143 
Progress Must be Conservative. 
impossible until then. Ifc wouldn’t work. For institutions do 
not run themselves. They require, the vital personality of a 
people behind them and within them. “A nation cannot leap 
several centuries of development.” -If it could, it would be 
possible to construct a state artificially. But no form of state 
lias ever artificially existed, and none can so exist. 
To say that in reform regard must be had to the stage of 
development, is to emphasize the importance of the average 
general education. There always is, in a country, a small num¬ 
ber of people in advance of the rest. The masses cannot go as 
fast as the thinking portion-of the community. But develop¬ 
ment, or progress, must wait on the body of the people. A 
new regime must be on the intellectual level of the people in 
general, if it is to be accepted and successful. It is for some 
such reason as this that the purity of the ballot has. deterior¬ 
ated in some places. The voters are not sufficiently educated to 
understand its value and importance. Similarly, it is claimed, 
the negroes in some sections of the south, have so little correct 
conception of their political rights and duties, that they are 
incapable of self-government; and our political institutions, left 
to management like theirs, would soon go to ruin. 
Again, new institutions must be in the line with the 1 histor¬ 
ical development of a people. At present we in this country 
.are having Germany held up to us as, in many respects, an in¬ 
stitutional model. We hear of the “model city” of Berlin. 
We are told of its excellent municipal administration, and have 
the government of our own cities held up in contrast. This 
contrast is, indeed, both real and painfully impressive. But it 
would be rash to conclude that the Berlin system could be suc¬ 
cessful in London or New York, or even in Boston. Its success¬ 
ful introduction would require a change not only in the temper 
of our people, but, what amounts to the same thing, in the 
spirit of our institutions. Americans and Englishmen would 
not submit to what seems to us like the excess of bureaucratic 
or administrative authority. The docile German spirit of re¬ 
spect for “ the powers that be, ” is lacking. “We are more 
tenacious of our political rights than observant of our political 
duties. ” This is, in some respects, a vicious spirit, but it is 
