It is, moreover,
a school into which the citizen is slowly received; and it is capable of
receiving great masses of men and accustoming them to political thought,
free and efficient action in political affairs, and a civic life in the
State, breeding in them responsibility for their own condition and that
of the State. It is the voice of the people always speaking; nor is it
to be forgotten, especially by those who fear it, that the questions
which come before the suffrage for settlement are, in view of the whole
complex and historic body of the State, comparatively few; for society
and its institutions, as the fathers handed them down, are accepted at
birth and by custom and with real veneration, as our birthright,--the
birthright of a race, a nation, and a hearth. The suffrage does not
undertake to rebuild from the foundations; the people are slow to remove
old landmarks; but it does mean to modify and strengthen this
inheritance of past ages for the better accomplishment of the ends for
which society exists, and the better distribution among men of the goods
which it secures.

Fraternity, the third constituent of democracy, enforces the idea of
equality through its doctrine of brotherhood, and enlarges the idea of
liberty, which thus becomes more than an instrument for obtaining
private ends, is inspired with a social spirit and has bounds set to its
exercise. Fraternity leads us, in general, to share our good, and to
provide others with the means of sharing in it. This good is
inexhaustible and makes up welfare in the State, the common weal. It is
in the sphere of fraternity, in particular, that humanitarian ideas, and
those expressions of the social conscience which we call moral issues,
generally arise, and enter more or less completely into political life.
In defining politics as, in the main, a selfish struggle of material
interests, this was reserved, that, from time to time, questions of a
higher order do arise, such as that of slavery in our history, which
have in them a finer element; and, though it be true that government has
in charge a race which is yet so near to the soil that it is never far
from want, and therefore government must concern itself directly and
continuously with arrangements for our material welfare, yet the higher
life has so far developed that matters which concern it more intimately
are within the sphere of political action, and among these we reckon all
those causes which appeal immed