Church and 
 
 State." 
 Gladstone : " Essays," Vols. V. and VI. 
 H. C. Lea : " A History of the Inquisition." 
 Kbstlin : " The Theology of Luther." 
 Kostlin : " Martin Luther." 
 
 John Henry Newman : " Private Judgment," Essays, Vol. II. 
 C. A. Briggs : The Bible, the Church, and the Reason." 
 
 VII. America as Representative of Democracy. 
 De Tocqueville : " Democracy in America." 
 Bryce : " The American Commonwealth." 
 NordhofE : " Politics for Young Americans." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY xi 
 
 VIII. Amebioa's Domestic Pkoblems. 
 Josiah Strong ; " Our Country." 
 Booker T. Washington : " The Future of the American 
 
 Nogro." 
 Helen Hunt Jackson : " A Century of Dishonor." 
 Jordan : " Imperial Democracy." 
 
 IX, America's Foreign Problems. 
 Paul L, Uoinsoh : "World Politics." 
 
 .Tosiah Strong : " Expansion under New World Conditions." 
 Brooks Adams : " America's Economic Supremacy." 
 
 X. Perils. 
 Anonymous : " Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American 
 
 Life." 
 Robert A. Woods : " The City Wilderness." 
 W. A. Wyckoffi : "The Workers." 
 II. D. Lloyd : " Wealth against Commonwealth." 
 C. L. Brace : " The Dangerous Classes of New York." 
 Jacob A. Riis : " How the Other Half Lives." 
 S. L. Looniis : " Modern Cities." 
 
 XI. Safeguards. 
 Theodore Roosevelt : "American Ideals." 
 C. W. Eliot : "American Contribution to Civilization, and 
 other Essays." 
 
 XII. The Goal of Democracy. 
 Count Tolstoi : "My Religion." 
 Looky : " Democracy and Liberty." 
 Iloiiry Morley : "Ideal Commonwealths." 
 Peabody : " Jesus Christ and the Social Question." 
 Lyman Abbott : " Christianity and Social Problems." 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 LECTUEE I 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTUEIES 
 
 In this course of lectures on the rights of man 
 it will be my attempt to define with some accu- 
 racy what those rights are, in State, Church, and 
 Society. The time is opportune for a considera- 
 tion of this topic. The fundamental questions con- 
 cerning the rights of man involved in the recent 
 political campaign are not yet answered, and can- 
 not be by a single election. But I hope that it 
 may be found possible for me to write and for 
 others to read with minds freed, not indeed from 
 all prejudice, but from those partisan heats which 
 usually accompany a political contest and render 
 difficult a judicial consideration of the principles 
 involved in it. The people have decided to whom 
 they will intrust the administration of the National 
 Government for the next four years, and have in- 
 dicated the methods which they expect the Admin- 
 istration to pursue. But the fundamental princi- 
 ples according to which the nation must frame 
 all its policies, both in domestic and in foreign 
 
2 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 dealing, remain, and must remain, subjects for 
 public discussion and popular instruction. In 
 these lectures I assume that there are such princi- 
 ples, that they are absolute, eternal, unalterable 
 because they are divine, that they inhere in the 
 nature of man and of human society because they 
 inhere in the nature of God which man inherits 
 from his Father, that God is in his world directing 
 its course toward the ultimate victory of righteous 
 principles, and that by a study of history no less 
 than by consulting our own intuitions and giving 
 heed to the counsels of the great spiritual inter- 
 preters of life, Hebrew and Christian, we can 
 learn what those principles are. 
 
 In the beginning of the Christian era two ideals 
 of social organization confronted each other, — the 
 Eoman and the Hebraic. In the Roman Empire 
 the entire organization, political, social, educa- 
 tional, and religious, was framed and administered 
 for the benefit of the few. The political power 
 was centred in an Emperor, who administered it 
 throughout the vast empire by means of a bureau- 
 cracy composed wholly of his appointees ; through 
 theip administration his jurisdiction, civil and 
 military, extended throughout all its various pro- 
 vinces. There are three great powers which in a 
 free community are intrusted to different bodies, 
 and so tend to counterbalance each other, — the 
 powers respectively of the sword, the purse, and 
 the public conscience. All three were vested in 
 the Emperor. As commander-in-chief of the ar- 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 3 
 
 mies of Eome, the power of life and death was in 
 his hands in time of war; and all times were times 
 of war. The control of the finances, the adjust- 
 ment of taxation, and the appointment of the tax- 
 gatherers were vested in him through his appoint- 
 ees, nor did it tend to lessen his real authority 
 that he secured the approval of the Senate by 
 giving to members of that body the chief places 
 of power and emolument. As supreme pontiff he 
 controlled the administration of religion and was 
 able to regulate its functions. This supreme power 
 extended to the remotest provinces of the great 
 empire, and even those cities which retained the 
 name of free cities were without the means of pre- 
 serving the liberties of their citizens. The pro- 
 vinces were, indeed, regarded valuable onlyor chiefly 
 as a source of public revenue; the right to collect 
 what revenue could be extorted was sold to wealthy 
 individuals or still wealthier corporations, and by 
 them in turn farmed out to subordinates who paid 
 for the privilege of using the power of the empire 
 to extort what they could from the people. 
 
 Industrially and morally, society was no less 
 organized for the benefit of the few. Agriculture 
 was wholly servile; and even in the great cities 
 the full benefit of citizenship belonged only to a 
 small minority, — "a portion," says Frederic Har- 
 rison, "which might not exceed one tenth, whilst 
 ninety per cent, of the actual dwellers within the 
 walls might be slaves, freedmen, aliens, strangers, 
 clients, and camp-followers."^ The many toiled 
 1 Frederic Harrison : Meaning of History, p. 231. 
 
4 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ■without receiving recompense in the product of 
 their toil; the few lived without industry. Schools 
 for the people were wholly unknown ; the only edu- 
 cation was in athletics and rhetoric, and this was 
 furnished only to the children of the most favored. 
 The ofi&ces of religion were not conducted for the 
 purpose of adding to either the intellectual or the 
 moral culture of the people; there was nothing 
 analogous to either our pulpit or our Sunday- 
 school; the pagan temples were not conducted for 
 an ethical purpose ; their function was to minister, 
 not to men, but to the gods, either by propitiating 
 their wrath and so escaping their displeasure, or 
 by winning their favor and so securing, not for the 
 people, but for the Imperial Government, what 
 may be called their alliance. Thus neither reli- 
 gion, education, industry, nor government sought 
 or pretended to seek the well-being of the many. 
 The many were regarded as created for the few ; 
 to be fed, amused, governed, compelled to labor, 
 but not to share in the benefits of either religion, 
 education, industry, or government. Such share 
 as they obtained was incidental and indirect, not 
 purposed and planned. 
 
 In one province of this great empire were a 
 people who possessed a very different social and 
 political ideal. It is true that partly by their 
 apostasy they had lost, partly by reason of their 
 feebleness they had been robbed of their liberties, 
 and that in this brief sketch I portray less their 
 actual life than the ideals contained in their liter- 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 5 
 
 ature. In their ideal commonwealth all authority 
 for law was regarded as derived from God, not 
 from military power, and the king was as truly 
 subject to it as was the meanest peasant. His 
 power was strictly limited by the constitution of 
 the commonwealth; he was commander-in-chief 
 of the army, but the army was composed of volun- 
 teers ; the power of the purse was not given, as in 
 later English history, to a representative assembly, 
 but the amount of tax which might be levied was 
 definitely limited to one tenth of the agricultural 
 product. The existence of a landed aristocracy 
 was prohibited; private ownership of land was 
 not admitted ; the land belonged to Jehovah — the 
 landholder was only a tenant and his lease expired 
 every fifty years; no caste of class was allowed; 
 the judges were forbidden to show any superior 
 respect to the rich or the great; bribe-taking was 
 condemned under severe penalties ; and the people 
 were required to provide the same law for foreign- 
 ers dwelling among them as for themselves. Slav- 
 ery was so hedged about with restrictions that in 
 the beginning of the Christian era it had almost if 
 not entirely disappeared. Industry was honored 
 and commended, and every father was expected to 
 teach his boy some trade, and generally did so. 
 There were schools for the children of the common 
 people in every village, and though, measured by 
 modern standards, the education was biit scant, it 
 was perhaps as good as could be expected from 
 a people so poor and so isolated as the Hebrews. 
 
6 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 It may indeed be claimed that the priesthood served 
 substantially the same purpose as the priesthood of 
 other peoples, the appeasement of God rather than 
 the inspiration of the people ; but they occupied a 
 secondary place in the public estimate. The prin- 
 cipal function of the church was to minister to the 
 life of the people, who every week gathered in the 
 synagogues to receive instruction in the principles 
 of their faith; the chief feature of the religious 
 service was a public reading and a public inter- 
 pretation of their religious books, the message of 
 which may be summed up, in the words of one of 
 their prophets, that "to do justly, to love mercy, 
 and to walk humbly with thy God," is all that true 
 religion requires of man. 
 
 Thus the religious, the educational, the indus- 
 trial, and the political institutions of the Eoman 
 Empire were all framed on the assumption that 
 the world is made for the few, and the many are 
 to be their servants; those of the Hebrew Com- 
 monwealth, on the assumption that the world is 
 made for all, and the few are to be the servants 
 of the many, — a doctrine which has never found 
 a clearer definition than in the statement of the 
 Great Prophet of the New Judaism, " He that is 
 greatest among you shall be your servant." The 
 history of Europe from the first to the nineteenth 
 century may be regarded as the history of the con- 
 flict between these two conceptions of life and of 
 the social order, in which, in successive epochs 
 and by successive campaigns, the Hebrew concep- 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 7 
 
 tion, entertained originally by an insignificant and 
 despised people, has triumphed over the Boman 
 conception once entertained unquestioned through- 
 out the then civilized world. 
 
 I have called Jesus Christ the Prophet of the 
 New Judaism, for so he may be called when re- 
 garded simply as a social reformer. He took up 
 the message of the earlier Hebrew prophets and 
 repeated, emphasized, amplified, and extended it. 
 His followers built upon their faith in his death 
 and resurrection, a faith that he had come ' to 
 emancipate the many from the thrall of the few 
 and found a new social order on the earth in which 
 ambition should seek, not the highest things for 
 self, but opportunity for the highest service for 
 others ; witnesses to his person and heralds of the 
 new life, they went forth as missionaries to pro- 
 claim the advent of a kingdom of God or of hea- 
 ven on the earth, in which the poor should be re- 
 cipients of glad tidings, the broken-hearted should 
 be healed, the captives delivered, the blind made 
 to see, and the bruised should receive their liberty. 
 Koman imperialism understood the social signifi- 
 cance of this message better than some of those 
 who delivered it, and, seeing very truly that these 
 apostles had come to turn the world upside down, 
 undertook to destroy the new spirit by wholesale 
 persecutions. The attempt failed. The new faith 
 and hope in humanity could not be extinguished ; 
 by the end of the fourth century it had captured 
 the empire, though by no means all the people, 
 
8 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 and by the seventh century had overturned the 
 old Kome and planted a new Eome in its place. 
 The palace of the Caesars became the Vatican of 
 the Pope, the temples of the gods were turned into 
 temples to Jehovah and to his Son Jesus Christ, 
 and to Mary the mother of Jesus, and to saints 
 who had given themselves to his service. Lan- 
 ciani has shown that it was not the Goths and 
 Vandals who destroyed ancient Kome; it was de- 
 stroyed by the new Eome which built the churches 
 of the new empire not merely on but out of the 
 ruins of the old empire. The physical fact is 
 symbolic of the spiritual. In vain did Charle- 
 magne in the ninth century and Charles V. in the 
 sixteenth century attempt to repeat a world-wide 
 empire with a new capital as its centre. Neither 
 outlived its founder; the real successor of pagan 
 Kome was ecclesiastical Eome. 
 
 In this transformation of imperialism from a 
 military to an ecclesiastical organization the New 
 Judaism had won its first victory. It is true that 
 ecclesiastical Kome was as imperial as its prede- 
 cessor; but the imperialism was ecclesiastical, not 
 military. The history of Kome may be said to 
 have been the reverse of that of the individual 
 man. In the individual the spirit is immortal, 
 the body dies; in the history of Kome the body 
 remained and the new spirit took possession of it. 
 The power of the Pope extended throughout the 
 whole of Europe, and it was as absolute as the 
 power of Augustus had been ; it was administered 
 
THE CONFLICT OP THE CENTURIES 9 
 
 by a bureaucracy as highly organized ; the diocese 
 corresponded to the province, the archbishop and 
 bishop to the proconsul and the procurator. But 
 the secret of power was entirely different. "The 
 Empire," says John Morley, "was a political or- 
 ganization resting on military power; the Church 
 was a social organization made vital by a convic- 
 tion."^ The one rested on fear of physical power 
 here, the other on fear of divine penalty hereafter. 
 It may be said that the one fear is no better than 
 the other; but it is different. An empire resting 
 on an idea can be conquered by an idea. By the 
 transformation of pagan Eome into ecclesiastical 
 Rome the J)attle between Imperialism and Hebra- 
 ism was transferred from the physical to the spir- 
 itual realm. 
 
 The fundamental postulate of ecclesiastical 
 Rome was that Jesus Christ had appointed Peter 
 and his successors to be the vicar of God on the 
 earth, to administer his kingdom, and direct and 
 control his Church in his absence ; that, therefore, 
 •what this vicar of God officially declared was in- 
 fallibly true, and what he officially commanded must 
 be implicitly obeyed. And inasmuch as a vicar of 
 God could not, in the nature of the case, be every- 
 where at once to teach the divine truth and exer- 
 cise the divine authority, inasmuch as he had not 
 the divine quality of omnipresence, his authority 
 must be executed through an ecclesiastical bureau- 
 cracy, and the voice of the priest must be" accepted 
 1 John Morley : Diderot, i. 100. 
 
10 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 in the remotest parish as the voice of the Pope, 
 — that is, as representing the vicar of God. To 
 refuse to hear and heed this voice was therefore 
 counted, not merely an act of disrespect to an eccle- 
 siastical superior, not merely a peril to the order 
 and unity of the Church, but an act of disloyalty 
 to Almighty God, whose vicar is the Pope, whose 
 pro-vicar is the priest. On this postulate was 
 built the whole superstructure of that ecclesiastical 
 imperialism which constituted the Roman Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Starting with an attack upon what he believed 
 to be an unauthorized abuse in the Church, Mar- 
 tin Luther was driven by the logic of events to 
 deny this postulate. He did not merely put the 
 Bible above the Church as the final authority ; he 
 did not merely claim for man what is called the 
 right of private judgment under the authority of 
 either Bible or Church; he affirmed that Christ 
 was with his Church always, even to the end of 
 the world; that he was not merely with the hier- 
 archy, but was with every one who honestly sought 
 to know and do his will; that there could be no 
 vicegerent when the King was present, and that 
 the King is present with and in every soul. The 
 Roman Catholic Church was right to refuse all 
 compromise with Luther; Luther was right to 
 refuse all compromise with the Roman Catholic 
 Church. There are some issues which cannot be 
 compromised. This was such an issue. The final 
 authority must be either outside the soul in a 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 11 
 
 church or a book, or within the soul in the voice 
 of the reason and the conscience. There cannot 
 be concurrent supreme authorities which sometimes 
 conflict. Luther gradually came to the conviction 
 that the authority was within, not outside, the 
 soul; but when he reached this conviction it was 
 unalterable, and inspired him with a military ardor. 
 "The investigations of the Reformer," says Dr. 
 Julius Kostlin, who is perhaps his best modern 
 interpreter, "lead to a clear conclusion that there 
 is, according to the divine order, no external, tan- 
 gible, final decision in matters of faith."-' And 
 that this was Luther's conclusion Dr. Kostlin 
 makes equally clear. In his reply to the Legate 
 of Eome Luther contended, his biographer tells 
 us, that "every faithful believer in Christ was 
 superior to the Pope, if he could show better 
 proofs and grounds of his belief." ^ Later reform- 
 ers might draw back from so radical a conclusion ; 
 they might seek to find in a new Church, or a new 
 epitome of the doctrine of the ancient Church, or 
 in the Bible as the outgrowth of the primitive 
 Church, a final authority which they could set up 
 against Papal authority. But Luther, who had 
 both a clear vision and an indomitable moral as well 
 as physical courage, struck at the heart of ecclesi- 
 astical imperialism in his doctrine that the final 
 authority in the spiritual realm is within, not with- 
 out; in the conscience, not in a church or a book. 
 
 1 Julius Kostlin : The Theology of Luther, i. 509. 
 ^ Julius Kostlin : Life of Martin Luther, p. 116. 
 
12 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 His doctrine was not the right of private judg- 
 ment, though that right may be deduced from his 
 doctrine; it was the possibility for every soul of 
 direct communion with God, and, therefore, for 
 every soul to take its directions from him and not 
 substitute therefor any vicar or pro-vicar, living 
 or dead, in church or in literature. 
 
 It is not necessary for my purpose in this arti- 
 cle to trace the history of this conviction and 
 its revolutionary effect on the thought of Europe. 
 Wherever it went it destroyed the superstructure 
 of ecclesiastical imperialism because it destroyed 
 the foundation on which that superstructure was 
 built. . The second victory for the new Judaism 
 had been won. Primitive Christianity, by influ- 
 ences working within the Eoman Empire, had 
 transformed it from a military to an ecclesiastical 
 autocracy; Lutheranism, working from within, 
 destroyed the foundation of the ecclesiastical auto- 
 cracy. Speaking broadly, Lutheranism found ac- 
 ceptance only among the Germanic races; among 
 the Latin races the ecclesiastical autocracy re- 
 mained dominant, and there remained also, based 
 on that autocracy, remnants of the old military 
 imperialism, though not in any one world-wide 
 power. 
 
 The religious revolution wrought by Lutheran- 
 ism was followed by another less dramatic but 
 equally important in its effect on humanity, — an 
 intellectual revolution wrought by science and 
 philosophy. So long as man imagined that this 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 13 
 
 world was a flat plain, that it was the centre of 
 the universe, that all problems of life belonged to 
 it, that the sun and the moon and the stars were 
 mere subsidiary bodies created to illuminate it, he 
 naturally conceived that the problems of life were 
 all within his comprehension, that it was possible 
 to frame a comprehensive, complete, and adequate 
 theory of the universe, — that is, of the divine life 
 and the divine law. The new astronomy gave to 
 this belief a shock from which it has never recov- 
 ered. As soon as men understood that this world 
 was not the only nor even the chief stage of divine 
 action, not the only nor even the chief realm in 
 which God's laws are operating; when they real- 
 ized that it was but a smaller one of many planets 
 in what is probably but a smaller one of many 
 planetary systems; when they began to get a 
 glimpse of the infinitely great, and to discover that 
 the best telescopes which art can create only show 
 the universe, as we know it, to be boundless; 
 when, further, the infinitely little began also to 
 be conceived, and it was discovered that the finest 
 microscopes which man can invent leave the small- 
 est globule of matter still to be analyzed; when, 
 still further, geology and anthropology began to 
 carry history back into boundless realms in the 
 past, and thus an infinity of time as well as an 
 infinity of space became the subject of study, the 
 old notion that man could form a complete system 
 of truth and reveal it infallibly to other men, or 
 receive it, if it were so revealed, became untenable. 
 
14 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Gnosticism yielded to agnosticism ; the assumption 
 of an infallible revelation was supplanted by the 
 more modest endeavor to know in part and pro- 
 phesy in part. 
 
 Contemporaneously with this development in 
 observation came a development in thought. Men 
 began to perceive that knowledge comes only by 
 research, and to found their convictions, not on 
 their imagination, but on their investigation. If 
 some, in the reaction against the old scholasti- 
 cism, denied the value of the intuitions altogether, 
 others, more rational and more catholic, simply 
 insisted that though the prophesyings of the poet 
 and the seer were not to be despised, neither were 
 they to be accepted with unquestioning credulity; 
 that all testimony, whether of observation or con- 
 sciousness, was to be tested and proved, and only 
 such as could bear the test of a rational examina- 
 tion could be accepted as ascertained and estab- 
 lished. Thus, partly through a new science, partly 
 through a new philosophy, was born in Europe 
 the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which 
 found among its most eminent exponents Kant in 
 Germany, Diderot in France, and Locke in Eng- 
 land. While the imperial authority of the Church 
 was rudely shaken and for the Protestant world 
 wholly overthrown by Lutheranism, i. e., by the 
 doctrine that God is in his world and speaks in 
 each soul and needs no vicar, the infallibility of 
 the Church was rudely shaken, and for all who 
 accepted the new philosophy wholly overthrown, 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTUEIES 15 
 
 by the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, 
 i. e., by the doctrine that knowledge is not and 
 cannot be instantaneously and infallibly revealed, 
 but, founded on experience and tested by experi- 
 ence, must grow gradually as the soul grows, and 
 must be limited by the limitations which time, 
 space, and the laws and conditions of the human 
 mind impose upon the soul. In the science of 
 Copernicus and Galileo, and in the inductive phi- 
 losophy of Bacon and what grew out of it, impe- 
 rialism received a third and fatal blow, this time 
 in the intellectual realm. 
 
 Lutheranism affirmed man's right, because his 
 duty, to judge in the moral realm ; the new philo- 
 sophy affirmed his right, because his duty, to think 
 in the intellectual realm ; his right to act was still 
 obstructed by remnants of Eoman imperialism ex- 
 isting in the political and the industrial realm. 
 
 In England, where the progress of liberty was 
 most advanced and best assured, and where- the 
 victory over ecclesiastical imperialism was complete 
 by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the 
 battle was first joined between pagan imperialism 
 and Hebraic democracy in the political realm. 
 
 Eoman imperialism had never truly subjugated 
 the British Isles. Csesarism withdrew from Great 
 Britain with Caesar's legions, leaving, as the chief 
 if not the only relics of its occupancy, remains 
 of Eoman architecture and Eoman roads. It had 
 never taken possession of the life of the people. 
 In the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, under Alfred 
 
16 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 tie Great, the people were represented as they 
 never had been in imperial Rome, and never were 
 in the imperial government of western Europe. 
 The subjugation of the Anglo-Saxons by the Nor- 
 mans gave unity to the kingdom without destroy- 
 ing the spirit of the people. The barons wrested 
 from King John in the Magna Charta concessions 
 which were fatal to absolutism. The common 
 people, under the lead of Simon de Montfort, in 
 the reign of Henry III. entered the Parliament 
 and began the process which was to make the 
 House of the Commoners supreme. If the willful- 
 ness of Henry VIII. was the occasion, the spirit 
 of independence in the people was the cause of 
 the reformation which separated England from 
 ecclesiastical Eome forever. Bacon, the father of 
 inductive philosophy, was the progenitor of that 
 method of thought which, founding knowledge on 
 experience, is fatal to all ecclesiastical claims of 
 infallibility, and so prepared the way for the more 
 radical if the more practical philosophy of Hume 
 and Locke. Through all these years in England 
 imperialism sat like an uncertain rider on an 
 unbroken horse, and her people were prepared for 
 the final struggle more than a century before the 
 people of the continent of Europe. 
 
 Ideas move in the realm of spirit; force in the 
 realm of matter. There are only two ways, there- 
 fore, in which a great moral power can overcome 
 a great physical power, — by converting it or by 
 inspiring a new physicial power to conquer it. 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 17 
 
 The new physical power which the spirit of Lu- 
 theranism inspired, and which gave successful bat- 
 tle to imperialism in England, was Puritanism. 
 Puritanism and imperialism are necessary and 
 mortal foes. Their conceptions of government, 
 industry, education, and religion are absolutely, 
 irreconcilably, hostile. Imperialism derives all its 
 ideas historically from pagan Kome ; Puritanism, 
 all its ideas from the Hebraic constitution. "Eng- 
 land," says J. R. Green, "became the people of 
 a book, and that book the Bible." ^ From this 
 book they derived not only their religious but also 
 their social and political ideals. In it they found 
 a conception of social equality which is still radi- 
 cal even in this democratic age. "Their common 
 call, their common brotherhood in Christ," — I 
 again quote from J. E. Green, — "annihilated in 
 the mind of the Puritans that overpowering sense 
 of social distinctions which characterized the age 
 of Elizabeth. The meanest peasant felt himself 
 ennobled as a child of God. The proudest noble 
 recognized a spiritual equality in the poorest 
 ' saint.' " It is the fashion in our time to speak 
 with open scorn or self-complacent though more 
 gentle irony of the Puritans; yet we imitate the 
 very characteristics in them which we satirize. 
 They were Roundheads ; aU men now cut the hair 
 short. They discarded the gorgeous colors of the 
 Cavaliers ; we all dress in sober grays and blacks. 
 They condemned bull-baiting and dog-fighting, and 
 1 A Short History of the English People, ch. viii,, § 1. 
 
18 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 even pugilistic encounters ; our laws are in these 
 respects Puritanical. They forbade the drama; 
 the plays which occupied the stage of Charles II.- 
 would not be allowed by public sentiment on the 
 boards of a New York theatre for a single night. 
 They did not, indeed, believe in religious liberty, 
 in the separation of Church and State, in the rights 
 of the individual conscience as we believe in them ; 
 that is, from the doctrine that God is in his world 
 and needs no vicar they had not deduced all the 
 conclusions which their descendants have deduced; 
 but they held this truth firmly and were prepared 
 to foUow whithersoever it led them. 
 
 In Oliver Cromwell the virtues and the vices 
 of Puritanism were embodied, — ■ its broadness of 
 view and its narrowness of sympathy, its tenacity 
 of will and its lack of tenderness, its love of lib- 
 erty and its spiritual despotism, its moral earnest- 
 ness and its lack of culture, its strength of con- 
 science and its intolerance, its curious combination 
 of humility and pious self-conceit. In the ideals of 
 Charles I. were combined the principles of imperial 
 Eome and of ecclesiastical Eome. Stafford repre- 
 sented the first. Laud the second. But Charles I. 
 had neither the power of a Caesar nor the diplo- 
 matic skill of a Pope; in the campaigns between 
 his Cavaliers and the Ironsides of Cromwell the 
 battle between the imperialism of ancient Home 
 and the fraternalism of the New Judaism was 
 fought out; and in the overthrow of Charles I. 
 Koman imperialism was forever overthrown for 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 19 
 
 England. Neither the brief absolutism of Crom- 
 well, the feeble attempts to reestablish imperialism 
 by Charles II. and James II., nor the yet more 
 feeble attempt to practice it by the Georges, could 
 do anything to stay the progress of that popular 
 revolution which in our century William Ewart 
 Gladstone has conducted to its consummation for 
 England, and which other statesmen after him are 
 to carry on throughout the wider domain of the 
 British Colonial Empire. 
 
 On the continent of Europe imperialism had 
 met with no such stubborn resistance as in Great 
 Britain. It was not dissolved, undermined, or se- 
 riously limited; it was simply broken into frag- 
 ments. In lieu of one great military power were 
 four rival military powers, — France, Prussia, 
 Spain, and Austria, — and a congeries of smaller 
 powers, not less absolute, in Germany and Italy. 
 Lutheranism had never won a considerable con- 
 stituency in either Spain or Italy, and though 
 in France the doctrine had been accepted by 
 large numbers of her best citizens, fire, sword, and 
 exile had so effectually driven the Huguenots from 
 the kingdom that as the eighteenth century drew 
 toward its close there was left in that once great 
 empire neither the conscience to resist absolutism 
 in the Church nor the courage to resist absolutism 
 in the State. By far other warriors and by very 
 different weapons both phases of imperialism, the 
 military and the ecclesiastical, received their death- 
 blow in the three Latin countries. 
 
20 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 Voltaire neither deserves the encomiums of his 
 friends nor the execrations of his enemies. The 
 best portrait of him in the English language is 
 that furnished by Thomas Carlyle in his famous 
 essay. Voltaire was not a great man, for great 
 men always build, and Voltaire only tore down; 
 he was not a great philosopher, for he left nothing 
 that can be called a philosophy as a legacy to the 
 future ; he was not a great poet, for he possessed 
 no true insight. He was an iconoclast in an age 
 and a country whose greatest need was iconoclasm ; 
 a destroyer, but a new order could not be built 
 until the old order was destroyed; a cynic and a 
 mocker, but the age needed such to unmask the 
 false pretense which mimicked piety; an unbe- 
 liever, but in an epoch when creeds had ceased to 
 be the expression of religion and had become only 
 the instruments of oppression. He had more wit 
 than wisdom, more audacity than courage. He 
 had the cynicism of Mephistopheles, but without 
 his malice; the curiosity of Faust, but without his 
 earnestness. No one who had faith in God could 
 have said, "If there were no God, it would be 
 necessary to invent one; " yet he was not an athe- 
 ist. No one who had faith in men could have 
 said, " We have never pretended to enlighten shoe- 
 makers and servants; the true public is always a 
 minority; the rest is vulgar; " ^ yet he was not an 
 aristocrat. He hated falsehood, yet had no love 
 
 1 Quoted in Lecby's History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, V. ZXL See the whole passage, pp. 309-314. 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 21 
 
 for truth; cowardice, yet was no hero; false pre- 
 tense, yet ever wore a mask. He did not so much 
 love his fellow men as scorn their oppressors ; he 
 despised the pretentious civilization of his age, yet 
 saw no way to make a better one. Nevertheless, 
 his ridicule did for France what neither the piety 
 of Luther nor the conscience of Cromwell could 
 have done in a country denuded of its devout 
 and independent souls, — it destroyed that respect 
 for royalty and that reverence for the priesthood 
 which were the basis of imperialism, military and 
 ecclesiastical. John Morley declares that it was 
 Voltaire's task "to shake the foundation of that 
 religious system which professed to be founded on 
 the revelation of Christ." ^ That task he success- 
 fully achieved; nor is it easy even now to see how 
 it could have been so successfully achieved in that 
 time and among that people by a man of a differ- 
 ent even though a better temperament. 
 
 While Voltaire attacked the bases of absolutism 
 by ridicule, Rousseau, by more subtle yet not less 
 effective methods, attacked it through the senti- 
 ments. Absolutism is based on contempt for 
 humanity, — by the nobility for the commoner, by 
 the hierarchy for the laity. Voltaire turned the 
 laugh upon the noble and the priest, — he leveled 
 down ; Rousseau claimed admiration for the com- 
 moner and the layman — he leveled up. The one 
 was the cynic, the other the sentimentalist, of the 
 Revolution. It is not possible to take seriously 
 1 John Morley : Voltaire, p. 241. 
 
22 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the man who writes beautifully of humanity and 
 left his friend in an epileptic fit upon the sidewalk 
 for strangers to take care of; who exalts marriage 
 and lived out of wedlock ; who glorifies the natural 
 instincts of humanity and violated the most sacred 
 of them by leaving his five children in a foundling 
 hospital without even making a note by which they 
 could be subsequently identified. ^ Some corolla- 
 ries deduced from his philosophy remain objects 
 of a not very intelligent admiration in certain cir- 
 cles, but his philosophy concerning man's state of 
 nature and the basis of government as founded 
 upon a social contract is no longer regarded seri- 
 ously by scholars ; nor is his faith in God and in 
 immortality, both of which were founded neither 
 on revelation, reason, nor intuition, but merely on 
 sentiment, worthy of a much more serious regard. 
 Nevertheless, his apotheosis of man signalized if 
 it did not produce a new respect for humanity, 
 and initiated if it did not induce a new study of 
 man, and led philosophy to discern in common 
 people qualities which the old philosophy thought 
 were wholly confined to the few. This spirit of 
 Eousseau reappears in more rational forms in the 
 fiction of Dickens and Bret Harte, in the political 
 philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham 
 Lincoln, and in the theological teaching of Chan- 
 ning and Beecher. 
 
 These two forces, respectively represented by 
 Voltaire and Eousseau, prepared the way for the 
 1 John Moriey : Eousseau, pp. 58, 115-126. 
 
THE CONFLICT OP THE CENTURIES 23 
 
 French Kevolution. The one destroyed respect 
 for the king and the priest, and simultaneously re- 
 spect for law and for religion ; the other developed 
 self-respect in the commonalty, and, at the same 
 time and by the same process, egregiously fostered 
 self-conceit. The French Revolution was the con- 
 sequent overturn of society ; it put what had been 
 the bottom of society at the top, and what had been 
 the top of society at the bottom. It is not neces- 
 sary for my purpose in this article to describe 
 either the social and political wrongs which abso- 
 lutism had inflicted upon France nor the inade- 
 quacy of the remedy which the Eevolution prof- 
 fered. I am here but sketching the process which 
 throughout Europe has led to the overthrow of 
 imperialism; and for France it was overthrown 
 by the Revolution of 1789. Out of that Revolu- 
 tion, at once its product and its typical represen- 
 tative, came the last factor in that history of the 
 destruction of imperialism which was a necessary 
 preparation for the recognition and establishment 
 of the rights of men. 
 
 Professor W.M. Sloane has described Napoleon 
 Bonaparte as "the embodiment of the Revolu- 
 tion," and no so brief sentence could more accu- 
 rately characterize him. It is true that he was an 
 Italian, not a Frenchman; and that his earliest 
 training was Corsican, not French ; but it is none 
 the less true that he was a child of the Eevolution, 
 that in his person he embodied alike its virtues 
 and its defects, that by his genius he carried its 
 
24 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 influence throughout all western Europe, and that 
 he was not defeated until, on the one hand, he had 
 completed the necessary work of destruction, and, 
 on the other, had proved himself incompetent to 
 lay the foundations of a new order on the ruins of 
 the old. 
 
 The French Eevolution was the coronation of 
 self-will by a great nation. The law which should 
 restrain, and the Church which should guide, had 
 both failed utterly, hopelessly, irremediably; the 
 pilot was ousted, and the passengers took posses- 
 sion of the vessel and undertook to pilot it without 
 any knowledge of the laws of navigation. There 
 was no one to restrain, no one even to guide the 
 passions of the hour; to-day a triumphant multi- 
 tude conducted the king into Paris, to-morrow to 
 the guillotine; now it screamed itself hoarse in 
 the glorification of the Goddess of Eeason, now in 
 brutal triumph at the execution of her chief priest 
 Eobespierre. Napoleon Bonaparte was an em- 
 bodiment of this spirit of self-will. His senti- 
 ments were sometimes of the noblest, sometimes of 
 the basest; he is alternately a hero and a brigand, 
 a Marcus Aurelius uttering the sentiments of a 
 saint and a Nero doing the deeds of a demon, a 
 lover of liberty and the most imperial Caesar of 
 European history : but he is always uncontrolled. 
 Various are the forces which operate to restrain 
 men from following too absolutely the impulse of 
 the hour, — law, public opinion, conscience, reli- 
 gion. None of these influences did Napoleon 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 25 
 
 linow. From the initiation of his Egyptian cam- 
 paign he knew no law but his own will; he was 
 throughout his life fighting the public opinion of 
 Europe, and was the creator of the public opinion 
 of France; conscience he had none; and religion 
 he regarded not as a power to which he must be 
 subject, but as an instrument which he could use 
 to subjugate others to his will. 
 
 Thus, for the fifteen years in which he ruled 
 France, Europe saw an empire in arms dominated 
 by its own self-will, unruled by law, uninfluenced 
 by public opinion, ungoverned by conscience, un- 
 restrained by religion. Yet we can now see, what 
 even such a prophetic spirit as Edmund Burke 
 could not see at the time, that the great destroyer 
 was completing the work of Luther and Copernicus 
 and Bacon and Cromwell and Voltaire and Eous- 
 seau. Luther had destroyed the spiritual author- 
 ity of ecclesiastical imperialism; Copernicus and 
 Bacon had overthrown its intellectual supremacy; 
 Cromwell had set an example for the rest of Eu- 
 rope to follow in teaching the lesson that kings 
 are the servants, not the masters, of the people; 
 Voltaire and Kousseau had prepared the way for 
 a similar lesson to be taught, not only in France, 
 but, through the power of France, in Italy, Spain, 
 Austria, and Germany. The Napoleonic cam- 
 paigns completed their work : destroyed imperial- 
 ism in Spain and with it the Inquisition; in Italy 
 and with it the military support of the temporal 
 power of the Pope; in Austria and so prepared 
 
26 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 the way for the quasi-emaneipation of Hungary; 
 in the German principalities and so made possible 
 the unity of Germany. Constitutional govern- 
 ment in Europe dates from the beginning of the 
 present century, — that is, from the French Revo- 
 lution. The State House in Boston and the Capi- 
 tol in Washington are the oldest buildings in the 
 world occupied by a popular assembly. The Eng- 
 lish Parliament is older than the American Con- 
 gress, but the Houses of Parliament are more 
 modern; while the Spanish Cortes, the Italian 
 Parliament, the German Eeichstag, the Austro- 
 Hungarian Reichsrath, and the French Parliament 
 are all children of the nineteenth century. When 
 the sword of Napoleon had thus made possible the 
 organization of a new social order, his sword was 
 taken from him; the new imperialism which he 
 had attempted to found on the ruins of the old fell 
 in his fall at Waterloo, and the way was left open 
 for those constructive processes which were carried 
 on under Castelar in Spain, under Cavour in Italy, 
 under Bismarck in Germany, under Gambetta in 
 France. 
 
 It is not necessary for my present purpose to 
 do more than recall in the briefest fashion these 
 constructive efforts of the present century. Bour- 
 bonism was reinstated wherever the Napoleonic 
 era had overthrown it. The Holy Alliance, most 
 unfitly called, aimed not only to reestablish abso- 
 lutism throughout all Europe, but to reinstate it 
 on this side of the ocean. The miscalled Monroe 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 27 
 
 Doctrine, English, not American, in its origin 
 (for it was suggested by Canning and accepted by 
 Monroe), gave a halt to this effort by foreign 
 powers to export imperialism to the American con- 
 tinent. At first success attended the effort in 
 Europe, but the reaction was short-lived. 
 
 In France the people, thoroughly awakened out 
 of the sleep of centuries by Napoleon's cannon, 
 could not be put to sleep again. Kevolution fol- 
 lowed revolution. Napoleon III. did, indeed, con- 
 struct a new Csesarism out of the ruins of that 
 which his uncle had constructed; but the Bastile 
 could not be rebuilt, nor the spirit of liberty be 
 entirely repressed. The awful and splendid genie 
 of the lamp, released from his imprisonment, re- 
 fused to return to it again. The self-constituted 
 defender of the Church became, despite himself, 
 the instrument for the overthrow of the temporal 
 power of the Pope in Italy; and when his empire 
 crumbled at Sedan, there were ready a Thiers and 
 a Gambetta to organize a republic which, in spite 
 of emeutes by Anarchists and Socialists, and in 
 spite of the advocates of the different forms of 
 absolutism, happily fighting among themselves, has 
 grown in wisdom and in strength. If the Church 
 has not been wholly separated from the State, the 
 State is emancipated from the Church, and Pro- 
 testantism has gained the right to contest the 
 claim of Rome for supremacy in the religious 
 realm. If the schools are not all that a republic 
 needs, they are no longer the means of maintain- 
 
28 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ing unquestioning obedience to the authority of 
 an infallible Church. If the ambition of glory 
 which fifteen years of military ambition kindled 
 throughout France is not wholly laid, the spirit 
 of militarism is not the supreme power it once was ; 
 the "man on horseback" is no longer the terror 
 of industrial France, and, if the trial of Dreyfus 
 came short of justice, it successfully asserted the 
 supremacy of the civil over the military authori- 
 ties. 
 
 In Spain as in France, though revolution fol- 
 lowed revolution, and every form of government 
 was tried in succession, there was no basis in either 
 a common national spirit nor a popular education 
 for a free commonwealth. The people, still cowed 
 by the domination of an Inquisition, although the 
 Inquisition was destroyed, are a prey to office- 
 holders, political and ecclesiastical. The descend- 
 ants of a nation which equipped the Armada proved 
 at Santiago and Manila how utterly Spain had 
 failed to keep up with the progress of the age ; the 
 brief and unequal conflict involved in the recent 
 Spanish-American war is chiefly valuable as an 
 object-lesson of the relative strength and weakness 
 of a nation founded on the schoolhouse and one 
 founded on the Inquisition, the one on the right of 
 every man to think for himself, the other on the 
 duty of common men to accept without question the 
 thoughts of their superiors. 
 
 The emancipation and unification of Italy has 
 been achieved by spiritual rather than by military 
 
THE CONFLICT OP THE CENTURIES 29 
 
 forces. The conscience of Europe had been awak- 
 ened, and when Gladstone in his famous letter pro- 
 tested against the cruelty of imperialism in Italy, 
 it responded as it did not to the no less trenchant 
 appeals of Voltaire a century before. It was thus 
 possible, as before it would not have been possible, 
 for Cavour to make the freedom and unity of Italy 
 a European question and compel the cooperation of 
 the Powers against imperialism in the very source 
 and fountain of its power. When, in 1870, the abo- 
 lition of the temporal power of the Pope was finally 
 effected, it was effected for all time, and with it 
 the danger of the permanent reestablishment of the 
 old imperialism in either Church or State west of 
 the Eussian boundary was forever destroyed. 
 
 It is still true that eternal vigilance is the price 
 of liberty; but it is also true, as it once was 
 not, that all the liberty which they are competent 
 to exercise can be had by any people in western 
 Europe, if they are willing to pay the price. In 
 Germany perhaps more than in any other state 
 there remains something of the spirit and more of 
 the power of the old imperialism. But the unity 
 of Germany has created an organization which is 
 capable of freedom, and the spirit of Luther, though 
 without his religious faith, is slowly but surely 
 possessing the nation. A recent writer in " The 
 Outlook " has thus briefly characterized the earlier 
 steps in a process not yet completed : — 
 
 In 1815 Germany emerged from the Congress of 
 Vienna divided into thirty-nine little states, but in 1815 
 
30 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 was born the man who was to weld them into one. So- 
 ciety was then organized on the old patriarchal basis : 
 at the bottom was the peasant ; above him was the gna- 
 dige Herr ; above him Unser AUergnadigster Herr, the 
 King, who lived in Berlin or Munich or Dresden ; and 
 above him, the Herr Gott in heaven. The statesman 
 who was born in 1815 brought about the third great 
 event of the nineteenth century in Europe, the unifica- 
 tion of Germany. Though an aristocrat, he changed a 
 multitude of little states, as Italy had been changed, by 
 the spirit of nationalism, through centralization, towards 
 democracy.^ 
 
 This is not the only case in the history of the 
 world in which one who was essentially an absolut- 
 ist has pushed forward the cause of human rights 
 and laid foundations for a free state. Hildebrand 
 transforming a political into an ecclesiastical em- 
 pire; William the Conqueror welding together the 
 fragments of provincial England into one body 
 politic; Napoleon I. overthrowing empires in the 
 name of liberty by a military empire more absolute 
 than they, but destined to fall in pieces because 
 hostile to the interests if not to the suffrages of 
 its citizens; Napoleon III. calling himself De- 
 fender of the Church, yet preparing by the victo- 
 ries of Magenta and Solferino for the overthrow 
 of the temporal power of the Pope ; Bismarck rul- 
 ing with the assumed authority of "Herr Gott in 
 Himmel," yet making an empire which the free 
 school, free thought, and a free Parliament are 
 I The Outlook, July 14, 1900, p. 648. 
 
THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES 31 
 
 sure to make truly free, — all furnish signal exam- 
 ples how a Power higher than the highest overrules 
 the rulers, and achieves through their wills the 
 purpose of a will they did not themselves under- 
 stand. 
 
 In history each epoch develops silently and grad- 
 ually out of the preceding epoch, as dawn succeeds 
 the night and day the dawn; but, in so far as any 
 date can ever be given to mark a great transition, 
 it may fairly be said that with the foundation of 
 the German Empire in 1871 the age of conflict 
 between Hebraism and Eomanism came to its end, 
 and that henceforth the chief problem of the Occi- 
 dent is, not how to escape the perils of imperialism, 
 military or ecclesiastical, but, the supremacy of 
 that imperialism having forever passed away, how 
 to solve the problems of life which are given to 
 humanity to solve in the free air of the nineteenth 
 and twentieth centuries. What those problems 
 are, and in what direction we are to look for their 
 solution, will be subject of consideration in the 
 future lectures of this course. 
 
LECTUKE II 
 
 THE 6EOWTH OF DEMOCEACT 
 
 In the previous lecture of this course I have en- 
 deavored to show how, in the conflict of eighteen 
 centuries between the principles of the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth and those of the Koman Empire, 
 the latter was, by successive processes, overthrown 
 in western Europe : first, by the transformation of 
 the Eoman Empire from a military into an ecclesi- 
 astical empire ; next, by the denial of the author- 
 ity of the Church by Lutheranism, and the denial 
 of the infallibility of the Church by the new philo- 
 sophy; finally, by the forcible destruction of the 
 military remnants of Eoman imperialism by the 
 swords of Cromwell and of Napoleon. In this 
 article I propose to trace the historical process by 
 which the fundamental principle of the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth has grown into general accept- 
 ance as the foundation of a new and democratic 
 order. 
 
 I. Whatever may have been the teaching of the 
 Hebrew prophets, some of whose utterances were 
 certainly more catholic than the spirit of the peo- 
 ple, the Hebrew race was possessed by a spirit 
 of brotherhood at once inclusive and exclusive; it 
 
THE GROWTH OP DEMOCRACY 33 
 
 included all of the race of Abraham, and excluded 
 all the rest of mankind. The most that liberalism 
 could claim was a secondary place for the proselyte 
 who by baptism had been adopted into the race of 
 Abraham. This exclusive spirit is illustrated by 
 the Temple at Jerusalem, in which no Gentile was 
 allowed to pass beyond the Court of the Gentiles, 
 under penalty of death ; by the egotistical belief of 
 the Hebrews that they were the chosen people 
 of God, — for the choice of a particular race out 
 of the world by God necessarily implies that the 
 rest of the world is left by him in darkness and 
 disfavor ; by their anticipation of the Kingdom of 
 God, in which Jerusalem should be a world-cap- 
 ital, the Temple a world-centre, the Hebrew nation 
 the mistress of the world, and all other races either 
 in subjection to it or shining, if at all, only by a 
 reflected light derived from the Hebrews. When, 
 in Christ's first sermon, he intimated, though with 
 the greatest tact and in the gentlest and most indi- 
 rect manner, that God cared for Gentiles as well as 
 for Jews, he was mobbed; and the proximate and 
 immediate cause of the popular feeling against him 
 in Jerusalem, which made possible his crucifixion, 
 was his explicit and daring declaration that God had 
 rejected the Hebrew people and would build his 
 kingdom anew upon another foundation. When 
 Paul first went out from Palestine to preach to the 
 Gentiles, it was against the opposition of a large 
 party in the nascent Christian Church, who could 
 not believe his radical doctrine that God is the 
 
34 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Father not only of the Jews but also of the Gen- 
 tiles. In short, the Hebrews believed in what 
 seems to us a very narrow doctrine of election: 
 they believed that religion was only for the Jews, 
 and God was the God of the Jews only. 
 
 As the Christian Church grew by accretions 
 from the Greek and Roman world, this doctrine 
 of national election necessarily disappeared. 
 Greeks and Romans would not and could not be- 
 lieve that God was the God only of the Jews, that 
 salvation was salvation only for the Jews, and that 
 they could come into the Church of God and have 
 his favor only by sufferance as adopted Jews. A 
 new and broader doctrine of election therefore 
 took the place of the Hebrew doctrine. The new 
 faith was also at once inclusive and exclusive ; it 
 assumed definite barriers; but they were changed. 
 In the Catholic Church, composed as it was in un- 
 equal parts of Jews and Gentiles, the doctrine soon 
 became dominant that God is the God of all the 
 baptized. There was still a race; but it was a 
 spiritual, not an ethnic, race; there were still lim- 
 itations, but they were ecclesiastical, not blood, 
 limitations. Whoever was baptized was brought 
 by baptism into personal relations with God; who- 
 ever was not baptized was left forever outside his 
 grace. And this is still the doctrine of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. "Infants dying unbaptized," 
 says the Catholic Dictionary, " are excluded from 
 the kingdom of heaven, although, according to the 
 opinion now universally held, they do not undergo 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 35 
 
 suffering of any kind in the next world." The 
 Catholic faith was not always so hopeful, however, 
 for the Catholic Dictionary is also authority for 
 the statement that the merciful suggestion of one 
 theologian "that God might commission angels to 
 confer baptism on infants who might otherwise 
 perish without it," found no general acceptance; 
 while, on the contrary, "the theologians of the 
 Augustinian order held an opinion at the opposite 
 pole, viz., that the infants in question were pun- 
 ished both by exclusion from heaven and by posi- 
 tive pain, though much less pain than is inflicted 
 on those who die in actual mortal sin ; " and it 
 adds, "This undoubtedly is the opinion of St. 
 Augustine." What was the orthodox opinion 
 respecting the fate of unbaptized heathen, Dante 
 graphically illustrates : — 
 
 So he set forth, and so he made me enter within the 
 first circle that girds the abyss. Here, so far as could 
 be heard, there was no plaint but that of sighs which 
 made the eternal air to tremble : this came of the woe 
 without torments felt by the crowds, which were many 
 and great, of infants and of women and of men. The 
 good Master to me, " Thou dost not ask what spirits are 
 these that thou seest. Now I would have thee know, 
 before thou goest farther, that they sinned not ; if they 
 have merits it sufficeth not, because they had not bap- 
 tism, which is part of the faith that thou believest ; and 
 if they were before Christianity, they did not duly wor- 
 ship God : and of such as these am I myself. Through 
 such defects, and not through other guilt, are we lost. 
 
36 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 and only so far harmed that without hope we live in 
 desire." ' 
 
 Paul, using Jewish philosophy to broaden the 
 Jewish conception of God, had insisted that God 
 was not confined in his choice to any race; he 
 might, if he pleased, choose a pagan, and he might, 
 if he pleased, pass by a Jew. John Calvin, partly 
 resting on the authority of Paul, partly employing 
 his method, used a similar argument against the 
 baptismal election of the Eoman Catholic Church. 
 He insisted that God was not confined within either 
 national or ecclesiastical lines; he might choose 
 whom he liked and he might pass by whom he liked. 
 Whether Calvinism was, in the intention of John 
 Calvin, a broadening faith or not, — a question not 
 necessary here to consider, — it was so in its effect. 
 It opened the way for a supposed choice by God of 
 Jews who had lived before Christ, of pagans who 
 had lived without a knowledge of Christ, and of 
 infants who had died before they were able to 
 exercise faith in Christ. In lieu of the Catholic 
 doctrine of election which sent all infants to a 
 Limbus Infantium where they would be forever 
 excluded from heaven, the Calvinistic doctrine of 
 election allowed that "elect infants, dying in in- 
 fancy, are regenerated by Christ, through the 
 Spirit, who worketh when and where and how he 
 pleaseth;"^ and also mercifully left the hopeful 
 
 ^ Dante : The Inferno, Canto V., Charles Eliot Norton's Trans- 
 lation. 
 
 ^ Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. x., § in. 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 37 
 
 believer to entertain the pleasing faith that all in- 
 fants are elect and therefore all infants are saved. 
 At the same time it opened a similar door for "all 
 other elect persons, who are incapable of being 
 outwardly called by the ministry of the word.''^ 
 Calvinism, as interpreted by the Westminster Con- 
 fession of Faith, does not involve the damnation of 
 infants nor of the heathen; respecting both, its 
 attitude is that of agnosticism. The election of 
 Calvinism is broader than that of Romanism, as 
 the election of Eomanism is broader than that of 
 the popular conception in Judaism. 
 
 Arminianism still further broadened the doc- 
 trine of election, though it still maintained a line 
 of exclusion and inclusion. That line, however, 
 was not racial, nor ecclesiastical, nor theological; 
 it was not drawn by birth, nor by divine decree, 
 but by human choice. The most striking practical 
 manifestation of this new doptrine of election is 
 that afforded by the history of the rise of Metho- 
 dism in England; and perhaps as unprejudiced a 
 history of that movement i as exists is the one fur- 
 nished by Lecky in his " History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century." ^ The leaders of the move- 
 ment, says Lecky, "were never tired of urging 
 that all men are in a state of damnation who have 
 not experienced a sudden, violent, and supernat- 
 ural change." This supernatural change was based 
 upon a conscious repentance of sin, a self -surrender 
 
 ^ Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. x., § IIL 
 " Vol. u., oh. ix. 
 
38 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 to the will of God, an acceptance of Jesus Christ 
 as Lord and Saviour, and was accompanied or 
 followed by "an absolute assurance of salvation 
 and by a complete dominion over sin." The rap- 
 turous experiences incident to the preaching of a 
 new and larger hope have passed away ; the philo- 
 sophy of the change called conversion has under- 
 gone changes ; but the Methodist or Arminian doc- 
 trine of election remains substantially unchanged. 
 It is, in a word, that God chooses all who choose 
 him. God is regarded as the Father, not merely 
 of a race, a baptized, an elect, but of all who, 
 accepting his gift of life, become conscious sharers 
 of that life with him. 
 
 Even this is not broad enough for the broad- 
 ening life of man. The doctrine of what may, for 
 want of a better name, be called the New Theology 
 is that God is the universal Father; that he chooses 
 the Jews and also the Gentiles, the baptized and 
 also the unbaptized, the elect and also the non- 
 elect, the repentant and also the unrepentant; that 
 he is the Father of the prodigal son as of the elder 
 brother; the Saviour of Zaccheus as of Peter, 
 James, and John; that he loves the whole world; 
 that Christ lived and died to save the whole world ; 
 that universal redemption is God's purpose; that, 
 if all men are not brought at last to holiness and 
 life, it will be because his purpose is frustrated 
 and his love disappointed; that, in a sentence, to 
 quote Dr. George A. Gordon, of Boston, "God 
 has a Christian purpose toward our entire human- 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 39 
 
 ity," and, "if God shall succeed, universal salva- 
 tion will be the final result. "1 Such is the out- 
 come of that gradually widening process by which 
 the spiritual vision of man has been extended and 
 his spiritual sympathies enlarged, from a faith 
 that God is the Father only of the Hebrew peo- 
 ple, to the faith that he is the Father of the 
 whole human race, regardless alike of national, 
 ecclesiastical, theological, or even ethical bounda- 
 ries. 
 
 And the nature and work of religious institutions 
 has changed with the changing philosophy of reli- 
 gion. The Jews made little or no attempt to 
 extend their faith beyond their own nationality; 
 the baptism of the people was the chief objective 
 point of the Roman Catholic missions, nor was 
 there any considerable attempt to instruct the rea- 
 son or change the conscience or the moral life of 
 men until by baptism they had come within the 
 supposed reach of God's blessing; Calvinism made 
 little endeavor to carry gospel influences beyond 
 the geographical boundaries which Providence had 
 indicated as those set by his sovereign decree as 
 the limits of practical Christian endeavor ; mission- 
 ary work in the modern sense of the term was in- 
 itiated, at least so far as the Protestant Church is 
 concerned, by the Moravians and the Methodists 
 in the eighteenth century, but by them was con- 
 fined to securing that supernatural change which 
 they deemed essential to the favor of God ; under 
 ^ The New Puritanism, p. 163. 
 
40 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the spur of the larger hope, the missionary move- 
 ment of to-day includes schools, colleges, hospitals, 
 orphanages, college settlements, boys' clubs, kin- 
 dergartens, — in brief, a whole host of instrumen- 
 talities which absolutely though quietly ignore alike 
 the limitations of race, of baptism, of divine decree, 
 and of supernatural conversion, fixed by the earlier 
 theologies. The gift of divine life is coming to be 
 regarded, if it is not already regarded, as intended 
 for the whole race, regardless of blood, baptism, 
 divine election, or even human choice; and this 
 extension of faith and hope is to be found, though 
 not in equal degree, in the Jewish rabbi, the 
 Roman Catholic priest, the Presbyterian preacher, 
 the Methodist evangelist, and the Liberal philan- 
 thropist. 
 
 II. The change which has taken place in the 
 conception of government is quite as radical as 
 that in the conception of religion. 
 
 Aristotle draws clearly the distinction between 
 two forms of government : " In the government of 
 slaves, though the interest of the natural slave and 
 natural master are really identical, yet the object 
 of the rule is, nevertheless, the interest of the mas- 
 ter and is that of the slave only incidentally, be- 
 cause if the slave is destroyed it is impossible that 
 the master's government should be maintained. 
 On the other hand, in the rule of children or wife 
 or a whole household, the end is either the good of 
 subjects or some common good of rulers and sub- 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 41 
 
 jects alike." ^ The doctrine that political govern- 
 ments exist and should be administered for the 
 benefit of the governors, not for the benefit of the 
 governed, was clearly a popular doctrine, as it cer- 
 tainly was the common practice, in ancient time. 
 In Plato's "Republic" Thrasymachus thus, with 
 cynical frankness, defines it: "Might is right; 
 justice is the interest of the stronger." And he 
 keenly satirizes the opposite view that government 
 exists for the benefit of the governed. 
 
 "You fancy," he says to Socrates, "that a shep- 
 herd or neatherd fattens or tends the sheep or oxen 
 with a view to their own good and not to the good 
 of himself or his master; and you further imagine 
 that the rulers of states, who are true rulers, never 
 think of their subjects as sheep and that they are 
 not studying their own advantage day and night." ^ 
 It is not improbable that Thrasymachus is set up 
 by Socrates only to be knocked down again, for 
 this was quite the Socratic method : but it is evi- 
 dent that the doctrine which he defends was really 
 maintained in his time, else Socrates would not 
 have thought it worth attacking. 
 
 We need not, however, go back to ancient times 
 to find either defenders of this doctrine that gov- 
 ernment exists for the benefit of the few, or for 
 illustrations of governments founded upon it. Two 
 striking illustrations are afforded at a much later 
 period, one by Great Britain, one by France. 
 
 1 Aristotle : Politics, Book HI., oh. vi. 
 ' The BepuUic, Book I. 
 
42 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 In the eighteenth century Great Britain gov- 
 erned her colonies undisguisedly, openly, avowedly, 
 upon the principle cynically avowed by Thrasy- 
 machus that "justice is the interest of the stronger." 
 Her whole colonial policy was founded on the doc- 
 trine that government exists for the benefit of the 
 governors. "The general sentiment," says AUeyne 
 Ireland,^ "in regard to the colonies, during the 
 period of the old colonial system, was that they 
 existed merely for the benefit of the sovereign 
 state ; that they were a national asset which should 
 be made to yield as much profit as possible to the 
 mother country." ^ Green, in his "History of the 
 English People," while offering some explanations 
 of this sentiment, is not less explicit in his recog- 
 nition of it. "England," he says, "looked on 
 America as her noblest possession. It was the 
 wealth, the growth of this dependency which more 
 than all the victories of her armies was lifting her 
 to a new greatness among the nations. It was the 
 trade with it which had doubled English commerce 
 in half a century. Of the right of the mother 
 country to monopolize this trade, to deal with this 
 great people as its own possession, no Englishman 
 had a doubt." ^ Lecky, in his "History of Eng- 
 land in the Eighteenth Century," is more explicit 
 than either Green or Ireland. "England," he 
 says, "made it a fixed maxim of her commercial 
 policy to repress the prosperity of her colonies by 
 
 1 Alleyne Ireland : Tropical Colonization, p. 7. 
 ^ History of England, iv. 199. 
 
THE GROWTH OP DEMOCRACY 43 
 
 crushing every industry that could possibly com- 
 pete with the home market." ^ 
 
 Nor was it America alone that suffered from 
 this doctrine that government is for the benefit of 
 the governors and that "justice is the interest of 
 the stronger." A plausible argument might be 
 framed for the application of this doctrine to the 
 American colonies. The continent had been taken 
 possession of by Great Britain ; she owned the land 
 by right of conquest; she had bestowed it by char- 
 ters upon the colonists who were her lessees ; she 
 had expended money in defending them from the 
 Indians ; she had furnished arms and men to them 
 in the wars against the French ; they were bound 
 to her by ties of gratitude ; they ought to be will- 
 ing to repay the debt by making their policies 
 subservient to her interests. Such was the Tory 
 argument then ; its echoes are still to be found in 
 literature. But no such arguments could be pro- 
 duced to defend the spoliation of the East Indies, 
 and the spoliation of the East Indies was more 
 open, more flagrant, more high-handed by far than 
 the inequitable government of the American colo- 
 nies. India was handed over as a private pos- 
 session to a private corporation. The nominal 
 sovereignty remained in Indian Princes, the real 
 sovereignty was delegated to the East India Com- 
 pany. It used the name and authority of native 
 rulers to earn dividends for English stockholders. 
 The system, corrupt at its fountain head, corrupted 
 1 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 11. 
 
44 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 all who administered it. The government of India 
 became a system of organized and unorganized 
 pillage, the latter founded on the former. When 
 Lord Clive went out the second time to India, he 
 declared that "every spring of the Government 
 was smeared with corruption; that principles of 
 rapacity and oppression universally prevailed, and 
 that every spark of sentiment and public spirit 
 was lost and extinguished in the unbounded lust 
 of unmerited wealth." 1 And Lord Clive was not 
 a purist in political morals; he had gone out to 
 India as a youth, a penniless clerk; he had re- 
 turned at the age of thirty-four with a fortune of 
 more than two hundred thousand dollars a year, 
 besides bestowing in gifts to his relatives two 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars more. The 
 protests against this corruption fell on deaf ears. 
 In vain Lord Chatham maintained that it was 
 both the right and the duty of Great Britain to 
 assume the sovereignty which she ought never to 
 have relinquished. The argument that a charter 
 is inviolable and that vested rights are an invinci- 
 ble bulwark against all assailants of gigantic wrongs 
 was too strong for him. In vain was it pointed 
 out that if the powers of sovereignty are delegated 
 to a commercial company they will be employed^ 
 for commercial purposes. In vain were public 
 exposures of the enormities to which such a travesty 
 of government inevitably led, — exposures unhap- 
 pily in that age not as public as they would be in 
 ^ Lecky : History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 518. 
 
