Conclusions (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1917. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... results that have followed. They are sufficiently numerous to suggest themselves. However safely the popular conscience might be trusted to decide such questions as that of slavery, it is conspicuously fallible in others, such as tariff, finance, and taxation; and even slavery itself might have reached a more wise and less costly solution, had the Bible and the golden rule figured less conspicuously in its discussion, and the principles of economic and social science been more frequently appealed to. A distinguished writer, who has succeeded to Sumner's grave responsibilities as a statesman, says of that great abolitionist: "He had neither the taste nor the capacity for philosophical analysis. . . . Sumner planted himself on the most general statements of right, on the simplest maxims of morals and duty -- the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence, the Sermon on the Mount, the golden rule, the beatitudes, the two sublime commandments upon which hang all the law and the prophets. His conclusion was always but one step from his premises. Sumner's decision, in the greatest emergencies, was prompt, instinctive, unhesitating." Unfortunately, however, his decisions were not always sufficiently without error to justify the precipitation with which they were reached; and, had they not been resisted by men who arrived at their opinions by more laborious processes -- as in his extravagant notions of civil rights, and his foolish hostility to England in the Alabama case -- would have resulted in serious mischief. Fiat justitia ruat ccelum would be a safer maxim in practical government, had we an infallible authority to determine the equity of each case as it arises; but, when men reach their conclusions by such royal roads as that here ascribed, no doubt justly, ...