Patriotism has not been dead, but sleeping. In time of peril we have never lacked Deweys, Roosevelts, Funstons, Hobsons, to fulfill the traditions of the race. Our fault has been the absence of that patient, unsleeping vigilance which is the price of honest government--not in war but in the humdrum days of peace. Perhaps it was only human that when the rebellion had been crushed and the Union restored, we should relax somewhat the strain of those four dreadful years and turn to long-neglected private fortunes. The field lay fallow; a vast public domain was opened; virgin forests awaited the axe. In the flush of general gratitude for the preservers of the Union the floodgates of public expenditure were opened wide, and its outpouring was not always watched with too keen an eye. Too often the Republic was generous before it was just. Moreover--and this is the point I wish especially to make--we had no jealous or aggressive neighbors to vex our frontier. The powers of Europe tore a leaf from the experience of Napoleon III. when Mr. Seward warned that presumptuous monarch out of Mexico, and left us to enjoy in peace our new prosperity. The men who had been serving their country at the front came home to mind their own private concerns. Seeing the Republic preserved and safe from intrusion, they turned to money-making with the same ardor that had carried them to victory in war. Intent upon this new occupation, they left politics to the politicians. The latter were not slow to see their opportunity. Millions of immigrants, unused to the franchise, untrained in the duties of citizenship, came in at our open doors. Tens and hundreds of thousands settled in the cities, where they became the convenient tool of the "boss." Under our system government is by parties, and parties imply the existence of the "machine," an institution which, like fire, is a good servant but may become a terrible master. So long as the machine is operated for the good of the party and the party for the state, the best results are possible. But when state or city become subservient to party and party to machine, such corruption is inevitable, as has been brought to light more than once in our metropolis. And New York is no worse than Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Cincinnati. All our large cities and some of our states are governed by irresponsible pirates, who marshal their perfectly organized bands of the ignorant and vicious, in defiance alike of law and of the plain will of the intelligent and well-intentioned majority; for these latter, we must assume, are in the majority. It is only because they have been absorbed in their private affairs that they have allowed the sacred prerogative of government, the delicate machinery of the state, to become the special privileges of unscrupulous men whom they would scarcely trust inside their houses. This dreadful price we have paid for thirty years of "peaceful isolation."