THE GROWTH OP DEMOCRACY 45 
 
 ours with its free press and its universal reading. 
 Officers of the company refused to pay the customs 
 which constituted the chief source of government 
 revenue; sold to natives for large sums a similar 
 exemption; forbade natives to deal in goods in 
 which they themselves dealt; compelled them by 
 imprisonment or even flogging to buy of the Eng- 
 lish official at his own price ; in one recorded in- 
 stance compelled a native peasant to plough up his 
 poppy field that his poppies might not interfere 
 with their monopoly. In spite of all, it may well 
 be doubted whether the East India Company's 
 rule would have ended to this day, had not their 
 agents and sub-agents robbed the corporation as 
 well as the natives, and brought the iniquitous sys- 
 tem to an end by bringing both corporation and 
 colony to the edge of irretrievable bankruptcy. 
 
 The doctrine that government exists for the 
 benefit of the governors and that "justice is the 
 interest of the stronger " was even more forcibly 
 illustrated, and its tragic results even more terri- 
 bly manifested, in the case of Ireland. Doubtless 
 the doctrine which prevailed in England in the 
 eighteenth century that Roman Catholics have no 
 rights which Protestants are bound to respect aided 
 commercial enterprise in destroying Ireland for the 
 supposed benefit of England. It is not the first 
 time in history that religious prejudice has come to 
 the support of commercial greed. It is not neces- 
 sary for a description of this application of the 
 principle of Thrasymachus to go beyond the pages 
 
46 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 of Leeky; it is not possible within the limits of 
 this lecture to do more than hint at some of the 
 illustrations which those pages afford. England 
 disregarded the religious faith of Ireland, denied 
 her aspirations for education, confirmed the feu- 
 dalism which was being abolished elsewhere in the 
 kingdom, and aggravated it by substituting ab- 
 sentee and foreign landlords for the ancient lords, 
 and put restrictions on industrial and commercial 
 enterprises which ended by destroying it. With 
 the latter process only, we have to do here, for 
 that alone was based exclusively and avowedly on 
 the principle that England's government of Ireland 
 should be for England's benefit. The "fixed 
 maxim of her commercial policy to repress the 
 prosperity of her colonies by crushing every rising 
 industry that could possibly compete with the 
 home market " was rigorously applied in the gov- 
 ernment. Irish cattle had always been famous; 
 their importation into England was prohibited. 
 Ireland has admirable harbors ; no goods could be 
 imported into English colonies except in English 
 ships manned by English sailors. Denied the 
 privilege of raising cattle, the Irish turned their 
 attention to sheep, and soon were producing what 
 was accounted the best wool in Europe. An Eng- 
 lish Parliament forbade the exportation of their 
 wool to any other country; let them make linen. 
 They attempted linen, only to find themselves for- 
 bidden to export to British colonies any but the 
 plain brown and white linens; and to make the 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 47 
 
 prohibition more effectual, they were not allowed 
 to bring back any colonial goods in return.^ 
 
 It was not possible to apply the same methods 
 to the same extent in the American colonies ; partly 
 because they were too remote, partly because the 
 Americans were Americans and would not submit. 
 But the same spirit underlay and the same spirit 
 guided English legislation concerning those colo- 
 nies. Navigation Acts forbade all trading to or 
 from the plantations except in English-built ships. 
 Woolens manufactured in the colonies began to 
 compete with woolens manufactured in England; 
 a law, therefore, was passed which forbade all ex- 
 portation of colonial wool from the colonies or even 
 from one colony to another. America abounded 
 in iron ore. But England was dependent on iron 
 industry ; her law, therefore, forbade all iron man- 
 ufacture in the colonies: "No smith might make 
 so much as a bolt, a spike, or a nail." America 
 abounded in furs, which began to be used ia the 
 manufacture of hats. The hatters of England 
 protested, and a complaisant Parliament forbade 
 the exportation of colonial hats even from colony 
 to colony. The colonists were accustomed to send 
 provisions and lumber to the West Indies and 
 bring back rum, sugar, and molasses. A law im- 
 posed prohibitive duties on all such articles unless 
 exported from the British colonies. 
 
 The object of all this spoliation of India, of Ire- 
 land, of the American colonies, was the enrichment 
 
 1 Lecky : History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ch. vii. 
 
48 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 not even of the English nation, but of an idle aris- 
 tocracy in the English nation. The elder son held 
 the feudal estate, took the product of labor he did 
 not perform, and sent his own nominee to Parlia- 
 ment to represent a constituency which did not 
 elect him. The second son went into the army, 
 and if there were war fought bravely, for the 
 Englishman has always been brave; but in peace 
 he lived in idleness on the State. The next son 
 went into the Church, not to preach the gospel, 
 but to enjoy a living; the fourth into the navy; 
 the others, if there were others, lived off the gam- 
 ing-table. Mr. Smollett has described the motley 
 crowd at the greatest of English watering-places, 
 Bath, which this system produced : — 
 
 Clerks and factors from the East Indies loaded with 
 the spoils of plundered princes ; planters, negro drivers, 
 and hucksters from our American plantations, enriched 
 they knew not how ; agents, commissaries, and contract- 
 ors, who have fattened in two successive wars on the 
 blood of the nation ; usurers, brokers, and jobbers of 
 every kind ; men of low birth and no breeding, have 
 found themselves suddenly translated to a state of afflu- 
 ence unknown to former ages. ^ 
 
 The war of the American Revolution was begun 
 not for any theoretical doctrine that government 
 rests on the consent of the governed; not from any 
 complaint that the consent of the colonists had not 
 
 ^ Humphrey Clinker ; quoted in The American Kevolutiotif by 
 Sir George 0. Trevelyan, i. 46. 
 
THE GROWTH OP DEMOCRACY 49 
 
 been asked for Acts of Parliament or appointments 
 of governors; not because of any insignificant tax 
 on tea or paper, except as these symbolized the 
 principle that the Americans were governed not for 
 their own benefit, but for the benefit of the English 
 governors; not to gratify an aspiration for inde- 
 pendence, which at first no one desired, all depre- 
 cated, and which finally was resolved upon by the 
 people with reluctance, because they could get jus- 
 tice in no other way. Lecky truly says that "the 
 deliberate and malignant selfishness of English 
 commercial legislation was digging a chasm between 
 the mother country and the colonies, which must in- 
 evitably, when the latter had become strong enough, 
 lead to separation." One has but to reread the 
 now unread Declaration of Independence to assure 
 himself that Lecky and Trevelyan are right in their 
 interpretations of the meaning of the American 
 Eevolution. "Deriving their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed " is but a parenthetic 
 clause in the Declaration, which might be omitted 
 without mutilating that noble document. Its fun- 
 damental doctrine is "that all men are created 
 equal; that they are endowed by their Creator 
 with certain unalienable rights; that among these 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that 
 to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
 among men ; and that whenever a form of govern- 
 ment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the 
 right of the people to alter or abolish it and to in- 
 stitute a new government, laying its foundations 
 
60 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 on such principles, and organizing its powers in 
 such form, as to them shall seem most likely to 
 effect their safety and happiness."^ On this as 
 on a self-evident truth is based an indictment of 
 the King of Great Britain for having in his gov- 
 ernment disregarded these rights and endeavored 
 to establish and maintain an absolute tyranny over 
 the States. In this indictment there is nowhere 
 a count against him that he has denied, refused, or 
 violated any real or fancied right of self-govern- 
 ment. The indictment is, count after count, this 
 and this alone, that he has used the powers of 
 government not for the benefit of the governed, 
 but for the benefit of the governors. Self-govern- 
 ment is but a means to an end ; but the end of all 
 just governments, whether paternal, aristocratic, 
 or democratic, is always the same, -^ the well-being 
 of those that are governed. 
 
 It is not necessary for my purpose, nor is there 
 space in this lecture, to show how this doctrine 
 that governments exist for the benefit of the gov- 
 erned crossed the ocean, how it found a fertile 
 soil in France, how, mingling with previous teach- 
 ings to the same effect, it cooperated in producing 
 the Eevolution of 1789. Nor is it necessary to de- 
 scribe at length the Bourbon rule of France which 
 has preceded that revolution, a rule which denied 
 every right claimed as self-evident by the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, — the right to life, the right 
 to liberty, and the right to the pursuit of happi- 
 1 See further, on this topic, the next lecture. 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY SI 
 
 ness. The wholesale starvation of communes while 
 the court was feasting symbolized the first denial; 
 the Bastile with its prisoners who never knew the 
 complaints against them symbolized the second; 
 the indescribable misery of a people sunk in the 
 .despair of a degradation which language cannot 
 picture emphasized the third. No one can read 
 Taine's "Ancient Kegime," or Morse Stephen's 
 "French Eevolution," or even such a novel as 
 Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," and question that 
 the government of France under the Bourbons was 
 and had been without disguise administered for 
 the benefit of the few and in disregard of the self- 
 evident right of the many; was and had been con- 
 sistently based on Thrasymachus's definition of 
 justice as "the interest of the stronger;" was and 
 had been framed on the pattern of a slavocracy, 
 not on that of a household. Nor is it less clear 
 that the revolt of 1789 was a revolt against this 
 fundamental assumption of all feudal governments 
 that the many exist for the benefit of the few, not 
 necessarily that government rests on the consent of 
 the governed. Frederic Harrison thus interprets 
 the effect of that revolution : — 
 
 For the old patriarchal proprietary de jure theory of 
 rule, there was everjrwhere substituted on the continent 
 of Europe the popular fiduciary, pro bono publico notion 
 of rule. Government ceased to be the privilege of the 
 ruler ; it became a trust imposed on the ruler for the 
 common weal of the ruled. . . . Over the continent of 
 Europe, down to 1789, the proprietary or jure divino 
 
52 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 theory t)f privilege existed in full form, except in some 
 petty republics which were of slight practical impor- 
 tance. The long war, the reactionary Empire of Napo- 
 leon, and the royal reaction which followed its over- 
 throw made a faint semblance of revival for privilege. 
 But after the final extinction of the Bourbons in 1830, 
 the idea of privilege disappeared from the conception of 
 the state. In England the Reform Act of 1832, and 
 finally the European movement of 1838, completed the 
 change. So that throughout Europe, west of Turkey, 
 all governments alike — imperial, royal, aristocratic, or 
 repubhcan, as they may be in form — exist more or less 
 in fact, and in profession exist exclusively, for the gen- 
 eral welfare of the nation. This is the first and general 
 idea of '89.1 
 
 Such is the outcome of the second great move- 
 ment, — the political. The religious movement 
 has conducted us from a narrow faith in a God of 
 a race, a baptized, an elect, or a repentant people, 
 to faith in a God of humanity; the second has 
 conducted us from a conception of government as 
 organized and maintained for the benefit of the 
 few who govern, to a conception of government as 
 organized and to be maintained for the benefit of 
 the many who are governed. 
 
 III. Analogous to and contemporaneous with 
 this enlargement of the theological conception of 
 God and his relation to humanity, and the politi- 
 cal conception of government and its relation to 
 the governed, is an enlargement of the conception 
 of the social and industrial organization. The 
 
 ^ Frederic Harrison: The Meaning of History, pp. 189, 190. 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 53 
 
 latter movement has not reached, either in its 
 theory or its practice, the democratic realization ; 
 but the candid and careful student of history can 
 hardly doubt that its tendency is democratic, — 
 that is, a tendency toward the doctrine that wealth, / 
 
 as well as religion and government, should be or- 
 ganized and administered, not for the feV, but for ' 
 the many. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the accumulations of pro- 
 perty were almost necessarily invested in land. 
 There were some ships and warehouses; there was 
 some wealth in clothing and in gems; some money 
 was hoarded, to be loaned out at usurious rates 
 of interest; but in the main, wealth was put into 
 lands or houses. And under the feudal system 
 land was the property of the few lords of the soil; 
 indeed, in strictness of speech, it was all the pro- 
 perty of one lord, the king, from whom others held 
 it only as tenants. This theory of landownership 
 still lingers in English law, though only as fossils 
 from which the life has forever gone. That theory 
 is thus stated in the article on Feudalism in the 
 "Encyclopaedia Britannica:" "There is no such 
 thing as absolute property in land ; a man can only 
 have an estate of interest in land. Every land- 
 owner is, in the eye of the law, a tenant only. The 
 owner in fee is the tenant of some one else, who in 
 his turn is the tenant of another, and so on until 
 the last and absolute owner is reached, viz., the 
 king, from whom, directly or indirectly, all lands 
 are held." 
 
64 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 This, which is now only a theory, was in the 
 Middle Ages a sombre and sometimes a tragic 
 fact. "The state: I am the state," was no ego- 
 tistical fiction; it was the sober utterance of an 
 undoubted fact. France belonged to the Bourbon 
 king. It was his personal property, and to call 
 him to account for wasting it was regarded as an 
 impertinence. To attempt to reduce his income 
 from it was treated as a violation of private rights, 
 even more than in our time would be socialistic 
 legislation aimed at limiting the amount of pro- 
 perty a citizen may own or the amount of income 
 he may be permitted to derive from it. The lords 
 of the soil were tenants of this king, and held 
 it by the same divine right. To them as his 
 representatives, the ownership of substantially 
 all invested wealth belonged by divine right. The 
 public revenues of the state were the personal 
 revenue of the king; the revenues of the estates 
 into which the kingdom was divided were the per- 
 sonal revenues of the lords political and ecclesiasti- 
 cal. Under this system in France the public lands 
 belonged to the king directly; of the remainder 
 fully one haM belonged to the privileged classes. 
 "This large fortune, moreover," says Taine, "is 
 at the same time the richest, for it comprises al- 
 most all the large and imposing buildings, the 
 palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and 
 almost all the valuable movable property, such as 
 furniture, plate, objects of art, the accumulated 
 masterpieces of centuries." The land, so far as 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 65 
 
 it was productive at all, depended for its cultiva- 
 tion on serfs who belonged to the soil, and so to 
 the lords of the soil. Sometimes they were per- 
 mitted to preserve enough of the fruits of their 
 labor to keep them alive ; sometimes they were not; 
 then wholesale famines ensued. But both in Eng- 
 land and in France much of this land was pur- 
 posely kept out of cultivation, — part of it in pri- 
 vate parks, part of it in great forests for the royal 
 sport of hunting. The King of France in the 
 closing part of the eighteenth century averaged one 
 hunting-party every three days, — stag hunts, boar 
 hunts, wolf hunts. Such hunts were made possible 
 only by reserving great tracts of forest from culti- 
 vation in order to serve the purposes of hunting- 
 grounds. 
 
 The abolition of feudalism, the invention of 
 machinery, the introduction of manufacturing, the 
 cessation of private war, the development of com- 
 merce, and the rise of the commercial spirit have 
 combined to change all this. Whatever moral 
 injury commercialism may have inflicted on the 
 community, it has certainly accomplished a decen- 
 tralization of wealth such as could not have been 
 accomplished by any merely moral reform, how- 
 ever supported. The wealth of the world is no 
 longer represented in unimproved lands; it is re- 
 presented in mines, factories, ships, railroads, cul- 
 tivated farms. Wealth is no longer idle; it is 
 busy. Jesus Christ counseled his followers not to 
 lay up for themselves treasures on earth, where 
 
66 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 moth and rust corrupt and thieves break through 
 and steal. At that time wealth was largely repre- 
 sented by coins or gems hoarded in earthen ves- 
 sels and buried in the ground, or in rich dresses 
 hung in cupboards and worn with caution, that they 
 might not tempt the omnivorous and unscrupulous 
 tax-gatherer. Moths destroyed the garments, rust 
 consumed the coin ; thieves could carry either off. 
 Jesus counseled against hoarding; his counsel is 
 now followed almost universally; hoards are very 
 few in America. He who ties up his gold and 
 hides it in a trunk, or invests it in an extraordi- 
 nary assortment of clothing, is rightly regarded 
 as a fool. Neither moth nor rust corrupts active 
 wealth; and thieves cannot steal it. And this 
 busy wealth necessarily renders service to others 
 than its possessor. The railroad serves the farmer 
 and the railroad employee ; the factory, the opera- 
 tive and the purchaser in the market; the culti- 
 vated land, the farmer who cultivates the soil, and 
 the men and women and children whom he feeds 
 by his industry. Commercialism compels the man 
 of wealth so to use his wealth that the world 
 shares it whether he will or no. Even idle wealth 
 becomes a minister to the people. The parks are 
 no longer private property; they are the breath- 
 ing-places of the city; and the analogue of Eng- 
 land's Great Forest, the Yellowstone Park, is held 
 in trust for seventy-five millions of people. 
 
 At the same time and by the same process pro- 
 perty is broken up into fragments and has many 
 
THE GROWTH OP DEMOCRACY 57 
 
 owners while it is serving many people. We 
 hear much about the concentration of wealth in 
 America. In fact, the process of the centuries 
 has been toward decentralization, not toward cen- 
 tralization, of wealth. Never in the history of 
 the world has wealth been so widely distributed in 
 ownership, and never approximately so widely 
 distributed in the benefits it confers, as in demo- 
 cratic America to-day.^ The complaint against 
 centralization of wealth is really due to the fact 
 that the community are beginning to appreciate 
 the advantages of wealth distribution, to see the 
 evils of its concentration, and to recognize that 
 they have the power, though they do not yet know 
 how to exercise it, to prevent such concentration. 
 While thus commercialism and modern invention 
 have brought about the distribution of wealth in 
 one way, the enlargement of human sympathy has 
 brought it about in another. There never was 
 a time when man had not fellow-feeling for his 
 brother man. But his brother man was the mem- 
 ber of his own household or the member of his 
 own tribe. Those that lay beyond the horizon of 
 his household or his tribe did not come within the 
 circle of his sympathy. Later, the sympathies 
 were enlarged to include all of his class, of what- 
 ever nation. Noblesse oblige was the law of the 
 Middle Ages. The nobility owed something to 
 the nobility, but nothing to the peasant class. 
 
 1 Some statiatics on this subject will te given in a future lec- 
 ture. 
 
68 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Thanks to the influence of Christianity, to the 
 preaching especially of the lower clergy, to the in- 
 fluence of a wider intelligence, to political revolu- 
 tions, to industrial uprisings, in a word, to the de- 
 velopment of humanity, noblesse oblige has grown 
 into a spirit of humanity. When Mr. Carnegie 
 considers what he shall do with his wealth, he 
 resolves to confer benefits, not on the men of his 
 own class, but on the men who have no class rela- 
 tion to him. As I am writing these lines, it is an- 
 nounced that he has given five millions of dollars in 
 trust for the benefit, not of the circle in which he 
 moves, or the class to which, so far as in America 
 there can be said to be classes, he is supposed to 
 belong, but for the benefit of the workingmen on 
 whom his industrial prosperity has depended, and 
 for their families. Thus a catholic philanthropy 
 has cooperated with the spirit of commercialism 
 to secure a distribution of the benefits of wealth, 
 while industrial forces have done something, as we 
 shall see more clearly hereafter, to secure the dis- 
 tribution of its ownership and control. 
 
 rV. These three processes, religious, political, 
 and industrial, have been accompanied by a fourth 
 process, — educational. There are two contrasted 
 philosophies respecting the significance and end 
 of life. The one is expressed by the phrase " strug- 
 gle for existence, survival of the fittest." It as- 
 sumes that the end of life is the development of 
 a type of individual character, what Nietzsche^ 
 
 1 Frederick Nietzsche : Thus spake Zarathustra. 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 59 
 
 calls the "beyond man." It assumes that the 
 weak and the poor are to be destroyed by the pro- 
 cess, and that whatever intervenes to prevent their 
 destruction delays the desired consummation. The 
 other assumes that the end of life is the develop- 
 ment of a race in which the strong will be the ser- 
 vants of the weak, and by their service will make 
 the weak fit to survive. The end of life, accord- 
 ing to this conception, which is Christ's, is a race, 
 a divinely organized society, a kingdom of God 
 or a kingdom of heaven, on the earth. 
 
 Which of these is the sounder philosophy, 
 which most scientifically interprets life, which will 
 achieve the noblest results in character, it is not 
 necessary for my purpose here to discuss. It is 
 enough to say that the latter of these is the domi- 
 nant philosophy to-day, and all educational sys- 
 tems in western Europe, England, and America 
 are based upon it. How these educational sys- 
 tems have grown, how the principle of education 
 has been changed, the curriculum widened, and 
 the circle of pupils to be provided for increased, 
 will be subject for consideration hereafter. It 
 must now suffice to point out the fact that with 
 democratic institutions has gone a democratic ideal 
 of education. Popular suffrage and representative 
 assemblies have been accompanied with public 
 schools provided by the State for the education of 
 all the children of school age. 
 
 And this widening of education by an enlarged 
 school system has been accompanied by similar 
 
60 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 educational processes outside the school. The dis- 
 covery of the printing-press has created cheap lit- 
 erature and the cheap newspaper, and, by making 
 reading possible to all, has made education pos- 
 sible for all. Photogravure, color-printing, and 
 photographs have made art universal, while the 
 press has made literature so, and education has 
 given to the common people the ability to enjoy 
 the one and utilize the other. If the highest ideals 
 for the few have been lowered by this process, — 
 though this is by no means here asserted, — it is 
 certain that the enjoyments and abilities of the 
 many have been greatly increased. Education, no 
 less than religion, government, and industry, has 
 been transformed from the servant of an elect few 
 into a ministry to the many. 
 
 We need not go to the Church nor to the Book 
 as an authority in order to learn what God is 
 doing in his world. We may deduce his purpose 
 from his achievements. Thus, history reveals his 
 will, because it shows what ends he has accom- 
 plished through the wills, often unintelligent and 
 sometimes recalcitrant, of his children. When 
 history is interrogated, it replies that he who is 
 mightier than the mightiest has, on the one hand, 
 undermined and destroyed the imperial organiza- 
 tion typified in ancient Eome, and, on the other, 
 has built up a democratic organization typified in 
 the religious, political, industrial, and educational 
 life of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In the future 
 lectures in this series I shall assume the conclusion 
 
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY 61 
 
 to which I have thus far sought to conduct the 
 hearer. I shall assume that the object of religion, 
 of government, of industry, and of education is 
 the benefit of all the people, and I shall ask the 
 hearer to consider with me what, assuming this to 
 be the case, the organization of society should be ; 
 assuming that the end of government is the benefit 
 of the governed, what should be the organization 
 of government; assuming that the end of industry 
 is the welfare of humanity, what should be the 
 organization of industry; assuming that educa- 
 tional and religious institutions are for the benefit 
 of all, what should be the institutions of religion 
 and education. If there are any of my hearers 
 who are still inclined to the opinion that life is 
 for the few, not for the many, that its end is the 
 development of a few fine types, not the develop- 
 ment of a divine race, they and I will from this 
 point part company. 
 
LECTUKE in 
 
 POLITICAL EIGHTS 
 
 Walking in the streets of one of our great 
 cities not long since, my interest was aroused by 
 a group on the opposite corner. A hutcher-boy, 
 with a basket of meat upon his arm, was sur- 
 rounded by a group of street arabs, who apparently 
 intended a petty highway robbery ; and as it was 
 in a district where I happened to know that such 
 highway robberies had been perpetrated by boys 
 on boys, I stopped a moment to observe. Half 
 a dozen of these hoodlums so surrounded the 
 butcher-boy that he could not escape in either 
 direction, and were unmistakably endeavoring to 
 provoke him into a fight. He was quite helpless. 
 He could not fight them with a basket on his arm, 
 and if he set it down, some one of his enemies 
 was sure to pick it up and make o£E with it. His 
 irresolute look first in one direction and then in 
 another appealed to me, and I started to his assist- 
 ance. The moment I approached, the hoodlums 
 ran hooting down the street, and the buteher-boy, 
 without even looking to see what were the rein- 
 forcements which had come to his aid, started on 
 his delivery again. This simple incident set me 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 63 
 
 thinking. What right had I to interfere? Prob- 
 ably the Anarchist, and possibly the Friend, would 
 say I had none ; but I had no scruples ; and if the 
 hoodlums had resisted, I should, without hesita- 
 tion, have laid my cane on the shoulders of any one 
 of them, my chief regret being that my arm was 
 not stronger. Neither the State nor the city had 
 reposed any authority in me; if a policeman had 
 come along at that moment, he would have been 
 quite justified in arresting us all and taking us to 
 the nearest magistrate, that the matter might be 
 investigated. Certainly my authority did not de- 
 pend on the consent of the governed. If a vote 
 had been taken, I should have been voted down 
 six to one; the butcher-boy would have been my 
 only supporter. The right to interfere in such 
 a case is the right which every man possesses to 
 interfere, to prevent by force an injustice which is 
 being perpetrated or threatened by force. 
 
 Every man has certain natural rights. He may 
 forfeit them by his crimes; he may prove himself 
 unable to use them with safety to himself or to 
 others by reason of his incompetency. There may 
 be other limitations. I shall not undertake to 
 offer a complete catalogue of these rights. But, 
 speaking broadly, every man has a right to his 
 person, to his property, to his reputation, to his 
 family, and to his liberty, — this last being the 
 right to use his person and his property in any 
 way he chooses, provided he does not infringe the 
 
64 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 rights or impair the welfare of others by such use.^ 
 If any one attempts by violence to deprive him 
 of these rights, he is justified in using whatever 
 force may be necessary to repel the assailant and 
 protect himself. This right of self-defense is ab- 
 solute, inherent, fundamental. There are a few 
 people who think it better to suffer any injustice 
 rather than to employ force in self-defense. There 
 are a few who think that such was the teaching of 
 Jesus Christ. The great majority of men, how- 
 ever, do not so interpret either the ethical instincts 
 of humanity or the ethical teachings of Jesus 
 Christ. I shall not discuss this question here. I 
 shall assume the right of self-defense. 
 
 This right of self-defense involves, if necessary, 
 the right to defend others who are dependent upon 
 us for protection, when they are attacked. The • 
 same instinct which justifies a man in defending 
 his person or his property justifies him in defend- 
 ing the person and the property of his wife and 
 children. Most persons would regard this as an 
 obligation rather than as a right. They might 
 concede that a man may, if he choose, suffer in his 
 person or his property rather than resort to vio- 
 lence in his defense; but they would not concede 
 that he may, if he choose, permit his wife and 
 children to be robbed or assaulted with impunity 
 
 ^ The reader will observe, o£ course, that this classification ia 
 borrowed from the Ten Commandments, which remain after 
 nearly thirty centuries the most comprehensive, as they are the 
 most concise, statement in literature of social rights and duties. 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 65 
 
 if he has the power to defend them. There is, 
 however, no adequate reason for confining this 
 right of self-defense to the man and to his own 
 family. He is a member of a larger family. 
 Every man is his brother; all the weak are his 
 children; whoever is in peril may look to him for 
 help if it is within his power to give help. What- 
 ever a man may do to protect himself he may do 
 to protect another who is in peril. Certainly men 
 may organize for the purpose of mutual protection 
 in their rights of person, property, reputation, 
 and family. Such an organization is government. 
 It is founded, not on the consent of the governed, 
 but on the inherent right of every man to protect 
 himself and to protect his neighbor whenever either 
 is assailed, and his person, his property, his repu- 
 tation, or his family is endangered. 
 
 What is government? It is nothing less than 
 the control of one man's will by another man's 
 will. In all government there are two elements : 
 authority and power. Authority is the right, real 
 or assumed, to control the will of another; power 
 is the ability to enforce that right despite the 
 resistance, if it should be offered, of the person 
 controlled. Where either of these elements 
 is lacking, rightful government does not exist. 
 Where no right to control is claimed, there is no 
 government; Marc Antony's control of the mob 
 in Eome was not government, for Marc Antony 
 neither had, nor pretended to have, any authority 
 to require the people to act contrary to their own 
 
66 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 wills. Where there is no power to control, thera 
 is no government; while Charles I. was in prison, 
 though he was still the nominal king of England, 
 he did not govern England, for, whatever his 
 authority, he had no power. Power enforcing 
 authority is essential to government. 
 
 This power enforcing authority may be one o£ 
 several kinds: it may be in the governor's ability 
 to inflict penalty for disobedience or give reward 
 for obedience, — in this case it is political ; it may 
 be in the conscience of the governed, who yield 
 to the will of the governor either because they 
 think it is right to do so, or because they fear su- 
 pernatural penalties in another world in case they 
 do not, — in this case the power is religious ; it 
 may be in the mere sense of loyalty to a person, 
 or in the semi-hypnotic influence exercised by one 
 over the many, as by Napoleon over his soldiers, 
 — in this case it is personal. But to constitute 
 a government, the two elements of authority and 
 power must combine. There must be in the gov- 
 ernor both a recognized right and a real power to 
 control the will of the governed. If there is no 
 rightful authority, there is no rightful government; 
 might, therefore, does not make right. If there 
 is no power to enforce that authority, there is no 
 government ; directions which-' cannot be enforced 
 are advice, not law. 
 
 The real question as to the basis of government, 
 then, is this : When has one man a right by his 
 will to control the wills of other men ; to overrule 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 67 
 
 them; to substitute himself as the director of the 
 action of other men ; to make his personality domi- 
 nate another's personality? This question brings 
 us to the same result we have already reached. 
 He has a right to do this whenever that other is, 
 in the exercise of his own will, violating the rights 
 of his fellow men. How far one may claim the 
 right, as against his fellows, to injure himself is 
 & doubtful question ; but he has no right to injure 
 his neighbor. If he attempts to do so, not only 
 the injured man but any one else may interfere to 
 prevent. This right of self-protection confers au- 
 thority, and makes the government just ; power to 
 exercise this right effectually makes it strong. A 
 good government is one which is strong enough to 
 protect the rights of the members of the com- 
 munity from all assailants, and which uses its 
 strength chiefly, if not exclusively, for that pur- 
 pose and never inconsistently with that purpose. 
 There are other functions which the political or- 
 ganism may exercise, but they are not, properly 
 speaking, governmental functions. Of these I 
 shall speak in a future article. 
 
 The history of the development of government 
 confirms this view of its basis and its primary 
 functions. The family is the earliest of all social 
 organizations. It grows by a natural process, — 
 by children, grandchildren, uncles, nephews, cou- 
 sins, and, connected with it, servants or retainers. 
 The father is the governor of this little community ; 
 the authority is vested in him; that authority 
 
68 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 is sustained partly by the interest and partly by 
 the conscience of the family. He is the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the organization, and arms and 
 equips it when it is attacked by another family. 
 The common perils which threaten families of the 
 same stock create a common interest; intermar- 
 riage creates a closer bond ; the family grows into 
 a tribe. The head of the tribe is the head of the 
 larger household; its authority is vested in him; 
 he is the commander-in-chief of the tribe and 
 leads it to battle, defensive and offensive. The 
 same instinct which has knitted the family to- 
 gether unites the families in a single tribe, — the 
 instinct of self-preservation for the individual, and 
 the unselfish instinct which leads every man to de- 
 sire to protect his wife, his children, his brothers. 
 Other elements enter into and modify the simple 
 organization. The tribe engages in predatory ex- 
 peditions; in robbery and revenge as well as in 
 self-defense. But the ethical foundation is the 
 desire of each man to secure the protection to his 
 rights which confederacy with his neighbor affords, 
 and to give similar protection in turn. Thus gov- 
 ernment has in fact grown up out of the instinct 
 of self-preservation and mutual protection. This 
 instinct, not the power of the governor nor the 
 consent of the governed, is the basis of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The theory that power of itself confers authority 
 I need not consider; for, although it has been 
 affirmed in the past by eminent thinkers, it is be- 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 69 
 
 lieved in America by so very few that it may be 
 dismissed without comment. The second theory, 
 that the consent of the governed confers author- 
 ity, is more popular in America and needs fuller 
 consideration. This phrase "consent of the gov- 
 erned" is the expression of a theory of govern- 
 ment which may be epitomized thus: In a state 
 of nature every man was free ; by a covenant with 
 one another men agreed to surrender this freedom 
 for the greater advantages of government; and 
 this covenant and surrender constitute the founda- 
 tion of government. Concerning this theory four 
 things are to be said. 
 
 First : Man did not enjoy freedom in a state of 
 nature. The alternative of freedom is a control 
 of one will by another will. In a state of nature 
 every man was always liable to run against the. 
 will of another, and which will should control de- 
 pended upon the question which will was the 
 stronger. If he fished in a stream, hunted in a 
 wood, cleared off a little patch and cultivated some 
 corn, loved and married a woman and built him 
 a home, a stronger man might at any time drive 
 him from the stream, expel him from the wood, 
 seize upon his growing corn, carry o£E his wife 
 and children. The state of nature is not a state 
 of liberty. Governments grew up, not by a sur- 
 render of freedom, but to secure freedom; they 
 grew up by a gradual, unconscious, spontaneous 
 process, in order to protect the governed in his 
 rights and thus to make his freedom larger and 
 
70 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 surer. The will of the stronger was in the grow- 
 ing government formulated in laws, written or 
 unwritten; thus the individual was enabled to 
 know when he was liable to collide with another's 
 will, and thus he could, if he wished, escape the 
 collision. The stream and the wood were protected 
 by the tribe and belonged in common to the tribe ; 
 a portion of the individual's corn patch went in 
 a simple tax, but of the rest he was secure; his 
 wife and home were sacred unless the government 
 to which he belonged was overpowered in war by 
 a government stronger than his own. The change 
 from a state of nature to a state of government 
 was a change from a control constantly shifting 
 and always irresponsible to a control established, 
 formulated, and comprehended ; it was an advance 
 into a greater and a more assured freedom. 
 
 Second : There never was a contract, covenant, 
 or compact on which, or out of which, govern- 
 ment grew. Historically, no government rests 
 upon any such compact. The "social contract" 
 is a philosophical fiction. Government has grown 
 historically, not out of a compact, expressed or 
 implied, to surrender liberty for the sake of or- 
 der; it has grown out of the organization of the 
 instinct of self-protection and mutual protection, 
 and begins in the patriarchal organization of the 
 family. 
 
 Third: The doctrine of the consent of the gov- 
 erned has never afforded even a philosophical bul- 
 wark of freedom. It has been made the defense 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 71 
 
 of absolutism, as well as of freedom, and has 
 served the one advocate as well as the other. 
 Says Thomas Hohbes in "The Leviathan: " — 
 
 They that are subjects to a monarch cannot without 
 his leave cast ofiE monarchy and return to the confusion 
 of a disunited multitude ; nor transfer their person from 
 him that beareth it to another man or other assembly 
 of men, for they are bound, every man to every man, 
 to own and be reputed author of all that he that already 
 is their sovereign shall do and judge fit to be done : so 
 that any one man dissenting, aU the rest should break 
 their covenant to that man, which is injustice : and they 
 have also every man given the sovereignty to him that 
 beareth their person ; and therefore, if they depose him, 
 they take from him that which is his own, and so again 
 it is injustice.^ 
 
 Fourth: Historically, the consent of the gov- 
 erned has never had even the least effect to make 
 the government founded thereon a just govern- 
 ment. In Spain, under Philip II., there is little 
 question that the great mass of the people would 
 have voted to continue the Inquisition; their ac- 
 quiescence did not make the Inquisition just. In 
 the Eed Terror, Eobespierre and the guillotine had 
 the enthusiastic support of the people; that sup- 
 
 ^ Hobbes : The Leviathan, ch. xviii. The meaning appears to be 
 that, a covenant having been entered into between the king and 
 the people, it cannot be broken by the people without injustice, 
 so long aa the king dissents. The employment of this theory of 
 compact to justify handing over a State to the autocrat, aristocrat, 
 or plutocrat is very common ; it has probably been employed by 
 despotism far of tener than by freedom. 
 
72 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 port did not make the Red Terror a just govern- 
 ment. The Empire of Napoleon I. was founded 
 on a plebiscite which gave overwhelming indorse- 
 ment to both it and him, and was an undoubted 
 expression of the will of the great body of the 
 people of France; that plebiscite did not make the 
 Napoleonic Empire a just government. The burn- 
 ing of negroes in the South and the West is no 
 more an act of justice because it is done by a mass- 
 meeting than if it were done by a Star Chamber.- 
 Majorities do not make wrong right. "For my- 
 self," says De Tocqueville, "when I feel the hand 
 of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little 
 who oppresses me; and I am not more disposed to 
 pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me 
 by the arms of a million of men." 
 
 It is clear, then, that the consent of the gov- 
 erned does not make government a just govern- 
 ment; nor does the lack of such consent make it 
 unjust. A government is just, whatever its form, 
 which protects the members of the community, the 
 poorest and the richest, the lowliest and the high- 
 est, in their rights of person, property, reputation, 
 and family, and in their liberty to use their per- 
 sons and property as they choose so long as they 
 do not injure their neighbors. It is equally clear 
 that the consent of the governed does not make a 
 government a free government. A government is 
 free when the members of the community are free. 
 If democracy denies to an accused the right to a 
 fair trial, as democracy has done again and again 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 73 
 
 in the United States, the community is, in so far, 
 not a free community. If democracy should at- 
 tempt to spoil the rich for the benefit of the poor, 
 to deny the men of property the right to be pro- 
 tected in their property and to use their property 
 as they choose so long as they do not use it to the 
 injury of others, the community would, in so far, 
 cease to be a free community. The freedom of 
 a people is not to be identified with the form of 
 their government. England is a monarchy, and 
 Englishmen are free; the Spanish-American gov- 
 ernments are republics, and the Spanish-Ameri- 
 cans are not free. 
 
 Thus, whether we consider the true basis of 
 government, — namely, the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation and mutual protection; the history of the 
 rise and development of government, — namely, its 
 evolution from the family by the unconscious oper- 
 ation of that instinct; the true function of gov- 
 ernment, — namely, the safeguarding of natural 
 rights ; the history of the phrase " consent of the 
 governed " and the uses to which it has been put, 
 or the history of governments just and unjust, — 
 this famous phrase is seen to have as little foun- 
 dation as the philosophy of which it is the popular 
 expression. He who desires to consider this sub- 
 ject further can do so advantageously by reading 
 the essay on "The Theory of the Social Compact," 
 by A. Lawrence Lowell, in his "Essays on Gov- 
 ernment." He thus sums up his history of the 
 social compact theory of government : — 
 
74 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 "We have traced the history of this extraordinary- 
 theory from the time of its first appearance at the end 
 of the sixteenth century, and we have seen it used 
 to support the most divergent doctrines and the most 
 conflicting opinions ; for, like certain ingenious Yankee 
 inventions, it was capable of being applied to almost 
 any service, although really adapted to none. No better 
 example can be found of the fact so strongly urged by 
 Lecky, that men are chiefly persuaded, not by the logi- 
 cal force of arguments, but by the disposition with which 
 they view them. We have seen the theory started by 
 a zealous churchman to uphold his church. We have 
 seen it wielded by Hobbes in favor of absolute mon- 
 archy in England. We have then seen it taken up by 
 Locke as a shield to individual right, and in defense of 
 a limitation of the power of government ; and later still 
 by Rousseau, as an argument for an unbridled demo- 
 cracy. We have seen its working here on the Constitu- 
 tion of Massachusetts ; and, after lighting the world for 
 two centuries, we have seen it give a last despairing 
 flicker in the courts of the United States, and fade away 
 in the dim light of German metaphysics.^ 
 
 With this quotation we may dismiss from fur- 
 ther consideration both the phrase "consent of 
 the governed " and the philosophy from which it 
 springs, save for one remark pointing out the 
 probable cause of the extraordinary currency which 
 has been given to both. While the consent of the 
 governed has nothing to do directly with either 
 the justice of a government or the freedom of the 
 people who are subject to it, it has much to do 
 
 1 A. Lawrence Lowell : Mssai/s on Government, p. 182. 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 75 
 
 with its stability. A government, however just, 
 which depends, for its maintenance, on force to 
 compel obedience to its commands, and issues 
 those commands to an uneasy, restless, and discon- 
 tented people, may be just, but will not be stable. 
 Its people may be free, but they will not be peace- 
 ful. Whether the fault is in the governed or in 
 the governor, the government will lack stability 
 if governed and governor are not in accord. The 
 authority of the governor may be never so just, 
 the power of the governor may be never so great, , 
 the stability of the government and the peace ' 
 of the people under the government will not be 
 secured unless the government has the consent of : 
 the governed, express or implied, positive or nega- ; 
 tive. To other elements we must look to make 
 the United States Republic just, but the consent 
 of the governed makes it stable. At the end of I 
 an exciting election in which a President is elected 
 and a policy indorsed by only seven hundred thou- 
 sand plurality in a total of nearly fourteen million 
 votes cast, the whole country acquiesces; and if 
 any advocate of the defeated party should attempt 
 to raise a revolt. Democrats would vie with Repub- 
 licans in putting the revolt down. This fact se- 
 cures a peaceful four years to the country. But 
 it does not secure four years of justice to the coun- 
 try. If the foreign and domestic policies of the 
 Republican party were unjust before the election, 
 they are unjust still; if they were just before the 
 election, a Democratic victory would not have 
 
76 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 made them unjust. Neither the decision of the 
 majority governing, nor the consent of the minor- 
 ity governed, can have the least effect on the fun- 
 damental question, what are human rights at home 
 and abroad, and what measures may be justly 
 taken to protect them. 
 
 The basis of government is the universal instinct 
 for self -protection and mutual protection ; and that 
 is a just government, whatever its form, which 
 adequately protects the natural rights of its sub- 
 jects. 
 
 If government fulfills this function of protection 
 justly and adequately, it is a good government, 
 whatever its form; and, whatever its form, it is 
 a bad government if it fails to perform this func- 
 tion justly and adequately; it is preeminently a 
 bad government if, instead of protecting rights, it 
 violates them. 
 
 It is not always easy to determine what are the 
 rights of person, property, reputation, family, and 
 liberty which government ought by force to pro- 
 tect. A great deal of the business of the courts 
 consists in the determination of these questions. 
 They recognize, for example, that man has rights 
 of property in some kinds of animals and not in 
 other kinds; that a verbal charge of crime is a 
 violation of the rights of reputation which govern- 
 ment will punish, but a verbal charge of impro- 
 priety or indecorum is not; that to seduce a 
 daughter by promise of marriage is an offense 
 against the family which the law will punish, but 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 77 
 
 to win her consent without promise of marriage is 
 not. Who is to determine what are the rights 
 which government will protect and how they shall 
 be protected? The answer is that the existing 
 government, whatever it may be, is to determine 
 these questions. And this for a very simple rea- 
 son. Whoever possesses power is, by the mere 
 possession of that power, made responsible for its 
 right employment. To recur to the illustration 
 with which I commenced the last article ; assuming 
 that I had power to protect the butcher-boy from 
 the hoodlums, I was responsible for the right exer- 
 cise of that power. The possession of the power 
 imposed a concurrent responsibility. If, on arri- 
 ving on the scene, the boys whom I took to be 
 hoodlums had assured me that the boy whom I 
 took to be a butcher-boy was a thief and they were 
 simply attempting to recover their property, it 
 would clearly have been my duty to have investi- 
 gated the question or secured an investigation of 
 it. If, as the result of my interference, the thief 
 had made off with the property which he had 
 stolen, I should have been morally responsible. 
 In any given community the actually existing 
 government must in the first instance determine 
 what is justice in any given case. Its power to 
 enforce its judgments makes it responsible to form 
 just judgments. Might does not make right; but 
 might does impose responsibility on the one who 
 possesses it, to determine what is right. 
 
 Suppose, what not infrequently occurs, the gov- 
 
,78 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ernment forms a judgment which to the individual 
 or to a group of individuals, seems to be unjust, 
 what is the remedy ? Is there any ? or is the deci- 
 sion of the government final, so that while in the- 
 ory might does not make right, practically and in 
 effect it does? In case the decision of the gov- 
 ernment appears to be unjust to the individual 
 or individuals directly affected, there are four 
 courses, and only four, open to the injured party. 
 He may submit; he may endeavor by peaceable 
 methods to change the decision of the govern- 
 ment or the personnel of the government; he may 
 leave the community for another which is under a 
 government that seems to him more just; or he 
 may resist the government and endeavor to over- 
 throw it. 
 
 In the great majority of cases, the first is the 
 course which both prudence and morality dictate. 
 There is probably not a reader of these articles 
 of the age of manhood who has not at some time 
 suffered what he regards as an injustice, either 
 through the commission or the omission of his gov- 
 ernment, and has submitted to it with such grace 
 as he could command. All human organizations 
 are imperfect. And for those individual acts of 
 injustice due to the imperfection of human govern- 
 ment, quiet and uncomplaining submission is the 
 best remedy. 
 
 When, however, it is not a single act but a 
 series of acts, and when this series of acts becomes 
 a governmental habit, we may resort to the next 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 79 
 
 remedy. "We appeal to public opinion, and by 
 public opinion endeavor to bring about a change, 
 either in the habit of the government, or in its 
 personnel, or in its structure, or in all three. As 
 I am writing this article, such an agitation is going 
 on in the city of New York, the object of which is 
 to change both the form of the municipal govern- 
 ment, — that is, its charter, — and the personnel 
 of the government, — that is, the men who admin- 
 ister it. As we have seen, the force which enables 
 the government to serve its purpose of protection 
 of rights may be a force of arms exerted over the 
 governed, or a force of conscience exerted within 
 the governed. In nearly all modern governments 
 these two forces are combined. The more demo- 
 cratic the government, the more its force is in the 
 conscience of the governed and the less is it in the 
 physical power or force of arms of the governor. 
 The appeal to the conscience of men, therefore, 
 which would have been in vain under the Caesars 
 in the first century, is not in vain in modern 
 Christendom in the nineteenth century. The ap- 
 peal to the conscience of Europe made by Mr. 
 Gladstone in his published letters concerning the 
 cruelty and rapacity of the Bourbon rule in Naples 
 led to the overthrow of Bourbonism in Italy and 
 the establishment of Italian unity. The appeal 
 of the anti-slavery reformers in England and 
 America against slavery resulted in the overthrow 
 of slavery by peaceful measures in the British Em- 
 pire, by revolution in the United States. The 
 
80 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 appeal to the conscience of England by the Chart- 
 ists ended in the initiation of nearly all of the 
 political and social reforms which they demanded 
 and the end of much of the injustice against which 
 they complained. 
 
 A variety of circumstances may make this 
 method impracticable or ineffective. The govern- 
 ment may refuse to permit free speech or a free 
 press ; or those who suffer the injustice may only 
 know that they are suffering, but not be suffi- 
 ciently intelligent to understand why they suffer 
 and so be unable to point out the injustice and 
 demand a remedy; or they may be so poor and so 
 uninfluential that their protests are unheard and 
 unheeded. In this case the third remedy remains: 
 they may, if they can accumulate the means and 
 possess themselves of the courage, leave the com- 
 munity in which they were born and reared and 
 go to another community, where, as they believe, 
 their just rights will be better safeguarded and 
 their interests better promoted. This is the rem- 
 edy which millions of immigrants to America 
 have sought for injustice suffered in their origi- 
 nal homes. It is true that the government may 
 forbid, and in some cases has forbidden, such 
 migration. In so doing it clearly violates the 
 fundamental principle of its own existence. For 
 government, as we have seen, is formed to protect 
 the rights of man. One of the most elemental of 
 those rights is the right to go where one pleases, 
 provided one does not violate the rights of others. 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 81 
 
 Leaving one's native country to go to another 
 country does not violate the rights of any other 
 one. Such prohibition of migration assumes that 
 the governed exist for the benefit of government, 
 whereas governments exist for the benefit of the 
 governed. 
 
 When neither of these remedies is practicable, 
 there remains, as a last and terrible resort, revo- 
 lution. To justify revolution against an existing 
 government, whatever it may be, these conditions 
 must exist: the government must be an unjust 
 government; the injustice must be of such a char- 
 acter that submission to it involves evils to the 
 community greater than resistance will involve; 
 the remedy by public opinion must be denied, or 
 be unavailing; the evils must be so widespread 
 that escape from them by emigration is impracti- 
 cable except to the favored few; and, finally, the 
 discontent produced by the injustice must be so 
 widespread as to give promise of success to a move- 
 ment organized to overturn the government and 
 substitute a new one in its place. 
 
 This right of revolution, however, requires fur- 
 ther elucidation. 
 
 "Man," says Aristotle, "is naturally a political 
 animal."^ He is born into a government as he 
 is born into a family. He has no more to do with 
 the choice of the one than with the choice of the 
 other. He is a subject of parents whom he did 
 not choose; he is similarly a subject of a govern- 
 1 Aristotle : Politics, book i., chap. ii. 
 
82 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ment which he did not choose. As his hand or 
 his foot is a part of his body, so he in turn is a 
 part of the political organism, and he cannot 
 dissociate himself therefrom. He is born, not iso- 
 lated, but to be sharer in obligations and respon- 
 sibilities from which he is powerless to escape. 
 They belong to him by reason of his manhood. 
 He does not form them, though he may partici- 
 pate in changing their form. Government is a 
 growth, not a manufacture. Even if it seems to 
 be newly created, as in the case of the American 
 and French Eepublics, it is not really the govern- 
 ment, it is only the ybrm of the government, which 
 is newly created. The American Republic grew 
 out of previous English and colonial governments ; 
 the French Republic grew out of previous imperial 
 and revolutionary governments. But, as we have 
 seen, government is founded on, and grows out 
 of, the instinct of self-preservation. Its primary 
 function is to protect the rights of men ; its author- 
 ity is derived from the right of the strong to pro- 
 tect the weak. If the government into which any 
 man is born violates this fundamental principle 
 upon which all government is based, if it uses its 
 strength, not to protect the weak, but to oppress 
 the weak, it no longer has authority. It may still 
 have power, but it has by its own act destroyed 
 its authority. It may still be able to rule, but 
 it has no right to rule. The same principle of 
 self-preservation, which is the foundation of gov- 
 ernment, then becomes the justification of revolu- 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 83 
 
 tion. Man has an inherent right to protect him- 
 self; if the government founded on this right of 
 mutual protection does not protect, especially, if 
 instead of protecting, it oppresses its subjects, the 
 same right of self -protection justifies them in over- 
 turning the government, if they have power to do 
 so. In other words, when injustice in any govern- 
 ment becomes so great, so radical, so habitual, that 
 the government ceases to be a mutually protective 
 organization, then the people have a right to over- 
 turn it and substitute a new government in its 
 place, because they have an absolute, inherent, 
 and indefeasible right to be protected in their per- 
 sons, property, reputation, family, and liberty. 
 
 The mere fact that the form of government does 
 not suit the protestants is no just ground for revo- 
 lution. The justice of a government does not 
 depend upon its form, — although some forms are 
 more apt to do equal justice than other forms; it 
 depends upon the fidelity with which it fulfills the 
 function of government, — that is, with which it 
 safeguards the rights of man and promotes his 
 prosperity. The resort to force is justified only 
 by the extremest exigency. A mere distaste for 
 one form of government or desire for another form 
 of government is not such an exigency as justifies 
 resort to force to overthrow the government. 
 
 The mere fact that the government declines to 
 permit the protestants to share in the administra- 
 tion of government is not an adequate reason for 
 revolution. No man has a natural right to share 
 
84 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 in the administration of the government under 
 which he lives. He has a right to be protected 
 in his person, property, reputation, family, and 
 liberties; but if the government of which he is 
 a subject affords him such protection, adequately 
 and effectively, he has no ground on which to de- 
 mand of the government, as his right, permission 
 to participate in it. That he has no such natural 
 right is evident from a consideration of the nature 
 of government. Government is, as we have seen, 
 the control of one man's will by another man's 
 will. No man has any ground for claiming that 
 it is his natural right to control the will, or domi- 
 nate the personality, or direct the life-action of 
 another man. This right, wherever it exists, is 
 not natural and inherent; it is acquired, and rests 
 upon some other fundamental and essential right. 
 We have seen what that fundamental right is; it 
 is the right of self -protection. The only reason 
 why one man may claim the right to control an- 
 other man against his will, if he be of full age and 
 mentally and morally of sane character,^ is in order 
 to secure the protection of himself and others from 
 injury and wrong-doing. If that protection is 
 sufficiently afforded by government, he has no 
 ground for insisting on his right to participate in 
 the government, — that is, to share in that control 
 
 ^ The right of a parent, or one standing in loco parentis, to con- 
 trol the child, and the right of the sane to control the insane, need 
 not here he considered. We are considering the control of sane 
 men of adnlt age hy other sane men of adult age. 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 85 
 
 over the wills and lives of other men. The only 
 ground on which such a claim can be based is that 
 such participation of all in the government is ne- 
 cessary, in order to make the government an ade- 
 quate' protection of all. Suffrage, or participation 
 in the government, is not an end, it is only a 
 means to an end; it is not a right, it is only one 
 means to the preservation of rights. 
 
 lliat we do not believe in this country that 
 suffrage is a natural right is evident from our 
 practice. The people who live in the District of 
 Columbia cannot vote, but they are not denied 
 their natural rights. The newly arrived immi- 
 grants not yet naturalized cannot vote, but they 
 are not denied their natural rights. The young 
 man of nineteen or twenty, whose education makes 
 him much more competent to vote than many men 
 who do vote, is not denied his natural rights. 
 The man whose business interests are in New 
 York City, but whose residence is in Westchester 
 County, and who pays large taxes in New York 
 City but is not allowed to vote there, is not denied 
 his natural rights. So in those states in which 
 women are not allowed to vote they are not denied 
 any natural right. Those whose persons, pro- 
 perty, reputation, family, and liberties are ade- 
 quately secured under the government as it is now 
 organized, have no right to claim anything more. 
 A claim by any persons, whether men or women, 
 to the suffrage as a right, must be founded on the 
 assumption that their natural rights cannot be 
 
8& THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 protected in any other way ; a claim to the suffrage 
 as politic must be founded on the assumption that 
 the rights of the individual and the welfare of the 
 community will be best promoted by the extension 
 of the suffrage. A man has no more a natural 
 right to vote in a general election than he has to 
 vote in the legislature. In both cases the condi- 
 tions of the vote are determined by the existing 
 government, whatever it may be. Properly speak- 
 ing, suffrage is not a right at all; it is a preroga- 
 tive and a responsibility; and who shall exercise 
 that prerogative and who shall share that respon- 
 sibility are to be determined by the existing gov- 
 ernment, whatever that government may be. This 
 is, in point of fact, the practice of all governments, 
 including our own ; and it is a practice abundantly 
 justified both by philosophy and history. How 
 extensive the suffrage ought to be in any given 
 community is dependent wholly upon the question, 
 what conditions of suffrage, first, will secure the 
 best protection of person, property, reputation, 
 family, and liberty, and, second, will best promote 
 the general life of the community, material and 
 spiritual. 
 
 The fact that a particular government is de- 
 pendent upon another government does not of itself 
 justify a revolution. Independence is not synony- 
 mous with liberty. The two are often confounded, 
 but they are quite distinct. A government is inde- 
 pendent when it has no organic relation of subjec- 
 tion to another government; it is free when the 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 87 
 
 members of the community subject to the govern- 
 ment are protected in their persons, property, 
 reputation, family, and liberties. It is clear that 
 a government may be independent and not furnish 
 such protection, and, on the other hand, that it 
 may be dependent and furnish such protection all 
 the better because of its dependence. Spain in 
 the sixteenth century was independent; but her 
 people were not free. Canada in the nineteenth 
 century is not independent, but her people are 
 free. No State in the Union is independent, but 
 the freedom of the subjects of the various states 
 is better secured because they are dependent on 
 each other and on the Federal Government. This 
 fact that dependence may be a means of securing 
 liberty is distinctly affirmed in the preamble to 
 the Constitution of the United States: "We, the 
 people of the United States, in order to form a 
 more perfect union, establish justice, insure do- 
 mestic tranquillity, provide for the common de- 
 fense, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
 blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, 
 do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
 United States of America." These, not indepen- 
 dence, are the ends of government. When they 
 are secured, the mere fact that the government 
 under which they are secured is dependent for 
 them in part on another government, is no reason 
 for a revolution. Our own history affords a strik- 
 ing illustration of the fact that independence and 
 liberty are not only not synonymous, but may be 
 
88 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 antagonistic. The Civil War was a war between 
 independence and liberty. The South fought that 
 the Confederate States might be independent, and 
 if they had won their independence they would 
 unquestionably have established slavery for a large 
 proportion of their people. The North fought 
 to prevent their independence, and, winning the 
 battle, gave freedom to the slaves. Liberty was 
 won by the overthrow of independence. There 
 are two questions in the Philippines to-day. 
 Ought they to be independent ? ought they to be 
 free? These are not different forms of the same 
 question. Those who believe that the Philippines 
 ought not to be independent believe that if they 
 become independent they will not be free, and if 
 they become dependent on the United States their 
 freedom will be assured. They justify maintain- 
 ing the dependency of the Philippines in order to 
 maintain the freedom of the Filipinos. 
 
 The principle here laid down, that only injustice 
 in the existing government justifies a revolution for 
 the purpose of overthrowing it, finds expression in 
 our own Declaration of Independence. The war 
 of 1776 is called not inaptly the War of Indepen- 
 dence. It was; our fathers fought for indepen- 
 dence; but they fought for independence only 
 because they became convinced by long experience 
 that they could not secure justice in any other 
 way. Independence was not an end, but a means 
 to an end. This is very explicitly declared by 
 them in the document by which they justify to the 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 89 
 
 world their action. Let the reader reflect upon 
 both the preamble and the conclusion of this De- 
 claration : 
 
 When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pur- 
 suing invariably the same object, evinces a design to 
 reduce them [the people] under absolute despotism, it 
 is their right, it is their duty, to throw o£E such gov- 
 ernment, and to provide new guards for their future 
 security. 
 
 Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British 
 brethren. We have warned them from time to time of 
 attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable 
 jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the cir- 
 cumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We 
 have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, 
 and we have conjured them by the ties of our common 
 kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would in- 
 evitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. 
 They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of 
 consangfuinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the 
 necessity which denounces our separation, and hold 
 them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, 
 in peace friends. We, therefore, the Representatives 
 of the United States of America, in General Congress 
 assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world 
 for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and 
 by the authority of the good people of these colonies, 
 solemnly pubHsh and declare, That these United Colo- 
 nies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Indepen- 
 dent States. 
 
 Why ought they to be independent States? 
 
go THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Not because they are denied participation in the 
 government and representation in the Parliament; 
 nor because they prefer a republic to a monarchy, 
 or independence to dependency. These are not 
 the reasons assigned. The signers of the Decla- 
 ration affirm that the people ought to be free and 
 independent because the government to which they 
 are subject "evinces a design to reduce them under 
 absolute despotism " — that is, to set at naught 
 that protection of human rights which is the fun- 
 damental function of government, and aU appeals 
 to the conscience of the governor for justice, have 
 been made in vain. 
 
 But, although man does not make government, 
 but is born a subject of government, and although 
 he is justified in resorting to violence to overthrow 
 the government of which he is a subject only in 
 case it abdicates its rightful authority by failing to 
 fulfill its fundamental function, — that is, the pro- 
 tection of human rights, — yet he may and does 
 modify the form of government, and, in fact, there 
 are many forms existing in the world. Which is 
 the best form? 
 
 Aristotle's division of governments into four 
 forms may be accepted as adequate, subject to a 
 modification to be hereafter suggested. These 
 forms are government by one, i. e., monarchy; 
 government by a few, i. e., oligarchy; government 
 by the best, i. e., aristocracy; and government by 
 the many, i. e., democracy. The Napoleonic em- 
 pire may be taken as a type of the first; Venice 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 91 
 
 as a type of the second; England, in the eigh- 
 teenth century, as a type of the third; America 
 as a type of the fourth. There is, however, a 
 fifth form of government which Aristotle does not 
 mention, perhaps because it did not exist in his 
 time, perhaps because it is a bastard which does 
 not deserve classification with legitimate govern- 
 ments. This bastard is bureaucracy, — a govern- 
 ment by the office-holder. The most complete 
 form of bureaucracy on a large scale is that fur- 
 nished by Hussia; but all modern governments, 
 not excluding America, are more or less corrupted 
 by it. It is the only form of government for 
 which a philosopher can find no defense. 
 
 In considering these four forms of government 
 it must be remembered that the distinction be- 
 tween them is marked more sharply in philosophy 
 than in fact. Thus monarchy in its modern forms 
 is rarely government by one. The power of the 
 one is generally limited, as in Turkey, by a hier- 
 archy, or, as in Russia, by a bureaucracy, or, as 
 in France, in the eighteenth century, by the nobles, 
 or, as in England, in the nineteenth century, by 
 the common people. So, again, the power of the 
 oligarchy, which, as Aristotle has also shown, is 
 necessarily a plutocracy or rule of the rich, is lim- 
 ited by the necessity of promoting the commercial 
 interests of the community in order to promote the 
 interests of the rich. So, again, the aristocrats 
 are, by no possible method of selection yet devised, 
 wholly composed of the best; from them are ex- 
 
92 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 eluded some of the best ; into them creep some of 
 the worst. Finally, democracy is not a govern- 
 ment of all the people, but only of a large minor- 
 ity of the people. In the recent Presidential elec- 
 tion, out of a population of over seventy millions, 
 only about fourteen million votes were cast, — 
 ■that is, one in five of the population determined 
 the questions at issue. And of this fourteen mil- 
 lions Mr. McKinley's majority was only seven 
 hundred thousand, so that in fact those questions 
 were determined by only about one one-hundredth 
 of the population. The value of this fact as a pro- 
 tection against the perils of democracy I shall con- 
 sider in a future paper. 
 
 Recognizing these qualifications in the actually 
 existing governments, the question presents itself 
 as a practical and important one, which of these 
 four forms of government, — government by the 
 one, by the few, by the best, or by the many, — 
 constitutes the best form of government; that is, 
 which of these forms of government gives the best 
 promise of, first, securing protection to the rights 
 of man, and, second, of promoting the general 
 welfare of man ? Whatever government does these 
 two things in the best manner is the best govern- 
 ment. For, as we have seen, no man has a right 
 to participate in the government, or has any 
 ground of complaint because he is not allowed to 
 participate in it, provided it fulfills these two func- 
 tions of government adequately, — the first a defi- 
 nite and fundamental function, the second an in- 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 93 
 
 definite and subsidiary, though perhaps not less 
 important, function. 
 
