jority in democratic countries such majority is not more amenable to moral principles than Jupiter or Jehovah. No pope in history was ever accorded a divine authority more supreme above moral considerations than that now accorded by democracy to the popular majority. In an article on "The Future of the Anglo-Saxon Race," in the North American Review for December, 1900, Lord Charles Beresford says: "The voice of the people is the voice of God,' says an old Latin proverb, and in the main that is true." The proverb is altogether English, though it has been Latinised. Hearing the proverb, John Wesley said, "No, it cannot be the voice of God, for it was vox populi that cried out 'Crucify him! Crucify him.'" But an American democrat answered that the crucifixion being necessary for human salvation, the cry of the people "Crucify him" was in exact accord with the will and purpose of God. And this is precisely the ethical corollary of vox populi vox dei. If the people vote that fifty cents shall be a dollar, or that a foreign nation shall be crushed, the sanction of God goes with the vote, and considerations of morality and justice are swallowed up in the divine decree. As a matter of fact, however, there is no such thing as the vox populi; what we really get is the voice of some Croker, or Hanna, or Chamberlain. The Boss is spokesman of the Collectivist God, and the deluded people are politically valueless as ciphers, except as they are added by order to one partisan figure or the other. Although, as already said, divine authority is not admitted to the same extent in the internal affairs of a community, yet there are several vitally important social interests in which progress is obstructed by an ethical cult. For example the Episcopalian Church finds it necessary to regulate marriage and divorce by words ascribed to a religious teacher in ancient Judea. It seems vain to argue with the textual moralists that if the divorced are not permitted to re-marry they will form illicit relations, that both virtue and happiness will be sacrificed: what is mere human morality in the presence of God? And when we pass from the Episcopalian to the less educated churches we find that each has an ethical cult in which moral fictions, such as Sabbath keeping, abstinence from balls and theatres, prayer,-are the supreme things. The rigid irrational sects enhance the charms of immorality. There is in America a notable effort to recover the lost authority of theology under the mask of morality. It is shown in the demand that "immorality" shall be punished legally as crime. But what is immorality? It is the other man's morality, that doesn't accord with mine. If my morality has in my eyes a divine sanction, if it is a cult, it is but natural that I should try to crush the other man's morality by force. In that way personal liberty is sacrificed to the Sabbath, and if those agitators for "God in the Constitution" should succeed, atheism will be punished as immorality. ous. Every now and then there occurs in New York a "crusade against vice," and it always becomes a question whether the vices. or the methods taken against them are the more immoral. The houses lyingly called "disorderly" are generally so orderly that they can only be detected by men sneaking about, and pretending to be patrons of such places: espionage, treachery, falsehood, intimidation, are freely employed, and then the citizens are shocked when it turns out that a police trained in such methods can equally deceive their "virtuous" employers when that is more advantageEmerson met at Concord station a friend who asked him where he was going; and he replied, "I am going to Boston to get an angel to do housework." New York will need a police force of angels to carry out the statutes against vices which do no calculable damage to any non-consenting party, nor disturb public order, and can only be proved by mere verbal police testimony. Wherever there are law-made crimes there must be blackmail. This is the gangrene of New York, and it will continue so long as the citizens suppose that their moral system is divine, infallible, and continue to substitute violence and its immoral methods for moral culture and removal of the physical conditions out of which the tares grow. So far as I can learn there is not a school in New York in which children are taught good manners. Of the deference due to age, of the respect due from boys to girls, from men to women, of the thoughtfulness for others and the self-respect that make the gentleman and the lady, the millions of children are taught nothing. Yet this is the foundation of all morality, and it is only as manners that morals can be taught children at all. The movement for Ethical Culture has for its foremost task the removal of the Ethical Cult. in human conditions and needs. No traditional system of morality, however sanctified, must be allowed to impede the development of new ethical ideas. Science admits no sacramental obligations. Ethical science is the most backward of all inquiries because of the intimidation of thinkers by the semi-theological ethics of monastic ages. The old theological polemics are ended. The dogmas have been weighed and found wanting by thinkers; their defence is professional; they continue automatically among those who dare not or cannot weigh them. There seems nothing left for the twentieth century but a great ethical reformation. The worship of an immoral deity, the circulation of an immoral Bible, the sacrifice of human freedom and happiness to ancient notions,-these must all be severely challenged. Possibly this entire humanisation of ethics may be attended by some outbreaks of moral anarchy, but even that is better than moral slavery. When philosophic and scientific minds are perfectly free there is little doubt that a purely human ethic will be developed able to bear great fruits. For the whole aim of ethics is human happiness. Those now described as immoral are really seeking happiness in the only way left open to them by personal and social conditions. Diffuse happiness and you diffuse virtue. Meanwhile let not the ethical philosopher despise