the senators who sat for them in
Congress. Macaulay said, in 1852, "We now know, by the clearest of all
proof, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no
security, against the establishment of arbitrary power." To quote James
Russell Lowell, writing a little later: "We have begun obscurely to
recognize that . . . popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no
better than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of the people
make it so."

As Americans, we cannot but believe that our political creed goes down in
its foundations to the solid rock of truth. One of the best reasons for
our belief lies in the fact that, since 1776, government after government
has imitated our example. We have, by our very existence and rise to
power, made any decided retrogression from these doctrines impossible. So
many people have tried to rule themselves, and are still trying, that one
begins to believe that the time is not far distant when the United
States, once the most radical, will become the most conservative of
nations.

Thus the duty rests to-day, more heavily than ever, upon each American
citizen to make good to the world those principles upon which his
government was built. To use a figure suggested by the calamity which has
lately befallen one of the most beloved of our cities, there is a theory
that earthquakes are caused by a necessary movement on the part of the
globe to regain its axis. Whether or not the theory be true, it has its
political application. In America to-day we are trying--whatever the
cost--to regain the true axis established for us by the founders of our
Republic.

HARLAKENDEN HOUSE, May 7, 1906.

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