 "We have already seen that there is no one form 
 of government which is absolutely right, making 
 all others absolutely wrong. There is no divine 
 right of either kings, oligarchs, aristocrats, or 
 majorities; the only divine right which govern- . 
 ment must recognize is the right to be protected 
 in person, property, reputation, family, and lib- 
 erty. It is also true that there is no one form of 
 government which is absolutely best, making all 
 other forms inferior. That is the best govern- 
 ment which, at the time, under the circumstances, 
 and in consideration of the intellectual and moral 
 development of the people, is best adapted to pro- 
 tect their rights and promote their welfare; and 
 the same form of government does not best accom- 
 plish these ends under all circumstances, in all 
 epochs, and with all peoples. This is not, per- 
 haps, a very popular opinion in America, but it 
 may be true nevertheless. 
 
 It is interesting to note that of the forms of 
 government mentioned by Aristotle, we have at 
 least three in successful operation in the United 
 States at the present time, and it is doubtful 
 whether any considerable number of persons would 
 wish to change radically either one of the three. 
 The family is autocratic. The father is not, in- 
 deed, an absolute despot, but a constitutional 
 monarch; and in case of extreme violation of the 
 rights or disregard of the interests of his children, 
 
94 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 an appeal lies to the government of which he is 
 a subject. But in all the ordinary matters of the 
 household his power is little less than absolute. 
 So also the organization of the secondary school 
 is largely autocratic. In some instances the prin- 
 cipal is very strictly limited in his powers by a 
 school board, in which case the government ap- 
 proximates the oligarchy, but whether with any 
 real benefit to the pupils, is very doubtful. But 
 in the best private schools the government is very 
 nearly absolutely autocratic, the remedy for any 
 real or fancied injustice being the remedy of emi- 
 gration already referred to ; that is, the pupil may 
 go to another school. But as long as he remains 
 in the school he has no participation in its govern- 
 ment; or, if he does, it is only by sufferance of 
 the principal. Political rights as such, he has 
 none. In the college the government is oligarchic. 
 It is administered almost exclusively by the fac- 
 ulty, who are under no political responsibility 
 whatever to the pupils, and under none directly 
 to the parents of the pupils. This oligarchy might 
 be described as a limited or constitutional oligar- 
 chy; that is, its powers are limited generally by 
 a written constitution, and in many cases an ap- 
 peal lies to the board of trustees, and in all eases 
 to that public opinion on which the college depends 
 for its prosperous life. But the students rarely 
 have any political power in the administration of 
 the college, or, if they do, it is a power conferred 
 by the favor of the faculty, and liable to be taken 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 95 
 
 away from them again. As a political organism 
 the college is oligarchic, and probably few would 
 wish to see it made more democratic than it is. 
 The government of the country, the state, and the 
 nation is that of a representative republic, — 
 that is, of a government administered, not by the 
 people directly, but by representatives elected by 
 the people, and really by a minority, though a 
 large minority, of the entire population. Finally, 
 we have in the town meeting in some states, and 
 in the district school meeting in others, an illus- 
 tration of a pure democracy, in which the people 
 assemble to debate questions and determine poli- 
 cies as well as to elect officials to carry those 
 policies out. The same divergences in form of 
 government are to be seen in other organizations : 
 thus, the chorus choir and the orchestra are neces- 
 sarily autocratic; the great corporation is gener- 
 ally in reality oligarchic, though it may be and 
 generally, is in form representative; and the 
 trades union is a curious combination of the oli- 
 garchic and the democratic. Similar differences 
 are to be seen in our ecclesiastical organizations : 
 the Roman Catholic Church being at least in form 
 autocratic; the Episcopal, semi-aristocratic; the 
 Presbyterian, representative; and the Congrega- 
 tional, democratic. These facts make it evident 
 that the form of government necessarily depends 
 in large measure upon the nature of the organism, 
 the function it has to perform, the capacity of the 
 people who constitute it, and the circumstances of 
 its existence. 
 
96 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 It is true that in most of the organizations men- 
 tioned above, the government is not an end, but 
 only a means to an end. That is, the organism 
 does not exist merely to govern, but also to per- 
 form other functions, — as to teach, to perform 
 music, to conduct trade, and the like. But it is 
 clear that it would be possible in some of these 
 organizations to differentiate these functions. 
 Thus, it would be conceivable that the boys in a 
 school or college should make all the rules, elect 
 all governing officers, and administer all discipline, 
 leaving the faculty simply to teach. But it is not 
 conceivable that any considerable number of either 
 teachers, parents, or pupils would desire such a 
 change. 
 
 My hearers may now, perhaps, be prepared to 
 consider, if not to accept, the next proposition, 
 — namely, that one controlling element in deter- 
 mining the question, what is the best form of gov- 
 ernment, is the mental and moral development of 
 the people who constitute the governed community. 
 In other words, government, as one of the products 
 of social evolution, necessarily depends on the 
 degree of social evolution attained by the governed 
 community. The political history of the world 
 indicates the true order of political development. 
 
 The family is the first and oldest government. 
 It is and ought to be autocratic. The tribe comes 
 next. The head of the tribe is, like the father 
 of the family, an autocrat, though his autocratic 
 powers are somewhat limited by the power of re- 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 97 
 
 sistance possessed by members of the- tribe, if the 
 autocracy becomes oppressive, and by customs 
 which have grown up' in the tribe and have all the 
 binding force of constitutional law. In other 
 words, he is a constitutional monarch. It is ex- 
 ceedingly doubtful whether any form of govern- 
 ment could be devised better adapted to the Indian 
 tribe, so long as it remains a nomadic tribe^ than 
 that which it possesses. We have given our in- 
 dorsement to this autocratic method of government 
 for the Indian by appointing over the tribe on the 
 Keservation a white autocrat, whom we caU Agent. 
 In many cases the Agency system has worked very 
 badly, because, first, the government of the Agent 
 has not been for the benefit of the governed 
 but for the benefit of the governor, and, second, 
 it has been aimed, not to prepare the Indian 
 for self-government, but to keep him in tutelage. 
 But where the Agent has been honest, capable, 
 and progressive, the results have been wholly 
 admirable. 
 
 The next step in the evolution of government is 
 the development of an aristocracy. This aristo- 
 cracy is often far from absolutely excellent; but it 
 possesses certain elements of courage, self-control, 
 and intelligence ^hich make it superior to the 
 average. It puts limits on the power of the auto- 
 crat; it demands better protection for its own 
 rights, if not for the rights of the people ; It wrests 
 from a King John a Magna Charta. Under its 
 influence political power is somewhat more diffused, 
 
98 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 and government is somewhat more equable than 
 under the autocracy. The class below the nobles 
 are awakened and stimulated by their example; 
 they in turn limit the power of the nobles, and 
 appeal to the still lower classes to aid them in 
 securing a more equal distribution of justice, ^— 
 that is, a more general and equable protection of 
 person, property, reputation, the family, and lib- 
 erty. The people under Simon de Montfort de- 
 mand and secure a representation in the House of 
 Commons. What are the rights of man, what are 
 the privileges of class, what are the distinctions 
 between the two, and what the functions and 
 therefore what the powers of government, become 
 matters of debate, each side enforcing its own in- 
 terests with reasons, and sometimes with coura- 
 geous battle. The privileges of the few give way 
 gradually to the interests of the many, and at 
 length the simple principle that governments exist 
 for the benefit of the governed, and that their 
 function is primarily the protection of the funda- 
 mental rights of man and of all men, is wrought 
 into the consciousness of the people. Then, and 
 not till then, is the community ready for a govern- 
 ment founded on the will of the majority. 
 
 Autocracy is the best government for a people 
 in its early childhood ; oligarchy or aristocracy for 
 a people in its teens : democracy for a people in 
 its manhood. What happens when a people is 
 suddenly transplanted from autocratic government 
 to democratic government, without any interven- 
 
POLITICAL EIGHTS 99 
 
 ing preparation, is illustrated tragically by the 
 French Revolution, and less tragically by the car- 
 petbag government in the South. That person, 
 property, reputation, the family, and liberty are 
 better protected in Egypt under an autocracy than 
 they would be by a government formed and ad- 
 ministered by the fellaheen will hardly be doubted 
 by any. Whether these fundamental rights will 
 be better protected in Cuba under an independent 
 democracy, or in Porto Eico under a mixed gov- 
 ernment, partly democratic partly autocratic, we 
 shall soon know. 
 
 But while there is no one form of government 
 which is absolutely right and no one form of gov- 
 ernment which is absolutely best for all peoples 
 and under all circumstances, there is one principle 
 of government which is the ultimate principle, and 
 to which all history is slowly but surely conduct- 
 ing the peoples. That principle, — for it is a 
 principle rather than a form, — is self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Government is the control of a part of the com- 
 munity by another part of the community; it may 
 be by a king, by an oligarchy, by an aristocracy, 
 by a vote of seven million voters to which the op- 
 posing six million three hundred thousand voters 
 submit, but in any case it is the control of a part 
 by a part. It is clear that the government is best 
 when the best exercise control and the less compe- 
 tent and virtuous are controlled. But it is not less 
 evident that the supreme and ultimate government 
 
100 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 is that in which the best in each man controls the 
 inferior in each man. This is self-government ; and 
 the more nearly any community approaches self- 
 government, the more nearly it approaches the 
 ultimate goal of all political organization. The end 
 of government is mutual protection against injus- 
 tice. But when the people have become so edu- 
 cated that no one wishes to do his neighbor an 
 injustice, the supreme end of government has been 
 reached, because there is no longer any need of 
 mutual protection ; and when public sentiment has 
 been so educated and developed that even men 
 who would do an injustice to a fellow-man dare 
 not do it, not because they fear a punishment for- 
 cibly administered, but because they fear the judg- 
 ment and condemnation of their fellow-men, the 
 end of government is approximated. For the ob- 
 ject of all government is to destroy the necessity 
 of any government, by developing such a public 
 conscience that no other force than that of con- 
 science will be needed to protect the rights of man. 
 But it is also evident that a government which 
 proposes to depend on the united conscience and 
 united judgment of a great body of men for its 
 means of enforcing justice, or, rather, to trust 
 thereto in lieu of relying upon an external enforce- 
 ment of justice, must have in the community a great 
 number of individual men whose judgment and 
 conscience have been educated. A great body of 
 men who are unable to govern themselves, either 
 because they lack the judgment or the conscience, 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 101 
 
 cannot constitute a community which can govern 
 itself. Self-government is not an assumption on 
 which we are to start in framing a government; it 
 is the goal which we are to reach by means of gov- 
 ernment. It is the terminus ad quern, not the 
 terminus a quo. 
 
 An educative preparation is necessary for self- 
 government in the race, as in the individual. To 
 thrust a childlike people out into the world and 
 expect them to provide for and protect themselves 
 without any previous training is as unwise, not to 
 say as cruel, as it would be to thrust the little 
 children out from a home and expect them to take 
 care of themselves. It is sometimes asked whether 
 a despotic government has ever prepared a people 
 for freedom. The answer is that no people have 
 ever been prepared for freedom except by a de- 
 spotic government. The Napoleonic empire was 
 a necessary preparation for the French Eepublic. 
 The suddenly liberated people had to learn to obey 
 before they could learn to command. A long line 
 of kings, beginning with WiUiam the Conqueror 
 and ending with Charles I., laid in England the 
 foundation for her constitutional liberties. Our 
 own preparation was made in the same school, and 
 a post-graduate education was added in colonial 
 government under an English autocratic authority. 
 No people in the history of the world have ever 
 passed directly and without intervening education 
 from a primitive or tribal^ condition of govern- 
 ment to a self-governing democracy which ade- 
 
102 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 quately protected person, property, reputation, the 
 family, and liberty, and it is safe to assume that 
 no people ever will. The question which confronts 
 self-governing countries in this beginning of the 
 twentieth century is, Shall we leave races just 
 emerging from childhood to acquire capacity for 
 self-government through the long and dismal pro- 
 cesses which have been necessary in our case, or 
 shall we serve as their guardians and tutors, pro- 
 tecting their rights and educating their judgments 
 and their consciences until they are able to frame 
 their own mutual protective associations, — that 
 is, to constitute and administer without aid their 
 own governments? 
 
 To sum up in a paragraph the conclusions of 
 this and the preceding article: Government is a 
 mutually protective association; it grows out of 
 the instinct of men to protect their own rights and 
 the rights of their neighbors; it is a just and a 
 free government when it adequately protects those 
 rights ; it is neither a just nor a free government 
 if it does not adequately protect those rights. The 
 possession of the powers of government gives to 
 those who possess such powers the responsibility 
 of determining when it is right to interfere in 
 order to prevent injustice. Man is born under 
 government, and he is to be subject to that gov- 
 ernment, unless it fails to fulfill the functions of 
 government; if it does so fail, and he cannot find 
 adequate remedy for himself and his fellows by 
 submission, protest, or migration, the right of re- 
 
POLITICAL RIGHTS 103 
 
 volution exists; because the same right to organize 
 for self-protection in government exists to over- 
 throw the government when it becomes an instru- 
 ment of oppression, not of protection. There is 
 no absolutely best form of government ; that is the 
 best form of government which, in any stage of 
 the world, in any age of human development, best 
 secures human rights; but the ultimate form of 
 government, toward which history is gradually 
 conducting the human race, is that form in which 
 every man governs himself, and therefore all men 
 partake in the common functions of government. 
 But such self-government in the community, as in 
 the individual, is a terminus ad quern, not a ter- 
 minus a quo ; that is, it is a result to be reached 
 by means of government, not a foundation to be 
 assumed on which government can be built. 
 
LECTUEE IV 
 
 ESTDUSTEIAL EIGHTS 
 
 The industrial rights of man: what are they, 
 and how are they to be secured in a democracy? 
 
 Every man has a right to the product of his 
 own industry, because it is a part of himself; into 
 it he has put a portion of his life. His life is his 
 own, therefore this portion of his life is his own. 
 The artist paints a picture; the musician com- 
 poses a symphony; the author writes a book; into 
 this picture, this symphony, this book the artist, 
 musician, author, has gone. Because the artist 
 has projected himself into the picture, the musi- 
 cian into the symphony, the author into the book, 
 this product of himself belongs to him. And 
 what is true of the artist, of the musician, of the 
 author, is true of every laborer. The shoemaker 
 projects himself into the shoes ; the carpenter into 
 the house; the loom -worker into the cloth. These 
 also are a part of the man. Into them he has put 
 his brain-work or his handiw6rk; therefore they 
 are his. This right of every man to the product 
 of his own labor is a natural right. Society did 
 not confer it; society cannot take it away. So- 
 ciety may fail to protect it, or may violate it ; but 
 the right itself is absolute. Whenever organic 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 105 
 
 law violates this right it is unjust; whenever it 
 fails to protect this right it is inefficient. 
 
 It was for this reason that slavery was unjust. 
 The injustice of slavery did not lie in the fact 
 that the slaves were ill-fed, ill-clothed, or ill- 
 housed. If it had been true that they were better 
 housed and fed and clothed in slavery than in free- 
 dom, stiU slavery would not have been justified. 
 The evil of slavery was not that families were 
 separated. If the law had provided explicitly that 
 slaves' families should not be separated, still sla- 
 very would have been unjust. The injustice was 
 not in specific acts of cruelty. If there had never 
 been a Legree, still slavery would have been un- 
 just. It was not that the slave was denied educa- 
 tion. In Kome the slaves were educated, and 
 authors, copyists, and literary men were held in 
 slavery, and slavery was not just. The wrong of 
 slavery lay in this: that personality was invaded; 
 the product of the man was taken from him; he 
 had put a part of his life out into the world and 
 he was robbed of it. Whenever and however so- 
 ciety does this, it does injustice. 
 
 So, again, if society is so organized that men 
 cannot engage in productive industry,, it is un- 
 justly organized. The command, "By the sweat 
 of thy brow thou shalt earn thy daily bread," in- 
 volves a prerogative even more than a command. 
 If society is so organized that there are large 
 masses of men that cannot, by the sweat of their 
 brow, earn their daily bread, it is unjustly organ- 
 
106 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 ized. "Enforced idleness," says Carlyle, "is the 
 Englishman's hell." There have been times in 
 the past, in the history of this country, — and if 
 the industrial organization of to-day remains un- 
 changed there will be such times in the future, — ■ 
 when thousands of men have been driven into that 
 enforced idleness which is the Englishman's hell. 
 Any organization of society which prevents masses 
 of the people from earning their daily bread by 
 the sweat of their brow, or which fails to enable 
 them so to earn it if they will to do so, is an un- 
 just organization of society. So, any organization 
 of society which, allowing men to work, still fails 
 adequately to remunerate their work, fails ade- 
 quately and rightfully to adjust the relations be- 
 tween the workers, and takes so much for the one 
 class that it leaves practically nothing for the other 
 class, or leaves them but a mere pittance and bare 
 subsistence, is an unjust organization of society. 
 The man who has put his life into his labor has 
 a right to the product of that life. If, in the 
 complexity of modern society, he is combined with 
 others in that production, he has a right to a fair, 
 just, and equable share in the product of the com- 
 bined industry. If society fails to secure it for 
 him, society is inefficient and in so far unjust. 
 
 If any section of society endeavors to prevent 
 any man from working and from enjoying the 
 product of his work, that section of society is un- 
 just. If any organization undertakes to prevent 
 any man from working when he will, where he 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 107 
 
 will, for whom he will, and at what wages he will, 
 that organization violates the essential right of 
 labor. It is not primarily the enemy of capital; 
 it is primarily the enemy of labor; for every man 
 has a right to work, and every man has a right to 
 the product of his industry. Imagine, for a mo- 
 ment, that any man should propose to place a law 
 on our statute-books providing that no man should 
 work in any special industry unless he belonged 
 to some special guild; not for one instant would 
 he have the support of the people. Not for one 
 instant would he have the support of any free 
 people. But such a law is not better, but rather 
 worse, if it be enacted by an irresponsible body 
 and enforced by violence. 
 
 The right of every man to work, and the right 
 of every man to the product of his work, are fun- 
 damental rights. There is enough to be done, 
 and the world is fruitful enough, to make it possi- 
 ble for every man, in the present stage of civiliza- 
 tion, to earn enough to support himself, his wife, 
 and his children in comfort. Any organization, 
 political or industrial, capitalistic or laborers', 
 which impugns this right, prevents this work, or 
 takes from the laborer the product of his industry, 
 whether it be industry of the brain or industry 
 of the muscles, without adequate compensation is 
 unjust. The first industrial duty of society is to 
 protect every man in his right to labor and in his 
 ownership of the fruits of his labor. 
 
 But there are large values in the world which 
 
108 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 are not the fruits of labor. There are, therefore, 
 large values in the world, the individual right to 
 which is not a natural right. 
 
 The ocean is not the product of industry. It 
 belongs to no man, and to no body of men. We 
 may call a nation mistress of the seas, but we do 
 not thereby concede that she owns the seas. By 
 international law it is generally agreed that the 
 water extending from the shore out to a line three 
 miles from the coast shall belong to the nation 
 whose coast that water adjoins; but this right to 
 the three miles of water is not a natural right. It 
 does not belong to the nation by any law of na- 
 ture. It belongs to the nation because the nations 
 have, for mutual convenience, agreed that it shall 
 possess it. It is a purely artificial right, and that 
 it is an artificial right is evident from the fact that 
 the artificial boundary has been settled by inter- 
 national agreement. 
 
 The great navigable rivers are not the subjects 
 of private property, according to any natural law. 
 They belong to the community, not to any individ- 
 ual in the community, nor to any group of indi- 
 viduals in the community. In the early part of 
 this century the State of New York gave to Kobert 
 Fulton and his heirs the exclusive right to navi- 
 gate the harbor of New York and the waters of 
 the Hudson Eiver. Daniel Webster contended 
 before the Supreme Court of the United States 
 that no State had the right to confer an exclusive 
 right to navigate the rivers within its own bound- 
 
INDUSTRIAL EIGHTS 109 
 
 ary lines. No one service that Daniel Webster 
 ever rendered to this country, except perhaps his 
 reply to Hayne, was so great and so lasting as this 
 service. The Supreme Court of the United States 
 affirmed what he had claimed. They declared 
 that no State could give a right to a navigable 
 river within its boundary line; and to-day all 
 navigable rivers in our country flow unvexed by 
 toll or personal intervention, or monopoly of any 
 kind, because the Supreme Court of the United 
 States has decided that a navigable river cannot 
 be made, even by the state through which it flows, 
 a private property. 
 
 Streams that are not navigable are not the sub- 
 jects of private property, except in so far as they 
 are made so by artificial arrangement. The brook 
 that flows through a man's land is not his to do 
 what he pleases with. He cannot pollute its 
 waters and make it a nuisance to his neighbor 
 below. He cannot dam its waters and make it 
 a nuisance to his neighbor above. He cannot 
 deflect its waters and prevent his neighbor below 
 from having the benefit of them. He has simply 
 the right to. use the waters as they flow through 
 his land, — no right beyond. This right is fixed 
 by law. It is an artificial right ; it is not a natu- 
 ral right. Ocean, navigable river, unnavigable 
 stream, are not subjects of private property except 
 as they are made so by artificial arrangement, for the 
 simple reason that they are given to man by God, 
 — they are not the products of man's industry. 
 
110 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 What is true of ocean and river is equally true 
 of land. No man ever made an acre of land and 
 its contents. Man may transfer the soil from one 
 place to another, in which case we speak of him 
 as "making land;" hut he does not really make 
 the land, he simply moves it. The land belonged 
 to the Almighty. To whom has he given it? Not 
 to a few favored individuals, but to the human 
 race. If land is the subject of private ownership 
 at all, that private ownership depends upon the 
 arrangements which society has made, not upon 
 the inherent and natural right of the so-called 
 owner. Society has a right, if it chooses, to say, 
 "The ownership of navigable rivers in common 
 will be injurious; we will let New York State 
 have a monopoly of them." It has a right, if it 
 chooses, to say, "It will cost too much for us to 
 build a waterway between the Atlantic and the 
 Pacific; we will let a corporation build the water- 
 way and levy the tolls." But if the corporation 
 gets the river or the canal, it is because society 
 has given it, not because the corporation has a 
 natural right to it. 
 
 That the right to land is an artificial right is 
 plain, in the first place, because it is not the 
 product of human industry. Man did not make 
 these prairies and store them with their vegetable 
 richness; nor these coal mines, filling them with 
 fuel for the future ; nor these wells where the oil 
 is stored ; nor these forests into which we go for 
 our lumber. These were put there by the Al- 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 111 
 
 mighty. And for whom? As we have already- 
 seen, not for individuals but for the whole human 
 race ; not to single men or single classes of men, 
 but to man, God gave the world, saying, "Take 
 it, rule it, use it; it is yours." 
 
 That the right to land is an artificial right de- 
 pendent upon artificial arrangements made by so- 
 ciety is further illustrated and confirmed by the 
 history of the evolution of land ownership. In a 
 state of nature men live in the forest as the wild 
 beasts live. The territory over which the tribe 
 roams is the common property of the tribe; the 
 only law recognized is the law of the strongest. 
 Controversies arise between families or between 
 tribes. Partitions are made, and out of these con- 
 troversies private ownership arises. The early 
 traditions of the Hebrew people furnish an illus- 
 tration of such a controversy and its peaceful 
 settlement. Abraham divides the land into two 
 sections, gives to Lot his choice, and Lot chooses 
 the fertile plains where are the cities of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah. It is thus that the first division 
 of lands is made. How later the governments 
 divide the lands they have acquired by grant to 
 favorites, and how the grants thus made continue 
 through successive generations by bequest or ex- 
 change, is familiar history. "William the Con- 
 queror crosses the Channel, conquers the Anglo- 
 Saxon people, takes possession of England, divides 
 the land among his retainers, and to-day the great 
 land titles of England date back to the distribu- 
 
112 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 tion of land made by William the Conqueror, be- 
 cause be had conquered England. The English 
 come over to this country; they find five hundred 
 thousand Indians roaming over this unused conti- 
 nent. England conquered the continent, took pos- 
 session of it, and then divided it. The great land 
 titles in America go back, the oldest of them, to 
 the patents issuing from Holland and from Eng- 
 land. The later titles come in the same way. 
 America, taking possession of the vast regions of 
 the West, divided them up and said to every man, 
 "You may have one hundred and sixty acres of 
 land if you will occupy and till them." How does 
 the owner get his right to this one hundred and 
 sixty acres? By the act of the Nation. His title 
 grows out of the homestead law. That law might 
 have said two hundred acres; it might have said 
 one hundred acres ; it might have said a thousand 
 acres. The, title to the land depends on the act 
 of the government. All land titles in their history 
 are thus derived from the action of society; the 
 right to land is an artificial, not a natural, right. 
 
 As the titles are derived from the act of govern- 
 ment, so, in the theory of the law, the government 
 still has the supreme ownership. We have already 
 seen that in the Hebraic commonwealth the land 
 belonged to God; the men who occupied it were 
 only tenants of God. We have seen how under 
 the feudal system the land belonged to the king; 
 the men who occupied it were only tenants of the 
 king. Under the doctrine of eminent domain, the 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 113 
 
 ultimate ownership of the land of the United 
 States is not in the individual owner, but in the 
 state. The owners are quasi tenants ; their rights 
 are limited and defined by the law which has cre- 
 ated them. Those rights are not absolute, as is 
 their right to the product of their own industry. 
 
 What is true of the ocean, the rivers, the land 
 and its contents, is equally true of the great forces 
 of nature. Light, heat, gravitation, electricity, 
 are not subjects of personal ownership except as 
 law makes them so. The world is a great electric 
 motor; it generates electricity, — that is, it trans- 
 forms some other power into electricity. This 
 electric power which the world generates belongs 
 to all the people in the world. If one man dis- 
 covers a way of tapping this electric reservoir and 
 drawing off the electric current and using it for 
 illumination or for locomotion, the state gives him 
 an exclusive right to use that method for a term 
 of years. When that term expires, his right ex- 
 pires. Nor does this right even for this limited 
 term prevent any other man from discovering some 
 other method of entering nature's reservoir and 
 drawing off the force which she has created for 
 the human race. The right to the forces of na- 
 ture, like the right to land and its contents, is an 
 artificial right limited and determined by the law 
 of society which has created the right. 
 
 Thus we have two kinds of right to property. 
 The first is absolute, — the right of every man to 
 himself, and therefore to the product of his labor, 
 
114 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 the right of every man to his life, and therefore 
 to that into which he has put his life. The other 
 is social, legal, artificial, dependent upon the ar- 
 rangements which society has been pleased to 
 make. All rights to ocean, to navigable rivers, 
 to unnavigable rivers, to land and the contents of 
 the land, and to the great forces of nature, are of 
 this latter kind. They are dependent upon the 
 arrangements which society has been pleased to 
 make. They are founded upon the will of the 
 community. 
 
 The chief sources of wealth are in this common 
 wealth. What has made this nation in the aggre- 
 gate wealthy beyond all compare is primarily, not 
 what our industry has produced, but what we have 
 found already produced for us : the rich prairies, 
 the almost inexhaustible mines, the great forests, 
 the mill streams, the navigable rivers, the great 
 forces of nature, — light, heat, electricity. We 
 are the richest people, not because we have pro- 
 duced more per capita than any other people have 
 ever produced, but because we have found a trea- 
 sure which no other people ever found. It was 
 made for us ; it was stored here awaiting our ar- 
 rival. 
 
 How ought this common wealth, this wealth 
 which by nature belongs to no individual because 
 no individual produces it, to be distributed? 
 
 In a previous lecture I traced the progress to- 
 ward the larger distribution of wealth in the aboli- 
 tion of feudalism and the substitution of the wages 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 115 
 
 system. We have seen that the wages system 
 converts capital from a dead possession to a living 
 instrument of industry; that the wealth once buried 
 in forests used by royalty for hunting, or in parks 
 kept by nobles as pleasure-grounds, is now in- 
 vested in factories which give employment to hun- 
 dreds and food or clothing or tools to thousands, 
 or in railroads which serve the entire nation as a 
 public highway. We have seen, too, that under 
 the wages system not only is nearly all property 
 used for the benefit of the all, but it is actually 
 divided among a vastly greater number of owners 
 than ever before. Statistics are rarely interesting, 
 but they are sometimes very significant. The stu- 
 dent who wishes to know to what extent the dis- 
 tribution of wealth is already carried in democratic 
 America wiU find ample material for his inquiry 
 in the admirable monograph of Mr. Charles B. 
 Spahr on "The Distribution of Wealth." He 
 shows that while in England, not yet whoUy freed 
 from the relics of feudalism, "more than three 
 fourths of the people of Great Britain and Ireland 
 are without any registered property whatever," 
 "nearly half the families in America own the real 
 estate they occupy," and in the rural communities 
 the proportion of real estate owners is stiU greater. 
 Again, in Great Britain less than six hundred 
 and fifty thousand persons, that is, about a little 
 over one and a half per cent, of the population, 
 are possessed of property valued at five thousand 
 dollars or more; in America approximately one 
 
116 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 eighth of the families of the Nation — city, town, 
 and country — own each more than five thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 The statistics of the savings banks confirm these 
 figures. The total deposits in such institutions 
 for 1890-91 aggregated over two thousand five 
 hundred million dollars. The total number of de- 
 positors in the savings banks alone for the year 
 1890 was over four million and a quarter, with an 
 average deposit of $354.80 for each depositor. 
 As most of these depositors probably represent 
 families, the proportion of wealth owners to the 
 population is seen to be large. But these figures 
 do not adequately represent the extent to which 
 wealth is distributed in the United States. This 
 is further indicated by the extent to which wealth 
 is owned by great corporations. The corporation 
 is a modern contrivance by which, for purpqses of 
 administration, the property of a great number of 
 owners is put into the control of a small number 
 of sagacious men. It is essentially a democratic 
 invention. The stock is owned by many stock- 
 holders; the administration is conducted by a few 
 directors. In estimating the extent to which pro- 
 perty is distributed in the United States, the eco- 
 nomic student must take account not only of the 
 landowners and the savings bank depositors, but 
 also of the smaller stockholders in the corporations 
 of the country. 
 
 The observer in any fairly prosperous American 
 town may see the evidences of this distribution of 
 
INDUSTRIAL EIGHTS 117 
 
 wealth for himself. As he goes by the miner's or 
 manufacturer's cottage he sees a hammock under 
 the trees, — this means leisure ; he hears the music 
 of an organ or a piano, — this means culture ; he 
 meets the grocery wagon or the- butcher's cart 
 driving through the town, — this means good food 
 and plenty of it; he finds the best building in the 
 town a schoolhouse and perhaps the next best a 
 public library, — this means education. To this 
 comparatively equable distribution of wealth the 
 unexampled prosperity of the United States is 
 due. Whatever tends to increase the distribution 
 of wealth will tend to increase that prosperity; 
 whatever tends to diminish that increase and sub- 
 stitute therefor a concentration of wealth tends to 
 diminish that prosperity. For the true wealth of 
 the community depends far more on the equity of 
 the wealth-distribution than upon the aggregate 
 amount of wealth possessed. 
 
 This matter requires a little further elucidation. 
 
 Money is simply a convenient means of exchang- 
 ing the products of industry. In any community 
 every member who is busy producing something 
 which the community needs is also producing 
 something which he can give in exchange for the 
 labor of another which supplies his own needs. 
 The shoemaker requires clothes of the tailor, a 
 house of the carpenter, flour of the miller. But 
 if for any reason the shoemaker is unable to pro- 
 duce shoes, and is compelled to lie idle, he no 
 longer has anything to give in exchange for the 
 
118 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 work of the tailor, the carpenter, and the miller. 
 Thus every busy man tends to produce another 
 busy man, and every idle man tends to produce 
 another idle man. Both idleness and industry are 
 self -propagating. When wealth is so concentrated 
 in the hands of an individual that the many are 
 without means to purchase what their needs really 
 demand, their inability produces a similar inabil- 
 ity in others, and thus poverty breeds poverty. 
 An Italian village, the wealth of which is concen- 
 trated in the castle of a single nobleman, while 
 the peasants live on the coarsest foods, in the 
 poorest hovels, wear the plainest clothes, and their 
 children go barefoot, will give employment to a 
 minimum of farmers, carpenters, tailors, and shoe- 
 makers. A New England village, in which there 
 are no millionaires and no paupers, in which every 
 family is well housed, well clad, uses the best 
 flour, and eats meat twice a day, gives employment 
 to a maximum of farmers, butchers, millers, car- 
 penters, tailors, and shoemakers. Thus no indus- 
 trial system can be advantageous to any which 
 leaves any without the possibility of employment, 
 as no industrial system can be ethically right 
 which has the effect of forbidding any from obey- 
 ing the divine command and earning their bread 
 by the sweat of their brow. 
 
 As it is the glory of the United States that 
 wealth has never been so widely distributed as it 
 is in the United States to-day, and employment 
 has never been so much in demand in all the 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 119 
 
 various vocations of life, so it is the peril of the 
 United States that wealth is still too much concen- 
 trated in the hands of the few, and stiU there are, 
 even in prosperous times, some, and in unprosper- 
 ous times great numbers, who in vain seek an op- 
 portunity to earn their livelihood by their indus- 
 try. For we must recognize the fact that, while 
 wealth has never before been so widely distributed 
 as it is to-day in the United States, while the con- 
 centration of wealth attracts so much attention, 
 largely because it is the exception in a community 
 whose prosperity is more equally shared than ever 
 before in the world's history, this concentration 
 exists, and in forms which are perilous to Ameri- 
 can institutions. De Tocqueville warned us more 
 than half a century ago that the greatest peril to 
 America would arise from plutocracy, and events 
 are proving his warning true. If it is true that 
 nearly one half of the families of the United States 
 own the real estate they occupy, it is also true that 
 seven eighths of the families own but one eighth 
 of the wealth of the nation; if it is true that the 
 families which own five hundred to five thousand 
 dollars equal in number those who own less than 
 five hundred, — that is, those who have been able 
 to save a little, those who barely live upon their 
 income, saving nothing, and those who are depend- 
 ent upon the charity of their neighbors, — it is 
 also true that one hundred and twenty-five families 
 own as much wealth as all the other families in 
 the United States put together. A single strik- 
 
120 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ing but not unparalleled fact may serve as a con- 
 crete illustration of the extent to which, and the 
 methods by which, the process of wealth-concen- 
 tration is carried on in the United States in our 
 time. The senior Cornelius Vanderbilt began life 
 as a deck-hand. It is currently reported that at 
 his death he left one hundred and eighty million 
 dollars to be divided among his heirs. If the pop- 
 ular chronology is correct, and Adam was created 
 six thousand years ago, and had lived until our 
 time, and had worked industriously throughout 
 that six thousand years, three hundred working 
 days in each year, and had earned one hundred 
 dollars a day more than his livelihood, which is 
 more than most industrious men are able to earn, 
 he would have acquired exactly the fortune that 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired in a lifetime. 
 Should we, then, put fetters on industry? limit 
 the amount a man may earn? prohibit his making 
 all that he can? No. Let him by his industry 
 produce the utmost which his industry can pro- 
 duce. Let law stimulate, promote, encourage his 
 industry. But a hundred and eighty millions are 
 not made in a lifetime by productive toil. They 
 are largely taken out of the common wealth. No 
 one objects — no one, at least, ought to object — 
 to an industrial system merely because it allows a 
 man, by his skill, by his knowledge, by his indus- 
 try, to produce all the wealth he can, and to own 
 it when he has produced it ; but the industrial re- 
 former does object to an industrial system which 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 121 
 
 permits a man, by Ms shrewdness, his skill, his 
 ingenuity, perhaps his political unscrupulousness, 
 to get all of the common wealth he can into his 
 hands. 
 
 Four evils grow out of this concentration of 
 that which is by nature common wealth in the 
 hands of a comparatively few. 
 
 First are the material evils. Where industry 
 is fairly compensated, every man, by his industry, 
 supports not only himself but his neighbor. Eid- 
 ing through any one of our commercial streets, we 
 wonder who it is that buys all these goods in all 
 these shops. The man in one shop buys from the 
 other shops. Each man purchases of his neigh- 
 bor; they support one another. The children of 
 the schoolmaster must be shod; they support a 
 shoemaker. The children of the shoemaker must 
 have clothes; they support a tailor. The tailor 
 must have woolens; he supports a factory. The 
 factory hands must have their children taught; 
 they in turn support the teacher. Every one of 
 us is thus engaged in supporting some one else, 
 and every one of us is in turn supported by some 
 one else. We hear much glorification of independ- 
 ence, but there is no such thing as independence. 
 The more complicated society and the more ad- 
 vanced civilization, the less the independence. 
 
 Let any one of these interdependent industries 
 stop, and all are injured. If the factory stops, 
 the children no longer go to school, the schoolmas- 
 ter can no longer buy shoes, the shoemaker can no 
 
122 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 longer buy clothes, the tailor can no longer buy 
 woolens. Whatever distributes wealth energizes 
 industry; whatever concentrates wealth paralyzes 
 industry. Sometimes we read in the newspapers 
 that hard times are due to over-supply. Too many 
 houses, therefore men are shelterless; too much 
 coal, therefore they are shivering ; too much bread, 
 therefore they are hungry; too many clothes, 
 therefore they go naked ! It does not take much 
 thought to see the folly of such political economy. 
 What causes hard times is not over- supply, but 
 under-demand. If every man was able to meet 
 the demands of himself, his wife, and his children, 
 no factory would ever close its doors. If all the 
 women in America were able to buy all the silk 
 dresses they want, no silk-factory would ever stop 
 its work. 
 
 In the second place, this concentration of wealth 
 tends to great political perils. As a result of this 
 concentration of the common wealth in a few 
 hands, one small body of men control the coal-oil 
 — that is, the light; another small body of men 
 control the anthracite coal — that is, the fuel; 
 another small body of men ■ control the gold and 
 silver mines — that is, the basis of currency of 
 the country; another small body of men control 
 the transportation, on which the whole country 
 depends for its life; and another small body of 
 men, through the stock exchanges, are continually 
 trying, with more or less success, to control the 
 food supplies. A community in which a small 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 123 
 
 body of men control the light, the fuel, the trans- 
 portation, the money, and the food supplies, is 
 perilously near a political oligarchy. And out of 
 this grows that political corruption which is the 
 worst foe and the greatest peril to the United 
 States. 
 
 A third evil grows out of this concentration of 
 wealth: under it, and owing to it, society is di- 
 vided into two classes, the tool-owners and the 
 tool-users. A comparatively small body of men 
 own the raw material and the tools with which it 
 can be transformed into useful products ; a large 
 body of men use those tools in making the raw 
 material into useful products. The tool-owners 
 we caU capitalists ; the tool-users we call laborers. 
 "I can myself remember when, in the remoter 
 parts of New England, there were still the spin- 
 ning-wheel and the hand-loom in the farmer's 
 house; when the sheep were sheared and the wool 
 was sent to the carding-mill, and then brought 
 back and woven and spun into garments. Now 
 the spinning-wheel is banished from the family, 
 the hand-loom is gone, and the spinning-wheel and 
 the loom are under the roof of the great factories, 
 operated by a thousand men, who own no share 
 whatever in the machinery which they are using. 
 In my boyhood, going home from school, I sat on 
 the box of the stage with the driver, who owned, 
 at least in part, the stage and four-horse team; 
 and it was my ambition as a boy to be some time 
 a stage-driver myself and own four splendid horses. 
 
124 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Now the locomotive engineer stands in the cab, 
 and carries many more passengers, a great deal 
 more comfortably, and at a far greater rate of 
 speed; but he does not own the locomotive. The 
 locomotive and the railroad track are owned by 
 one set of men, and operated by quite another. 
 Practically, all the tools and implements of indus- 
 try, except in agriculture, are owned by one class, 
 while they are employed in productive labor by 
 another class." ^ 
 
 The result of this division of society into two 
 classes — the few that own the tools and the many 
 that use them only as they get the consent of the 
 tool-owners, that is, into capitalists and working- 
 men, — is to make a rift in what would otherwise 
 be a homogeneous democratic society, and to bring 
 about, as between these two classes, a chronic state 
 of warfare which does not merely injure the classes 
 but imperils the whole community. The tool-own- 
 ers in Pennsylvania — that is, the men into whose 
 hands we have allowed the coal-mines to fall — 
 and the workingmen in Pennsylvania — that is, 
 those who are laboring in the mines — become 
 involved in a controversy, and the rest of the com- 
 munity wait, wondering how high the price of the 
 coal will go and whether the factories will have to 
 close for lack of power and the poor will suffer 
 cold for lack of fuel because of this labor war in 
 the anthracite coal district. Such labor wars are 
 an almost inevitable incident of this rift of society 
 
 1 Quoted from my Christianity and Social Problems, p. 161. 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 125 
 
 between tool-owners and tool-users; for more and 
 more the tool-users are inclined to combine to pro- 
 tect their rights against aggression, and then to 
 use that combination for purposes of aggression 
 if they think they can do so successfully; and 
 the tool-owners to combine to protect themselves 
 against aggression and then to use that combina- 
 tion for purposes of aggression if they think they 
 can do so successfully. For neither capitalists nor 
 laborers are yet whoUy sanctified ! 
 
 A fourth evil resulting from this concentration 
 of wealth and consequent division of society into 
 two classes, a few very rich and the many depend- 
 ent upon them, is seen in the vices which such 
 a social organization tends to produce; the vices 
 respectively of what Mr. Gladstone has called the 
 "idle rich" and the "idle poor." It is true that 
 the great millionaires are not idle ; they are gen- 
 erally the busiest of men. But their sons are not 
 the busiest of men. Given an idle rich class, with 
 plenty of money and none of that self-control 
 which is learned in the school of industry, and 
 there inevitably result the three great vices of 
 America, — gambling, drinking, and licentious- 
 ness. On the other hand, given a great dependent 
 class and a time of hardship when some of them 
 can no longer get the right to use tools and earn 
 their bread, and they become literally dependent 
 upon charity and begin to listen to the man who 
 says, "The world owes you A, living;" and when 
 a man has begun to think that the world owes him 
 
126 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 a living he has taken the first step toward getting 
 his living by foul means if he cannot get it by 
 fair. So out of the great working class the poor 
 are recruited, and out of the poor the paupers, 
 and out of the paupers the tramps, and out of the 
 tramps the thieves, and out of the thieves the rob- 
 bers. 
 
 Thus the concentration of wealth tends, first to 
 material, second to political, third to industrial, 
 and fourth to moral evil. The real and radical 
 remedy is nothing less than a better distribution 
 of wealth, — not by invalidating the right of every 
 workingman, whether he works with his brain or 
 his hand, to the product of his toil, but by a better 
 division of that great common wealth, the title to 
 which, in so far as it is held by individuals, de- 
 pends on the artificial arrangements of society. 
 Society, which made originally the arrangements 
 by which this common wealth tends to drift into 
 the hands of a few, has a right to make new ar- 
 rangements by which this common wealth will 
 tend to be divided among the many. Nor will this 
 process of division reach its consummation until 
 the distinction between tool-owners and tool-users 
 is obliterated, and the tool-users become the tool- 
 owners ; in other words, until the laborers become 
 capitalists ; until, at least, the present relationship 
 is so far reversed that the tool- user hires or owns 
 the tool in lieu of the tool-owner hiring or, as in 
 the slave system, owning the tool-user, — until 
 labor ceases to be a commodity to be hired, and 
 
INDUSTRIAL EIGHTS 127 
 
 becomes itself the hirer of capital; in other words, 
 until, in lieu of money employing men, men em- 
 ploy money. 
 
 This is the revolution toward which society is 
 steadily, though for the most part unconsciously, 
 moving. This is the true meaning of socialism 
 and communism, which, by, I believe, mistaken 
 methods, seek to secure the world for the all and 
 put it under the control of the all; which interpret 
 the divine declaration, "Behold, I have given you 
 every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of 
 the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit 
 of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for 
 meat," as addressed to the whole human race, not 
 to a privileged class who, possessing the earth, are 
 afterward to parcel it out to their less fortunate or 
 less competent fellows. This is the meaning of the 
 so-called socialistic legislation, which is an attempt 
 by the community, though not always wisely di- 
 rected, to take control, if not possession, for the 
 community of those industries on which the life 
 of the community depends. This is the meaning 
 of the labor unions and the strikes, which often 
 seem, and sometimes are, causeless, but which are 
 generally blind endeavors to get, not merely a 
 larger share of the common product of labor and 
 capital working in cooperation, but also a larger 
 share in the control of the industry by which that 
 common product is created. 
 
 By Democracy of Industry, then, I mean that 
 state of society in which the right and duty of 
 
128 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 every man to earn an honest livelihood by his in- 
 dustry will be universally recognized, and in which 
 the raw material and the native forces, by which 
 alone in our time such a livelihood can be secured, 
 will be recognized as belonging not to the few, but 
 to the many. Thus, and only thus, will indus- 
 try be truly democratic. Such a result can be 
 accomplished either by revolution or evolution. 
 Our present industrial system throughout the civil- 
 ized world is based upon the private ownership 
 of the common wealth. The common ownership 
 of the common wealth, wherever it has been at- 
 tempted, has failed to furnish any adequate re- 
 ward to enterprise, and so any adequate incentive 
 to industry. Communism in all its forms assumes 
 in man a virtue which he does not possess, and 
 fails to furnish that stimulus which is essential, 
 not only to the production of the greatest wealth, 
 but to the development of the best character. If 
 the present industrial system were overturned by 
 a revolution, and the people were to become own- 
 ers in common of the common wealth, the result 
 would be a derangement of the industrial organi- 
 zation which would bring immeasurable suffering, 
 accompanied with gross injustice, upon all classes 
 of the community. It would be a revolution like 
 that of France in 1789, probably accompanied 
 with distress more widespread, though possibly 
 ameliorated by the humanitarian spirit which did 
 not exist in France a century ago. Such a revo- 
 lution might possibly be endured if great benefits 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 129 
 
 were to follow, but, so far as it Is possible to fore- 
 see, great benefits would not follow. For the 
 common ownership of the common land, if ef- 
 fected, would probably produce in civilized com- 
 munities the same sort of effect which it has pro- 
 duced in India, in Russia, and among the North 
 American Indians. What society needs is not 
 a revolution which will destroy private property 
 in the common wealth, but an evolution which 
 will accomplish changes as great by processes more 
 gradual, and will leave operative on character and 
 society all the incentives which private ownership 
 affords, and yet will preserve for all the people 
 their right to an equable share in the benefits of 
 that wealth which is not produced by personal in- 
 dustry. The method proposed for this purpose, 
 a method which makes very slow progress, and in 
 spite of years of agitation is as yet understood 
 only by the few, is that miscalled the Single Tax. 
 
 At present the expenses of governments are 
 chiefly met by three forms of taxation: a tariff 
 tax on imports, a tax on incomes, and a tax on 
 property, real and personal. 
 
 The tariff on imports is an unjust tax because 
 it is levied, not upon property nor on income, but 
 upon expenditure. The rich man calls on govern- 
 ment for much greater protectioti than the poor 
 man. If he is a landlord, he has a hundred houses 
 to be protected; the poor man has but one; if 
 he is a stockholder in a great railroad, he has a 
 highway thousands of miles long to be protected, 
 
130 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 while the poor man has nothing but the pathway 
 from his front door to his gate. The rich man 
 ought therefore to pay a very much larger tax than 
 the poor man. It ought to be proportioned to the 
 value of his property, because the value of his 
 property determines, roughly speaking, the amount 
 of protection which he needs. He who has fifty 
 millions of dollars invested in mines, railroads, 
 oil-wells, ought to pay nearly ten thousand times 
 as much taxes as the householder who has a home 
 in the village or a farm in the country worth five 
 thousand dollars. But if the tax is levied upon 
 imports, he who has fifty million dollars to protect 
 does not pay ten thousand times more taxes than 
 he who has five thousand dollars in a homestead 
 to be protected. The millionaire wears somewhat 
 more expensive clothing, lives in a somewhat more 
 expensive house, has somewhat more expensive 
 furniture, eats somewhat more expensive food; 
 but it is perfectly evident that he cannot, if he 
 tries, expend on himself and his family ten thou- 
 sand times as much as his humbler neighbor. 
 Taxes, therefore, levied on expenditure are always 
 and necessarily unjust. 
 
 The second tax is one on incomes. The income 
 can generally be ascertained only by the statement 
 of the man who has the income; an income tax, 
 therefore, tempts every man to make false a state- 
 ment of his income in order to reduce his tax. A 
 tax system which involves wholesale temptation 
 is not a system to be commended if any better one 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 131 
 
 can be devised. But this is not all. Men who live 
 upon salaries can state their income accurately; 
 men who live upon profits derived from business 
 cannot state their income accurately. It often 
 happens that a business man cannot teU. in any 
 given year whether he has made any profit. He 
 never can tell accurately how much profit he has 
 made, for he must always make allowance for the 
 rise in value of some things he has purchased and 
 the fall in value of others, and this estimate of 
 stock in hand is rarely more than a shrewd guess. 
 An income tax, therefore, falls proportionately 
 more heavily on the man whose income is in sala- 
 ries or wages than on the man whose income is in 
 profits. That is, it falls more heavily on the de- 
 pendent, if not on the poorer, classes. But that 
 is not all. Income, again, may be derived from 
 industry, or it may be derived from investment. 
 The investment is property which the government 
 must protect, and the protection of this property 
 requires governmental expenditure, while the pro- 
 tection of the individual requires but little govern- 
 mental expenditure, and practically no more for 
 the man who is earning a hundred dollars a day 
 than for the man who is earning one dollar a day. 
 An income tax, therefore, is, in the third place, 
 inequable because it is not proportioned to the ex- 
 penditure demanded of the government by the 
 persons taxed. A tax on income derived from 
 industry is a tax on industry itself, which should 
 be the last to be taxed. 
 
132 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 The third source of government revenue is a tax 
 upon property, real and personal. If the value of 
 all property, real and personal, could be justly 
 estimated, and the tax could be levied on the pro- 
 perty thus estimated in the proportion of its actual 
 value, the result would be a just and reasonable 
 tax; but in effect this is impossible. For govern- 
 ment is dependent upon the citizen's own state- 
 ment for its knowledge of the citizen's personal 
 property. It is largely dependent on his state- 
 ment for its estimate of the value of that property. 
 The citizen is thus brought under temptation both 
 to conceal the possession of personal property and 
 underestimate its value, and in point of fact this 
 temptation is so considerable that personal pro- 
 perty largely escapes taxation. This escape of 
 personal property from taxation is so common, and 
 the frauds and falsehoods into which men are led 
 by the desire to secure the same exemption which 
 their neighbors secure is so great, that the aboli- 
 tion of all tax on personal property has been very 
 earnestly urged by moral reformers and by finan- 
 cial reformers in the interest both of simplicity 
 and of justice. Yet it seems difficult, if not im- 
 possible, to defend on abstract principles a system 
 of taxation which levies all the expenses of gov- 
 ernment on real estate, for no other reason than 
 that real estate cannot be hidden away from the 
 assessor's inspection. Why should the man who 
 has put his industry into a house pay a tax, while 
 the man who has put his industry into horses, car- 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 133 
 
 riages, dresses, or bank stock, — that is, money 
 loaned to others, — not pay a tax? The one de- 
 rives benefit from the government no less than 
 the other. Justice would seem to require that he 
 should pay as well as the other. 
 
 The so-called Single Tax proposes to rid gov- 
 ernment of all these perplexities by assuming as 
 true what in the previous article I have tried to 
 show is true, that land and its contents are not 
 proper subjects of private ownership; that the 
 land which in the Hebrew commonwealth belonged 
 to God, and in the feudal system belonged to the 
 king, in a republic belongs to all the people. It 
 proposes to make them the landlord, and it asserts 
 that if as landlord they receive a rental which 
 fairly represents the value of the land and its 
 contents, no one will need to pay any taxes; that 
 if, in other words, the people come by their own, 
 they have income enough for all the expenses of 
 government, and probably some to spare. 
 
 Thus, properly speaking, the Single Tax is not 
 a tax at all. It is an exemption from all taxation 
 by means of a resumption of the common wealth 
 by its owners, the common people. What would 
 be called a tax would really be a rental, and this 
 rental would be based, not on the idea that the 
 man who pays it pays for the protection which 
 government affords his property ; it would be based 
 on the idea that the man who pays it pays to the 
 owner of the land a rental for the land of which 
 he is the tenant. This rental would be paid in the 
 
134 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 form of a tax which would be levied not on real 
 estate, but on the land and its contents. All that 
 human industry had done to improve the land 
 would belong to the owner, — he would pay no tax 
 on it; aU the value inherent in the land as God 
 has made it, and all the value added to the land 
 by what the public has done for it, would belong 
 to the public, and this valu6 the public would 
 receive in rental or taxation. 
 
 Thus let the reader imagine two plots of ground, 
 each one hundred acres in extent, side by side in 
 a rural district where wild land sells for five dol- 
 lars an acre. One of them is wild. No tree is 
 felled, no plow has ever turned the virgin soil, 
 no fence has been erected. Everything is as na- 
 ture made it. The other is a cultivated farm, 
 with house, barns, outhouses, orchard, cultivated 
 meadow-land. The uncultivated land is worth in 
 the market five hundred dollars; the cultivated 
 farm would be worth five thousand dollars. But 
 for purposes of taxation each would be estimated 
 as worth five hundred dollars, and on that five 
 hundred dollars the tax or rent would be esti- 
 mated, and for the simple reason that the man 
 who had built the house and the barn and the out- 
 houses, and planted the orchard, and constructed 
 the fences, would not pay any tax on this wealth, 
 which is the product of his industry. Of this the 
 people are not the owners; he is the owner. Or, 
 again, let the reader imagine two lots side by side 
 in the centre of a great city, where a lot one hun- 
 
INDUSTRIAL EIGHTS 135 
 
 dred feet by fifty is worth a thousand dollars. 
 One stands vacant; on the other a ten thousand 
 dollar building has been erected. On each lot 
 the same tax would be paid, or, to speak more 
 accurately, for each lot the same rent would be 
 collected; the owner of the building would pay no 
 rent for that building, because it is the product 
 of his industry ; he would . pay rent only for the 
 land, which is not the product of his industry, the 
 value of which has been created partly by God 
 who made it, partly by the entire community who 
 live in its vicinity, and who, therefore, should re- 
 ceive the benefit of the value which their presence 
 and activity have conferred upon it. 
 
 In a similar manner the owner of a mine — 
 whether coal, gold, copper, or iron — would pay 
 in rent the value of the mine as fairly estimated 
 before ever a pick had been put into the hillside. 
 All the product of the industry which had opened 
 up the mine and made its treasure available would 
 belong to him. All the value of the mine as raw 
 material, and all the increased value of that mine 
 due to the opening of railroads, the increase of 
 population, the development of civilization, would 
 belong to the state, not to the owner, because it 
 would be the gift of God enhanced by the product 
 of the general activity of the community. The 
 value thus added by the general social conditions 
 which surround land is the "unearned increment" 
 of which the reader so often hears in the discus- 
 sion of this subject. 
 
136 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 But, as we have seen, it is not only land and its 
 contents that belong to the public, rorces of na- 
 ture belong to the public also. The right of the 
 public to these forces is now recognized by our 
 patent laws, which give to the patentee a right to 
 his special use of them only for a limited term. 
 It is quite conceivable that these patent laws 
 should be so modified. as to enable government, 
 and perhaps any individual, to take advantage of 
 the patented device on paying, not whatever the 
 patentee may choose to ask for his device, but 
 what a disinterested tribunal may think that it is 
 worth. Not only the forces of nature, but also the 
 great franchises created by the state, belong to 
 the state. The exclusive right to run a car-track 
 through the street of a great city, the exclusive 
 right of a railroad corporation to run a railroad 
 from New York to Buffalo, belongs primarily to 
 the people, in the one case of the city, in the other 
 case of the state. That it belongs to them is evi- 
 dent from the fact that the track cannot be laid 
 down in the street of the city, nor the railroad built 
 from New York to Buffalo, without special author- 
 ity from the people. The work which the car 
 company or the railroad corporation does is to be 
 paid for. The fruit of their industry belongs to 
 them. But the highway of which they make use 
 in their industry belongs to the people of the city 
 or the state, and the franchise tax paid by the 
 railroad corporation should be so adjusted that 
 the industry of* muscle and of brain which has pro- 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 137 
 
 duced and carried on the railroad shall receive its 
 just compensation, which should be paid to those 
 who have constructed and are managing the rail- 
 road ; and the rental of the highway, whether in the 
 municipality or across the state, should be paid to 
 the people to whom that highway really belongs. 
 
 This rental may be charged either in the form 
 of a tax or in the form of a rental. Hitherto 
 franchises, that is, the exclusive right to use a 
 public highway, have been given to private own- 
 ers, personal or corporate. Sometimes, as in the 
 case of the Pacific KaUroad, not only the highway 
 has been given, but a bonus has been added in 
 order to induce the private owner to take the high- 
 way as a gift. This was always folly. The folly 
 has been now so demonstrated that to continue to 
 give away these highways is scarcely less than 
 criminal. A single case will serve to illustrate the 
 value to a city which takes possession of its highway 
 and rents it instead of giving it to a corporation. 
 
 The Boston subway has been let to the corpora- 
 tion which operates the trolley-cars of that city 
 for 4| per cent, annually on the cost. This 4J 
 per cent, meets all interest on municipal bonds, 
 and leaves a surplus sufficient to repay the entire 
 principal invested in less than forty years. The 
 corporation which has hired the subway has leased 
 its lines to another corporation which guarantees 
 seven per cent, on its common stock and eight 
 per cent, on its preferred stock. That is, in the 
 city of Boston, the corporation which operates the 
 
138 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 trolley-car system makes a profit such as enables 
 it to give satisfactory dividends to its stockhold- 
 ers and pay the whole cost of the subway, princi- 
 pal and interest, in less than forty years. The 
 city of New York, learning a lesson from this 
 and other analogous experiments, has now in a 
 similar manner undertaken to build its own sub- 
 way. It will build this on money borrowed upon 
 its bonds. It has already leased this subway to 
 a corporation on such terms that at the end of the 
 fifty years the bonds, principal and interest, will 
 have been paid. In other words, the subway will 
 belong to the municipality, though it will not have 
 expended a dollar of the people's taxes in its con- 
 struction. It is clear that the same principle 
 might be applied to surface roads in town and 
 country, long or short, operated by steam or oper- 
 ated by electricity. Whether this rent shall be 
 paid for the highway by the railroad corporation 
 in the form of a rent or in the form of a tax is 
 immaterial. The essential fact to be noted is that, 
 if the people keep possession of the highways which 
 belong to them, the rentals therefrom will go far 
 toward paying the expenses of the government. 
 
 It does not come within the province of this 
 article to go into detailed argument with figures 
 in support of any particular scheme. My object 
 is to give the general reader as clear and coherent 
 an account as I can, in a limited space, of the 
 method which modern thinkers have wrought out, 
 by which the common people can secure joint 
 
INDUSTRIAL EIGHTS 139 
 
 benefit of the common wealth, without revolution. 
 He who desij-es to study the philosophy of this 
 plan more fully will find material for his study in 
 Henry George's "Progress and Poverty." He 
 who desires to estimate scientifically its economic 
 effect will find material for his study in Thomas 
 G. Shearman's "Natural Taxation." He will in 
 the latter book find reasons given for the belief 
 that a fair rental to the people as landlord for the 
 value of wild land and its contents, and of public 
 franchises created by and belonging to the people, 
 would be adequate to pay all the expenses of gov- 
 ernment, municipal, State, and Federal.^ He will 
 also find there given the reasons for believing that 
 such a rental, instead of increasing the burdens 
 of the agricultural class, would decrease them;^ 
 and, finally, the reasons for believing that such 
 a rental could be collected with almost absolute 
 equity, since there would be no possibility of con- 
 cealing the land or the franchise for which the 
 rent would be paid, and not much difficulty in 
 estimating their natural market value. This last, 
 the moral argument for the Single Tax, will, to 
 him who regards ethical considerations as more 
 important than economic, appear of the first im- 
 
 1 " Thus all national and local taxes, if collected exclusively 
 from ground rents, would absorb only 44^ per cent, of those rents, 
 leaving to the owners of bare land a clear annual rent of $763,- 
 252,000, besides the absolutely untaxed income from all buildings 
 and improvements upon their land." Natural Taxation, p. 147. 
 
 ^ " Thus the farmers woiild save much more than one third of 
 their present tax burdens by the concentration of taxes on ground 
 rents alone." Natural Taxation, p. 196. 
 
140 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 portance. It is thus stated in a recent letter by 
 Mr. Charles Francis Adams : — 
 
 On this moral side, which to my mind is the most 
 important side of all, there can, so far as I see, be hut 
 one way of looking at the thing. The Single Tax would 
 be an enormous improvement over the existing system, 
 or over any other system which I think could be devised. 
 It would reduce taxation to a basis of absolute certainty 
 and fairness, rendering evasion impossible. A complete 
 stop would thus be put to the whole system of cheating, 
 and consequent unjust transfer of a burden from those 
 who have no conscience to those who have a conscience 
 — from those who can escape the law to those who can- 
 not escape the law — which is the unanswerable argu- 
 ment against the continuance of the present system — a 
 system which puts a confessed, because quite undeniable, 
 premium on perjury ; and no system which puts a pre- 
 mium on perjury admits of justification. This argument 
 alone, to my mind, would be conclusive in favor of the 
 Single Tax. Any possible amount of wrong or injury 
 it might incidentally inflict would to my mind be httle 
 more than dust in the balance compared with the advan- 
 tage which would result, after the thing fairly adjusted 
 itself, from the complete freedom it would bring about 
 from aU temptation to evasion and false swearing. 
 From the moral point of view, consequently, there do 
 not seem to be any two sides to the question ; and the 
 moral point of view is, in my judgment, the all-impor- 
 tant point of view. 
 
