DEMOCRACY holds as a distinguishing and fundamental principle the recognition of individual rights and privileges. The living units of a democratic system are citizens, not subjects. Before the law, so far as it be administered in justice, all citizens are on a plane of equality. In the exercise of the elective franchise, for example, the ballot of the poor man, the unscholarly, the weak, sick or maimed, counts just as much as that of the millionaire, the university graduate, or the athlete. All this is inherent in democracy as a political system. If through corrupt administration a citizen suffers deprivation of his rights, the fault, grievous though ti be, is not chargeable to the system but to the officials who have misused the authority delegated to them. In this sense it is affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, as the first of the truths therein set forth as self-evident, and as assuring to all their inalienable rights "that all men are created equal;" and in this sense the affirmation is irrefutable. No other foundation could support a stable structure of government by the people. But it is manifest folly to carry this conception of the legal equality of citizenship to the extreme of assuming that all men are alike in capacity, ability, or power. As long as mankind live in communities there will be leaders and followers, men of prominence, and of necessity others who are relatively obscure, men of energy and idlers, and consequently masters and servants. Doubtless much of the existing disparity among men, such as the inequitable distribution of wealth, the unrighteous acquisition of power and its iniquitous exercise, is pernicious--evil in the sight of God and ominously wrong under the laws of man. Nevertheless, attempts to right such wrongs by illegal force, and to establish a false equality by promiscuously taking from one to give to another, tend toward disruption and anarchy. We are confronted by this profound fact: Individualism is an attribute of the soul, and as truly eternal as the soul itself. (1) In the unembodied, preexistent or antemortal state, we were decidedly unequal in capacity and power. (2) We know we are not equal here in the world of mortals. (3) Assuredly we shall not be equal after death, either in the intermediate state of disembodiment or beyond the resurrection.