foreseen? It has resulted in all those far-reaching changes suggested in the earlier part of what I have said to-day, as respects our ideals, our political theories, our social conditions. In other words, the old era is ended; what is implied when we say a new era is entered upon?
To attempt a partial answer to the query implies no claim to a prophetic faculty. Whether we like to face the fact or not, far-reaching changes in our economical theories and social conditions are imminent, involving corresponding readjustments in our constitutional arrangements and political machinery. Tennyson foreshadowed it all in his "Locksley Hall" seventy years ago:—"The individual withers, and the world is more and more." The day of individualism as it existed in the American ideal of sixty years since is over; that of collectivism and possibly socialism has opened. The day of social equality is relegated to what may be considered a somewhat patriarchal past,—that patriarchal past having come to a close during the memory of those still in active life.
And yet, though all this can now be studied in the political discussion endlessly dragging on, strangely and sadly enough that discussion carries in it hardly a note of encouragement. It is, in a word, unspeakably shallow. And here, having sufficiently for my present purpose though in hurried manner, diagnosed the situation,—located the seat of disturbance,—we come to the question of treatment. Involving, as it necessarily does, problems
