nse of those terms--raised to the
highest degree; and that these are both bad things. Mr. Bellamy admits
that they have been bad things in the past; but claims that something
in nationalistic socialism is to change their nature. As, in the
millennium, the lion is to "eat straw like the ox," so, in this coming
Edenic condition of affairs, the age-long oppressors of the individual
are to lose their man-eating proclivities. The world is open to
conviction on this point; but it will take more than words to produce
the result. When we see a lion eating grass, while the sheep play
about his feet, we will believe in his conversion. For--let the reader
take earnest heed--it is not the conscious evil in men that has been
oftenest the oppressor of their fellows; almost always the plea for it
has been the general good. Church and State both have set this
propensity down among the great cardinal virtues. As Saul of Tarsus
thought he was doing God service when he persecuted the early Church,
so the Church herself sang _Te Deums_ over St. Bartholomew, and
believed verily that the groans of the Inquisition and the fires of
her _autos de fe_ were for the glory of God and the good of man.

The curse of the whole business is just here--that a set of men should
fancy that they know better what their brothers ought to think and do
than the brothers themselves know. Mr. Bellamy himself lets out, in a
most curious way, his own advanced (?) idea of "toleration." By the
way, I would like to know how it happens to be any of his business,
for example, to "tolerate" me. Who sets him, or anybody else, up on
high to look down with "toleration" on other people?

But let us note his idea of "toleration." He says, with great
emphasis, "A man may prove to me by inductive data, reaching
uninterruptedly over ten thousand years"--I did not know he was so
old--"that my own nature is intolerant; he may even corroborate his
proof by pointing to my occasional acts of thoughtless disregard for
another's opinion; yet all this array does not overwhelm me, for _I
know_ [Italics mine] that I am not intolerant." This superlative
confidence in his own goodness makes me think of the congressman of
whom it was said, "He is the most distinguished man in Washington. I
know he is, _for he admits it himself_."

But a little later on creeps out an indication, in the light of which
we have a right to interpret this claim. Mr. Flower, in his editorial,
had shown how a Chr