Excerpt from Idols Vs Idyls
There are but two ways to be rid of the evils which threaten our existence as a republic - one of which is through the ballot, the other through civil war. Every one, except him who has gold for sale, is alarmedly aware of the necessity of immediate action if republican institutions are to survive. And being a worshipper of Janus rather than of Mars I have undertaken, in the following pages, a logical consideration of the most available means of a peaceable solution of present national difficulties.
Theoretically, nation-building is an easy task. Truth finds ready access to every well-ordered mind. But truth is not always capable of practical results when the means of its fulfillment consists wholly of an assumed constancy of human effort. The tailor may cut a model garment, and yet not one man in a thousand could wear it. And those philosophers who offer mankind an ideal social State, as a refuge from the calamities of existing institutions, will fare even worse than the garment-maker who would shape his wares according to the form of Apollo of Belvidere. The question that presents itself, therefore to the statesman, is of what may be, rather than of what can be. And since the success of a cause cannot be predicted from the number of its professed adherents, he should be loth to engage in the promotion of utopian schemes; hazarding as he does, thereby, in the event of failure, the deepening of popular discontent, and a probable sequence of revolution. The hope of plunder and the spirit of mercenary warfare would enlist those who suffer as they should fight, in common brotherhood, upon one side as often as justice and a sense of duty, upon the other. In the present crisis Force would be a most uncertain experiment. In its event, the Republic might become a second Rome, and a prolonged era of civil darkness, worse than medieval night, follow an invasion of barbarians.
The safety of republican institutions lies in peaceable procedure. And peaceable procedure means the adoption of such issue, or issues, as will unite the anti-plutocracy element as thoroughly as practicable. The writer, notwithstanding his ideas of civil government have been received from a school of socialism which holds that money is a positive evil, regardless of the quality quantity or kind, believes nevertheless that Finance is the issue. No other issue, it seems to him, will enlist the support of the masses more effectively, and he invites you to a careful perusal of the following pages "for the faith that"s in him."
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