The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-04
PurItanisn In Politics.


touching the danger of infusing too much Of a
Puritan spirit into legislation have elected
from DR.. Cotton Smith, in late sermon on
municipal government, some expressions of
dissent whioh-although the report we have
seen is probably neither full nor accurate
seem to us to call for a more explicit state
ment Of what we mean when we object to
attempts to make men moral by law. We are
quite as ready as anybody can be to acknow
ledge the indirect effect that legislation in sup
port of good morals may exercise, even in cases
in which it may seem to trespass ON personal
freedom, in strengthening and purifying the
conscience of the community. We do not
deny, for instance, that the Puritan legislation
of colonial New England, hard, cOld stern
destructive as it was of taste and sentiment
and hostile as it was in many respects to indi-
vidual freedom, nevertheless strengthened the
moral fibre of the community as nothing else
would have done. But there are, we think
reasons for believing that Purtanical legisla-
ton, always Of doubtful expediency, is every
day becoming, owing to the changes in modern
society, more and more dangerous.
In the first place, the idiSSer-t fare doctrine
which was in such favor thirty years ago, has
gradually fallen out of favor. In fact, we see
III ubdIly every BlNlllLbu country a SOEL OF
reaction against it.. The only thing in which
the doctrine of nOn-interference makes pro-
gress is with regard to trade. In almost every
other direction, as the Duke of Argyll has
pointed out in his excellent little work on the
E'Reign of Law, ;" the tendency is to extend the
limits of the province Of government, to make
it regulate and direct or assist or restrain peo-
pie; and the tendency is contemporaneOus
with great change in the composition of the
lc1r s.
passing into the hands of the many, and is
generally eXercised-in intention, at least
for the benefit Of the many; it consequently
acts with force which in the hands of the
few it never had. More than this, the new
pOssessers of power, the classes who are rising
into Importance, are intensely eager for social
improvements, but have little or no train
ing in or knowledge of the science of govern
ment, and are impatient of opposition, and
ready to sacrifice individuals to what seems to
be the general welfare.
When one sees the sort of code which the
trades uniOnists enforce, and the sort of labor
legislation which the working classes ask for
here, and remember what a tremendous poll
tical force the working classes are everywhere
becoming, one feels that it is high time to
consider whittier we are driving and what
amount of space there would be left for the
play of that greatest and most fruitful of all
the sources of civilization, the free individual
taste and will, if society should be organized
on cut-and-dry theory, sketched out by any
set of ideologues or moralists who happen to
get the majority on their side.
No careful reader of history can fail to see
that all social and religious systems have
helped civilization, in the highest sense of the
term, just in proportion to the amount of free
dom they allowed to the individual man. Sys-
TENS in which the individual will and taste
were pruned and trimmed, and made to grow
in the direction prescribed by the possessors of
power, have never been successful. They
have fourished for title while, and seemed
to promise great things, but they have not
permanently helped the race. Men have
always written better, thought better, painted
better, and traded better in countries where the
poVernment did very little, than where it did
very much and, in fact, the testimony of expe-
Tience ON this point is so strong, and is so for
titled by our observation and knowledge of
human nature, that we may feel satisfied that
God intended the work of progress to be ac-
complshed rather by individual minds work
ing freely and separately than masses OF minds
working under a uniform rule imposed by
''authoTity." Progress, of course, includes
moral as well as mechanical and intel
lectual growth. We believe that mems
morals also improve more rapidly under
the action of general influences than under
the action of special regulations. The religion
which done most for humanity is the first and
only one which addressed itself to individual
reason, and it has accomplished most in those
countries in which it has relied most on per-
suasion and least on coercion. Contrast the
religious condition of Spain and Italy and
France with that of Prussia and Holland or
England or America-and by religious condi-
ton we do not mean so much outward atten-
tion to religious ordinances as susceptibility to
religious influences and interest in religious
questions and perception of the connection
between religion and life. State churches and
legal intolerance are simply attempts on the
part of the holders Of power (whether one or
many to improve the character of the mino-
rity by force-to make it behave in the man
ner which they think must eonduce to moral
growth. Religious intolerance is dying out,
not simply from the spread of the conviction
that it is wrong, but from practical experience
of its uselessness. The world sees either that
men cannot be dragooned into uniformity, or
that, if they are dragooned into 1t, 1t does not
improve them.
But the conviction that men cannot be dra-
gOOned into morality, that to make men more
moral you must not legislate, but teach, is not
yet by any means general. There is strong
tendency amongst those who are most shocked
by the imperfectOns of our social condition
and are, therefore, most eager for its improve
ment--to get out of patience with Gods pro-
cesses, to feel that they are too slow; that ini-
quity ought not to last so long in the world
when we have such Well-digested criminal
codes, such magnificent penitentiares, and
such Well-organzed and well-disciplined
police. What is the use, they ask us, of the
power of legislation if we have still TO endure
4ba TraspOca in O1r Gtrapte Of druuIyards and