Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-10-24

regiments OF men armed Win Young
papers, who obey the word of COM
mand as Loyalty as did the dependents of
the old feudal mobiles, and who thus enable
their leaders to override the general will
and make the community submit to their
exactions as effectually as their prototypes
of old. Manifestly those who framed your
constitution never dreamed that 10000
citizens would go to the poll led by Boss
America exempliies at the other end of Tie
social scale change analogous to that
which has taken place under sundry des-
potisms. You know that in Japan, before
the recent revolution, the divine luler, the
Mikado, nominally supreme, was prac-
tically puppet in the hands of his chief
minister, the Shotgun. Here it seems to be
that the sovereign people is fast becom-
ing puppet which moves and speaks as
wirepullers determine"
NOT A FAILURE.
"Then you think that republican insti-
tutions are failure?"
"By no means! I imply no such con-
clusion. Thirty years ago, when often
discussing politics with an English friend,
and defending republican institutions, as
I always have done and do still, and
when he urged against me the ill-working
of such institutions over here, habitually
replied that the Americans got their
form of government by happy accident,
not by normal progress, and that they
would have to go back before they could
90 forward. What has since happened
seems to me to have justified that view;
and what I see now confirms me in it.
America is showing on a larger scale than
ever before that paper constitutions will
not work as they are intended to work.
The truth, first recognized by Macintosh,
that constitutions are not made, but grow,
which is part of the larger truth that So
cieties throughout their whole organiza-
tions are not made, but grow, at once,
when accepted, disposes of the notion that
you can work, as you hope, any artifcially
devised system of government. It be-
comes an inference that if your POLITICAL
structure has been manufactured and not
grown, it will forthwith begin to grow into
something different from that intended
something in harmony with the natures of
citizens and the conditions under which
the society exists. And it evidently has
been so with you. Within the forms of
your constitution there has grown up this
organization of professional politicians,
altogether uncontemplated at the outset,
which has become in large measure the
ruling power"
INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION.
"But will not education and the diffusion
of knowledge fit men for free institu-
| tions?"
| "No. It is essentially question of
| character, and only in the secondary de-
gree a question of knowledge. But for the
universal delusion about education as a
panacea for political evils, this would have
been made sufficiently clear by the evil
dence daily disclosed in your papers. Are
not the men who officer and eontrel your
federal, state and municipal organizations
l-who manipulate your caucuses and con-
ventions and run your partisan
campaigns educated men? And
has their education prevented them
from engaging in, or permitting
or condoning the briberies, lodgings and
other corrupt methods which vitiate the
actions of your administrations? Perhaps
party newspapers exaggerate these things;
but what am to make of the testimony of
your civil service reformers- of all
parties? If understand the matter Alright
they are attacking, as vicious and danger
Gus, a system which has grown up under
the natural spontaneous working of your
free institutions exposing vices
which education has proved powerless to
prevent"
THE SENSE OF DUTY.
'You think the people have not suffi-
Gent sense of public duty?"
swell, that is one way of putting it: but
there is a more specific way. Probably it
will surprise you if I say that the Ameri-
can has not, think, a sufficient quick
sense of his own claims, and at the same
time, as necessary consequence, not a
sufficiently quick sense of the claims Of
others, for the two traits are organically
| related. observe that you tolerate
various small interferences which English
men are prone to resist. Free institutions
can be maintained only by citizens, each
of whom is instant to oppose every lille
climate act, every assumption of SUI
premacy, every official excess of power,
however trivial it may seem. As Hamlet
says, there is such thing as greatly to
find quarrel in straw when
the straw implies principle.
If, as you say of the American, he pauses
| to consider whether he can afford the time
and trouble it will pay'-cor-
ruption is sure to creep in. All these
lapses from higher to lower forms begin in
trifing ways; and it is only by incessant
| watchfulness that they can be prevented.
As one of your early statesmen said, The
price of liberty is eternal vigilance But
it is far less against foreign aggressions
n -