The mind, in passing from the unhonored grave of the prince to the last resting-place of the peasant boy, leaps from a kingdom of darkness to one of light.
Let us now return to the career of Washington. Throughout the Revolutionary War he carried in his hand, like Atropos, the destinies of millions; he bore on his shoulders, like Atlas, the weight of a world. It is unnecessary to follow him throughout his subsequent career. Honored again and again by the people of the land he had redeemed from thraldom, he has taken his place in death by the side of the wisest and best of the world’s benefactors. Assassins did not unglory him in life, nor has oblivion drawn her mantle over him in death. The names of his great battlefields have become nursery words, and his principles have imbedded themselves forever in the national character. Every pulsation of our hearts beats true to his memory. His mementoes are everywhere around and about us. Distant as we are from the green fields of his native Westmoreland, the circle of his renown has spread far beyond our borders. In climes where the torch of science was never kindled; on shores still buried in primeval bloom; amongst barbarians where the face of liberty was never seen, the Christian missionary of America, roused perhaps from his holy duties by the distant echo of the national salute, this day thundering amidst the billows of every sea, or dazzled by the gleam of his country’s banner, this day floating in every wind of heaven, pauses over his task as a Christian, and whilst memory kindles in his bosom the fires of patriotism, pronounces in the ear of the enslaved pagan the venerated name of Washington.
Wherever tyranny shall lift its Medusan head, wherever treason shall plot its hellish schemes, wherever disunion shall unfurl its tattered ensign, there, oh there, sow his deeds in the hearts of patriots and republicans. For from these there shall spring, as from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus of old on the plains of Heber, vast armies of invincible heroes, sworn upon the altar and tomb at Mount Vernon, to live as freemen, or as such to die!
THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY
(The Murder of President McKinley)
By David Starr Jordan
We meet to-day under the sway of a number of different emotions. We would express our sorrow at the untimely death of a good man. We would show our regret that our nation has lost the Chief Magistrate of its choice. We would express our sympathy with the gentle woman who has been suddenly bereft of the kindest and most considerate of husbands. We are filled with shame that in our Republic, the land where all men are free and equal wherever they behave themselves as men, the land which has no rulers save the public servants of its own choosing, a deed like this should be possible. We would express our detestation of that kind of political and social agitation which finds no method of working reform save through intimidation and killing. We would wish to find the true lessons of this event and would not let even the least of them fall on our ears unheeded.
And one plain lesson in this: Under democracy all violence is treason. Whosoever throws a stone at a scab teamster, whosoever fires a shot at the President of the United States, is an enemy of the Republic. He is guilty of high treason in his heart, and treason in thought works itself out in lawlessness of action.
The central fact of all democracy is agreement with law. It is our law; we have made it. If it is wrong we can change it, but the compact of democracy is that we change it in peace. “The sole source of power under God is the consent of the governed.” This was written by Cromwell across the statute books of Parliament. This our fathers wrote in other words in our own Constitution. The will of the people is the sole source of any statute you or I may be called on to obey. It is the decree of no army, the dictum of no president. It is the work of no aristocracy; not of blood nor of wealth. It is simply our own understanding that we have to do right, shall behave justly, shall live and let our neighbor live. If our law is tyrannous, it is our ignorance which has made it so. Let it pinch a little and we shall find out what hurts us. Then it will be time to change. Laws are made through the ballot, and through the ballot we can unmake them. There is no other honest way, no other way that is safe, and no other way that is effective. To break the peace is to invite tyranny. Lawlessness is the expression of weakness, of ignorance, of unpatriotism. If tyranny provokes anarchy, so does anarchy necessitate tyranny. Confusion brings the man on horseback. It was to keep away both anarchy and tyranny that the public school was established in America.