There are two opposite standpoints from which American civilization will be regarded both by the present and future generations; opposite both in respect to the views they give of American society and the judgment to be formed thereon: so opposing, in fact, that they must ever give rise to conflicting opinions, which can only be reconciled in individual instances by the actual occurrence of great events, and never when dealing with generalities. These two far distant points of view are the foreign and the native. We are, more perhaps than any other nation in existence, a peculiar people. Our institutions are new and in most respects original, and cannot be judged by the experience of other nations. Our manner of life and modes of thought—all our ideas of individual and national progress, are sui generis, and our experience, both social and political, as based upon those ideas, has been similar to that of no other race which history records. Hence to the foreign historian or philosopher our inner life is a sealed book; he can neither understand the hidden springs of action which govern all the movements of our body politic, nor appreciate the motives or the aspirations of the American mind: in a word, he can never be imbued with the spirit of our intellectual and moral life, which alone can give the key-note to prophecy, the pitch and tone to true and impartial history. And he who, reasoning from the few À priori truths of human nature, or from those characteristics which the American mind possesses in common with that of the Old World, shall pretend to treat of our systems and our intellectual life, or to map out our future destiny, will be as much at fault as the historian of a thousand years ago who should attempt to portray the events of this our day and generation. The historian of American civilization must not only be among us, but of us—one who is able not only to identify his material interests with those of the great American people, but also to partake of our moral habitudes, to be actuated by the same feelings, desires, aspirations, and be governed by the same motives. By such an one alone, who is able to understand our moral life in all its phases and bearings, can a clear and truthful view be taken of the great events which are continually agitating our society, and their bearings upon our present and future civilization be correctly estimated.

It is precisely from lack of this sympathy and of appreciation of the difficulties under which we have labored, that America has suffered in the opinion of the world. For the foreign view, looking upon us not as a new people, but as the offshoot of an old and cultivated race, has conceded to us little more than a certain mechanical ingenuity in fitting together the parts of an edifice built upon a foundation already laid for us away back in the ages—a carrying out of plans already perfected for us, and requiring little of originality for their development; forgetting that oftentimes the laying of the foundation is the easiest part of the work, while the erection and embellishment of the superstructure has taxed the efforts of the loftiest genius. In so far as regards the development of the national mind, the strengthening of the originating and energetic faculties, and the capability of profound and well directed thought arising therefrom, we are, as a race, deeply indebted to our progenitors of the Old World, and we have reaped therefrom a great advantage over other nationalities in their inception. But aside from these benefits, the cultivation of the race before the settlement of our country has been rather a hamper upon our progress. For here was to be inaugurated a new civilization, upon a different basis from and entirely incompatible with that of the Old World; here was to be established an idea antagonistic to those of the preexisting world, and evolving a new and more progressive social life, which needed not only a new sphere and new material, but also entire freedom from the restraints of the old-time civilization. And it is harder to unlearn an old lesson than to learn a new. The institutions and modes of thought of the Old World are to the last degree unfavorable to the progress of such a nationality as ours. Their tendency being toward the aggrandizement of the few and the centralization of power, renders them wholly incompatible with that freedom of thought and action, that opening up of large fields of exertion as well as of the road to distinction and eminence, with all their incentives to effort, which are the very life of a majestic republic stretching over a large portion of the earth's surface, embracing such mixed nationalities, and founded upon principles of progress both in its physical and mental relations which have rendered it in very truth a new experiment among the nations. We had first to forget the divine right of kings, and the invidious distinctions of class, with all their deep-seated and time-honored prejudices, and to start forward in a different and hitherto despised path toward which the iron hand of our necessity pointed, and in which all men should be considered equal in their rights, and the position of each should depend, not upon the distance to which he could trace a proud genealogy, but upon the energy with which he should grapple with the stern realities of life, the honesty and uprightness with which he should tread its path, and the use he should make of the blessings which God and his own exertions bestowed upon him. We had to learn the great but simple lesson that

and in so doing, to accept, for a time, the position of the Pariahs of Christendom, through the imputation of degrading all things high and noble to the rank of the low and vulgar, of casting the pearls of a lofty and ennobled class before the swinish multitude, of throwing open the doors of the treasury, that creatures of low, plebeian blood might grasp the crown jewels which had for ages been kept sacred to the patrician few; in a word, we had to take upon ourselves all the odium of a despised democracy—a moral agrarianism which should make common property of all blessings and privileges, and mingle together all things, pure and impure, in one common hotch-potch of corruption and degradation. Greater heresy than all this was not then known, and the philosopher of to-day has little conception of the sacrifice required of those who would at that time accept such a position.

