Their failure taught them the difference between mind and matter. A dead savage was another wolf under ground, but one of themselves persecuted or killed for conscience sake sowed the seed of discontent and disbelief. The effort to wall in a creed and wall out liberty was at once abandoned, and to-day New England has more religions and not less religion, but less bigotry, than any other community in the world.
In an age when dynamite was unknown, the Pilgrim invented in the cabin of the Mayflower the most powerful of explosives. The declaration of the equality of all men before the law has rocked thrones and consolidated classes. It separated the colonies from Great Britain and created the United States. It pulverized the chains of the slaves and gave manhood suffrage. It devolved upon the individual the functions of government and made the people the sole source of power. It substituted the cap of liberty for the royal crown in France, and by a bloodless revolution has added to the constellation of American republics, the star of Brazil.
But with the ever-varying conditions incident to free government, the Puritan’s talent as a political mathematician will never rust. Problems of the utmost importance press upon him for solution. When, in the effort to regulate the liquor traffic, he has advanced beyond the temper of the times and the sentiment of the people in the attempt to enact or enforce prohibition, and either been disastrously defeated or the flagrant evasions of the statutes have brought the law into contempt, he does not despair, but tries to find the error in his calculation.
If gubernatorial objections block the way of high license he will bombard the executive judgment and conscience by a proposition to tax. The destruction of homes, the ruin of the young, the increase of pauperism and crime, the added burdens upon the taxpayers by the evils of intemperance, appeal with resistless force to his training and traditions. As the power of the saloon increases the difficulties of the task, he becomes more and more certain that some time or other and in some way or other he will do that sum too.
PATRIOTISM A REALITY.
BY THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.
All Americans ought to feel kindly disposed toward this eloquent Irish patriot, for he not only risked his life in the cause of Irish liberty, but also in our own Civil War. This oration has a rugged strength and blunt earnestness quite characteristic of the man. Let it not be delivered in any feeble halting manner, but with all your nerve and energy.
Sir, the pursuit of liberty must cease to be a traffic. It must resume among us its ancient glory—be with us an active heroism. Once for all, sir, we must have an end of this money making in the public forum. We must ennoble the strife for liberty; make it a gallant sacrifice, not a vulgar game; rescue the cause of Ireland from the profanation of those who beg, and from the control of those who bribe!