Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/50

42 in any movement that may please a portion of his constituency," "would obviate all such trouble. . . . Such laws would be enforced by the State and local boards of health, and, in case of their failure or neglect, such attention and assistance from the national powers should be given as the circumstances of the case may require." That is to say, again, a defective principle inoperative on a small scale can be made a success on a large one. Although a despotic local law can not be enforced, a despotic national law will be scrupulously observed. If local officials can be blinded in "one hundred and one ways," national officials are subject to no such impairment of vision.

But this is only a fresh illustration of the pathetic faith of the chronic invalid, ever on the search for a new pill or a new tonic. A change from one despotism to another, or from one set of officials to another, will not deliver society from the defects of human nature. Much less will that blessing come from the increase of despotism and the multiplication of officials. Such quackery has been tried from the dawn of Greek democracy down to the latest product of popular sovereignty—the Brazilian Republic. It has failed; it must inevitably fail. It violates a law of social development as immutable as the law of gravitation, one that punishes those that fail to heed it with equal certainty and severity. I refer to the law set forth by Mr. Spencer that the more peaceful and industrious a nation becomes, the less is its need of the restraints of either custom or legislation. But of this matchless induction of modern science the social reformers of to-day have no conception. They act upon the assumption that the world has made no headway in a thousand years; that men are still barbarians and require the shackles of an age of disorder; that there must be the official mechanism of an old French or Prussian despotism, which had no other use than to recruit and drill troops and to wring taxes from despised and impoverished toilers. But since the days of feudal chaos humanity, despite the obstacles thrown in its path by ignorance and interest, has gained ground. Men have outlived the rules and regulations of a military despotism. They do not pay homage to the occupant of a throne, surrounded by courtiers as intent on the plunder of subjects as soldiers on the plunder of enemies. Their allegiance is to another ruler, which, though less regal, is not less powerful; it is conscience, the embodied restraints that come of peace, sympathy, and culture.