1902.] THE FARMER AS A CITIZEN. 9 1 



true that the right to vote is one of the particular rights of 

 citizenship, and a person is not a citizen fully and entirely 

 unless he has the right to vote, but the mere act of voting is 

 only one of the things pertaining to citizenship. A person 

 may be a very bad citizen and yet always vote right perhaps. 

 He may be an injury to the community in which he lives, but 

 that is quite apart from his exercise of the right of suffrage. 

 A good citizen is a person whose relations are correct and 

 proper and useful with all those with whom he comes in con- 

 tact. Every relation in life must be good and beneficial to 

 those with whom he comes in contact or he is not a good citi- 

 zen in the highest and best acceptation of the term. The 

 good citizen is a good man in his family. He is a good man 

 in the neighborhood in which he lives. He is a useful man 

 in the township where he resides. He is useful and benefi- 

 cial so far as all of these relations of life are concerned. A 

 good citizen can be nothing else. Now, you cannot have a 

 good citizen without having a good man. It is utterly im- 

 possible to have something out of nothing, and it is utterly 

 impossible that a man shall be a good citizen unless he is 

 personally a good man. You cannot conceive of the thing. 

 Now, there are two things that go to make up the man. The 

 man is the resultant of two things, of two 'powers that have 

 been at work. One is the power of heredity, that which he is 

 because of what his father and grandfather and his whole 

 line of ancestors were. Somebody asked when the education 

 of a child should begin, and the answer was, " Five hundred 

 years before he is born." About one-half of the men, taking 

 the average men of the world, about one-half of us are what 

 we are from the force of heredity; what we have inherited 

 from our ancestors. The character and disposition, mental 

 and moral characteristics, all these come to us from our line 

 of ancestry, and the other half is made up by our environ- 

 ment — where we are placed, what our surroundings are, and 

 the influences that every day are affecting us. Now, these 

 two things, the force of heredity, and the influence of envi- 

 ronment, act very differently upon different individuals. A 

 person of strong character, a person who has descended from 

 a long line of vigorous ancestors, is but comparatively little 

 influenced by environment. He moulds his environment to 

 suit himself. That is one of the characteristics of the Anglo- 



