religious, and produced the Reformation. Even
in that, far-sighted persons like the Emperor Charles V. saw the germ of
political and social revolution. Now that the chief end of man seems to
have become the keeping of the body alive, and as comfortably alive as
possible, the leaven also has become wholly political and social. But
there had also been social upheavals before the Reformation and
contemporaneously with it, especially among men of Teutonic race. The
Reformation gave outlet and direction to an unrest already existing.
Formerly the immense majority of men--our brothers--knew only their
sufferings, their wants, and their desires. They are beginning now to
know their opportunity and their power. All persons who see deeper than
their plates are rather inclined to thank God for it than to bewail it,
for the sores of Lazarus have a poison in them against which Dives has no
antidote.

There can be no doubt that the spectacle of a great and prosperous
Democracy on the other side of the Atlantic must react powerfully on the
aspirations and political theories of men in the Old World who do not
find things to their mind; but, whether for good or evil, it should not
be overlooked that the acorn from which it sprang was ripened on the
British oak. Every successive swarm that has gone out from this
_officina gentium_ has, when left to its own instincts--may I not call
them hereditary instincts?--assumed a more or less thoroughly democratic
form. This would seem to show, what I believe to be the fact, that the
British Constitution, under whatever disguises of prudence or decorum, is
essentially democratic. England, indeed, may be called a monarchy with
democratic tendencies, the United States a democracy with conservative
instincts. People are continually saying that America is in the air, and
I am glad to think it is, since this means only that a clearer conception
of human claims and human duties is beginning to be prevalent. The
discontent with the existing order of things, however, pervaded the
atmosphere wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus,
seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door
of America. I say wherever the conditions were favorable, for it is
certain that the germs of disease do not stick or find a prosperous field
for their development and noxious activity unless where the simplest
sanitary precautions have been neglected. "For this effect defec