588 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



torians like Herodotus, early poets like Pindar, early dramatists like 

 JEschylus, we find a deep sense of the fateful working of the laws of 

 life. The liistory of colonies is a sermon on the same text. Goodness 

 is speedily rewarded; retribution no longer limps claudo pede, like 

 Vulcan, but flies like Mercury with winged feet. In Europe a high- 

 handed wrongdoer like Napoleon may pursue his career unchecked 

 for fifteen years, or a high-handed rightdoer like Bismarck for five- 

 and-twenty years; a would-be colonial Bismarck or Napoleon is com- 

 monly laid by the heels in the short duration of a colonial parliament. 

 The vision of providential government, or the reign of law, in old 

 countries is hard, because its course is long and intricate; in a colony 

 it is so comparatively simple that all may understand it and find it 

 (as Carlyle found it) " worthy of horror and worship." From wit- 

 nessing the ending of a world Augustine constructed a theodicy, and 

 so justified the ways of God to man. We may discover in the begin- 

 nings of a world materials for a cosmodicy which shall exhibit the 

 self -operating justice inherent in the laws of the universe. 



**» 



POLITICS AS A POEM OP CIVIL WAR. 

 Br feanklin smith. 



"VTTHY is it that, in spite of exhortation and execration, the dis- 

 V V inclination of people in all the great democracies of the 

 world to take part in politics is becoming greater and greater? Why 

 is it that persons of fine character, scholarly tastes, and noble aims, 

 in particular, seek in other ways than association and co-operation 

 with politicians to better the lot of their fellows? Why is it, finally, 

 that with the enormous extension of political rights and privileges 

 during the past fifty years, there has occurred a social, political, and 

 industrial degeneration that fills with alarm the thoughtful minds of 

 all countries? Aside from the demoralization due to the destructive 

 wars fought since the Crimean, the answer to these questions is to 

 be found in the fact that at bottom politics is a form of civil 

 war, that politicians are a species of condottieri, and that to both 

 may be traced all the ethics and evils of a state of chronic war itself. 

 In the light of this truth, never so glaring as at present in the United 

 States, the peril to civilization is divested of mystery; it is the peril 

 that always flows from anarchy, and the refusal of enlightened men 

 to-day to engage in politics is as natural as the refusal of enlightened 

 men in other days to become brigands. 



The analogy between war and politics is not new. The very lan- 

 guage in common use implies it. When people speak of " leaders," 



