To-day many specious types of radicalism, that are for the most part pleasant Utopian dreams of the future, standing upon no foundation and drawing no nutriment from the past, are thundered about most seriously. In life and in statecraft there is one great teacher,—Experience. A man weighs the advisability of a certain step by his past experience, and this must be the basis of thought when determining matters of political science. A reader of American History may find food for thought in comparing the manner in which the half-baked political theorists of to-day come to their conclusions with that of the great American statesmen of the past. To-day we are opportunists. Instead of weighing experience and testing the future, we jump helter-skelter at what seems of temporary value. In dreaming of the future you must remember the past or your dreams are futile. Emerson somewhere tells us, that when you are drawn into an argument upon moral values, you should always ask your opponent whether he has carefully digested his Plato. If he has not, you may placidly refuse to continue the altercation, as he to whom Plato is unknown is unfit to talk with a thinking man upon problems of higher morality. I believe that in like manner we could close the mouths of many trumpeters of social uplift through sumptuary legislation. Ask them if they have carefully read their histories. If they have not, and probably the accent will be on the "not," you may safely snub them, by insisting that they turn to the past, before they have the right to ask people to listen to their talk of the present and the future.