the immoral nor confuse them with the criminal. The Crusaders would like to make every city into a prayer-meeting, relieved only by salvationist amusements. Because they are "virtuous" there are to be no more cakes and ale. But the so-called "immoral" are there, finding and conferring happiness in their own way, just as genuine products of the world as the pious, and hitherto it is they rather than the handful of ethical cultivators who have saved the world from a deluge of superstition and moral despotism. That English Bishop who said he would rather have a free England than a sober England hit the nail on the head. The definition of Liberty in the French Declaration of Rights is impregnable: "Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not contrary to the rights of others; thus, the natural rights of each man have no limits other than those which secure to other members of society enjoyment of the same rights." If any one injures another he is not immoral but criminal; and the statute that encroaches on the personal liberty of any one who wrongs no other is a criminal statute. It is a supreme task of ethical culture to maintain and defend moral freedom. To overthrow this principle because of even the worst vices is like burning down one's house to get rid of rats. Ethical Cult, like the theological Cult which preceded it, may propose such sacrifices of the large to the little; but Ethical Culture realises that social evils can be got rid of only as farms are rid of skunks and foxes. Agriculture, unrestrained by any superstition, clears away weeds and wild creatures, and Ethical Culture, when equally unrestrained, will replace with innocent pleasures the vices that nestle in untilled social swamps. THE NEED OF A CIVIL SERVICE ACADEMY. BY THE HON. CHARLES CARROLL BONNEY. GR REAT and powerful, with an overflowing treasury and boundless resources, the United States of America can afford to do whatever justice may demand, or wise policy approve. The following conditions now invite especial attention. The enormous growth and development of our country have produced numerous important conditions which were practically unknown, even a generation ago. Then but few of our people visited foreign lands; and the idea largely prevailed that our foreign service was of little practical use, and the expense of maintaining it was grudgingly borne. But now tens of thousands of American citizens travel or sojourn in other countries, and form commercial or other relations with their inhabitants. But our foreign service has notoriously not kept pace with the growth of the country in population, wealth, and power. Our treaties with other nations give us the right to maintain in almost every other part of the world, representatives of our government, for the protection of our citizens, and the promotion of our commercial interests. But it is well known that such representatives have in many cases been of too low official rank to command proper respect and attention; or have lacked the qualifications indispensable to good service; or have had so poor a support that their mode of living has been a personal humiliation, and a grave reproach to our rich and powerful nation. While in all other departments of the public service we pretend to have some regard for the necessary qualifications therefor, we have in too many cases grossly neglected such qualifications in preparing for the conduct of our foreign affairs. We have neither a standard of attainments, nor a place of training for that branch. of the government service. In theory our sovereignty extends to every spot over which our flag has authority to wave, and our constitution and laws are applicable to cases arising within the jurisdiction which our government is authorised to exercise. We scarcely appreciate the fact that even a consul is in a certain sense a "public minister," and that our consuls and ministers are sometimes invested with great judicial powers, as in China, Siam, Madagascar, Turkey, Persia, Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and some other countries.1 That those powers have sometimes been seriously abused is known, but how often or to what extent, the government has no adequate means even to ascertain, much less to give relief from or inflict punishment for such abuses. The enormous increase of our products, and the ever-enlarging demand for foreign markets, now urgently require that means be devised for extending our commercial relations with other parts of the world. But we cannot sow in the morning and reap the harvest in the evening of the same day. We must give time for growth and development. Under existing circumstances it may be affirmed without hesitation, that the United States has now a greater interest than any other nation in the world in maintaining the best and most perfect system of foreign service that our statesmen can devise. Such a system would bring the amplest pecuniary returns for whatever it might cost, in the profits of enlarged commerce, and in the wealth and advantages to be derived from it. A consideration of these conditions suggests the following measures of reform, to which attention is earnestly invited. 1. The establishment of a Civil Service Academy, to be to our civil service, and especially to our foreign affairs, what the military and naval schools are to our army and navy. In this school should be taught the modern languages, constitutional law and history, international law, commercial law and usage, the practical business of diplomacy, foreign jurisprudence, the protection of citizens, and the interpretation and application of the particular provisions of our treaties with the several foreign powers. To that school should be admitted, from time to time, two students from each congressional district, selected as the military and naval pupils are now. The prescribed course of instruction would at once become the standard for the foreign service, and all candidates would be expected to conform to that standard. Our preparatory system would then seem to be complete. But, strangely enough, it now 1 U. S. Revised Statutes, Foreign Relations. |