OUR NATIONAL PARADOX—LEGALIZED LAWLESSNESS.
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of the most atrocious crimes. Can the result then, be wondered at?
Human nature is not changed by crossing the Atlantic. What these men were in the Old World they are in the New. They were criminals there; they are the same here. Perhaps they are not altogether to blame for it; doubtless ages of barbarous oppression have done much toward making them what they are.
Neither, perhaps, can we blame the man stricken down by the power of a loathsome and destructive plague. But lest others should be polluted, self preservation forces us to quarantine against him, even though he be a brother. The imported communists and nihilists, the putrescent spume of vicious European systems are poisoning, with their corrupt doctrines, the minds of the laboring classes in the great centers of population. They are honey-combing the whole social foundation; and the next industrial crisis may witness scenes in some of our cities paralleled in history only by the darkest deeds of the French Revolution. To open our doors alike to virtue and depravity is short-sighted; to afford unlimited protection to outlaws is criminal; to allow the nation to be polluted by professional anarchists is suicidal.
Edmund Burke has said that the great object of our government is to make strong men and strong women-good citizens. No government is worth the name unless good men and good women are the result. Our sagest statesmen have always maintained that the final triumph of republican principles-the forlorn hope of freedom-depends on the intelligence and virtue of our citizens. Yet, strangely contradictory as it may seem, intelligence is not made a basis of governing capacity-of the franchise. It is at the ballot-box that our republican institutions touch bottom. Here, if anywhere, we would expect intelligence to be
pre-requisite to the exercise of a freeman's rights.
Our immigrants come largely from the lower ranks of foreign society. That many of them are illiterate is not their fault, but rather the bitterest curse of the system under which they have lived.
But ignorance, whatever its origin, is merely pernicious in its effects. Ignorant at home, what do many of these people know of America's history; what do they know of her forms of government; what do they know of her political questions. That a ballot which they cannot read, should be thrust into their hands when they have scarcely set foot on American soil? Is it any wonder that in their credulous helplessness they become the ready dupes of wily demogogues? Is it any wonder that in cities where the ignorant preponderate, the administration of affairs should be a standing disgrace? If the ballot-box be the foundation of republicanism; if the national welfare depends on the intelligence of the voters, it follows that education should be made an indispensable qualification for the elective franchise.
Our nation is now the crucible of freedom. Into it have been poured the most discordant elements—ones of every kind with much that was only the vilest dross, yet we profess disappointment because the outcome was not pure gold.
The struggle and development of a century, instead of solving the problem of selfgovernment, have only rendered it more intricate and perplexing. To eliminate the maze of difflicultes and disorders; to effect a happy and glorious solution, is the task which confronts the statesman of to-day. Its accomplishment calls not so much for great men, as for good men; not so much for consummate ability, as for unflinching integrity.
The true architect of empires plans not