The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-08

bers of the committee on ways and
 means Here the statesman and prac-
 tical reformer must have actua, leader
 ship. With the true prophets and sons
 of God come in numerous followers of
 the devils of laziness and intemperance,
 sentimentalists, enthusiasts, cranks,
 men who have failed to make a living
 for themselves, but can tell the world
 how to be successful, loud-voiced and
 scolding women, lunatics and semi-lu-
 naties-all declaiming against the
 wealthy, but deeply desirous of wealth
 themselves and laboring not as much
 as the aristocrats they denounce Cau-
 ton is necessary. Clergymen, teachers,
 philanthropiSts, men of leisure, educa-
 ted women, who hail the message of so-
 cialism as heaven-sent, should pause
 awhile and consider the duty incumbent
 upon them. All must account before
 the bar of reason for the use they make
 of their freedom of mind tongue or pen.
 It is sad that a liberal education in this
 country should leave most of the grad
 uates of high school and college so ig-
 norant of the elements of political and
 economic science that the first clever | TOlIldHCGI, llhG MI. bGlldIlly Ol
 Backward fame, should captivate their
 minds A truer thinker on fiction is he
 who made the Peoples Palace in East
 London possibility; or Mrs Ward
 who makes David Grieve say Social
 ism as system strikes down and weak
 ems the most precious thing in the word that on which the whole of civil ized life and progress rests-the spring of will and conscience in the individual. As a modern dogmatism it is like other dogmatisms. Emerson asserts the worth of the individual in contrast with the worship of the majority which cul- inmates in socialism. We need vastly more careful treatment of these great questions than novelists and essayists have hitherto supplied.
 But it is time to consider the authors estimate of the American spirit itself and then to apply the analysis to the two tendencies of individualism and so- cialsm He acknowledges the greater difficulty of describing-not Greece or Rome, whose career is ended, whose record is in our hands--but people of | modern times and the complexity of | developed civilization One who tries to 1 portray his fellow -countrymen will en- l deavor to free himself from the partial 1 ity of the patriot or the bitterness of the | censor and correct his temptation to eu- l logy of fault-finding by the opinions of l enlightened foreigners who have care- fully studied these states-of such men l as De Jocqueville Won Hoist and Bryce. Socialism is question of to-day and | not of yesterday, and the American who | ;e, ta ;e 1,a nf o l free from the reproach of slavery
 through tremendous civil war that | deepened and purified the national con-
 seriousness. The query will be at once raised whether one can properly speak of an American spirit in a population including so many millions of other na- | tionalities and scattered over a territo- ry so immense, with notable local diff
 ferences of habit and temper. But, de- l spite every admixture the master-force in I American civilization is the Anglo Sax 1 on spirit derived from our English fore | fathers, who coloniZed the new world. Still the American has been made, by l climate, freedom, remoteneSs from Eu- I ropean influences, a different type, in- 1 tellectually and morally, from the mod | ern Englishman. The various access
 sions to our population come here not to l transform, but by the influence of our I free schools newspapers, literature, the l circulation of population, extension of l political rights and responsibilities, to l be transformed and fused There is a 1 Greater New England in morals, educa- l ton, tradition and spirit in the Middle 1 and Western states, and even on the Pacific slope. The Pilgrims and Puri- .tans exercise still the controlling power in American history.
 The first characteristic noted of the American spirit is the love of personal | liberty. This is liberty not after the order of Rousseau and the advocates of I the natural rights of man. The French school left it's impression on our Decla- l ration of Independence, but the Consti-
 tuition is the supreme law or our land.
 and the Declaration must be interpreted
 in the light of the Constitution. Liber- ty, Equality and Fraternity-the watch
 words of the French. are accepted here | with due definition. The American
 takes a practical view of liberty. He
 was born in it and takes it for granted. Heisless disposed to talk rapturously of | equality. When reminded that all men are created equal he has too much re- spect for the obvious facts of life to | suppose that this equality is an equality in natural ability or in moral character, or in respect to property and social po-
 sition to be enforced by law. Mans I equality is an equal chance with all others of life and its possibilities of lib- erty and it's safeguards and of the pur- suit of happiness. As Emerson said
 America is only another name for op- portunity." It is not happiness but 1 justice which the fathers of the repub- |