Our Fathers
of the time of the Revolution understood this matter better
than we do. The difficult problems in our national politics
at this hour will nearly all of them be solved if the people
will adhere to rules of conduct imposed as restraints in the
early constitutions. The sublimity of the principle of self-
government does not consist wholly or chiefly in the idea
that self is the person who governs, but quite as much in
the doctrine that self is the person who is governed. How
our race troubles would disappear if the dominant Saxon would
but obey, in his treatment of the weaker races, the authority
of the fundamental laws on which his own institutions rest!
The problem of to-day is not how to convert the heathen from
heathenism, it is how to convert the Christian from heathenism;
not to teach the physician to heal the patient, but to heal
himself. The Indian problem is not chiefly how to teach the
Indian to be less savage in his treatment of the Saxon, but
the Saxon to be less savage in his treatment of the Indian.
The Chinese problem is not how to keep Chinese laborers out
of California, but how to keep Chinese politics out of Congress.
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