The logic of Hearst’s agitation is analogous to the logic of the anti-slavery agitation in 1830, and Hearstism is merely Abolitionism applied to a new material and translated into rowdy journalism.  The Abolitionists, believing as they did, that the institution of slavery violated an abstract principle of political justice, felt thereby fully authorized to vilify the Southern slaveholders as far as the resources of the English language would permit.  They attempted to remedy one injustice by committing another injustice; and by the violence of their methods they almost succeeded in tearing apart the good fabric of our national life.  Hearst is headed in precisely the same direction.  He is doing a radical injustice to a large body of respectable American citizens who, like Hearst himself, have merely shown a certain lack of scruple in taking advantage of the opportunities which the American political and economic system offers, and who have been distinguished rather by peculiar ability and energy than by peculiar selfishness.  On a rigid interpretation of the principle of equal rights he may be justified in holding them up to public execration, just as the Abolitionists, on the principle that the right to freedom was a Divine law, might be justified in vilifying the Southerners.  But as a matter of fact we know that personally neither the millionaire nor the slave-holder deserves such denunciation; and we ought to know that the prejudices and passions provoked by language of this kind violate the essential principle both of nationality and democracy.  The foundation of nationality is mutual confidence and fair dealing, and the aim of democracy is a better quality of human nature effected by a higher type of human association.  Hearstism, like Abolitionism, is the work of unbalanced and vindictive men, and increases enormously the difficulty of the wise and effective cure of the contemporary evils.

Yet Hearst, as little as the millionaires he denounces, is not entirely responsible for himself.  Such a responsibility would be too heavy for the shoulders of one man.  He has been given to the American people for their sins in politics and economics.  His opponents may scold him as much as they please.  They may call him a demagogue and a charlatan; they may accuse him of corrupting the public mind and pandering to degrading passions; they may declare that his abusive attacks on the late Mr. McKinley were at least indirectly the cause of that gentleman’s assassination; they may, in short, behave and talk as if he were a much more dangerous public enemy than the most “tainted” millionaire or the most corrupt politician.  Nevertheless they cannot deprive him or his imitators of the standing to be obtained from the proclamation of a rigorous interpretation of the principle of equal rights.  Hearst has understood that principle better than the other reformers, or the conservatives who claim its authority.  He has exhibited its disintegrating