or himself, and as a matter of
pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus
claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in
any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that
country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of
religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his
life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong
his neighbor. Persecution is bad because it is persecution, and
without reference to which side happens at the moment to be the
persecutor and which the persecuted. Class hatred is bad in just the
same way, and without any regard to the individual who, at a given
time, substitutes loyalty to a class for loyalty to the nation, or
substitutes hatred of men because they happen to come in a certain
social category, for judgment awarded them according to their
conduct. Remember always that the same measure of condemnation should
be extended to the arrogance which would look down upon or crush any
man because he is poor, and to the envy and hatred which would destroy
a man because he is wealthy. The overbearing brutality of the man of
wealth or power, and the envious and hateful malice directed against
wealth or power, are really at root merely different manifestations of
the same quality, merely the two sides of the same shield. The man
who, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his less
fortunate brethren, is at heart the same as the greedy and violent
demagogue who excites those who have not property to plunder those who
have. The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man,
whatever his station, who seeks to make his countrymen divide
primarily on the line that separates class from class, occupation from
occupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead of
remembering that the only safe standard is that which judges each man
on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or poor, without regard to
his profession or to his station in life. Such is the only true
democratic test, the only test that can with propriety be applied in
a republic. There have been many republics in the past, both in what
we call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and
the prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended to
divide along the line that separates wealth from poverty. It made no
difference which side was successful; it made no difference wheth