Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/18

 from the demagogue to mobocracy; from mobocracy to autocracy; from feudalism to communism; from bondage to license.

Tyranny, conquest, militarism, lawlessness, mobmindedness, riot, persecution, oppression, rebellion—these are the words that describe the long-continued panorama of unsuccessful efforts and experimental failures in government for approximately seven thousand years.

Now and then a ray of light and hope appeared in Greece, Rome, Holland, Switzerland, England and elsewhere, but during all that period of time no government was devised that could secure for its people any one of the great fundamental privileges for which government is primarily organized.

In all those thousands of years there was no government that secured for its people religious freedom, or civil liberty, or freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, or security of individual rights, or popular education, or universal franchise.

It is a startling statement, but an indisputable fact, that in reviewing the centuries of history prior to the founding of the republic of the United States of America we find no country to which the historian can point and truthfully say: There was a government that worked well.