good neighbors, one to another, in business and in social life; that we should each do his or her primary duty in the home without neglecting the duty to the State; that we should dwell even more on our duties than on our rights; that we should work hard and faithfully; that we should prize intelligence, but prize courage and honesty and cleanliness even more. Inefficiency is a curse; and no good intention atones for weakness of will and flabbiness of moral, mental, and

physical fiber; yet it is also true that no intellectual cleverness, no ability to achieve material prosperity, can atone for the lack of the great moral qualities which are the surest foundation of national might. In this great free democracy, more than in any other nation under the sun, it behooves all the people so to bear themselves that, not with their lips only but in their lives, they shall show their fealty to the great truth pronounced of old-the truth that Righteousness exalteth a nation.

I

N November, 1909, three hundred miners were entombed in a mine at Cherry, near Spring Valley, Illinois, for a week. The living were here imprisoned with the dead. At the end of that time twenty-two miners were rescued alive. They had kept themselves free from the fatal gas by building a barricade. Saved from death by suffocation, they were threatened with death by thirst. Two of these men, self-constituted leaders by virtue of their character, gave orders for the protection of the little community. They directed that the three members of the party who were sick should have the first chance at the little pools of water that were in the depressions that had been scooped out of the veins of coal. Against these orders some of the men revolted, and one was discovered stealing water from one of the sick miners. was seized by the guard whom the selfconstituted leaders had appointed and, after a struggle, was felled to the ground and made a prisoner.

He

'These articles are based on and in part condensed from a series of lectures on "The Spirit of Democracy "delivered by the author on consecutive Sunday afternoons before the Brooklyn (New York) Instítute in January and February, 1910.

Such is always the origin of government. For the protection of the community some man, or some body of men, exercises control, to which usually the majority yield willing obedience, and, if the government is successful, the minority an unwilling obedience. This government is always based upon power. A command is not a command unless there is power to enforce it. Without such power it is only advice. When one man, or a group of men, gets such control in a community that he or they can make the rest obey their commands, there is the beginning of government; and all governments in the history of the world have begun in this way. Parental government is no exception to this fundamental principle. In the well-ordered family the child obeys the requirements of his parents because they are his parents and have a right to demand submission to their authority, as in a well-ordered State the citizens obey the government because it is the government and has a right to demand their submission to its authority.

This government may be that of one strong man ruling over the rest, in which case it is an autocracy; it may be a small body of men, or class of

men, ruling over the rest, then it is an oligarchy; it may be the many ruling over the rest, then it is a democracy. But it is not a government at all unless the ruler, be he one, few, or many, has a recognized authority to issue commands and power to enforce obedience to them. This power may be that of an armed force; then the government is a military government. It may be a traditional or inherited power exercised by a class and resting upon tradition; then it is an hereditary aristocracy. It may be that of a selected body of office-holders intrusted by long custom with practically irresponsible power; then it is a bureaucracy. It may be the power of concentrated wealth exercised through political forms that may be either monarchic, oligarchic, aristocratic, or democratic; then, whatever the political forms, the government is a plutocracy. To these historic forms of government our fathers attempted to add anotherself-government. It was founded upon three fundamental principles, the truth of which was tacitly assumed rather than explicitly expressed. They were:

First, that the mass of men are better able to govern themselves than the few are to govern them; that the perils from the ignorance of the governed are less than the perils from the selfishness of the governors.

Second, that therefore men should be left free to manage their own affairs, and only their own affairs; that therefore each man should govern himself in respect to those things that concern only himself, and each community should govern itself in those things which concern only itself. Hence grew up local self-government and the Federal system: the town government for the town, the municipal government for the city, the county government for the county, the State government for the State, and, finally, the Federal Government for those National interests which concern the people of all the towns, cities, counties, and States. Hence the provision of the Constitution that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, cr to the people." "

1

1 It is true that this is a subsequent Amendment to the Constitution, but there is no doubt that it expresses the spirit of the original document, and of those who framed that document.

