658 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ited a capacity unparalleled since the advent of man to solve " the 

 problems of life " without other impulse than their love of toil and 

 devotion to improvement. But, with the outbreak of the civil war, 

 a new political and social philosophy became the vogue. It was the 

 product of the conditions that always spring from desperate con- 

 flicts. Men of action, coping with insurrection, had no taste for the 

 refinements of political speculation, and no use for the limitations 

 of a Constitution. Nothing was of importance to them except the 

 measures that would save the Union. Even freedom, private inter- 

 ests, and cherished institutions had to yield to the exigencies of the 

 hour. Hamilton had feared that " the States, with every power in 

 their hands, will make encroachments upon the national authority 

 till the Union is weakened and dissolved " ; * but under the terrific 

 stress of war the Federal Government became omnipotent, threaten- 

 ing to reduce them to administrative departments. Whatever power 

 was thought necessary to raise troops, or to provide revenue, or to 

 crush opposition, was intrusted to it or arrogated by it. ]STo matter 

 how violative of moral or economic law, every act was defended, 

 first, on the ground of necessity, and, later, on the ground of wisdom. 

 When the war was over, the Federal Government, which had per- 

 formed such miracles, had not simply become all-powerful; it had 

 become all-wise. There was no work it was not thought fitted to do. 



When account is taken of the resistless influence of war upon 

 thought and institutions, the revolution wrought in the theory and 

 practice of government in the United States within the past thirty 

 years does not belong to the domain of mystery. It is not to be 

 classed as an inscrutable decree of Providence, designed to hasten 

 the work of civilization. This enlargement of the sphere of govern- 

 ment and the loss of freedom it involves have a less cheerful signifi- 

 cance. Thy mean that a nation has suffered from the ravages of con- 

 flict. Instead, therefore, of welcoming the change as a beneficent 

 " tendency of the times," to use the current phrase, it should be re- 

 sisted as an onslaught of the forces of barbarism. 



To be sure, the founders of the republic had not worked out with 

 Mr. Spencer's precision a theory of government. Science had not 

 put them in possession of the knowledge that has enabled him to de- 

 fine the limits of public authority. Yet in their denunciations of 

 British despotism and in the Bills of Rights with which they pref- 

 aced their Constitutions, they set forth principles quite as hostile as 

 those of his Justice to the state socialism now current. Neither did 

 they apply with his rigor of logic the principles of freedom they did 

 proclaim. Widely, at times, did they depart, as I have said, from 



* American Orations, voL i, p. 46. 