Another and not less important lesson which our ancestors had to learn was, that national prosperity which depends upon the learning and refinement or energy of a certain privileged class, can never be otherwise than ephemeral; that the common people—the low plebeians, whom they had been taught to consider of the least importance in the state, are in reality the strength of the land; and that in the amelioration of their condition, in the education and mental training of the masses, while at the same time placing before them the highest incentives to individual exertion, lies the only sure basis of an enduring prosperity—that the only healthful national growth is that which is made up of the individual strivings of the great mass rather than the self-interested movements of the few; and as a consequence of this truth, that the privileged minority is really the least important of the two classes in any community. In the infancy of government, when a rude and unlettered people are little able to take care of themselves, the establishment of class distinctions is undoubtedly conducive to progress, as it tends to unite the people, thereby counteracting the thousand petty jealousies and strifes and bickerings which invariably beset an infant people, and to organize and systematize all progressive effort. It is, in fact, a putting of the people to school under such wholesome restraints as shall compel them forward while guarding them against those evil influences which militate against their prosperity. But in the course of events the time comes when these restraints are no longer necessary, but rather become hampers upon the wheels of progress; and when that period arrives, all these invidious distinctions should, in a well-regulated state, gradually disappear and give place to that freedom which is essential to individual advancement as the basis of national power. Trained as our ancestors had been to consider these distinctions divinely appointed, it was no easy task for them to abrogate so aged and apparently sacred a system, and nothing but the material evidence before their eyes in the experience of their own society, convincing them that such a course was an actual necessity of their future well-being, could have induced them so to depart from the teachings of their progenitors. Nor was it less difficult to determine how far these safeguards of the olden time might safely be dispensed with, or where or how deeply the knife should be applied which, in the fallibility of human judgment, might possibly cut away some main root of their social organization. Here was required the exercise of the profoundest wisdom and the most careful discretion—wisdom unassisted by any experience in the past history of the world other than that of the utter failure of all past experiments in any way similar to their own. To us of to-day, viewed in the light of intervening experience and of the increased knowledge of human affairs, this may seem a little thing; but to them it was not so, for the path was new and untried, and they were surrounded by the thickest of darkness. Thus it will be seen that in the founding of our system there were great difficulties, which only the loftiest aims and the utmost firmness and determination in the cause of the good and the true, with the liveliest sense of the necessities and the yearnings of human nature, and the true end of all human existence, could have overcome,—difficulties which, with all the cultivation of their past, rendered their task not less arduous than that of the founders of any community recorded in history even among the rudest and most savage of peoples. And for all their energy and perseverance the world has not yet given them the credit which is their due, although the yearly developing results of their labors are gradually restoring them to their proper position in the appreciation of humanity. And the time will come when their memory will be cherished all over the earth as that of the greatest benefactors of the human kind. As the Alpine glacier year after year heaves out to its surface the bodies of those who many decades ago were buried beneath the everlasting snows, so time in its revolutions heaves up to the view of the world, one by one, the great facts of the buried past, to be carefully laid away in the graveyard of memory, with a towering monument above them to mark to all succeeding ages the spot where they have wrought in the interest of humanity.

Another evil effect of this same foreign view is to lead the world to expect of us, the descendants of an old and polished civilization, more than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but little wonder that, excited by our past successes, and stimulated to an inordinate degree as their ideas of progress have become through the new truths which our efforts have brought to light, the friends of human freedom all over the world should expect from us more astonishing developments, more rapid progress, than is compatible with the frailties and fallibilities of our humanity. Hence in the light of this morbid view our greatest successes are looked upon as somewhat below the standard which our advantages demand.

