like that which overtook France in 1870. The spectacle of our financial condition and legislation during the last twenty years, the general silliness and credulity begotten by the newspapers, the ferocious optimism exacted of all teachers and preachers, and the general belief that we are a peculiar or chosen people to whom the experiences of other people is of no use, make a pretty dismal picture, and, I confess, rather reconcile me to the fact that my career is drawing to a close. I know how many things may be pointed out as signs of genuine progress, but they are not in the field of government. Our two leading powers, the legislature and the press, have to my knowledge been running down for thirty years. The present crisis is really a fight between the rational business men and the politicians and the newspapers, and the rational business men are not getting the best of it.
"The press is the worst feature of the situation, and yet the press would not be what it is without a public demand for it as it is. I have been having cuttings about the present situation sent in to me from all quarters, and anything more silly, ignorant, and irational you could not imagine. I am just now the object of abuse, and the abuse is just what you would hear in a barroom row. You are lucky in being a professor, and not obliged to say anything about public affairs except when you please. I have had a delightful and characteristic letter from William James urging me not 'to curse God and die,' but to keep on with 'the campaign of education.'"[1]
With the Spanish War he lost all hope of the American people ever retrieving themselves. It is unfair, however, in judging the great work that Godkin did, to be influenced by this later pessimism. It was his belief in American institutions, as he expressed it in a letter to
- ↑ Ogden, Life of E. L. Godkin, ii, 202, 203.
