church?  If some commanding genius, unscrupulous or wise or eloquent or full of tricks, controls elections with us, much more easily could such a man as Savonarola rule in Florence, where there were no political organizations, no caucuses, no wirepullers, no other man of commanding ability.  The only opinion-maker was this preacher, who indicated the general policy to be pursued.  He left elections to the people; and when these proved a failure, a new constitution became a necessity.  But where were the men capable of framing a constitution for the republic?  Two generations of political slavery had destroyed political experience.  The citizens were as incapable of framing a new constitution as the legislators of France after they had decimated the nobility, confiscated the Church lands, and cut off the head of the king.  The lawyers disputed in the town hall, but accomplished nothing.

Their science amounted only to an analysis of human passion.  All wanted a government entirely free from tyranny; all expected impossibilities.  Some were in favor of a Venetian aristocracy, and others of a pure democracy; yet none would yield to compromise, without which no permanent political institution can ever be framed.  How could the inexperienced citizens of Florence comprehend the complicated relations of governments?  To make a constitution that the world respects requires the highest maturity of human wisdom.  It is the supremest labor of great men.  It took the ablest man ever born among the Jews to give to them a national polity.  The Roman constitution was the fruit of five hundred years’ experience.  Our constitution was made by the wisest, most dignified, most enlightened body of statesmen that this country has yet seen, and even they could not have made it without great mutual concessions.  No one man could have made a constitution, however great his talents and experience,—­not even a Jefferson or a Hamilton,—­which the nation would have accepted.  It would have been as full of defects as the legislation of Solon or Lycurgus or the Abbe Sieyes.  But one man gave a constitution to the Florentines, which they not only accepted, but which has been generally admired for its wisdom; and that man was our Dominican monk.  The hand he had in shaping that constitution not only proved him to have been a man of great wisdom, but entitled him to the gratitude of his countrymen as a benefactor.  He saw the vanity of political science as it then existed, the incapacity of popular leaders, and the sadness of a people drifting into anarchy and confusion; and, strong in his own will and his sense of right, he rose superior to himself, and directed the stormy elements of passion and fear.  And this he did by his sermons from the pulpit,—­for he did not descend, in person, into the stormy arena of contending passions and interests.  He did not himself attend the deliberations in the town hall; he was too wise and dignified a man for that.  But he preached those