The extreme socialist democrat will find a discrepancy between the magnificent end and the paltry means.

"Why seek to justify," he will ask, "a series of proposals for economic and institutional reform most of which have already been tried in Europe for purely practical reasons, why seek to justify such a humble scheme of reconstruction by such a remote and lofty purpose ?" It might remind him of a New Yorker who started for the North Pole, but proposed to get there by the Subway.

The justification for the association of such a realistic practical programme with an end which is nothing short of moral and social improvement of mankind, is to be found, however, by the manner in which even the foregoing proposals will be regarded by the average American democrat.

He will regard them as in meaning and effect subversive of the established political and economic system of the country; and he would be right.

The American people could never adopt the accompanying programme, moderate as it is from the point of view of its ultimate object, without unsettling some of their most settled habits and transforming many of their most cherished ideas.