The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1912-04-16

are shot through with emotion and
the passion that comes with strength
and growth and self confidence. We
live in a new and strange age and
reckon with new affairs in economics
and politics of which jefferson knew
nothing.
And, yet, we may remind ourselves
that Jeffersons mind did not move in
world of narrow circumstances; it
did not confine itself to the conditions
OF single race or single continent.
It had commerce with the thought of
men old and new; it had moved in an
age of ample air, in which men
thought not only of nations but of
mankind, in (which they saw not only
individual policies but a great field of
human need and of human fortune.
Neither did he think in abstract terms
as did the men with whom he had had
such stimulating commerce of thought
uation, it was the large generaliza-
ton that comes from actual observa-
ton and experience. He had had
contact with plain men of many kinds
rs well as with philosophers and for
eign statesmen. He thought in way
that his neighbors in Virginia could
understand, in way which il
animated their own lives and am
ttions for them And though he was
deemed a philosopher he vas never
theless the idol of the people for he
somehow heard and voiced what they
themselves could have said. and pur-
posed and conceived. For all the
'argoness of his thought it was bath
ed in an everyday atmosphere: it be-
longs to the actual, workadav world;
/, has its feet firmly on circumstances
and fact and the footing all men are
accustomed to who reflect at all on
their lives and the lives of their
neighbors and compatriots. He was
iolding up for the Illumination of the
things of Which he spoke a light which
lie had received out of the hands of
old philosophers. But the rays of that
light as he held it fell upon actual
American life they did not lose them
selves vaguely in space: they were for
the guidance of mems feet every day
I'VE may be sure, therefore. that
would have acted upon the facts as
they are. In the first place, because
he would have seen them as they ac-
tually are, and in the second place
because he would have been interest
ed in theory as he could adjust it to
the reality of the life about him. He
would not have been content with a
philosophy which he could fit togeth-
err only within the walls of his study.
ITO determine what Jefferson would
have done, therefore, requires only
that we should ourselves clearly see
whether in the field of government or
in the field of our economic life and
that we should see how Jefferson's
principle of the rule and authority of
the people stands related to those
facts. We are constantly quoting JEFF
ferson's fundamental thought; it was
that no policy could last whose foum.
datiOn is narrow, based upon the
privileges and authority of a few but
that its foundations must be as broad
as the interests of all the men and
families and neighborhoods that live
under it. Monopoly, private control,
the authority of privilege, the CON
cealed mastery of a few men cunning
enough to rule without showing their
poWer-he would have at once pro-
nGunced the rank weeds which were
sure to choke out all wholesome life
in the fair garden of affairs. If we
can detect these things in our time
If We can see them and describe them
as they are, then we know what JEFF
rorson would have done. He would
have moved against them, sometimes
directly, sometimes indirectly, some
times openly, sometimes subtly; but
whether he merely mined about them,
or struck directly at them, he would
have set systematic war against them
at the front of all his purpose
"As regards the real influences that
control our government, he would
have asked first of all; are they de-
| termined by the direct and open con-
facts of opinion? He would have found
that they were not; that, on the con-
trary, our government as it has de-