Estimated and summ'd-up to-day, having thoroughly justified itself
the past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and power are
concern'd,) by severest and most varied trials of peace and war,
and having establish'd itself for good, with all its necessities and
benefits, for time to come, is now to be seriously consider'd also
in its pronounc'd and already developt dangers. While the battle was
raging, and the result suspended, all defections and criticisms were
to be hush'd, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated toward the
urge of victory. But that victory settled, new responsibilities advance.
I can conceive of no better service in the United States, henceforth,
by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, than boldly exposing
the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy. By the
unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in the United States, the
last hundred years, under our institutions, not only the good qualities
of the race, but just as much the bad ones, are prominently brought
forward. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or
whether with freedom.
"The ideal form of human society," Canon Kingsley declares, "is
democracy. A nation--and were it even possible, a whole world--of free
men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master,
for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their duties toward
the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; not from fear,
nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they have seen the beauty
of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because the law of God is in
their hearts. Such a nation--such a society--what nobler conception of
moral existence can we form? Would not that, indeed, be the kingdom of
God come on earth?"
To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold--and never abandon
or lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by our
American democracy to-day!