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Charles Nordhoff, who followed a youth spent at sea with a long life of honorable and brilliant activity in journalism, describes the watchfulness of the fleet as he had often seen it: "The fleet is the aggregate of all the vessels engaged in the mackerel fishery.
How did you find me?" "It was not easy, but I persevered " "Why?" "For a purpose. I will tell you presently. And do not think that I came to sneer. I am sorry for you grieved to find you struggling in the vortex of London." He looked about the room, which, indeed, told a plain story. "You were intended for better things," he added. "Where is Count Nordhoff?" "He left me three years ago."
The distinction must be observed, for while the law is helpless against theories, it is potent against the practical application of theories. In a little book called "Politics for Young Americans," written with most pious and orthodox intent by the late Charles Nordhoff, the discussion of government begins with the epigram, by no means original with Nordhoff, "Governments are necessary evils."
Nordhoff, whose reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes this method of fishing and its results graphically: "At midnight, when I am called up out of my warm bed to stand an hour's watch, I find the vessel pitching uneasily, and hear the breeze blowing fretfully through the naked rigging.
Nordhoff wished to impress upon his readers is the part played by a Constitution in fixing that recognition in a strong and enduring form. The quotation I have in mind, however, from one of the highest of legal authorities, has no reference to the United States Constitution or to any Constitution. It deals with the essential principles of law and of government.
But, highly important as is this aspect of State independence, the most essential benefits of it are the training in self-government which is emphasized in the above quotation from Mr. Nordhoff, and the adaptation of laws to the particular needs and the particular character of the people of the various States.
A series of pretty stories of feathered songsters, for little men and women, alike interesting to the young and children of an older growth. POLITICS FOR YOUNG AMERICANS. By CHARLES NORDHOFF, author of "The Communistic Societies of the United States," etc. Popular edition; paper, 12mo., 400. Harper and Brothers, New York.
In a country of such vast extent and natural variety, a country developing with unparalleled rapidity and confronted with constantly changing conditions, who can say how great would have been the loss to local initiative and civic spirit, how grave the impairment of national concord and good will, if all the serious concerns of the American people had been settled for them by a central government at Washington ? In that admirable little book, "Politics for Young Americans," Charles Nordhoff fifty years ago expounded in simple language the principles underlying our system of government.
Badeau's analysis was rather delicate; infinitely superior to that of Sam Ward or Charles Nordhoff. Badeau took Adams to the White House one evening and introduced him to the President and Mrs. Grant. First and last, he saw a dozen Presidents at the White House, and the most famous were by no means the most agreeable, but he found Grant the most curious object of study among them all.
Nordhoff certainly did not intend his young readers to infer that such tyranny as he describes is either sure to occur in the absence of a Constitution or sure to be prevented by it. The primary defense against it is in the people's own recognition of the proper limits of majority power; what Mr.
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