258 AMERICAN FARMS. 



men a new morality ' ; to give men a higher conception 

 of human responsibility than they had hitherto known ; 

 a new, startling realization of the all-important truth that 

 the whole human race is one great brotherhood ; that 

 their rights are essentially equal ; that all through the 

 centuries that had gone before, an abnormal condition 

 had existed in the alienation of these rights from the great 

 majority of mankind ; that principles have no bounds. 



It is indubitably correct that the human family have 

 been far too slow in grasping these truths, with even a 

 rudimentary conception of their immense importance to 

 man, or of the responsibilities they call upon him to 

 assume. We have much to assure us, however, that they 

 do sink into men's hearts, and influence their actions. 

 From the light they now furnish, error should be more 

 easily distinguished. Had it shone around men and 

 pierced their hearts in the earlier civilizations, who can 

 say that, notwithstanding, they would still have fallen ? 



To this same morality we must look to shed a light 

 over those difficulties which now seem insurmountable. 

 Morality is stronger than a majority. 



Men must one day scorn the thought of seeking priv- 

 ileges through legislation at the expense of others. The 

 day must come when all men will look upon the whole 

 system of protection as a mean, selfish, un-Christian bar- 

 barism of the past ; when free trade will not mean merely 

 liberty for particular interests, but justice to all ; when 

 no man will dare insult his fellow-men by insinuating 

 that they do not so far value liberty as to submit to a direct 

 burden as its cost, rather than to be cheated into it by 

 an indirect one ; when men will put no bounds to recti- 

 tude or justice ; when statesmen must look upon it as 



' Geikie. 



