St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-01-12
PATTERN lHnUsTRATED.

ing, and, at rare intervals, instructive.
In the interview which he kindly pre-
pared for the papers in this case he is.
as usual, interesting; and, to the extent
to which he reveals his conception of
paternallsm III government, lie is in
structive. Mr.. Donnelly has been
more or less interesting parsonage to the
people OF the state for good many
years. Probably there is no man in
the state Of whom such vari-
ETY. of opinions is held. These
range from those which impute to
HIM the disinterestadness OF the phil
anthropist and the wisdom of the states
man down through the various grades
to those which assign him to the rank
of demagogue craving notorlety. with Il
natural bias i'll favor of the sensational.
We confess to have halted for a long
while between the doubt as to whether
Mr.. Donnelly was politician because
he was philnnthropist, or was phil
anthropist because he was politician:
and, while the doubt is not entirely re-
moved. we are inclined to think that he.
belongs to that class which make up
the larger portion of paternaliSts, whose
warm sympathies are readily ignited by
any tale of wrong, and who believe that
a universal panacea for all the ills that
society is heir to Is simply a 'be it en-
acted"
ANY familiarity with that class Of our
fellow beings who are constantly call
ing upon the government to redress
,uronur raoI mr. imnuinorv divides than
readily into two classes. One-and this
the smaller class-whose purposes are
purely selfish. who look upon govern
ments as implements for jobbery, and
who are reformerS for revenue only.
In this class fall all those people who
cultivate popular preludiceS against the
foreigners and the products of their
handicraft, With view to their whole
or partial exclusion by the imposition
of a tax on them. hoping thereby to in.
sure for themselves a larger profit OH.
their own products. Others of them are
those who labor to convince Legislators
that sundry of the pursuits for their
fellow men need inspecting and regu-
lating, expecting themselves to do the
inspecting and regulating, with min
imum of labor and maximum of salary.
But by far the larger part of this Gle
ment of our citiZenry are unSeifish senti-
mentalists, the Don QuiXotes of pater
nalism. The Sympathies of these good
people are always bubbling over for
the oppressed and downtrodden and
wronged. Their anger IS quick to flame
at the oppressor; their imaginations are
agile in the creation of social dragons
like the money power,o which feed and
gIut and batten on the miSerieS and
mlsfortunes of men. Impatient of the
slow processes by which nature and
natures creator are content to work
out the great problem of humanity; lg-
noring the inevitableneSS of the con-
ditions in which they live; failing to see
that they are the result of human agen-
cies, and that any betterment can only
come from the Improvement OF the NOR
ais of men, they would use as the sole
agency of reformation the laW-making
power of the state. In this class of pa
ternalists we are inclined to place Mr..
Donnelly.
We are not, therefore, surprised to
find that the Sage can see no difference
between the relations of the state to the
farmers and those of the state to its
paupers. its detectives, its insane, and
its other unfortunates who, through
some misfortune, have become incapable
of caring for themselves. 10 him all
classes of citizens are alike. The state
stands ever to all its citizens in loco
PARENTS. 1t is the father with the
strong arm, quick to WELD the rod or
apply the shingle, who guides the steps
of his children with constant Musts and
Shalls. and Must Nots and Shall Nots,
and is obdurate in the belief that, unless
he did so, the children would go at a
killing pace to the bad. 1t is one of
those fathers to whom his children are
always children, who never grow to
be men and women capable of self
reliant action; father, withal, endowed
with that wisdom approaching omnis-
cience, which knows Invariably what is
best for each and all of his children.
1t is this inability to discern the differ
ence i'll the one case between caring for
those whom misfortune has rendered in
capable of self-help and caring for those
capable of helping themselves, and in
the other the difference between regu-
lating business and engaging in it-th1s
failure to see the vital difference OF
things-that marks the paternaIist of the
sentimental school. To Mr.. Donnellv
the farmer, preyed on by the elevator
and other rings, classes with the person
whose reason is unthroned, or the child
born with defective powers of body OF
mind. They are equally proper objects
for the Solicltous care of the state.
There is in all this an idsaliZation OF
the state which will not bear scrutiny
or analysis. 1t assumes many things
that do not exist; it assumes primarily
a wisdom in state legislators which no
person in his senses would concede
them. 1t assumes breadth of view
which takes in the whole social organi-
cation of state, and sees with accurate
eye the relations Of part with part. But
| most egregiouS contamination Of all, il
assumes that when this impossible wis
dom has expressed itself in some meas
ure its ''be it enacted" is equal in effect
| iveness to that command which spoke
to chaos, "Let there be light" III
Another popularity of the sentiment.
alist Is that he learns nothing by expert
ence. He posters legislatures into the
| enactment of some panacea for some
ailment of our social body and passes on
to the pursuit Of another i'll and the an
plication of another plaster, serenely
confident that the measure enacted ha.
relieved society OF one of its evils, and
either btissfully ignorant OF compla
Gently Indifferent to the fact that he llas
but added one more to the dead letter
laws which cumber the statute books oil
states and nations.
A list of the paternalistic laws of thi;
state which slumber undisturbed among
its several compilations, which fell into
| innocuous desuetude at their very BIRTH
and whose existence is unknown or for.
gotten would he an Obiaat Lesson In tho