The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-13
ESTATES Vs. THE NATION
Too Much Talk of Rights and Too Little About Re
 responsibilities.

to the distorted theory of states rights, so long will the evils which Roosevelt, Beveridge and others are striving to correct, remain" Those persons who are clinging "blindly"
 and "fatuously' to a distorted theory of state rights may pick up the chal- ienge and make the best fight they can. It is well, however for all those
 who care to consider the subject with
 reason and with candor that there may be theories of state rights which
 are not distorted" and to which l blindness and fatuousness of attach ment are not common. We think there is far too much talk about state
 rights" on one side and on the other,
 and not half enough about state re- responsibilities, particularly in the light l that state responsibilities are not the obligations of some vague and far-off
 entity, but the responsibilities of the people, and of the individual people.
 For example, we find a New England
 exchange, which discourses as if 1t had
 brief for the nation in the suit of Nation vs. State, declaring that If the
 states are to enjoy the respect they
 once had they must prove more eff
 fcient than they have in dealing with
 the problems of the day" We should | like to ask what this newspaper means i by the states, and by the respect which
 the states once had. What does 1t un-
 derstand by the states? Certain tracts
 of land, marked off by boundary posts i ,4,,i, l1 oofd Of land nd
 divided into sections which are called
 counties and cities and towns? Or does
 it means the people who live within that area, and who by their votes and
 their acts and their daily lives deter
 mine principles and policies of govern ment? Because if the latter meaning is
 adopted--and we do not see how any
 other meaning can bethe charge is
 reduced to an accusa ton that the peo- pie are lacking in efficiency to correct evils, and even in a desire for correc- | tion That is about what most of the criticism of the states, in this contro- versy over state rights and powers and
 national rights and powers amount to. And logical following out of the con- 1 tention is in the absurdity that while the people in their capacity as mem bers of the states cannot be trusted to correct wrongs, in their capacity as members of the nation they will be ac- tive, alert, vigorous and successful in the very same task. All this fallacy,
 we think, comes out of the continual l insistence on rights" and continual | ignoring of the far more important fact that responsibilities are vital, and that both state and national responsi-
 bilities in the last analysis mean in dIvidual responsibilities. If the people
 of a state, or of 20 states, face to face with an abuse, do not reform it. or at l least sincerely try to reform it, we can see no reason whatever to suppose that l they will be any more eager or any more efficient as the people of nation. As to precisely what affairs the state organizations of the people shall ad-
 minister and precisely what affairs the national administration shall adminis- ], ter, we do not see that there is need
 of an emotional cult on either side. The l practical view is that which was taken
 by the founders of the government, that some things can be better done by
 the people as towns; some by the peo- pie as counties; some by the people
 as states, and some by the people as a nation. They devised working scheme
 which seemed to them in their time best Naturally, changed conditions
 must involve changes In the scheme; but no scheme is sacred, and no mere scheme has the right to be elevated in-
 to dogma, to be supported by rhetor- l ical fulminations. This is true, even of l those contestants who range them 1 selves as champions of the state or the nation respectively. State and nation
 are only meehanisms through which
 the people express their will But hav- 1 ing the power to express their will 1 through these organizations, the re- suits of this expression are determined,
 not by their rights, but by the manner in which they exercise their responsi- bilities. We do not believe they can sh!rk or misuse their responsibilities in the states and at the same time be l true to their obligations in the nation. New Bedford Standard.