Stephen Langton and the barons of England protested against the tyrannical power of King John. They did so at the peril of their heads. Yet they were possessed of this spirit of contemporaneous rebellion, and they fought against John and won from him that great charter of the liberties of men, that has been the basis of all proclamations of freedom ever since.
Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Milton, and the other great commoners and democrats of England were in a state of contemporaneous protest and rebellion against the undue pretensions of King Charles I. Their protests might have cost them their lives—yet they protested. And they won a victory that has made republics possible throughout all time.
So with the leaders of the French Revolution. There were many awful and bloody events connected with that great act of contemporaneous protest, but that the ultimate outcome upon mankind has been good most true-hearted thinkers agree. Yet the protests were made by the earlier agitators under great danger.
When Patrick Henry, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and the other American revolutionists protested against King George's tyranny, and when the noble band met at Philadelphia and signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew they did it at the peril of their lives—yet they protested and won for mankind the victory that Joaquin Miller calls "Time's burst of Dawn."
Had Langton, Cromwell, the French Revolutionists, Washington, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence failed, they would all have forfeited their lives for their temerity. It was an act of great moral courage to rebel.
When Galileo rebelled against the dictum of the ecclesiastic authorities in regard to the movement of the earth, it meant his imprisonment, yet he rebelled and thus ushered in a new day of advancement in astronomical knowledge. Darwin did the same. Both men required daring and courage, yet they did not hesitate or falter.
There are evils to-day that should be fought; fashions, customs, entrenched wrongs in existence now against which manly men are called to be in contemporaneous rebellion. Those of us who live to-day are reaping great and blessed privileges, freedom, liberties, won for us as the result of the protests, rebellions, warfares of the moral heroes of the past; so should we further the progress of the world by protesting and fighting the existing wrongs, in order that future generations may be freer than we are, and may push on still further the glorious chariot of human progress.
Henry George was a recent heroic example of contemporaneous protest against current evils. Garibaldi, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Kossuth, were all noble and inspiring examples of the like spirit. Ruskin's life was a perpetual protest against the sacrificing of beauty, peace, harmony, and brotherhood for the rush and show of material prosperity. William Morris's life, work, voice, and pen were ever in active, open, contemporaneous hostility and opposition to the damnable spirit of modern competition, and demoralizing commercialism which destroyed artistic labor, banished fellowship, and substituted therefor the rule of the jungle where the strong devour the weak. Thank God! the ranks of the morally courageous have always found glad and willing recruits; men willing to spend and be spent for the benefit of humanity; willing to be rebels and accounted and treated as such that they might help gain larger victories of freedom for their fellow-men.
We sometimes think that there was more moral heroism in the days gone by than there is to-day. I do not believe it! In this matter of moral heroism and contemporaneous rebellion against entrenched wrong, we have many fine and noble living examples on every hand. I could mention a hundred of them in as many minutes. A few must suffice.
When Edwin Markham wrote The Man with the Hoe, he showed his spirit of contemporaneous protest and rebellion. Here was no reflection upon labor or its dignity, as some thoughtless critics have affirmed, but it was a tremendous and powerful onslaught upon the "Kings and Rulers of All Lands" who permit employers to chain the laborer to the "wheel of labor." Markham's poem is a direct challenge and throwing down of the gauntlet to those who contend that they have a right to purchase labor in the open market at any price, however demoralizing to mankind. It is a contention that manhood is more than money; that the laborer is more than the labor; and that the employers who value the labor done more than the men who do the labor are unworthy the honor and respect of decent men; are unworthy to be called real men because of their tyrannical abuse of their helpless brothers.