Third, that men are not born able to govern themselves as fish are to swim or birds are to fly, but that all men have a dormant capacity for self-government; that they must be, and they can be, educated; hence the public school system.

Thus was the new Nation born, inspired by a new ideal and founded on a new political faith-faith in humanity.

But it needed education in a school of conflict. The Declaration of Independence was deemed, both in the South and in the North, to be applicable only to the white race. Slavery, which both in the South and in the North our fathers expected would gradually disappear, grew with our growth and strengthened with our strength. It created in the South what may be called a feudal democracy, a type of aristocracy existing under democratic forms. The war between the two ideals of political life, the Southern and the Northern, established for the Republic two principles: first, the doctrine that all governments exist for the benefit of the governed is as applicable to the government of the negro as to the government of the white man; second, a government founded on self-government is not weak but strong

strong enough to meet successfully what was perhaps the greatest revolt against government which the world has ever seen. This war at home was followed by one between autocracy and democracy, between the Land of the Inquisition and the Land of the Public School. As the Confederates had established the power of the Federal Government within the borders of the Republic, so the Spanish War established the power of the Federated Republic among the governments of the world. If it did not make the Republic a world power, it at least won for that world power a world recognition.

Meanwhile, the country has grown with unprecedented growth in territory from thirteen feeble colonies along the Atlantic coast to a Republic overspreading half a continent; in population from three or four millions to ninety millions; in wealth from poverty to one of the richest communities in the world. Its educational equipment includes a public school system which is certainly the largest, and, unless Germany be an exception, the best in Christendom, supplemented by private schools,

colleges, universities, and professional schools not surpassed by any in the world; its material equipment of railway, telegraph, telephone, and the like, puts it among the foremost nations in the march of human progress; its moral ideals, exemplified in its various social and educational reforms, and in its free institutions of religion, prove the self-educative value of self-government; and its international influence is seen in the effect of its ideals and institutions upon other lands, which have adopted since the birth of America its representative houses of legislature, its popular suffrage, its public schools, its free assemblies, and its free press.

Meanwhile, this ideal of self-government has been undergoing a change which is none the less revolutionary because it has been growth, and hence unconscious; a change from a government of self-governing individuals into a selfgoverning community. We have learned that the interest of the whole is more than the sum of the interests of all the individuals; and that the interests of all individuals can be secured only by their common recognition of the interest of the whole. Some of the changes which have taken place in my own lifetime may serve to illustrate this peaceful revolution.

The private penny posts which were once operated in some of our great cities exist no longer; all epistolary communication between the members of this great community are conveyed for them by their Federal Government. The banking, which was at first a purely private enterprise, is a purely private enterprise no longer; as one great financier once said to me, "the United States is the greatest banking concern in the world ;" and all so-called private banks are so brought into affiliation with the United States Government and under its regulation and control that the whole banking system possesses a real, though not a strictly organic, unity. Our highways, because of the invention of steam and railways, are no longer open highways on which each man is free to travel when and as he will, but are great enterprises carried on by combinations、 between labor and capital, and now under Government control, which, there is reason to believe, will make sure that their

operation shall be for the equal benefit of the entire community. The public school system has not only extended over the whole Nation, as it did not at first, but has undertaken all forms of education from the kindergarten to the university, and is accompanied by public libraries in practically all centers of population. The public health is seen to be something more than the health of individuals, or, at least, it is seen that the health of individuals cannot be secured by individualistic enterprise. We have, therefore, Health Boards, beginning in our great cities, extending throughout our States, and now, unless I am greatly mistaken, soon to be organized in a bureau of the Federal Government, for the purpose of compelling obedience to sanitary law and stamping out epidemics. Even our amusements and recreations are made a public concern, and in our cities, towns, and even smaller villages park sare provided, playgrounds for the children, and bands of music for the summer evenings. In some cases these are provided by political organizations, in others by voluntary organization, but in either case by a common and cooperative effort.

