this country the one essential thing
for right living--a true and high ideal and the strength of will to
attain it.

Men like the two just sent away; women like Mrs. Peete (whether she be
guilty of murder or not) are the products of a generation that has torn
itself away from its old anchors of religion, of duty and responsibility
and has not yet set up a new standard to true its conduct. State and
church, with all their will to do and their efforts and expenditure of
means, can never take the place of right-minded parents and homes where
children are taught by example and by word their true relations to God
and to their fellow-men. Crooked minds can only be prevented by heritage
from men and women, who understand their responsibility to God and to
their country, and who start their sons and daughters out upon the
journey of life with a chance, at least, for decency and uprightness.

_New York Tribune_, April 22, 1921.

MACAULAY ON AMERICA

_"Your Constitution Is All Sail and No Anchor"_

_The subjoined letter from the historian Macaulay to Henry S. Randall,
of Cortland, N.Y., is taken from an old file of The Cortland Standard.
It was published originally in Harper's Magazine._

Holly Lodge, Kensington,
London, May 23, 1857.

Dear Sir: The four volumes of the Colonial History of New York reached
me safely. I assure you that I shall value them highly. They contain
much to interest an English as well as an American reader. Pray accept
my thanks and convey them to the Regents of the University.

You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr.
Jefferson, and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I
never wrote a line, and that I never, in Parliament, in conversation, or
even on the hustings--a place where it is the fashion to court the
populace--uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme
authority in a state ought to be intrusted to the majority of citizens
told by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part
of society.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must,
sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both. In Europe,
where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be
almost instantaneous. What happened lately in France is an example. In
1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there
was reason to expect a general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new
partition