The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1875-11-20
Society and the State.

Yet even a nation wonted to self-government
and to political reflection can not hope to es-
cape changes of a different kind from those
that generally give birth to revolutions in free
communities. The changes to which we refer
do not proceed from political causes in the first
instance, although such causes may help them
in their growth but they are to be ascribed to
moral and social changes affecting large mass-
es in the society. They resemble, on the great
scale, those silent alterations in individual
character when man finds his old ways Of
thinking not so satisfactory to himself as they
once were, or when he acquires the means Of
pleasure or of show of which in his youth he
was destitute, or when he forms relations and
enters into intimacies with men of class or
of habits to which he was stranger before
By and-by he finds his old principles giving
ways he was not aware of the direction in
which he was drifting until, perhaps, the work
on his character or his faith is nearly done.
In the same way, the influences Of changes in
the relations of property when there is inn
mense capital in the hands Of a few by the side
of great prolectarian class, or Of a transition
from simplicity of life and habits to showiness
and expensiveness, or of changes of religious
faith and moral principles undermined by So
cial or philosophical causes, and giving way to
skepticism er profigacy on the part of many
these influences may 60 on without being no.
ticed or feared for long time, but are really
more to be dreaded than political revolutions.
Changes from causes like these are hard to be
estimated, not only because they are slow and
silent, but also because the people themselves
are the ubject Of the change, and the new gen.
erations have no exact standard within their
reach by which they can compare the present
with the past. Their effects, again, on political
institutions as we'll as on social life can not be
prevented. You might as we'll try to keep a
stream from running downward as to prevent
these consequences altogether. Take an ex-
ample: the feudal system could keep its sway
over a nation as long as the feudal lords held
all the land, and there was no, or next to no,
became great centres of manufacturing and
commerce, as soon as large merchants could
| lend money to kings and so turn the fortune oi
war against the mobiles, so soon a new estate
| was in its germ, which, in the nature of the
case, would demand place in the political
system, and could not long be kept out. Such
an instance is plain one, because the external
side of life is visible to all, and is easily meas
ured by the historian. But what shall we say
| Of a general loss of religious faith in a nation
of the decay of simplicity, of integrity in pub
lie and private affairs, of honor, or respect fol
the institutions or habits OF fsrefathers? Shall
we not say that these changes in peoples
moral principles must havean effect upon their
capacity to endure political restraints, to bear
political freedom, to deal seberly with obstacles
in the way of prosperity, to respect the rela-
tions of private life, to be orderly and content
ed amidst the inequalities of fortune TT. D.
Woolsey, in Harpe,'s Magasine for October.