The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full share of all the best things of this life,—its highest culture, hopes, aspirations, burdens—as well as its loaves and fishes—and, setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them to attain it. Whatever goes beyond that, or beside that, savors of Jacobinism, for then comes in that jealousy which is the bane of true democracy. The true democrat has no old scores to pay, covets no man’s good things, wants nothing for himself which is not open to his neighbors, will destroy nothing which others value merely because he doesn’t value it himself, unless it is palpably and incurably unjust and unrighteous. |