600 BALCH— SOME FORMER MEMBERS. [April ,8, 



plan is not working so smoothly now as in their day is clue to the 

 changed conditions that have grown up, especially the vast increase 

 of population, largely congregated in small areas. Formerly it was 

 a great deal easier for a man to rise to political leadership unaided 

 except by the appeal that his abilities and force of character made 

 upon his neighbors. And to-day many of the best political men rise 

 in small communities. So in South Africa, where the population 

 is sparse in the country districts and the cities and towns are still 

 generally small, one of the Dutch farmers of the Orange Free State 

 rose in the Anglo-Dutch three years' war to become the ablest gen- 

 eral who held high command on either side, Christian de Wet. Such 

 a career as his would be almost impossible in a densely populated 

 country. To so adapt the governmental structure to. the ever-chang- 

 ing conditions of population that the individuality of most men will 

 not be strangled by the density of population in which they live is 

 as difficult an undertaking as any problem within the range of sci- 

 ence, as worthy of the efiforts of the best minds as the continued 

 attempts to conquer disease, or to win a reasonable safe and certain 

 navigation through the air. In all times and climes there have been 

 political leaders with but little knowledge of events and institutions 

 before their own lives began, who have asserted that existing insti- 

 tutions and laws were inadequate and bad, and in glittering phrases 

 have said that such conditions must be changed. But as a rule they 

 have not presented any well thought out plans by which such con- 

 ditions could be remedied to the advantage of the human race. For 

 while men have found it easy to destroy governmental structures, 

 only occasionally a leader like Charlemagne or Washington, for in- 

 stance, has come forward possessed of the ability to build up some- 

 thing new for the advantage of humanity. And towards the efforts 

 of such politcal leaders of the human race to devise a better and 

 more acceptable system of government, publicists from Plato down, 

 have made valuable contributions. Malthus in 1798 published his 

 " Essay on the Principle of Population," in which he pointed out 

 that population tends to increase faster than sustenance, with the 

 result that poverty, misery and vice must ever be present with us. 

 He explained and expounded the " struggle for existence " (those 