 The question may be and has been asked, would 
 not the carrying out of this plan amount to a con- 
 fiscation of landed values? Henry George con- 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 141 
 
 cedes that it would, and defends such confiscation 
 on the ground that land is not a proper subject of 
 ownership. He compares the loss to the land- 
 owner involved in the Single Tax with the loss to 
 the slaveholder involved in emancipation. The 
 cases do not seem to me parallel. Society has no 
 right to organize a system involving ownership of 
 man ; society has a right to organize a system in- 
 volving ownership in land. If the community 
 thinks the private ownership and control of land 
 is best for the community, it has a right to provide 
 for such private ownership and control; but it has 
 no right to provide for the private ownership and 
 control of one man by another, against the protest 
 of that other, though he be but a minority of one. 
 Society having provided for the private ownership 
 and control of land, and individuals having in- 
 vested their earnings in that land on the faith of 
 that provision of society, society has no right by 
 revolutionary act to confiscate the property and 
 destroy for the individual owner the economic val- 
 ues which it has itself created. If, therefore, it 
 were proposed suddenly to abolish all taxes on 
 imports, on incomes, on personal and real pro- 
 perty, and levy them all on land and its contents 
 and on franchises, the proposition would involve 
 an industrial revolution which would be at once 
 inexpedient and unjust. But no such sudden 
 change is possible. If taxation is taken ofE from 
 all other objects, and levied only on those things 
 which are properly a common wealth, the change 
 
142 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 can be wrought out gradually, and there will be 
 time for industry to adjust itself to the new con- 
 ditions as they are created. There is very little 
 reason to believe that the practical injustice to in- 
 dividuals which would grow out of the adoption of 
 the Single Tax theory, in any way which would 
 be possible in America, would be so great as the 
 injury which has come to individuals through the 
 use of steam and electricity, through the influence 
 of machinery, through the organization of labor 
 and of capital, and through the consequent neces- 
 sary changes in industrial conditions and in values 
 depending on those conditions. 
 
 This and all other changes in economic condi- 
 tions are, however, in the last analysis, dependent 
 upon changes to be wrought in personal character. 
 Industrial democracy is dependent upon educa- 
 tional democracy. There is no possible way by 
 which the people can obtain the benefits of the 
 common wealth except as they are intelligent and 
 thrifty. They must understand the forces of na- 
 ture in order to get the fruit which nature is ready 
 to drop into their lap. They must have, in other 
 words, industrial intelligence, and they must have 
 thrift, — that is, the moral capacity to spend less 
 than they earn, and not before they have earned 
 it. In a nomadic state man catches a fish or 
 shoots a deer in the morning, cooks it and eats it 
 at night. He lives literally from hand to mouth. 
 In the agricultural period this is no longer possi- 
 ble. He plants corn in the spring, harvests it in 
 
INDUSTRIAL RIGHTS 143 
 
 the fall, and cannot plant again until the next 
 spring. He therefore must wait for one year from 
 the time of his planting until he is able to plant 
 again, or from the time of his reaping until he is 
 able to reap again. In this one year he will 
 starve if he has not capital; that is, if he, or some 
 one before him, has not laid by, out of previous 
 industry, enough for food supply until the new 
 harvest is ready. In the agricultural state the 
 world may be said to pay its wages once a year ; 
 and as agriculture is the basis of all industry, 
 speaking broadly, it may be said that no man has 
 caught up with the world unless he has laid by as 
 much as is equivalent to one year of his expendi- 
 tures. If he has not done this, he is not living on 
 his real income, but is borrowing from the future. 
 But all investment beyond a year's income is pro- 
 perly investment for power, not for pleasure. The 
 aphorism. Money is power, expresses a very sub- 
 stantial truth. It is power because it is hoarded 
 or solidified industry, the industry of past years, 
 hoarded as sunlight is hoarded in the coal, to be 
 set free for future activities. Until these two 
 simple capacities have been acquired — the capa- 
 city to understand and use nature, and the capa- 
 city to reservoir, in capital, industry for future 
 necessity — no economic changes will or can per- 
 manently secure economic equality or any approxi- 
 mation to it. Thus the considerations presented 
 in this paper lead to the subject of the next lec- 
 ture, which will be the Educational Eights of Man. 
 
LECTUEE V 
 
 EDUCATIONAL EIGHTS 
 
 The child lies in his cradle, the feeblest of all 
 creatures. He knows not how to use his eyes, nor 
 his ears, nor his hand, nor his feet. He knows 
 not how to use the germs within him, of imagina- 
 tion, of reason, of conscience. He knows nothing. 
 At the other extreme is the great poet, the great 
 statesman, the great scientist, the great captain of 
 industry: Tennyson, Gladstone, Huxley, Vander- 
 bilt. The difference between this creature in the 
 cradle, and this man who reaches out into all the 
 universe and counts nothing too large for his in- 
 vestigation, is made by education. The funda- 
 mental principle of education is this: that every 
 being whom God ever made has a right to become 
 all that it is possible that he should become ; and 
 therefore a right to whatever may be necessary 
 to enable him to fulfill the divine ideal. Man's 
 right to education will not be fulfilled in society 
 until this is accomplished. Let us trace histori- 
 cally how the progress of education has been lead- 
 ing toward this consummation. 
 
 In imperial Kome there were no schools; no 
 education but of the tongue for rhetoric and of 
 the fist for gladiatorial combat. But at this very 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 145 
 
 time in connection with every synagogue in Pales- 
 tine, was a parish school. The curriculum was 
 certainly very imperfect, the teachers were but illy 
 trained ; hut underlying Hebraism was this funda- 
 mental principle, that the children of the common 
 people are to have an education, though what edu- 
 cation means the world was yet to learn. Into 
 Europe passed, with Christianity, the synagogue 
 schools developed into parochial schools. Out of 
 these parochial schools grew in time, on the one 
 hand the great universities, on the other hand the 
 primary schools for the common people. The 
 monks and nuns were the teachers ; the convents 
 and monasteries had their libraries; the church 
 directed, controlled, administered education. To 
 know how to write was almost demonstration that 
 he who knew had been under the tuition of the 
 church. But the teaching was limited in its scope 
 as in its purpose. The church which was doing 
 this teaching assumed to know the truth and to 
 know it infallibly; its object was to give so much 
 of its infallible knowledge as it thought advanta- 
 geous for the common people to possess. The 
 teacher was a giver, the pupil was a recipient; it 
 was the duty of the pupil to receive without ques- 
 tioning what the church imparted with authority. 
 Obedience, acceptance, reception, — this was the 
 duty of the pupil in the mediaeval school. The 
 object of the school was to prepare men for heaven 
 and for death, and in order that they might be 
 prepared for heaven, and as a means to that end, 
 
146 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 to prepare priests wlio should prepare men for 
 heaven and for death as the entrance to heaven. 
 
 The Renaissance came and with the Renaissance 
 a protest against the narrowness of conception 
 which regards religious topics as the only proper 
 themes for popular education. Ancient literature 
 in all its forms was brought back into the life of the 
 people, in spite of the protests of some ecclesias- 
 tics, with the enthusiastic support of others. Thus 
 both the curriculum and the conception of educa- 
 tion were changed; for although the Renaissance 
 in form only demanded that the literature of the 
 ancient classical authors should be studied, there 
 was really involved in that a demand that every- 
 thing of vital interest to humanity should be stud- 
 ied. The classicists opened one door for the in- 
 troduction of secular knowledge, but when they 
 opened that door all secular knowledge came troop- 
 ing in. Thus the Renaissance changed the scope 
 of education, though the method of education re- 
 mained unchanged. The pupils continued to be 
 \ recipients and the teachers givers. 
 
 Luther introduced a new conception, not only 
 of religion but of education. Luther maintained 
 / the right of private judgment and he was therefore 
 / compelled to maintain the necessity of educating 
 ' the private judgment. Thus while the Renaissance 
 changed the curriculum of education the Reforma- 
 tion changed its nature. Education became no 
 longer an information, given to receptive pupils 
 by teachers who assumed to possess infallible 
 
EDUCATIONAL EIGHTS 147 
 
 knowledge; it became a training in intellectual 
 power of men and women, who were to exercise 
 that power for themselves. Thus Luther laid the 
 foundations of that great school system which was 
 to grow up in Germany, to which our indebted- 
 ness is perhaps larger than we think. Education 
 is partly acquiring, at second hand, information 
 as to facts which men before us have ascertained. 
 We cannot all go round the world; so we accept 
 as true the reports of what other men have seen 
 who have traveled around the world. We can- 
 not all use the telescope to study the heavens, so 
 we take the information which has been obtained 
 by those who have used their telescope to study 
 the heavens. Up to the time of Luther it may 
 almost be said that this acquisition of information 
 was the only object of education; but since Lu- 
 ther's time education has been something more 
 than this : it has been not only the acquisition of 
 information, it has been even more the develop- 
 ment of capacity to deal with the facts thus ascer- 
 tained; it has come to be the acquisition of power 
 even more than the acquisition of information. 
 
 Some earnest temperance reformers have been, 
 within the last fifteen or twenty years, introducing 
 into our public schools what are known as "ap- 
 proved temperance text-books." These approved 
 text-books are in form books of physiology, in 
 fact books for the advocacy of a certain doctrine 
 respecting alcohol. In so far as they are books 
 for information, in so far as their aim is to tell 
 
148 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the boys and girls in school what are the qualities 
 of their bodies and what is the nature of food, and 
 how that food operates on the body, they are quite 
 legitimate; in so far as the object of these text- 
 books is to inspire the child with certain emotions 
 respecting alcohol or to impart to the child certain 
 formulated principles respecting the use of alcohol, 
 the temperance text-book is a return to mediaeval- 
 ism. It is an attempt on the part of the school to 
 teach dogmatically, and it is not the function of 
 the school to teach dogmatically either in the realm 
 of ethics or in the realm of religion. The func- 
 tion of the school is, first, to give information as 
 to well-ascertained facts, and, second, to equip the 
 boy or girl with power to decide for himself what 
 are the principles which those facts indicate. 
 
 In imperial Eome education was first for the 
 few; by primitive and mediaeval Christianity it 
 was enlarged in its scope so as to provide for the 
 many; by the Renaissance it was broadened in 
 its themes so as to include a larger field of know- 
 ledge than ecclesiasticism had ever included; by 
 the Reformation it was changed in its object and 
 methods so that it should create power as well as 
 confer information. Under Comenius, Pestalozzi, 
 Froebel, Rousseau, the educational system took 
 one further step forward. Not agreed in all, 
 they were agreed in this, that the function of edu- 
 cation is not to add something to man from with- 
 out, but to develop man from within; in other 
 words, that education is development. Education 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 149 
 
 proceeds, they said, in accordance with nature. 
 It is not an addition to nature, still less is it some- 
 thing antagonistic to nature. The child grows as 
 the plant grows, and it is the function of educa- 
 tion to help the child to grow, to feed the root, 
 to furnish sunlight, to train the plant upward 
 toward light and away from groveling on the 
 earth, to be sometimes a stake that the plant may 
 be supported until it has strength to stand by it- 
 self ; — but the teacher is always to work with 
 nature, always to study the nature of the child, 
 always to learn what are his aspirations and coop- 
 erate with them, always to recognize that educa- 
 tion is not a pouring in from without, but a devel- 
 oping from within. 
 
 Thus the history of eighteen centuries brings us 
 back to the truth that education is nothing else 
 than development. It is the whole process by 
 which the child who is but a seed, may be devel- 
 oped into the tree, the child who is but a germ, 
 may be developed into the man, the child who is 
 but a beginning, may be carried on towards com- 
 pletion. This, and nothing less than this, is edu- 
 cation. It is the training of the whole man — 
 of his hand, of his eye, of his feet, of his reason, 
 of his judgment, of his taste, of his conscience, of ' 
 his physical, intellectual, and moral powers, — in a 
 word, of the man. 
 
 Says Professor Huxley : — 
 
 Education is the instruction of the intellect in the 
 laws of nature ; under which name I include not merely 
 
150 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 things and their forces but men and their ways, and the 
 fashioning of the affections and of the will into an ear- 
 nest and loving desire to move in harmony with those 
 laws. For me education means neither more nor less 
 than this. Anything which professes to call itself edu- 
 cation must he tried by this standard, and if it fails to 
 stand the test I will not caU it education, whatever may 
 be the force of authority or of numbers upon the other 
 side.' 
 
 This seems to me an admirable definition of 
 education. It is the right of every man to have 
 this education — this instruction of his intellect 
 and this training of his affections and his will, in 
 short, this development of his personality : not the 
 superimposition upon him of another will, another 
 intellect, another personality; not a reconstruction 
 into a different will, a different intellect, a differ- 
 ent personality: but the development of his own 
 true, ideal, divine personality. 
 
 Let me restate these principles as they have 
 been historically interpreted. Education is for 
 all men. This education is to be in aU subjects. 
 As the whole material world is given to man to 
 control, so the whole intellectual world is given to 
 man to enter. There is no field so set apart, so 
 sacred, that a man may not enter upon it. It 
 may not be said by an hierarchical class, this be- 
 longs to the ministers of religion, the common 
 people must not investigate here ; it may not be 
 said by a scientific class, this belongs to science, 
 
 1 Huxley's JBssays, " Science and Education," p. 83. 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 151 
 
 laymen must not enter here; it may not be said 
 by a philosophic class, this belongs in a realm so 
 high that no man may enter here. There is no 
 place for either dogmatism or agnosticism. There 
 is nothing which man may not inquire into; no 
 problem which he may not investigate ; no affirma- 
 tion which he may not question. But it is not 
 enough that man enters all fields and examines all 
 subjects, he must have capacity to exercise judg- 
 ment and will, he must be a man in the possession 
 of power, not a mere vessel in the possession of 
 information. And, finally, the whole process of 
 education from the cradle to manhood is a process 
 of growth, in which nature is not to be set aside, 
 but in which the teacher is to cooperate with 
 nature. 
 
 By whom is this education to be furnished? 
 The answer of modern democracy is that certain 
 important phases of it are to be furnished by the 
 state. What phases? What has the state to do 
 with education ? 
 
 The public school is not a charity school; it is 
 not a school for the children of the poor; it is not 
 a kind of intellectual "soup-house." 
 
 The public school is not a socialistic venture. 
 The state has not assumed functions which belong 
 to individuals in furnishing public education. 
 We do not provide our public schools because it 
 is cheaper to maintain schoolmasters than it is to 
 maintain policemen — though it is cheaper. It 
 has been proved by statistics that it costs a great 
 
152 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 deal more to kill an Indian in war than it does to 
 educate an Indian in school. It is good economy, 
 therefore, to provide schools rather than to provide 
 soldiers. But that is not the ground on which 
 the public school stands. 
 
 The state, in establishing and maintaining a 
 public school system, is not usurping the place of 
 the church. It is not primarily the function of 
 the church to educate and secondarily the function 
 of the state. The state has not interfered with or 
 taken up the work that naturally belongs to the 
 church. The aim and the method of the church 
 are different from that of the state. The church, 
 as we have seen, is, and always has been, in its 
 teaching dogmatic. Its object is to impart truth 
 to the student; but the object of the public school 
 is not to impart truth to the student: its object is 
 to impart power to the student to find truth for 
 himself. And this makes the radical difference 
 between the ecclesiastical and the non-ecclesiastical 
 system of education. The question at issue be- 
 tween the public school and the parochial school, 
 whether that parochial school is Roman Catholic 
 or Protestant, is not shall education be Eoman 
 Catholic or Protestant, shall it be denominational 
 or undenominational, shall it be supported by the 
 pence of the few or by the taxes of the many; it 
 is not shall it be controlled by the state by popu- 
 lar vote or controlled through the church by its 
 bishops — the fundamental question in education 
 between the two systems, parochial and public, is 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 153 
 
 this : Is it our aim, ourselves knowing the truth, 
 to impart this truth to pupils? Or, being our- 
 selves ambitious to know the truth, is it our aim 
 to give to those who are in the schools power to 
 determine for themselves what is the truth? 
 
 Finally the state in assuming an educational 
 function does not stand in loco parentis. It is 
 not a kind of father to the children. It does not 
 establish public schools as it establishes orphanages 
 for children who have no parents. It does not 
 step in to take the place of a poverty stricken 
 parent. 
 
 In assuming the direction of education, the state 
 acts from a very different motive than any of those 
 thus suggested. The free school rests on the fun- 
 damental postulate that education is a condition 
 precedent to self-government. The statement that 
 men have a right to govern themselves does not 
 mean that all men possess, without education, the 
 capacity for self-government; it means that all 
 men, with a few abnormal exceptions, possess the 
 capacity for education, and, being educated, they 
 possess the power, first to govern themselves, and 
 then to take share in governing their fellow citi- 
 zens. If we had recognized the fact that educa- 
 tion precedes government, that the individual must 
 know how to govern himself before he knows how 
 to govern his fellow citizens, we should not have 
 to confront in the South the political problem 
 which we have to confront to-day. The public 
 school system stands on the broad ground that 
 
154 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 wherever democracy undertakes the problem of 
 self-government it must, as a necessary condition 
 precedent, undertake the problem of universal edu- 
 cation. Therefore it is that, historically, wher- 
 ever democracy has gone education has gone. So 
 soon as the United States begins its democratic 
 life it begins the creation of a school system. So 
 soon as slavery is overthrown at the South and 
 the South truly becomes democratic, the whole 
 Southern people, with a heroism and self-sacrifice 
 which deserve a great deal more praise than they 
 have ever received from the North, undertakes in 
 its poverty, the problem of universal education. 
 France becomes a republic : at once it establishes 
 a state school system. So long as England is a 
 feudal power, it leaves the schools in the hands of 
 the church; when feudalism is abolished, the 
 Board schools are established, under the control 
 of the state. Democracy and the public school 
 always go together — necessarily go together ; one 
 cannot exist without the other. To attempt to 
 build a democracy without a public school is to 
 build on a morass. It was the instinct of the 
 American people, as well as the wisdom of a great 
 teacher, that led Harvard College to invite fifteen 
 hundred Cuban teachers to go to Harvard Univer- 
 sity last summer, in order that they might learn 
 what an American system of education is and 
 carry back that learning to their own shore. If 
 Cuba is to become a republic, first of all there 
 must be a public school system in Cuba. This, 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 159 
 
 then, is the fundamental principle: as in mon- 
 archies, the children of the king are educated by 
 the state because they are to exercise the power of 
 the state, so in a democracy the children of the 
 people are educated by the state because they are 
 to rule the state. 
 
 In America we all belong to the royal family; 
 therefore the state educates us all. 
 
 But if it is the function of a free state to edu- 
 cate its citizens in order to make them good citi- 
 zens, worthy to be intrusted with the powers and 
 prerogatives of citizenship, it is the function of 
 the state to give all the education that is necessary 
 to make a good citizen worthy to be intrusted with 
 such powers and prerogatives. 
 
 What, then, are the conditions necessary to good 
 citizenship? Evidently the tenets of our various 
 theological schools are not necessary to good citi- 
 zenship. No Congregationalist would say that an 
 Episcopalian cannot be a good citizen. No Roman 
 Catholic would say that a Protestant cannot be a 
 good citizen. Very few Protestants, outside the 
 North of Ireland, would say that a Roman Catho- 
 lic cannot be a good citizen. No Christian would 
 say that a Jew cannot be a good citizen. I do not 
 say that the differences between Romanism and 
 Protestantism, between Judaism and Christianity, 
 even between Congregationalism and Episcopalian- 
 ism, are unimportant; but they do not afPect citi- 
 zenship. A man may be a good citizen of the Re- 
 public, whatever his theology; indeed, there are 
 
155 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 many very good citizens in the Eepublic who have 
 not any theology at all. What is necessary to 
 make a good citizen? 
 
 First, this citizen must know the language of 
 the people among whom he lives. He must know 
 how to communicate his ideas to them, and he 
 must know how to understand their ideas when 
 they wish to communicate with him. If the coun- 
 try is made up of a great number of various tribes 
 who cannot understand one another, it is not pos- 
 sible in the nature of the case that there should 
 be a common government or a common society, 
 except as the government is government by an oli- 
 garchy or an aristocracy or a monarchy. If when 
 we landed on these shores we had undertaken to 
 establish the federal government out of the Indian 
 tribes here it would have been absolutely impossi- 
 ble, if for no other reason because the Indians did 
 not understand one another's language. I had 
 a letter the other day from a personal friend who 
 was living in the Philippines, in which he said 
 that persons on one side of the border-line of a 
 province cannot understand the language of the 
 people who are living on the other side of the 
 border-line of the province. These tribes cannot 
 comprehend one another, and if they cannot com- 
 prehend one another, they cannot make one na- 
 tionality, except as they are kept in one national- 
 ity by a superior power. It may be Aguinaldo's 
 power, it may be ours, but it must be external to 
 the people unless the people can communicate with 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 167 
 
 one another. Intercommunication of ideas is es- 
 sential to nationality. Therefore in this country 
 our first duty is to teach all our children the Eng- 
 lish language, because we are going to be an 
 English-speaking nation on this continent one of 
 these days. Every citizen, therefore, must know 
 how to read and write and speak the English lan- 
 guage. 
 
 In order to be a good citizen one must know 
 something about the world he lives in; something 
 of his own land and something of other lands. It 
 is not necessary that he should be able to recite 
 by rote the length of a long list of rivers or the 
 height of a long list of mountains. He can go to 
 the last cyclopaedia to get information on those 
 subjects if he wants it. But it is necessary that 
 he should know something about the nature of his 
 country and the nature of other countries. If he 
 is not measurably familiar with these facts, he is 
 in no condition to take part in the government of 
 his own country or in determining what shall be 
 the relation of his country to other countries. He 
 must know about our products, about our exports 
 and our imports, about what we have shown our- 
 selves able in the past to do ; he must know some- 
 thing about our soil and the configuration of our 
 land, or he cannot exercise any wise judgment on 
 the question what, for example, should be our. 
 tariff laws. All he can do is to ask his newspaper 
 or his leader and act accordingly. And this is 
 not democratic; this is something else — I don't 
 
168 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 know what to call it. Some knowledge of geo- 
 graphy is an essential part in public education, 
 because it is necessary to make intelligent citizens 
 in a great republic. 
 
 But the world is not only made up o£ material 
 things, it is also made of physical forces. The 
 citizen must know something about the forces of 
 this world in which he lives; something about 
 light, heat, electricity. He must know something 
 about nature, for he has to cooperate with nature; 
 and more and more as civilization increases will 
 his cooperation with nature be necessary to his 
 well-being. Therefore some knowledge of science, 
 some comprehension of the great laws and forces 
 of nature, are essential to intelligent citizenship. 
 
 The world has been trying experiments ever 
 since it was in long clothes, and he who would be 
 wise respecting the future must know something 
 j respecting these experiments of the past. Wise 
 men learn by the experiences of others, says the 
 proverb, fools learn only by their own. If the 
 citizen is to be a wise man, and if he is to have 
 a part and a wise part in the government of the 
 nation, it is necessary that he should know some- 
 thing of the experiments which have been made in 
 the past — that is, of history. It is not necessary 
 that he should be able to give the list of the 
 crowned heads of England. This is not to know 
 history. What is necessary is that he should un- 
 derstand what is the rise, progress, and develop- 
 ment of the human race; where it has succeeded 
 
EDUCATIONAL EIGHTS 159 
 
 and where it has failed; why it has succeeded and 
 why it has failed. He should know in order that 
 he may not repeat to-day the experiments which 
 were the failures of yesterday. It is necessary 
 in order that he may not think that the methods 
 which did well in one age and under one circum- 
 stance must necessarily be applied in another age 
 and under other circumstances. He must know 
 history because he must know the world's expe- 
 rience; otherwise he cannot be wise in shaping 
 the destiny of the nation for the future. 
 
 There have been in this world great men. They 
 have had great thoughts, and have uttered these 
 great thoughts. They live in some sense immor- 
 tal in these great thoughts. The world's true his- 
 tory is its intellectual history, and its intellectual 
 history has been written by its great leaders. If 
 you ask what Palestine was, you look to its pro- 
 phets; if you ask what Greece was, you look to 
 its poets and its philosophers; if you ask what 
 Rome was, you look to its great statesmen and 
 jurists; if you ask what Italy was, you think of 
 Dante ; of England, you think of Shakespeare ; of 
 France, you think of Bousseau or Voltaire or Vic- 
 tor Hugo. The great men of past ages have done 
 great thinking, and their thoughts live in litera- 
 ture. The good citizen, he who is to have the 
 power to direct or participate in directing the des- 
 tinies of a great nation, must know something of 
 these great thoughts of these great men. A book 
 is not a dead thing, it is a living man. A library 
 
160 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 is not a mausoleum, it is the abode of the living. 
 "We go into our library and ask, now Milton, now 
 Shakespeare, now Dante, now Homer, now Plato, 
 now Aristotle, to talk to us. All the wise men 
 of the world are on these shelves ; wiser than they 
 were when they lived, for now they are wise enough 
 to speak when you want them to speak, and wise 
 enough to keep silent when you want them to keep 
 silent. The educated man, the voter, or the wife 
 who will influence the voter, needs to know the 
 great thoughts of the great thinkers. He needs 
 to know literature. 
 
 In all — language, geography, history, literature 
 — he needs to have not merely the symbol but its 
 vital meaning. He needs to know, not names of 
 books, but the spirit in the books; not the dates of 
 the history, but the trend of events in the history ; 
 not the mere natural forces, but their expression 
 and their coordination and their cooperation; not 
 the names of boundaries and states, but what vari- 
 ous countries, and especially what his own country 
 in its physical aspect, stand for; not mere alphabet 
 and words, but how to use words so as to express 
 the mind that is in him, and how to understand 
 words so that he can comprehend the mind that 
 is in another man. Thus the educated man must 
 know language, geography, science, history, litera- 
 ture. And it is the function of the state to teach 
 these things, because these things are necessary to 
 make a good citizen of a state. 
 
 Is there anything else? Certainly. Almost the 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 161 
 
 first requisite of good citizenship is that the citizen 
 shall be able to support himself. He may have 
 large information, excellent ideas, good judgment, 
 he may be a good talker, he may even be a good 
 listener, but if he is dependent on the charity of 
 the public, he is not a good citizen. It should be 
 the function, therefore, of the free state to fur- 
 nish such elements of education as will enable this 
 man to be a self-supporting citizen of the United 
 States. How far industrial education will go is 
 a question which I do not undertake here to dis- 
 cuss. I doubt whether as yet we are ready to 
 answer the question; but it should go far enough 
 to make all graduates of public school systems 
 able to give to the community in work at least as 
 much as they have to take back from the commu- 
 nity in wages. Industrial education, in this broad 
 sense of the term, is a function of the state; not 
 because it is the duty of the state to give to every 
 or to any man a training for his profession, but 
 because it is the function of the state to prepare 
 men for self-support. One difficulty with our sys- 
 tems of education thus far seems to me to be that 
 we have paid too much attention to the higher 
 education and too little to the broader education. 
 We need to broaden it at the base even if we have 
 to trim it a little at the top. For when all the 
 education of a public school system tends towards 
 literary proficiency, and when the boy or girl 
 graduating from the school can do nothing but 
 write school compositions, or the most proficient 
 
162 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 among them articles for newspapers, it is evident 
 that the provision of self-support is not adequate. 
 Education should be such as to make intelligent 
 workmen; not skilled workmen, but intelligent 
 workmen ; and there is a great difference between 
 the two. The workman in a factory may do a 
 particular piece of work for one or two years and 
 may become a very skilled mechanic in the doing 
 of that one particular piece of work, and yet he 
 may have no intelligence about his work whatever. 
 He may not know what is done before or after him 
 in making the finished product. If he is taken 
 from that particular piece of work, he may be as 
 helpless as if he were a child. There is many a 
 skilled mechanic who knows how to do a particu- 
 lar thing, if the particular thing is one that he 
 has done fifty times before, but if there happens 
 to be a new combination of circumstances demand- 
 ing a variation in the work, the intelligent wife 
 has to stand over him and tell him, the skilled 
 mechanic, how to do it. We ought in our public 
 school system to give such an industrial education 
 as win make intelligent workingmen. Then let 
 them go out and become skilled workingmen by 
 practice in' their several departments. 
 
 Is this all? No. A man may read and write 
 the English language, he may know geography and 
 science and history and literature and some form 
 of industry, and all his knowledge may simply 
 equip him to be a greater rascal than he could 
 otherwise have been. Life is not made up of in- 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 163 
 
 telligence ; into life enters that which is more 
 important than mere intelligence, — will and 
 conscience, — the ability to know what is right 
 and wrong, the ability to resist the wrong and to 
 do the right. This is absolutely essential to good 
 citizenship. To be a good citizen the man must 
 be trained morally. I do not urge that he should 
 be taught in school certain ethical dogmas, any 
 more than I urge that he should be taught certain 
 theological dogmas; but he should be so trained 
 that he can and will use his conscience and his 
 moral will in all the varied exigencies of life. If 
 this is not done, his skill in writing simply makes 
 him an ingenious forger, his knowledge of science 
 simply makes him a skillful dynamiter. The better 
 educated he is, the greater peril he may be to 
 society, if moral training has not accompanied 
 intellectual equipment. 
 
 It has been proposed to leave the moral train- 
 ing to the churches and the families, and to assign 
 only the intellectual equipment to the schools. It 
 was at one time popular thus to divide education 
 into two departments, and to assign all secular 
 education to the state and all religious education to 
 the church. But there is no such division between 
 the secular and the religious; it does not exist. 
 Religion is carrying the right spirit into all life. 
 We cannot divide man into compartments and 
 direct one institution to develop one compartment 
 and another institution to develop the other com- 
 partment, any more than we can draw a line of 
 
164 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 cleavage in a tree, and say we will feed this side 
 of the tree with one sort of manure and that side 
 of the tree with another sort of manure. The 
 whole man must be educated, the whole man must 
 be trained. It is not enough to teach the man 
 what are the laws of nature and of life, it is also 
 necessary to fashion the affections and the will to 
 move in harmony with those laws. And if it is 
 the function of the state to furnish education in 
 order to make men and women good citizens, and 
 if in the exercise of this function it is the duty of 
 the state to give all that is necessary to citizen- 
 ship, then it is the duty of the state to fashion the 
 affections and the will in harmony with the great 
 laws of society. 
 
 Of all the books available for this purpose there 
 is none so useful as the English Bible. I do not 
 advocate the reading of the Bible and the use of 
 prayer in the public schools if any one objects, 
 because the reading of the Bible and the use of 
 prayer in public schools is worship, and it is not 
 the function of the state to conduct worship, cer- 
 tainly not to conduct compulsory worship, whether 
 the worshipers are little children or grown men. 
 I do advocate the study of the Bible in the public 
 schools as a means of acquainting our pupils with 
 the laws, the literature, and the life of the ancient 
 Hebrews, because-the genius of the Hebrew people, 
 pervading their laws, their literature, and their 
 life, was a spiritual genius. 
 
 Every nation has its function in the develop- 
 
EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS 165 
 
 ment of the human race. Every nation contrib- 
 utes its quota to the complex sum of human civil- 
 ization. Speaking broadly, Greece may be said to 
 have contributed philosophy, Eome law, Italy art, 
 Germany liberty, England commerce, the United 
 States democracy, — which is more than liberty, — 
 and the Hebrew people what we call religion. I 
 do not mean that there has been no philosophy ex- 
 cept in Greece, no law except in Eome, no art 
 except in Italy, no liberty except in Germany, no 
 commerce except in Great Britain, nor that there 
 has been no religion except among the Hebrew 
 people ; but more of the great moral forces of the 
 world may be traced back to that people, and to 
 the literature of that people, than to any other 
 historic or literary source. The United States is 
 more intimately connected with the Hebrew people 
 than with any other ancient people. Our litera- 
 ture abounds with references to the literature of 
 the ancient Hebrews ; they are probably more fre- 
 quent than the references to the literature either 
 of the Greeks or the Eomans. No man can read 
 the great English or American poets or authors 
 understandingly unless he knows something of his 
 English Bible. Historically we are more closely 
 connected with the Hebrew people than with the 
 Greeks. Our free institutions are all rooted in the 
 institutions of the Hebrew people, and have grown 
 out of them, as the result of the long conflict be- 
 tween their political principles and those of pagan 
 imperialism. A man is not a truly educated man 
 
166 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 who knows nothing of the sources and fountains 
 of our national life, and they are preeminently to 
 be found in the Bible. 
 
 Why should he not know them? Why should 
 they not be taught in the public schools ? Because 
 the Bible cannot be taught without teaching reli- 
 gion in the public schools? No! No one objects 
 to teaching religion in the public schools. No one 
 objects to teaching the public school children what 
 was the religion of the ancient Greeks or the reli- 
 gion of the ancient Romans. We cannot read 
 Homer nor Virgil without learning something of 
 the religion of the Greeks and the Eomans. Why, 
 then, should we object to teaching in the schools 
 what was the religion of the Hebrews? Is it so 
 dangerous a religion? "Who shall ascend into 
 the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands 
 and a pure heart" — would that be a perilous 
 teaching for the men who are to become aldermen 
 in our great cities? "What doth the Lord require 
 of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to 
 walk humbly with thy God?" — would that be a 
 dangerous teaching for boys who are to become 
 business men in this commercial age? What is 
 the religion of the Hebrews ? This ancient people 
 believed that God was the authority behind all law, 
 that no law was just which did not conform to 
 divine ideals, and no people free whose laws were 
 not enforced by an enlightened conscience. They 
 believed that God was in history, and that the 
 record of human events was the record of a divine 
 
EDUCATIONAL EIGHTS 167 
 
 progress of humanity toward justice, liberty, and 
 mercy. They believed that God is in all natural 
 phenomena ; that nature alike conceals and reveals 
 him; that God is in all human experience, the 
 King, the Father, the Companion, the Friend of 
 man. The laws of this religion are summarized in 
 the Ten Commandments, demanding in the name 
 of Jehovah protection for person, property, reputa- 
 tion, and the family ; it is summarized for the his- 
 torian by such a statement as that of the psalmist, 
 " Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand 
 of Moses and Aaron ; " it is summarized by the 
 poet of nature in the affirmation, "The heavens 
 declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
 showeth his handiwork; " it is summarized by the 
 poet of human experience in the declaration, "The 
 Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." The 
 religion of the Hebrews assumes that God is a 
 righteous God, that he demands righteousness of 
 his children, that he demands nothing else, and 
 that he will forgive their unrighteousness if they 
 turn from it, and help them to righteous living if 
 they desire his help. 
 
 I do not here discuss the question whether this 
 religion is true or false. It can certainly do no 
 harm to teach our children in the public schools 
 that this religious faith was held by an ancient peo- 
 ple. Surely, if we may teach them that the Greeks 
 and Romans held these conceptions respecting the 
 gods, and the relation of men to the gods, and 
 the duties of men toward one another and toward 
 
168 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the gods, wliicL Homer portrays and Plato sati- 
 rizes, we may teaeL them those conceptions respect- 
 ing the character of God, and the relation of man 
 to God, and the relation of man to his fellow man, 
 which the Hebrew prophets inculcated. It cajinot 
 hai-m our children to become acquainted with the 
 laws of the Pentateuch, the visions of the Psalter, 
 the wisdom of the Proverbs, the righteousness of 
 Amos, the mercy of Hosea, the hopefulness of 
 Isaiah. It is not the function of the school to 
 teach that the Bible is an authority, any more than 
 to teach that the church is an authority. But it 
 is the function of the school to make its pupils 
 familial' with the sources of our life, — national, 
 social, and individual, — and no one source has 
 contributed so much to make tlie American people 
 what it is, in its political institutions, in its social 
 organism, and in its fundamental ethical principles 
 and spiritual faiths, as has the life and literature 
 of this ancient people. 
 
 Professor Huxley is not to be accused of eccle- 
 siastical or theological prejudice in favor of ortho- 
 doxy, and Professor Huxley has thus summai'ized 
 the ai'gument in favor of the use of the Bible in 
 public schools supported and carried on by the 
 state : — 
 
 I have always been strongly in favor of secular edu- 
 cation, in the sense of education without theology ; but 
 I must confess I have been no less seriously perplexed to 
 know by what practical measiu-es the religious feeling, 
 which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, 
 
EDUCATIONAL EIGHTS 169 
 
 in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on those 
 matters, without the use of the Bible. The pagan moral- 
 ists lack life and color, and even the noble Stoic Marcus 
 Ajatoniuus is too high and refined for an ordinary chUd. 
 Take the Bible as a whole ; make the severest deductions 
 which fair criticism can dictate for shortcomings and 
 positive errors ; eliminate, as a sensible lay teacher would 
 do, if left to himself, all that is not desirable for children 
 to occupy themselves with; and there stiQ remains 
 in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty 
 and grandeur. And then consider the great historical 
 fact that for three centuries this book has been woven 
 into the life of all that is best and noblest in EngUsh 
 history ; that it has become the national epic of Britain, 
 and is as famihar to noble and simple, from John-o'- 
 Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once 
 were to the Italians ; that it is written in the noblest and 
 purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of 
 mere literary form ; and, finally, that it forbids the veri- 
 est hind who never left his villa,ge to be ignorant of the 
 existence of other countries and other civilizations, and 
 of a, great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of 
 the oldest nations in the world. By the study of what 
 other book could children be so much humanized and 
 made to feel that each figure in that vast historical pro- 
 cession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in 
 the interval between two eternities ; and earns the bless- 
 ings or the curses of all time, according to its effort to 
 do good and hate evil, even as they also are earning 
 their payment for their work ? ^ 
 
 Education is development of character; and de- 
 mocracy requires that the state shall furnish to 
 
 1 Huxley : Essays, " Science and Education," pp. 387, 388. 
 
170 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the children and to all the children of the state 
 development in aU those elements of character 
 which are essential to good citizenship. If we are 
 to be a free, self-governing people, we must be 
 a people of free, self-governing individuals. If 
 we are to be a people of free, self-governing indi- 
 viduals, each individual in the nation must be 
 educated to understand himself, the world he lives 
 in, the men and women with whom he is to live, 
 and the laws which govern both the world of mat- 
 ter and the world of men; and he must not only 
 be educated to know those laws, but he must be 
 trained to conform his life to them. Nothing less 
 than this is the function of the state in education; 
 nothing less than this will make a free, self-gov- 
 erning republic composed of free, self-governing 
 individuals. 
 
LECTUKE VI 
 
 RELIGIOUS EIGHTS 
 
 What are the relations of the state to religion ? 
 In most countries until a very recent period it has 
 been believed that the duty of the church is to 
 protect its subjects from irreligious teachers and - 
 from false religious teachers. In practically aU 
 countries excepting the United States it is stiU 
 the opinion that it is the duty of the state to sup- 
 port, sustain, and sanction true religious teaching; 
 and in substantially all churches, whether in the 
 United States or out of it, it is believed to be 
 the duty of the church, though not necessarily of 
 the state, to prevent and to punish false religious 
 teaching, and, therefore, to determine what is 
 true religious teaching, and to determine it with 
 a certain degree of authority. Before it is possi- 
 ble for us to understand the religious rights of 
 man, at least as I desire to present them to you, it 
 is necessary to understand this view which has 
 been held up to a very recent period throughout 
 the civiHzed world, and is to-day held in a very 
 considerable proportion of the civilized world, 
 though in a modified form. That doctrine I wish 
 to state, free from prejudice and in as sympathetic 
 
172 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 a manner as possible ; for I desire to get for my- 
 self, and to give to my reader, the point of view 
 of those who believe in some kind of organic 
 authority in religion, exercised either by church or 
 by state, or by both combined. 
 
 The Hebrew commonwealth was a theocracy. 
 The king of that commonwealth was Jehovah. 
 All power was supposed to be derived from him, 
 all authority centred in him. Therefore, to at- 
 tempt to turn the minds and loyalty of the people 
 away from him was treason. It is not proper to 
 say that there was a union of church and state 
 in the Hebrew commonwealth: they were really 
 one organization exercising different functions. 
 The church was the state conducting public wor- 
 ship ; the state was the church administering law. 
 In all lands — including our own in theory, though 
 not in practice — treason is a capital offense. The 
 attempt to destroy the loyalty of people to their 
 country or to their king has been in all ages pun- 
 ished with death, and it was so punished in the 
 Hebrew commonwealth. A single extract from 
 its laws win suffice : — 
 
 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of 
 dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign 
 or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, 
 saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not 
 known, and let us serve them ; thou shalt not hearken 
 unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of 
 dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to know 
 whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart 
 
RELIGIOUS EIGHTS 173 
 
 and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your 
 God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and 
 obey his voice, and cleave onto him. And that prophet, or 
 that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death ; because he 
 hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, 
 which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed 
 you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the 
 way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. 
 
 He was to be put to death, not because he pro- 
 phesied falsely : the fact that the event which he 
 prophesied came to pass made no difference. He 
 was to be put to death because he was guilty of 
 treason, in attempting to turn away the loyalty of 
 the people from their king. 
 
 Jesus Christ came preaching that the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand; but he gave to this phrase, 
 kingdom of heaven, a new significance. He de- 
 clared that the kingdom of God was not to be a 
 kingdom like other kingdoms. It was not to 
 dominate other kingdoms. It was spiritual in its 
 nature, and it was to dominate the world by per- 
 vading the other kingdoms. There was no room, 
 therefore, in the kingdom as he proclaimed it for 
 political treason, for there was no political organi- 
 zation, and no political head to which the individ- 
 ual could be traitor. There was a spiritual or- 
 ganization, which was endeavoring to implant new 
 principles and to inspire with new life all political 
 organizations; the ultimate end of its work could 
 not be seen until the kingdoms of this world had 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
 
174 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 Christ. The kingdoms of the world would remain 
 world-kingdoms, but they would be world-king- 
 doms subject to, because pervaded by, the spirit 
 of Christianity. But though this was a spiritual 
 kingdom and would proceed by spiritual forces, 
 the same absolute loyalty was required by Christ 
 in the new theocracy that had been required by 
 Jehovah in the old theocracy. Christ was in- 
 finitely patient in dealing with error and with 
 faults; but whoever desired to join his organi- 
 zation must give to him absolute and implicit 
 obedience. When he called his first disciples, 
 he told them that they must forsake all in order 
 to follow him; and they did. When a rich young 
 man came running to him, and knelt down in the 
 way, asking what he should do to inherit eternal 
 life, he said to him in effect: You cannot come 
 into this fellowship unless you forsake everything 
 and come after me. When he would have washed 
 Peter's feet, and Peter objected, he refused to 
 give any explanation: I shall either wash your 
 feet, he said, or this is an end of your relationship 
 to this society; you have no more part in me. 
 When certain scribes came and said. We will fol- 
 low thee, but first let us go and bury our dead, 
 he replied. No, there is no "first." Absolute, 
 immediate, instant, unconditional obedience is 
 required; nothing less will suffice. 
 
 Thus as the old theocracy was centred around 
 Jehovah, the new theocracy was centred around 
 Jesus Christ. As the new theocracy went forth 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 175 
 
 to imbue the kingdoms of the world with its 
 spirit, Christ was recognized as a risen Christ, 
 and the new theocracy was centred around an 
 invisible Master, as the old theocracy had been 
 centred around an invisible King. This new Chris- 
 tian theocracy went out into the Koman world, 
 which was preeminently a world of order and 
 organization, into the Greek world, which was 
 preeminently a world of philosophy and thought. 
 It pervaded them, it did something to transform 
 them; but they also did something to transform 
 this new theocracy. In a very little while the 
 Christian Church became a great imperial hier- 
 archy; it became organized in accordance with 
 the Koman spirit; it came to have a philosophy 
 of religion, which was pervaded by the Greek 
 spirit. And by the fifth or sixth century this new 
 theocracy had become a hierarchical organization, 
 teaching a philosophy of religion. It required 
 the same loyalty that the old Hebrew common- 
 wealth required; it required the same loyalty that 
 the primitive Christian Church required; but it 
 required loyalty to a different object. It was no 
 longer loyalty to an invisible King; it was loyalty 
 to a visible hierarchy and a visible creed. 
 
 The nature of the organization had been 
 changed, the nature of the object to which the 
 loyalty was attached had been changed, but the 
 loyalty was still required by this third religious 
 organization, the mediaeval church. This loyalty 
 was required to an organization and to the philo- 
 sophy which the organization taught. 
 
176 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 At first the mediseval churcli contented itself 
 with employing no other penalty than that which 
 the primitive church had employed in apostolic 
 times; it simply said to men, If you do not accept 
 our creed and our authority, you are outside our 
 church; we excommunicate you. But as the 
 church grew in power, as it acquired control of 
 political organizations, and as mere banishment 
 from the ecclesiastical organization did not suffice 
 to prevent independence of thought, the church 
 reestablished the old Hebraic penalty; it said, If 
 you are disloyal to our teaching, if you teach that 
 which is contrary to it, you must suffer death. 
 And it quoted from the Old Testament and from 
 the New Testament in support of its doctrine that 
 disloyalty to the principles of the order required 
 death. It quoted such passages as I have just 
 referred to; it quoted such a parable as that in 
 which Christ said, "Go out and compel them to 
 come in," or that in which he said, "The branch 
 that beareth no fruit shall be cut down and cast 
 into the fire." 
 
 The cruelties of the ecclesiastical penalties of 
 the Middle Ages were not peculiarly ecclesiastical; 
 it is a mistake to charge them to the church ; they 
 belong to the epoch. The age was one which be- 
 lieved in the deterrent power of penalty. It be- 
 lieved that the greater the penalty, the greater the 
 deterrent power ; the more horrible and the more 
 manifest the suffering, the more likely that the 
 offense would not be repeated. An age in which 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 177 
 
 violations of person and property were punished 
 by burning at the stake, by flaying alive, by boil- 
 ing in oil, by tearing men asunder by wild horses, 
 naturally punished heresy in similar fashion. And 
 yet, in theory, the church never inflicted penalties. 
 The church assumed the authority to determine 
 what was true, and whether any particular teacher 
 was teaching in accordance with the truth. That 
 question decided, it handed over the individual 
 convicted of teaching against the truth to the civil 
 authorities, and they inflicted the penalty. It is 
 true that the church taught that the state ought 
 to inflict penalties ; it did this in no uncertain lan- 
 guage. Thomas Aquinas said: "The corruption 
 of doctrine is worse than the corruption of coin; 
 because the corruption of doctrine threatens the 
 eternal soul, and corruption of coin only impairs 
 the present commercial prosperity." But theoret- 
 ically the church left the state to protect the com- 
 munity from false doctrine; while it determined 
 what was true and what was false. 
 
 Thus, historically, grew up the doctrine that 
 the state and church combined are to determine 
 what is religious truth, and are to protect the com- 
 munity from religious error. This doctrine rests 
 on four postulates. The first postulate is, that 
 the fundamental need of humanity, preeminent and 
 transcending all other needs, is the need of reli- 
 giousjEUth-; that there is a system of comprehensive 
 religious truth, which can be known, and every 
 man ought to be enabled to learn it; that if every 
 
178 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 individual is left to find out the truth for himself, 
 and to preach truth or error as he pleases, room 
 is left for perpetual confusion, and the foundations 
 of accuracy and certitude in the whole realm of 
 religious teaching are destroyed. This doctrine 
 is clearly expressed by John Henry Newman in 
 his essay on Private Judgment, written before he 
 became a Roman Catholic : — 
 
 There is this obvious, undeniable difficulty in the at- 
 tempt to form a theory of Private Judgment, in the 
 choice of a religion, that Private Judgment leads differ- 
 ent minds in such different directions. If, indeed, there 
 be no reUgious truth, or at least no sufficient means of 
 arriving at it, then the difficulty vanishes : for where 
 there is nothing to find there can be no rules for seeking, 
 and contradiction in the result is but a reduotio ad 
 dbsurdum of the attempt. But such a conclusion is in- 
 tolerable to those who search, else they would not search ; 
 and therefore on them the obligation Ues to explain, if 
 they can, how it comes to pass that Private Judgment is 
 a duty, and an advantage, and a success, considering it 
 leads the way not only to their own faith, whatever that 
 may be, but to opinions which are diametrically opposite 
 to it ; considering it not only leads them right, but leads 
 others wrong, landing them as it may be in the Church of 
 Eome, or in the Wesleyan connection, or in the Society 
 of Friends. 
 
 This assumes that the object of the quest of 
 man is to know religious truth, and that the know- 
 ledge of such truth is a fundamental necessity of 
 the religious life. 
 
KELIGIOUS RIGHTS 179 
 
 The second postulate is that, inasmuch as there 
 is a necessity for a revelation of a complete and 
 comprehensive system of religious truth, there has 
 been given to the world by God a complete and 
 comprehensiye-jQrganizatianjto furnish this system 
 of religious truth. This postulate is thus stated by 
 William Ewart Gladstone ; after speaking of the 
 necessity of developing the religious life, he goes 
 on as follows : — 
 
 This was to be done by making men sensible that 
 God's dispensation of love was not a dispensation to 
 communicate his gifts by ten thousand separate channels, 
 nor to establish with ten thousand elected souls as many 
 distinct, independent relations. Nor, again, was it to 
 leave them unaided, to devise and set in motion for 
 themselves a machinery for making sympathy available 
 and cooperation practicable among the children of a 
 common Father. But it was to call them all into one 
 spacious fold, under one tender Shepherd ; to place them 
 aU upon one level ; to feed them aU with one food ; to 
 surround them all with one defense ; to impart to them 
 all the deepest, the most inward and vital sentiment of 
 community and brotherhood and identity, as in their 
 faU so in their recovery, as in their perils so in their 
 hopes, as in their sins so in their graces, and in the 
 means and channels for receiving them.^ 
 
 The third postulate is that it is wrong for indi- 
 viduals to set themselves apart from this divine 
 order or to teach something different from that 
 which the order is teaching. Such teachers are 
 1 W. E. Gladstone : Gleanings of Past Years, vol. i. 
 
180 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 disturbers of the public peace, they are under- 
 miners of the Christian faith, they are enemies of 
 the church, they are foes to religion, and they 
 ought not to complain if they are made to suffer. 
 Even if it be granted that some agitation is neces- 
 sary, even if it be granted that some criticism of 
 the church is permissible, the men who criticise 
 should be willing to suffer for the sake of their 
 convictions. This doctrine is thus stated by John 
 Henry Newman, in his essay on Private Judgment, 
 from which I have already quoted : — 
 
 The first remark which occurs is an obvious one, and, 
 we suppose, will be suffered to pass without much oppo- 
 sition, that, whatever be the intrinsic merits of Private 
 Judgment, yet, if it at all exerts itself in the direction of 
 proselytism and conversion, a certain " onus prohandi " 
 lies upon it, and it must show cause why it should be tol- 
 erated, and not rather treated as a breach of the peace and 
 sUenced " instanter " as a mere disturber of the existing 
 constitution of things. Of course it may be safely exer- 
 cised in defending what is established ; and we are far 
 indeed from saying that it is never to advance in the 
 direction of change or revolution, else the Gospel itself 
 could never have been introduced ; but we consider that 
 serious religious changes have a " primd facie " case 
 against them ; they have something to get over, and 
 have to prove their admissibility before it can reasona- 
 bly be allowed ; and their agents may be called upon to 
 suffer, in order to prove their earnestness, and to pay 
 the penalty of the trouble they are causing. 
 
 Both these statements are by Protestants — one 
 a Protestant up to the time of his death, the other 
 
KELIGIOUS RIGHTS 181 
 
 a Protestant at the time of writing the essay, 
 though afterward a Roman Catholic. 
 
 The fourth postulate is based on the other three. 
 It is that, if the state has the power, it should pun- 
 ish the teachers of error; if the state has not the 
 power, or if the state is indifferent, the church 
 should punish the teacher by turning out of its 
 membership the man who does not agree with the 
 comprehensive and complete system of truth held 
 by the church of which he is a member. 
 
 I have tried to state this doctrine as fairly as I 
 can. I could easily have given quotations from 
 authorities that would have made it seem more 
 offensive. I wish to be equally explicit in my 
 repudiation of the doctrine in aU its parts. I 
 deny that a knowledge of religious truth is the 
 great desideratum of life. I deny that there is or 
 can be any complete or comprehensive system of 
 religious truth. I deny that there is or can be 
 any organization which can furnish such a system 
 of religious truth. And, therefore, of course I 
 deny that there can be any right, either in church 
 or state, to punish, by either physical or moral 
 penalty, the man who dissents from the commonly 
 received religious opinion. 
 
 What is religion? Max Miiller defines it as 
 "such a perception of the manifestations of the 
 Infinite as produces a moral infiuence on the con- 
 duct and character of man." The perception of 
 the Infinite is not religion, that is theology; a 
 recognition of the moral relation of man with his 
 
182 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 fellow man is not religion, that is ethics; but 
 such a perception as enlarges and enriches the 
 moral life and conduct of man is religion. 
 
 An examination of other definitions confirms the 
 accuracy of Max Miiller's. Religion has been 
 defined by John Henry Newman as "the know- 
 ledge of God and of his will, and of our duties 
 toward him." ^ That is included in Max Miiller's 
 definition ; but religion is more than " a knowledge 
 of God and of his will, and of our duties toward 
 him." One may have such a knowledge and be 
 morally indifferent to it. Eeligion has been de- 
 fined as "communion between a worshiping subject 
 and a worshiped object." That is a part of reli- 
 gion ; but religion is not confined to worship. Re- 
 ligion, indeed, may exist where there is no con- 
 scious worship ; religion is the play of the infinite 
 on the finite in the moral realm. Religion has 
 been defined by Matthew Arnold as "conduct 
 touched by emotion ; " but it depends on what the 
 emotion is : if the emotion comes from the infinite, 
 that is a good definition; but there are emotions 
 of a baser sort. Religion is a perception of God, 
 and such a perception as affects the moral conduct 
 and character of the one who perceives. This is 
 the religion of the Old Testament. The Old Tes- 
 tament is not a book about religion; it is not a 
 book written by men who had studied in the phe- 
 nomena of life the manifestations of God, and 
 written philosophically about them. It is a book 
 ^ A Grammar of Assent, p. 3*78. ' 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 183 
 
 o/" religion; it is the expression of the life of men 
 who had perceived God in his world. Poet, his- 
 torian, prophet, law-giver, all bear testimony to 
 what they have seen; they record their own per- 
 ception of the divine within themselves, or in their 
 fellows, or in external nature. Turning from the 
 Old Testament to the New, we find this also a 
 book of religion as religion is defined by Max 
 Miiller. The Four Gospels are written by men 
 who had seen the divine in one man, and wrote 
 to show what they had seen. The Book of Acts 
 is written by men who had perceived this Infinite 
 working in and through the church. The Epistles 
 are letters of men who had perceived this Infinite 
 in their own souls or in the souls of their fellow 
 men. The Apocalypse is written by some one who 
 had seen, even in the Neronian persecution, the 
 hand of God, and foreseen the triumphs of the 
 kingdom of God. Old and New Testament alike 
 answer to this definition of religion, that it is such 
 a perception of the Infinite as alEects the conduct 
 and the character of man. 
 
 The quest of humanity is after this perception 
 of the Infinite. It is a quest, not after truth 
 about God, but after God himself. The two are 
 not the same. Knowing the life of Queen Victoria 
 as you read it in the daily papers is not know- 
 ing Queen Victoria. Reading a skillful analysis 
 of her character is not knowing Queen Victoria. 
 Knowing a man is not the same as knowing about 
 a man. Knowing God is not the same as knowing 
 
184 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 about God. The office of religion is not to tell 
 men about God; it is to bring tbem into personal 
 acquaintance with God; it is to bring them into a 
 perception of the Infinite himself. Truth about 
 God is some one else's perception of the Infinite. 
 It is not the perception of a perception that is re- 
 ligion ; it is the perception of God. It is not the 
 understanding of what some one else says about 
 him; it is acquaintance with him. 
 
 Therefore the Bible cannot take the place of 
 God. Faith in the Bible is not religion; faith 
 in God is religion. Faith is seeing Him who is 
 invisible ; faith is the evidence of things not seen : 
 but the Bible is not unseen. If we are to say that 
 there may be faith in the Bible, then it is faith 
 in the invisible spiritual experiences of the men 
 who wrote the book; faith is not in the book, but 
 in the life which is transcribed in the book; and 
 that means faith in God, the perception of whom 
 is testified to by the writers of the book. Faith 
 in the church is not religion. The church is a 
 body of men and women who, more or less clearly, 
 have had some perception of the Infinite. If we 
 come into their fellowship, and through sympathy 
 get from that fellowship some perception of God 
 for ourselves, then we are getting a true religious 
 life. But the church and the witness of the church 
 cannot give religion : all that the church can do 
 is to report the experience of men who have had 
 religion. Religion is the personal perception, the 
 individual experience. Acceptance of a creed is 
 
RELIGIOUS EIGHTS 185 
 
 not religion. The creed is something which the 
 philosopher, more or less skillfully, has wrought 
 out of the experiences of those who have perceived 
 the Infinite. To perceive their perception is not 
 religion. Nothing is religion except to perceive 
 what they perceived or what the men perceived out 
 of whose perceptions they have wrought their creed. 
 Reading Nansen is not going to the North Pole. 
 Believing a creed is not perceiving God. 
 
 This is religion, — the personal perception of 
 the Infinite. This is the quest of humanity, — not 
 a complete knowledge, not a comprehensive sys- 
 tem, but God himself, — nothing less than God 
 himself. And such a quest must necessarily be 
 personal. It must be conducted by each man for 
 himself; it cannot be done vicariously. One man 
 may tell a thousand men about a great statesman, 
 but if the thousand men are to know the great 
 statesman they must meet him one by one. There 
 is no possible way by which a personal and inti- 
 mate acquaintance can be acquired for one soul 
 vicariously by other souls. The acquaintance 
 must be acquired by each man for himself. This 
 is the testimony of the Bible ; this is the testimony 
 of history. The accessibility of God to every 
 soul, the possibility of every soul coming to God, 
 — this is the teaching of the Bible, from its open- 
 ing statement that God made man in his own 
 image, to its closing statement that whosoever will 
 may take the water of life freely. The whole 
 record of the Bible is the record of a personal re- 
 
186 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 lation between the individual soul and God. These 
 writers talk to God, God answers them; they walk 
 with him, they have fellowship with him, they 
 report that fellowship. He is their friend, their 
 companion, their inspirer, their counselor, their 
 helper, their king, their father. This which is 
 the teaching of the Bible is the teaching of his- 
 tory. The Hebrews thought they were the chil- 
 dren of God, and that God had no paternal rela- 
 tionship with the pagan. The mediaeval church 
 thought the baptized were the children of God, 
 and he had no paternal relation with the unbap- 
 tized. The Calvinist thought the elect were the 
 children of God, and that he had no paternal rela- 
 tion with the non-elect. The Methodist thought 
 that God was the father of those who had passed 
 through a certain religious experience, and that 
 he was not the father of the rest of the world. 
 We are now coming to recognize that he is the 
 father of Jew and Gentile, baptized and unbap- 
 tized, elect and non-elect, repentant and unrepent- 
 ant, regenerate and unregenerate, — of the whole 
 world. Fatherhood means personal relation. A 
 father and an orphan asylum are not identical. One 
 may get food and shelter from the orphan asy- 
 lum ; but he cannot get fatherhood. When Christ 
 says to us, "Say ' Our Father which art in hea- 
 ven,' " he really says, "Eecognize that there is a 
 personal relation between you and God." Neither 
 the Bible, the church, nor the creed can serve as a 
 substitute for this personal relationship with God 
 as a Father and a Friend. 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 187 
 
 The whole world is consciously or unconsciously 
 seeking acquaintance and cooperation with God. 
 The little child lies in the cradle, knowing nothing. 
 He begins to observe the world about him. At 
 first he does not know the difference between the 
 distance to an electric light and the distance to 
 the moon; only gradually does he comprehend 
 space; at last he learns that he is surrounded by 
 infinity. He begins to study the nature of matter : 
 its complexity, and finds its forms infinite; its 
 history, and finds for it no beginning ; its probable 
 future, and can forecast for it no end ; thus again 
 he finds himself surrounded by infinity. He 
 becomes an artist or a musician, studies beauty in 
 color, form, and sound, and soon learns that there 
 is no limit to the combinations which produce 
 beauty, none to the ideal world, a little of which 
 he is trying to translate into visible or audible 
 forms; he also is studying the Infinite. Or he 
 becomes an engineer; deals with forces, the vari- 
 ous manifestations of which are beyond all compu- 
 tation, learns that all forces are one force, gives 
 himself to a study of its nature that, by obeying 
 its laws, he may command its service : he also is 
 studying the Infinite. Or he goes out into so- 
 ciety, becomes a lawyer or a statesman, studies the 
 laws of human nature, seeks both to understand 
 their nature and their application to the varied re- 
 lation^ of life, and in this endeavor learns that 
 there are such laws which man does not make and 
 cannot unmake : he also is studying the Infinite. 
 
188 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 And all the time as scientist, artist, engineer, 
 statesman, he is seeking the cooperation of the 
 Infinite. Unseen forces cooperate with the farmer 
 in his sowing and his reaping; with the mechanic 
 in his factory ; with the artist in his painting ; with 
 the statesman in his building and his guiding of 
 the state. Always is man cooperating with a 
 Partner whom he never sees, of whom he knows a 
 little, of whom he is always seeking to know more, 
 of whom he can never know all. 
 
