type of character that they should be so. It seems to me, however, that we cannot spare them, and we cannot expect to make them work in strait-jackets. I think that the liberty which has allowed all our great achievements is also the best for each of us in his place and way, and I regard the passion for equality as a vice of our age.
In daily practise the relation between economics and politics does not trouble us much. It is only when the statesmen propose to make a new and great interference with the industrial conditions that their acts reach the mass of us. In general we enjoy great opportunities of industrial and professional activity. We can earn a good living and accumulate some savings. We have very little occasion to feel, in personal experience, the interference of the political system. We live in a new country, under easy conditions, and the mistakes of our legislators fall only on the wide margin of opportunity which is at our disposal but not yet used. Taxation amongst us is very unjust, and falls very unequally on persons and property; but in general our attitude in regard to that seems to be that the "least said the soonest mended." In the twentieth century, however, our peculiar position as a new country will, in great measure, pass away. The dogmas of political optimism which we have inherited from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will be put to new tests which they cannot stand, when conditions are changed. It is now evident that our political institutions are to be put under great strain by the attempt of the United States to act as governor, patron, and receiver for the rest of America. Our institutions cannot meet such a strain, for they were planned for a confederation of petty agricultural republics. They might have sufficed for a republic of industrial interests and unambitious citizens, but they will not
