Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/118

 piecemeal, devoured by political vermin. Had the inhabitants of these countries occupied a planet by themselves, they would, in all probability, after passing through the usual changes, gradually have raised themselves to a higher plane of civilization than before; but their despotic rulers regarded with jealousy and fear the countries where free institutions still held their own.

"You must keep in mind, that the series of changes just related did not take place in a day, nor in a century; also that the political disease ran its course with greater rapidity and with greater virulence in some countries than in others. Certain nations served as frightful examples to others.

"On these latter the warning was not always lost. The better disposed of their citizens had time to take alarm, on seeing the downward course of their neighbors. They saw the folly of being led by party cries into the support of knaves. They resolved no longer to be oppressed under the forms of liberty, and robbed in the name of law.

"In the political upheaval that ensued, the phonograph played much the same important part once filled by the printing-press during the great religious upheaval of the sixteenth century. Charlatans no longer found it so easy to palm themselves off as statesmen, when their every legislative utterance was spoken, as it were, in the ears of their assembled constituents.

"In the excitement of the times, many things were done that a cooler posterity has not approved. Here, in the United States, for example, the eighth article of the Constitution was abrogated by an enormous majority, in order