The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-10-19

featuring company, as if the latter set
forth in any true sense or manner the
former, has been rejected as utterly I'M
worthy and inadequate by the most
careful and scholarly thinkers of all
lands. Witness the names of the high
est authorities in political science in
America, England, France and Ger
many, such as Franklin, Story, Webster,
Chancellor, Kent, Prof. Lewis, Woolsey
and Lieber, milford, Milton, Burke,
Vattel, Martens, Cousin, Klueber,
Heffter, Won Mohl, Rothe, Frendelen-
burg, Bluntschli, Dorner and Stahl, not
to mention hosts of Others
What the State. in Fact, Does.
more important to this discussion
than the works of the array of writ
ers, important and authoritative as
they are, is what the state actually
does, and not merely what it may do.
The state under the authority of
which we live does claim and exercise
sovereign power. 1T acknowledges no
superior on earth. 1t is amenable to
no higher earthly authority, practical
ly denies any such subsection. 1t is
continually acting as the sovereign ar
bitrator of the lives of citizens and
subjects. It is constantly exercising
power of life and death, in the
pains and penalties it sees fit to in
f,ict. 1t recognizes no earthly limit
ing power, no human authority above
it's own. 1t charters or gives exist
ence to other collective beings: 1t
recalls their charter at pleasure and
puts an end to their existence. 1t per-
mits no rival that would claim to as
sumo any of its high prerogatives. 1t
alone is armed with the sword ard
it alone cares to use that tremendous
power to the utmost limit it's own COW
ereign VIII may choose.
What Is an Adequate Basis for Such
a Sovereign Power?
"a foundation must ever be suffi-
cient for its SuperStructure, otherwise
must come overthrow. collapse, ruin.
ing twenty to thirty stored struc-
lures Of our great cities, can not safe
ly be based on foundations sufficient
for old-time three to six-storied edi-
fees. Architects of an edifice into
which pour every. day five thousand
men regularly employed, and ten
thousand more coming and going in
the course of the days business, make
sure of a foundation deep and firm
enough for a superstructure equal to
an ordinary town. The buiIde- of the
Washington monument at our national
capital, finding the foundation insult
ficient as the work of erecting that
noble shaft progressed, wisely arrested
and undld the work of the super
structure that an adequate basis, firm
and stable enough to bear through the
ages to come the worthy memorial of
the father of his country, might be
provided Is there not grave danger
that the sovereign power of the state
claiming unlimited control over all its
citizens and subjects, and actually do
ing through succeeding genera lions
what touches and largely determines
the birth, the lives and the character
and the destiny of millions of beings,
should be superimposed upon an insult
fcient foundation?
Inadequate Foundations
Efforts have been made to found the
state with all it's powers on the So
called divine right of some man to rule
over his fellows. Such superstructures
sooner or later topple over in irretrieva-
BILE ruin. States have sought a basis in
force or might. Might has been made
the foundation of right. The despotisms
of the eastern hemisphere have been
superimposed on this sub-stratum of
brute force. They are doomed to over
throw and destruction. The darkest
outlook for the future of Russia is in
the shadow of this foundation of injus-
Christian character in the edifice placed
upon it can save it from the inevitable
doom of despotism and wrong.
The Inadequacy of Mere Majorities.
1.-The preponderance of a numerical
majority is in itself no less inadequate
than the brute force of an aristocracy
or an emperor. Human slavery,
whether proclaimed and upheld by an
imperial edict, or by the legislation of
a Democratic government enacted by an
OVERWHELMING IldJOT1ly, Is dllke a crime
against humanity and a sin against
God. The state must base its enact
mentS on something more stable and
sure than the mere will of the people,
apart from a standard of right and
wrong by which the will of the MAORI
ty is to be tried. To build the state on
this as its ultimate foundation is to
build it on the sand. The will of the
people as expressed by the majority in
truly republican and constitutional gov
eminent is the proper mode of reaching
the solid foundation of the state, but in
and of ITSELF severed from what is in
the nature of the case ultimately fun
damental it will prove in critical per-
iods of moral upheaval a Veritable
Quicksand.
"The spheres of the church and of the