Much the same line of thought applies to the remnants of our aboriginal Indian tribes who, as "Wards of the Nation," might well accuse us of a gross and gigantic breach of trust. The efforts making to educate the Indians, both in private and Governmental schools in the West and in the Hampton and Carlisle institutions in the East, give most encouraging results. They promise to fit these people for a reasonable use of the freedom and responsibity that will be theirs when the Government divides their lands to them in individual severalty instead of by tribes, and when they put their nobler qualities of truthfulness and self-respect to work in the sphere of American citizenship.

We should not too harshly criticise our uncivilized "inferior races," for we ourselves have much to learn in the practice of Christianity, honesty and common fair dealing, when our Government, legislative and executive together, unites in making a "Chinese exclusion law," in plain contravention of existing treaties. That has been done in the year of our Lord 1892.

I allude to but one more evil, threatening to sap the moral health of the Nation, and reducing our boasted liberty to a scandal and a failure--especially in cities, to which the people are more and more flocking with alarming eagerness and that is, corruption and venality in elections. I will not dwell on this disease, since I see no remedy until the whole moral tone of society is raised, and that is not to be done by machinery. If the integrity of popular elections is destroyed we must be ruled by demagogues and bosses controlling the votes of ignorant foreigners. No combinations of capital and occasional bursts of indignant eloquence can remove the evil. It is the most deeply seated and fatal calamity that can possibly threaten the friends of Constitutional liberty. If Thomas Jefferson, who was among the first and was the most potent to open the door to universal suffrage, could

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now see the results of his policy, his bones would rattle in his coffin. All elective governments are liable to this misfortune; but here the intelligent voters and taxpayers are on the one hand so devoted to their private enterprises, and on the other such blind worshipers of the party fetich, that the unscrupulous politician has become a professional worker and power. Bribery is nowhere so unblushing and disgraceful as in this country, in consequence of which we have incompetent and dishonest rulers, with their eyes open, not to good which they might do and evils which they might remove, but to the spoils of office. This subject is too painful to enlarge upon, but is, nevertheless, mixed up with American destinies. It will never be eliminated till intelligent Americans take again a lively interest in public affairs and refuse to be herded at the polls by ambitious party leaders. A beginning of betterment has been made, in the adoption of the Australian method of secret balloting at elections, in many of the States. Public opinion is slowly awakening, and the true citizen may hope for a gradual emancipation from corrupt elections; but let

one boast of our material triumphs while this abomination exists in the very citadel of our liberties.

The dangers which some deplore in immigration, in Mormonism, and in Roman Catholicism I fail to see, at least to any alarming extent. Immigration planted the West and developed its industries. Why should not the poor and miserable of foreign lands have a share in a boundless inheritance? It is not necessary that they should always be ignorant. They are as civilized as our own remote ancestors, and they have as noble aspirations. They have already largely amalgamated with the AngloSaxon race. Mormonism is only a spot upon a sun, and must fade away with advancing light unless more deeply impregnated with evil than I am inclined to believe; while Catholicism has a mission to fulfill among people

still enslaved by the dogmas and superstitions of the Middle Ages. Grasping as the Catholics are of political power, it is because they had none in the countries from which they came, and their new privileges are all the dearer from their former political insignificance. Every succeeding generation becomes more enlightened and more impressible by grand ideas. They are still the most religious, and in some respects the most moral, of all our colonists; and their priests are the most hardworked and most self-denying of all our clergy-teaching, with all their prejudices and ecclesiastical bondage, the cardinal principles of the Christian religion. The Catholics may become a very powerful and numerous religious party, but they never can become a dominating power while faith remains in the agencies which have produced so wonderful a civilization as this, nor could the Pope encroach largely on civil freedom in this utilitarian age, even were he so disposed. Indeed, his recent utterances, as to both French and American affairs, seem to show a sagacious sympathy with the political tendencies of the day.

No picture can be true which does not show the shadows as well as the lights. We have had to look at some dark ones. But it is to be remembered that Amer

ica is not a completed country. Much of the great prospect is chaotic, confused, unsightly, showing piles of dirt and accumulations of refuse material-like the building-ground of a huge edifice during construction. Such rapid advancement in nation-building was never made before on the earth, because all classes have been free and interested workers. We are in a transition stage, and even approximate perfection is a long way off. We may take courage, however, in the knowledge. that not only is our edifice well founded-"broad-based upon a nation's will "--but that, counteracting against the infelicities and tendencies to danger, is a new force

arising among the builders-the thoughtful and the devotional alike-which is making more of conduct than of creed, more of piety than of institutional religion, more of individual character than of ecclesiastical form. This leaven is spreading with wholesome infection, and must find its sphere of work in arousing the multitude of individual consciences of American freemen to loftier standards of life and aspiration, in business, in all kinds of manual labor, in politics, in law-making and lawkeeping briefly, in good citizenship. It is much that a land has been found large and rich enough to raise its people out of the degradation of poverty to a higher plane of physical and social life, for morals and intelligence follow that. And there is great hope in the new popular movements in favor of education,-the Chautauqua Circles for home culture, the University Extension for giving collegiate instruction to non-collegiate youth, the libraries and reading clubs, the societies for political, literary and socialistic discussion, the literatureclasses among women, and a great number of local associations for self-improvement and for the helping of others, from which radiate newer and better and loftier influences into all ranks of our people-even the very lowest. For among these a fresh zeal of Christian effort, aided by common sense, is carrying the light of physical cleanliness and comfort, together with moral and spiritual light. Moreover, the ancient civilizations, whose material greatness toppled them to their ruin, lacked two things that we rely on, free schools and an untrammeled press. Frequent political revolt tends to avert the more destructive armed rebellion; and the growing intelligence of our youth, with the atmosphere of free discussion into which they come up, will prove, under the influence of Christianity, a vital force to throw off evil as well as to propagate good.

I have but a word more to say, and that is on the dig

nity and utility with which the history of this great nation is invested. It will not be long before every university of Europe will have a chair to study and teach the development of our civilization. Such a wonderful progress in a hundred years cannot pass unnoticed by the students of the Old World. Even now the best treatises on our political institutions have been written by a Frenchman, a German and an Englishman, and are used as text-books in our own colleges. The field of American history cannot be exhausted any more than our mines of coal. Everyone who writes a school-book or an elaborate survey of the changes through which we have passed, everyone who collates a statistical table, or writes a treatise or a popular epitome of leading events, is a benefactor. Everyone who paints and analyzes a great character makes an addition to our literature. Even the honest and industrious expert who drags out of oblivion the driest and most minute details, is doing something to swell the tide of useful knowledge in this great country. Especially useful to the hard-pushed student or the busy man must be any reasonably compact record of American life which presents the essential forces and facts that have produced results. Such a work should not only show the annals of political, military and industrial growth, but should note the characteristics of the various groups of colonists and the social, religious and civic elements that entered with influence into the formative periods of our composite national character. It should give at successive points analyses of the principles of republican government and their American applications from the town-meeting to the highest Federal departments. It should, in brief, show not only the results and processes, but the reasons for them, and thus offer wholesome stimulant to the reader's mind.

The excellent book to which this is a merely suggestive introduction, while it does not startle us by brilliant