Whatever power may be needed beyond the conscience of men to control their conduct will be that of rational public opinion. As a matter of fact, it is the only power at any stage of social progress that has validity or efficacy. Without it neither the autocrat nor the democrat can command the slightest allegiance. But no truth is more persistently and disastrously ignored. Although public opinion can make dissent from a Hebrew myth or from a rule of evening dress more culpable than the deception of a customs collector or a tax official, modern social reformers put their faith in a power that has no authority without it. Instead of appealing to Cæsar himself, who alone wields the scepter, they appeal to Cæsar's slaves, who obey his will and incline to his vices. But every act of a legislator that abridges a right or confers a privilege twists the convictions and perverts the morals of every person affected. As this despotism grows, no matter what name it bears, public opinion becomes more depraved and less fitted to be the arbiter of social welfare. It sets up false standards of belief and conduct.[1] In the end it will justify bribery and plunder, as during the degradation of the Swiss,[2] and even assassination, as
- ↑ How far public opinion has been perverted in the United States by this influence may be gathered from an address of Dr. Rainsford before the Woman's Auxiliary to the Civil Service Reform Association, reported in the Evening Post, May 6, 1897. "Dr. Jamsford," it says, "administered a scathing rebuke to those who excuse corrupt practices on the part of politicians and others in power on the ground of expediency. Educated men who accepted such things as necessary evils were the most to blame, and committed the greatest crime against democratic institutions. He thought that the distrust manifested in some quarters arose from the fact that the country was honeycombed with the idea that 'pulls,' 'deals,' buying of legislation, and similar practices is the only way to get things through. Continuing, 'I heard a member of the City Club declare that it was legitimate to buy legislation at Albany.'" I, too, have heard respectable men express the same opinion.
- ↑ " La corruption par l'or étranger pénétra chez les députés aux diètes fèdérales: l'assentiment des peuples dans les cantons fut obtenu par des dons annuels décorés du nom des pensions." (Morin, Histoire politique de la Suisse, vol. i, p. 101.)
excludes from such institutions, as in Kansas, the professors that oppose populism; that requires an official history of the civil war to be taught in the public schools. Should wheat production and distribution become a function of the Government, I doubt not that prescribed or "official" views in regard to it would spring up, as in regard to the tariff and the currency, and that instruction in them in all State institutions would be demanded. Still another amazing example of intolerance is to be found in an article from the Democrat and Chronicle (July 2, 1897) of Rochester, N. Y., the largest and most influential Republican newspaper in the State outside of New York city. "A college president," it says, exhibiting the same spirit as that of the measure before the Prussian Diet to suppress critics of the Government or of Prussian institutions, "ought to have full power to drive out by force and arms, if need be, college professors who belittle American history and cast reflections upon our system of government. In recent years some of the colleges have become teachers of pessimism in history and politics, sending out narrow-minded critics of American institutions. A correspondent of the Sun, E. A. Scribner, a graduate of Bowdoin, suggests a chair of 'American Patriotism' in every college. There is need of such a chair in several institutions."
