1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 273 



permanence in this way, but effectiveness as well. Associa- 

 tion accumulates power, but organization provides for its 

 wise expenditure. 



Note, secondly, that all these associations, while formed 

 for good uses, may be and have been turned aside to those 

 which are evil. Human governments have expended their 

 force in tyranny over their own, and violence to other people, 

 which no principle of right can sanction or excuse. Religious 

 associations have shown a peculiar susceptibility to fall under 

 the dominion of hate, rather than love ; and the record of 

 their misdeeds is long and black. And the voluntary associa- 

 tions, formed for the guardianship of important interests, 

 have not kept their record clear from well-founded charges 

 of perversion of power to others' injury. It is so easy to 

 pass from defence of one's own rights to assault upon the 

 rights of others ; so difficult to halt the movement at the true 

 line of demarkation, and restrain the eager impulse of human 

 nature to push its advantage to the utmost. The sense of 

 power is an exhilaration .to him who wields it ; and history 

 shows on many of her pages how easily this exhilaration 

 passes to the delirium of intoxication. 



Note, next, that after frank and full statement of all the 

 evils wrought by the misdirection of the power of association, 

 an immense balance of good still remains to its credit. 



It is either the fault or misfortune of history that it occu- 

 pies itself so largely with the strifes of nations and individuals. 

 The picture which it paints becomes in this way distorted. 

 It puts the drama of war upon the stage in full cast and 

 with all the accessories, while peaceful, happy home life 

 is something between the acts. "Happy," says the old 

 proverb, "that nation whose history is brief." Meaning, 

 Happy that nation the story of whose strifes is brief. But, 

 if it were possible to put on record the story of myriads of 

 useful individual lives, of unnumbered happy family groups, 

 of neighborhoods, of states and nations in peaceful activity, 

 made possible all of them by the association of men in gov- 

 ernmental organizations, the showing of history would be a 

 very different one. The anarchists who would cure the inci- 

 dental evils of government by the destruction of its entire 

 fabric, are either under a horrible delusion or are malignant 



