as at bottom
a fund of moral and political conservatism. Thomas Jefferson, one of
the greatest of our radical idealists, had a good deal of the English
squire in him after all. Jeffersonianism endures, not merely because it
is a radical theory of human nature, but because it expresses certain
facts of human nature. The American mind looks forward, not back; but
in practical details of land, taxes, and governmental machinery we are
instinctively cautious of change. The State of Connecticut knows that
her constitution is ill adapted to the present conditions of her
population, but the difficulty is to persuade the rural legislators to
amend it. Yet everybody admits that amendment will come "some day."
This admission is a characteristic note of American feeling; and every
now and then come what we call "uplift" movements, when radicalism is
in the very air, and a thousand good "causes" take fresh vigor.

One such period was in the New England of the eighteen-forties. We are
moving in a similar--only this time a national--current of radicalism,
to-day. But a change in the weather or the crops has before now turned
many of our citizens from radicalism into conservatism. There is, in
fact, conservatism in our blood and radicalism in our brains, and now
one and now the other rules. Very typical of American radicalism is
that story of the old sea-captain who was ignorant, as was supposed, of
the science of navigation, and who cheerfully defended himself by
saying that he could work his vessel down to Boston Light without
knowing any navigation, and after that he could go where he "dum
pleased." I suspect the old fellow pulled his sextant and chronometer
out of his chest as soon as he really needed them. American radicalism
is not always as innocent of the world's experience as it looks. In
fact, one of the most interesting phases of this twentieth century
"uplift" movement is its respect and even glorification of expert
opinion. A German expert in city-planning electrifies an audience of
Chicago club-women by talking to them about drains, ash-carts, and
flower-beds. A hundred other experts, in sanitation, hygiene,
chemistry, conservation of natural resources, government by commission,
tariffs, arbitration treaties, are talking quite as busily; and they
have the attention of a national audience that is listening with
genuine modesty, and with a real desire to refashion American life on
wiser and nobler plans. In this national fo