The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-03-20
MACAULAY.
HIS GREAT PROPHECY.
The True and False Interpretation
of 1t.

He lOllOWlnR quotation is taken
from letter dated May %. 1867. writ
ten by Lord Macaulay to H. S. Ran
dali, LII. D., the author of Life of
Jefferson" The words certainly have
greater significance now than they
had when first published. No
thoughtful and patriotic citizen can
read them without the conviction
that something speedily must be done
by way of amending our immigration
and naturalization laws if we would
save the country from the doom that
Macaulay saw impending over us:
you are surprised to learn that I
have not high opinion of Mr.. Jeffer-
son. and am surprised at your sur
prise. l am certain that l never
wrote line, and l never, in parlia-
ment, in conversation, or even on the
hustings-a place where it is the fash
ion to court the populace-uttered
word indicating an opinion that the
supreme authority in state ought to
be intrusted to the majority of citi-
zens; in other words, to the poorest
and most ignorant part of society. 1
have long been convinced that insti-
tutions purely Democratic must soon
er or later destroy liberty, or civiliza-
tlOn, or both. In Europe, where the
population is dense, the effect Of such
institutions would be almost in
Simultaneous. You may think that
your country enjoys an exemption
from these evils. l will frankly own
to you that I am of a very different
opinion. Your fate l believe to be
certain, though it is deferred by
physical cause. AS long as you have
boundless extent Of fertile and un-
occupied land, your laboring popula-
tlon will be far more at ease than the
laboring population of the Old World,
and while this is the case, the Jeffer-
SOnlan politics may continue to exist
without causing any fatal calamity.
But the time will come when New
England will be as thickly peopled as
Old England. Wages will be as low,
and will fuctuate as much with you
as with us. You will have your Man
chesters and Birminghams, and in
those Manchesters and Birminghams
hundreds of thousands of artisans
will assuredly be sometimes out of
work. Then your institutions will be
fairly brought to the test. 1t is quite
plain that your government will never
be able to restrain distressed and
discontented majority. For with you
the majority is the government, and
has the rich, who are always minor
ity, absolutely at it's mercy. The day
will come when in the state of New
mi nd of 4
whom has had more than half a
than half a dinner, will choose leg
islature, Is it possible to doubt what
sort of legislature will be chosen?
On one side is states man preaching
patience, respect for vested rights,
strict observance of public faith. On
the other is demagogue ranting
about the tyranny of capitalists,
usurers, and asking why anybody
should be permitted to drink cham
pagne and ride in a carriage, while
thousand of honest folks are in want
of necessaries. Which of the two
candidates is likely to be preferred by
a wOrkingman who hears his children
cry for more bread? / seriously ap-
prehend that you will, in some such
season of adversely as l have de-
scribed, do things which will prevent
prosperity from returning; that you
will act like people who should in a
year of scarcity devOur all the seed
corn, and thus make the next year,
not of scarcity, but of absolute famine.
There will be, fear, spoilation. The
spoilation will increase the distress.
The distress will produce fresh spoila-
tion. There is nothing to stop you.
Your constitution is all sail and no
anchor, AS I said before, when So
progress, either civilization or liberty
must perish. Either some Caesar or
Napoleon will seize the reins of gov
ernment with a strong hand, or your
republic will be as fearfully plundered
and laid waste by barbarians in the
twentieth century as the Roman EN-
pire was in the fifth, with this differ
ence, that the Huns and Vandals who
ravaged the Roman Empire came
from without, and that your Huns and
VandalS will have been engendered
within your own country and by your
own institutions"
print the above to show what Lord
Macaulay saw nearly forty years ago
and he was student of social prob
lems-and to show the readiness Of
surface thinking writer's to misinter-
pret the plainest statements to boil
ster up the dominant idea of the
writer. The writer sees only that i'm
migration and naturalization laws
should be amended to avert the full
fillment of the prophecy, but Macau-
lay said that "our Huns and Vandals
will have been engendered within our
own country and by our institutions"
Our institutions, mind you-inst titu
tions that would create Manchesters
and Birminghams, hungry and des-
perate men and women-inStitutiOn
that would monopolize the boundless
and fertile land-then would the trOu
BILE arise. My friend is blind to the
real cause and basis of Macaulay's
predictions. He had no thought of
church, no thought of immigration
he saw that under our free license law
that shrewd and cunning men would
mOnopoliZe the land, the money, the
shops, and that in their greed to out
strip each other these capitalists
would crush the people as his class
had crushed them in England and the
continent, and that these crushed
masses had votes and votes made the
men who made the laws and that it
could have but one end, military des-
potism or purer form of democracy.
He knew that a Protestant employer
would crush his protestant laborers
just as Catholic would crush those of
biC hn1ipf Ho 1ypoxu fhot man Io