 This quest after God must be individual and 
 personal, because it is a quest after a personal 
 God; the result must always be partial, because 
 the quest is by the finite concerning the infinite ; 
 the knowledge which the finite gains of the infinite 
 must always be fragmentary and imperfect. A 
 complete and perfect system of truth regarding God 
 and divine law is absolutely impossible; because 
 God and divine law are .infinite, and we are finite. 
 All, therefore, that any man can ever see is some 
 of the manifestations of God; all that he can ever 
 report is something of the divine. We make our 
 different excursions into the infinite; we bring 
 back our different reports. Let me quote once 
 more from John Henry Newman : — 
 
 There is this obvious and undeniable difficulty in at- 
 tempting to form a theory of private judgment in the 
 choice of a religion, that private judgment leads differ- 
 ent minds in such different directions. 
 
 That is the glory of it — the splendor of it! 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 189 
 
 Send ten thousand men in different directions, eacli 
 to look with his own eyes, feel with his own heart, 
 realize in his own experience some aspect of the di- 
 vine character, and they will bring back from their 
 quest ten thousand manifestations of God, ■ — ■ each 
 that manifestation which he is capable of receiving. 
 So it is that the engineer gets a conception of 
 the power of God which the artist never has; 
 and the artist a conception of the beauty of God 
 which the mechanic never has ; and the mechanic a 
 conception of the skill of God which the statesman 
 never has ; and the statesman a conception of the 
 justice of God which the divine never has; and 
 the divine a conception of the kinship of man in 
 the spiritual realm with God which the others do 
 not easily get. Each has his own point of view, 
 each sees his own vision. Private judgment has 
 broken the church up, — thank God for it ! For 
 it is not individuals alone, it is churches also, that 
 get their different points of view. Each sees a 
 little, none sees all. The Calvinist says, "God 
 is a sovereign, and rules the whole world with in- 
 finite, unvarying, unalterable law." The Metho- 
 dist says, "Man is a free moral agent; he can do 
 what he will, he is personally responsible for his 
 actions." And not till after centuries of contro- 
 versy does it at last begin to dawn on both that 
 we may be living in a world of free moral agents, 
 under a divine sovereign. One theologian de- 
 clares that God is just and must maintain his law, 
 and will to the end of time, cost what it may. 
 
190 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Another theologian declares that God is merciful, 
 tender, and compassionate, and cares for the in- 
 dividual. Not till after centuries of controversy 
 do we at last begin to learn that mercy and justice 
 are simply different phases of the same character, 
 that their demands are confirmatory, not contra- 
 dictory, and that the greatest penalty which society 
 can put upon a deliberate criminal is to place him 
 under redemptive influences until he is reformed. 
 Formerly the Unitarian said, Christ cannot be 
 God, he is merely man; the Trinitarian said, 
 Christ cannot be merely man, he is God. We are 
 beginning to learn that there is a human life in 
 God, that there is a divine life in man, that God 
 is best seen in humanity, that humanity is never 
 seen at its best and truest self except as God 
 dwells in it and makes it divine. 
 
 I hear a great deal about the virtue of tolera- 
 tion. I do not believe in toleration. I do not 
 thank any man for tolerating me; and I cannot 
 conceive of myself as tolerating Cardinal Gibbons, 
 who represents one extreme in ecclesiasticism, or 
 President Eliot, who represents another extreme 
 in ecclesiasticism. It is not toleration, it is cath- 
 olicity we need; it is not indifference to error, it. 
 is the humility of mind which says, I see in part 
 and I prophesy in part; my brother sees in part 
 and prophesies in part; and by and by we will 
 put these parts together, and then we shall — 
 know it all? No. Then we shall know a little 
 more than we know at present. 
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS 191 
 
 These, then, are my postulates. There is no 
 complete and comprehensive system of the infi- 
 nite, and cannot be. If there were, it would do 
 us no great good to have it; it is not what we 
 need. There is a personal quest after the Infinite, 
 and there is possible, what is far better than a 
 knowledge of truth, a personal acquaintance with 
 God. It is the right of man to pursue this quest 
 unhindered; to find God for himself, in his own 
 way, with his own faculties, after his own fash- 
 ion. This is the absolute right of every man; his 
 absolute right because God is accessible to all 
 men ; his absolute right because this acquaintance 
 with God is the divine end of his existence. When 
 a state interposes and prohibits this quest ; when it 
 says to any man, "You must not find out God for 
 yourself, or tell what you have found out to oth- 
 ers," that state is violating the fundamental right 
 of man. When any church says to any man, 
 "You must not look for God yourself, you must 
 take our definition of him; you must not go be- 
 yond the lines of that definition, or expect to find 
 any new thing about him," that church is not 
 only not doing its function, it is directly antago- 
 nizing its function. It is preventing men from 
 seeking God for themselves, by putting an eccle- 
 siastical organization between the soul and its 
 Father. When a creed is offered to men, and 
 they are required to take it under penalty of some 
 obloquy if they reject it, the imposition of such 
 a creed violates the fundamental right of man to 
 
192 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 find God for himself. All creeds have some truth 
 in them; no creeds have all truth in them. I am 
 almost prepared to say that it would be safe to 
 believe all the affirmations of all the creeds, and to 
 reject all their denials. Whenever a body of de- 
 vout men have come saying, "We have found this 
 in the infinite," their report of what they have 
 found is presumptively true. Whenever they have 
 comeback saying, "We have not found this," it 
 does not in the least indicate that what they have 
 not found may not be there. 
 
 In all other ranks of life we recognize the fact 
 that the infinite is infinite, and that finite discov- 
 eries are but fragmentary and partial. We crown 
 with honor the man who brings back from the in- 
 finite a new discovery. He has been out into the 
 infinite space and found a new world with his tel- 
 escope; he has been out into the infinite forces 
 of nature and discovered a new force which he can 
 set to work for the good of mankind; he has 
 been out into the infinite of music and created a 
 new symphony ; he has been out into the infinite 
 realm of color and learned how to paint, not 
 merely trees and rocks, but the very atmosphere 
 through which we see trees and rocks. We honor 
 the new school of art, of music, of astronomy. It 
 is only the church that has thought God little and 
 has thought man big. It is only the church that 
 has condemned the man who has gone out into the 
 infinite and brought back a new vision of God. 
 I have sometimes thought I should like to write 
 
RELIGIOUS EIGHTS 193 
 
 a history of the church, for the purpose of show- 
 ing that Christianity must be supernatural to have 
 lived despite so many blunders by its friends. 
 
 Agnosticism says, "We can know nothing about 
 the Infinite." "All talk of God," says Professor 
 Huxley, " is like sounding brass and tinkling cym- 
 bals;" and then he goes on to write four or five 
 volumes on the subject ! Dogmatism is first cousin 
 to agnosticism, for dogmatism says, "We cannot 
 know anything about God except what other peo- 
 ple tell us." Over against both I here put the 
 foundations of religious liberty, — the accessibility 
 of God to every soul, and the consequent right of 
 every soul to find God by its own quest, in its 
 own way. We need to get away from the notion 
 that the end of religious life is the acquisition 
 of truth, and to realize that it is the acquisition 
 of God; away from the notion that there is or 
 can be a complete system of truth about God and 
 divine law, and realize that he is infinite and we 
 are finite, and that we can but know in part and 
 prophesy in part; away from the notion that the 
 church is primarily a teaching institution, equipped 
 with truth which it is to give to others, and to 
 learn that the church is a life-giving institution, 
 stirring men up to do their own thinking, that each 
 may reach for himself his own result ; away from 
 the mediaeval notion that the loyalty of the Chris- 
 tian is to be to an organization, a creed, or a book, 
 and learn that it is to be to the Jehovah of the 
 Old Testatment, the Christ of the New Testa- 
 ment, the God of all life. 
 
LECTUEE VII 
 
 THE AMEEICAN DEMOCEACY 
 
 I SHALL venture to-night to recall your atten- 
 tion to the principles which I have endeavored, 
 in the preceding lectures of this course, to illus- 
 trate. 
 
 In the first lecture, I endeavored to trace the 
 conflict between the Hebraic commonwealth and 
 Boman imperialism, and to show how, as the re- 
 sult of that conflict, Eoman imperialism was over- 
 thrown; in the second lecture I endeavored to 
 show how the fundamental principle — that the 
 world and life are made for all men and not for 
 a few — has been gradually wrought out in reli- 
 gion, in politics, in industry, in education; in the 
 third lecture I applied this fundamental principle 
 to government, and endeavored to show that just 
 governments are organized and administered for 
 the benefit of those that are governed, not for the 
 benefit of those who do the governing, but that 
 this does not necessarily mean that those who are 
 governed must have a share in the government; 
 in the fourth lecture I attempted to apply the same 
 principle to industry, and to show that the indus- 
 trial rights of man involve the right of every man 
 
THE AMEKICAN DEMOCRACY 195 
 
 to the profit of his own industry and to his share 
 in the common wealth, that is, that wealth which 
 is not the product of any man's industry but the 
 gift of God, but this does not necessarily involve 
 the doctrine that all such property shall be held or 
 administered in common ; in the fifth lecture, ap- 
 plying the same principle to education, I endeav- 
 ored to show the right of every man to a free and 
 fuU. development of all his powers, physical, intel- 
 lectual, moral, and spiritual, and that in a govern- 
 ment which rests on the political cooperation of its 
 citizens, it is the duty of the state to provide such 
 education as is necessary to enable every member 
 of society to fulfill the functions of good citizen- 
 ship; in the sixth lecture, applying the same 
 principle in the sphere of religion, I attempted to 
 show that every man stands in a personal relation 
 to God, somewhat analogous to that of a child to 
 its father, and that therefore every man has a 
 right to go to God, to learn what he can of God, 
 and to bring back and tell to his fellow men what 
 he has learned, or what he thinks he has learned, 
 without let, hindrance, obstacle, or interference of 
 any kind, from either state or church. These 
 fundamental principles all rest on the postulate 
 that the world and life are made for aU men, not 
 for a few: consequently government must be for 
 the benefit of the governed, the common wealth 
 must be administered for the benefit of the com- 
 mon people, education must be for all, not for a 
 few, and both church and state must recognize and 
 
196 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 respect the right and liberty of every man to give 
 forth as he will his own interpretation of the In- 
 finite and the Eternal. 
 
 America represents these four fundamental prin- 
 ciples better than any other nation now represents 
 them, and better than they ever have been repre- 
 sented by any nation in the past. But America 
 represents more than these principles. Democracy, 
 as represented in America, means that the people 
 themselves are trusted to administer their own 
 government, to carry on their own industries, to 
 organize their own educational system, to develop 
 their own religious life. Democracy is more than 
 a scheme of government, more than a theory of 
 economics, more than a plan of education, more 
 than a form of religious institutions. Democracy 
 is a great religious faith : a superstitious faith, if 
 you will, but a great religious faith. It is faith 
 in man. It is not merely good will toward man, 
 — autocracy might be that; not merely hope for 
 man, — autocracy might be that : it is faith in 
 man; autocracy never is that. 
 
 Every man has his distinctive peculiarities. He 
 is a poet, an orator, a statesman; he is great in 
 some virtue, as courage or gentleness or patience. 
 Rarely is any man great in all virtues; never is 
 any man great on all sides of his nature. As 
 every man has his own distinctive characteristics, 
 so has every nation. It is not always conscious of 
 its own characteristics, it is not always consistent 
 in manifesting those characteristics. But a nation 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 197 
 
 lias its distinctive characteristic, as does the race 
 or the tribe or the individual. Thus the distinc- 
 tive characteristic of ancient Eome was autocracy, 
 of Venice oligarchy, of England in the eighteenth 
 century aristocracy. In the sense in which Kome 
 was autocratic, Venice oligarchic, England aristo- 
 cratic, America is democratic. That is, the insti- 
 tutions, the history, the life of America, have been 
 pervaded by the spirit, not merely of good will 
 toward man, and of large hope for man, but also 
 of faith in man. America has not always been con- 
 scious of the spirit which has possessed her ; she has 
 not always consistently carried out the principles 
 which she has professed. Neither has any nation, 
 neither has any individual. But as distinguished 
 from the other nations of the earth, America is dis- 
 tinctively democratic. That is, she has distinc- 
 tively a spirit of goodwill toward all men, hope for 
 all men, faith in all men. This good will may have 
 sometimes been unwise, this hope may have some- 
 times been visionary and extravagant, this faith 
 may have sometimes been audacious and ill-based. 
 I am not eulogizing America ; I am not even de- 
 fending America; I am only trying to describe 
 America. 
 
 What are the distinguishing characteristics of 
 this nation ? Let us forget for a moment that we 
 are Americans, and stand apart and look at our 
 country. Not greatness of territory: Russia has 
 greater territory than America. Not greatness of 
 population : China has a greater and a far denser 
 
198 THE BIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 population than America. Not wealth: Great 
 Britain has perhaps as great wealth as America. 
 Not the tendency to crowd into cities : that ten- 
 dency is as marked in Germany and in England as 
 in our own West. Not any of these things are dis- 
 tinctively characteristic of America. Nor are the 
 vices which are sometimes attributed to her, and 
 of which she is indeed guilty ; they are character- 
 istic, but they are not distinctive. It is sometimes 
 said that drunkenness is distinctively characteris- 
 tic of the American people ; it is not true. There 
 is a great deal too much drunkenness in America, 
 but on the whole it may safely be said that there is 
 proportionally more drinking and less drunkenness 
 in America than in any other country possessing a 
 similar climate. There is certainly less than in 
 England or Scotland or France ; and if in the term 
 "drunkenness" you include the stupefying influ- 
 ence of alcohol as well as its inebriating effect, 
 then there is more drunkenness in Germany than 
 in America. There are more drunken people to 
 be met in a day in London or Edinburgh than one 
 will meet in a week in Boston or New York. 
 
 Corruption is not a distinctive characteristic of 
 America. If one were to form his judgment from 
 some of our orators, and our newspapers, he would 
 imagine this was the most corrupt nation on the 
 face of the earth. But it is not. Our own Credit 
 Mobilier scandals were equaled if not surpassed 
 by those in France in connection with the Panama 
 Canal. Our own political corruption, even in 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 199 
 
 New York, has been surpassed by the political cor- 
 ruption unearthed in the last war in Spain. And 
 every man who is familiar with the political his- 
 tory of England in the latter half of the eighteenth 
 and in the early part of the nineteenth century 
 knows that England was more honeycombed with 
 corruption, and corruption in higher quarters, than 
 America has ever known in any period of her his- 
 tory. I do not palliate American corruption. I 
 am not apologizing for it by the plea that we are 
 no worse than our neighbors. I am simply saying 
 that corruption is not distinctively American. It 
 is characteristic of the commercial age in which we 
 live, and it belongs to Berlin and Paris as well as 
 to New York or Washington. It is the vice of our 
 age, not of our peculiar democratic development. 
 It is all the more dangerous because it is world- 
 wide ; but it is not the distinguishing characteristic 
 of the American people. 
 
 There is, perhaps, more reason to say that law- 
 lessness is a characteristic of America. Lynch 
 law in our more sparsely settled regions is un- 
 doubtedly common, — lynch law aggravated in 
 some instances by race prejudice. And yet law- 
 lessness is by no means a distinctive peculiarity of 
 America. There is more violence in an English 
 election than there is in an American election. 
 The scenes of lawlessness in the French Assembly, 
 in the Austro-Hungarian Eeichsrath, and in the 
 Italian Chamber, within the last few years, have 
 far surpassed anything that has been witnessed in 
 
200 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 either our Congress or any one of our state legis- 
 latures. The spirit of lawlessness belongs to the 
 uprising of democracy; it belongs to an age in 
 which men have had the manacles taken off and 
 have not yet learned how to use their hands. It 
 belongs to an age in which men have been set free 
 from the control of others and have not yet fully 
 acquired control of themselves. It belongs to the 
 nineteenth century rather than to the United 
 States. 
 
 Are there any characteristics of America which 
 differentiate it from other lands, — which are un- 
 like those of France or Germany or Italy or Spain 
 or England? 
 
 In the first place, in America the people are 
 trusted to govern themselves, and they are thus 
 recognized as the source of authority. The demo- 
 cracy of America differs from that of France and 
 from that of England in this fundamental respect. 
 All the powers of the locality in France, and in 
 England, are derived from the central govern- 
 ment. In England the county has just so much 
 power as Parliament chooses to give. In France 
 the arrondissement has just so much power as the 
 French Assembly chooses to give. The process is 
 exactly reversed in America. Our Constitution 
 assumes, first, that every man is not necessarily 
 competent to govern himself, but more competent 
 to govern himself than any one else is to govern 
 him; second, that each locality is able to take care 
 of its own affairs better than any other locality is to 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 201 
 
 take care of its affairs for it. So we have, first, in- \ 
 dividual self-government; next, local self -govern- i 
 ment, — home-rule in town or city or county ; then 1 
 the larger affairs of the state cared for by aU the 
 people of the state ; and finally, those things which 
 belong neither to the individual nor to the city nor 
 to the county nor to the state, but to the whole 
 federation of states, — those, and those alone, are 
 relegated to the federal Congress. The authority 
 of the people is initiative and primary in America ; 
 it is derived and secondary in Europe. All the 
 powers of the central government are derivative 
 here; all the powers of the individual and the lo- 
 cality are derivative there. In other words, the 
 American nation started with the assumption that 
 the people should be permitted to govern them- 
 selves ; this is faith in the people. It was not at 
 first as wide a faith as it is to-day. In the origi- 
 nal constitutions of our several states, there were 
 qualifications for suffrage that no longer exist; 
 some- of them were religious qualifications, some 
 of them property qualifications, some of them edu- 
 cational qualifications. Most of these have been 
 swept away, whether wisely or unwisely, I do not 
 now stop to discuss. I only point out that faith 
 in the ability of men to govern themselves has 
 been increasing. Democracy is faith in man. 
 
 Nor has it only been faith in man's judgment to 
 decide great questions, but also faith in his power 
 of self-restraint to submit to the decision when it 
 is made. We are so accustomed to our American 
 
202 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 method that we hardly recognize the greatness of 
 the experiment upon which we have entered. Will 
 we have silver or gold for our currency? We 
 do not ask experts to decide the question for us. 
 We submit it to the whole American people, and 
 the porter who sweeps out the bank has as much 
 i power — though not as much influence — in de- 
 termining that question as the president or the 
 cashier of the bank. The question confronts us, 
 Shall we enter into new world-relations? What 
 shall be our relation to Cuba, to Porto Kico, to 
 Hawaii, to the Philippine Islands? We do not 
 gather a small body of expert statesmen and leave 
 to them the decision of the problem; we do not 
 even submit it to a few college professors, or to 
 men skilled in diplomatic affairs, or versed in con- 
 stitutional history. The whole American people 
 organize themselves into a great debating society; 
 and after the debate has been carried on one or 
 two years, — ia the last three months with great 
 excitement and sometimes too much passion, — 
 fourteen million people decide the question, four- 
 teen million of all classes, conditions, characters, 
 and grades of education. Nor is that aU; we not 
 only trust the American people to decide, but we 
 trust in their self-restraint to abide by the decision. 
 If, as has happened more than once, the majority of 
 the people vote in one way, and the majority of 
 the presidential electors vote the other, the major- 
 ity submits to the decision of the minority and 
 helps to carry it out. We not only believe in the 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 203 
 
 potential capacity of men to decide the most fun- 
 damental questions of national life for themselves : 
 we also believe ^ — and act on that belief and in- 
 corporate it into our institutions — that when a 
 question is decided against their judgment, or even 
 against their conscience, they will submit until 
 they have changed the judgment or the conscience 
 of their fellow men. The most striking illustra- 
 tion of this trust of the American people in the 
 self -restraining power of man is seen in the organ- 
 ization of our United States Supreme Court, which 
 is regarded by all writers on law as the greatest 
 contribution which our fathers made, in the for- 
 mation of the Constitution of the United States, 
 to political organization. We have on this con- 
 tinent forty-five independent states. Questions 
 arise between these states. If such questions 
 were to arise between European states, they would 
 arm and go to war. Some forty or fifty questions 
 have so arisen in the history of the United States, 
 which would have been quite sufficient cause for 
 war in Europe. They have been submitted to a 
 selected body of a dozen or fifteen gentlemen sit- 
 ting in Washington. Those gentlemen are not 
 the wisest men in the world, they are not neces- 
 sarily the wisest men in the United States ; there 
 are scores, perhaps hundreds of lawyers as wise, 
 disinterested, and dispassionate. But we have 
 selected these particular gentlemen, put them on 
 the bench, and said to them, "These great ques- 
 tions we will leave to you." To-day the Ameri- 
 
204 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 can people is divided in opinion as to the right 
 of this people, under its constitution, to hold ter- 
 ritory which is not incorporated within the nation. 
 We have our different opinions, and we have a 
 right to them. The ablest men are divided on 
 the question. The question has heen submitted to 
 these judges of a Supreme Court; it is decided, by 
 a majority of one, and the whole country accepts 
 that decision without a suggestion of resistance or 
 revolt. We had a hotly contested presidential 
 election: was Mr. Tilden elected, or Mr. Hayes? 
 The South American republics would have been 
 in a flame of revolution. We organized a tribu- 
 nal, submitted the question to the tribunal, and 
 accepted its decision. We had a hotly debated 
 question about the income tax: half our people 
 said. It is right to levy an income tax; it is just, 
 honest, constitutional, it ought to be levied; the 
 other half said. It is wrong, dishonest, unconstitu- 
 tional, it ought not to be levied. This affected 
 more than our consciences : it affected our pockets. 
 We submitted that question to the Supreme 
 Court ; first they decided in favor of the tax, then 
 they decided against the tax, and the final de- 
 cision was reached, as it was wittily said, "by the 
 indecision of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States." When it was decided, no one thought of 
 resistance, and the bare suggestion that the com- 
 position of the court might be changed in order to 
 secure a reversal of the decision was received with 
 deep and widespread indignation. This is the 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 205 
 
 faith which the American people have in the great 
 masses of mankind, not only that they have capa- 
 city potentially to decide great questions, but 
 power of moral self-restraint to submit when ques- 
 tions are decided against them, not only by ma- 
 jorities but even by minorities, not only by minor- 
 ities but even by single men. 
 
 Along with this faith in humanity is a great 
 hope for man ; with the faith that every man ought 
 to have a chance goes a hope for every man if he 
 gets the chance. This is the meaning of the aboli- 
 tion of all caste and class distinctions. It is a dis- 
 tinctive peculiarity of America that every man has 
 an open door set before him. In England, at least 
 until very recently, the son of a porter was ex- 
 pected to be a porter, the son of an omnibus driver 
 to be an omnibus driver, the son of a landed 
 owner became as matter of course a landed owner, 
 and the man who held a seat in Parliament handed 
 it down to his son. All this we have done away 
 with in America. Why? Because we believe 
 every man ought to have a chance, because we 
 have hope for every man that he can make some- 
 thing out of his chance. This spirit of hopeful- 
 ness is a very distinctive characteristic of Amer- 
 ican life; of this spirit and the grounds of it I 
 shall have something to say in a succeeding lecture. 
 
 Out of this has grown, not merely a chance for 
 every man, but a system of education to give men 
 the ability to take advantage of that chance. Not 
 only the workshop is open, but the school to teach 
 
206 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 liow to handle tools; not only the professorship, 
 but the school to teach how to use language; not 
 only the mercantile career, but the school to teach 
 book-keeping. We have not only opened the 
 door, but we have gone to the very cradle and 
 said to every child, You shall have an education 
 that will fit you to enter into this door, to take 
 advantage of this chance, and to be what you can. 
 Our school system is founded on nothing less than 
 a belief in the potentiality of man and of every 
 man. Children in the cradle are like seeds, and 
 in India the seeds are assorted, put in separate 
 bins, and called castes. In America there is no 
 assortment; no man knows when a seed is dropped 
 into the ground whether it wiU be a thistle, a stalk 
 of wheat, or a tree. We leave the process of de- 
 velopment to make what can be made out of each 
 seed. 
 
 At the same time we have thrown, as no other 
 nation has, the religious responsibility wholly upon 
 the people. America is the only considerable 
 country on the globe which has not a state church, 
 or which does not give support to some form of 
 religion or to certain forms of religion. There 
 are two distinguishing features in the religious life 
 of the United States : one that it puts no obstacle 
 in the way of any man's religion or irreligion; the 
 other that religion is the free expression of the na- 
 tional life. A man may advocate worship or he may 
 denounce worship ; he may preach Christianity or 
 he may vilify Christianity ; he may lecture against 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 207 
 
 it in halls to applauding thousands or he may 
 preach in support of it in the church to unapplaud- 
 ing hundreds ; the law does not interfere. Robert 
 IngersoU has rendered incidental and unintentional 
 service, for the very fact that he traveled through- 
 out this country, and no man attempted to forbid 
 him, is a splendid witness to the truth that we 
 believe in America that religion and irreligion are 
 absolutely free. As a result, we have on the one 
 hand no obstacle put upon any man's worship or 
 no worship, and on the other hand all our worship 
 is the frank expression of the life of the people. 
 Our churches are not as splendid as the cathe- 
 drals of England, of France, of Germany, and 
 of Italy; but there is not a brick, nor a timber, 
 nor a shingle, nor a pane of glass that is not the 
 witness either to the free religion of the people 
 who built the church, or to the vanity, the pride, 
 and the self-glorification that apes and assumes 
 the habits of religion. Our religious institutions 
 in America are, every one of them, the free-will 
 offering of a free people. 
 
 And we have not only trusted ourselves, but we 
 have beckoned to other peoples, and they have 
 come from Europe flocking to our shores, — men 
 without education, without training, without pre- 
 vious background of history, men unfitted, one 
 would say, for all these functions. Steam has 
 bridged the Atlantic Ocean, and over this bridge a 
 long procession marches, half a million every year, 
 — Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Swiss, Norwe- 
 
208 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 gians, Spaniards, Irish, Hungarians, Poles. For 
 a long time we asked no questions; for a long 
 time we let any man come. Now we exclude 
 the pauper, the diseased, the unmistakably in- 
 competent and unworthy. But in the main the 
 door is thrown wide open. Nor is that all: we 
 have offered our lands to them. We have offered 
 to every man a section of land if he would but 
 occupy and cultivate it. Never before in the his- 
 tory of the world has a nation thus invited the 
 men of other nations to come and compete with 
 them in industry. It may be said that this was 
 a wise financial policy? I think it was. That it 
 has helped to develop the wealth of the nation? I 
 believe it has. That it has enriched us ? I also 
 think so. But it has been distinctively a policy 
 of good will, working out good for others as well 
 as for ourselves; and a policy of faith in man, — 
 faith that the ignorant, the uncultivated, the 
 poorer classes of foreign lands, had in them, for 
 themselves and for their children, the potentiality 
 of a great manhood. 
 
 To these immigrants we have given equal share 
 in all the advantages we possessed ourselves: we 
 have given them our land, we have opened to them 
 our schools, we have welcomed them to our indus- 
 tries, and then, with the smallest possible appren- 
 ticeship, we have invited them to a share in our 
 government, to take part in controlling the des- 
 tinies of this great nation. Was this wise? I shall 
 have something to say about that by and by. But 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 209 
 
 this is what we have done, and doing it was char- 
 acteristic of us. It may have been too audacious, 
 but it has been faith in man, and not in Anglo- 
 Saxon man alone, faith in all men, of all classes 
 and conditions. 
 
 These are the distinguishing characteristics of 
 our American people : faith in man's capacity for 
 self-government, in his power of self-restraint, in 
 his readiness to receive education, in his ability to 
 solve all religious problems for himself; and this 
 faith, not merely in ourselves and our kin, but in 
 all classes and conditions of men of all races and 
 countries. It has been a spirit of faith in man, 
 hope for man, good wiU toward man. 
 
 How has this experiment worked? What has 
 been the result? 
 
 In the" first place, this nation has grown in terri- 
 tory marvelously. Within this hundred years, 
 beginning as a little strip along the coast, with a 
 population not greater than that now inhabiting 
 Greater New York, it has spread out until it 
 reaches from ocean to ocean, and from the Lakes 
 to the Gulf. In the second place, there has been 
 a marvelous growth in population; from five mil- 
 lion in 1800 to seventy-five million in 1900, — a 
 growth in population, I believe, absolutely unpar- 
 alleled in the whole history of the globe. But this 
 growth in population has been less than the growth 
 in wealth. We have asked the poor to come over 
 here, and we have grown richer. We have asked 
 the ignorant to come over here, and we have grown 
 
210 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 richer. While our population has increased four- 
 fold, from 1840 to 1890, our wealth has increased 
 thirteen -fold. In other words, while we have in- 
 vited the poor of other lands to come hither and 
 share our wealth with us, that wealth has grown 
 more than three times as fast as our population. 
 There has never been, in the history of the globe, 
 such a growth in wealth as in America. 
 
 The external development of our religious insti- 
 tutions has been equally great. We have thrown 
 the responsibility for religious institutions upon 
 the people. We have been warned against this 
 course; English writers said, It will never do; 
 you cannot maintain the church if you do not 
 support it by the state. But our churches have 
 grown faster than our population. Dr. Dorches- 
 ter, in some statistics published in the " Congrega- 
 tionalist " of December 29, 1900, tells us that in 
 the hundred years 1800-1900, the population has 
 increased fourteen-fold, and the membership in 
 the Evangelical Protestant churches has increased 
 fifty-fold. Consider what that means: with all 
 the rapidity of our growth, increased by immigra- 
 tion from foreign sources, the growth in the Evan- 
 gelical Protestant churches has been fifty-fold, 
 against fourteen-fold growth in population. And 
 this does not begin to indicate what has been the 
 numerical growth of the churches; for to these 
 figures must be added the communicants in the 
 Eoman Catholic Church, the adherents in the Jew- 
 ish synagogues, and the members in all the so-called 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 211 
 
 Liberal churches and Ethical Societies. Along with 
 this growth in numbers and in organization, there 
 has also been growth in the material prosperity 
 of the churches, in the character of the buildings, 
 in financial equipment, in facility for service. 
 
 Along with all this, there has been an analogous 
 growth in education. On the people themselves 
 has been thrown the whole responsibility for the 
 education of the nation, and they have responded. 
 At first, public schools existed practically only in 
 the New England states ; now, there is not a state 
 or territory in the Union without its public school 
 system; at first, no school system whatever for 
 negroes or Indians ; now, education is provided and 
 open to nearly all negroes and all Indians. Nor 
 has this education consisted solely of the simpler 
 elements of learning. In my boyhood the youth 
 who wished to get the higher education must go to 
 England or Germany or France. There are still 
 two or three specialties which he can acquire better 
 abroad, but with these exceptions he can do post- 
 graduate work as well in America as anywhere in 
 the world, if not better. While our educational 
 institutions have been multiplied, they have both 
 grown broader and grown upward. 
 
 There are certain elements of life which cannot ; 
 be summed up in statistics. What has been the 
 moral product of this democracy? what the moral 
 accompaniment of this growth in territory, in pop- 
 ulation, in wealth, in religious and educational 
 equipment? The moral power of America is cer- 
 
212 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 tainly not inferior to that of any other nation. The 
 love of country never was subjected to a severer 
 test than it was in America during the civil war. 
 What patriotism means to democracy, what love 
 of country means, what the love of man for his 
 fellow-man, what the love of man for the institu- 
 tions that represent or appear to him to represent 
 liberty, justice, equality, the graves of our soldiers 
 and the monuments in every town and village bear 
 witness. 
 
 It is the conscience of America which abolished 
 slavery. It is the conscience of America which 
 has diminished drunkenness and put a curb-bit in 
 the mouth of the liquor traffic. It is the con- 
 science of America which has wrought the indus- 
 trial reforms which have already been accom- 
 plished. It is the humane conscience of America 
 which has built up hospitals and asylums and 
 libraries, some founded and maintained by the 
 state or the city, some by the benevolent enterprise 
 of individuals. 
 
 "Whatever else may be said of Americans, they 
 are not mean or narrow or niggardly. They may 
 be selfish, they may be grasping, but they do not 
 hoard. They may be provincial, but they are 
 not narrow. Democracy has made a nation of 
 broad and generous men. 
 
 We are to remember, too, what has been the 
 spiritual and ethical development. of the churches. 
 Their growth in numbers, in equipment, has not 
 been their only growth. Within this century the 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 213 
 
 city mission movement, the home mission move- 
 ment, the foreign mission movement, have all been 
 organized. They are products of democracy in 
 religion. The churches are no longer merely wor- 
 shiping places, nor places where people gather for 
 aesthetic enjoyment, nor where their piety is kept 
 alive by the assiduous calls of a busy pastor. 
 The church has become, in Parkhurst's phrase, 
 the pastor's force, not his field. Every church 
 that is worthy of the name in America is to-day a 
 working church. Democracy has made working 
 churches, because democracy has thrown the re- 
 sponsibility of the religious institution on the indi- 
 vidual member. And out from these churches have 
 gone forth spiritual forces, reaching far beyond 
 ecclesiastical walls, — the Young Men's Christian 
 Associations, the Young Women's Christian Asso- 
 ciations, the Societies of Christian Endeavor, the 
 King's Daughters, and cognate organizations. 
 
 This is what has been wrought in America by 
 a century of faith in man, hope for man, good 
 will toward man. A land wide in extent, rich in 
 population, growing in wealth and in the diifusion 
 of wealth, in education and in the diffusion of 
 education, growing in religious institutions and in 
 the power of an awakened conscience and an awak- 
 ened spirit of faith and hope and love. The dis- 
 tinguishing spirit of America is this spirit of faith 
 in man, hope for man, and good will toward man. 
 This is its history, this is its vital constitution, 
 this is its essential nature. 
 
214 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 There are those who think, or seem to think, 
 that suddenly this nation has thrown away its birth- 
 right, has forgotten its faith in man, has lost its 
 hope for man, has ceased to have good will toward 
 man, and that now, at the close of the century, it 
 has suddenly become dominated by an imperial 
 and imperious ambition. Some of these are men 
 for whose views I have great respect, whose intel- 
 lectual conclusions Americans ought to weigh with 
 candor and with consideration; but I cannot be- 
 lieve that a nation is either converted or perverted 
 in a day. I cannot believe that a great nation, 
 founded on faith in man and hope for man and 
 good wiU toward man, — a nation which has shown 
 its faith in man by its institutions, and by its his- 
 tory, has suddenly broken with all the traditions 
 of the past, lost all the spirit of its youth and early 
 manhood, and has been instantaneously converted 
 from a great example of faith and hope and good 
 will toward man into an imperial Eepublic. The 
 spirit which has emancipated the negro, which has 
 opened all the lands to the immigrant, which has 
 founded the public school and taxed the state for 
 the education of the common people, this spirit 
 is not lost. We may differ among ourselves as 
 to the facts, and as to the application of funda- 
 mental principles to those facts; some of us may 
 be too eager to enter upon untried paths in the 
 future, and some of us too reluctant; some of us 
 may be glad that new days bring new duties and 
 be too ready to assume them ; some of us may be 
 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 215 
 
 sorry that new days bring new duties and wish 
 only to fulfill the duties of our fathers ; but the 
 great heart of America is a heart of faith in hu- 
 manity, of hope for humanity, of good will toward 
 humanity. The American people are true to their 
 past traditions, their present institutions, their real 
 life. We shall go on with this experiment we are 
 making, of trust in the people, hope for the people, 
 and good will to the people, until we have carried 
 it out to its final and uttermost end. How this 
 spirit is to be applied, how these principles are to 
 be interpreted in their application to the solution 
 of the problems of the future, both foreign and 
 domestic, will be the subject for consideration in 
 the next two of these lectures. 
 
LECTUKE VIII 
 
 AMERICAN DOMESTIC PEOBLEMS 
 
 In preceding lectures I have expounded certain 
 fundamental political principles, which in the suc- 
 ceeding lectures of this course I shall assume to be 
 true. These principles may be thus rehearsed: 
 The o.y ect ,of^oyernmentjs^thejgrotection^of ^per^ 
 son^property, reputation, familY3_a nd liberty — by 
 which last I mean the right of every individual 
 tojise his person_j^nd^^i^_property_^^sjbe^p]£ases, 
 so lon g_as^he doesjiotj[^iolateJbhaJidghts.gr_ impair 
 the welfare of his fellosfjimen. All just govern- 
 ments exist for the benefit of those that are gov- 
 erned — that is, they exist in equal measure for 
 the protection of all these rights in all men, not 
 for the protection of the rights of special classes 
 more than others. That is the best government, 
 whatever its form, which best protects person, pro- 
 perty, reputation, family, and liberty. The ulti- 
 mate government is self-government — that is, it 
 is that state of society in which the best in each 
 man governs the worst in each man, so that there 
 is no longer the need that some better man outside 
 of him shall_goyern him and Jkeep him from wrong; 
 doing. Therefore the true government, the ideal 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 217 
 
 government, while it is primarily protecting per- 
 son, property, family, reputation, and liberty, also 
 ought to be so administered as to develop in man 
 a capacity for self-government, and thus bring 
 about that state of society in which every man 
 shall govern himself, and there shall be no need of 
 external government over him. 
 
 This development of character is accomplished, 
 not only by systems of education established and 
 maintained by the state, as such systems are main- 
 tained by all free states in the measure in which they 
 become free ; but it is also accomplished by throw- 
 ing on the people of each particular community 
 the largest measure of responsibility which they 
 are able to bear, consistently with the protection 
 of person, property, reputation, and family. But 
 if greater responsibility is thrown upon the people 
 than they are able to bear, if they are not compe- 
 tent to protect the inherent and inalienable rights 
 of the individual, then the government is a bad 
 government, no matter who shares in it, no matter 
 what its form. For the fundamental nature of 
 government and its sole justification is that it is 
 a mutual protection society, organized for the pre- 
 servation of human rights. If it does not pre- 
 serve the rights of the individual, it is a bad gov- 
 ernment; if it does protect his rights, it is a good 
 government; if it so preserves human rights as to 
 develop in the governed people the power to gov- 
 ern themselves, it is the best government. I wish 
 in this lecture to apply these fundamental princi- 
 
218 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 pies to certain political problems that e«nf ront us : 
 they are five in number, — the Indian question ; 
 the negro question; the woman suffrage question; 
 the question of the relation of the political ma- 
 chine to human liberty in a democratic government ; 
 and the question of the rights of the majority over 
 the minority in a free community. This is a large 
 theme; it can be treated only in outline. 
 
 I. When our fathers landed in this country, 
 they found something like half a million savages 
 roaming over it, who lived on the continent, but 
 did not truly occupy the continent. They hunted 
 in the woods, but felled no timber; fished in the 
 streams, but made no mills; roamed over the 
 prairies, but got out of them no wheat or corn of 
 any consequence; roamed over the hills, but found 
 not the gold, the silver, the copper, or the coal. 
 They merely played on the surface of the conti- 
 nent. Our fathers landed, took possession of a 
 little strip of land along the Atlantic coast, and 
 began to grow — by natural increase and by immi- 
 gration. At first it was a serious question whether 
 the whites or the Indians would possess this con- 
 tinent. But the white race grew and the white 
 civilization developed, and the Indians neither 
 increased in numbers nor improved in capacity. 
 Wars ensued; sometimes the Indian was the ag- 
 gressor, sometimes the white man; but the Indian 
 was always, sooner or later, defeated. At the end 
 of every war was a treaty; a new boundary line 
 was laid down ; and the white man said, " We will 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 219 
 
 keep on this side, you shall keep on that." But 
 the white race grew, and the Indian race did not 
 grow, and the boundary line was pushed steadily 
 westward. At last the result of all these years of 
 conflict and struggle was the reservation of certain 
 territories for the Indians, where they might hunt 
 and fish, and leave the forest unfelled and the 
 prairie uncultivated, the hills unmined, and the 
 rivers to flow unvexed to the sea. These districts 
 are called "reservations," because they are re- 
 served, not for Indians merely, not for barbarians 
 merely, but for barbarism. Barbarians have rights 
 which civilized folk are bound to respect; but bar- 
 barism has no rights which civilization is bound 
 to respect. In the history of the human race 
 nothing is more certain than that civilization must 
 conquer and barbarism must be subdued. 
 
 When two forms of civilization come in conflict, 
 a higher and a lower, one of three results inevita- 
 bly ensues. The higher civilization may destroy 
 the lower and extirpate the barbarians, as the 
 Hebrews did the Canaanites; the higher civiliza- 
 tion may subjugate the lower and hold it under 
 control, as we held the African race in this coun- 
 try, and as England is now holding the Hindu 
 race in India ; or the higher civilization may per- 
 vade the lower, convert and transform it, and so 
 make it over, as primitive Christianity did impe- 
 rial Kome. One of these three results is certain 
 to ensue — extirpation, subjugation, or transfor- 
 mation. In this country we have tried to avoid 
 
220 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 that inevitable, eternal, inflexible law of God ; we 
 have tried so to fence around the Indian civiliza- 
 tion (which is barbarism) that it should remain 
 permanently in this country alongside with the 
 higher civilization. And this cannot be done. 
 
 It cannot be done because it ought not to be done. 
 It ought not to be possible for a civilized nation to 
 leave in its territory its great forests unfelled that 
 would make houses, its great mines undug that 
 would furnish tools, its great prairies uncultivated 
 that would furnish food, its great rivers unharnessed 
 that would grind out grists for civilized people. 
 It ought not to be possible to put a fence around a 
 particular people and leave them uncivilized. 
 
 What is a reservation? It is a yard of a great 
 many thousand acres in extent, with an imaginary 
 but very effective wall built about it. Within 
 that yard barbarism is sacred. The Indian can 
 own no land within the reservation, and he can- 
 not go out of the reservation to seek the benefits 
 of civilization elsewhere. The railroad comes to 
 the border, and stops there; the post-office, and 
 stops; the newspaper, and stops; the telegraph, 
 and stops. Commerce, trade, the market — all 
 stop. The Indian is left without that play of life 
 which makes us what we are. For character is not 
 only produced by those institutions which are organ- 
 ized for that specific purpose, but by all the acti- 
 vities of human life. A telegraph will teach men 
 conciseness in language as no professor can teach it. 
 A savings bank will teach thrift as no preacher in 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 221 
 
 the pulpit can teach it. A railroad in a community 
 wiU teach promptness as a church will not teach 
 it; for if we get to the railroad late the train is 
 gone, but if we get to the church late the sermon 
 is still there. 
 
 All this play of life, that makes us what we 
 are, we have shut out from the reservation, and 
 then we have wondered that the Indian did not 
 grow! Suppose we had pursued the same course 
 respecting our immigrant popvdation — suppose all 
 the Italians had been put in one reservation by 
 themselves, all the Hungarians in another, and all 
 the Irish in a third — how long would they have 
 lived in these reservations, without a market, with- 
 out commerce, without industry, and supported by 
 rations given them by the government, before they 
 would have become self-respecting, self-support- 
 ing, self-governing American citizens? 
 
 Our Indian problem is to be solved by the same 
 process by which we have solved our immigrant 
 problem. The imaginary wall around every reser- 
 vation ought to be taken down. The land which 
 has been held in trust for the Indian should be 
 given him, that he may own it absolutely, as we 
 own ours. He should be as free to seek an open 
 market as any American. He should have a right 
 to appeal to the courts for the protection of his 
 rights, as have all other Americans, and he should 
 be made amenable to the courts for his violation 
 of law, as are all other Americans. He should be 
 protected in his right to go where he will and do 
 
222 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 what he will, provided he does not will to wrong 
 his fellow men. In brief, he should be treated, 
 not as an Indian, but as a man — thrown upon 
 his own resources, given the protection to person, 
 property, family, and reputation which it is the 
 function of government to give to all who are 
 subject to it, and left at liberty to use his person 
 and his property as he chooses, provided he does 
 not so use it as to injure his neighbor. If it be 
 said that he is a child, and that if he is free to 
 sell or lease his property it will be expended in 
 drink and gambling and he will become a charge 
 upon the community and his children will be 
 paupers, the answer is that the law has long since 
 found an adequate method of protecting those who 
 are not able to protect themselves. His land 
 should be treated as an estate given to him and 
 to his heirs after him; he should be treated as a 
 ward of the courts; and his alienation of his land 
 should be permitted only upon application to the 
 court and with adequate protection to his children. 
 He is not to be condemned to barbarism because 
 he is not yet equal to the competitions involved in 
 civilization. 
 
 Will not some Indians die in the process? Yes; 
 perhaps many. Will they not suffer in the pro- 
 cess? Yes; perhaps much. But God's way of 
 making men and women is through suffering and 
 by struggle, and there is no other way. The phi- 
 lanthropy which would shield the Indian from all 
 the perils of civilized life, which would keep him 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 223 
 
 in a reservation and feed liim there, in the expec- 
 tation of fitting him for civilization before subject- 
 ing him to its danger, is a philanthropy which 
 imperils, undermines, dwarfs, and destroys his 
 manhood, under the impression that it is protect- 
 ing his rights and providing for his well-being. 
 
 Something of the larger and wiser policy has 
 already been adopted. The nation some years ago 
 resolved to make no more treaties with Indians. 
 It has more recently abolished the reservation in 
 many cases. And yet, in those instances where 
 the Indian has been given his land in severalty 
 and set to take care of himself, it has stiU left the 
 agent to be his guardian, and treated him as a 
 ward. This very session of Congress, in spite of 
 the urgent recommendation of our Indian Com- 
 missioner, has kept in office something like a dozen 
 or fifteen Indian agents, whose chief use is to 
 draw their salaries for themselves, and who inflict 
 incalculable injury on the Indian by keeping him 
 under pupilage when he should be thrown into the 
 struggle of life, that out of the struggle he may 
 come forth a man. 
 
 II. The race problem at the South is more com- 
 plicated and more difficult, but it is to be solved 
 by the same fundamental principle. At the end 
 of the Civil War our fathers were confronted with 
 a very difficult problem. What should they do? 
 Should they give the ballot back into the hand 
 of the ex-slaveholder who had been in rebellion 
 against the national government, and leave the 
 
224 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 destinies of the Southern states in his hands? 
 This was perilous to national interests, and they 
 believed it would be perilous to the rights of the 
 negro race. There was current talk in the South- 
 em states at the time of establishing some system 
 of serfdom to take the place of slavery. Should 
 they put the political power into the hands of the 
 Union men? They were hard to find; and when 
 they had been found, conferring political power 
 upon them and depriving all others of it would 
 have been to create an insignificant and not very 
 intelligent oligarchy. Should they control this 
 conquered territory from Washington by imperial 
 administration? The nation had no gifts for im- 
 perial administration and no desire for imperial 
 administration, and our fathers justly feared the 
 effects on the nation as well as on the conquered 
 country. The experiment which we finally re- 
 solved to try was this: they established universal 
 suffrage, gave the political power equally to blacks 
 and whites, ignorant and educated, thrifty and 
 thriftless, and said to them, "Take care of your- 
 selves." At the same time they intimated, through 
 many a hot political debate and many a public 
 utterance in press and platform, a profound dis- 
 trust of the Southern people in general, and a 
 profound distrust of their good wiU and fair treat- 
 ment toward the negro race who lived among them. 
 Thus, on the one hand they showed a strange and 
 extraordinary confidence in the black race, and a 
 not so strange but equally marked distrust of the 
 white race. 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 225 
 
 The confidence and the distrust have alike been 
 proved erroneous. It is not necessary for me to 
 trace here the results of the carpet-bag rule in the 
 South, growing out of negro domination. The 
 facts are fresh in the recollection of most of us. 
 The page is a dark, even a terrible one, and there 
 is little inclination on any of our parts to re-read 
 it. That era of despotism, of corruption, of evil, 
 was introduced and carried on for a time. Under 
 that government of ignorance, incompetence, and 
 corruption the fundamental function of govern- 
 ment was not fulfilled; persons were not protected, 
 property was not protected, the family was not 
 protected, reputation was not protected. The ends 
 of government were for the time lost sight of; the 
 object of government was not accomplished. 
 
 Our distrust of the white man in the South has 
 also been proved false. He has shown himself the 
 friend of the slave who used to work in his home 
 and on his farm. We may well be proud of the 
 nation's record since the close of the Civil War. 
 A great stream of beneficence has flowed from 
 Northern churches and Northern philanthropists 
 into the South to establish and maintain schools 
 for the negro race. But it has been insignificant 
 in comparison with the record which the South 
 has made by its gifts to Southern education. 
 Forty million dollars a year, Marian L. Dawson 
 tells us in the last number of the "North Ameri- 
 can Eeview," ■* are spent by the Southern states 
 
 1 For February, 1901. 
 
226 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 for education; one thirtieth of it contributed by 
 the negroes, nearly one half of it given to the 
 negroes.^ We may search the pages of human 
 history in vain for a parallel; a community of ex- 
 slaveholders, whose slave system compelled the 
 keeping of their slaves in ignorance, have suddenly 
 reversed all their precedent history, and out of 
 their poverty have contributed with such largeness 
 of generosity for the education of those whom, 
 a little while before, it was a penal offense to in- 
 struct. 
 
 The solution of the race problem in the South 
 is a reversal, on the one hand, of the unreasonable 
 confidence, and the reversal, on the other hand, 
 of the unreasonable distrust. It is a mistake to 
 suppose that every man has a right to vote in any 
 community. It is a still greater mistake to sup- 
 pose that a people who have never learned how 
 to govern themselves can suddenly, by an act of 
 Congress, be empowered with capacity to govern 
 a great Republic. This was our mistake — forced 
 upon us, indeed, by alternatives that might have 
 brought us into equal disaster had we followed 
 them ; but none the less a real and serious mistake ; 
 a mistake on which perhaps I should not lay stress 
 now, were there not many who are urging us to fall 
 into the same mistake in new conditions and under 
 
 ^ Since the Civil War it is estimated that about thirty million 
 dollars have been expended by the North in missionary and edu- 
 cational work among the negroes of the South, and one hundred 
 and twenty million dollars have been raised by taxation chiefly 
 from the Southern whites for the educiition of the negroes. 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 227 
 
 new circumstances.^ We are now beginning to 
 learn that a people who had behind them three cen- 
 turies of slavery in the United States, and unnum- 
 bered centuries of barbarism in Africa, could not 
 become suddenly competent to take equal share in 
 government with a race who had been educated by 
 centuries of struggle in England, followed by years 
 of equally trying struggle in the United States, 
 who had written with their own hands, by pens 
 dipped in their own blood, the Magna Charta, the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, the Declaration of 
 Independence, and the Constitution of the United 
 States. The power of a community to govern itself 
 depends on the power of the individuals in that 
 community to govern themselves. Before a com- 
 munity can be self-governing, there must be a back- 
 ground of history or at least a contemporaneous 
 and adequate method of education. 
 
 The South found a condition of society intoler- 
 able in which the bottom controlled the top. So 
 did France after the French Revolution ; so would 
 Hayti if there were any top to be controlled. The 
 South has endeavored to reverse the conditions 
 and put the top of society at the head of govern- 
 ment and the bottom of society under government. 
 I do not justify the violence and the frauds by 
 which that has been attempted; I do not justify 
 the process. But the South is right and deserves 
 
 1 The perils of tliia mistake are being illustrated, as this lec- 
 ture is revised for the press, by the results of an almost unquali- 
 fied suffrage in Hawaii. 
 
228 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 our sympathy and our support in its supreme de- 
 sire to have the intellect and the conscience rule. 
 What we have a right to demand of the South is 
 this — that the line shall not be a color line or a 
 race line, but a line of character ; that an educated 
 and cultivated Booker T. Washington shall not be 
 turned from the poUs because his face is black, 
 while an ignorant, incompetent, drunken white man 
 is permitted to cast his vote because his face is 
 white. Our problem in the North is not to with- 
 stand the South and be reluctantly forced back, 
 little by little, to acquiesce in a system which gives 
 the power of governing to those who are compe- 
 tent to govern, but to offer the open hand of cordial 
 fellowship to Southern reformers, and say to them. 
 We will help you in securing for your states gov- 
 ernment that will protect person and property and 
 reputation and family and liberty. We have a 
 right to demand that this shall be done for the 
 negro and for the white man ; and, on the whole, it 
 is done. The person and property, the life and 
 liberty, the family and reputation, of the negro are 
 in the main protected in the Southern states. If 
 they were not, the results could not have been 
 secured which are secured. Says Marian L. Daw- 
 son in the article already quoted from : — 
 
 In the South all trades are open to them, and they 
 receive every encouragement to become proficient in 
 industrial arts. A large number of negroes have eagerly 
 taken advantage of these opportunities, and have made 
 unprecedented progress in bettering their condition in 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 229 
 
 every way. They have amassed in one state property, 
 the assessed value of which is nearly thirty millions of 
 dollars, and it is estimated that they own, all told, about 
 three hundred million dollars' worth of personal and 
 real estate. They have their own doctors, lawyers, and 
 preachers ; they have colleges and universities, and they 
 own military companies.^ 
 
 A community in which it is possible for a 
 race to accumulate, from a condition of absolute 
 poverty, three hundred millions of dollars of per- 
 sonal and real estate is not a community which 
 has signally failed in protecting the rights of per- 
 son and property. I know the tragic story of 
 lynch law. Who has not been horrified by this 
 recrudescence of barbarism? But let us be just; 
 it is not distinctively Southern. When negroes 
 are mobbed in Ohio and in Kansas, when lynch 
 law is executed in Indiana, in Colorado, and in 
 
 ^ The following statistics have teen made np from the Keport 
 of the Auditor of the state of Virginia for 1900, and apply only 
 to the country landholdings, not to town lots : — 
 
 1. The negroes now own one twenty-sixth of all the land in 
 
 Virginia. 
 
 2. They own a little over one sixteenth of all the land in Vir- 
 
 ginia, east of the Blue Ridge. 
 
 3. They own about one tenth of all the laud in twenty-five 
 
 counties in the state. 
 
 4. They own one sixth of Middlesex County. 
 
 5. They own about one fourth of Hanover County. 
 
 6. They own about one eighth of Charles City Coimty. 
 
 7. The negroes acquired land from 1895 to 1898 at the rate of 
 
 over fifty-two thousand acres a year. 
 In addition it may be said that the landholdings of the negroes 
 in the state have increased one third in the last six years. 
 
230 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Montana, as well as in Mississippi and Alabama 
 and Kentucky; when oven tlio women become 
 lynchers, dc.Htroying saloons in K annas with soirie 
 sort of ox(^iinc, and drug-stofoH in Cliimigo witliout 
 any excuse at all, let im nuiognizo the Fact that 
 lynch law is not distinctively Southern. Wc may 
 not have an large a beam in our eye as our n(!ig]i- 
 bor, but it will be well to remomlKir that we need, 
 as well as he, to submit to a surgical ojxjration. 
 
 It is true that the Southerner does not grant to 
 the negro what wo call social c([uality. lie does 
 not invite him into his parlor, ask him to sit at 
 his table, introduce him as a friend to his wife and 
 children, or ovcsn allow the (iiiildrcn of the two 
 races to attend the same school, ilow much of 
 this is due to unjust and unreasonable ])n)judico, 
 how much of it is nature's own protection against 
 a too intimate intermingling of the races, it is not 
 necessary here to discuss; because it is not the 
 function of government to protect social y)rivi]eges. 
 The function of government is fulfilled when the 
 rights of person, of property, of reputation, and of 
 the family, and the liberty that results therefrom, 
 are maintained. It has nothing to do witfi purely 
 social relations. It is the riglit of each individual 
 to choose social companions for himself and for 
 his children. Whatever there may be of race pre- 
 judice in the South is to bo removed, if removed at 
 all, by the gradual, pervasive influence of teach- 
 ing, not by the power of governmcint. Soi^ial pre- 
 judice presents a moral, not a politi<^ul ])roblom. 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 231 
 
 III. Ought women to vote ? 
 
 As we have already seen, no one has by nature 
 a right to vote in any government. The right to 
 vote is an artificial right, created by the commu- 
 nity, defined, limited, and determined by the com- 
 munity. We talk of universal suffrage, but we 
 do not have it. In the last presidential election, 
 out of seventy-five million people, fourteen million 
 voted. Women do not vote ; nor aliens ; nor non- 
 residents, although they may be taxed in the dis- 
 trict; nor men under twenty-one years of age. 
 The conditions under which one may vote are 
 determined by the state in which he resides, and 
 they differ in different states. Sometimes an edu- 
 cational qualification is attached, sometimes a pro- 
 perty qualification; in the early colonies a religious 
 qualification was sometimes attached. There is 
 no natural right of suffrage. The question is not, 
 therefore. Has woman a right to vote as she has 
 a right to the protection of her person, her pro- 
 perty, her family, and her reputation? The real 
 question is twofold : Is it necessary for the protec- 
 tion of her rights that she should vote? If not, 
 is it for the interest of the community that the 
 suffrage should be multiplied by two? 
 
 Democracy does not demand that every one 
 should vote; it only demands that every class 
 shall be represented in the voting. It is undemo- 
 cratic that there should be a certain portion of the 
 community set apart by itself, without political 
 representation in the community. Is woman, then, 
 
232 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 a class, so that she can be set apart by herself? 
 Has she interests distinct from those of the hus- 
 band or the brother or the father? Are her rights 
 to person and property violated under the system 
 in which she is not a voter? The simple answer 
 to this is the history of the last fifty years, in 
 which all the progress, in the way of opening voca- 
 tions, protecting property rights, enlarging liberty 
 for women, has been wrought out by manhood 
 suffrage. Jeremy Bentham said, many years ago, 
 that it could be trusted to the fathers to protect 
 the rights of the children. So history shows us 
 that the personal and property rights of women 
 can safely be intrusted to the rest of the commu- 
 nity. 
 
 The other question which presents itself, at least 
 to men, is this: Shall the duty of voting be im- 
 posed on women? For thus far nothing is more 
 clear than that in most communities the majority 
 of women do not wish to vote. They regard it as 
 an irksome duty, if it be a duty at all. They de- 
 sire to be excused from it, or they are absolutely 
 indifferent to it. Nevertheless, if they can be con- 
 vinced that it is their duty, no doubt they would, 
 with whatever reluctance, assume it. For it may 
 be safely taken for granted that if the women of 
 the country ever conclude that it is their duty to 
 vote, the men will give them the suffrage. The 
 question is, then, really one to be answered by the 
 women themselves. Is it the duty of women to 
 assume the responsibility of suffrage in a free 
 state? 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 233 
 
 What is the function of government? It is the 
 function of government to protect person, property, 
 family, reputation, liberty. The function of gov- 
 ernment is protection — of the community against 
 foreign foes, of the individual against domestic 
 wrong-doers. The ballot is not merely an expres- 
 sion of judgment, it is an expression of the will. 
 It says. Thou shalt, or Thou shalt not. This 
 Thou shalt or Thou shalt not is said in order that 
 society as a whole and each individual in society 
 may be protected in carrying on the essential func- 
 tions of life. Of these functions the most impor- 
 tant is the rearing and training of children. Ap- 
 parently it is for this preparatory work for some 
 other life, we know not what, that we are put into 
 the world. Children are given to the parents. 
 They grow up to manhood, marry, and receive for 
 training other children. The grandparents, in 
 the order of nature, remain for a few years upon 
 the earth, years of rest after the life-work is 
 largely done, and then depart, leaving their suc- 
 cessors to do in turn what they have done. Hith- 
 erto the functions have been divided between the 
 sexes, in the family, which is the first and funda- 
 mental organism, the one on which all other social 
 organization is based. The father has been the 
 breadwinner and the protector ; the mother has at 
 home nurtured and trained the children. If now 
 she must become breadwinner and protector, if 
 she must support the home and protect the home, 
 either he must share with her in the duties of the 
 
234 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 home-stayer, and so each must fulfill a double 
 function, or she must double her duties while 
 he adds none to his. This is the answer to the 
 question. Ought women to vote? Suffrage is not 
 woman's natural right, for suffrage is never a 
 natural right. Suffrage is not woman's necessity, 
 for her rights have been and will be adequately 
 protected without her suffrage; the chivalry of 
 man furnishes a better protection than would his 
 submission to her commands issued through the 
 ballot-box — such submission is very problemati- 
 cal. Suffrage is not woman's duty, for it is not 
 the duty of woman to act as the protector of the 
 natural rights of man, and the ballot is, in the last 
 analysis, nothing but a means of protection; as 
 government is, in the last analysis, nothing but a 
 mutually protective society. There is no duty of 
 suffrage resting on women, because it is not the 
 duty of woman to be the protector of person, pro 
 perty, reputation, family. There is no right, be 
 cause rights are only co-relative terms for duties 
 There is no need to multiply the suffrage by two 
 it would be better to lessen it rather than to in 
 crease the number of voters. 
 
 IV. What are the relations of what we call the 
 political machine to a democratic government? 
 
 We are accustomed to say that we elect, that is, 
 choose, our officers ; but that is a mistake. Origi- 
 nally the fathers proposed that we should elect 
 a certain number of presidential electors; these 
 electors were to gather together at Washington, 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 235 
 
 or in their several states, and determine who 
 should be our President. We think we have abol- 
 ished the electoral college. No, we have substi- 
 tuted another electoral college. No one supposes 
 that the convention that met at Philadelphia 
 nominated Mr. McKinley. We all knew that Mr. 
 McKinley was selected before the convention met. 
 No one supposes that the convention which gath- 
 ered at Kansas City selected Mr. Bryan; we all 
 knew that Mr. Bryan had been selected before the 
 convention met. A small body of gentlemen, 
 more or less intelligent, patriotic, disinterested — 
 if you please, the ablest, the most patriotic, the 
 most disinterested men in the country; for their 
 personal or political character has nothing to do 
 with the method of nomination — met together 
 and decided that Mr. McKinley was the man the 
 Eepublican party should nominate for President. 
 Another small body of men similarly selected 
 Mr. Bryan for thfe Democratic candidate. The 
 one body of men organized primaries, out of which 
 grew the one convention which came together 
 ready to shout itself hoarse when Mr. McKinley 
 was proposed; the other body of men organized 
 primaries, out of which grew another great con- 
 vention which came together ready to shout itself 
 hoarse when Mr. Bryan was proposed. Then 
 the people went to the polls; if a voter did not 
 like Mr, McKinley, he could vote for Mr. Bryan ; 
 if he did not like Mr. Bryan, he could vote for 
 Mr. McKinley ; and if he did not like either Mr. 
 
