THE CALL OF THE LAND 



good old democratic principles, and try as 

 they should have done to educate the masses 

 up to the level of them, but deliberately 

 bribed the ignorant and immoral, not to 

 become good citizens, but to be and con- 

 tinue law-breakers and immoral. If the 

 time shall ever come when free govern- 

 ment, when government by the people, has 

 to be relinquished in this goodly land for 

 the tyranny of monarchy on the one hand, 

 or the worse tyranny of a mob on the other, 

 the guilt will lie mainly at the doors of 

 those, high and low, who, knowing better, 

 have, with money, directly or indirectly, 

 helped to eradicate in ignorant voters their 

 already too slender sense of political duty. 

 It is the great obligation of the hour to 

 cultivate a conscientious worldliness, a 

 righteous, ardent zeal for society and state 

 that shall devote each of us to his fellow- 

 men, not alone as so many individuals with 

 characters to be developed, but as a brother- 

 hood, a society, a nation, susceptible of in- 

 finite development in all high forms of weal. 



340 



