a kindred nation that has their own institutions and their own love of freedom; that show contempt for the law of nations in their reckless clamor for the recognition of insurgents that have no status as belligerents; that lust after the territory of a primitive people and applaud the conspirators that rob them of their rights; that join with others to crush the native government of harmless tribes of South Sea islanders; that hide behind the dazzling shield of "manifest destiny" colossal schemes of aggression all over the world, and prepare for them with lavish expenditures upon a powerful navy and a vast system of coast fortifications.[1] Yet it is supposed that a people thus tainted from top to bottom with the ethics of feudal barbarism may be trusted with their brother's keeping—that he can have no possible need of the kindly attention of a good Samaritan.
V.
From democracy as a form of political government no more need be expected than from any other despotism.[2] Like the government of the one and of the few, the government of the many tends to crystallize society and to thwart its growth. Every law to restrict freedom and every official appointed to enforce it are steps toward a fixity of structure that will cramp and deform social life and divest it of variety or interest.[3] Already this
- ↑ In a review of one of Captain Mahan's laudations of naval barbarism, in the Political Science Quarterly, vol. ix, p. 172, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, a brilliant representative of the spirit of modern barbarism, says: "We need to have the lesson taught again and again and yet again, that we must have a great fighting navy, in order to hold our proper position among the nations of the earth, and to do the work to which our destiny points." As though our "proper work" did not consist of strict attention to our own affairs, to the suppression of crime and the better enforcement of justice, to the reclamation of our cities from misrule and to the protection of our liberty from threatened destruction; as though "a great fighting navy" as well as a great fighting army could point to any other "destiny" than the indefinite postponement of this important work of civilization.
- ↑ M. Edmond Scherer's study of French democracy has brought him to a similar conclusion. "Je me persuade," he says, in Démocratic et la France, p. 2, "que la nature humaine restera eternellement assez semiblable à elle-même, et dans tous les cas, que ce ne sont pas des formes de gouvernement ou des mesures d'economie sociale qui la modifieront."
- ↑ "It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in ourselves by cultivating it and calling it forth within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others," says Mill (On Liberty, Ticknor & Fields edition, p. 121), "that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake of the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified,
husband to slay the man who has invaded his family," the Atlanta Constitution said two years before to a month, "We know it is a bad thing for one man to kill another, but it is worse to permit men to violate the sanctity of a home, and go free upon paying a fine or damages." With an extension of this law of revenge society would soon be reduced to a state of anarchy.
