Excerpt from Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association, Held at Louisville, Ky., June 21-27, 1917 But in 1848 you find yourself confronting a sinister power that said democracy was going too far, a power that forced out Carl Schurz and those other men who did so much for democracy in the United States, a power which imprisoned and prosecuted in 1848 and which still imprisons, hangs and mutilates today in the name of those who hate democracy. In 1848 we see this struggle intensifying. After the end of the wars of Napoleon, in 1815, that amazing Congress of Vienna was summoned, to divide up the world, in a way I suppose highwaymen would divide up loot. They carved and recombined Europe in the interest of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Great Britain; and France and French possessions were the victims. You will, perhaps, recall that when the Repub lic of Genoa had been tossed over to some king, the representatives of the republic complained to the czar, who was one of the most sentimental, beautiful souls that ever played the part of an iron-handed, bloody despot. The czar replied, Repub lies are no longer fashionable. One, hun dred and two years after that remark Rus sia said to the czar, Czars are no longer fashionable. The difference between those two fashions is the difference which meas ures the development of American ideals in the spread of democracy throughout the world. This autocratic power which, in 1815, was so firmly intrenched in Europe has gone down in a way that is hard to believe. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.