These changes have been accompanied by another change. The increasing complexity of modern civilization forces upon us, whether we will or no, an increasing complexity in our government. The prime function of government is to protect persons and property, and the four fundamental rights of persons and property have never been better defined than in the four moral laws of the Ten Commandments Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness. The enforcement of these laws in a modern community with the heterogeneous population which America contains means something very different from the enforcement of these laws in the wilderness, where they were first proclaimed.

The law, Thou shalt not kill, means not only adequate protection of the individual from the assassin or the mob, and of the free laborer from the pistol, the dynamite, or the savage blow of the striking laborer or his ally; it means supervision by the Government of our food supplies to prevent adulterations perilous to health;

protection of the life of little children from the greed which sends them into life-destroying industries; protection of the wives and mothers from insistent demands of industry which destroy their motherhood and rob their children and their husbands of their care and companionship; from the peril to life involved in tenement-house sweat-shops; from the corrupting of our water supply by turning our rivers into open sewers; from the carelessness of railway management, which in one year destroyed more lives in America than were destroyed in the Russian army by the Battle of Mukden, the greatest battle of modern times; and from the reckless driving of automobiles, of whose death-list there is no census. Malice slays our hundreds, greed our thousands, carelessness our tens of thousands. It is the duty of a competent and efficient government to save life from all three of these assassins. The law, Thou shalt not commit adultery, is not adequately enforced by setting husband or wife free from the marital relation when its law is violated. What havoc in human health, what evils inflicted upon innocent women and children, are due to the violation of this law physicians have long known, and the public is beginning to know. Monsters in human form, such as the grotesque fancies of a Dickens or a Shakespeare creating a Quilp or a Caliban have never equaled, exist in American society, carrying on a white slave trade so horrible in its details that reputable men and women have been unable to believe that it could be true. Nor will our Government, Federal or State, have fulfilled its duty in the enforcement of this primitive legislation, Thou shalt not commit adultery, until our legislators realize, as they have not in the past, how openly it is violated and how great is the almost epidemic evil which such violations inflict upon the Nation.

Thou shalt not steal, means thou shalt not take from thy neighbor without giving him a just equivalent; it means protection of the ignorant from the wiles of the professional gambler; protection of the innocent and helpless stockholder from the chicanery of the stock gambler; protection of the insured and of the bank depositor from the tricks and devices of the dishonest financier; protection of the

owners from the schemes of the railway wrecker; and the protection of the public interest in the public property from the shrewd devices of men who are eager to acquire wealth without the labor of producing it.

The law, Thou shalt not bear false witness, means prosecution and punishment of the press which violates this law, whether it does so with malicious intent or from mere careless money-making greed. The freedom of the press no more means freedom to do what one likes with his pen than freedom of action means that one may do what he likes with his hand. If I put my hand into my neighbor's pocket and abstract his purse, I am presently carried off to the police station, because I have violated my neighbor's right of property; if I use my pen to vilify my neighbor, or, with absolute carelessness of his rights and my obligations, print untrue and sensational gossip about him, I ought to go into the same prisonhouse and occupy the same cell with him who has robbed his neighbor of his purse. A newspaper has no more right to despoil one of his reputation than a thief has a right to despoil one of his property. The robber of reputation is the more despicable criminal of the two. Freedom of the press means that the newspaper may print what it will without submitting beforehand its matter to a governmental censor. It does not mean that it may print what it will without being responsible afterwards for its falsehoods if it prints what is not true.

Thus in two ways the function of government has greatly increased within the last century. It has increased because the elementary rights of men are more complex in our complex civilization, and the laws for their protection must therefore be more complex. It has also increased because we have discovered that many of our fundamental rights, such as our right to go from one part to another of our Republic, our right to be preserved from the contagious disease of a careless neighbor, our right to have our children protected from the corrupting influence of seductive vice, our right to have them given such education as will give them a fair opportunity for a useful and happy life, can be protected only by competent

ment.

and co-operative action through governBoth causes have contributed to our growing realization of the truth that a self-governing community is something very different from a community of selfgoverning individuals.

