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.