With the foreign view we, as a nation, have nothing to do. We must be content to act entirely independently of the opinions of the outside world, being only careful steadfastly to pursue the path of right, leaving to future ages to vindicate our ideas and our motives. So only can we possess that true national independence which is the foundation of all national dignity and worth, and the source of all progress. We must free ourselves from all the hampering influences of old-time dogmas and worn-out theories of social life, content to submit to the aspersions of Old-World malice, confident that time will prove the correctness of our policy. So only can we throw wide open the doors of investigation, and give free scope to those truths which will not fail to follow the earnest strivings of a great people for the purest right and the highest good.

In estimating any civilization at its true value, the law of God is obviously the highest standard. Yet in these days of divided opinion and extended scepticism, when scarcely any two hold exactly the same religious views, and when all manner of beliefs are professedly founded on Holy Writ, such a comparison would only result in as many different estimates as there are reflecting minds, and the investigation would be in no degree advanced. Even the moral sense of our own community is so divided upon the distinctions of abstract right, that the application of such a standard to our civilization would only open endless fields of useless because interested and bigoted discussions.

There are two other and more feasible methods of conducting such an investigation; the first of which is that of comparing our own civilization with that of Europe; marking the differences, and judging of them according to our knowledge of human nature and the light of past experience and analogy. Yet such a course presents the serious objection of preventing an impartial judgment through the strong temptation to self-laudation, which is in itself the blinding of reason as well as the counteraction of all aspirations for a still higher good.

The third and last method is that which takes cognizance of the most obvious and deeply felt evils connected with our own system, and reasoning from universally conceded principles of abstract right, and from the highest moral standard of our own society, to study how they may best be remedied and errors most successfully combated. From such a course of investigation truth cannot fail to be evolved, and the moral appreciation of the thinker to be heightened. For such a method presents less danger of partiality from local prejudices, religious bias, or national antipathy. And such is the method which we shall endeavor to pursue.

Judging from mankind's sense of right, of justice, and of that moral nobility which each individual's spiritual worthiness seems to demand, a pure democracy is the highest and most perfect form of government. But such a system presupposes a perfect humanity as its basis, a humanity which no portion of the earth has yet attained or is likely to attain for many ages to come. Hence the vices as well as the weaknesses of human nature render certain restraints necessary, which are more or less severe according as the nation is advanced in moral excellence and intellectual cultivation, and which must gradually disappear as the race progresses, giving place to others newer and more appropriate to the changing times and conditions of men. Under this view that progress in the science of government is alone healthy which keeps exact pace with the moral progress of the nation, and tends toward a pure democracy in exactly the degree in which the people become fitted to appreciate, to rationally enjoy, and faithfully guard the blessings of perfect liberty. Too rapid progress leads to political anarchy by stimulating, to a degree unsustained by their acquirements and natural ability, the aspirations of the ambitious and the reckless, thereby begetting and nationalizing a spirit of lawlessness which grasps continually at unmerited honors, and strives to make all other and higher considerations bend to that of individual advancement and personal vanity. The truth of this position is seen in the utter failure of all attempted democratic systems in the past, which may be traced to this too eager haste in the march of human freedom, ending invariably in the blackest of despotism, as well as from the fact in our own history that every era of unusual political corruption and reckless strife for position and power, has followed close upon the moral abrogation of some one of those safeguards which the wisdom of our fathers threw around our political system.

On the other hand, advancement which does not keep pace with the expansion of thought, the intellectual development, and consequent capacity of the people for self-government, not only offers no encouragement to effort, but actually discourages all striving, and blunts the appetites of the searchers for truth. It fossilizes the people, retards the march of intellect by its reactionary force, and rolls backward the wheels of all progress, till the nation becomes a community of dull, contented plodders, fixed in the ruts of a bygone age, suffering all its energy and life to rust away, day by day, in inaction. Such we find to be the case with those nations of the Old World which are still ruled by the effete systems of a feudal age. The governmental policy and the intellectual status of the masses mutually react upon each other, effectually neutralizing all progress, whether moral or physical.

