What, then, shall I talk about? Here in this great building, surrounded by this vast display of the products of agriculture, industry, invention, commerce, and art, the eye and the mind, not the tongue, should be busy. This Exposition is a modern object lesson—a school for the instruction of old and young alike. It illustrates the social and industrial progress and prosperity of the West—the arts, trades, sciences, literature and philosophy of our people, as well as their great commercial and agricultural pursuits. The useful and the beautiful, the products of skill and of industry, of the studio, the factory, the field and the mart, are here blended happily together, for the inspection of the curious and the study of the thoughtful. Such exhibitions are of the greatest value to all classes of the people. They instruct and inspire. They suggest new ideas. They diffuse a better knowledge of the natural resources of the country, and of the methods, industries and progress of its people. The Exposition, therefore, needs no orator. It speaks for itself. It is its own advocate and eulogist. Look around, and admire.
I heartily congratulate the originators and managers of the Exposition upon the brilliant success they have achieved. They have inaugurated a great enterprise; an enterprise of vast and permanent importance and value; an enterprise worthy of this great and prosperous city.
I rejoice, also, to see that here, as at all previous exhibitions of similar character, commencing with the Centennial at Philadelphia, the displays made by Kansas attract general attention and comment. Kansas has never been ashamed or afraid to appear in any presence, or on any proper occasion, and exhibit samples of her products; and every true Kansan is sure that wherever Kansas sits, there is the head of the table. Perhaps this may be a clansman’s pride and enthusiasm. But I believe it is measurably shared by the people of a small section of Missouri. Is not this so? For if Kansas were not where and what it is, what would Kansas City be? I have been informed that fully three-fourths of the trade of this city comes from Kansas. I have also been told that, excluding their circulation within the corporate limits of the city, fully four-fifths of the readers of the Kansas City papers are found in Kansas. And if these are facts, surely no people outside of Kansas can have a larger interest in the development, prosperity and victories of the Sunflower State than have the people of Kansas City.
Gentlemen of the Exposition management, I thank you sincerely for the kind invitation you gave me to inspect this wonderful exhibit. People of Kansas City, I salute you, and acknowledge with gratitude, the cordial and generous reception you have given me. Fellow-citizens of Kansas, I know you will enjoy your visit to the Exposition, and I am assured that its officers and all the people of Kansas City are glad to greet and to welcome you. And now, fervently hoping that the future may bring returns of a fruitful harvest to the originators and managers of this great enterprise, and that the Exposition may increase in interest and importance year after year, I bid you, one and all, good-bye.
THE FARMERS’ PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION.
Address delivered at the annual meeting of the Farmers’ Protective Association, held at Atchison, February 7th, 1888.
Mr. Chairman: When I was visited, a few days ago, by a committee of Atchison county farmers, and requested to welcome the members of this Association to my home, I very cheerfully assented. I was glad to gratify my old neighbors and friends, and, in their name, bid their fellow-members of the Protective Associative a cordial welcome to Atchison. I knew that their greeting, their reception, their hospitality, would supplement and emphasize my words, and so, if I should fail in fairly expressing the pleasure they feel in having you for their guests, their kindliness and generosity would atone for my failure. I greet and welcome you, therefore, in the full assurance that your brief sojourn here will be made enjoyable by all the gracious courtesies that inspire generous hearts, and that you will return to your homes carrying with you only pleasant memories of your visit to Atchison, and of the hospitality of your hosts, the members of the Atchison county branch of your organization.
I cannot claim a close familiarity with the aims, principles, and workings of your Association. But I have learned, from its constitution, that its objects are “the protection of the person and property of its members, and to assist the civil authorities in the enforcement of law.” The uninitiated speak of it as an “anti-horse thief society,” and it seems to exercise a wholesome influence over those individuals who entertain communistic ideas concerning property rights in horseflesh. And if your organization had no other or broader aims than to make horse-stealing unprofitable and horse thieves unsafe, it would be a useful society. A Western sheriff in pursuit of a horse thief will ride faster and go further than will an officer in search of any other criminal, because he knows that his tenure of office largely depends upon the energy, activity, courage, and success of his pursuit. He knows, too, that he is backed by a public sentiment which holds horse-stealing to be one of the gravest and meanest of crimes, and so he is impelled to activity and vigilance by the strongest incentives—his sense of official duty, his desire to win the approval of his fellow-citizens, and his fear of popular condemnation should he fail in his mission.
But your constitution does not pledge your support to the enforcement of the law against horse-stealing alone. It explicitly declares that the objects of your association are, “the protection of the person and property of its members, and to assist the civil authorities in the enforcement of law.” The wisest and greatest of Americans said that this government of ours was a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” In this country, all power, all authority, is vested in the people. They make and unmake laws. He, therefore, who derides or disregards law, is not contemning or defying a despot or an autocrat—he is antagonizing the sovereign power of the people.
Law may not be, as Coke defines it, “the perfection of wisdom.” I have known laws, indeed, that were rather the perfection of folly. But, good or bad, as laws in this country are merely the expression of the people’s will, they should be respected as long as they remain laws. For law is just as necessary to the human race as is the air we breathe or the food we eat. William Pitt truly said that “where law ends, tyranny begins.” Contempt for and disregard of law naturally lead to anarchy, and anarchy, soon becoming intolerable, invites despotism. Nations prosper, peoples thrive, as their laws are wise, humane, and just; but even a bad law is better than no law at all. Lawlessness means disorder, tumult, crime; it means the oppression of the weak by the strong; and, in the end, it means despotism. A people who cannot make and obey their own laws will, just as certainly as the sun will rise to-morrow morning, at last invite the rule of an autocrat who will make laws for them.