altogether. American books, American papers, American manners and
customs seem all for the ninety and nine.

Deeper and graver than the superficial defects of manner and execution
and outlook to which these charges point, there are, one gathers, other
things that are traceable to the same source. There is a report of
profounder troubles in the American social body, of a disease of
corruption that renders American legislatures feeble or powerless
against the great business corporations, and of an extreme
demoralization of the police force. The relation of the local political
organization to the police is fatally direct, and that sense of ordered
subordination to defined duties which distinguishes the best police
forces of Europe fails. Men go into the police force, we are told, with
the full intention of making it pay, of acquiring a saleable power.

There is probably enough soundness in these impressions, and enough
truth in these reports and criticisms, to justify our saying that all
is not ideally right with the American atmosphere, and that it is not
to present American conditions we must turn in repudiating our British
hereditary monarchy. We have to seek some better thing upon which
British and American institutions may converge. The American personal
and social character, just like the English personal and social
character, displays very grave defects, defects that must now be
reflected upon, and must be in course of acquisition by the children
who are growing up in the American state. And since the American is
still predominantly of British descent, and since he has not been
separated long enough from the British to develop distinct inherited
racial characteristics, and, moreover, since his salient
characteristics are in sharp contrast with those of the British, it
follows that the difference in his character and atmosphere must be due