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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a hundred years of trial, we find our- 

 selves called npon to make report 

 of the net results of our experiment. 

 What and how much have Tve done 

 to make humanity our debtors? How 

 have we used our opportunities ? How 

 much has been gained toward the 

 progress and welfare of man by our ex- 

 perience ? The Centennial Celebration 

 should be the suitable occasion to re- 

 turn answers to these questions. 



Obviously it will not do merely to 

 carry out John Adams's old programme 

 of bell-ringing, powder-wasting, and 

 hosannas to liberty, by raising the 

 Fourth of July, 1876, to the tenth pow- 

 er of uproar and rhetorical bombast. 

 And, although the event to be com- 

 memorated is political, nothing could 

 be more absurd than to go into a par- 

 oxysm of political jubilation. If poli- 

 tics alone is to be taken into account, 

 there will be precious little to celebrate, 

 for it is matter of world-wide notoriety 

 that the course of the nation has been 

 downward in this respect from the start. 

 British rule had given us better men 

 in 1776 than a century of republican 

 experience can turn out in 1876. In 

 purity, honor, self-sacrifice, and the tri- 

 umph of patriotic principle over selfish 

 ambition, the politicians of to-day will 

 bear no comparison with those who 

 founded the government a hundred 

 years ago. If we are to be judged 

 solely by the political fruits of our po- 

 litical system, it would be most appro- 

 priate to devote the Centennial to fast- 

 ing and humiliation, with the accom- 

 paniments of sackcloth and ashes. 



But, if technical politics has degen- 

 erated and fallen in esteem, there has 

 been a noble progress in other direc- 

 tions and in other things, involving the 

 thought and life of the people, which 

 may well be commemorated on our 

 centennial birth-year. 



The act of severance which made us 

 an independent people, as we have said, 

 was a measure of government reform in 

 the direction of less government, or a 



restriction of its powers and offices. 

 There was an increase of self govern- 

 ment at the expense of state control, 

 under the theory put forth by the 

 author of the Declaration of Indepen- 

 dence, that "the world is governed too 

 much." By declaring at the outset, 

 that the source of power is not in the 

 divine right of hereditary rulers, but 

 among the people themselves ; that re- 

 ligion is not a fit matter for the state to 

 deal with, but must be left to individ- 

 uals ; and by organizing a political sys- 

 tem, in which the management of their 

 own interest was thrown back upon the 

 people by local and municipal regula- 

 tions, while the powers of the Gen- 

 eral Government were strictly limit- 

 ed and defined- by a written constitu- 

 tion, a new order of things was theoreti- 

 cally assumed and partially adopted, 

 which, if carried out, could not fail 

 greatly to narrow the sphere of legis- 

 lation and reduce the pretensions of 

 politics. The preamble to the Consti- 

 tution, which declares the reasons why 

 our government was established and the 

 principles which should animate and 

 pervade all our legislation and admin- 

 istration, though couched in general 

 terms, if fairly construed and thorough- 

 ly executed, would work the most 

 profound and beneficent reform that 

 could be conceived in the conduct of 

 civil affairs. It would strike away half 

 the machinery of political regulation, 

 and raise the other half to a double 

 efficiency and power. The founders 

 of our government declared that it 

 was ordained to "establish justice," 

 and if the state were confined to 

 that great duty, and the whole moral 

 power of the community were con- 

 centrated upon the attainment of 

 that result, the thousand other things 

 with which government now meddles 

 might safely be let alone. The practi- 

 cal working of our political system, it 

 must be confessed, has fatally contra- 

 vened the intentions of its founders; 

 and, in the attempt to attain a multitude 