For these reasons that nicely graduated mean between political recklessness and national old fogyism, which alone guarantees an enduring progress, is the object of search to all disinterested political reformers. For only by following such a golden mean, in which political reform shall keep even pace with intellectual and moral advancement, can physical and mental progress be made mutually to sustain each other in the onward march. Yet this mean is extremely difficult to find, for though we be guided by all the experience of the past, and earnestly and sincerely endeavor to profit by the failures as well as the successes of those who have gone before us, the paths of experiment are so infinite and the combinations of method so boundless, that the wisest may easily be led astray. Hence the failures of the republics of the past, however pure the motives and lofty the aims of their founders, may be attributed to a leaning to one side or the other of this strait and narrow way, which lies so closely concealed amid the myriad ramifications of the paths of method. The slightest divergence, if it be not corrected, like the infinitesimal divergence of two straight lines, goes on increasing to all time, till that which was at first imperceptible, becomes at last a boundless ocean of intervening space, which no human effort can bridge.

To say that we, as a nation, are following closely this golden mean, that our wisdom has enabled us to discover that which for so many ages has remained hidden from men, were simply egotistical bombast; for it were to assert that with us human nature had lost its fallibility and human judgment become unerring. Yet we may safely assert that no system exists at the present day which so clearly tends toward the attainment of such a mean, and which contains within itself so many elements of reform, as our own. For ours is a system of extreme elasticity, a sort of compensation balance, constructed with a view to the changing climate of the political world, and capable of accommodating itself to the shifting condition of men and things. And this not by forcing or leading public sentiment, but by yielding to it. Thus while it is founded upon, and in its workings evolves, so many lofty and ennobling truths, keeping constantly before the eyes of the people lessons of purity and moral dignity, acting as a check upon the visionary and a safeguard to our liberties, it nevertheless yields quietly to the requirements of the times, and changes according to the necessities of the governed, thus being far from proving a hamper upon our intellectual advancement, but, on the contrary, leaving free and unimpeded the paths of national progress. And it is one of the most distinctive features of our institutions that, while few foreign Governments admit of much change without danger of revolution, with us the most thorough reforms may be consummated and the greatest changes effected without danger of ruffling the waves of our society. For with us change is effected so gradually and in such exact consonance with the necessities of the people as to be almost imperceptible, and to afford no handle to the turbulent and designing revolutionist. The gratification of legitimate ambition is guaranteed, but our system utterly revolts against the sacrifice of the public good to the inordinate cravings of personal ambition or aggrandizement. It is in recognition of this principle of gradual change that the politician of to-day hesitates not to avow and to advocate principles which twenty years ago he deemed the height of political absurdity. It is not abstract truth that has altered, but the necessary modification of theories resulting from the altered condition and exigencies of society. Were this truth not recognized, no statesman could for many years retain his hold upon the popular appreciation, for he would at once be branded with inconsistency and incontinently thrown aside as an unsafe counsellor. Hence the hackneyed phrase, 'ahead of the times,' contains within itself a deep and important meaning, since it is but a recognition of the fact that relative right and wrong may change with the condition of society, and that theories may be beneficial in a more advanced stage, which at present would be noxious in the extreme, and that, in consequence, he is an unsafe leader who grasps at some exalted good without making sure of the preliminary steps which alone can make such blessings durable—who would, at a single leap, place the nation far ahead in the race of improvement, without first subjecting it to that trial and discipline which are absolutely necessary to fit it for a new sphere. And the extreme disfavor with which such agitators are regarded by society is an evidence of the safeguard which our institutions contain within themselves, which, by moulding the minds of the people to a proper appreciation of the blessings of limited reform and of the inevitable and necessary stages and degrees of progress, as well as of the danger of too sudden and radical change, effectually counteract the evil influence of the unmethodical and empirical reformer.

