THE PILGRIMS.
HEY were practical statesmen, these Pilgrims. They wasted no time theorizing upon methods, but went straight at the mark. They solved the Indian problem with shotguns, and it was not General Sherman, but Miles Standish, who originated the axiom that the only good Indians are the dead ones. They were bound by neither customs nor traditions, nor committals to this or that policy. The only question with them was, Does it work? The success of their Indian experiment led them to try similar methods with witches, Quakers, and Baptists. 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.
HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
THE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN ORATOR AND JOURNALIST.