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 immediately to great principles, to liberty, justice, and manhood, as things apart from material gain or loss, and in our consciousness truly spiritual; and such a cause, preeminently, was the war for the Union, heavy as it was with the fate of mankind under democracy.  In such crises, which seldom arise, material good is subordinated for the time being, and life and property, our great permanent interests, are held cheap in the balance with that which is their great charter of value, as we conceive our country.

Yet even here material interests are not far distant.  Such issues are commonly found to be involved with material interests in conflict, or are alloyed with them in the working out; and these interests are a constituent, though, it may be, not the controlling matter.  It is commonly felt, indeed, that some warrant of material necessity is required in any great political act, for politics, as has been said, is an affair of life, not of free ideas; and without such a plain authorization reform is regarded as an invasion