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CHAPTER XVIII.
A VISIT TO THE MINISTER OF STATE.
Before returning to the United States of America I called on the
Minister of State, who is also the presiding officer of the Parliament,
and told him that I would regard it as a great favor if he would tell me
how such changes had taken place in the Government of his country ,
"for," said I, "from what I read about your Government when I was a boy
it was an absolute monarchy, and one man's will was the law of the
land."
"You have the key to the problem in that statement," he replied, "for I
am free to confess that it would have taken centuries to have brought
about our present system of government under so-called democracy. Near
the middle of the last century an absolute ruler in our country by a
stroke of his pen freed twenty-three millions of slaves, while in your
country it required four years of bloody war at a cost of ten thousand
millions of dollars and the lives of one million of brave men, and
through the widespread demoralization that ensued through your bravest
and best being killed or giving to the corrupt element in your country
(for a dishonest man is always a coward) the opportunity to inaugurate
a reign of monopoly where graft and bribery flourishes and the slave
element that you freed are a menace (and will be as long as they remain
in the country) to society.
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