236 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 McKinley or Mr. Bryan, he could vote for Mr. 
 Debs. In point of fact, in state and nation, our 
 oiScers are primarily selected for us by a small, 
 self-appointed committee, and tbe people at the 
 polls exercise a veto power over their selection. 
 
 This is partly the result of having an ignorant and 
 an uninterested voting population. A great body 
 of voters who either do not know or do not much 
 care about candidates, and do not know or do not 
 much care about political questions, will necessa- 
 rily follow a leader or leaders, whoever the leaders 
 may be, and will do whatever the leaders tell them 
 to do. Universal suffrage, if it is exercised by 
 men who are either ignorant or indifferent respect- 
 ing political principles and political duties, neces- 
 sarily means government by an irresponsible oli- 
 garchy; though the majority have this recourse, 
 that they can, whenever they please, turn the oli- 
 garchy out of office, when a new and sometimes 
 better oligarchy takes its place. This is caUed 
 overturning the machine. In short, the actual re- 
 sults of democratic institutions do not justify the 
 very optimistic expectations of Jeremy Bentham 
 as Mr. Leslie Stephen has interpreted them to us 
 in his admirable volumes on "The English Utili- 
 tarians." 
 
 There are two primary principles : the " self -prefer- 
 ence" principle, in virtue of which every man always 
 desires his own greatest happiness ; and the " greatest 
 happiness " principle, in virtue of which " the right and 
 proper end " of government is the " greatest happiness to 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 237 
 
 the greatest number." The " actual end of every gov- 
 ernment, again, is the greatest happiness of the gov- 
 ernors." Hence, the whole problem is to produce a 
 coincidence of the two ends, by securing an identity of 
 interest between governors and governed. To secure 
 that we have only to identify the two classes, or to put 
 the government in the hands of all. In a monarchy the 
 ruler aims at the interest of one — himself ; in a " limited 
 monarchy " the aim is at the happiness of the king and 
 the small privileged class ; in a democracy the end is 
 the right one — the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. . . . The people will naturally choose " morally 
 apt agents," and men who wish to be chosen will desire 
 truly to become " morally apt," for they can only recom- 
 mend themselves by showing theii desire to serve the 
 general interest. "All experience testifies to this 
 theory," though the evidence is " too bulky " to be given. 
 Other proofs, however, may at once be rendered super- 
 fluous by appealing to "the uninterrupted and most 
 notorious experience of the United States." ^ 
 
 There are three ansv?ers to this very optimistic 
 argument: the first is Senator Clark, of Mon- 
 tana; the second is Senator Quay, of Pennsyl- 
 vania; the third is Eichard Croker, of New York. 
 
 What we have to do is, in the first place, to 
 diminish the ignorant, the uninterested and care- 
 less class of voters ; in the second place, to increase 
 the power of the interested and thoughtful class 
 of voters. The first is to be accomplished, not 
 by a formal educational or property qualification, 
 
 ^ Leslie Stephen : The English Utilitarians, i., Jeremy Bentham, 
 pp. 284-286. 
 
238 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 because the formal property qualification is liable 
 to develop a class which cares more for property 
 than it does for fundamental principles, and be- 
 cause a formal educational qualification is always 
 liable to be misused and misconstrued. Make it 
 a rule that a man must read the Constitution of 
 the United States in order to vote, and the judges 
 of elections will be rigid in their interpretation of 
 the intellectual qualifications of one party, and lax 
 in their interpretation of another. Add the provi- 
 sion that he must also understand the Constitu- 
 tion, and Democratic judges will be sure to think 
 that a Eepublican voter does not understand, and 
 Republican judges will be sure to think that a 
 Democratic voter does not understand. What is 
 needed is an automatically working ballot which 
 will not only compel thought but also consideration 
 and interest — which will not only exclude the 
 ignorant, but also the careless voter. In Mary- 
 land to-day there is a proposal pending for the use 
 of an Australian ballot without any party emblems 
 upon it.-' Simply the names of the men to be 
 voted for are upon the ticket. The man who can- 
 not read the name cannot vote the ticket, for he 
 will not know for whom he is voting. The man 
 who does not care enough about politics to inquire 
 about the candidates cannot vote, for he will have 
 
 1 This hag been adopted since this lecture was given, and it is 
 reported that the adoption of this ballot has already caused the 
 opening of night-schools to teach illiterate voters to read, that 
 they may not be excluded from the polls. 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 239 
 
 no emblem to guide him. A ticket so constructed 
 that every man who votes it must <know who the 
 men are whose names are on the ticket, and what 
 they represent, would automatically exclude from 
 the polls a large proportion of those who are care- 
 less voters, and practically aU absolutely ignorant 
 voters. This is the advantage of the Australian 
 ballot, and I have no wish to see it supplemented 
 by any such provision as that in New York state, 
 which allows to the man who declares that he 
 cannot read and write permission to take a political 
 friend with him to show him how to read and how 
 to mark his ballot. 
 
 The other remedy is to increase the power of 
 the careful and interested voters; and this is to be 
 done by enabling them to nominate as well as to 
 elect their officers. This nomination of officers 
 is to be brought about by what is known as the 
 direct primary. 
 
 It is idle to tell busy men that they ought to go 
 to the primaries : idle because they are busy men ; 
 idle because politics takes all the time they can 
 now give to it out of their business and personal 
 affairs ; idle because, when they get to the primary, 
 they find a slate made up for them for which they 
 must vote, or vote in solitary grandeur against it. 
 There may be exceptions, but, generally speaking, 
 the primary as at present conducted is a contriv- 
 ance for enabling a few men to determine for 
 whom the many may vote. 
 
 The direct primary does away with such prima- 
 
240 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ries and with tlie delegate conventions which grow 
 out of them. On certain conditions prescribed by 
 the law, any person may announce himself, or be 
 announced, as a candidate for any office. On the 
 day of registration every voter, when he registers, 
 drops a ballot in the box which indicates whom he 
 elects to be the candidate of his party. The per- 
 son receiving the greatest number of Eepublican 
 votes becomes the Republican candidate, the per- 
 son receiving the greatest number of Democratic 
 votes becomes the Democratic candidate ; the same 
 principle applies to the candidates of other parties, 
 including any who choose to regard themselves as 
 Independents. The best way to indicate both the 
 method and its results is to give a concrete illus- 
 tration of its operation in a single instance. 
 
 "The direct method of voting at primaries was 
 first adopted by the Republican party in this 
 county in 1897. It is called the Crawford County 
 system, deriving its name from the county first to 
 adopt it. Any member of the Eepublican party, 
 by registering his name with the Eepublican 
 county committee, can become a candidate for the 
 nomination for any office he may elect. All the 
 members of the party, on a day stated, vote, as 
 in elections, directly for the man of their choice. 
 There are often as many as five or seven candi- 
 dates for the same nomination. The ones receiv- 
 ing the highest number of votes for the different 
 offices are declared to be the nominees of the 
 party. Under the delegate system an aspirant for 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 241 
 
 political office secured the consent of the boss. 
 Under the present system this would injure the 
 candidate's chances of success. Under the dele- 
 gate system the consent of the boss was given in 
 return for contributions assessed according to the 
 emoluments of the respective offices. The money 
 thus pooled was used in buying the votes of a 
 sufficient number of the delegates to control the 
 convention. These delegates were chosen by 
 about one fifth the entire vote of the party. How 
 vicious, corrupt, and oligarchal this system had be- 
 come is illustrated by an editorial in the Scranton 
 ' Truth ' of September 8, 1897, immediately after 
 the last of the conventions, reporting that the 
 price of a delegate was in the neighborhood of two 
 hundred dollars, and that something like twenty 
 thousand dollars had been spent in controlling the 
 convention." 1 
 
 The writer from whose report this account is 
 taken is authority for the statement that the nomi- 
 nation of Captain James Moir, as Mayor, by the 
 direct primary system cost him $98.50, and he 
 adds that "the greatest compliment that can be 
 paid him is that he is the kind of a man who could 
 never have been nominated under the old system." 
 In the primary election by which he was nominated 
 7000 votes were cast; in South Carolina, out of 
 120,000 possible white voters, over 90,000 partici- 
 pated in a direct primary for Governor. These 
 
 1 Letter of Mr. Arthur Dunn, of Scranton, Pa., quoted in The 
 Outlook of December 8, 1900, pp. 861, 862. 
 
242 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 facts indicate the three advantages of the direct 
 primary : first, the number of voters who partici- 
 pate in it; second, the removal of temptation to 
 bribery by the removal of the necessity for it; 
 third, the improvement in the character of candi- 
 dates, who are willing to accept a nomination spon- 
 taneously given by all the people, but are not will- 
 ing to enter into competition for a nomination by 
 a committee of professional politicians. 
 
 The evils of democracy are mostly due to cor- 
 ruptions or adulterations of democracy; the gen- 
 eral remedy for the evils of democracy is more 
 democracy. Democracy does not mean merely 
 universal suffrage; it means the universal exer- 
 cise of judgment, conscience, and common sense 
 by every man in the community. We have not 
 given a fair trial to democracy until every member 
 of the community is brought to exercise and act 
 upon his own judgment, not merely to ratify and 
 confirm the judgment of another. A ballot which 
 automatically excludes the ignorant and the indif- 
 ferent voter, and a direct primary which enables 
 all voters who are not ignorant and indifferent to 
 participate in the nomination of candidates, will 
 not constitute a panacea nor exclude all corrupt or 
 inefficient officials from the Republic, but, by de- 
 creasing the power of the ignorant and the indif- 
 ferent, and increasing the power of the intelligent 
 and the interested, such a system will do much to 
 overthrow the oligarchy which now too often wears 
 the democratic mask, and pretends to be the ser- 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 243 
 
 vant while it is really the master or "boss " of the 
 people. 
 
 V. What are the rights of a minority in a 
 democratic state ? 
 
 The theory of paternalism in government is sim- 
 ple of statement though diiiicult of application. 
 The father is not merely the guardian of his chil- 
 dren, he is their guide, their superior, their law- 
 giver, in a word, their final authority. To them 
 he is taste, judgment, conscience. "Children, 
 obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right," 
 says Paul. That is, this is the children's right- 
 eousness. In the early days of childhood this 
 authority of the father is necessarily exercised in 
 every department of life and over every act. The 
 father determines what shall be the food and the 
 clothing ; he regulates the hours of sleep, of play, 
 of study ; he decides whether the child shall go to 
 school, to what school, and during what hours; 
 whether the child shall go to church, to what 
 church, and on what occasions. He takes the 
 child's earnings, if he earns anything, and directs 
 their expenditure. He is not merely a protector 
 of the child from the wrongs of others, but is the 
 child's supreme arbiter in every question of life. 
 Only gradually, as the child comes into the posses- 
 sion of a taste, a judgment, and a conscience of 
 its own, is he set free from this supreme and per- 
 vasive authority of his father. 
 
 In a paternal government this principle is more 
 or less consistently applied, whether the govern- 
 
244 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 ment be monarchic, oligarcliic, or aristocratic. 
 It is assumed that one or a few men of superior 
 wisdom and superior righteousness should direct 
 the destinies of the community and its members. 
 This paternal government therefore decides what 
 the people may eat and what they may wear; it 
 regulates the cost and character of the garments 
 permitted to different classes; it decides what their 
 worship shall be; it establishes one church by law 
 and prohibits another ; it fixes the limits allowable 
 in education, and determines what shall be both 
 the minimum and the maximum for the pupils ; it 
 regulates the hours of industry for the laborer, 
 and the wages which he may receive; it leaves in 
 the hands of the common people barely enough 
 money for their subsistence, and spends the rest, 
 theoretically for the benefit of the entire commu- 
 nity; it subsidizes theatres, pensions authors, pro- 
 motes one trade, discourages or prohibits another 
 trade. In all this it is assumed that the govern- 
 ment has the superior wisdom of the father, and 
 that the people are children. It was demonstrated 
 in the French Revolution that this paternal despot- 
 ism may be exercised as despotically by a majority 
 in a nominally democratic community as by a 
 monarchy or an aristocracy. The Jacobin pro- 
 gramme required dealers in grain to offer the grain 
 publicly for sale, to bring it every week to market, 
 to keep no more on hand than was needed for per- 
 sonal subsistence, to sell at the price fixed by the 
 state, to go on with their business at this price, 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 245 
 
 whatever peril of bankruptcy might be imminent 
 by reason of their conformity to the standard; and 
 all these laws were enforced by the death penalty. 
 In a similar spirit it took charge of the educa- 
 tion of the children, determined the curriculum, 
 required all teaching to conform to the Revolu- 
 tionary morality, and its representative thinkers 
 affirmed that all ought, "under the sacred law of 
 equality, to receive the same clothing, the same 
 food, the same education, the same attention." 
 M. Taine has set forth with great specification 
 these characteristics of the Jacobin programme in 
 his work on the French Revolution. 
 
 But we have seen that democracy, at least 
 American democracy, is in theory wholly inconsist- 
 ent with this theory of paternalism. It assumes, 
 not that every sane man is competent to take care 
 of his own interests, but that it is safer to intrust 
 them to him than to any guardian. It similarly 
 assumes that the people of each locality are better 
 able to take care of their own local interests than 
 are those of any other locality. It thus denies the 
 postulate of paternalism that one man, or class 
 of men, is possessed of a superior intelligence or 
 virtue which fits him to provide for the interests 
 and to control the conduct of other men or classes 
 of men. There is some reason for the assumption 
 that a king, an oligarchy, or an aristocracy espe- 
 cially selected may be more competent to regulate 
 the affairs of the mass of the community than they 
 are to regulate their own affairs, as the father is 
 
246 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 more competent to regulate the life of his child 
 than the child is to regulate his own life; but 
 there is no reason whatever for the assumption 
 that the majority in a community are more compe- 
 tent to regulate the affairs of individuals than the 
 individuals are to regulate their own affairs. The- 
 oretically, an argument can be made for the doc- 
 trine that a king should take the earnings of his 
 subjects and direct them to the general good of 
 the community; but no theoretical argument can 
 be found for the doctrine that the majority of the 
 community should take the earnings of the indi- 
 vidual and direct them for the general interests. 
 Some argument can be made, theoretically, for 
 the doctrine that a king may advantageously, by 
 sumptuary law, regulate the attire or the food of 
 his subjects, but none theoretically for the doctrine 
 that a majority may, by sumptuary laws, regulate 
 the food and attire of the individual. "Demo- 
 cracy," says M. Taine, "in its nature and compo- 
 sition, is a system in which the individual awards 
 to his representatives the least trust and conjfi- 
 dence; hence it is the system in which he should 
 intrust them with the least power." ^ 
 
 The history of the United States, however, 
 illustrates the truth that democracies in America 
 have not always recognized this principle, still less 
 have they always consistently acted upon it. The 
 majority has frequently assumed the functions of 
 a paternal government, although the postulate on 
 
 1 The French Revolution, iii. p. 100. 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 247 
 
 which those functions are assumed by a paternal 
 government are wholly inconsistent with the postu- 
 late of democracy. Two instances may serve to 
 illustrate this general fact. 
 
 At the present time (February, 1901) a serious 
 and energetic effort is being made to pass a sub- 
 sidy bill in aid of American commerce. This 
 subsidy bill would appropriate out of the people's 
 earnings nine millions of dollars a year, four fifths 
 of which would be paid to four great corporations. 
 If the expenditure were equally divided among aU 
 the 'voters, it would cost each voter a little over 
 sixty cents a year. Whatever advantage America 
 might derive through its shipping from such a sub- 
 sidy, it is evident that the bill is founded upon an 
 assumption that the majority can make better use 
 of the sixty cents of each taxpayer for his benefit 
 than he can make of it for himself. This sixty 
 cents will not be paid to protect his person, his 
 property, his reputation, his family, or his liberty. 
 It will be paid theoretically to enhance the gen- 
 eral prosperity of the community, practically to 
 promote activity in a single industry, and add to 
 the welfare of the comparatively few who are en- 
 gaged in it. The few who will divide the nine 
 millions of dollars a year between them are greatly 
 interested in securing the passage of such a bill. 
 The many who wiU contribute each a comparatively 
 insignificant sum toward the nine millions of dol- 
 lars a year are not greatly interested in defeating 
 it. Thus, such legislation, through the concen- 
 
248 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 trated and active interest of the few, outweighing 
 the comparatively insignificant interest and com- 
 paratively practical indifference of the many, is 
 very apt to succeed in a democratic government; 
 but it is based upon the notion that the representa- 
 tives of all the people are better able to judge what 
 is the pecuniary interest of each of the people than 
 each individual is to judge for himself. The sub- 
 sidizing of ships belongs with a system which gives 
 pensions to authors and newspapers, subsidies to 
 theatres, tithes to churches and ministers. It 
 does not belong to a system in which the recog- 
 nized function of government is the function of 
 protection, and the political assumption of the 
 government is that every man can spend his money 
 for himself better than government can spend it 
 for him. 
 
 The same problem is presented by the attempted 
 domination over the conscience of the individual 
 by the conscience of the majority. My objection 
 to prohibitory laws is not that they cannot be 
 enforced, but that they ought not to be enforced. 
 A local community may legitimately agree that it 
 will allow no sale of liquor except for medicinal 
 purposes within its bounds. It may do this, not 
 because even the local community has a right to 
 determine that men shall not drink alcohol, but 
 because the public sale of alcohol entails, in pov- 
 erty, disorder, and crime, burdens upon the com- 
 munity against which they have a right to protect 
 themselves, as they have a right to protect them- 
 
AMERICAN DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 249 
 
 selves against contagious disease. But the right 
 of a state to prohibit all sale of liquor except for 
 medicinal purposes presents an entirely different 
 question. Has a rural county in Maine, which 
 thinks the saloon is an injury, a right to prohibit 
 the saloon to the people of Bangor or Portland, 
 who entertain a diif erent opinion ? If so, on what 
 is that right based? It is not based on their 
 right to protect themselves, for drunkenness and 
 disorder in Portland or Bangor inflicts an insig- 
 nificant amount of injury upon the inhabitants of 
 the remote rural county. It must be based on the 
 supposed right of the majority to impose their 
 conscience on the minority, to determine for them 
 what is safe and right, to act toward them in loco 
 parentis ; and this right of the majority to act in 
 loco parentis toward the minority is fundamentally 
 antagonistic to the essential principle of a demo- 
 cracy, which is founded upon local self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The American statute-books are full of illustra- 
 tions of this attempt by the majority to act as 
 judgment and conscience for the minority or for 
 the individual. It is not always easy to draw the 
 line between such legislation as is necessary for 
 the protection of the many against the ignorance, 
 the incompetence, or the wrong-doing of the few, 
 and such legislation by the many as undertakes to 
 regulate the conduct of the few in accordance with 
 their supposed highest interest or with supposed 
 moral laws. But the principle never can be de- 
 
250 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 parted from by a self-governing democracy with- 
 out peril of injustice, that the function of law, 
 uttered by authority and enforced by power, is 
 with rare if any exceptions to be confined, in a 
 democracy, to the protection of person, property, 
 familj"^, reputation, and. liberty; and whenever the 
 majority, passing beyond this boundary, endeavor, 
 from either pecuniary or conscientious motives, to 
 regulate the expenditures or the conduct of the 
 minority according to a standard of judgment or 
 conscience which the majority have set up, they 
 are acting in violation of the fundamental prin- 
 ciple that every man is to be left free, in a self- 
 governing community, to regulate his own conduct, 
 provided he does not impair the rights or injure 
 the well-being of his neighbor. 
 
LECTUEE IX 
 
 AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 
 
 In considering our foreign problems, I purpose 
 to apply to the questions which confront us the 
 principles which I have already elucidated in pre- 
 vious lectures in this course. 
 
 The earliest state of man is that of independ- 
 ence. He builds his wigwam, cultivates the soil, 
 makes the moccasins, fashions the bow and arrows, 
 constructs the canoe. He is carpenter, farmer, 
 shoemaker, tailor, armorer, boat-builder. The 
 various industries are carried on by one house- 
 hold, if not by one man. He is industrially inde- 
 pendent of his fellow man. As with the individual, 
 so with the tribe: it is both politically and in- 
 dustrially independent of the neighboring tribes. 
 Peace is preserved only so long as each tribe con- 
 tinues upon its own territory. Encroachment upon 
 a neighbor's territory is a signal for war. There is 
 no commerce; exchange of industrial products is 
 unknown. Wars between the various tribes either 
 compel a union of tribes in one nation for pur- 
 poses of offensive or defensive warfare, or result 
 in the subjugation of one tribe by its neighbor. 
 Thus slowly, out of wars between independent 
 
252 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 comraunities, a great world-empire arises, like the 
 Chaldsean, the Macedonian, or the Roman. But 
 the unity of this great empire is formal rather 
 than real. It is dependent upon one central head ; 
 it is preserved by military force. The community 
 is heterogeneous in language, in habits, in reli- 
 gion, and presently it drops to pieces, as the Mace- 
 donian Empire did after the death of Alexander 
 the Great, as the Roman Empire did by a slower 
 process of dissolution. The formal unity has dis- 
 appeared, the nations are separated again. 
 
 But they have learned in this process something 
 of the value of unity ; and now a more real, though 
 a less apparent unity begins to appear. These 
 independent nations are also enemies; they also 
 fight with one another ; but the end of the fighting 
 is not subjugation, it is not absorption, it is agree- 
 ment. They make treaties with one another, they 
 come into alliances one with another — sometimes 
 offensive, sometimes defensive, sometimes purely 
 commercial; they are affiliated and federated in 
 temporary relationships. Commerce — that is, 
 the interchange of industries between these differ- 
 ent nations — begins to appear ; and this commerce 
 binds the nations together in an invisible unity. 
 It is less apparent, but it is more real, than that 
 which was due to conquest. Colonization begins. 
 This nation, sending out members from its centre 
 into new and comparatively unoccupied countries, 
 produces what I may call shoots of its national 
 tree. Thus a third step in the unity of the human 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 253 
 
 race is taken ; a great world-empire grows up, like 
 that of Great Britain — initiated by force, as was 
 the Roman Empire, centred in one head, as was 
 the Roman Empire, but not held together by mili- 
 tary force. With heterogeneous populations, dif- 
 ferent languages, alien religions, the communities 
 which constitute this empire are yet bound to- 
 gether by a real recognition of mutual interests 
 and by some recognition of a common purpose. 
 
 Beyond this lies a still further step toward that 
 unity of the race which is the goal of social pro- 
 gress; independent states freely combining form 
 a permanent federation. They retain local self- 
 government for the individual state, they relin- 
 quish to the united body the administration of 
 their common interests. Thus a great world-em- 
 pire grows up, not by the subjugation of one power 
 by another power, not by the absorption of one 
 power by another power, but by the voluntary 
 unity of various powers in one common organism. 
 
 All these phases of national life are to be seen 
 to-day on the globe. Tribes independent in- 
 dustrially and politically, always indifferent and 
 often hostile to one another — this is Africa. Na- 
 tions each having its separate life, yet entering 
 into occasional and temporary alliances with one 
 another, recognizing some mutual obligations, de- 
 veloping something which they call international 
 law, and finally, in our day, agreeing to the con- 
 stitution of a court to which their differences shall 
 be submitted — this is Europe. The subjugation 
 
254 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 of foreign nations by a great central power, deter- 
 mined, remorseless, irresistible, moving through 
 the centuries with unchanged purpose, accomplish- 
 ing a kind of national unity through the subjuga- 
 tion of the inferior by the supeft^ior — this is Eus- 
 sia. The evolution of an empire, with branches 
 growing out of it and correlated to it and to each 
 other, each with independent life yet each depend- 
 ent on the central organism — this is Great Brit- 
 ain. Federated states united in one national 
 union, with a common judiciary, with a common 
 parliament, and yet with individual local gov- 
 ernment — this is the United States. Except 
 the tribal state, all of them — Russia, Europe, 
 Great Britain, the United States — mark succes- 
 sive steps in the progress toward that unity of the 
 human race which has been the ideal of poets and 
 the vision of dreamers since the world began to 
 think. 
 
 For a considerable time we in this country were 
 separated from this unifying process of the nations 
 of the world. We stood apart from all the other 
 peoples of the globe. We were glad to do so ; it 
 was wise that we should do so. We were sepa- 
 rated from them by three thousand miles of ocean; 
 we were not, therefore, compelled to enter into 
 relations with them. We had sufficient demand 
 for all our activities in taking possession of this 
 continent; felling the trees, opening the mines, 
 clearing the pasture-lands, initiating and organiz- 
 ing our industries. We had no time to engage in 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 255 
 
 world-problems; we had no power to exert any 
 influence on world-policies. If we entered into 
 world-relations, we were in danger of being en- 
 tangled, enmeshed, crushed. Washington gave us 
 wise advice — to preserve as far as possible our 
 isolation. Even this counsel was phrased with 
 characteristic and studied moderation. "It is our 
 true policy," he said, "to steer clear of foreign 
 alliances with any portion of the foreign world — ■ 
 so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it." ^ 
 
 But for a hundred years we have been steadily 
 drawn into world-relations, and were unconscious 
 of the process. Material civilization was annihi- 
 lating distance ; as with hooks of steel our conti- 
 nent was drawn across the ocean. Whereas in 
 the beginning of the century it was six weeks from 
 New York to Liverpool, to-day it is less than six 
 days. We acquired power to speak so that we 
 could be heard three thousand miles away. Steam 
 and electricity annihilated the barrier of distance, 
 and made Liverpool much nearer to New York than 
 in the days of our fathers New York had been to 
 Charleston. Physically, we were brought nearer. 
 Commerce combined with invention to destroy our 
 isolation. 
 
 Europe needed our agricultural products; we 
 needed the products of French, German, and Eng- 
 lish industry. We began to interchange our pro- 
 ducts one with another. The interchange grew in 
 extent and complication; we became in business 
 1 Washington's Farewell Address. 
 
256 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 intertwined with European nations, so intertwined 
 that there grew upon us a consciousness that we 
 needed a common currency, at least a common 
 standard of values; that we must be able to mea- 
 sure our commercial products as England, France, 
 Germany, measured theirs. As a people we had 
 preferred bimetallism; we had declared our pre- 
 ferences in both Kepublican and Democratic plat- 
 forms; but when we had to decide whether we 
 would take a standard of value which we preferred, 
 or would accept the standard of value which the 
 nations of the earth had adopted, we decided to 
 surrender our preference for the sake of interna- 
 tional unity. 
 
 Closer bonds knit us to Europe: immigrants 
 had come from the Old World, leaving their kins- 
 folk there, and thus as a nation we came to be 
 united to European countries by innumerable let- 
 ters, and by all that those letters signified — com- 
 mon hopes, anticipations, affections. Love is 
 stronger than commerce; and love began to bind 
 the New World to the Old. Not the English 
 alone are our kin across the sea; Scandinavian, 
 German, Hungarian, Italian, Pole — they are all 
 kinsfolk of America. It is said that there are 
 more German dialects spoken in New York city 
 than in any city in Germany; and it is not im- 
 probable that there is more political power exer- 
 cised by Irishmen in New York city than in any 
 city in Ireland. Thus, by kinship, by commerce, 
 by propinquity, we have become attached and our 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 257 
 
 life has become interwoven with the life of the Old 
 World. Meanwhile the Old World has been 
 learning something from us. The fundamental 
 republican principle that government exists for 
 the benefit of the governed has been adopted by 
 European governments which did not recognize it 
 a hundred years ago. It is theoretically accepted 
 to-day as the basis of government by all the na- 
 tions of Christendom. The radicalism of the De- 
 claration of Independence has become the com- 
 monplace of the statesmen of western Europe. 
 
 While this fivefold process was going on, we 
 were unconscious'of it. Men are generally uncon- 
 scious of their growth. The boy grows to man- 
 hood, and neither he nor his father knows that he 
 is a man, until some sudden exigency arises, some 
 responsibility is thrown upon him, some duty is 
 unexpectedly thrust upon his shoulders, and — 
 behold! yesterday he was a boy, to-day he is a 
 man. We had heard the story .of cruel outrage 
 across the sea. We had read with hot hearts the 
 story of Armenian massacres; we had wondered 
 that European powers did not interfere with the 
 independence of Turkey and stop the cruel wrong; 
 we had wondered that England did not throw 
 down the gauntlet of defiance to Turkey and take 
 up the cause of oppressed Armenia and come to 
 her rescue. We said so in the press, in the 
 pulpit, on the public platform, and in many a 
 private conversation. We can generally see the 
 defects in another more easily than in ourselves, 
 
258 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the duty before another more easily tian the ' duty 
 before ourselves. The right, the duty, of a strong 
 nation to interfere for the protection of a weak, 
 oppressed, and suffering people burned itself into 
 the heart of America, through the story of Arme- 
 nian outrages. Then suddenly we were awakened 
 to the fact that outrages quite as great were being 
 perpetrated at our very door. A missionary who 
 went through the horrors of Armenia, and after- 
 wards went to Cuba, said to me personally, " There 
 was nothing so bad in Armenia as the effects of the 
 reconcentrado policy in Cuba." We had learned 
 in another school and concerning another nation 
 that no nation liveth unto itself and no nation 
 dieth unto itself ; we had learned in another school 
 and by the observation of another nation that 
 there is a duty of the strong to protect the weak. 
 When at last the blowing up of the Maine seemed 
 to the people as a challenge of defiance, they grew 
 weary of the delays of diplomacy, demanded in- 
 stant justice, and rushed, perhaps too precipi- 
 tately, into war. 
 
 The moment we did so we found we could not 
 love the neighbor at our door without becom- 
 ing entangled in European politics. We were at 
 war with a European nation, and that involved 
 us in diplomatic difficulties with other European 
 nations. France had large financial interests in 
 Spain ; we must avoid war with France. German 
 absolutism was inclined to sympathize with Spain 
 and to fear the growing power of this young re- 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 259 
 
 public; we must appeal to popular' sentiment in 
 Germany lest the imperial authority in Germany 
 should be exercised against us. We remembered 
 that Spain was a Roman Catholic country, and we 
 feared — though, as events turned out, without 
 cause — that the Pope of Rome would interfere on 
 behalf of Spain and against the United States. 
 We were entangled in European diplomacy as 
 well as engaged in a European war ; and we found 
 that we needed, and were glad to welcome, all the 
 moral support, all the practical aid, which could 
 be secured by an informal and unphrased alliance 
 with our kinsmen across the sea in Great Britain. 
 The war came to its end. What followed ? Our 
 men were sent abroad to Paris, to carry on their 
 negotiations, in the Old World with the Old 
 World power, for the settlement of a new treaty 
 between the old empire and the young republic. 
 Our representatives were there in Europe, decid- 
 ing our destiny and the destiny of a dependent 
 people. We had learned from the voyage of the 
 Oregon that we could not longer delay the con- 
 struction of an interoceanic canal from the Atlan- 
 tic to the Pacific, and we must enter into negotia- 
 tions with Great Britain to modify if not to set 
 aside the treaty previously made, in order that we 
 might have a free hand for the construction of the 
 Nicaragua Canal. We found ourselves made re- 
 sponsible by the fate of war for law, for order, 
 for the protection of persons and property, in the 
 Philippine Archipelago, on the other side of the 
 
260 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 globe; and we must fulfill that obligation. Al- 
 most simultaneously with the close of the war, a 
 sudden and violent outbreak took place in China ; 
 our property was destroyed, our citizens were put 
 to death, and our national representatives were 
 besieged in the capital of China, and their lives 
 depended on our intervention. Our diplomacy led 
 the way, our soldiers marched side by side with 
 French and German and Bussian and Japanese 
 soldiers, for the relief of the beleaguered repre- 
 sentatives of the great nations of the world — for 
 the punishment of offenders, for the restoration of 
 order. 
 
 This, rapidly sketched, is the history of the 
 past four years. This, rapidly sketched, is the 
 outcome of the longer history of the past hundred 
 years. Whether we like it or not, we are in the 
 world. We can no more return to the old policy 
 of isolation than we can return to be but thirteen 
 colonies along the Atlantic coast. We can no more 
 separate ourselves from the destinies, the interests, 
 the life of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and 
 Great Britain than we can fly to Mars that we 
 may keep ourselves apart from the globe on which 
 we live. When the boy has grown to be a man, 
 he cannot be thrust back into the cradle again. 
 Occasionally the old man says, "I wish I were a 
 boy again," or listens with romantic pleasure to 
 the song, "Kock me to sleep, mother." But we 
 are not boys, and mother does not rock us to 
 sleep. We are men ; and when the boy becomes 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 261 
 
 a man, whether he likes it or not, he must face 
 the responsibilities of manhood, and with courage 
 must enter upon their fulfillment. When a na- 
 tion has emerged from its period of isolation, 
 when by the history of the past it has been brought 
 into a fellowship with other nations, when, looking 
 back upon its hundred years of history, it sees 
 that the very object of events, and of Him who 
 rules in all history, is to break down barriers and 
 bring all nations together in one great brother- 
 hood, it is idle to say, "Let us go back to be as 
 we were, let us resume our isolation, let us in our 
 manhood be governed by the -counsels that belong 
 to our babyhood." 
 
 If one ventures to speak of manifest destiny, he 
 is scoffed at. "There is no destiny," we are told, 
 "which we do not make ourselves. Our nation 
 is what we compel it to be." We are told that 
 we are fatalists, and are attempting to revive the 
 ancient notion of Greece that life is determined 
 by an irresistible fate outside humanity. If, then, 
 we speak of Providence, and say that God has 
 opened a great door before us and laid upon us 
 a great duty, again we are scoffed at. " Who are 
 you," we are asked, "that undertake to interpret 
 the ways of Providence to men, and tell us glibly 
 what God means and does not mean?" I accept 
 the issue thus presented. I believe heartily and 
 profoundly in manifest destiny; heartily and pro- 
 foundly in a Providence that directs us in ways 
 we know not of. The destiny of no individual is 
 
262 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 determined by himself; the destiny of no nation 
 is determined by the aggregate of the human wills 
 that make up the nation. ' ' There 's a divinity that 
 shapes our ends, rough hew them as we wiU." We 
 live in history as we live upon this globe. Travel 
 north or south, east or west; plant corn or wheat 
 or what we will; live in Europe or America — 
 however we travel, whatever we do, wherever we 
 live, we are going round with incredible speed in 
 the world's orbit, whether we will or whether we 
 will not. Our wills have absolutely nothing to 
 do with it. We can understand what changes from 
 day to night, and from summer to winter, the revo- 
 lutions of the globe bring, and we can adapt our 
 actions to them, but those changes we -cannot mod- 
 ify. So we are a part of the great movements of 
 history ; we do not make them ; they are made by a 
 power greater than our own ; we may call it man- 
 ifest destiny, or Providence, or God — call it what 
 we will, it exists. It is for us to understand, to in- 
 terpret, and to conform our lives to its commands. 
 Christ rebuked the Pharisees because they did not 
 discern the signs of the times ; it is our function to 
 study the signs of the times, and understand what 
 the Lord God Almighty means by human history, 
 that we may work with him and not against him, 
 and not think we are setting the world back in its 
 orbit because we are traveling in the opposite 
 direction to that in which the world is going. 
 
 What is it that history makes clear? What as 
 to the duty of this nation ? Anything ? We have 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 263 
 
 seen that for eighteen centuries imperialism has 
 been decaying and democracy has been developing; 
 we have traced the twofold progress, of decay and 
 of development, — in government, industry, educa- 
 tion, and religion ; we have seen that what we call 
 Anglo-Saxon civilization has its roots in the He- 
 braic Commonwealth and its life in the principle 
 that the world is for the all, not for the few ; we 
 have seen that the Anglo-Saxon race have appre- 
 hended and appreciated this principle more fully 
 and embodied it in their institutions more thor- 
 oughly than any other race; we have seen that it 
 involves not merely a national but an international 
 unity as a preparation for and a prophecy of the 
 brotherhood of the whole human race; and we 
 have seen that this international unity, this com- 
 bination of union with that self-government which 
 is the ultimate goal of social progress, is further 
 advanced toward its ideal in the United States of 
 America than in any other form of world-empire. 
 What does all this mean but that the Anglo-Saxon 
 race is to act as a leader, and in the Anglo-Saxon 
 race the United States of America is to take no 
 inferior place in leadership, toward that brother- 
 hood of man founded on justice and liberty which 
 is the kingdom of God? 
 
 The duty thus devolving upon this country is 
 emphasized by the issue that confronts us in the 
 future. The old struggle has been between Roman 
 civilization and Hebraic liberty. The new strug- 
 gle is to be between Slav civilization and the He- 
 
264 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 braic liberty. This truth has been so well put by 
 another writer, and one whom no one will accuse 
 of being a poet guided by his imagination, that I 
 venture to read his interpretation to you. 
 
 Of late it has dawned upon a few outreaching minds 
 thatvthe one formidable competitor of the liberty-loving, 
 English-speaking people of the world is that gigantic 
 nation of the North, whose political organization is still 
 absolutely autocratic, and whose teeming millions of in- 
 habitants are, for the most part, a superstitious, igno- 
 rant multitude, who bow to authority with unquestion- 
 ing submission. The rapidity with which that nation is 
 extending its territorial possessions and influence indi- 
 cates that its statesmen are restrained by no such fears 
 of the inherent weakness of empire as have recently 
 been voiced within the United States. Little by Uttle 
 it is tightening its grasp upon the peoples of Eastern 
 Asia ; and its purpose stands clearly revealed to extend 
 its sovereignty and its poUtical organization throughout 
 at least a great part of China. Can any one look for- 
 ward to the consolidation of a Russian-Chinese empire 
 without serious misgivings as to the future of those 
 things that we are accustomed to regard as the essentials 
 of civilization ? Certain it is that a gigantic struggle 
 impends between that empire and the power from which 
 we have derived our own civilization and institutions, 
 and which to-day is our truest friend and strongest ally. 
 In the broad sense, there is from henceforth but one 
 real political question before mankind. That question 
 is ; Are world politics to be dominated by English- 
 speaking people in the interest of an English civiliza- 
 tion, with its principles of freedom, seUrgovprnment, and 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 265 
 
 opportunity for all, or by the Eussian-Chinese combina- 
 tion, w^th. its policy of exclusiveness, and its tradition of 
 irresponsible authority ? Let us not deceive ourselves 
 with any notion that we can safely stand apart from 
 this conflict.^ 
 
 To this place of leadership history with irresist- 
 ible force propels us; to this place -of leadership 
 an inward force no less impels us. America is a 
 nation of pioneers. The first colonists were pio- 
 neers : pioneers selected from these pioneers pushed 
 out from the older colonies into the wilderness, 
 and led the way for others to follow. Those that 
 did follow were again the pioneers selected from 
 the Old World, who came across to make in the 
 New World homes for themselves and their chil- 
 dren. They were men of hope, expectation, enter- 
 prise, energy. The men without hope, expecta- 
 tion, enterprise, energy, the men of dull content 
 or more dull despair, remained, old men in the 
 Old World. From the days of Columbus's dis- 
 covery of America to the present day, this nation 
 has been populated by the pioneers. Therefore it 
 is that this nation has in it more energy, more 
 enterprise, more expansive power, than any other 
 nation on the face of the globe. This impelling 
 power from within combines with public events 
 propelling from without to urge the nation for- 
 ward. It is idle to tell the natural leaders of 
 great commercial enterprises that they must not 
 send their ships across the sea, the masters of 
 ^ Franklin Henry Giddings : Democracy and Empire, pp. 288, 289. 
 
266 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 great railroads that they must not look for a com- 
 merce from other lands, the energetic manufactur- 
 ers ever looking for new worlds to conquer that 
 they cannot manufacture for any people but Amer- 
 icans, the progressive American farmers that they 
 can raise corn only for the neighbor at their doors. 
 The world is ours. We know it, and the impell- 
 ing power from within and the currents of history 
 from the past urge us forward into world-relations. 
 It is in vain to tell the people that the spirit of 
 enterprise is not safe ; the American courts danger. 
 It is in vain to tell them that Americans are not 
 competent; the ready answer is upon their lips: 
 We can make ourselves competent, and we will. 
 We may fail; but no fear of failure will prevent 
 us from trying the experiment. We are a world- 
 power; we are likely to be a leader among the 
 world-powers. We could not help ourselves if we 
 would ; we would not help ourselves if we could. 
 
 What duty does this fact lay upon us? The 
 duty of promoting the world's civilization. What, 
 then, are the essentials of civilization? 
 
 The first essential of civilization is law, con- 
 formed to justice, uttered with authority, and en- 
 forced by power. Without law and obedience to 
 law there can be no civilization. This is the first 
 lesson to be taught the child; it is the first lesson 
 to be taught the community. The babe is lawless ; 
 even if he is what his mother calls him, an angel, 
 still he is a lawless angel. The first lesson he must 
 be taught is that he is in subjection to a stronger 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 267 
 
 will. The first duty of a father or mother to the 
 babe is to compel obedience to "Thou shalt; " the 
 first function of the paternal prophet is to be a 
 Moses coming down from the mountain with a Ten 
 Commandments to tho little child below. And 
 what is true of the child is true of the child-race. 
 It must learn obedience. There is no road to 
 liberty oxcopting the road that leads through obe- 
 dience to law. There is no liberty which is not 
 founded on justice, and no justice which is not 
 formulated and regulated by law. Law, with 
 force behind it to compel obedience to it, is the 
 sine qua non of a civilized condition. 
 
 All civilized communities have passed through 
 this tutelage under law. Europe is a civilized 
 continent, more so than any other of the Old 
 World. Why? Because for centuries Europe 
 was under Eoman law, learned how to obey law, 
 learned the sanctity and value and worth of law. 
 Of all European countries, England leads in civi- 
 lization, because, of all European countries, Eng- 
 land learned the value and the authority of law. 
 The Norman Conquest, with a mailed hand, com- 
 pelled her to obey ; the Plantagenet kings, through 
 their judges, with sheriffs to enforce their decrees, 
 created throughout England "common law" — 
 that is, a law common to all England. There was 
 no sut'h common law in France; every province 
 had its own law ; and therefore in France a Drey- 
 fus trial is possible — never in England. The first 
 step in any civilizing process is to bring a lawless, 
 
268 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 barbaric, independent people under the dominion 
 of law; all else rests upon that. There can be 
 neither commerce nor trade nor manufactures, un- 
 less there is law protecting persons and property. 
 There cannot be churches nor schools nor a free 
 press nor free speech, unless there is law protecting 
 persons and property. Law is the foundation; aU 
 else is built upon it. Law therefore precedes, 
 necessarily precedes, commerce, education, reli- 
 gion. This is the divine order: first comes Sinai, 
 afterwards Bethlehem; the law of God must be 
 promulgated, and a sense of the divine authority of 
 law must be wrought into the consciousness of the 
 Hebrew race, before they can be ready for the 
 other message. Christ's first great public message 
 is a message of law — the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Throughout his ministry he "speaks with author- 
 ity," and no man is allowed to call himself a 
 disciple unless he accepts that authority with un- 
 questioning obedience. Law is the foundation of 
 Christianity, the foundation of religion, the foun- 
 dation of civilization. 
 
 The next element in the production of civiliza- 
 tion is trade, commerce, manufactures. So long 
 as every man by his own handiwork produces all 
 that he needs for himself and his family, there 
 cannot be wealth, nor comfort, nor development 
 of character; the individual is too busy getting his 
 bread out of the soil ; he has no opportunity for 
 the development of character; he cannot by his 
 independent efforts acquire enough even to make 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 269 
 
 life comfortable. There are two essentials of our 
 industrial civilisation. The first is a knowledge 
 of nature's forces: we set them to work, and they 
 do our drudgery for us ; they grind our grist, run 
 our traius, light our houses, manufacture our 
 wares, and so give us time for brain and heart 
 development. The second is the individualization 
 of industry: one man makes shoes, a second 
 clothes, a third books, a fourth teaches school, and 
 all these men interchange industries one with 
 another. This harnessing of nature to do our 
 drudgery, coupled with this individualization of 
 industry, it is which makes possible civilization. 
 
 Commerce cannot be carried anywhere without 
 carrying some ills with it. The larger the life, 
 the more the peril. But the ills that commerce 
 carries with it are but the incident. If we ship 
 goods to China, alcoholic liquors may also be 
 shipped; but the liquor-shop is but a spot on the 
 sun. I hope, indeed, the time will come when 
 Americans will say, "As we do not allow any 
 saloon to sell liquor to children, so we will allow 
 no American to export liquor to a child -race ; " 
 but whether we do or not, the fundamental fact is 
 that commerce is a life-giver. Where commerce 
 goes, the life is larger, the comfort greater, the 
 home better. Twenty-five years ago the wheel- 
 barrow was the only vehicle in China; to-day they 
 are importing bicycles and locomotives. Twenty 
 years ago rice was almost the only staple in China ; 
 to-day we are sending over shiploads of wheat, to 
 
270 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 supplement the rice and fill the vacant place when 
 the rice crop fails. Commerce fills millions of 
 mouths where philanthropy feeds but hundreds. 
 Commerce clothes millions of the naked where 
 philanthropy clothes but scores. Men condemn 
 the commercial spirit of the age ; if it is a spirit of 
 greed, of spoliation, it deserves the condemnation ; 
 but the commercial spirit is not necessarily a spirit 
 of greed or spoliation. When a nation subjugates 
 a province, holds it under its control, taxes it, for 
 its own benefit, as Rome taxed Palestine and as 
 Spain taxed Cuba, it is highway robbery. When 
 it uses its power to clutch a poorer nation by the 
 throat and rifle its pockets, it is a highway robber 
 and should be treated as one. But when a nation 
 sends its wheat and corn, its locomotives and bicy- 
 cles, its sewing-machines and agricultural pro- 
 ducts, to a far-distant country, and brings back 
 some product in return, it is doing a great service. 
 The commercial spirit is essentially a spirit of 
 mutuality of service; for commerce is the inter- 
 change of one nation's industry with that of an- 
 other, as trade is the interchange of one individ- 
 ual's industry with that of another. 
 
 Let us have done with the idea that material 
 progress is inimical to human welfare, and that 
 the opening of China and of Africa is to be looked 
 on with suspicion because Russian, German, and 
 American capitalists are taking advantage of it 
 to build great railroads and establish steamship 
 lines as profitable investments. These are the 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 271 
 
 beginnings of international unity, because these 
 annihilate distance and make every community 
 neighbor to every other community. 
 
 The third great factor is education, as Mr. Hux- 
 ley defines it: "The instruction of the intellect in 
 the laws of nature — under which name I include 
 not merely things and their forces, but men and 
 their ways; and the fashioning of the affections 
 and of the will into an earnest and loving desire 
 to move in harmony with these laws." When we 
 have laid the foundations for civilization by law, 
 established and maintained by such force as is 
 necessary against the lawless, we must pour into 
 the uncivilized regions the moral forces that make 
 for civilization. We must follow the power that 
 compels obedience with the powers that make for 
 life. Where we have established the foundations 
 of law, there we must see that the free press, the 
 free school, free industry, and a free church go also. 
 George Kennan writes that when he first went into 
 Santiago, Cuba, there was not what could prop- 
 erly be called a free school in the city — not one 
 that had a building properly constructed for it, 
 and which was maintained at the public expense. 
 Ecclesiastical schools there were, no doubt. But 
 shortly after the American occupation there were 
 seventeen schools, with nineteen hundred pupils. 
 Under the splendid administration of General 
 Wood, America pushed forward the forces of civi- 
 lization in Cuba with the same courage with which 
 the army pushed the forces of law and order that 
 
272 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 laid the foundations for civilization. An English 
 writer has said that English missions are but an 
 attempt to convert Hindus into second-class Eng- 
 lishmen. If this is true of American missions, 
 if by Christian missions we mean an attempt to 
 make Malays and Hindus and Negroes and Indians 
 into second-hand Puritans, the less we have of 
 such missions the better. On the other hand, if 
 we have a living faith in one God, the Father of 
 the human race, revealed to us through Jesus 
 Christ his Son; if we have faith in love as the 
 law of life, in love as the disposition of God, in love 
 as the ideal of existence ; if Christianity means to 
 live and to love ; if it means to do justly, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with God — it would 
 be the lasting disgrace of Christian men and 
 women if in this hour, when the world is opening 
 to us, and law is being established where law never 
 was known before, and commerce, white-winged, 
 is going where commerce never went before. 
 Christian men and women had no message, or no 
 courage to send their message, to the half-emanci- 
 pated children of the just opened wildernesses. 
 
 Without these three elements, law, commerce, 
 and education, no community is civilized or pros- 
 perous, no community has liberty or justice. It 
 is the function of the Anglo-Saxon race to con- 
 fer these gifts of civilization, through law, com- 
 merce, and education, on the uncivilized peoples 
 of the world. If we are to do this, we must 
 begin with law uttered with authority and enforced 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 273 
 
 by power. We cannot confer law on a recalci- 
 trant people without evil ; we cannot do it, as men 
 are constituted, without some measure of hardship 
 and injustice. But when men look at the injus- 
 tice and the cruelty that go with the enforcement 
 of law, when they look at the incidental evils which 
 commerce carries with it, when they can see only 
 the faults and the failures in missionary enter- 
 prises, when, as a result, they scoff alike at the 
 armed hand, commercial enterprise, and the mis- 
 sionary and educational endeavor, I appeal from 
 their scoffs to the history of mankind. Where 
 the Anglo-Saxon race has gone in America, in 
 Australia, in Egypt, in India, in Africa, persons, 
 property, family and reputation are safer than they 
 ever were before. Imagine for one moment that 
 when this country was first settled the English peo- 
 ple had said, "The North American Indians must 
 have their own independence ; we must not interfere 
 with it." Imagine that they had sent over the 
 Puritan preacher with his Bible, and the Koman 
 Catholic missionary with his baptism, and waited; 
 how long would the continent have been compelled 
 to wait, if left without commerce, without law, 
 with only the Puritan minister and the Jesuit mis- 
 sionary, before it would have become the continent 
 that it is, peopled by seventy-five million people, 
 and alive with active industry, its prairies cul- 
 tivated, its mines opened, its forests felled, its 
 streams busy, with its schools, its churches, its 
 homes, its prosperous, industrious, educated, virtu- 
 ous, and happy people? 
 
274 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 It is said that we have no right to go to a land 
 occupied by a barbaric people and interfere with 
 their life. It is said that if they prefer barbarism 
 they have a right to remain barbarians. I deny 
 the right of a barbaric people to retain possession 
 of any quarter of the globe What I have already 
 said I reaffirm: barbarism has no rights which 
 civilization is bound to respect. Barbarians have 
 rights which civilized people are bound to respect, 
 but they have no right to their barbarism. A 
 people do not own a continent because they roam 
 through its forests, travel across its prairies, and 
 hunt on its hillsides ; no people own a continent 
 unless they are using the continent. The world 
 belongs to humanity, not to the men that happen 
 to be in one quarter of the globe. And the people 
 who are living in a place and not utilizing the 
 place have no right to warn all other people off 
 as trespassers. The dog has not a right to the 
 manger, even if he is a barbaric dog -and the ox 
 is an Anglo-Saxon ox. 
 
 It is said that we Americans have no capacity 
 for this work. If that were true, it is high time 
 we acquired the capacity: but it is not true; the 
 history of the past demonstrates that we have the 
 capacity. I admit the truth that every superior 
 race, in dealing with inferior races, has fallen far 
 short of Christ's spirit of patient service and long- 
 suffering sacrifice. But on all the pages of human 
 history there is not to be found the record of any 
 other nation which has come so near fulfilling the 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 275 
 
 Christ-ideal in dealing with subject races as this 
 American people. We had imposed upon us negro 
 slavery — not by our choice, but by the authority 
 and power of Great Britain, against colonial pro- 
 test. In the original draft of the Declaration of 
 Independence, Thomas Jefferson made it one 
 ground of complaint against Great Britain that she 
 imposed slavery upon us despite our wish. We 
 sacrificed untold millions of money, and human 
 lives whose value is beyond all estimate, to set those 
 negroes free; and, having set them free, we have 
 spent untold millions of money. North and South 
 combining in the effort, to educate and fit them 
 for manhood. What other nation has done as 
 much for a subject race? In our dealing with the 
 Indians we have blundered, criminally blundered; 
 but, in spite of it all, we have saved much of their 
 lands for them, we have kept much of their money 
 for them, we have furnished them with education, 
 and we are to-day providing for the education of 
 practically every Indian child of school age in the 
 United States. If we had been willing to take 
 their lands without recompense and their money 
 without justice, the Indian problem would have 
 disappeared long ago — with the Indian. Only, 
 our honor would have been lost and our flag dis- 
 graced. What other nation in human history has 
 done what we have done for Cuba? We have 
 fought to set this people free, and, when they have 
 been set free by our benevolence, we have brought 
 hundreds of them here at our own cost to give them 
 
276 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 at one of our great universities a glimpse of Amer- 
 ican education, and then have sent them back to 
 educate their own people. What people have 
 shown more moral capacity for dealing with sub- 
 ject peoples than the American? Turkey, in her 
 dealings with the Armenians ? Spain, in her deal- 
 ings with the Moors? Italy, in her treatment of 
 the peasant class? France, in her treatment of the 
 Huguenots ? England, in her treatment of Ireland ? 
 Eussia, in her treatment of the Jews? 
 
 It is said that we have not the form of govern- 
 ment which fits us for this work. If that were true, 
 we should change the form of government. Forms 
 of government are but tools; let us adapt our tool 
 to our work, not our work to our tool. But our 
 government is admirably adapted for the work 
 God has given us to do. For our work is not to 
 subjugate a people; it is not to govern a people; 
 it is to develop in a people, through law, through 
 commerce, through education, through religion, 
 the power of self-government. And no nation is 
 better fitted, by the structure of its government, 
 by the noble traditions of its past, by the splendid 
 opportunities of the present, by the aspirations and 
 desires of its prophets and poets, to take the lead 
 in this great work of the world's civilization, and 
 make of a barbaric community first a law-abiding 
 people, then an industrious people, then an edu- 
 cated people, finally a self-governing people, than 
 this our republic. Our government, by its struc- 
 ture and in its spirit, more than any other govern- 
 
AMERICAN FOREIGN PROBLEMS 277 
 
 ment embodies the three essential elements of true 
 democracy — the spirit of good will to man, of 
 hope for man, of faith in man. The nation which 
 in its institutions embodies this threefold spirit is 
 preeminently the nation to rule, to teach, to in- 
 spire, so that through rule, through inspiration, 
 through teaching, other nations may become free 
 as we are free. 
 
LECTUKE X 
 
 THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 The pessimist, who sees only evil in the present 
 and danger in the future, does little to guard us 
 against the evils of the present or to prepare us 
 for meeting with courage and effectiveness the 
 perils of the future. The optimist, who insists 
 that we should look always at the bright side of 
 things, and who desires to close our eyes to present 
 evils and to future perils, does quite as little to 
 prepare us to escape present evil or to avoid or 
 overcome future danger. A brave man does not 
 believe in looking only at the bright side of things. 
 He wishes to look on aU sides of things ; he wishes 
 to know the evil as well as the good, the peril as 
 well as the promise. 
 
 To-night I am to speak of some of the perils 
 which threaten democracy in America — some 
 which seem to me to be inherent in the very or- 
 ganization, structure, and spirit of democracy. To 
 those who at all know me it is hardly necessary to 
 say that I speak of these evils in the faith that 
 they can be eradicated, of these perils in the faith 
 that they can be avoided or overcome ; of the ele- 
 ments of moral power in democracy which will 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 279 
 
 enable us to eradicate the evils and avoid or over- 
 come the perils, I shall speak in the next lecture. 
 
 The fundamental principle of American demo- 
 cracy is local self-government. We assume that 
 each individual can take care of his own interests 
 better than his neighbor can take care of them for 
 him, that each locality can take care of its own 
 interests better than the state can take care of 
 them, and that each state can take care of its own 
 affairs better than the nation can take care of 
 them. Thus, by the very structure of our politi- 
 cal organization, we are without a central author- 
 ity. There is no power at the head of the govern- 
 ment to enforce decisions, except as those decisions 
 are palatable to the people and receive their in- 
 dorsement from the people. There is not even 
 any symbol of central power, such as a king or 
 queen. There is no symbol that represents the 
 continuity of the nation. All political power is 
 derived from the people; they are conscious that 
 they have given that power to the so-called author- 
 ities ; they are conscious that it is given for a little 
 time, and that the officers to whom it is given hold 
 it in trust, and they are ready to resent any exer- 
 cise of that authority over them against their will. 
 Thus, central political authority is lacking in the 
 nation; that power on which the Old World has 
 in times past depended to prevent emeutes, risings, 
 revolutions, is either absolutely wanting or reduced 
 to a minimum. 
 
 Not only, however, is this central political au- 
 
280 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 thority wanting: there is no recognized social or 
 literary or artistic standard. There is no aristo- 
 cracy, no higher class, no cultivated few, to whom 
 the great body of the people are accustomed to 
 look up. An astute observer once remarked to 
 me: "In England every one but the Queen looks 
 up to some one above him, and every one but the 
 very lowest tramp looks down to some one below 
 him; but in America we neither look up nor down, 
 we only look off." Thus there is little in America 
 to develop the spirit of reverence for authority, 
 either within or without the realm of politics. 
 Each individual is a standard to himself; and the 
 fact that all authority is localized tends to make 
 the people of each locality provincial in their judg- 
 ments, whether political, aesthetic, or literary. 
 
 Not only this, but the standards of the past are 
 either wholly lacking or but lightly regarded in 
 America. England reveres her traditions; she 
 walks in her old paths; it is difficult to get her 
 out of them; her conservatism in this respect is 
 sometimes amusing to the American. We do not 
 walk in the old paths, because we are not old 
 enough to have any old paths. We are a mere 
 boy among the nations ; we have not yet had time 
 to form habits, and the restraining influence which 
 comes upon a man or a nation by reason of habits 
 long formed is almost wholly wanting in America. 
 It would be wanting even if we were all native 
 Americans, with a common past; but we are not 
 all native Americans, and we have not all a com- 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 281 
 
 mon past. A very large proportion of our people 
 have come hither from the Old World, and have 
 brought with them very differing traditions. Thus, 
 the traditions of the German and of the Puritan 
 are widely different, and to one the tradition is 
 as sacred as to the other. We not only have but 
 few and slight traditions, but in so far as we have 
 any they are varied and often conflicting. There 
 are two statesmen in America whom all Americans 
 practically agree to honor — George Washington 
 and Abraham Lincoln ; but it would be difficult to 
 name another. Some of us look back to Hamilton 
 as the great statesman of the Constitution; others 
 think that Hamilton was an impediment to the pro- 
 gress of the nation and bow at the shrine of Jeffer- 
 son. There is no continuity and no steadfastness 
 of tradition to hold us to the past, as there are no 
 standards of aristocratic or cultivated classes to 
 hold us to what is thought to be higher, and no 
 central political authority to enforce decisions over 
 a recalcitrant multitude. 
 
 Moreover, the authority of ecclesiastical religion 
 is greatly less than it was formerly. Whether this 
 is an advantage or a disadvantage I am not en- 
 gaged to-night to consider; but we must recognize 
 it as a fact. The church may have as great influ- 
 ence as it ever had, but it certainly has not the 
 authority it once had. In the Puritan churches 
 no one supposes that there is the ecclesiastical au- 
 thority that there was in the days of our fathers ; 
 but the change in authority is scarcely less marked 
 
282 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 in the Koman Catholic Church. Those who have 
 lived in the West know how frequently it happens 
 that when men go from New England into the 
 West they leave their church traditions and their 
 church relationship behind them; but we are apt 
 to forget that the men who have come over from 
 the Old World have equally been separated from 
 their traditions, and have equally found their loy- 
 alty to their church lessened by the process. Our 
 Koman Catholic divines assure us that there is no 
 such recognition of the supremacy of the church 
 in the American Catholic as in the Italian, the 
 Spanish, or even the German Catholic. Many of 
 them lament the lack of reverential regard for ec- 
 clesiastical authority; certainly that regard has 
 been diminished. We no longer believe the creeds 
 of our churches merely because our fathers believed 
 them ; we make new creeds to suit ourselves, or we 
 dismiss all creeds to the limbo of the past, or we 
 subscribe to them with so many mental reservations 
 that the subscription is practically meaningless. 
 
 Thus the four great restraining authorities of 
 history are either lessened or lacking : the authority 
 of a central power, the authority of a social class, 
 the authority of an historical tradition, and the 
 authority of ecclesiastical or institutional religion. 
 
 Along with this absence of restraint have gone 
 influences to develop individualism in extreme 
 forms. It is the fundamental postulate of demo- 
 cracy that the world and life are made for the 
 whole human race. From the belief that the 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 283 
 
 world is made to meet the wants of humanity, it is 
 easy to jump to the conclusion that it is intended 
 to suit the wishes of humanity. Collective human- 
 ity, and sometimes, by an easy transition, the in- 
 dividual man, is made the centre around which all 
 life is made to revolve. Thus there comes to be 
 an apotheosis of humanity, and, growing out of it, 
 a cultivation and intensification of egotism. From 
 the doctrine. Everything is made for us, there 
 easily follows the doctrine, Everything is made for 
 me. From the doctrine, Everything is made to 
 meet the needs of humanity, there easily follows 
 the doctrine, Everything is made to suit the wishes 
 of humanity. Thus the wish of man is made the 
 standard of life. Because government exists for 
 the benefit of the governed, it is concluded that 
 the government must be based on the consent of 
 the governed and must conform to their inclina- 
 tions. Because the world is made for humanity, it 
 is concluded that all men, without equally sharing 
 in the energy, industry, assiduity, and thrift, must 
 have an equal share in the wealth of the com- 
 munity. Because all men ought to have an oppor- 
 tunity for education, the conclusion is easily 
 reached that every man should take the education 
 that he personally likes, and that he should not be 
 required to do any studying that is contrary to his 
 own inclination. So the wish of the individual, 
 whether in government, in industry, or in educa- 
 tion, is enthroned, and man bows down before a 
 Great White Throne, himself sitting upon it. 
 