Our Government, in its form, can in no sense of the word be called a democracy, however much its workings may tend toward such a result in some far-distant future. It is founded in a recognition of the fact that however equal all men may be in their civil and political rights—however the humblest and most ignorant member of the community may be entitled to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' all men are not equal either in intellectual endowments or personal acquirements, and consequently in their influence upon society, or equally fitted either to govern or to choose their rulers. Our ancestors recognized the fact that the people are not, in the democratic sense of the term, fitted to govern themselves. Hence they threw around their system a network of safeguards, and adopted and firmly established restraints to counteract this principle of democratic rule, without which our infant republic would soon have fallen to pieces by the force of its own internal convulsions. And time has proven the wisdom of their course, and we shall do well if we shall reflect long and deeply before we essay to remove the least of those restraints, remembering that when once the floodgate is opened to change, the eternal tide is set in motion, and a precedent established which will prove dangerous if it be not carefully restrained within the limits of the necessities of the times.

To draw an illustration from the constitution of our body politic: we find that the people meet in their primary elections, and choose a representative to their State legislature, which representative is, theoretically, considerably advanced above his constituents in intellect, and in knowledge and experience of governmental affairs, and of the necessities of the nation; by whom, in conjunction with his colleagues—and not by the people themselves—a Senator is chosen to represent the State in the national Congress,—which Senator, in his turn, theoretically, is elevated above his constituents, not by the fortuitous circumstance of birth or of worldly possessions, but in point of intellect and acquirements, and consequent capacity to govern. Again, the people do not directly choose their President, but select certain electors, to whose superior wisdom and judgment is intrusted the task of determining who is most fitted to rule the nation for the coming presidential term. In the single instance of the representative to Congress do the people choose directly from among themselves. And this was adopted as a wise precaution that he, springing directly from their midst, owing both his present and future position to their suffrages, more closely identified with them in interest, and partaking more nearly of their modes of thought, and who from the shortness of his term might easily be displaced if he should prove recreant to his trust, thus having every inducement to correctly represent the sentiments and protect the rights of his constituents, might act as a check upon that other house, which, further removed in every respect from the people, elected more in accordance with, the aristocratic institutions of the mother country, and from this exalted and exclusive position, and long term of office, more liable to aristocratic influences, might be tempted to combine for the consolidation of power and the gratification of personal ambition, even at the expense of the liberties of the people.

Such is the theory of our form of Government; the practical working of it has altered with the times. While the form of the Constitution is still observed to the letter, the spirit is, in a great measure, abrogated. The people now choose only those representatives whose sentiments are well known and whose future course can safely be predicated—only those electors who stand pledged to cast their votes for a designated candidate. Yet even now there is nothing to prevent those representatives from pursuing a course entirely opposed to all previous professions, and the known wishes of their constituents—nothing to hinder those electors from casting their votes for some third party, or combining to place in the executive chair some unknown person whom the people have not chosen or desired; nothing, if only we except the eternal odium and political damnation of public opinion. Yet it may well be questioned if this same public opinion be not after all the safest custodian of the public interest, the most powerful restraint which could be imposed upon these representatives of the people to compel them to a strict performance of their trust.

Yet while, as we have said, a pure democracy is but another term for the highest type of civilization, the fact that our form of Government is not in any sense of the word a democracy, is no argument against our civilization, but rather in its favor. For it is but a recognition of the fact that no people on earth is yet fitted for a pure democracy as a basis of their institutions: it is an adapting of ourselves to that state of things for which we are most fitted, instead of grasping at some Utopian scheme of perfection, which the common sense of the nation tells us is beyond our present capacity. On the other hand, it is a frank acknowledgment of our own defects and frailties. As the 'γνὡσι σεαυτὁν' of the heathen philosophers contained within itself the germ of all individual philosophy and moral progress, so does it comprehend the whole problem of national growth and progress. It is only the rudest, most ignorant and barbarous nation that arrogates to itself perfection: it is that nation only which, conscious of no defects, sees no necessity for reform, and has no incentive thereto. The consciousness of defects, both physical and moral, is the life of all reform, and hence of all progress; while the capacity to detect error in our system implies the ability for thorough reform, and the cultivation which underlies such knowledge implies the inclination to effect it. The establishment of a pure democracy in our midst, in the present state of human advancement, were evidence of a lack of that civilization which depends upon earnest thought and a proper appreciation of the present capabilities as well as the frailties and imperfections of our humanity.

