"What we most need, to secure honest elections," says a well-meaning
reformer, "is the Clifford or the Myers voting machine." Why, truly,
here is a hopeful spirit--a rare and radiant intelligence suffused with
the conviction that men can be made honest by machinery--that human
character is a matter of gearing, ratchets and dials! One would give
something to know how it feels to be like that. A mind so constituted
must be as happy in its hope as a hen incubating a nest-ful of porcelain
door-knobs. It lives in rapturous contemplation of a world of its own
creation--a world where public morality and political good order are
to be had by purchase at the machine-shop. In that delectable world
religion is superfluous; the true high priest is the mechanical
engineer; the minor clergy are the village blacksmiths. It is rather
a pity that so fine and fair a sphere should prosper only in the
attenuated ether of an idiot's understanding.
Voting-machines are doubtless well enough; they save labor and enable
the statesmen of the street to know the result within a few minutes of
the closing of the polls--whereby many are spared to their country who
would otherwise incur fatal disorders by exposure to the night air
while assisting in awaiting the returns. But a voting-machine that human
ingenuity can not pervert, human ingenuity can not invent.
That is true, too, of laws. Your statesman of a mental stature somewhat
overtopping that of the machine-person puts his faith in law.
Providence has designed to permit him to be persuaded of the efficacy
of statutes--good, stringent, carefully drawn statutes definitively
repealing all the laws of nature in conflict with any of their
provisions. So the poor devil (I am writing of Mr. Legion) turns for
relief from law to law, ever on the stool of repentance, yet ever
unfouling the anchor of hope. By no power cm earth can his indurated
understanding be penetrated by the truth that his woful state is due,
not to any laws of his own, nor to any lack of them, but to his rascally
refusal to obey the Golden Rule. How long is it since we were all
clamoring for the Australian ballot law, which was to make a new Heaven
and a new earth? We have the Australian ballot law and the same old
earth smelling to the same old Heaven. Writhe upon the triangle as we
may, groan out what new laws we will, the pitiless thong will fall upon
our bleeding backs as long as we deserve it. If our sins, which are
scarlet, are to be washed as white as wool it must be in the tears of a
genuine contrition: our crocodile deliverances will profit us nothing.
We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring
art, literature and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of
civilization. We must subdue our detestable habit of shaking hands with
prosperous rascals and fawning upon the merely rich. It is not permitted
to our employers to plead in justification of low wages the law of
supply and demand that is giving them high profits. It is not permitted
to discontented employees to break the bones of contented ones and
destroy the foundations of social order. It is infamous to look upon
public office with the lust of possession; it is disgraceful to solicit
political preferment, to strive and compete for "honors" that are
sullied and tarnished by the touch of the reaching hand. Until we amend
our personal characters we shall amend our laws in vain. Though Paul
plant and Apollos water, the field of reform will grow nothing but the
figless thistle and the grapeless thorn. The State is an aggregation of
individuals. Its public character is the expression of their personal
ones. By no political prestidigitation can it be made better and wiser
than the sum of their goodness and wisdom. To expect that men who do not
honorably and intelligently conduct their private affairs will honorably
and intelligently conduct the affairs of the community is to be a fool.
We are told that out of nothing God made the Heavens and the earth; but
out of nothing God never did and man never can, make a public sense of
honor and a public conscience. Miracles are now performed but one day
of the year--the twenty-ninth of February; and on leap year God is
forbidden to perform them.