284 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 The result of this apotheosis of humanity and 
 this discrediting of authority is seen in some forms 
 of activity that are praiseworthy and some that 
 are not. Because of these conditions, the Ameri- 
 can is full of energy and full of hope and expecta- 
 tion. He has confidence in himself, confidence in 
 his nation, confidence in his fellow man. This con- 
 fidence easily becomes an assurance that we can do 
 anything that any other people can do, and then 
 that each individual can do anything that any 
 other individual can do. Involved in war, we 
 pick out civilians here and there, who never han- 
 dled a musket or put on a sword, and make them 
 officers in command of our men in the field. In 
 politics, we take an utterly untried man and send 
 him to the House of Eepresentatives to represent 
 us, assured that since he is an American, that is 
 enough ; other untried men we send to act as our 
 representatives abroad. One Western party passed, 
 not long ago, a resolution that they would have no 
 lawyers on the bench; that is, the fact that a man 
 was educated in law was sufficient to prevent him 
 from exercising legal judgments in controversies 
 between man and man. 
 
 The lack of standard, the lack of authority of 
 any kind, — political, social, ethical, religious, — • 
 coupled with this intensification of individualism 
 developing into egotism, is one of the natural re- 
 sults — perhaps not a necessary result — of demo- 
 cratic institutions and the democratic spirit. But 
 we cannot have a government without some final 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 285 
 
 arbiter somewhere. There must be a power that 
 shall say what the nation shall do, what it shall 
 not do. There need not be in education, for we 
 can have local schools with different methods; nor 
 in industry, for we can there work out our individ- 
 ual problems; nor in religion, for we can have a 
 great variety of sects and each sect may believe 
 and do as it likes ; we may worship God according 
 to the dictates of our conscience, or not at all if 
 we so prefer. But in government, in which we 
 must act together, there must be some method of 
 final decision, some ultimate standard; and we 
 have hit upon this as a standard — the wish of the 
 majority of the voters, representing, on the whole, 
 in this country, fairly well the wish of the majority 
 of the families in the nation. This is our political 
 standard, — - our necessary standard, but necessarily 
 imperfect. 
 
 There are probably no Americans who believe 
 avowedly in what Mr. Bryce calls " the infallibility 
 of the majority." No man, looking back upon 
 history, can be of the opinion that great masses 
 of men always act correctly, or always act with 
 even approximate wisdom or justice. Remember- 
 ing that the majority cried, "Set Barabbas free; 
 crucify Jesus of Nazareth," no man can think 
 that majorities always decide questions correctly. 
 Looking back to a period not beyond the memory 
 of some of us still living, to a time when the over- 
 whelming majority in this country were strenu- 
 ously and earnestly opposed to any agitation of 
 
286 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the slavery question, we cannot think that the will 
 of the majority of Americans is always correct or 
 always wise. Still, if we could always have the 
 great questions which we have to pass upon care- 
 fully debated and well considered, if we could 
 have the interchange of mind with mind, if the 
 Democrat could look at the question through Ee- 
 publican eyes, and the Republican could look at 
 the question through Democratic eyes; if the ex- 
 pansionist could understand what the anti-impe- 
 rialist means, and the anti-imperialist could un- 
 derstand what the expansionist means, the decision 
 of the majority would generally, if not uniformly, 
 prove to be a very good method of reaching con- 
 clusions on debatable questions in practical poli- 
 tics. But, with all our debates and discussions, I 
 think it must be conceded that a great deal of our 
 political action is taken without any serious inter- 
 change of opinion, because without any real under- 
 standing of each other's views. Says Professor 
 Bryce : — 
 
 Those who know the United States, and have been 
 struck by the quantity of what is called politics there, 
 may think that this description underrates the volume 
 and energy of public political discussion. I admit the 
 endless hubbub, the constant elections in one district or 
 another, the paragraphs in the newspapers as to the 
 movements or relations of this or that prominent man, 
 the reports of what is doing in Congress and in the 
 state legislatures, the decisions of the Federal Courts in 
 constitutional questions, the rumors about new combina- 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 287 
 
 tions, the revelations of King intrigues, the criticisms on 
 appointments. It is nevertheless true that, in proportion 
 to the number of words spoken, articles printed, tele- 
 grams sent, and acts performed, less than is needed is 
 done to form serious political thought and bring practical 
 problems toward a solution.^ 
 
 I venture to take a single illustration, afforded 
 by an event in connection with this course of lec- 
 tures, to illustrate my position. In one of this 
 course of lectures I said, " Barbarism has no rights 
 which civilization is bound to respect ; " and, that 
 my position might not by any possibility be misun- 
 derstood, I added that this did not mean that bar- 
 barians had no rights which civilized people are 
 bound to respect. On the contrary, the right of 
 barbarians to justice, liberty, education, and a 
 fair share in the common wealth is the right which 
 barbarism denies them and which it is the duty of 
 civilization to afford them. And I found myself 
 quoted in the press as saying that barbarians had 
 no rights which civilized people were bound to 
 respect. The thing which I had denied I was told 
 I had affirmed. That a public speaker should be 
 misunderstood, misinterpreted, misrepresented, is 
 a matter of no particular consequence; nor should 
 I use this occasion to set the error right. I use 
 the incident simply because it illustrates the prin- 
 ciple I want to expound. When one man gets on 
 horseback, puts his lance in rest, and says, "Bar- 
 barians have rights which civilized men are bound 
 1 James Bryce : The American Commonwealth, ii. p. 295. 
 
288 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 to respect," and another man gets on horseback, 
 puts his lance in rest, and also says, "Barbarians 
 have rights which civilized men are bound to re- 
 spect," and they ride full tilt at each other, it is 
 evident that nothing is determined by the mock 
 battle. The real and fundamental problem, 
 "What ought civilized people to do to give to 
 barbarians the blessings of their own civiliza- 
 tion?" has not the slightest light thrown upon it 
 by such misunderstandings, such would-be discus- 
 sions. 
 
 The wish of the majority is an imperfect stand- 
 ard even in politics, though it is, for a tolerably 
 educated people, the best which the wit of man 
 has yet devised. But when it is universally ac- 
 cepted as the standard in politics, it easily becomes 
 the standard in art, literature, and morals; and 
 when this is the case, it is, in the nature of the 
 case, impossible that the standard should be the 
 highest. It will be higher than the lowest — it 
 will tend to elevate the taste of some ; but it will 
 be lower than the highest — and so will tend to 
 drag down the taste of others. For the will or 
 judgment of the majority can never be the will or 
 judgment of the few supreme thinkers in the com- 
 munity. It can only be something above the aver- 
 age. Thus the tendency of America is to create 
 general averages, and to measure all things by 
 majorities. 
 
 This tendency to measure all things by majorities 
 is intensified by the fact that we live in a commercial 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 289 
 
 age. Commercialism is better than militarism, but 
 the commercial age involves peculiar perils to hu- 
 man character. When we begin to measure suc- 
 cess by financial results, we necessarily begin to 
 measure success by the largeness of the market 
 reached; and when we measure success by the 
 largeness of the market reached, we necessarily 
 measure success by the capacity of the producer to 
 adjust his product to the average taste, the average 
 intellect, the average judgment, not to the highest. 
 The effect of this is seen on every hand. Pho- 
 togravure gives us pictures of every sort, from ex- 
 cellent in our higher magazines to execrable in our 
 lowest newspapers. Every one has art, or some- 
 thing that passes for art, in his house — on his 
 parlor table or on his walls. But there is no in- 
 centive to create an Albert Diirer; and if he ex- 
 ists, he must fight his way to recognition in spite 
 of what commerce and democracy will call failure. 
 We have in chromo-lithographs on oar walls very 
 reputable imitations of fine pictures; but if one 
 desires to give himself to art in America, he must 
 make up his mind, to begin with, to struggle long 
 with poverty, and perhaps to labor all his life 
 unknown, and leave his genius to be discovered 
 after he is dead. Our periodicals and our news- 
 papers carry literature into every home; there is 
 no man so poor that he cannot have a good book ; 
 there are few men so ignorant that they cannot 
 read. But the same influence that multiplies liter- 
 ature tends to make it not of the highest quality. 
 
290 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Our public-school system has given us a great 
 many people in this country who are sufficiently 
 educated to read, but not sufficiently educated to 
 think, and they form a great constituency which 
 supports not a few newspapers which can be read 
 without thinking. Our periodicals give stories, 
 descriptions, poetry, well worthy of our applause; 
 but it is doubtful whether "Henry Esmond " would 
 have had any such circulation as " To Have and To 
 Hold," or whether any periodical would ever evoke 
 "The Eing and the Book," from the brain of a 
 Browning. 
 
 But it is not only in art and literature that the 
 tendency of our age is to lower standards. It is 
 preeminently true in politics. When we come 
 together in a political convention, our problem is 
 not to determine what is true, or right, or just, 
 but what will carry this doubtful state. We put 
 this problem to ourselves with a naive frankness. 
 The convention gathers, the debates are reported 
 all over the country, and apparently there is no 
 sense of humiliation in the fact that the question 
 is not, "Is this proposition true?" but "How will 
 it aifect the vote in New York or in Montana? " 
 Sometimes the convention avoids the question by 
 putting the statement in such a way that it will 
 carry both the doubtful states. Thus, not long 
 since we were saying in some quarters that we 
 believed in tariff for revenue only, so adjusted as 
 to protect all American industries, and that we 
 believed in bimetallism, so administered as to give 
 
THE PERILS or DEMOCRACY 291 
 
 us a gold standard. Thus one tendency of our 
 method of determining political elections by the 
 will of the majority is to lower the standard of 
 absolute truth in the political and moral realm, a 
 tendency which found a too brutally frank expres- 
 sion from an American politician in the declaration 
 that the Ten Commandments and the Golden Eule 
 in American politics are an "iridescent dream." 
 Nor is it possible for one who studies carefully the 
 religious phenomena of this country to doubt that 
 something of the same effect is manifest in our 
 churches. A minister is called to the pulpit to 
 "draw," and he is measured by his drawing capa- 
 city. If he fills the church with a great congre- 
 gation, and the treasury with abundant pew rents, 
 he is a successful preacher. The question how 
 much he has filled the conscience with indignation 
 against wrong, how much he has filled the life 
 with hope, with love, with loyalty, may be asked, 
 but it is not publicly asked. This measure of the 
 ministry may be real, but it is not apparent. 
 Thus, with the lessening of authority, with the 
 lowering of standards of value to suit an average 
 demand, with the development of the egotistic 
 spirit in America, and with the acceptance of the 
 wish of the majority as the rule of all life, comes 
 inevitably a certain element of commonplace in 
 democracy. 
 
 Nor is this all. To government two things are 
 necessary — wise judgment, and power to enforce 
 the judgment. For government is always the 
 
292 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 exercise of power, either openly or- tacitly ; either 
 directly exercised or in the background ready to 
 be exercised. In order to make a good govern- 
 ment, those that are to govern must not only be 
 wise to determine, but strong to enforce the deter- 
 mination when it is reached. And there is a ten- 
 dency in democracy, as in all great multitudes of 
 men, to act together under passion and at fever 
 heat, and then, when the time of action has passed, 
 to forget the action and relax into indifference and 
 apathy. 
 
 Several results follow from this. In the first 
 place, when on the one side are financial interests 
 widely divided among the whole body of the peo- 
 ple, and on the other side the concentrated finan- 
 cial interests of a very small body of people, the 
 interests of the great body are always liable to be 
 set aside by the concentrated interests of the few. 
 If the subsidy bill before Congress, ^ appropriating, 
 in round numbers, nine million dollars a year to 
 shipping, of which by far the greatest amount will 
 go to four great corporations, should be passed, 
 each individual voter will give on an average sixty 
 cents in taxes, and four great corporations will get 
 nine million dollars. The individual voter does 
 not care much about the sixty cents ; by giving his 
 attention to other things he can make much more 
 than the sixty cents; but the four great corpora- 
 tions are greatly interested in the nine million 
 dollars. Whether the subsidy bill is right or 
 1 March, 1901. 
 
THE PERILS OP DEMOCRACY 293 
 
 wrong, expedient or inexpedient, it is quite evi- 
 dent that financially the interest of fourteen mil- 
 lions of people scattered all over the country is 
 not or may not be an adequate make-weight for 
 the concentrated interest of four or five men who 
 can afford to give time, strength, energy, and 
 money to carry their point. 
 
 This apathy of the American people also shows 
 itself on moral issues in which financial interests 
 are not directly concerned. We pass a law, put it 
 on the statute-books, and are satisfied that we have 
 done our duty. But it is not enough to pass a 
 law; it is also necessary to enforce the law. A 
 very striking illustration of this moral and politi- 
 cal peril from unenforced law has been recently 
 afforded in Kansas. The people of that state 
 passed a law prohibiting all saloons; then sup- 
 posed, apparently, that they had done their duty, 
 and that the saloons were banished from Kansas. 
 But the saloons were not banished. We were told 
 that prohibition did prohibit in Kansas, and we 
 supposed that it must be true, until suddenly the 
 public press informed the country that a woman 
 was going from town to town breaking the mirrors 
 and the glass doors of the saloons that had been 
 abolished. The apathetic conscience of Kansas was 
 awakened, and the citizens in one town assembled 
 and gave the saloon-keepers a definite time to leave 
 the town, with notice that if they had not left at 
 the allotted time a vigilance committee would fol- 
 low the example which Mrs. Nation had set, and 
 
294 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 would break the mirrors and the plate-glass win- 
 dows of the prohibited saloons. It is claimed that 
 it is better to enforce the law by mob violence than 
 not to enforce it at all; but it is not a pleasant 
 spectacle to the thoughtful American to see a law 
 on the statute-book openly, flagrantly, and contin- 
 uously disregarded, the officers of the law allowing 
 it to be disregarded, and at last the people waking 
 up, and not holding themselves in leash and with 
 patience waiting until by legitimate and proper 
 methods they can enforce the law, but organizing 
 themselves into a vigilance committee to do a work 
 of demolition by mob violence. Such are at times 
 the operations of democracy — first apathetic and 
 then passionate, then apathetic again. 
 
 Thus democracy has two weaknesses: first, the 
 weakness of a standard not the highest, and, sec- 
 ond, the weakness of a will that is often not alert. 
 Out of these two, coupled with the spirit of indi- 
 vidualism, — the apotheosis of the individual and 
 the enthronement of the individual will, — grows a 
 spirit of lawlessness. 
 
 This spirit of lawlessness is seen in many and 
 various manifestations: in the national habit of 
 putting laws upon the statute-book with a tacit 
 understanding that they are not to be obeyed, or 
 with a quiet disregard of them in localities where 
 the law is not popular; in the common saying, 
 which national experience does much to confirm, 
 that law is no stronger than the public opinion 
 which is behind it, and accordingly the law enacted 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCKACT 295 
 
 by state authority is no stronger in any particular 
 city or county than the public sentiment in that 
 locality; in the conscienceless evasion of tax laws, 
 even when such evasion involves deceit and false- 
 hood and sometimes perjury; in sporadic acts of 
 mob violence, especially in the less well-settled 
 portions of the country, where the impatient peo- 
 ple will not wait for the slower process of the law; 
 in the occasional open defiance of the law by or- 
 ganized mobs, especially in great cities such as 
 Chicago, Pittsburg, Cleveland, and New York; 
 in not less flagrant violations of law by great cor- 
 porations, who are very rarely called to account 
 for their disobedience. 
 
 While this volume is going through the press 
 the assassination of President McKinley affords a 
 startling and tragical illustration of the perils 
 threatened to democratic institutions by the spirit 
 of lawlessness. Intemperate speech, going far 
 beyond all bounds of legitimate discussion of either 
 public measures or public men, had exhausted the 
 resources of vehement rhetoric in vituperation of 
 the chief magistrate of the nation. He had been 
 assailed by reputable men and women as "un- 
 scrupulous and deceitful," "the most unmoral of 
 all the occupants " of the presidential chair, char- 
 acterized by "vacillation, infirmity of purpose, and 
 general dishonesty," as "affable putty," a "pup- 
 pet," "watchful for votes alone," a "traitor," one 
 who "stands not only for cheating and robbery, 
 but also for arson and murder," a "shameless 
 
296 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 President," "an Ohio twaddler," with "mediocrity 
 of mind and low left-handed cunning," whose name 
 history would "pillory in letters black," "whether 
 as tool or tyrant . . . time alone can tell.". While 
 these epithets were flung in widespread publica- 
 tions by reputable Americans in an endeavor to 
 excite popular passion against the man whom the 
 nation had chosen to be its leader, the doctrine 
 was in smaller circles sedulously taught that all 
 government is oppression, that all rulers are "tool 
 or tyrant," and stand "not only for cheating and 
 robbery, but for arson and murder," and that there 
 is a sacred right and even a solemn duty to slay 
 them at sight, as we would slay a prowling woK or 
 a man-eating tiger. One of the disciples of this 
 school traveled across the sea from America and 
 assassinated the king of Italy, and his fellow dis- 
 ciples here met and glorified his act; still Amer- 
 icans contented themselves with newspaper pro- 
 tests; nowhere was a vigorous, concerted, and 
 continuous effort made either to restrain by law 
 the speeches of Anarchists inciting to crime and 
 glorifying it when committed, or to rebuke by 
 public opinion the speeches of embittered partisans 
 transcending aU the bounds of honorable public 
 debate. At last a man of feeble intellect and still 
 feebler conscience, with that ambition for notoriety 
 which a sensational press does much to stimulate 
 even in larger men, put the public teaching of the 
 partisans and the private teachings of the An- 
 archists together and carried them to their logical 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 297 
 
 conclusion. The one had told him that WiUiam 
 McKinley was a tyrant, the other that all tyrants 
 ought to die, and he resolved to achieve a martyr's 
 crown by carrying into execution the lesson he had 
 learned. It is idle to charge the result to immi- 
 gration, or to think that repetition of such murders 
 can be guarded against by sentinels placed at the 
 landing piers of our Atlantic cities. Booth, 
 Guiteau, and Czolgosz were all native Americans, 
 and Czolgosz was a graduate of our public schools. 
 The assassination of William McKinley was the 
 ripened fruit of seed sown by lawless tongues in 
 partisan invective which public opinion, regardless 
 of party, should have sternly rebuked, and in 
 Anarchistic counseling of crime which public law 
 ought to have forbidden under severe penalty. 
 
 An illustration on a larger scale of the spirit of 
 self-will which democratic institutions foster, and 
 which in turn fosters the spirit and methods of 
 lawlessness, was afforded by the civil war. The 
 tendency of local self-government separated the 
 country into two sections, North and South. Sla- 
 very embittered the conflict between the two; war 
 ensued, the cost of which in life and treasure it 
 is impossible to estimate. It is true that the re- 
 sult of the war proved the power of democracy to 
 enforce its will when that will is once thoroughly 
 aroused ; but the very fact of such a struggle bears 
 witness to the peril which the enforcement of the 
 national will may at any time involve. The next 
 controversy, if there is one, will probably not be 
 
298 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 between different sections of the country, but 
 between different classes in the community. 
 
 I do not see how any one looking upon our in- 
 dustrial situation can doubt that there is peril of a 
 serious strife between capitalists and wage-workers. 
 The wage-workers are generally without capital, 
 often without education, sometimes densely igno- 
 rant. Masses of them have never been taught 
 the difficult art of self-government. Coming from 
 countries in which the church has been too often 
 an instrument of priestly oppression, and the state 
 too often an instrument of political oppression, 
 they bring with them an inherited hatred of both 
 state and church, and a disbelief in man which is 
 more dangerous to society than that disbelief in 
 God which always accompanies it. Freed from the 
 restraints of the Old World, they are at the same 
 time endowed with powers which in the Old World 
 they never possessed — free ballot, a free press, 
 and free speech. Add to this the fact that, with 
 dynamite carried in a carpet-bag, the modern Guy 
 Fawkes can destroy in an instant the products of 
 a century's industry. In a warfare between classes 
 for the possession of property, civilization has every 
 advantage; in a warfare of Anarchy against all 
 property, anarchy has every advantage. There is 
 no power in the state which the restless and the 
 unprincipled recognize and which they fear, no 
 power in the church to which their conscience or 
 their superstition compels obedience. The public 
 schools address not their conscience, but their 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 299 
 
 intellect. They live in a country where the chief 
 support of order is an enlightened conscience and 
 the chief protection of property an enlightened 
 self-interest, and neither their conscience nor their 
 self-interest is enlightened. 
 
 The number of such discontented, restless, and 
 Anarchic individuals is not large, hut their power 
 is out of proportion to their numbers. Trades- 
 unions exist in nearly every state of the Union 
 and in most of the territories. Agriculture is 
 the only considerable industry which has not its 
 industrial organization. These unions are essen- 
 tially warlike both in their aims and in their 
 methods; that is, they are not primarily organized 
 to promote education, facilitate apprenticeship, in- 
 troduce new methods of labor, encourage the in- 
 troduction of labor-saving machines, and equalize 
 wages by equalization of intelligence and industry. 
 They are not organized like a political club, for 
 purposes of personal intercourse; nor like a literary 
 club, for purposes of education; nor like a co- 
 operative club, for purposes of mutual benefit; 
 they are organized to protect their members 
 against real or fancied oppression of employers, 
 or to wrest from employers a larger share of the 
 profits. They are founded on the assumption that 
 the interests of employer and employed are antag- 
 onistic. They are ruled over generally by a direc- 
 tory scarcely less absolute than that which governed 
 the Eevolutionists in the day of Mirabeau, which 
 meets in secret, demands implicit obedience to its 
 
300 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 orders, and forces obedience to them by indus- 
 trial excommunication, and sometimes by open 
 violence or secret assault. In times of industrial 
 peace tbese trades-unions are a conservative force. 
 They facilitate cooperation between labor and 
 capital, and they constitute a necessary protection 
 of the individual laborer against the otherwise irre- 
 sistible power of capital, which is always combined. 
 But in time of industrial war the radicals in these 
 organizations come to the front. Their radicalism 
 gives them a control to which their judgment does 
 not entitle them. The union, organized and main- 
 tained in a pacific spirit in time of peace, becomes 
 in a labor war, by its solidarity, by the sympathy 
 of large sections of the community with it, and 
 especially by the opportunity which its action 
 affords to the lawless and to the violent, a menace 
 not only to the employer but to the entire commu- 
 nity. 
 
 While thus labor is organizing, and the organi- 
 zations at times pass under the influence of violent 
 and lawless agitators, capital is also organizing, 
 and passes at times under the control of leaders 
 more astute but not more scrupulous. The con- 
 centration of the wealth of many in the hands of 
 a few is of great industrial advantage in times of 
 peace, but it gives to the few power perilous to 
 democracy in times when men's passions or their 
 fears are aroused. The wealth invested in Amer- 
 ican railroads counts by billions, the annual in- 
 come by hundreds of millions. The owners of this 
 
THE PERILS OP DEMOCRACY 301 
 
 wealth are combined in great corporations and 
 combinations of corporations. Against them the 
 private citizen is almost powerless. The working- 
 men must take what work they will furnish at what 
 wages they will give. The shipper must pay what 
 rates they charge. There is no appeal to the law, 
 because in general the law recognizes the right of 
 the corporation to hire its labor in the cheapest 
 market and to charge for freight what the traffic 
 wiU bear. If the actions of the corporation are 
 illegal, the expense of proving their illegality and 
 bringing the corporation to account is so great that 
 the private citizen is estopped from appeal to the 
 courts for justice. When the country is prosper- 
 ous and the demand for manufactured goods is 
 great, and money is plenty, and mills are busy, 
 and wages are high, the peril of open controversy 
 between employer and employed disappears; but 
 only to reappear when times are hard, when a 
 glutted market paralyzes industry, when mills are 
 closed, when workmen are thrown out of employ- 
 ment, when hundreds of thousands draw near the 
 starvation line, while a small and wealthy aristo- 
 cracy know not how to spend their income or even 
 the interest on their investment.^ 
 
 These perils are aggravated by four types of 
 leaders in our country, whom I will call respec- 
 
 ^ The possible peril here so briefly sketched I have described 
 more fully in an article published in the Century Magazine for 
 November, 1885, entitled " Danger Ahead," though it is proper 
 to say that at that time the danger seemed both greater and 
 more imminent than it does now. 
 
302 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 tively the demagogue, the boss, the plutocrat, and 
 the medicine-man. 
 
 The demagogue is to democracy what the cour- 
 tier was in olden times to the king; he lives by 
 flattering his sovereign. The majority is sovereign 
 in America, and the demagogue assures this sover- 
 eign that he can do no wrong. He appeals to his 
 passions; he cultivates his foibles; he is careful 
 never to irritate or cross his wishes or his whims. 
 He does not hesitate to excite class against class, 
 section against section, sect against sect, if by so 
 doing he can win fame or fortune. If he speaks 
 upon the platform, he speaks that he may win the 
 applause of his audience, not that he may lead 
 them on to a higher ground. If he edits a news- 
 paper, he talks morality in his editorial pages and 
 spreads vice and sensationalism in all its worst 
 forms in his reading columns, and thinks he pub- 
 lishes a great newspaper because he publishes an 
 affidavit that a great many copies of it go out 
 from the printing-press, and never an affidavit how 
 many of them come back to be burned for fuel. 
 This conscious and deliberate demagogue is not 
 so dangerous as the half-unconscious demagogue. 
 Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said, "What 
 my audience gives to me in spray, I give them 
 back in drops." The half-unconscious demagogue 
 speaks to a prejudiced and not too intelligent 
 audience. They give him muddy water in spray, 
 and he gives them back muddy water in drops. 
 He simply reflects the sentiment of the people to 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 303 
 
 whom he talks; there are innumerable men in 
 America who think the highest compliment they 
 can give to a public speaker, secular or religious, 
 is, "You said just what I have always thought." 
 Such a demagogue, conscious or unconscious, re- 
 flecting the sentiments of the people, stirring pas- 
 sions that should be allayed and stimulating hostil- 
 ity that should be pacified, intensifies and energizes 
 the egotism and the self-will which should be cor- 
 rected and restrained. 
 
 The demagogue, whether he speaks from the 
 platform or edits a newspaper, whether he is con- 
 scious or unconscious, whether he directly and 
 openly appeals to class prejudice or covers his ap- 
 peal with a mask of piety and patriotism, is not so 
 dangerous as the boss. Government in a demo- 
 cracy necessitates parties, parties necessitate ma- 
 chinery, and machinery necessitates a leader or 
 leaders, who must give the initiative and furnish 
 the guidance. The boss is a leader who uses this 
 machinery either for personal or for party ends, 
 not for the ends for which the party itself has 
 been organized. "We are familiar in church his- 
 tory with three types of ecclesiastic — the place- 
 hunter, who uses the church for his own advance- 
 ment ; the church partisan, who regards his church 
 organization as essential to the cause of religion, 
 and therefore identifies the cause of his church 
 with the cause of religion; and the non-chfirch- 
 man, who affiliates himself with some church sim- 
 ply as a means of promoting the religious life in 
 
304 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 others and in himself. The same classification is 
 possible in politics. There are politicians who 
 use the party for their own political advancement; 
 politicians who regard their party organization as 
 essential to the nation's welfare, and regard par- 
 tisanship and patriotism as substantially identi- 
 cal; and politicians to whom the party is simply a 
 convenient means to accomplish public ends, to 
 be adhered to when it subserves these ends, to be 
 abandoned when it ceases to do so. The "boss" 
 belongs to the first or second class ; that is, he is 
 a leader who does not simply attach himself to a 
 party and employ its organization to secure certain 
 political ends which he regards as vital for the 
 welfare of the country, but one who belongs to the 
 party and uses the party machinery either to ad- 
 vance his own interests or that of the party. He 
 is rarely scrupulous, and never very scrupulous. 
 He believes that "all is fair in love and war," and 
 that politics is war; that one must "fight fire with 
 fire," and that the enemy is always using fire; 
 that the "end justifies the means," and that the 
 end is the supremacy of his party in the city, the 
 state, or the nation, and generally his supremacy 
 in the party; that "nothing succeeds like success," 
 and that whatever is successful is justified by the 
 success. The methods of the boss vary; the end 
 is always the same : political success for his party 
 and incidentally for himself, or political success 
 for himself and incidentally for his party. I had 
 the opportunity once of traveling with the lieuten- 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 305 
 
 ant of one of the widely known political bosses of 
 this country, and he told me, in a burst of frank- 
 ness for which I was very much obliged to him, 
 how the politics in his state were administered. 
 The corporations, he said, which desired favors 
 from the legislature, or the corporations which 
 feared that they might be blackmailed by members 
 of the legislature, found it easier to work through 
 one man than through many men. They therefore 
 paid to the boss of his party a considerable sum of 
 money for election expenses. "I do not think," he 
 said in substance, "that any of the money stays in 
 his pocket. I do not think he is in politics for what 
 he can personally make out of them. But when 
 an election is coming on, he writes to the candi- 
 dates for the legislature, asking each candidate 
 who belongs to his party how much he will need in 
 his district, and the money needed is forthcoming. 
 No pledges are taken, no promises are exacted. 
 If in the next legislature that man, having received 
 support for his election by this method, does not 
 vote as the director of his party desires him to 
 vote, at the next election he can pay his own elec- 
 tion expenses." This is not a very gross form of 
 corruption ; but, coupled with others that are prob- 
 ably more debasing, it puts one man at the centre 
 of political power. 
 
 In this instance the ambition of the boss was 
 apparently the success of his party and only inci- 
 dentally his own success. The case of Mr. Eich- 
 ard Croker and Tammany HaU illustrates the case 
 
306 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 of an organization and a boss, both of whicb are 
 inspired by a more sordid purpose. In a compara- 
 tively recent political investigation Mr. Richard 
 Croker, on the stand, without the slightest hesita- 
 tion and with entire frankness unfolded his theory 
 and his practice as the leader or "boss" of Tam- 
 many, both of which terms he accepted as applied 
 to himself; he explained how he distributed city 
 patronage, including various municipal offices and 
 even Supreme Court judgeships, in such a way as 
 to give to him and his associates the largest finan- 
 cial return. The " Outlook " thus summarized at 
 the time a part of his testimony : — 
 
 I believe that to the party belong the spoils, and we 
 expect everybody to stand by us. That 's what the peo- 
 ple voted our ticket for. So long as we offer just as 
 good men for office as any other party, I believe we 
 should have aU the offices we can get. We expect to be 
 permitted to make a living. Working for my own 
 pocket ? Yes. AU the time, every day in the week, 
 the same as you are. Plunder ? You may call it what- 
 ever you like ; because men are loyal to us, you call 
 that plunder. Positions, offices, and money that come in 
 a legitimate way should go to the organization. Tam- 
 many nominates judges, for instance, who contribute 
 liberally to her funds — no, not as high as $18,000 
 [one judge testified that he contributed $10,000 at Mr. 
 Croker's request] — these judges appoint as referees 
 Tammany men as a matter of course ; these referees 
 give their sales to Tammany auctioneers. I am part- 
 ner in an auctioneer firm that gets most of these judicial 
 sales. Action of the judges was secured to remove all 
 
•THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 307 
 
 sales to 111 Broadway when I became Mr. Meyer's 
 partner there, and our firm has a monopoly of the 
 sales. 
 
 The extent to which this spoils system is carried 
 in all parts of the country, in city, state, and 
 nation, and by both political parties, is probably 
 not realized by the country, despite much news- 
 paper denunciation. How absolutely fatal it is to 
 true democracy, how it substitutes the will of one 
 man or a few men, and those too often unscrupu- 
 lous and self-seeking, for the will of the majority, 
 and how demoralizing it is to the public con- 
 science, from the highest to the lowest, is quite 
 apparent without further comment. How difficult 
 it is to overcome, many a sporadic reform move- 
 ment, leading to no permanent result, has imhap- 
 pily illustrated. 
 
 More perilous to the country than either dema- 
 gogue or boss is the plutocrat. A man is not a 
 plutocrat because he is very rich. A plutocrat is 
 one who exercises political control by means of 
 his wealth, one who, having control of money, 
 uses that money to c6ntrol government for the 
 purpose of having government foster the interests 
 in which he himself is directly or indirectly con- 
 cerned. Sometimes the plutocrat sends his hench- 
 men to the election districts and buys the votes at 
 so much a head. Since the introduction of the 
 Australian ballot system this is difficult, for he 
 is not sure that the votes will be delivered as 
 promised. Sometimes he goes to the legislature 
 
308 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 and buys a few men directly. But the number of 
 legislators who are directly purchasable by money 
 is comparatively small, and is greatly exaggerated 
 by newspaper reports. Still, this form of corrup- 
 tion is not- uncommon, nor is it carried on upon 
 a small scale, nor does it shock the American con- 
 science as it ought to shock that conscience. Mr. 
 Clark was elected to the Senate of the United 
 States by his state. An official investigation took 
 place, and it was demonstrated that he expended 
 large sums in the purchase of legislators ; the sums 
 were known, the payments were demonstrated; he 
 was refused his seat by the Senate, went back to 
 his state, and his state has reelected him to the 
 Senate of the United States. More frequently 
 the plutocrat works by more indirect methods. He 
 gives, or sells at a low price, the stock of the cor- 
 poration in which he is interested to legislators on 
 whose vote the future value of the stock will de- 
 pend; he furnishes legislators, judges, newspaper 
 men, with passes over the railroad which desires 
 special favors ; he employs legislators or ex-legis- 
 lators at large salaries as attorneys to secure de- 
 sired legislation. In the case of the Pacific Eail- 
 road, so largely built out of government moneys 
 loaned to a private corporation, it is matter of 
 official report that stock was sold below market 
 rates to Congressmen whose votes might be of im- 
 portance in the future; that one United States 
 Commissioner was paid $25,000 in consideration 
 of signing a report accepting a section of the road; 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 309 
 
 and that nearly half a million dollars was paid to 
 a representative of the company for securing the 
 passage of an act which made the Government 
 lien a second mortgage. The extent to which in 
 past times the power of the plutocrat has been ex- 
 ercised in national polities is thus illustrated by 
 Mr. Hudson : — 
 
 The records of the House of Eepresentatives, how- 
 ever, furnish a terrible warning against the corporate 
 practice of gaining the support of members by pecuniary 
 influence. The most conspicuous instance is found in 
 that cemetery of pohtical reputations, the report on the 
 Credit Mobilier. The insidious approaches by which 
 agents of corporate schemes, unrestrained by any scru- 
 ples, gradually bind the people's representatives to their 
 interests, are manifold ; but this wholesale murder of 
 national characters t3rpifies them all. How many of the 
 Congressmen who were quietly and plausibly induced to 
 take shares in that great and successful public swindle 
 knew that they were becoming tools of corporate adven- 
 turers it is hard to teU. . . . The sahent fact is that 
 scores of most promising careers were cut short by 
 the discovery that they had been used by the Pacific 
 Railway speculators. Such corruption assumes a hun- 
 dred forms. Gifts, loans, investments, favors of infinite 
 variety, may be brought to surround a public man, until 
 aU his circumstances and prospects tie him to the cause 
 of the corporations. The knowledge of what has been 
 done, and especially the epitaphs on pohtical prospects 
 slaughtered by the Credit MobUier, must always show 
 what unscrupulous and irresponsible corporations can ef- 
 fect in corrupting the highest political instrumentalities.^ 
 1 Railways and the R^ublic, pp. 460. 
 
310 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 The fourth leader who adds to our perils I call 
 the "medicine-man." I will not call him "quack," 
 because this would involve too great obloquy; nor 
 "professional reformer," because this pays to him 
 too great deference. I call him medicine-man be- 
 cause he thinks there is one medicine which will 
 cure all the ills to which humanity is subject. 
 Sometimes he is the advocate of two remedies, 
 sometimes he vacillates between two. He is gen- 
 erally morally honest, but intellectually narrow; 
 he is not a hypocrite, but he is apt to be a Phari- 
 see, with a strong sense of "I am holier than thou " 
 pervading his dogmatic utterances. He imagines 
 that universal suffrage will cure all political evils ; 
 or free silver all commercial and financial evils; 
 or a single tax on land all industrial evils; or 
 woman suffrage or prohibition, or''the two com- 
 bined, ■ all moral evils. I do not here consider the 
 value of prohibition, or woman suffrage, or the 
 single tax on land, or free silver, or universal suf- 
 frage; but he who imagines that all evils are due 
 to one social or political cause, and can be cured 
 by one social or political reform, has studied hu- 
 man nature and human history to little purpose. 
 Unfortunately, there are many good men in Amer- 
 ica who cannot be influenced by the demagogue — 
 their moral sense resents his appeals to popular 
 prejudices; nor led by the boss — they are too 
 independent; nor purchased by the plutocrat — 
 they are too honest — who are swayed by the 
 medicine-man because he appeals to their con- 
 
THE PERILS OF DEMOCRACY 311 
 
 science; and their conscience is not very intelli- 
 gent. 
 
 These causes combine to produce certain very- 
 apparent tendencies in American life ; the tendency 
 to superficial reforms, accomplished by a spasm of 
 virtue and followed by the apathy of discouragement 
 and almost despair ; the tendency to substitute big- 
 ness for greatness and quantity for quality, to think 
 that much reading means much intelligence, and 
 the existence of pictures everywhere means univer- 
 sal taste ; the tendency in politics to think that if 
 in New York we can turn the Democratic party 
 out and put the Eepublican party in, and in Phil- 
 adelphia we can turn the Eepublican party out 
 and put the Democratic party in, we shall have 
 political reform ; the tendency in education to ac- 
 cept a superficial knowledge of many subjects for 
 a thorough acquaintance in one ; the tendency in 
 morals to imagine that the enactment of a right- 
 eous law makes a righteous community, that put- 
 ting prohibition in the Constitution makes the 
 State temperate, and putting God in the Constitu- 
 tion would make the nation devout; the tendency 
 in religion to substitute emotionalism or dogma- 
 tism for life, and to suppose that a church is sound 
 because it is orthodox and a man is religious be- 
 cause he has feeling. 
 
 Such are some of the perils which seem to me 
 to threaten America. The root of them all is the 
 lack of a central authority; the cure for all is in 
 finding that central authority. It will not be 
 
312 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 found in the central autliority of a Caesar; nor in 
 an aristocracy, hereditary or otherwise; nor in 
 a church, Papal or Protestant; nor in a Bible 
 accepted as the final word of God. It must be 
 found only in the recognition by every individual 
 soul of the voice of God speaking within each 
 man. I look forward sometimes with great exhil- 
 aration and sometimes with appalling fear on the 
 future. When the great problem on which we 
 have entered is brought to its close, what wiU the 
 result be? WiU it afford another demonstration 
 that a nation without God will inevitably go on to 
 ruin, whether it be oligarchic or aristocratic or 
 monarchic or democratic? Or will its splendid 
 future demonstrate that every man is akin to God, 
 that all men can find in him a common centre and 
 a common authority, and that government needs 
 no other basis than the authority which it finds in 
 the universal conscience uttering the voice of the 
 Almighty King? 
 
LECTUEE XI 
 
 SAFEGUAEDS 
 
 There is in literature no better definition of 
 democracy than that furnished by Abraham Lin- 
 coln : " Government of the people, for the people, 
 and by the people." It is government: not no- 
 govemment; not mere individualism; not anarchy; 
 and it has no kinship with anarchy. It is govern- 
 ment for the people, and for all the people ; it is 
 not for the benefit of any class — neither for an 
 aristocratic class nor for a democratic class ; it is 
 not, as all oligarchies have been, for the benefit of 
 the rich; nor as Aristotle feared it would be, for 
 the benefit of the poor. It assumes, therefore, 
 that government can be for all the people; that 
 what is for the interest of one is for the interest 
 of all, and what is an injury to one is an injury to 
 all. It thus assumes the community of humanity, 
 the oneness of their political well-being. The 
 mediaeval saints thought that they could benefit 
 their brains by starving their stomachs; they 
 found it a mistake. The body is one organism; 
 an injury to one part is an injury to every part. 
 Democracy assumes that society is an organism, 
 no part of which can be benefited and the rest not 
 
314 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 receive benefit, no part of which can be injured 
 and the rest not suffer injury. It is government 
 by the people. It finds the sources of political 
 power in the people. Whatever power is exer- 
 cised over the people by administrators is exercised 
 derivatively. It is not government in the ad- 
 ministration of which every member of the com- 
 munity partakes — only a minority really partake 
 in the administration; nor is it a government in 
 which every individual, or even every household, 
 much less every piece of property, is directly re- 
 presented by voice or vote. The doctrine "no 
 taxation without representation " does not mean in 
 democracy that wherever property is taxed there 
 must be a vote. Democracy is not a representa- 
 tion of pocketbooks, but of persons ; it is a repre- 
 sentation of the common judgment and the com- 
 mon conscience, not merely, nor even chiefly, of 
 the common pecuniary interest. But though it is 
 not necessarily government by every one, it is ne- 
 cessarily government in which every class is repre- 
 sented. All class government is antagonistic to 
 democracy. There may be property qualifications, 
 but if so they must be such qualifications that 
 economy, prudence, thrift, can meet them. There 
 may be educational qualifications, but if so they 
 must be such that industry and energy may meet 
 them. There can be no race qualification, there 
 can be no hereditary qualification, in a democracy; 
 democracy is government "by the people." 
 
 Such government "of the people, for the people, 
 
SAFEGUARDS 315 
 
 by the people " is a comparatively recent experi- 
 ment. There were Greek democracies and Eoman 
 democracies, but they were neither of them demo- 
 cracies in this sense. Democracy in this sense 
 did not exist in the Southern states until after the 
 Civil War. Democracy in this sense is not much 
 over a hundred years old in any part of the world. 
 It is an infant; it is experimental; we must 
 frankly recognize it as an experiment. 
 
 Is it likely to be a successful experiment? I 
 wish to put before you to-night some reasons why 
 I think we have a right to believe it will be a suc- 
 cessful experiment, why we have a. right to believe 
 that it is permanent. 
 
 In the first place, it is, as we have seen, the out- 
 come of a long historical process ; the result of the 
 political evolution of eighteen centuries; and the 
 result not only of an evolution, but of a conflict 
 carried on through eighteen centuries between 
 Boman imperialism, where the government was 
 for the few and by the few, and Hebraic liberty, 
 where the government was for the many and in 
 large measure by the many. This controversy of 
 eighteen centuries has developed that democratic 
 spirit and produced those democratic forms of 
 government which exist with modifications in all 
 western Europe, and which have reached their most 
 perfect form in the United States of America. A 
 great river rising among the mountains and flowing 
 steadily in one direction with increasing current 
 is not likely to turn upon its course and flow back 
 
316 THE EIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 again to the fountain from which it issued. A 
 great stream of tendency which can be traced with 
 widening and deepening current through eighteen 
 centuries may be assumed to be not one liable 
 suddenly to return upon its course, or to perish 
 from sight leaving no result. He who believes 
 that God is carrying on a work in the world, that 
 he is directing the course of human history, that 
 he is working out the ultimate result in human 
 society, may well believe that this great historic 
 movement is not a useless nor an unmeaning one; 
 may well believe that the ultimate result will be, 
 not necessarily our form of government, but neces- 
 sarily the victory of those principles of government 
 which were germinant in the ancient Hebraic com- 
 monwealth, and of which America furnishes to-day 
 the best existing embodiment. 
 
 Those principles are not embodied alone in 
 government. Democracy is more than a form of 
 government. England is democratic, but her form 
 of government is different from ours; France also 
 is democratic, but her form of government is dif- 
 ferent both from ours and from that of England. 
 Democracy is an order of society; it is a spiritual 
 organism. It means, as we have seen, not merely 
 government "of the people, for the people, by the 
 people; " it also means industry and education and 
 religion "of the people, for the people, by the 
 people." It means a recognition of the truth that 
 wealth is in some true sense a common wealth ; it 
 means, therefore, a larger distribution of wealth 
 
. SAFEGUARDS 317 
 
 and a more popular control over wealth. It is 
 hostile to any state of society in which the many 
 labor that the few may be idle. It involves indus- 
 try of brain or of muscle by all men, and it in- 
 volves fair recompense for toil to all men. Indus- 
 trial democracy is not yet, indeed, established. 
 In the realm of industry the controversy between 
 imperialism and the principles of the Hebraic 
 commonwealth has yet to be wrought out, and 
 perhaps so wrought out upon this soil. But even 
 here in America, where the industrial democracy 
 is not yet achieved, there is a larger distribution 
 of wealth and of material happiness, and a greater 
 necessity for universal labor, and a greater recog- 
 nition of that necessity, than ever existed in the 
 past, or than exists in any other quarter of the 
 globe, Australia alone excepted. 
 
 Democracy is also education for the people and. 
 by the people ; not merely nor mainly for an intel- 
 lectual class ; education, therefore, in those things 
 which all the people need; and education directed 
 and controlled by the people. Occasionally in 
 America we find protests uttered against universal 
 education; occasionally sporadic efforts in the 
 South to lessen education for the negroes; occa- 
 sionally some man saying in the North that we 
 have carried our common-school system too far, 
 and are educating too many, or are giving them 
 too large an education. But these protests pass 
 by as idle wind which people heed not. On the 
 whole, the great educational movement goes for- 
 
318 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ward, and the whole tendency of the last fifty 
 years has been to widen our educational system 
 both in its curriculum and in its constituency. 
 This has been done not only by public state dona- 
 tions, but by private benefactions, until we have 
 built up, not only the largest and best public- 
 school system of the world, but also, and in an in- 
 credibly short time, universities whose doors are 
 open to men of all classes and all conditions. 
 
 Democracy is also religion for the people, and 
 in all its institutional forms administered and con- 
 trolled by the people ; that is, religion not for an 
 elect, not for a few special white-robed saints, not 
 for a few specially endowed visionaries, not for 
 those who are able to shut themselves out from 
 life in convents or monasteries. We believe, or 
 are rapidly coming to believe, that religion is of 
 sjich a character that it can enter into the shop 
 and the store, into the parlor and the school-room, 
 into all the common life. of the common people. 
 It is not life set apart from common vocations for 
 special places and special days; it is right living. 
 We are also coming to believe that, as religion is 
 for all the people, so it is to be administered by all 
 the people; that the creeds are not to be framed 
 for them by the saints or scholars of the past, nor 
 by the saints or scholars of the present, but that 
 the people are to do their own thinking, and work 
 out their own results, and formulate those results for 
 themselves; that as their creeds are to be framed 
 by the people, so their religious institutions, 
 
SAFEGUARDS 319 
 
 whether ecclesiastical or non-ecclesiastical, how- 
 ever administered, are to be, in the last analysis, 
 controlled and supported by the people ; the priests 
 and the pastors are the servants of the people, not 
 their masters. 
 
 This broader democracy is triumphant in Amer- 
 ica; still, perhaps, to win its final victory in in- 
 dustry, but having won it in the realm of politics, 
 of education, and of religion. Democracy per- 
 vades society as well as government, and a revo- 
 lution that would change the government must 
 change the religious spirit, the educational spirit, 
 and the industrial spirit as well as the political 
 forms. A political organism, simply, may be 
 easily changed; but the life of a nation is not 
 easily changed, and the life of the American peo- 
 ple, not merely the form of the nation, is demo- 
 cratic. A pyramid resting on its top must be 
 perpetually propped; a pyramid resting on its 
 base cannot easily be overthrown. The democracy 
 of America rests on its base: it is a democracy 
 not merely of politics ; it is a democracy religious, 
 educational, social, industrial. 
 
 Moreover, this democracy, thus political, indus- 
 trial, educational, social, and religious, has brought 
 with it a great degree of diffused happiness. 
 There is certainly no people on the globe, except, 
 perhaps, the equally democratic communities of 
 Australia and New Zealand, where happiness is 
 so general as in America; where there are so 
 many happy homes ; where there is so little misery. 
 
320 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 As we have already seen, nearly one half of the 
 families of the United States own the real estate 
 they occupy, and a very large proportion of the 
 remainder have property in money or bonds or 
 stocks, or hope to have money in property of some 
 sort or other which presently they can put into 
 real estate. With very rare exceptions these men, 
 whether they own or hope to own property, are by 
 the possession or by the hope made conservative; 
 they desire to keep what they have, they fear to 
 lose what they anticipate. Radicalism, therefore, 
 in the United States gets little support from the 
 common people. The socialism which multiplies its 
 adherents in Germany has few adherents in Amer- 
 ica, and is a losing rather than a gaining cause. 
 When appeals are made — as sometimes they are — 
 to class feeling, they fall either on deaf ears or more 
 likely on ears that are very alert, rousing the will 
 and stimulating the purpose to put at once an end 
 to every such dangerous and inflammable endeavor. 
 The American people are conservative, because 
 the great body of the American people have every- 
 thing to lose and nothing to gain by any promised 
 revolution. They are careless; they allow spo- 
 radic mobs; they shrug their shoulders at the re- 
 port of such mobs, believing that the disease will 
 cure itself, that the flame will burn itself out. 
 But whenever the mob shows signs of strength 
 such as really threatens the well-being of the com- 
 munity, the nation is alert and its action is quick, 
 vigorous, determined, and effective. 
 
SAFEGUARDS 321 
 
 This democracy which has thus changed not 
 merely the form of government, but which has 
 changed the nature of education and even the 
 offices and aims of religion, has also made great 
 changes in the individual character. Something 
 of the American character is due to climate ; some- 
 thing to Anglo-Saxon blood; but a great deal is 
 due to American — that is, democratic — institu- 
 tions. For democracy not only tends to produce 
 the conservative spirit by its distribution of wealth 
 and of happiness, it also tends to produce the 
 hopeful spirit by the eager expectation which it 
 inspires in all men. Nearly every man in America 
 expects to be better off to-morrow than he was 
 yesterday, or, if he does not expect this for him- 
 self, he anticipates it for his child. He looks 
 toward a better future for himself or for those who 
 are dependent on him. Thus the prevailing spirit 
 of the American people is one of energy, of enter- 
 prise, of hopefulness, even of audacity. And this 
 spirit of energy, of enterprise, of hopefulness, and 
 of audacity pervades all classes. If one will take 
 the trouble to visit the slums of London and inves- 
 tigate a little by personal observation the charac- 
 ter of those who live in the slums of London, and 
 then will visit the slums of New York and investi- 
 gate a little by personal observation the character 
 of the people who live in the slums of New York, 
 he will come away from his comparative study 
 having perceived that while the people in New 
 York are perhaps not better housed than in Lon- 
 
322 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 don, nor the filth less, nor the drunkenness less, 
 nor the licentiousness less, and the government 
 is in some respects inferior, in London the men 
 have come down from better conditions into more 
 degraded ones; they are on the down grade, and 
 are without hope for themselves or their children ; 
 in New York they have come up out of worse con- 
 ditions into better ones ; they are on the up grade, 
 and are full of hope for themselves and for their 
 children. Whether in the Chinese quarter, or 
 the Italian quarter, or the Hungarian quarter, or 
 the Kussian Jew quarter, the inspiration of hope 
 is in the hearts of these people even in the slums. 
 And when we get out of the great cities into the 
 manufacturing towns, or into the great prairies of 
 the West, the faces are set toward the future and 
 the eyes are bright with expectation of coming 
 prosperity. 
 
 Paul's statement, We are saved by hope, is as 
 true for society as for the individual. It is despair 
 that is the inspiration of revolution. When men 
 can see nothing better for themselves, and nothing 
 better for their children, in present conditions, 
 they are ready to take up arms to change the con- 
 ditions; when the conditions themselves inspire 
 hope of betterment for themselves, for their neigh- 
 bors, and for their children, they are ready to take 
 up arms against any man who proposes to destroy 
 those conditions on the chance that he can create 
 better ones. Democracy is more than a form of 
 government, it is more even than a social order, 
 
SAFEGUAKDS 323 
 
 it is a spirit; a spirit, first of all, of hopefulness, 
 of resultant energy and activity, and therefore of 
 self-respect. What Christianity said to the freed- 
 men and the slaves in the first century, democracy 
 has said to the poor in Europe: You are men. 
 On this affirmation of their manhood it has based 
 the invitation, Come to America and you will find 
 a chance to develop your manhood. Coming to 
 America, they have found aU industries open to 
 them, the school-room open to their children, and 
 presently the ballot put into their hand. What- 
 ever evil may have come from excess of immigra- 
 tion, whatever evil may have come from a too 
 widely extended ballot, there has grown out of it 
 the development of self-respect in the men who 
 have been thus treated on a plane of industrial 
 and political equality. 
 
 It is this tendency of democracy in America to 
 appeal to the self-respect of men which develops 
 in America its self-conceit ; and it is probably 
 true that we are the most self-conceited people on 
 the face of the globe. But self-conceit is the de- 
 fect of our virtue, and self-esteem is a very neces- 
 sary virtue. It is true that self-esteem, unmodi- 
 fied, tends to isolate each man from his neighbor. 
 But democracy develops mutual esteem, as well as 
 self-esteem; it develops in man the tendency to 
 respect the opinion of his fellow man; for it makes 
 his fellow man his equal. Thus two men laboring 
 together in the factory to-day do not know who 
 may be to-morrow a foreman, or ten years from 
 
324 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 now the capitalist in control of the factory. In- 
 dustry, education, social life, religion, as they ex- 
 ist in America, tend to make us have respect one 
 for another. 
 
 Out of this grows public opinion, and a great 
 respect for public opinion ; sometimes a too great 
 respect for public opinion ; sometimes a belief in 
 what Mr. Bryce has called "the infallibility of 
 the majority," a belief that our fellow men when 
 going together cannot go wrong. But this again 
 is the defect of our virtue. Our virtue is a com- 
 mon life in which we are bound together, not 
 merely by a ballot-box, a representative system, a 
 form of government, but by the facts that we have 
 been educated together in the same school, that 
 we labor together without recognized class distinc- 
 tions in the same industries. No man knows who 
 will rise to a higher stage in the hierarchy of in- 
 dustry; ev6ry other man's opinion counts or may 
 count for as much as our own ; in order to get the 
 other's opinion to weigh upon our side in politics, 
 we must argue with him as a reasonable man, we 
 must treat him as though he were guided by intel- 
 lectual and moral principles. Thus democracy is 
 not only in theory a brotherhood, but it tends to 
 produce a true brotherhood, by creating that spirit 
 of self-esteem which is one of the foundations of 
 personal character, and that spirit of mutual es- 
 teem which is one of the foundations of organized 
 society. 
 
 These tendencies enter into other than our for- 
 
SAFEGUARDS 325 
 
 mally organized institutions — they enter into our 
 homes. In Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" the 
 pilgrim is taken into the Interpreter's house and 
 shown a fire burning in the grate. Beelzebub is 
 throwing water upon the fire, and the more water 
 he throws upon the fire the higher leap up the 
 flames. The pilgrim cannot understand this phe- 
 nomenon until the Interpreter takes him to the 
 other side of the partition, where he sees an angel 
 feeding the flames with oil, before unobserved. In 
 our homes the flames of patriotism, of purity, of 
 the higher life, are being secretly fed. Our homes 
 are not aU they ought to be, but, nevertheless, 
 there are comparatively speaking few homes in 
 America in which, on the whole, the influence is 
 not for the higher and the better living. For 
 this reason a great many fathers who never go to 
 church are very desirous that their children should 
 go to Sunday-school. For this reason a great 
 many men and women who are iU educated them- 
 selves are determined that their children shall go 
 to the public school. 
 
 Some years ago there was a man in New York 
 who had the newspaper reputation of being the 
 wickedest man in the city. He became a news- 
 paper sensation, and, with some companions, I 
 went down in my .college days to make him a call. 
 We were cordially welcomed, and had an inter- 
 view. He had two sons. One of them, he told 
 us, "is not very bright, but he is a good boy, and 
 I have sent him up to his grandfather's to study. 
 
326 THE RIGHTS OP MAN 
 
 and lie 's going to be a minister. The other is as 
 smart as a steel trap." He stood this other boy 
 on the table before us to give us a declamation. 
 "He's going into politics," he said. I asked, 
 "Where wiU he get his education? Here?" 
 "Oh, no; just as soon as he is old enough I shall 
 send him away from this place to a boarding- 
 school." What became of the boys I do not 
 know; whether the education the father planned 
 for them made of one of them a minister and the 
 other a United States Senator I- cannot tell; but 
 this I know, that the father, who kept one of the 
 lowest and worst dens in the city of New York, 
 desired a higher and better life for his boys than 
 he had himseK. 
 
 While thus our homes are feeding more or less 
 effectively the higher life in the community, our 
 great educational systems are doing much in the 
 same direction. I have already in this course of 
 lectures criticised our public-school system as in- 
 adequate, especially in the one direction of moral 
 culture. But in spite of this defect, which we are 
 gradually learning to be a defect, our public-school 
 system is not only an intellectual, it is also a moral 
 educator. Let any man to-morrow morning walk 
 down one of the streets of any of our great cities in 
 the vicinity of one of its public schools, let him see 
 the children hastening to school, not with the lag- 
 gard steps which Shakespeare attributed to school- 
 children, but with eager and glad faces; or let 
 him, later in the day, watch those same children 
 
SAFEGUARDS 327 
 
 as they come out from school, and see them carry- 
 ing their too heavy load of books home for study, 
 — or pretended study, — and then let him try to 
 estimate the value of this education as it is carried 
 on in town and country in every state in the 
 Union. With all its deficiencies and with aU its 
 defects and errors, I know not how any American 
 can look on that sight and doubt that from this 
 public-school system is going forth an influence to 
 make worthy citizens of America. Had I the elo- 
 quence of an orator, I would like to stop here to 
 pay the tribute that is due to the great army of 
 teachers who are pursuing their work, often with 
 little salary, often in inconvenient quarters, often 
 with inadequate equipment, often with what is 
 worst of all, suppression of their energies and their 
 activities by the great machine of which they are 
 a part and which does not give them the liberty 
 they ought to have. I would like to stop and pay 
 a tribute to this uncanonized sainthood of Amer- 
 ica; if they have not the cross worn on the bosom, 
 they deserve the crown given by the people. 
 
 Another influence making for the better life of 
 America, and for its permanence, is that proceed- 
 ing from our literature — and from our cheap 
 literature. Many years ago, when the phrase 
 "dime novel" was a stigma, Mr. Fletcher Harper, 
 of the firm of Harper & Brothers, said to me: "I 
 may not live to see the day, but you wiU, when 
 the best English classics will be sold in America 
 for a dime." I have lived to see it! No man in 
 
328 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 America to-day need be without a library worth 
 the reading. The library may be poorly bound 
 and ill printed, but it will contain the noblest 
 thoughts of the noblest thinkers. There are few 
 so poor that they cannot have within their own 
 home a better collection of literature than our 
 grandfathers of very considerable means were able 
 to possess. This tendency toward a higher type 
 of literature seems to me, from all I can learn 
 from inquiry, to be widespread and substantially 
 universal. A few years ago I was in conversation 
 with Mr. Poole, whom many will know as the 
 editor of "Poole's Index," and who was the libra- 
 rian of the great Chicago Library. Mr. Poole 
 said to me substantially, "It is the common thing 
 for shop-girls to come into this library to get 
 books, and begin with Miss Southworth, and then 
 follow successively with E. P. Eoe, Walter Scott, 
 Charles Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and 
 then some of the best histories and some of the 
 best essays." I fell into conversation a year or 
 two ago with a gentleman traveling on a train, 
 who introduced himself to me as a representative 
 of the American News Company. He said that 
 ten or fifteen years ago he was chiefly selling 
 through the country a cheap, poor literature ; to-day 
 he found the greatest demand to be for the highest 
 and the best. It is a question what is the ultimate 
 effect of what we call sensational literature. 
 That it sometimes degenerates and deteriorates 
 the mind, I do not doubt; but, on the whole, I 
 
SAFEGUARDS 329 
 
 believe that even the sensational literature teaches 
 people to read; and when they have learned to 
 read, they generally learn to read what is better, 
 though very gradually. 
 
 Next to literature as an educative influence in 
 America is the press. It is as customary for min- 
 isters and platform orators to jeer at newspapers 
 as it is for newspapers to jeer at ministers and 
 platform orators; but despite many and serious 
 defects in the American press, it renders us one 
 great service — it holds the mirror up to American 
 life, and shows us what that life is. It does not 
 always show it in right proportions. The mirror 
 is not always a well-formed mirror ; it is sometimes 
 like one of those convex or concave mirrors that 
 stand in the agricultural fairs — that present your 
 face so out of proportion that you do not recognize 
 yourself when you look in it. Nevertheless the 
 press does bring American people to self -conscious- 
 ness. If we do not like the records of vice and 
 crime, of ignorance and poverty, which we read in 
 our newspapers, let us change the life. If, when 
 we look in the looking-glass, the face is dirty, it 
 is the face we need to wash, not the looking-glass. 
 The American press, though defective in leader- 
 ship, though it appeals too much to the sensa- 
 tional, though it lacks in seriousness, sobriety, ear- 
 nestness, conscience, — qualities which it ought to 
 possess and which I trust it will yet possess in the 
 future, — does one great educative work : it brings 
 the whole history of yesterday before us. I am 
 
330 THE BIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 glad that it brings the history of the bad as well 
 as of the good. We do not want in America a 
 press which only portrays our virtues and forgets 
 our vices. An index expurgatorius administered 
 by one carefully selected tribunal is a very doubt- 
 ful advantage to the intellectual and moral well- 
 being of the world; an index expurgatorius ad- 
 ministered in every newspaper office through the 
 country, shutting off what the editor thinks we 
 ought not to read, and allowing us only to know 
 what he thinks we ought to read, would be a very 
 poorly censored press indeed. Let us have from 
 the press the truth, the whole truth, and — also — 
 nothing but the truth. 
 