We have seen that while, in the matter of choosing our rulers and legislators, our institutions are, in their practical workings, democratic, in form they are by no means so. This cannot long remain so. An empty form is of little value, and ere many years the country will either return to the principles of the olden time—which in the present advanced state of public sentiment is not likely—or else sweep away the form and simplify the whole system. Already the question has begun to be agitated of submitting the presidential vote directly to the people without intervention of electors. But it may well be doubted whether, in the light of the political corruption of to-day, even this be not too great an advance upon the democratic principle for the moral condition of our people. For many years our country has been the victim of a demagoguism, resulting from the working of this very principle, and the question admits of serious discussion whether, instead of abrogating the form, a return to the spirit of the Constitution, while, at the same time, holding strictly amenable those to whom this important choice is intrusted, would not result in a pure and more statesmanlike administration of public affairs. For the elector, being held politically responsible for the conduct of the candidate for whom his vote was cast, and for all the evils resulting from mal-administration, would soon learn that to be faithful is not less important than to be wise, and that his political interest was identified with the well-being of the country. But it is one of the evils of our rapid progress that the past is looked upon with such disfavor as to effectually prevent a return even upon the path of error. In the pride of our civilization the simpler theories of the olden time are despised as unworthy of, if not wholly unfitted for, our present exalted intellectuality. The principle is ignored that reform may sometimes be effected by retracing the steps of years. Hence reform in this particular must either adopt the dangerous experiment of establishing the pure democratic principle, or else devise some third plan which shall charm by its novelty at the same time that it is founded upon some evident and abiding truth.

And in this connection another great evil becomes evident which is in itself a fault of our civilization, and not a defect arising from any fundamental error in our system; an evil which, although always predominant, has been more active in its workings, more injurious in its effects during the present war than ever before. It is the spirit of bitter, uncharitable, and even malicious opposition of the minority to the acts and theories of the party in power, forgetting that no great evil was ever yet effectually counteracted by opposition, which only fans the flame and makes the fire burn hotter. And while no good can be effected by such opposition, its direful effect is to divide the councils of the nation, to paralyze the executive arm in all times of great emergency, to render but half effectual every great national enterprise, to make wavering the national policy, to exasperate political parties more and more against each other, thereby dividing the people and weakening the national life and progress, preventing all concentration of effort and unanimity of purpose, and—worst of all—subjecting the country periodically to the violent shock of opposing systems, according as parties alternate in power, tossing the ship of state in the brief period of a four years' term from one wave of theory to another, and opposing one, only to be hurled back as violently as before. Can it be doubted that such a state of affairs is injurious to prosperity and either political or social advancement? Were the results of every Administration for good, there would be less danger; but radical evils cannot but result from the bitter partisanship of the party in power, and when the scale is reversed and the opposite party gains the ascendency, the new Administration has scarcely time to correct the errors of its predecessors and to establish its own theory, ere the popular tide ebbs and flows again in the opposite direction, the ins are out and the outs are in, and again the alternation begins. Certainly party divisions are the life of a republic, from their tendency to counterbalance each other, and periodically reform abuses, thus keeping the vessel in the straight course; yet when those divisions reach the point which we see in our midst to-day, when the avowal of any principle or theory by the one party, however just or beneficial it may seem, is but the signal for the uncompromising hostility and bitter denunciation of the opposition, who seek to make of it a handle to move the giant lever of political power, unmindful of the wants and the urgent necessities of the land—a hostility having for its basis the single fact that the new measures are unfortunately advocated by the opposite party—then such divisions become not only injurious to the body politic, but a foul blot upon the civilization of our day and nation. This is perhaps putting the question in a strong light; but, admitting that we have not yet reached that point, are we not swiftly drifting in that direction? Let every candid thinker put the question to himself and ponder it deeply, remembering, while looking for the ultimate result, that it was the bitter hostility of opposing factions which ruined the republics of old, and which to-day convulse many that might otherwise take rank among the most powerful and progressive nations of the earth, neutralizing their progress, and holding them constantly suspended above the gulf of anarchy and desolation.

