Such “insurgent” sentiments did I in 1895, some time before insurgency’s day, speak out in the preface to my first book of Western tales; to-day my faith begins to be justified. In the West, where the heart of our country has been this long while, and where the head may be pretty soon, the citizens are awakening to the fact that our first century of “self” government merely substituted the divine right of corporations for the divine right of Kings. Surprising it is not, that a people whose genius for machinery has always been paramount should expect more from constitutions and institutions than these mere mechanisms of government can of themselves perform; the initiative, referendum, and recall are excellent inventions, but if left to run alone, as all our other patent devices have been, they will grind out nothing for us: By his very creed is the American dedicated to eternal vigilance. This we forgot for so long that learning it anew is both painful and slow. We have further to remember that prosperity is something of a curse in disguise; it is the poor governments in history that have always been the purest; where there is much to steal, there will be many to steal it. We must discern, too, the illusion of “natural rights,” once an inspiration, now a shell from which life has passed on into new formulas. A “right” has no existence, save in its potential exercise; it does not proceed from within, it is permitted from without, and “natural rights” is a phrase empty of other meaning than to denote whatever primitive or acquired inclinations of man each individual is by common consent allowed to realize. These permissions have varied, and will vary, with the ages. Polygamy would be called a natural right now in some parts of the world; to the criminal and the diseased one wife will presently be forbidden in many places. Let this single illustration serve. No argument based upon the dogmatic premise of natural rights can end anywhere save in drifting fog. We see this whenever a meeting of anarchists leads a judge or an editor into the trap of attempting to define the “right” of free speech. In fact, all government, all liberty, reduces itself to one man saying to another: You may do _this_; but if you do _that_, I will kill you. This power Democracy vests in “the people,” and our final lesson to learn is that in a Democracy there is no such separate thing as “the people”; all of us are the people. Truly his creed compels the American to eternal vigilance! Will he learn to live up to it?