The San Francisco call., 1910-06-15
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES

conflicts the world has ever known.
1t has challenged not only the admira-
ton Of the world, but has enforced imi-
civilized races of men abide. 1t still
serves our purposes, still distinguishes
us among the nations of the earth.
Nobody claims for our constitution
the merit of Utopian completeness, but
wise men see that it has not yet
reached the limits of its possibilities.
or attained the full measure of what
it holds of social and political advan-.
tage. The advancing years have made
manifest its working efficiency; the
strains of time and circumstances have
strength. Gladstone's characterization
of it a S the greatest work ever struck
off, a. any one time, by the mind and
purpose of man" remains as true to-
day as when 1t was spoken.
NO RULE FRAMED
AS rational men and women you
must recognize that perfection is not
to be looked for in human institutions.
No general rule of society was ever
yet framed, however saIutary in the
main, that would not work hardship
In particular cases, and no political in
stitution will ever be devised through
human ingenuity that will not exhibit
defects in the course of its operations.
And while this knowledge ought not
to deter us from laboring necessarily
for the betterment of our laws and in
the danger of revolutionary changes.
Almost invariably such proposals are
found to be false lights, with new col
ors, perhaps, but not essentially dis
similar from those which precipitancy
or quackery are forever holding before
the eyes of discomfort and credulity
It is not difficult to account for the
attention which well meaning but un-
critical people give to loudly heralded
short cuts TO political perfection. That
there are those who turn to the sup
n to-,
and even in the face of repeated dis
appointment, is a mark of that aspira-
ton which pervades the American
character. But aspiration-eve moral
spiration-uninstruc by knowledge,
unregulated by judgment, may in the
sphere of constructive politics work in
finite mischief. Those who proceed
under its impulses, greedily clutching
al everything that offers or appears to
offer relief from the shortcomings of
our system, may be compared to the
Tor a patent nostrum that may mask
the symptoms of his disease even while
augmenting its real virulence.
observation has convinced me that
those who lightly propose notifications
in the fundamental structures of our
government have no true comprehen-
sion of the force and meaning of their
proposals. Those who SO ardently urge
these revolutionary notifications do
not understand that they would surely
nuIlify and destroy representative gov
sider-in the limitations of their knowl-
edge they do not understand-that the
principle of pure democracy, which
they would substitute for the repre-
sentative principle, is a thing filched
from the scrapheap of past times and
discredited systems, device many
times used and as often discarded as
wanting in the elements essential to
permanent or stable government.
GUARD CONSTITUTION
1t is for you to whom l speak today.
educated men and women. to examine
all proposals of political change, in the
light OF knowledge and under the guild
ance of judgment. and to appraise each
at its true value. 1t is for You to
recognize and to expose fallacies which
10 caution and restrain those who
would rush blindly into the field of
political experimentation, to instruct
the uninformed and the thoughtless
that ina our our constitution affords in itself
the best and surest means of con-
structive and wholesome change. 1t is
for you to insist that such changes as
we make shall harmonic with and
sustain the integrity of our political
fabric. In brief it is for you, edu-
Gated men and women, to guard our
system against the proposals of a
reckless innovation which would
cheaper it to a scheme of inconsis-
tencies, and which would debase our
noble constitution to thing of shreds
and patches.
l am sure that L make no mistake
when / appeal with confidence to men
and women of instructed and trained
minds. when appeal to conscience al
lied with intelligence, on the score of
its high and special responsibilities to
cherish that which has come down to us
from the fathers of the republic, that
which has sustained us in a progress
unparalleled in the records of man.
kind.