Ask the oppositionist of to-day what he proposes or expects to accomplish by his hostility to the powers that be, and he will answer to little purpose. A vague idea is floating in his brain of some 'good time coming' for his party, yet he knows very little what or when this good time shall be, living on in the hope of some unknown event which shall reverse the political chessboard. The opposition of to-day is that of ultra conservatism to radicalism, of which the tendency of the one is toward the stationary, that of the other to the rapidly progressive. The so-called conservative, apparently blind to the result, and looking to a return of the nation to the worn-out theories of the past as the result of the efforts of his clique, is straining every nerve to paralyze the arm of the Government, and to neutralize the effect of every great achievement, doing everything in his power to exasperate the large majority who are endeavoring to sustain the country in her hour of peril, seemingly unconscious that in so doing he is not only working steadily to defeat his own purpose, but also paving the way for the destruction of his faction. For he is endeavoring to drag the country backward along the track of years—an object which, as all history proves, can never be effected with any progressive race; on the contrary, such nations have ever owed their ruin to the inevitable tendency to too rapid advancement. Again, by embittering the feelings of his opponents toward himself and his coadjutors, he is effectually preventing any future reconciliation and coÖperation of the divided factions, in which only could he hope for success, and raising up a powerful opposition which will counteract all his future efforts.

A purer civilization would look at this question of party divisions in a different light, recognizing it as an institution of Providence, whereby great good may be effected when its benefits are properly appreciated, and at the same time as a terrible engine of destruction when misused or not properly controlled. A purer civilization would recognize and candidly acknowledge every element of good in the theories of even the fiercest opponents, and heartily coÖperate in every enterprise whose tendency was to the national good, working steadily and cheerfully side by side with rivals and political opposers, and confining its own opposition strictly to those measures of which the effect is, judged by its own standard, obviously evil. The rÔle of the true reformer is to glide quietly along with the tide of events, becoming reconciled to those measures which, though contrary to his own convictions, are nevertheless too firmly established to admit of being shaken by his most powerful efforts; and so while carefully avoiding all unnecessary antagonisms, all useless stirring up of old bitternesses, to seek so to identify himself with the current of events, and so to become part and parcel of the nation's political life and progress, as to be enabled to guide into the channel of future good the movement which at first started awry. Even where the vessel has widely diverged from the path of good, and follows that which leads to inevitable destruction, it is his part, instead of wasting his powers in useless struggles to stay her course, to continue on as part and parcel of the precious freight, seeking opportunity so to guide the erring prow that she shall be gradually diverted from the evil course toward some distant and advanced point of the forsaken track, without being violently dragged back along her wake. So reaching at last the accustomed course, the good ship will still be far advanced upon her way with all the benefits of past experience of evil to act as a warning against future digressions from the established path of progress. It will be time enough then to point out the dangers she has escaped, and to argue the absurdity of the olden theories which have so seriously interfered with her navigation. By such a course alone will he secure the respect of his opponents, and the love and admiration of those who never fail to appreciate sterling integrity of purpose, uprightness of motives, and persevering effort in the cause of the public good, which is that of the right and the true; and so only will he quiet and disarm that factious spirit which would otherwise be ever ready to start into a violent opposition at his first effort in the public cause. Nor must such a course imply time-serving or sycophancy, or the least concealment of any of the loftiest and noblest sentiments. In any matter of wrong, where the voice and the concentrated effort of the true philanthropist can avail to check the nation's career, the voice of the reformer should not fail to be raised in its most powerful tones, and all his energy exerted to form such political and social combinations as shall effect his purpose. But in those stages which are prominent in every nation's progress, when the tide of public opinion sets full and irresistibly in one direction, sweeping along all thought and energy in its course, against which it were madness to contend until the tempest shall have worn itself out by its own violence—more especially when the great questions involve a mere difference of opinion as to the results of important measures or the general tendency of the public policy—then, when opposition would only serve to arouse a factious or disputatious spirit, his part is to glide quietly along with the popular movement, acquiescing in and reconciling himself to the condition of affairs till such time as the public sentiment is ripe, and the circumstances fitting for the advocacy and the triumph of his own views; meanwhile letting no opportunity escape to guide the national mind and direct the nation's strivings to such a consummation.

By such a course only can he effect great results and make durable the establishment of his own cherished principles.