must necessarily be foolish, their honesty only an ordinary honesty, and their sentiments vulgar, falls to the ground. The multitude, it would seem, either can distil essential wisdom from a seething mass of heterogeneous evidence and opinion; or can be inspired, like a single individual, from without and above itself. If the practical wisdom of the multitude inaction be attributed to the management or to the influence of a sagacious few, the wise result proves that these leaders were well chosen by some process of natural selection, instead of being designated, as in an oligarchy, by the inheritance of artificial privileges..

"There is a limited sense in which it is true that in the United States the average man predominates; but the political ideas which have predominated in the United States, and therefore in the mind and will of the average man, — equality before the law, national independence, federation, and indissoluble union, — are ideas not of average, but of superlative merit. It is also true that the common school and the newspaper echo received opinion, and harp on moral commonplaces. But unfortunately there are many accepted humane opinions and ethical commonplaces which have never yet been embodied in national legislation, much less in international law, and which may therefore still be repeated to some advantage. If that comprehensive commonplace, Ye are all members one of another,' could be realized in international relations, there would be an end of war and industrial isolation."

President Eliot enumerates four forms of mental and moral activity, of the highest usefulness: first,

that which maintains political vitality throughout the Federal Union; second, that which supports unsubsidized religious institutions; third, that which develops the higher instruction in the arts and sciences and trains men for all the professions; and, fourth, that which is applied to the service of corporations. All these forms of activity mark the American democracy. No disposition appears in the masses to oppress those better placed. "After observing the facts of a full century, one may say of the American democracy that it has contracted public debt with moderation, paid it with unexampled promptness, acquired as good a public credit as the world has ever known, made private property secure, and shown no tendency to attack riches, or to subsidize property, or in either direction to violate the fundamental principle of democracy, that all men are equal before the law. The significance of these facts is prodigious. They mean that as regards private property and its security, a government by the many and for the many is more to be trusted than any other form of government; and that as regards public indebtedness, an experienced democracy is more likely to exhibit just sentiments and practical good judgment than an oligarchy or a tyranny."

As to progress and reformation, continues President Eliot, combating here ideas expressed in Sir Henry Maine's "Popular Government," nowhere else is religious toleration so thoroughly put in practice as in the United States; nowhere else has there been such well-meant and persistent effort to improve the legal status of women, in behalf of hospitals, asylums, reformatories, and prisons, to apply legislative

For

remedies to acknowledged abuses and evils. promptness in making physical forces and machinery do the work of men, the people of the United States incontestably surpass other peoples. The notion that democracy will hinder religious, political, and social reformation and progress, or restrain commercial and industrial improvement, is a chimera. Lastly, says President Eliot, no other land has succeeded so well in producing the gentleman, and that consummate fruit of society at its best, the lady. "Since democracy has every advantage for producing in due season and proportion the best human types, it is reasonable to expect that science and literature, music and art, and all the finer graces of society will develop and thrive in America, as soon as the more urgent tasks of subduing a wilderness and organizing society upon a new and untried plan are fairly accomplished." 1

Among English-speaking men, then, is there satisfaction with the freedom which they have inherited? At one end of the social scale there is no doubt an element which would, if it could, spect and love

General re

for AngloSaxon freedom among

turn liberty into license, order into anarchy; it is, however, newly arrived, high and low.

1 In the "Century" magazine for August, 1890, President Eliot furnishes, in an article called "The Forgotten Millions," an interesting supplement to his Phi Beta Kappa address. To people inclined to be hysterical over the woes and sins of the present, an age which, whatever may be said against it, is the best age which the world has ever seen, this account of the simple, honorable life of a plain New England town will afford profitable reading. For, as Mr. Eliot says: "This sequestered, wholesome, and contented community affords a fair type of the organization of basal American society. Due allowance made for difference of climate, soil, diet, and local usage, this is very much the way in which from thirty to forty millions of the American people live."

unassimilated, and we may confitlently look forward to its absorption into the strong and sound AngloSaxon environment. Again, among the well-placed, as regards means, position, and high education, both in England and America, are undoubtedly some who dread democracy, and who would, if they could, strengthen the hold upon the world of narrowing institutions which we are fast forsaking. The great public heart, however, whether we study its pulses among the masses or among those who by ability, culture, and place, are the leaders of the world, clings with love to our forms, upholds them with enthusiasm, and anticipates their full triumph with the highest hope.

1

CHAPTER XX.

A FRATERNITY OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING MEN.

Saxon brotherhood.

FINALLY, the question is to be answered whether in the Anglo-Saxon world there is any disposition toward proper brotherhood. Among the The idea of English-speaking races, thoughtful minds an Anglonow and then express the idea that a closer coming together of the various Anglo-Saxon bodies, isolated and scattered about the world, is a thing to be desired. In the British empire, in which it has come to pass that the great dependencies are connected with the mother-land by links scarcely appreciable, Imperial Federation has grown to be a popular notion. The dream is entertained that all may become England, that the distinction between mother-land and dependency Seeley. having been quite done away, a great world-Venice may come into existence, through which indeed the seas shall flow, to unite, however, not to divide; because the seas are to be the easy highways through which fellow-citizens may speedily move in their intercourse with one another.1 A still broader incorporation into a compact whole than even this has been thought of, and the idea expressed by men whom, in their respective communities, all

revere.

1 J. R. Seeley: The Expansion of England.

View of J. R.