NATIONAL SELF-RESPECT.
Nathaniel S. S. Beman, an American Presbyterian divine. Born in New Lebanon, N. Y., 1785; died at Carbondale, Ill., August 8, 1871. For forty years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, N. Y.
The western continent has, at different periods, been the subject of every species of transatlantic abuse. In former days, some of the naturalists of Europe told us that everything here was constructed upon a small scale. The frowns of nature were represented as investing the whole hemisphere we inhabit. It has been asserted that the eternal storms which are said to beat upon the brows of our mountains, and to roll the tide of desolation at their bases; the hurricanes which sweep our vales, and the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; the thunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the beasts of the forest have not attained more than half their ordinary growth.
While some of the lines and touches of this picture have been blotted out by the reversing hand of time, others have been added, which have, in some respects, carried the conceit still farther. In later days, and, in some instances, even down to the present period, it has been published and republished from the enlightened presses of the Old World, that so strong is the tendency to deterioration on this continent that the descendants of European ancestors are far inferior to the original stock from which they sprang. But inferior in what? In national spirit and patriotic achievement? Let the revolutionary conflict—the opening scenes at Boston and the catastrophe at Yorktown—furnish the reply. Let Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific, answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and the arts? It is true our nation is young; but we may challenge the world to furnish a national maturity which, in these respects, will compare with ours.
The character and institutions of this country have already produced a deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has stricken the chains of despotism from the provinces of South America—giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence, which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered by a corresponding signal from the heights of the Andes. And the same spirit, too, that came across the Atlantic wave with the Pilgrims, and made the rock of Plymouth the corner-stone of freedom, and of this republic, is traveling back to the East. It has already carried its influence into the cabinets of princes, and it is at this moment sung by the Grecian bard and emulated by the Grecian hero.