Frank Preston Stearns
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 52
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... RATIONAL REPUBLICANISM In the preamble to the Constitution of the United States it says: "We, The People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." This is the grandest sentence ever yet inscribed in America, and perhaps the grandest of the past hundred years. It was the first full and explicit statement of the true object of government by the freely chosen delegates of a whole people; and it is as much in advance of the English "Magna Charta" as the nineteenth century is in advance of the thirteenth. Who was the author of it remains in doubt, but it is likely that a number of great minds were concerned in its composition. It was a general consensus of the best political opinion of the time, and marks an epoch in history like Abelard's teaching of reason and Luther's translation of the Bible. What might have been added to it, but which would not have been suited to the occasion, was, that without governmental oversight progress in civilization would not be possible. So much having been conceded, I think it will be admitted that the true course by which to attain this end, --that is, the best possible government, --should not be an a priori, dogmatic, or empirical method, but by inductive reasoning and the practical adaptation of means to ends. This is the strong point made by Macaulay in his controversy with John Stuart Mill, who has the credit of introducing the inductive principle in logic, but who did not make use of it sufficiently in practice. Macaulay says: "How, ...