 It is a question much debated whether our poli- 
 tics are not deteriorating; perhaps you may sus- 
 pect me of being an optimist when I say that I 
 think, on the whole, the American elections are a 
 great preservative of American life. 
 
 In the first place, our general suffrage, with all 
 the perils it has brought, furnishes a safety-valve, 
 and a very valuable and important safety-valve. 
 Ignorant voting, it is said, is a peril to the com- 
 munity; so it is; but it is a fair question whether 
 a great ignorant population that cannot vote is not 
 quite as great a peril to the community. The 
 peril is primarily in the ignorance, only secondarily 
 in the voting. The Revolution of France was due 
 to the fact that the great under-population of 
 France had no remedy in their hands but the rem- 
 edy of a violent revolution. England came near 
 
SAFEGUARDS 331 
 
 to a similar revolution in the great Chartist move- 
 ment, and escaped it by extending the suffrage. 
 When a man has the ballot, he will not resort to 
 the bullet. The anarchists in Chicago are wise 
 in their day and generation in urging their fol- 
 lowers not to vote, and in insisting to them that 
 voting does them no good. The fact that a dis- 
 contented minority can express its will at the 
 polls is itself a protection against the discontented 
 minority. Americans generally are willing to let 
 the majority rule, so long as the minority have an 
 opportunity for free discussion and the free ex- 
 pression of their conviction. 
 
 These elections not only furnish a safety-valve, 
 they also furnish a great education. What we 
 call a "campaign" is really a great debate. The 
 whole American people gather together to dis- 
 cuss questions which in an undemocratic commu- 
 nity would be left to be settled by a few experts. 
 The result of this discussion is the development of 
 intelligence and of character. If a man has but 
 little judgment, the way to give him more is to 
 bid him exercise what little he has; and this is 
 what we do in every political campaign. Four or 
 five years ago throughout the West night-schools 
 were organized by the two political parties for the 
 discussion of the financial problem; and out of 
 these night-schools grew an understanding of cur- 
 rency questions such as never* before had existed 
 in America. Every great election is an edu- 
 cation; we go to school every four years in the 
 
332 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 nation, every two years in the state. Perhaps it 
 would be as well if the school terms were shorter 
 and did not come so often; nevertheless, though 
 inconvenient, they are great educators. 
 
 Moreover, in these elections a comparatively 
 small number of conservative men hold the balance 
 of power. Even when an election is carried by 
 an apparently overwhelming majority, the major- 
 ity is rarely more than five per cent. This five 
 per cent, of voters which may turn the scale one 
 way or the other is always, in the last analysis, 
 made up of men who hesitate between the two 
 parties; they determine the election, and because 
 they determine the election, their judgment and 
 that of those whom they represent must be taken 
 account of by those who are carrying on the gov- 
 ernment. If in the last election Mr. Bryan had 
 been elected, he would have had to take account 
 of those gold Democrats who voted for him in 
 spite of his free-silver policy, and of those Ameri- 
 cans who voted for him with the belief that we 
 cannot leave the Philippines until liberty, justice, 
 and order are established there. Similarly Mr. 
 McKinley must pay regard to those who voted for 
 him because they could not accept the free-silver 
 policy of Mr. Bryan, and are yet opposed to the 
 commercial spirit in government, or because they 
 were not willing to leave the Philippines to them- 
 selves, though they are intensely hostile to the es- 
 tablishment of an imperialistic or quasi-imperial- 
 istic government either at home or abroad. The 
 
SAFEGUARDS 333 
 
 people are never as radical as their radical leaders; 
 the voters never go as far as the men who speak 
 on the stump to get the applause of the citizens 
 who listen. In all great engines there is what is 
 called the "governor " — two revolving balls which, 
 rising and falling, regulate the pressure of steam 
 and so the speed of the engine. This five per 
 cent, of voters is the automatic governor in our 
 elections which prevents us from running into one 
 extreme or another in our public life. 
 
 Our churches are another great factor in the 
 safeguarding of democratic institutions. Whether 
 they possess the power or the influence which they 
 once possessed is a question not necessary here to 
 discuss, but I believe they possess a greater power 
 in democratic America than they do in any coun- 
 try where they are patronized and supported by 
 the state. The power of the minister who speaks 
 Sunday after Sunday to congregations gathered 
 there, and who can speak on the great moral 
 themes that concern the nation without being 
 either Democratic or Republican, Populist or Pro- 
 hibitionist, can, if he will, so speak as to send 
 men back to the polls with a higher conscience, a 
 greater regard for purity, a greater purpose to 
 serve their country well. The influence of all the 
 clergy of the country in this direction is one not 
 easy to overestimate. Nor does the Christian re- 
 ligion express itself only through churches and 
 ministers. If indeed the church is losing its 
 power, it may be only that the Christian religion 
 
334 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 may gain in its power. If the alabaster box is 
 being broken only that the odor of the ointment 
 may break out and fill the whole house, we can 
 look on the result without regret. Certain it is 
 that the moral and religious influences which a 
 hundred years ago went almost exclusively from 
 ministers and through churches are now diffused 
 through newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and 
 personal gatherings to an extent never before 
 known. 
 
 All these influences are tending to make out 
 of heterogeneous materials a homogeneous people, 
 filled with a passionate patriotism. There is no 
 people that love their country more than the Amer- 
 ican people, and in America no people that love 
 their country more than the foreign immigrants 
 who have come here seeking for the broader op- 
 portunity and the higher life. These men, who 
 have broken away from old associations and old 
 traditions, who have sacrificed sentiment and en- 
 dured poverty and privation that they might come 
 to an America that would treat them like men, 
 give them the education of men, give them the 
 opportunities of men in industry, give them the 
 liberty of men in the church, and give them a 
 share with other men in the control and direction 
 of the destinies of their nation — these German 
 immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, 
 Hungarian immigrants, love America. Nor have 
 we thus far found it difficult — nor shall we in the 
 future — to bring them into harmony with that 
 
SAFEGUARDS 335 
 
 great brotherhood which is the essential spirit of 
 American institutions. 
 
 Democracy is not merely a political theory, it is 
 not merely a social opinion; it is also a profound 
 religious faith. May I phrase it as it exists in 
 my own experience? I believe in man because I 
 believe in God ; I believe in God because I believe 
 in man. I believe in humanity because I see God 
 in all men; I believe in God because in all hu- 
 manity I see something of his illumination, some 
 reflection of his image, some sign of his sonship, 
 some promise of his revelation. This one fun- 
 damental faith in the Fatherhood of God and in 
 the universal brotherhood of man, which is the 
 essence of democracy, is more important as the 
 basis of democracy than past history, more im- 
 portant than political or industrial or educational 
 or religious institutions, more important than the 
 influence of the individual, more important than 
 home or church or state or popular elections. 
 
 What this faith involves and what it anticipates 
 as the ultimate goal of democracy will be the sub- 
 ject of the next and closing lecture in this series. 
 
LECTUKE XII 
 
 THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Democracy, as it has been defined in these 
 lectures is Social Christianity, that is, it is the 
 product which results or will eventually result 
 from applying to society the precepts and princi- 
 ples inculcated by Jesus Christ. Therefore in the 
 teachings of Jesus Christ are we to look for the 
 goal of democracy. 
 
 Jesus Christ began his ministry by declaring 
 that the Kingdom of God, initiated by Moses and 
 foretold in its consummation by the prophets, was 
 at hand. He gathered a few disciples about him 
 to help him while he lived, and to carry on his 
 work of revival and reconstruction after his death. 
 He made clear to them what this work was, by his 
 constant use of the phrase "kingdom of God," or 
 "kingdom of heaven," and by the petition which 
 he taught to his followers, "Thy Kingdom come, 
 thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." He 
 came not primarily to prepare men for a kingdom 
 in heaven, but to inspire them with the spirit of 
 heaven on the earth. To borrow a figure from 
 the one disciple, who of those who companioned 
 Christ on earth understood him best, the Kingdom 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 337 
 
 of God is like a city which descends out of heaven, 
 but to abide on the earth as the dwelling-place 
 alike for God and for men, that God may be with 
 men. That the object of Christ's coming was not 
 to enable a few men to escape from a lost world, 
 as Bunyan's Christian escaped from the City of 
 Destruction, but the creation of a new earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness, is evident from 
 even a casual study of Christ's teachings. 
 
 There are five great discourses of Jesus Christ, 
 which correlated with one another make clear the 
 generic purpose of his ministry. The first of 
 these discourses is his sermon at Nazareth, the 
 first public sermon of which we have any record. 
 He stood up in the synagogue, it is said, and read 
 from the prophet Isaiah the prophecy : " The spirit 
 of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath 
 anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; 
 he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to 
 preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery 
 of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
 are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the 
 Lord." "This day," he said, "is this scripture 
 fulfilled in your ears." This is something to be 
 fulfilled on the earth. It is on the earth that the 
 poor are to hear glad tidings, and the broken- 
 hearted are to be healed, and the captives are to 
 be delivered, and the blind are to be given their 
 sight, and the bruised are to be set at liberty. 
 This is an earthly deliverance in that it is to be 
 accomplished on the earth; a divine deliverance in 
 
338 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 that it IS to be accomplished by the spirit of Jeho- 
 vah in Jesus Christ and his followers. 
 
 Jesus Christ's second great sermon begins where 
 the first ends. The first prophesies the diffusion of 
 happiness, the second explains the secret of happi- 
 ness : " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; the meek ; 
 they which hunger and thirst after righteousness; 
 the merciful; the pure in heart; the peace-makers. 
 Happiness — ^this is Christ's second fundamental 
 principle — depends upon what we are, not upon 
 where we are; upon character, not upon posses- 
 sions. This is the theme of Christ's second great 
 sermon, and this principle is clearly as applicable 
 to the terrestrial as to the celestial sphere. Meek- 
 ness, mercifulness, purity, peaceableness are divine 
 virtues in that their spring and source are divine; 
 celestial virtues, in that we must believe that the 
 happiness of heaven depends upon their existence 
 and manifestation there ; but they are earthly vir- 
 tues in that they are to be exercised on the earth. 
 They are the bonds which bind together scattered 
 humanity in a divine social order; they are the 
 life blood which animates it and makes it a living 
 organism. 
 
 Jesus Christ's third great sermon is contained 
 in the parables by the seashore. In this sermon, 
 or this series of sermons, Christ makes it clear 
 to his disciples that the Kingdom of God which he 
 has come to establish on the earth cannot be made 
 instantaneously by a miracle ; indeed it cannot be 
 made at all ; it must grow, and growth takes time. 
 
THE GOAL, OF DEMOCKACT 339 
 
 It is like a seed growing secretly, no one knows 
 how; it is like a seed sown in aU soils, friendly 
 and unfriendly, and its fruitfulness depends upon 
 the soil ; it is like a seed sown in a field where an 
 enemy has sown tares, and grows up side by side 
 with that which is not a part of the Kingdom of 
 God ; it is like leaven hidden in three measures of 
 meal, which by agitation and ferment it will in 
 time pervade and radically change. These para- 
 bles all illustrate an earthly growth, under earthly 
 conditions, despite earthly opposition, and pro- 
 ducing earthly results. The seed is divine; the 
 growth process is divine ; but the result is earthly, 
 that is, it is a result wrought out upon the earth. 
 
 Christ's fourth great sermon is that on the 
 Bread of Life, preached in the synagogue at 
 Capernaum. This sermon is all summed up in 
 the words: "I am the living bread that came 
 down from heaven. ... As the living Father 
 hath sent me and I live by the Father; so he that 
 eateth me, even he shall live by me." Here is 
 the same truth: a kingdom of heaven on the 
 earth; a will of God done on the earth. The 
 bread comes from heaven, but it comes down to 
 the earth, and is eaten on the earth, and they that 
 eat live by it on the earth. Christ who lives by 
 the Father lives on the earth; the disciples who 
 live by Christ live on the earth; the kingdom 
 nurtured by and dependent on the divine life is a 
 kingdom on the earth. 
 
 In his fifth great sermon Christ makes clear 
 
340 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the nature of this kingdom which he came to 
 establish, this new social order which he came 
 to organize. "Be not ye called Kabbi," he says 
 to his followers, "for one is your Master, even 
 Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no 
 man your father upon the earth, for one is your 
 Father which is in heaven. Neither be ye called 
 Master: for one is your Master, even Christ. 
 But he that is greatest among you shall be your 
 servant." The kingdom of God which Christ has 
 come to establish on the earth is a human brother- 
 hood, founded on and inspired by faith in one 
 Father, over all and in all, and in one Christ, 
 Master of all and Saviour of all. 
 
 This brotherhood which Jesus Christ came to 
 establish on the earth is not theological or eccle- 
 siastical; that is, it is not a brotherhood founded 
 on a common opinion in the realm of religious 
 thought. There is such a brotherhood. Men of 
 like intellectual tastes and opinions naturally affili- 
 ate with each other: the artist with his brother 
 artist, the lawyer with his brother lawyer, the 
 doctor with his brother practitioner. And the 
 deeper the convictions and the more they enter 
 into the spiritual nature, the closer will be the fel- 
 lowship. But this is not the brotherhood which 
 Jesus Christ has come to establish. It is not 
 based on, it does not spring from, a common 
 creed. A Roman centurion came to Jesus pray- 
 ing for the healing of his daughter ; and the Jew- 
 ish elders commended him as worthy because he 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 341 
 
 had built a synagogue for them. But Christ found 
 in the centurion something better than ecclesiastical 
 kinship: "I have not found," he said, "so great 
 faith, no not in Israel." He once told a story of 
 a heretical Samaritan who helped a robbed and 
 wounded traveler, and so told it as to extort even 
 from Jewish listeners the confession that he was 
 more truly neighbor to the man who fell among 
 thieves than were the orthodox priest and levite 
 who passed him by. To Jesus Christ the bond of 
 a common humanity was far more than the ecclesi- 
 astical or theological bond. 
 
 The brotherhood which Jesus Christ came to 
 establish is not founded on social affinity. It.is 
 not a brotherhood of congenial spirits. This also 
 is a real brotherhood. We like, and we have a 
 right to like, those who share our tastes, who be- 
 long to our circle, whose life harmonizes in its in- 
 tellectual activities and its social forms with ours. 
 But this was not the brotherhood Jesus Christ 
 emphasized. Society was in his time and country 
 divided into social cliques and castes far more 
 sharply than it is in ours. These lines Jesus 
 Christ habitually disregarded. He might have 
 preached to the lower circles and no one would 
 have criticised him. But he treated the publicans 
 and sinners as brethren; he made social compan- 
 ions of men and women who did not share the 
 political views of the aristocracy, nor possess the 
 social customs of the aristocracy, nor even con- 
 form to the ethical standards of the aristocracy. 
 
342 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 This was an unpardonable offense in the eyes of 
 the best society of his time. The brotherhood he 
 came to establish included men of all social circles 
 as it included men of all religious beliefs. 
 
 This brotherhood which Jesus Christ came to 
 establish on the earth is not limited by any con- 
 siderations of race. Blood is said to be thicker 
 than water. The American meeting abroad an 
 American recognizes in him a kinsman ; and in a 
 more catholic spirit, the American recognizes in 
 the Anglo-Saxon in England, as the Englishman 
 in the Anglo-Saxon in America, what Mr. Glad- 
 stone has well called " Kin across the sea." But 
 brotherhood as interpreted by Christ includes men 
 of all races. The race prejudices of his time were 
 far greater than they are in ours. Christ never 
 denied'that there are race differences and race in- 
 equalities. He declared to the woman of Samaria 
 that salvation is of the Jews, and that they knew 
 whom they worshiped, while the Samaritans did 
 not. He told his disciples that he was not sent 
 except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 
 He directed them to begin their missionary work 
 among their own people, and to them he himself 
 confined his own ministry. But he also declared 
 in explicit terms that the men and women of other 
 races were his brethren. The prejudice that set 
 them apart by themselves, as uncared for by God 
 and incapable of manhood, he condemned. In his 
 first recorded sermon, he told the amazed and 
 angry congregation that God cared for the Samari- 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 343 
 
 tan and the Syro-Phoenician,- and proved it from 
 their own history, and they mobbed him for his 
 audacity. 
 
 The brotherhood which Jesus Christ came to es- 
 tablish was founded neither on consanguinity, nor 
 race, nor congeniality in character, nor agreement 
 in opinion : it was founded on the one simple and 
 fundamental fact that God is the God and Father 
 of the whole human race, the Father of whom, as 
 Paul says, every fatherhood in heaven and in earth 
 is named. Because all men can call God Father, 
 because to all men Christ is a Deliverer, whether 
 they are Caucasian, Indian, Chinaman, or Afri- 
 can, whether wise or foolish, cultivated or unculti- 
 vated, good or bad, therefore all men are brethren ; 
 they are brethren because one is their Father 
 which is in heaven. To deny the Fatherhood of 
 God, as the socialist has sometimes done, is to 
 deny the only basis on which the brotherhood of 
 men can rest, and to disintegrate society into an- 
 tagonistic races, antagonistic nations, antagonistic 
 classes iu the same nation. To deny the brother- 
 hood of man, as ecclesiasticism has sometimes 
 done, is to deny the Fatherhood of God, and to 
 relegate humanity to a class, a national, a tribal 
 or a race religion, or to none at all. 
 
 The primitive church began in the faith that 
 the risen Christ would return in that generation 
 and establish by a miraculous display of kingly 
 power this new theocracy. The Jewish Christians 
 could not at once abandon their Jewish belief that 
 
344 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 the theocracy was to be a world kingdom in its 
 form and spirit as well as in its dwelling-place. 
 Gradually, however, this hope gave place to an- 
 other, that the Empire of Eome might be trans- 
 formed into such a theocracy. The Apostle John 
 saw in a vision the time when the kingdoms of 
 this world would become the kingdoms of our 
 Lord and of his Christ. The bitter persecutions 
 of the Christians by pagan Eome destroyed this 
 hope. Then another took its place. The church 
 was itself regarded as the kingdom of God; the 
 Pope was his vicar; loyalty to him was loyalty to 
 the Great King whom he represented; the Papal 
 decrees were regarded as divine decrees, much as 
 the Ten Commandments brought down from the 
 mountain by Moses were regarded as the laws of 
 Jehovah; and the faithful, united in one creed and 
 in one ecclesiastical organization, constituted the 
 kingdom of God. Corruption entered the church; 
 castes grew up in it; pagan pomp invaded it. 
 Then devout souls separated themselves from the 
 world and from the church, though in loyalty to 
 the church, and constituted themselves an impe- 
 rium in imperio, a brotherhood in a brotherhood, 
 a theocracy in the theocracy. Such were the 
 Franciscan friars, the Brothers of the Poor, such 
 the monastic and conventual establishments scat- 
 tered throughout Europe. These grew rich, lazy, 
 corrupt, and lost the spirit while retaining the 
 form of brotherhood. Then at last despair of any 
 kingdom of God on the earth took possession of 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 345 
 
 the church. The devout still prayed, "Thy king- 
 dom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven," but they ceased to believe in their prayer; 
 they transferred their hopes from earth to heaven ; 
 they came to regard their life as but the prepara- 
 tion for a kingdom yet to come in another and 
 a celestial sphere ; they reversed the vision of St. 
 John, and saw a city rising out of the earth and 
 entering heaven ; they ceased to teach men how to 
 live, and thought it their function chiefly to teach 
 men how to die ; they separated religion from life, 
 — forgot Micah's definition of religion as doing 
 justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with 
 God, — forgot Paul's definition of religion as liv- 
 ing soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
 world, — forgot John's declaration that he that 
 doeth righteousness is righteous, and abandoning 
 commerce, trade, politics, and even education to 
 the men of the world, retreated to cloisters to 
 practice religion, not in devotion but in devotions, 
 or confined their religious duties to sacred seasons 
 and sacred places, and left their religion behind 
 them when they returned to the world, or, with no 
 hope of conforming the world to the precepts of 
 the Master, counted it sufficient if they endeavored 
 to conform their own lives thereto and saved them- 
 selves, and perhaps some others, out of the general 
 wreck. 
 
 Yet all the time God, who works outside his 
 church as well as within it, when and where and 
 as he pleases, was inspiring society, partly by 
 
346 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 means of the church, partly by reformers who 
 were without the church, with aspirations for bro- 
 therhood. Gradually government was trans- 
 formed, labor was emancipated, wealth was con- 
 verted from idle hoards to the instruments of 
 active industry, general comfort was enhanced, 
 hospitals and orphanages and asylums were estab- 
 lished and endowed, the ministry of medicine was 
 made available for the poor as for the rich, justice 
 was made not indeed absolutely free nor absolutely 
 equal to all, but more nearly free and more nearly 
 equal, public education was promoted and fostered, 
 and by all these means the promise of Jesus Christ 
 approximated fulfillment: the poor had glad tid- 
 ings preached to them, and the acceptable year of 
 the Lord was proclaimed. 
 
 At length a new continent was discovered, and 
 a new world was opened for a new trial of the ex- 
 periment of human brotherhood. The Puritans 
 in New England, the Presbyterians in New York, 
 the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Boman Catho- 
 lics in Delaware, the Episcopalians in Virginia, 
 the Huguenots in the Carolinas, each brought 
 from the old world a Christian faith, and each a 
 partial conception of that kingdom of God which 
 is so great that no church can ever adequately 
 manifest it, and no prophet can ever adequately 
 interpret it. But they also brought with them 
 from the old world corruptions of the Christian 
 faith, ethical and social as well as doctrinal. The 
 feudalism of England and the reactionary and 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 347 
 
 revolutionary democracy of France mingled with 
 the fraternalism born of an imperfectly appre- 
 hended Christian teaching in the birth of a 
 brotherhood which is only partially Christian, and 
 which it is the duty of the church to perfect and 
 establish. Nor is it the least part of this duty to 
 prevent the brotherhood of man from degenerat- 
 ing into a mere cant of politicians and professional 
 reformers, to distinguish the brotherhood which 
 Jesus Christ inculcated from the specious imita- 
 . tions which are labeled with its name, and to apply 
 its essential principles to the solution of our social 
 and national problems. 
 
 This rapid sketch of the social teachings of 
 Jesus Christ, and their gradual and as yet im- 
 perfect recognition by Christendom, indicates the 
 goal of democracy. It is the reconstruction of 
 society, so that it shall embody these five princi- 
 ples : — 
 
 I. The diffusion of happiness. 
 
 II. Through the development of character. 
 
 III. By a process of gradual growth- 
 
 IV. The secret thereof being the indwelling of 
 God in humanity. 
 
 V. The end thereof being a brotherhood of man 
 centred in God as the Universal Father. 
 
 Let us consider these principles as they appear, 
 though imperfectly developed, in the American 
 Democracy of to-day. 
 
 I. The aim of democracy is the extension and 
 diffusion of happiness ; it purposes to make happi- 
 
348 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 ness universal. For this reason it denies the right 
 of men to separate themselves into classes and 
 cliques, to concentrate happiness in the lives of 
 the few and to leave wretchedness and misery in 
 the lives of the many. In this respect democracy 
 accepts the utilitarian theory of life. It does not 
 accept it in so far as that theory determines all 
 questions by their relation to happiness; it does 
 accept it in so far as that theory declares the true 
 end, the divine end, of life to be the greatest hap- 
 piness of the greatest number. 
 
 There are four great material enemies to human 
 happiness: war, poverty, pestilence, and famine. 
 Democracy sets itself resolutely to combat all four. 
 
 Democracy is unalterably opposed to war; the 
 military spirit and the democratic spirit are essen- 
 tially antagonistic to each other. Wars may be 
 sometimes necessary — I believe that they are 
 sometimes necessary — but if so they are a neces- 
 sary evil. The spirit that regards war as an ad- 
 vantage, that desires war for its own sake, that 
 exalts and glorifies militarism, is in direct contra- 
 diction to the spirit of democracy. For war can 
 only be carried on successfully under an autocracy. 
 A nation which is armed and equipped for war is 
 of necessity under a commanding general, and a 
 commanding general must be an autocrat. War 
 cannot be carried on by a committee; the experi- 
 ment has been tried more than once, and always 
 with failure. An army cannot by universal suf- 
 frage determine how a campaign against an enemy 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 349 
 
 shall be conducted. An army is necessarily an 
 autocratic organization, and an armed nation — a 
 nation which is an armed camp — is necessarily 
 autocratic. Thus democracy is inherently, vitally, 
 essentially opposed to the spirit of war ; if it ac- 
 cepts war it accepts it only as a dire and unavoid- 
 able necessity, to be escaped from as soon as may 
 be with honor. It is for this reason that demo- 
 cracy has found its way to contrivances which 
 lessen the danger of war. It is for this reason 
 that the most democratic country, America, con- 
 trived that federation of states and invented that 
 Supreme Court of the United States which has 
 served as an arbitrator between different commu- 
 nities, and has substituted reason for force as the 
 means of settling interstate controversies. It is 
 for this reason that in Europe the uprising of 
 democracy has preceded the development if not 
 the creation of international law, and preceded 
 the organization of courts of arbitration and that 
 final consummation of courts of arbitration — the 
 creation of the international court at The Hague. 
 Democracy is not only opposed to war, but demo- 
 cracy has invented or discovered the methods by 
 which contrpversies between communities can be 
 adjusted more rationally, more peacefully, and 
 more in accordance with human happiness than by 
 military force. 
 
 The second great enemy of human happiness is 
 poverty. Democracy does not believe that pov- 
 erty is a necessity. The fundamental tenet of de- 
 
350 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 mocracy is ttat there is wealth enough in the 
 world to make all men happy. This was certainly 
 the tenet of Jesus Christ: "In my Father's house," 
 he said, through one of the characters whom he 
 portrayed, "is bread enough, and to spare." The 
 world is the Father's house, and there is bread 
 enough in the Father's house for all the Father's 
 children. If any go hungry, it is either their own 
 fault or else it is the fault of a vicious social or- 
 ganization. "Come," said Christ, in another par- 
 able, "for all things are now ready: go out into 
 the streets and lanes of the city and bring in 
 hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and 
 the blind." And the servant did so and returned 
 with the statement, "Still there is room." This 
 lesson Jesus Christ repeats in more than one par- 
 able. We have given to these parables a spiritual 
 interpretation, and doubtless they deserve a spirit- 
 ual interpretation, but they deserve the other in- 
 terpretation also. On their face they carry with 
 them this great economic truth, that there is in 
 the world, provided by the Father, enough for all 
 his children, so that none need go in want. 
 
 If war can be avoided and pauperism can be 
 avoided, the other two great evils would disappear 
 themselves, for pestilence and fapine are the chil- 
 dren of war and pauperism. Pestilence has fol- 
 lowed close upon the heels of war, and when war 
 has not produced it pauperism has ; it has grown 
 inevitably out of insanitary conditions, due, not 
 only to ignorance, but also to poverty and the kind 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 351 
 
 of vice which is connected with and fostered by 
 poverty. Given universal education and universal 
 competence, and pestilence would cease from the 
 earth; nor would famine find a place if wealth 
 were so equitably distributed that all men had suf- 
 ficient for their own sustenance. Thus democracy 
 seeks the happiness of all men, not only in its 
 dreams, but in its definite plans. Its progress 
 thus far has been a progress toward the cessation- 
 of war and the substitution of arbitration, and 
 toward the division of wealth and the end of pau- 
 perism. Christ's parables are full of joyousness; 
 dancing, singing, festivity, happiness ripple over 
 the surface of his instructions ; and they are phases 
 of happiness not for the few, but for the all. De- 
 mocracy has already made some approximation to 
 this broad diffusion of happiness. We have not 
 in America as many splendid palaces as in the old 
 world, but we have more comfortable homes; we 
 have not in America the lordly parks, but, save in 
 our great cities and a few of our factory towns, 
 we have a little plot of ground around the home of 
 each individual tenant. 
 
 II. This universal happiness democracy seeks 
 to accomplish by the development of character, 
 a principle which democracy borrows unconsciously 
 from Jesus Christ. It simply needs to understand 
 Christ's principles more clearly and apply them 
 more unflinchingly. 
 
 Jesus Christ gives no support by his teaching 
 to either communism or socialism. He does not 
 
352 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 teach with Proudhon that property is theft; nor 
 with Tolstoi that accumulation of property is sin- 
 ful; nor with St. Francis of Assisi that poverty is 
 a virtue. On the contrary, he affirms that in- 
 equalities in wealth are a part of the divine order. 
 In the parable of the ten talents the Lord gives 
 to his servants in different measure, to one five 
 talents, to another two talents, to another one, 
 "^o every man according to Ms several ability." 
 The notion that all men are to have equal posses- 
 sions and the notion that all men possess equal 
 abilities are alike foreign to Christ's teaching. 
 Moreover, each man is to use his ability to in- 
 crease his wealth. The man who trades with five 
 talents and makes them ten, and the man who 
 trades with two talents and makes them four, are 
 commended; the man who wraps his one talent in 
 a napkin and adds nothing to it is condemned. If 
 he had not the ability to increase his store, he 
 might at least have loaned it to some one who pos- 
 sessed the capacity which he lacked. It is not 
 wealth which Christ condemns, nor the accumula- 
 tion of wealth, but the hoarding of wealth. The 
 man who invests his money in fine dresses to be- 
 come food for the moths, or buries it in the earth 
 to become a prey to robbers, Christ castigates. 
 The farmer, who when his harvests yield abun- 
 dantly, can think of nothing better to do with his 
 grain than to stock it in barns for his own enjoy- 
 ment, he calls a fool. The rich man who spends 
 it in clothing himself in purple and fine linen and 
 
THE GOAL OP DEMOCKACY 353 
 
 in faring sumptuously every day, while want lies 
 unrelieved at his door, he declares worthy to be 
 an outcast in the world to come. In all this he 
 condemns not wealth, but the hoarding, the osten- 
 tation, the inhumanity, which are the vices to 
 which wealth tempts. For these vices Christ's 
 remedy is not the self-imposed poverty practiced 
 by Francis of Assisi, nor the common ownership 
 of wealth proposed by Fourier and Robert Owen, 
 nor the incongruous and unreal admixture of pea- 
 sant and princely condition assumed by Tolstoi: 
 Christ's remedy is the practical application of the 
 doctrine that wealth is a trust, that every man is a 
 trustee, that all that he has and all that he is are 
 to be used for the welfare of his fellow men ; that 
 it is not the ability to make money, but the ability 
 to use it for the common welfare that alone makes 
 any man worthy of the respect of his fellow citizens. 
 As little does Christ give support to state so- 
 cialism. State socialism maintains that the state 
 should own all the tools and implements of indus- 
 try and should direct and control all its operations. 
 Each individual is to do the work which the state 
 allots, and to accept the recompense which the 
 state awards. That the state may be free, each 
 individual in the state is to be deprived of indus- 
 trial freedom. That we may be rid of the domi- 
 nance of the capitalist, we are to substitute there- 
 for the dominance of the politician. This was 
 not Christ's method. He had very little to say 
 about the social organism. Government was de- 
 
354 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 spotic, but he did not propose a republic; labor 
 was servile, but he said 'nothing about slavery. 
 He sought to bring men into filial relations with 
 God and into fraternal relations with their fellow 
 men, to inculcate the principles of brotherhood 
 and inspire in them the spirit of brotherhood; 
 then he left men, guided by these principles and 
 inspired by this spirit, to make their own organi- 
 zations. 
 
 Nor does Christ's teaching give any support to 
 that type of democracy of which Eousseau is the 
 most distinguished prophet, which declares that 
 all men are equal in natural ability and therefore 
 ought to be equal in social conditions. Jesus 
 Christ never taught, by even remote implication, 
 the natural equality of men; on the contrary, he 
 recognized explicitly that some men are greater 
 than others; but he furnished a new standard of 
 greatness in the saying, "He that is greatest 
 among you shaU. be your servant." In the social 
 order of imperial Kome the greatest were the served, 
 the inferior were the servants; in the democracy 
 of France there was neither greatness nor littleness, 
 neither superior nor inferior, neither master nor 
 servant, all were equals; in the brotherhood which 
 Jesus Christ has come to establish, the rich are 
 the servants of the poor, the wise are the servants 
 of the ignorant, the strong are the servants of the 
 weak, the superior are the servants of the inferior. 
 He that renders the greatest service is the greatest 
 man. In the same hour in which Jesus Christ 
 
THE GOAL OP DEMOCRACY 366 
 
 washed his disciples' feet, — a service usually ren- 
 dered by the menials for their lords, — he declared 
 himself the Lord and Master of those whose feet 
 he had washed. 
 
 In these three respects democracy has borrowed 
 its principles from Jesus Christ. It has sometimes 
 been inclined to try the experiments commended 
 to it by Fourier, Karl Marx, and Eousseau; but 
 experience has confirmed the teachings of its un- 
 acknowledged Master, and it has returned to the 
 democracy of Jesus Christ. Communism, social- 
 ism, democracy all seek the same end — a benefi- 
 cent reconstruction of the social order; but true 
 democracy is neither communistic nor socialistic, 
 but Christian. Socialism, that is state socialism, 
 — and in essential principles communism and 
 socialism are of kin, — seeks to change the social 
 order without changing the individuals, democracy 
 seeks to change the individuals that they may 
 change the social order; socialism seeks the wel- 
 fare of the individual by making him subservient 
 to society, democracy seeks the welfare of society 
 by making it subservient to the individual; social- 
 ism would make society free by destroying the 
 freedom of the individual, democracy calls on so- 
 ciety to protect the freedom of the individual that 
 society may be free; socialism would make the 
 state the owner of aU wealth, democracy would 
 make the state the protector of individual wealth; 
 socialism would have the state carry on all the 
 industries and would make every individual the 
 
356 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 servant of the state, democracy would make the 
 state a protector of individual industries and the 
 state the servant of the individual ; socialism puts 
 the organization first, the individual second, de- 
 mocracy puts the individual first, the organization 
 second; socialism expects to develop the individ- 
 ual, but chiefly through a change in the organi- 
 zation, democracy expects to develop society, but 
 chiefly through the development of the individual. 
 Thus these two, working to the same ends, work 
 by diametrically opposed methods. The object of 
 democracy is, first, to protect the rights of the 
 individual, next, to develop the character of the 
 individual, and third, to teach the individuals how 
 to cooperate together to a common end. 
 
 It is because democracy lays this stress on indi- 
 vidual character that it lays stress on the institu- 
 tions which develop individual character. It is 
 for this reason that so soon as a state becomes 
 democratic it establishes a school system for the 
 education of the individual. France becomes de- 
 mocratic, it establishes a state school system ; Eng- 
 land becomes democratic, it organizes the board 
 school system; the Northern states become demo- 
 cratic, they organize a public school system; the 
 Southern states become democratic, they organize 
 a public school system ; we wish to establish self- 
 governing communities in Cuba, Porto Eico, and 
 the Philippines, and contemporaneously with the 
 organization of civil government we organize a 
 free school system. Democracy instinctively re- 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 357 
 
 cognizes tlie fact that we cannot have a self-gov- 
 erning state without educating the individuals and 
 substantially all the individuals in the community. 
 
 For the same reason democracy develops in- 
 dividualism in religion. With imperialism goes 
 naturally one church, one creed, one ritual, one 
 ecclesiastical order; with democracy there goes 
 naturally a variety of churches, of creeds, of rit- 
 uals, of ecclesiastical organizations, because de- 
 mocracy insists on the development of the individ- 
 ual, and therefore x)n the right of the individual 
 to frame his own creed, to worship according to 
 his own. ritual, to organize his own church. The 
 innumerable variety of sects into which the church 
 in America is divided is no accident; it is the in- 
 evitable result of the individualism which it is the 
 object, deliberate or unconscious, of democracy to 
 promote. Democracy believes that it is better to 
 have great men and little churches than a great 
 church and little men. 
 
 For this reason democracy tests everything by 
 its relation to character — not always consciously, 
 not always wisely, but intuitively and instinctively. 
 It is thus to-day testing the churches in America. 
 The workingmen are asking. Will the church help 
 us ? Will it make us better men ? Will it make 
 us happier men? Will it enlarge and enrich our 
 life? I do not think they find altogether the right 
 answer to their question, but they are justified in 
 asking it. The church can add to the glory of 
 God only by adding to the welfare and happiness 
 
358 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 of his children ; and if it fails to add to the happi- 
 ness and welfare of his children, or if it fails to 
 add to the welfare and happiness of those of his 
 children who most need to have their happiness 
 and welfare promoted, then, in so far, the church 
 is a failure. Whether rightly or wrongly, this is 
 the test which democracy applies to preacher, to 
 priest, to church, to religious institutions of every 
 kind. So long as we have a democratic America, 
 so long it is certain we must have churches that 
 will serve the common people, or the churches will 
 cease to be supported by the common people. De- 
 mocracy measures its institutions by their relation 
 to human need. 
 
 In the same way it measures industry. It tests 
 every industrial organization by the question: Is 
 it making good men and good women ? It is de- 
 mocracy which has insisted that the law shall in- 
 terfere with industrial enterprises which are not 
 making good men and good women. It is demo- 
 cracy which has insisted that child labor shall 
 cease, that woman labor shall be limited, and that 
 hours of labor for all men shall be defined. It 
 is democracy which protests against any system of 
 labor which requires a man to work twelve hours 
 out of the twenty-four, and seven days out of the 
 week. It is democracy which insists on shorter 
 hours of labor and larger wages; not merely for 
 the sake of the larger wages, not merely for the 
 sake of the shorter hours, but for the sake of such 
 leisure as will make development of the working- 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 359 
 
 men's life possible. This is the meaning of the 
 blind, groping, ignorant, often impracticable, and 
 sometimes revolutionary demands of labor organi- 
 zations. This is the spur that drives them on, 
 this the moral force that compels them. It is true 
 that wages are better than wages ever were before, 
 and that hours of labor are less than they ever 
 were before. But it is also true that manhood is 
 larger than it ever was before ; that it needs more 
 relief from toil and more opportunity for the de- 
 velopment of the higher life than it ever did be- 
 fore. Democracy measures industry by its effects 
 on character. It counts that a poor industrial 
 system which grinds up men and women in order 
 to make cheap goods. 
 
 That American democracy is not the same as 
 the democracy of Kousseau, that it adopts as its 
 principles not the falsehood that all men are equal 
 or ought to be equal, but the truth that the greater 
 the man the greater his obligation of service, we 
 shall see in considering Christ's fifth principle that 
 the kingdom of God is a brotherhood of men. 
 
 III. The third principle which Jesus Christ in- 
 culcated is that the kingdom of God comes by a 
 peaceable process of growth; in other words, that 
 the hope of society is not in revolution but in evo- 
 lution. 
 
 This principle is alike seen in the Old Testa- 
 ment and in the New Testament. Both in Judaism 
 and in Christianity social reforms have been only 
 gradually wrought, so gradually as to excite the 
 
360 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 impatience of some moral reformers and to pro- 
 voke the scoffing skepticism of others. In the 
 twelfth century before Christ slavery and poly- 
 gamy were almost universal, and sacrificial cere- 
 monialism was the only method of worshiping the 
 gods. The Mosaic law abolished neither. But 
 slavery was hedged about with such restrictions 
 that by the time of Christ slavery had disappeared 
 from Judaism; polygamy was interpenetrated by 
 such moral influences that in Christ's time the 
 harem was no longer known among the Hebrews, 
 who are now distinguished by their marital fidelity ; 
 and the sacrificial system was at once so modified 
 by ecclesiastical law and so interpreted by pro- 
 phetic teaching that with the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem it disappeared forever from the Jewish reli- 
 gion, without in the least affecting the funda- 
 mental principles or the essential spirit of Judaism. 
 The same doctrine that moral reforms to be effec- 
 tual must be the result of a moral growth was, as 
 we have seen, explicitly affirmed by Jesus Christ. 
 His teaching, accordingly, though radical was 
 never revolutionary; and so gradual has been the 
 overthrow of slavery, the amelioration pf war, the 
 transformation of government, the emancipation 
 of industry, the establishment of systems of popu- 
 lar education, the elevation of woman, and the 
 development of the home, that, although these 
 reforms have been absolutely confined to Christen- 
 dom, some thinkers have believed them to be 
 wholly due to other than Christian influences, and 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 361 
 
 some tave even claimed that they have been ac- 
 complished in spite of Christianity. 
 
 This principle that evolution, not revolution, is 
 the true method of enduring reform, and this spirit 
 of patient waiting coupled with high endeavor, 
 characterize that type of democracy the genealogy 
 of which can be traced historically to the Hebraic 
 commonwealth. The so-called revolutions in Eng- 
 land have with one exception been developments 
 of a larger life out of precedent conditions; and 
 that one exception, furnished by the Puritan Com- 
 monwealth, did not survive Oliver Cromwell, and 
 was followed by a disastrous moral and political 
 reaction. In America the colonies reluctantly ac- 
 cepted revolution only when it was forced upon 
 them as their only escape from the reestablishment 
 of a feudal system ; our fathers, with equal reluc- 
 tance, acquiesced in the immediate abolition of 
 American slavery only when it became necessary 
 as a means of preserving the nation; and in our 
 own times the anarchist and the socialist, who 
 propose to disregard the experiences and to discard 
 the work of the past, get but an inattentive listen- 
 ing from 1?ut scant audiences. The democracy of 
 Ajnerica is essentially a conservative democracy. 
 This characteristic is made the more striking by 
 the contrast which it presents to the French de- 
 mocracy. In France the "men of the Book," the 
 Puritans of France, disappeared in the massacre 
 and the exile of the Huguenots; in their dis- 
 appearance Hebraic Christianity disappeared ; 
 
362 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 Eoman imperialism took an undisputed possession 
 of the church as of the nation ; the revolution of 
 1789 was equally a revolt against church and state; 
 and its leaders, many of them men both of intellec- 
 tual ability and noble spirit, had, or seemed to 
 themselves to have, no alternative but to break ab- 
 solutely with a past which was wholly reactionary, 
 and begin anew. The comparative results of the 
 French and the American revolutions remain to 
 attest the wisdom of the third principle enunciated 
 by Jesus Christ, that the development of society 
 into a kingdom of justice and liberty must be by 
 a process of gradual growth, not by one of instan- 
 taneous new creation. 
 
 IV. Democracy does not yet clearly perceive 
 the fourth principle which Jesus Christ inculcated, 
 namely, that thesecret of all life is God dwelling 
 in man and inspiring him to an ever higher life. 
 And yet democracy already begins to feel after 
 this truth, if haply it may find it; and I cannot 
 but think that if it fails to see it clearly, it is partly 
 because religious teachers have failed to see it 
 clearly, or to present it so that others should see it 
 clearly. 
 
 Democracy believes in law; it believes in gov- 
 ernment for the protection of person, of property, 
 of the family, of reputation. Demoracy has or- 
 ganized a strong government; the old fears that 
 the United States would be but a rope of sand are 
 no longer entertained by any students of American 
 history. Democracy is as far removed from anar- 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 363 
 
 chism as it is from socialism. But law must be 
 either imposed and enforced by authority from 
 without, or imposed and enforced by authority 
 from within. If the law comes from without, and 
 is enforced by a power from without, the individ- 
 ual is, in so far, in subjection to some one other 
 than himself; if the law comes from within, and 
 is enforced by his reason and his conscience, the 
 law thus within the man is a self -enforcing law ; 
 when a man lives under a self-enforcing law he 
 lives in liberty. Law according to the Christian 
 conception, law according to the Old Testament 
 conception, law as more and more democracy is 
 coming to see it, is the law of man's own nature. 
 It is not an edict issued by a king, nor a statute 
 framed by God; it is the law of man's own organ- 
 ism. The moral law is a part of his organism and a 
 product of it. Those laws of the social order which 
 bind men together in a great social organism are 
 not made by man ; they are made by the Creator 
 of man; they are divine; but they are not exter- 
 nal to man ; they are not brought down to him at 
 Mount Sinai, nor in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Mount Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount do but 
 interpret them. This is the fundamental postulate 
 of liberty : God appeals to the divine in man and 
 finds in man himself the power to enforce all right- 
 eous laws. Thus the foundation of liberty is the 
 recognition — intelligently or unintelligently — of 
 a divinely organized law; not getting its authority 
 from any human will, but from a divine will, and 
 
364 THE EIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 from that will as it is manifested in the structure 
 of the human soul, and as it finds its expression in 
 the voice of the human reason and the human con- 
 science. That God is in man, that man is of kin 
 to God, that law derives its authority from the 
 divine Lawgiver and not from the human czar, 
 or from congress, or from a majority — this is the 
 fundamental postulate of free institutions, this is 
 the basic fact of democracy. 
 
 X V. Christ not only declared that he had come 
 to give human happiness to the world, and to give 
 it by the development of individual character, to 
 do this by a gradual process of growth, the secret 
 of which would be a growing consciousness of the 
 divine within them, but he taught them that when 
 thus they were developed and' came to the con- 
 sciousness of this divine within them, they would 
 be brought together into a great social organism. 
 And he gave us a type and illustration which we 
 should have perpetually before us, which should 
 give to us our conception of the type of this organ- 
 ism and of the spirit which should animate it: 
 "One is your Father which is in heaven, and all 
 ye are brethren." The family is the type of the 
 true social organism. The goal of democracy, as 
 of Christianity, is a family or brotherhood of man. 
 The family is the first and oldest of organiza- 
 tions and is the parent of all other organizations. 
 Out of the patriarchal family grew the patriarchal 
 church; out of the patriarchal church the patri- 
 archal government. Governments are but collec- 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 365 
 
 tions of families ; the church is but a combination 
 of households. As the family is the first, and as 
 the family is the parent, so the family is the type. 
 "Our Father" is more than an acknowledgment 
 of our relation to God, it is an acknowledgment of 
 our relation to one another; and this relation 
 which we bear to one another is the relation of 
 brothers in a family, as the relation which we bear 
 to God is the relation of children to a father. 
 
 The first fact to be noticed is that in the family 
 the ground of fellowship is in the parents. These 
 children are brethren, not because they think alike, 
 not because they have similar temperaments, not 
 because they are naturally congenial to one an- 
 other, but because they are children of the same 
 father and mother. Loyalty to the father and 
 mother makes the family one. So loyalty to God 
 makes the human race one; this is the first and 
 fundamental fact. A brotherhood of man — why 
 a brotherhood of man ? I can understand why I 
 am brother to a man who is congenial to me, who 
 thinks as I think and likes what I like; or why 
 I am brother to the man who belongs to the same 
 state or the same nation and has the same political 
 interests that I have ; or even why I am brother 
 to the man who is neighbor to me and with whom 
 I come in perpetual contact. But why am I bro- 
 ther to all men ? Why am I brother to the man 
 against whom I brush in the street-car, whom I 
 shall never see again? Why am I brother to the 
 man on the other side of the globe? What basis 
 
366 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 is there for saying that I am brother to all men? 
 Because deeper than consanguinity, deeper than 
 race relationship, deeper than a common language, 
 is this sublime fact: that we, all of us, rich and 
 poor, black and white, American and Filipino, 
 are children of God, made in his image, or at least 
 being made in his image. This it is, and only 
 this, that makes us brothers. It is as infidel to 
 deny the brotherhood of man as it is to deny the 
 existence of God, and it is as inconsistent with 
 any large human progress to deny the Fatherhood 
 of God as it is to deny the brotherhood of man. 
 Atheism never can be made to consort with demo- 
 cracy. 
 
 The second fact to be noticed is that the laws 
 which govern the family in their inter-relationship 
 to one another are the laws which are to be pro- 
 jected into society and to govern men in their rela- 
 tions with one another. Mark the contrast be- 
 tween the laws which we recognize as laws of the 
 family and those which we generally have assumed 
 to be the laws of the social organism. For exam- 
 ple : " Hire labor in the cheapest market and sell 
 it in the highest market ; " this is the silver-plated 
 rule of industry; this is the basis on which it is 
 supposed a harmonious social organism can be 
 erected. Apply this rule to the family : Seek the 
 wife who will render to you the greatest service 
 and ask you for the least money; seek the hus- 
 band who will pay the largest pin-money and ask 
 of you the least service ! What kind of a family 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 367 
 
 •will that give ? Take another aphorism of science 
 misapplied to the social order — " struggle for ex- 
 istence, survival of the fittest." Is this the rule 
 of the family? The babe is laid in the mother's 
 arms, the unfittest infant on the face of the globe 
 to survive, for there is no other infant that has 
 not more capacity to take care of himself than the 
 human infant. At once we all begin to study 
 how this unfittest can survive. The boy must 
 take off his noisy shoes when he enters the house, 
 that he may not disturb this unfittest; the husband 
 must be»careful not to talk too loud in the adjoin- 
 ing room lest he awake the unfittest; he must get 
 up in the middle of the night and walk with the 
 unfittest, that the unfittest may be comforted and 
 go to sleep. There is no service that we must not 
 render for the little king, who is king because 
 he is dependent; only as we love him, and care 
 for him, and give ourselves in unrequited service 
 to him, will he survive. If we were to take these 
 two principles of the home and carry them out 
 into our industries, if the problem of the capitalist 
 was, how large wages he could give and still keep 
 his business going, and the problem of the laborer, 
 how much work he could give and still maintain 
 the time necessary for his own highest manhood; 
 if the problem in our life was to "bear one an- 
 other's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ," 
 which is also the law of democracy ; if we really 
 believed that he who would be greatest among us 
 should be the servant of aU, can any one doubt 
 
368 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 that the social problem which perplexes us would 
 be solved? 
 
 Life is divinely organized for mutual service. 
 The farmer gathers the raw material from the 
 earth; the manufacturer converts it into objects 
 which are useful to human life — the grain into 
 flour, the wool into clothing; the railroad man 
 takes this material, which is of no use where it is, 
 and carries it across the continent to those regions 
 where it is needed, from the overfed West to the 
 underfed cities of the Atlantic border ; the middle- 
 man takes what is transported and carries it to 
 our individual houses; the banker regulates the 
 money through which all this mysterious and in- 
 tricate system of interchange is carried on; the 
 lawyer determines for us what are the principles 
 of justice by which we are to be governed in our 
 dealings one with another in this intricate system; 
 the doctor cures us when we are sick, or, if we are 
 wise and he is also wise, keeps us from getting 
 sick; the teacher gathers from all the experience 
 of the past that which shall launch us into life 
 with something of the wisdom acquired by our fore- 
 fathers; and the preacher ministers the life and 
 love of God to men to inspire them in all their 
 labor. Life is organized for service, and the goal 
 of democracy is the realization of that ideal in 
 which every man shall look not only upon his own 
 things, but also on the things of his brother; in 
 which every man shall endeavor to help the weaker 
 man through the hard places of life; in which 
 
THE GOAL OF DEMOCRACY 369 
 
 CTcry man shall recognize that his place in life, 
 wherever it may be, is a place for the service of 
 others, not for self-service. In this truth, that life 
 is a place for service, and he who renders the 
 greatest service is the greatest man, not in the 
 groundless notion that all men are equal in their 
 abilities or endowments or ought to be equal in 
 their office or function, is the foundation of demo- 
 cracy to be found. 
 
 Such seems to me to be the goal toward which 
 that democracy whose source is to be traced to 
 the Hebraic commonwealth has been steadily tend- 
 ing : universal happiness, founded on the develop- 
 ment of character, wrought by a gradual process, 
 inspired by the indwelling of God, and leading to 
 the unification of the human race in one brother- 
 hood, bound together'by love, and manifesting it- 
 self in mutual service. 
 
 In bringing this series of lectures to a close, 
 I sum up their results in a paragraph: The con- 
 flict of the centuries is one between the doctrine 
 of pagan imperialism, that life and the world are 
 made for the few, whom the many are to serve, 
 and that of the Hebraic democracy, that life and 
 the world are made for the many, and the great 
 are to be their servants. This democratic or 
 Hebraic or Christian doctrine involves : in politics. 
 All just government is for the benefit of the gov- 
 erned; in political economy, The common wealth 
 is for the benefit of the common people; in edu- 
 cation, A fair opportunity for the development 
 
370 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 of every individual; in religion, The right of 
 every soul to learn for itself what it can of the 
 Infinite, and to tell what it thinks it has learned. 
 Of the Hebraic democracy the United States af- 
 fords the best modern example; in the faithful 
 application of these simple principles it will find 
 the solution of its problems, both domestic and 
 foreign. Its perils are great, but the grounds for 
 hopefulness as to the final issue are greater. That 
 issue, if it be successfully achieved, involves the 
 material welfare of all the people, based on their 
 intellectual and spiritual development; the free- 
 dom of the community, based on the recognition 
 of a divine law enforced by reason and conscience ; 
 and a brotherhood of humanity, based on loyalty 
 to one Father and manifested in glad service ren- 
 dered by his sons as freemen to one another. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, Chables F., on single 
 tax, 140. 
 
 Agnosticism and dogmatism, 193. 
 
 America,a nation of pioneers, 265 ; 
 and immigration, 207; and re- 
 ligion, 206; and subject races, 
 276 ; democracy in, 196. 
 
 Apatliy, political, in America, 293. 
 
 Aristotle's forms of government, 
 40, 90. 
 
 Arminian doctrine of election, 37. 
 
 Australian ballot, advantages of, 
 238. 
 
 Baptism, election by, 34. 
 
 Bible study in the public schools, 
 164. 
 
 Boss, the, as a leader, 303. 
 
 Brice, Prof., on political discus- 
 sion, 286. 
 
 Brotherhood of man, basis of, 365 ; 
 the real, 341. 
 
 Bureaucracy, 91. 
 
 Calvin's doctrine of election, 36. 
 
 Capitalists and wage-workers, 298. 
 
 Carnegie and his wealth, 58. 
 
 Character and democracy, 321, 356. 
 
 Christ, conception of education, 
 69 ; counsel as to wealth, 55 ; five 
 great sermons, 337 ; Jewish feel- 
 ing against, 33 ; the Prophet of 
 New Judaism, 6. 
 
 Christianity, and democracy, 336 ; 
 and wealth, 352. 
 
 Church, decline in authority of 
 the, 281 ; democracy's test of the, 
 357. 
 
 Churches, growth of, in TJ. S., 210 ; 
 influence of our, 333. 
 
 Citizenship, conditions necessary 
 to good, 155. 
 
 Civilization, essentials of, 266. 
 
 Classes, division of society into 
 two, 124. 
 
 Commerce a life-giver, 269. 
 
 Communism, 128 ; not Christianity, 
 351. 
 
 " Consentof the governed" theory, 
 69. 
 
 Conservatism of the American 
 people, 320. 
 
 Constitutional government in Eu- 
 rope, 26. 
 
 Corporations, influence of, 300. 
 
 Creeds and religion, 185. 
 
 Croker, Sichard, as a boss, 305. 
 
 Dante, on the unbaptized, 36. 
 
 Declaration of Independence, 
 fundamental doctrine of, 46, 88. 
 
 Demagogue, the, as a leader, 302. 
 
 Democracy, and poverty, 349 ; and 
 the public school, 154 ; and war, 
 348 ; as an experiment, 315 ; in 
 America, 196 ; is social Chris- 
 tianity, 336 ; not socialism, 355 ; 
 of industry, 127. 
 
 Democratic institutions, 236. 
 
 Despotic government, value of 
 101. 
 
 Destiny, manifest, existence of, 
 261. 
 
 Dogmatism and agnosticism, 193. 
 
 Education, a factor of civilization, 
 271 ; and the state, 151 ; change 
 in conception of, 58 ; democracy 
 is, 317 ; growth of, in U. S., 211 ; 
 progress of, 144 ; what is, 149. 
 
 Election, doctrine of, 34. 
 
 Elections preservative of Ameri- 
 can life, 330. 
 
 England, imperialism in, 16. 
 
374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 English colonial government, 42. 
 Evolution, of government, 96; of 
 kingdoms of God, 359. 
 
 Faith and religion, 184. 
 
 Family, the, type of the society, 
 364. 
 
 Fatherhood of God, the, 186, 364. 
 
 Feudalism, B3. 
 
 France under the Bourbons, 50. 
 
 Franchise tax or rental, 136. 
 
 French Kevolution, the, 23, 51. 
 
 Forces of nature not private pro- 
 perty, 113. 
 
 Geography and citizenship, 157. 
 
 George, Henry, on Single Tax, 141. 
 
 Germany, unification of, 29. 
 
 Giddings, F. H., on the "new 
 struggle," 264. 
 
 Gladstone on religious truth, 179. 
 
 God, in man, the secret of life, 362 ; 
 the quest after. 187 ; his purpose 
 seen in his works, 60. 
 
 Government, basis of, 68 ; change 
 In conception of, 40; evolution 
 of, 96 ; forms of, in U. S., 93 ; 
 object of all, 100; of English 
 colonies, 43; what Is, 65; what 
 is a free, 72 ; what is a good, 217 ; 
 what is the best, 92. 
 
 Growth of the United States, 209. 
 
 Happiness, the diffusion of, 347. 
 Harrison, Frederic, on French 
 
 Eevolution, Bl. 
 Hebraic, doctrine of election, 34 ; 
 
 social Ideals, 4. . 
 History, and citizenship, 158 ; the 
 
 lessons of U. S., 262. 
 Hobbes, Thomas, in defense of 
 
 absolutism, 71. 
 Hudson, Mr., on power of pluto- 
 crat, 309. 
 Huxley, on education, 149,271; on 
 
 the Bible in the public school, 
 
 168. 
 
 Immigration and America, 207. 
 Imperialism, in England, 15; in 
 France, 23; loss of supremacy 
 
 of, 31 ; on European continent, 
 19 ; Eoman, 2. 
 
 Imports, tariff on, unjust, 129. 
 
 Income tax, evils of, 130. 
 
 Independence not liberty, 86. 
 
 Indian question, the, 218. 
 
 Individualism, development of 
 282. 
 
 Industrial education and citizen- 
 ship, 161; elements of civiliza- 
 tion, 268. 
 
 Industry, democracy of, 127 ; De- 
 mocracy's test of, 358. 
 
 Inquisition, the, and Spain, 28. 
 
 Isolation of U. S., destruction of, 
 
 254. 
 
 Italy, unification of, 28. 
 
 Kostlin, Julius, on Luther, 11. 
 
 Land, private ownership of, no. 
 Language study and citizenship, 
 
 156. 
 Law an essential of civilizationi 
 
 266. 
 
 Lawlessness, spirit of, in Amer- 
 ica, 294. 
 
 Liberty, not derived from nature, 
 69 ; not independence, 86. 
 
 Literature, and citizenship, 159; 
 influence of, in America, 327. 
 
 Local self-government in Amer- 
 ica, 279. 
 
 Lowell, A. L., on " social com- 
 pact " theory, 74. 
 
 Lutheranism, 10, 146. 
 
 Majority, fallibility of the, 285. 
 McKinley, assassination of, 295. 
 Medicineman, the political, 310. 
 Methodist doctrine of election, 37. 
 Minority, problem of the rights of 
 
 a, 243. 
 Missionary, spirit, the, 272 ; work, 
 
 widening scope of, 39. 
 Moral, power of America, 211; 
 
 training and citizenship, 163. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, 23. 
 Natural rights of man, 63. 
 Negro question, the, 223. 
 
INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 Newman, J. H., on private judg- 
 ment, 178, 180, 188. 
 New theology doctrine of election. 
 
 Ocean, the, not an industrial pro- 
 duct, 108. 
 
 Paternalism, 243. 
 
 Paul's doctrine of election, 36. 
 
 Philippines questions, 88. 
 
 Pioneer spirit in America, 265. 
 
 Plato, on government for the gov- 
 ernors, 41. 
 
 Plutocrat, the, as a leader, 307. 
 
 Political, machine, the problem 
 of, 234 i principles, fundamen- 
 tal, 2, 216. 
 
 Poverty and democracy, 349. 
 
 Press, influence of, in America, 
 329. 
 
 Prunary, the direct, 239. 
 
 Principles of Social Christianity, 
 347. 
 
 Property tax, the, 132. 
 
 Public opinion, respect for, 324. 
 
 Puritanism, 17. 
 
 Relativity of knowledge, doctrine 
 of, 14. 
 
 Keligion, and America, 206 ; 
 change in conception of, 32 j de- 
 mocracy is, 318 ; what is, 181. 
 
 Eeliglous truth determined by 
 state and church, 171. 
 
 Kemedies against misgovern- 
 ment, 78. 
 
 ■ Revolution, intellectual, 13; justi- 
 fication for, 81; reUgious, 10; 
 the French, 23. 
 
 Eights, natural, of man, 63. 
 
 Rivers not private property, 108. 
 
 Roman, church, fundamental 
 postulate of, 9 ; social organiza- 
 tion, 2. 
 
 Rousseau and his philosophy, 21. 
 
 School system, public, influence 
 
 of, 326. 
 Self-defense, right of, 64. 
 Self - government, the ultimate 
 
 principle, 99. 
 Sermons, Christ's five great, 337. 
 Ship subsidy bill, the, 247, 292. 
 Single tax, the, 129. 
 Slavery, why unjust, 105. 
 Smollett on English government 
 
 system, 48. 
 Social Christianity, evolution of, 
 
 341. 
 Socialism not Christianity, 351. 
 Spain founded on the Inquisition, 
 
 28. 
 
 State, the, and education, 151. 
 Suffrage not a natural right, 85. 
 Supreme court, authority of, 203. 
 
 Toleration or catholicity, 190. 
 Trades-unions in the U, S., 299. 
 Traditions in America, lack of, 
 280. 
 
 United States, growth of, 209. 
 
 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, wealth of, 
 
 120. 
 Voltaire and his service to France, 
 
 20. 
 
 War and democracy, 348. 
 
 Wealth, and Christianity, 351 ; 
 change in conception of, 62; 
 chief sources of, 114 ; concentra- 
 tion of, in U. S., 119, 121 ; distri- 
 bution of, 116 ; growth of, in U. 
 S., 209 ; what is true, 117. 
 
 Westminster confession of Faith, 
 36, 37. 
 
 Woman suffrage question, the, 
 231. 
 
0bt BiMn^it^z ^xt^^ 
 
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