--The personal nature of our politics was never more apparent than it is at present. On all sides, and in regard to all questions, we meet with evidence of it. Whether it be in regard to great questions of national importance, the formation of parties, or some little State or county matter, the point generally first raised is how Mr. ---- or Mr. ---- will be likely to feel about it. The subject is not discussed upon broad grounds of right, of law, or of policy, but with regard to the effect that it will have upon such or such an "interest," which is represented by Mr. ----, the said interest being sometimes that of a railway, or a "ring," but generally that of a knot of professional politicians. This seems strange in a country where the government is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Our democracy has subjected us to the condition of the old Roman clients. We do not have leaders in politics, but users; men who use us for their own advantage.
--China and Japan are turning the tables upon us bravely. We have been sending missionaries to them for two hundred years and more, and now a young disciple of Buddha comes among us to criticise our religion and to tell us that the moral principles and the conduct of Christians are of a lower standard than those taught by Confucius; and a Japanese publicist criticises our politics in our leading review, and tells us that we are the slowest people on the face of the earth, and are tied hand and foot by our paper constitutions. There will probably not be many converts to Buddhism; and as probably the Constitution of the United States will not be set aside as a worthless piece of paper in this generation. None the less, however, are these return-missionary efforts of our extremely Oriental friends very significant signs of the times. They show two things: first, the little real effect which, after all, the West has produced upon the East; and last, the freedom of thought and discussion which is now pervading the world. It is safe to say that our Chinese and Japanese critics will be listened to with respect; and that not in a mere spirit of tolerance and politeness. The world has changed its position greatly in such respects within the last thirty or fifty years. The petition in the English prayer-book in favor of "Jews, Turks, heretics, and infidels," which found its counterpart in the extemporaneous prayers of other orthodox religious sects, is beginning to sound rather antiquated. The idea of holding up Dr. Gottheil, for instance, as a proper subject for especial prayer, is to most sensible people rather ridiculous, however good Christians they may be. Investigation has found the principles of a high morality in other religious creeds than those of Western Europe and America; and charity, that chiefest of Christian virtues, has taught us to judge others, if we judge them at all, by standards of general application with allowance for peculiar conditions. We have discovered that political sagacity was not confined to the founders of the political systems of modern Europe. It is found that the human mind is much the same under like conditions in all countries and in all times; and we are approaching gradually to Tennyson's "parliament of man" and "federation of the world."