He says, hopefully and manfully: "I have a feeling that our progress, if slow, is steadily in the direction of betterment. I do not expect to see the history of the next twenty years in the affairs of our cities repeat all the scandals that have marked the past twenty years. It is not strange that a people conducting an experiment for which there is absolutely no precedent, should have to stumble towards correct and successful methods through experiences which may be both costly and distressing. I see no other road towards improvement in the coming time, but I think it certain that in another decade we shall look back on some of the scandals of the present in city government with as much surprise, as we now regard the effort to control fires by a volunteer fire department, which was insisted upon in New York until within twenty years. In other words, I take no gloomy view of the situation. I see nothing in the general condition of affairs which is absolutely incurable, unless it be the unwillingness of the people themselves to choose their local officials along divisions on local lines. I confess that it is here that the problem appears to me the most difficult. I hope for good results in this direction, however, from the growth of sentiment in favor of civil service reform, whereby patronage shall become less and less powerful in the determination of election contests; from legislation which, in controlling to some extent the cost and methods of conducting canvasses, may reduce to a minimum the mischief wrought by the improper use of money. I do not expect to live long enough to see the government of cities in America anything other than a pressing problem, but it is a problem everywhere."

Above all, Mr. Low's experience has inspired him with confidence in, not with distrust of, the people. "Because there is scum upon the surface of a boiling liquid, it does not follow that the material or the process to which it is subjected is itself bad. Universal suffrage, as it exists in the United States, is not only a great element of safety in the present day and generation, but is perhaps the mightiest educational force to which the masses of men have ever been exposed. In a country where wealth has no hereditary sense of obligation to its neighbors, it is hard to conceive what would be the condition of society, if universal suffrage did not compel every one having property, to consider, to some extent at least, the well-being of the whole community."1

As regards local self-government, then, there is no ground for hopelessness as to the future of America. In rural communities, the popular moot, Grounds for a adapted to our new conditions, but with hopeful view. its administrative efficiency and its salutary educative power not lost, persists in New England, is spreading West, and even South. With respect to cities, while the embarrassments are great, there is no reason for feeling that a good way to govern them will not some day be found. A town-meeting plan is unquestionably quite inadequate; but whatever be the method, why need we doubt that it can safely

1 Bryce: American Commonwealth, I, Chap. LII (chapter by Hon. Seth Low), "The Problem of Municipal Government in the United States." (Address at Cornell University, March 16, 1887; repeated in substance at Johns Hopkins University.)

rest on a basis of universal suffrage? If the folk vote, the folk will also, in some way, moot the merits of candidates and of questions upon which it must pass judgment. If the primordial cell is sound, the body will not perish.

To candid foreign eyes we offer no unpromising spectacle. "Local self-government will doubtless sometimes go wrong, but so too will government officials. A few mistakes are a small price to pay for freedom. Compare France and America. The agitation of France is aggravated, if not caused, by centralization. Under every régime Paris has been France; the provinces have been powerless; the best statesmen of France are making every effort to decentralize. Centralization emasculates public spirit, induces a careless indifference to the welfare of the community, takes away the sense of responsibility in local affairs, tends to produce a degrading subserviency to the powers above, and is in every way destructive of that manly feeling of individual freedom with combined action which has hitherto been held as the glory and boast of our English institutions. Compare with France the system of the United States, where democratic and local institutions have acquired a development and ascendency elsewhere unknown. No doubt, a thousand faults

may be discovered. The Tammany ring, the iniquities of the New York municipality, venality and corruption in various forms, may be raked up and combined to form a hideous picture. But turn to the other side. Where is there, on the whole, a more law-abiding people? Where is individual liberty more enjoyed? Where, indeed, has the true

English principle of local self-government been developed with such success?" 1

1 Contemporary Review, 34, p. 678, etc., art. "Self-Government in Towns," by J. Allanson Picton. For a hopeful view of the prospects of the United States, and also of Canada and Australia, as regards the disappearance of political corruption, see Dilke: Problems of Greater Britain, p. 103.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FUTURE OF ANGLO-SAXON FREEDOM.

THE progress of Anglo-Saxon freedom has been outlined in these pages through eighteen hundred years, from the Germans of Tacitus to the present moment. It is now in place to consider what may fairly be anticipated for it in years to come, and to inquire whether the generation of English-speaking men now upon the stage is doing what may reasonably be expected of it, in view of the opportunities it enjoys and the responsibilities with which it is trusted. Though Anglo-Saxon freedom in a more or less partial form has been adopted (it would be better perhaps to say imitated) by every nation in Europe, but Russia, and in Asia by Japan, the hopes for that freedom, in the future, rest with the Englishspeaking race. By that race alone it has been preserved amidst a thousand perils; to that race alone is it thoroughly congenial; if we can conceive the possibility of the disappearance among peoples of that race, the chance would be small for that freedom's survival. They are the Levites to whom, in especial, is committed the guardianship of this ark, so infinitely precious to the world. In no century of its career has the band understood so well the sacred character of its responsibility, and looked with such love upon the trust it was appointed to defend.