We trust now that the worst has come, the foulest deed has been committed, that our civil wars may stop, not through the victory of one side over the other, the trusts or the unions now set off against each other, but in the victory over both of the American people, of the great body of men and women who must pay for all, and who are the real sufferers in every phase of the struggle.
Strangulatus pro Republica—slain for the republic. The lesson is plain. It is for us to take it into our daily lives. It is the lesson of peace and good-will, the lesson of manliness and godliness. Let us take it to ourselves, and our neighbors will take it from us.
All civilized countries are ruled by public opinion. If there be a lapse in our civic duties, it is due to a lapse in our keenness of vision, our devotion to justice. This means a weakening of the individual man, the loss of the man himself in the movements of the mass. Perhaps the marvelous material development of our age, the achievements of huge coöperation which science has made possible, has overshadowed the importance of the individual man. If so, we have only to reassert ourselves. It is of men, individual men, clear-thinking, God-fearing, sound-acting men, and of these alone, that great nations can be made.—From “The Voice of the Scholar,” by kind permission of author and publishers, Paul Elder & Co., San Francisco.
WHAT IS TO BE THE DESTINY OF THIS REPUBLIC
By Judge Story
When we reflect on what has been and what is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this republic to all future ages! What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence!
The old world has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty.
Greece! lovely Greece! “the land of scholars and the nurse of arms,” where sister republics, in fair processions, chanted the praise of liberty and the good—where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressors have bound her to the earth. Her arts are no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery; the fragments of her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruin. She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermopylæ and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions. She fell by the hands of her own people. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions.
Rome! republican Rome! whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has traveled in the parts won by the destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire. A mortal disease was upon her before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the north, completed only what was begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money.
And where are the republics of modern times, which cluster around immortal Italy? Venice and Genoa exist but in name. The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss, in their native fastnesses; but, the guarantee of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains, with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.