Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-03-28
WHERE WE ARE FAULTY.
rwRIrrEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.l

WHERE WE ARE FAULTY.
| WRITTEN FOR THE DEsPArCH.1
we make great mistake when we fiat
| ter ourselves that we are the most progress.
sive people on the face Of tho earth. That Is
not true.
believe most enthusiastically in patriot
ism, and public spirit, and love Of country,
and national pride. and the large Language
of the Fourth of July orattons. would have
| the American Eagle spread her wings from
the Aurora Borealis to the Southern Cross,
and from the Garden Of Eden to the Process:
| sion Of the Equinoxes. But would have all
| the exuberance properly tempered with
| truth.
The most pernicious falsehoods which are
| dealt in by that supreme deceiver, the
| Father OF Lies are the falsehoods that we
| tell to ourselves. 1t is one of the vagaries OF
human nature that man can sit down, and
with one-half of his brain deliberately
| tell lies to the other half, and the other half
will innocently believe the lies.
It is particularly bad thing for man or
| a city or a nation to get the habit Of exag-
gerated and unfounded self.esteem, because
that is the death of development. When
we account ourselves about as good az we
can be- we are about as good as we desire to
be- and the consequence is that we are about
as good as we ever will be. Thorwaldsen
made a statue once which entirely satisfied
him, and he flung down his chisel in despair,
for he knew that he had come to the end of
his art. The most hopeless people in the
whole world are the pharisees, who con-
gratulate themselves that they are so much
better than anybody else, and the political
pharisees are only little less Objectionable
than the religious.
NnfI T IN I'll
This is pretty good sort of country,
and we are, on the whole. very decent peo-
pie, and we have thing or two to be proud
Of Nevertheless, to quote the homely
proverb, he is a wise child who can teach his
grandmother to suck eggs. And we are not
so wise as that. Our old mother England.
over on her little island, is still long way
ahead of us in more matters than the detail
Of age.
The American delegates to the Congrega-
tional Council that was held q few months
ago in London. were amazed at the speeches
of their English brethren. They found that
theology in this country is 20 years behind
the times. Dr. Munger says that the Ameri-
can parsons discovered that the English
Congregationalists have so far parted with
Calvinism that they have no interest in it,
and that Biblical criticism with them Is so
purely a matter of scientific investigation
and common sense, that to denounce it is to
denounce reading and writing and grammar
and history. They found that religious
thinkers in England have left away in the
background that selfish idea of Christianity
which still holds here-that the purpose of
the Christian is to save his own soul. ana
that the Church is a spiritual emigration
society to get men to abandon earth and
pack up their possessions in readiness for
heaven-and that ethical Christianity, civic
Christianity, social Christianity, the idea
that we are all brothers. and that we all
have duties to society and to the State, has
got possession of all hearts.
The most progressive nation to-day, in the
realm of theological thought, is not Amer
lea, but England.
Behind England in Se1f-Government.
BUT it was not of theology that was
thinking when I said that we are a back
ward people. I had in mind a more surpris-
ing backwardness than that. We are fifty
years behind our English brethren in prac
tical politics.
This, it must be confessed, is an interest
ing condition of things. The land of the free
and the home of the brave needs to take
lessons of effete monarchies in the problem
of self-government! In our own particular
speciality we are out-distanced by the sub
jects of the Queen.
This is most apparent in municipal affairs.
The worst governed cities on the face of the
earth are to be found between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. and between the Great
Lakes and the GULF That is, perhaps,
sweeping statement In Africa, in Turkey,
in Russia, in South America, there may be
conditions equally disgraceful. But within
the pale of Chr1stendom and decent civilixa-
tion, there is nothing to compare with the
sellshness, the Incompetence, the avarice,
the injustice, the corruption of the average
city government.
Dr. Parkhurst said the other day that an
officer in an important business was re-
moved recently, because, though innocent,
there had been scandal connected with his
name; and then he compared with that the
condition Of things in the largest city of this
country, where, he said. the most damning
thing that could be done against a consider
able proportion of its public officers would
be to publish the simple, frank and detailed
history of their past lives
An American Political Blunder.
THE best governed cities that are in
habited by English-speaking people are in
England. We are in the Middle Ages COM
pared with them. There is as much differ
ence in civilization between Birmingham
and-let US get a good way off, say-San
Francisco, as there is between the English
village of to-day and the English village of
the time when the baron's house stood at
one end of the main street and the priests
house at the other, with the gibbet ana the
stocks between.
All this bad business which is coming to
the light just here in Allegheny is as moth
ing compared with the other worse business
that will never see the light at all. The
whole scheme by which municipal politics
are made a part of national politics is
blunder from the beginning to the end. 1t
is q wonder that with such q FOOLS way of
providing ourselves with public servants we
are as well served as we are A man might
as we'll expect to be successful in his bus
iness who should permit all his foremen and
skilled workmen to be turned out every
three or four years because they CHANGED to
hold with certain political party. What is
needed in the American city is not a lot of
Republicans or a lot of Democrats, but a
company of efficient officers who shall be
chosen for their efficiency, and dismissed for
ineff1ciency. The political opinions of the
officers of the city of Pittsburg have no
more to do with their ability to give us a
well-gove verned city than their opinions about
the Westminster Confession of Faith, or
about the chemical components of the fixed