Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/114



There are certain periods in the lives of nations when the balance of things in general would seem to be faultily adjusted; when one side of the scale almost breaks and falls to the ground through excess of weight, and the other tips crazily upward, well-nigh to overturning, through an equally undue excess of lightness. The inequality can be traced with mathematical precision as occurring at regular intervals throughout the world's history. It is as though the clock of human affairs had been set correctly for a certain limited time only, and was then foredoomed to fall out of gear in such a manner as to need cleansing and winding up afresh. A good many people, including some of the wisest of our few wise men, have openly expressed the opinion that we, of the proudest and greatest Empire at present under the sun, have almost reached that particularly fatal figure on the Eternal Dial,

When all the wheels run down,

and when the scales of Justice are becoming so dangerously worn out and uneven, as to suggest an incapacity for holding social and political weights and measures much longer. One of the symptoms of this overstrained condition of