ividual of civilized mankind may now be cognizant, at any
moment, of what is taking place at any point of the earth's surface
to which the appliances of civilization have penetrated. This
unprecedented spread of common acquaintanceship of the world
has been supplemented by discoveries of science in many other
directions. We know more of the moon to-day than Europe did of
this planet a few centuries ago. The industrial arts are now
prosecuted by machinery with a productiveness which enables one
man to do the work formerly performed by hundreds, and which more
than keeps up the supply with the demand. Conquests of natural
forces are constantly making, and each one of them adds to the
comfort and enlightenment of man. Men, practically, live a dozen
lives such as those of the past in their single span of seventy
years; and we are even finding means of prolonging the Scriptural
limit of mortal existence physically as well as mentally.

But is all this due to that great moral and social earthquake
to which we give the name of the French Revolution? Yes; for
that upheaval, like the plow of some titanic husbandman, brought
to the surface elements of good and use which had been lying
fallow for unnumbered ages. It brought into view the People,
as against mere rulers and aristocrats, who had hitherto lived
upon what the People produced, without working themselves, and
without caring for anything except to conserve things as they
were. Human progress will never be advanced by oligarchies, no
matter how gentle and well-disposed. We see their results to-day
in Spain and in Turkey, which are still mediaeval, or worse, in
their condition and methods. It is the brains of the common people
that have wrought the mighty change; their personal interests
demand that they go forward, and their fresh and unencumbered
minds show them the way. The great scientists, the inventors,
the philanthropists, the reformers, are all of the common people;
the statesmen who have really governed the world in this century
have sprung from the common stock. The French Revolution destroyed
the dominance of old ideas, and with them the forms in which
they were embodied. Political, personal and religious freedom
are now matters of course; but a hundred years ago they were
almost unheard of, save in the dreams of optimists and fanatics.
The rights of labor have been vindicated; and the right of every
human being to the benefit of what he produces has been claim