towards individual freedom and individual responsibility. And that is only another way of saying democracy. Shifting the responsibility to some heaven-born ruler is mere cowardice. It is putting off the inevitable. Seek to evade it as we may, sooner or later men must find themselves everywhere face to face with the issue of self-government. Europe today is vastly more democratic than it was when our Continental Congress declared the independence of these United States. Universal suffrage rules European legislation from the Atlantic to the borders of Russia. Aristocratic power is stubborn. But it is slipping away. One might as well try to swim up Niagara Falls as attempt to set back this on-rushing tide of democracy.
And it is the glory of our fathers that they looked into the future with the eye of the seer. They dared to cut loose from the hereditary systems of the old world. They dared at that early day to assume, for themselves and their posterity, the responsibility of self-guidance. And that responsibility now rests on us.
It is evident that self-control means conscience and honor. And it is these qualities which a democracy pre-eminently needs. Here is the lack of our age. Democracy means individualism. And that has too fatefully come to mean yielding to the individual desire. It is what I want—or what I think I want—not what I ought—which determines my action. And so my moral strength becomes flabby. Here is the secret of the yielding of personal honesty to corporate unscrupulousness. Here is the secret of legislative corruption. More—here is the secret of that laxness of the family tie which is fattening our divorce courts and starving our delicate sense of duty. The ideal of the republic should not be sensuous ease, but fearless honor. Luxury and display belong to old world courts. He is not fit to live in the freedom of a republic who does not scorn a bribe—who does not look on personal dishonor as on bodily filth.
I believe profoundly that in our people there is a soundness at the heart which no superficial corruption can infect. We have met great dangers in our national history. And we have conquered them. The day in honor of which we are here assembled
