192 PERILS. — THE CITY. 



greater. The republics "of Greece and Eonie, and, if I 

 mistake not, all the republics that have ever lived and 

 died, were more intelligent at the end than at the begin- 

 ning; but growing intelligence could not compensate de- 

 caying morals. What, then, is our moral progress? 

 Are popular morals as sound as they were twenty years 

 ago? There is, perhaps, no better index of general 

 morality than Sabbath observance; and everybody 

 knows there has been a great increase of Sabbath dese- 

 cration in twenty years. We have seen that we are now 

 using as a beverage 29 per cent, more of alcohol per caput 

 than we were fifty years ago. Saj^s Dr. S. W. Dike : ^ 

 " It is safe to say that divorce has been doubled, in pro- 

 portion to marriages or i^opulation, in most of the North- 

 ern States within thirty years. Present figures indicate 

 a still greater increase." And President W^oolsey, speak- 

 ing of the United States, said in 1883 : ^ " On the whole, 

 there can be little, if any question, that the ratio of di- 

 vorces to marriages or to population exceeds that of any 

 country in the Christian world." While the population 

 increased thirty per cent, from 1870 to 1880, the number 

 of criminals in the United States increased 82.33 per 

 cent. It looks very much as if existing tendencies were 

 in the direction of the dead-line of vice. Excepting 

 Mormonism, all the perils which have been discussed 

 seem to be increasing more rapidly than the population. 

 Are popular morals likely to improve under their in- 

 creasing inflaencef 



2. The fundamental idea of popular government is the 

 distribution of power. It has been the struggle of liberty 

 for ages to wrest power from the hands of one or the 

 few, and lodge it in the hands of the many. We have 

 seen, in the foregoing discussion, that centralized power 

 is rapidly growing. The "boss" makes his bargain, 

 and sells his ten thousand or fifty thousand voters as if 

 they were so many cattle. Centralized wealth is cen- 

 tralized power ; and the capitalist and corporation find' 



'^ Princeton Review, March, 1884, p. 170. 



'^ North American Review, April, 1883, p. 314. 



