he silent bosom of the earth, rise the
currents of life and energy. Up from the common soil, up from the quiet
heart of the people, rise joyously to-day streams of hope and
determination bound to renew the face of the earth in glory.

I tell you, the so-called radicalism of our times is simply the effort of
nature to release the generous energies of our people. This great American
people is at bottom just, virtuous, and hopeful; the roots of its being
are in the soil of what is lovely, pure, and of good report, and the need
of the hour is just that radicalism that will clear a way for the
realization of the aspirations of a sturdy race.

V

THE PARLIAMENT OF THE PEOPLE

For a long time this country of ours has lacked one of the institutions
which freemen have always and everywhere held fundamental. For a long time
there has been no sufficient opportunity of counsel among the people; no
place and method of talk, of exchange of opinion, of parley. Communities
have outgrown the folk-moot and the town-meeting. Congress, in accordance
with the genius of the land, which asks for action and is impatient of
words,--Congress has become an institution which does its work in the
privacy of committee rooms and not on the floor of the Chamber; a body
that makes laws,--a legislature; not a body that debates,--not a
parliament. Party conventions afford little or no opportunity for
discussion; platforms are privately manufactured and adopted with a whoop.
It is partly because citizens have foregone the taking of counsel
together that the unholy alliances of bosses and Big Business have been
able to assume to govern for us.

I conceive it to be one of the needs of the hour to restore the processes
of common counsel, and to substitute them for the processes of private
arrangement which now determine the policies of cities, states, and
nation. We must learn, we freemen, to meet, as our fathers did, somehow,
somewhere, for consultation. There must be discussion and debate, in which
all freely participate.

It must be candid debate, and it must have for its honest purpose the
clearing up of questions and the establishing of the truth. Too much
political discussion is not to honest purpose, but only for the
confounding of an opponent. I am often reminded, when political debate
gets warm and we begin to hope that the truth is making inroads on the
reason of those who have denied it, of the way a debate in Virginia once
seemed l