Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/333

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Lessons of History and Evolution.
323

a grand government, as compared with other monarchies, but viewing it under the lime light of history, it easily falls within the last definition. In England the conservatives call this popular appeal for justice "the ugly rush," and not strange at all to say, it is the great reformatory force in the British Empire.

Justin McCarthy, in his History of Our Own .Times, Vol. 2, page 149, writes: "Parliament rarely bends to the mere claims of reason and justice. Some pressure is almost always to be put on it to induce it to see the right. Its tendency is always to act exactly as Mr. Saloman did in this case; to yield when sufficient pressure has been put on to signify coercion. Catholic emancipation was carried by such a pressure. The promoters of the Sunday Trading Bill yield to a riot in Hyde Park. A Tory government turn reformers in obedience to a crowd who pull down the railing of the same enclosure. A Chancellor of the Exchequer modifies his budget in deference to a demonstration of match-selling boys and girls. In all these instances it was right to make the concession; but the concession was not made because it was right." Reforms in the United States come pretty much in the same way; by the remonstrances and disorderly demonstrations of those who feel the pinch of injustice, and of those who not feeling it themselves, sympathize with those who do and look with alarm at the encroachments of privilege in the guise of law. Keeping away from present politics, we can say that Shay's rebellion in Massachusetts brought about a repeal of the summary and heartless laws for the collection of debts, and Dorr's rebellion in Rhode Island brought an extension of the suffrage to persons not having the previous property qualifications, though Dorr himself was imprisoned for lawlessness. To say that all perversions in the name of government should be patiently borne and conformed to until removed by the pow-