Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden
rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too
strong to bear it longer. One cannot, to be sure, demand of whole
nations exceptional moral foresight and heroism; but a certain hard
common-sense in facing the complicated phenomena of political life must
be expected in every progressive people. In some respects we as a nation
seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not
destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we
are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the question and not
with us. Consequently we often congratulate ourselves more on getting
rid of a problem than on solving it. Such an attitude is dangerous; we
have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical, momentous, and
pressing questions to answer. The riddle of the Sphinx may be postponed,
it may be evasively answered now; sometime it must be fully answered.
It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interest both of
scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such
chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade.
The most obvious question which this study suggests is: How far in a
State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although
this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the
ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any
nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any
social evil to grow.
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