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. CHAMPION OF PERSONAL LIBERTY. Mayor McClellan of Now York Takras View that Paternal Legislation Is Not "Cure-All." Mayor George B. McClellan of Greater New York, who is looked upon as the likely nominee of the Democratic party for governor of the Empire State at next years election, lias recently concluded a tour of tin- county fairs throughout the state, during which he addressed great gatherings ot the populace. Mayor MeClellans addresses were pitched on a high plane, worthy of a direct descendant of the great Marcy. whose service in the United States Senate and later as secretary of state in the cabinet of President Pierce, are familiar to students of political history. During the course of his speech at the Franklin County fair at Maloue. Mayor McClellan spoke as follows: "We have during the last few years seen some very extraordinary examples of paternal, or. rather, grandmotherly legislation. With the best will in the world, those in charge of government have tried to cover every field of human endeavor by legislative .enactment intended to carry us by the shortest possible route to the millennium. This lielief in the power of legislation, through governmental interference, to cure all ills and right all wrongs, would be almost pathetic in its futility were it not that It often results in oppression and positive mischief. The enactment of the decalogue will not make us perfect, any more that a declaration1 that sin shall cease will banish it from the earth. Moral sentiment must first be awakened before moral standards can be raised. The moral standards of the community are those of the Individuals who compose it. and can only be lettered by appealing through argument to the individual, and not by arbitrary and sometimes offensive legislation. "The prohibition wave has been sweeping the country has not been due to restrictive legislation, but to the phenomenal growth of temperance sentiment, which has expressed itself in legislative form. The statutes have not been the cause of the sentiment, but. on tin; contrary. Its direct result. Forbidding men to drink will not of itself keep them sober, any more than making gambling in any form a crime will of itself stop betting or tinkering with the primary and election laws will of itself give us honest primaries or pure elections. No law can be effective that is not supported by public opinion, for after all law is nothing but the recognition of a public opinion that already exists. "The very men who in private life insist that reform must begin iu the individual are only too apt. when bj- fortuitous circumstances they find themselves occupying high office, to utterly forget their former teachings. Carried away by their enthusiasm, the.v- imagine that by a stroke ot the pen they can change public opinion, and that the laws which they place upon the statute books will in some mysterious way enforce themselves. AVben bv the exercise of the entire police power of the state an unpopular law is enforced, they deceive themselves into the belief that the vigor of its enforcement is the triumph of the law. although it may le nothing more than the evidence of a petty tyranny. Moral progress is only possible through the force of public opinion. The prophet who. ignoring it. tramples custom under foot, and invading what have always been held to be the rights of personal liberty, forces down the throats of the people his own peculiar brand of perfection, is apt to find himself unpopular and, like other prophets, far more honored abroad than at home. As long as we remember the great truth that this nation is composed of the people of the states and that the states are eomiiosed of individuals, of men. each with a life to live by himself, each with his own salvation to work out. but all united in a common cause: that the state does not exist for the purpose of caring for its children, but that the children live for the purpose of caring for the state, just so long will our country remain great."
