If the party leader preserve his integrity--if he keep himself disinterested and clean--if his public influence be inspiring to his countrymen and his private influence obstructive of cheats and rogues among his adherents--he will have done well.
We have left behind us the gibbet and the stake.

No further need of the Voltaires, the Rousseaus and the Diderots to declaim against kingcraft and priestcraft.

We have done something more than mark time.

We report progress.

Yet despite the miracles of modern invention how far in the arts of government has the world traveled from darkness to light since the old tribal days, and what has it learned except to enlarge the area, to amplify and augment the agencies, to multiply and complicate the forms and processes of corruption?
By corruption I mean the dishonest advantage of the few over the many.
The dreams of yesterday, we are told, become the realities of to-morrow.
In these despites I am an optimist.