Many in our times look with apprehension upon this rapid extension of the function and powers of government. We are departing, they say, from the traditions of our fathers; and they are right. We are compelled to depart from the traditions of our fathers. They traveled in stage-coaches, we travel in Pullman cars; they communicated by mail, we increasingly communicate by telegraph and telephone; they used coin as a medium of exchange, or bank bills at their own risk, we use bank bills without any risk; they suffered from devastating epidemics, we are protecting ourselves from devastating epidemics by governmental regulation; they burned candles or whale oil, we illuminate our houses by kerosene or electricity; they had few books and poor schools, we have excellent schools and public libraries. Life in the twentieth century is very different from life in the eighteenth; government in the twentieth century must be very different from government in the eighteenth. It must be either more extensive in its function and operation, or far less effective in its protection of human rights and its enforcement of human duties.

The notion that a complex and extended government is inconsistent with freedom grows out of the notion that freedom is exemption from law; that liberty and independence are synonymous. But freedom and independence are not synonymous, and freedom is not exemption from law. Leonard Bacon, in his "Pilgrim Hymn," thus describes the cargo the Pilgrims brought with them:

"Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God

Came with these exiles o'er the waves." Laws! Freedom! Can these live in the same ship? Can these flourish in the same community? What do we mean by law?

Austin, the famous writer on English law, has defined law as the edict of a superior who has the power to enforce his will by penalty, a power which confers on him his authority, and creates

in the subject a duty or obligation of obedience.1

It is true that power to enforce law is necessary to law; but more is necessary; the possession of power does not of itself confer authority or create duty. Authority is rightful or just power, and something more than the mere possession of power. is necessary to give the possessor a right to command or create in the subject a duty of obedience. If the law is an unjust law, disobedience may become duty. King Darius had power to enforce by decree his command, but the plain duty of Daniel was to disobey. The Italian bandit has power to command his prisoners, but he has no just authority over them. If law is simply an edict issued by one who has power to enforce obedience by penalty, then law and liberty are inconsistent. The Puritans in their revolt against the Stuarts no less than the French in their revolt against the Bourbons refused such submission. But the Puritans were not a lawless folk; they put an unaccustomed emphasis on the sacredness of law.

I venture, to offer my own definition of law, without, however, claiming for it any originality. It is Hebraic in its origin, although it is not formally stated, so far as I recall, in Hebrew literature. But it underlies the conception of law embodied in the Old Testament Scriptures. A striking illustration of it is afforded by the Nineteenth Psalm, which many Biblical scholars regard as two different psalms put together by some editor. I hesitate to dissent from them,

"A command is an order issued by a superior to an inferior. It is a signification of desire distinguished by this peculiarity, that the 'party to whom it is directed is liable to evil from the other, in case he comply not with the desire.' 'If you are able and willing to harm me in case I comply not with your wish, the expression of your wish amounts to a command. Being liable to evil in case I comply not with the wish which you signify, I am bound or obliged by it, or I lie under a duty to obey it. The evil is called a sanction, and the command or duty is said to be sanctioned by the chance of incurring the evil. The three terms command, duty, and sanction are thus inseparably connected. As Austin expresses it in the language of formal logic, each of the three terms signifies the same notion, but each denotes a different part of that notion, and connotes the residue.'"-Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XIV, p. 356.

Charles Augustus Briggs, LL.D., "Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms," Vol. I, p. 162. "Psalm 19 is composed of two originally separate poems: (a) a morning hymn, praising the glory of 'El in the heavens (v. 2-5b) and glorious movements of the sun (v. 5c-7); (b) a didactic poem, describing the excellence of the Law (v. 8-11), with a petition for absolution, restraint from sin, and acceptance in worship (v. 12-15). "