OUR NATIONAL PARADOX—LEGALIZED LAWLESSNESS.
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LITERARY.
OUR NATIONAL PARADOX—LEGALIZED LAWLESSNESS.
Not very long ago the French Republic presented to our own Bartholdi's magnificent statue of liberty. This royal masterpiece of art, it is proposed to erect near the entrance of New York harbor. There, at the very gateway of the Western hemisphere, fancy gladly pictures the oppressed of all lands casting behind, like an abandoned garment, the woes of their past existence, and bringing to our happy shores no souvenir of their thralldom except its gloomy recollections. Within view of the munificent gift from one hemisphere to the other, each wayfarer is supposed to put on the priceless livery of freedom, and we can easily imagine the goddess of liberty dropping a benison on the head of the weary wanderer as he crosses her very shadow to enter the portal of the Western world.
But, unfortunately, this Utopian picture is ideal. The erection of the statue has been from time to time delayed. Should its completion be much longer postponed, their is weighty reason to fear that, instead of testifying to the glories of the living, its sad office will be to commemorate the virtues of the dead.
It is easy to swim with the current. To follow the multitude is still less difficult. Eulogy—especially of our friends—is a delightful occupation, while criticism—even of adversaries—is an invidious task. To drift with the tide, to praise things as we find them, to maintain against all comers that our present freedom is phenomenal in the world's history is, doubtless, the most popular doctrine. It is a doctrine that is
exceedingly flattering to the national selfesteem.
But the delusive belief that we enjoy the acme of freedom pictured by optimists is being hourly disturbed by the rudest shocks. The halcyon dreams of enthusiasts are suddenly dispelled by the angry crash of contending social and moral elements around us—elements which the founders of this republic did not foresee when they planned its institutions; elements against whose destructive influences they did not make any provision.
Everywhere there is a manifest tendency toward a disregard of social and moral obligations. Daily developments indicate too surely that the pendulum is swinging far from liberty toward anarchy.
In view of countless events transpiring around us; in view of the extent to which offenders, occupying some of the highest positions in the gift of the people, have been able to escape the consequences of one iniquity by the commission of another; in view of the legions of atrocious criminals within apparent reach of the law, and yet practically beyond its terrors; in view of scores of similar facts, it is not too much to say that the condition of American society in many places is almost a paradox—a condition of legalized lawlessness.
Freedom, in a bountiful degree, was the legacy left by the founders of the republic. While the nation has added to that legacy by the liberation of the slaves, it has sadly retrograded in other directions. License is not liberty. Unrestrained violence and