I am myself accused sometimes of being a “pessimist.” Assuredly I am no
optimist of the Billy Sunday sort, who fancies the adoption of the
prohibition amendment the coming of “de jubilo.” Early in life, while
yet a recognized baseball authority, Mr. Sunday discovered “pay dirt”
in what Col. Mulberry Sellers called “piousness.” He made it an asset
and began to issue celestial notes, countersigned by himself and made
redeemable in Heaven. From that day to this he has been following the
lead of the renowned Simon Suggs, who, having in true camp meeting
style acquired “the grace of God,” turned loose as an exhorter shouting
“Step up to the mourner’s bench, my brethering, step up lively, and be
saved! I come in on na ’er par, an’ see what I draw’d! Religion’s the
only game whar you can’t lose. Him that trusts the Lord holds fo’
aces!”
The Billy Sunday game has made Billy Sunday rich. Having exhausted
Hell-fire-and-brimstone, the evangel turns to the Demon Rum. Satan,
with hide and horns, has had his day. Prohibition is now the trick
card.
The fanatic is never either very discriminating or very particular. As
a rule, for him any taking “ism” will suffice. To-day, it happens to be
“whisky.” To-morrow it will be tobacco. Finally, having established the
spy system and made house-to-house espionage a rule of conventicle, it
will become a misdemeanor for a man to kiss his wife.
From fakers who have cards up their sleeves, not to mention snakes in
their boots, we hear a great deal about “the people,” pronounced by
them as if it were spelled “pee-pul.” It is the unfailing recourse of
the professional politician in quest of place. Yet scarcely any
reference, or referee, were faultier.
The people en masse constitute what we call the mob. Mobs have rarely
been right—never except when capably led. It was the mob of Jerusalem
that did the unoffending Jesus of Nazareth to death. It was the mob in
Paris that made the Reign of Terror. Mobs have seldom been tempted,
even had a chance to go wrong, that they have not gone wrong.
The “people” is a fetish. It was the people, misled, who precipitated
the South into the madness of secession and the ruin of a hopelessly
unequal war of sections. It was the people backing if not compelling
the Kaiser, who committed hari-kari for themselves and their empire in
Germany. It is the people leaderless who are making havoc in Russia.
Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, in all lands and
ages, the people, when turned loose, have raised every inch of hell to
the square foot they were able to raise, often upon the slightest
pretext, or no pretext at all.
This is merely to note the mortal fallibility of man, most fallible
when herded in groups and prone to do in the aggregate what he would
hesitate to do when left to himself and his individual accountability.
Under a wise dispensation of power, despotism, we are told embodies the
best of all government. The trouble is that despotism is seldom, if
ever, wise. It is its nature to be inconsiderate, being essentially
selfish, grasping and tyrannous. As a rule therefore revolution—usually
of force—has been required to change or reform it. Perfectibility was
not designed for mortal man. That indeed furnishes the strongest
argument in favor of the immortality of the soul, life on earth but the
ante-chamber of eternal life. It would be a cruel Deity that condemned
man to the brief and vexed span of human existence with nothing beyond
the grave.
We know not whence we came, or whither we go; but it is a fair guess
that we shall in the end get better than we have known.