THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1877.
There is little beyond the Russo-Turkish war that will mark this year apart from others in the annals of universal history. Questions, national and international, that we have touched upon time and again come up now unsettled as ever. It is tedious and profitless to go over well-trodden ground; to repeat reflections that have already been repeated; and to attempt a solution of problems, social, political, and religious, that are still working themselves out. We purpose, therefore, in the present review to follow up a few of the broad lines that have marked the year and given to it something of an individual and special character. If these are very few, perhaps it is the better for mankind. The more nations are occupied with their own affairs the better it is for the world at large.
To begin with ourselves. We had a very vexed and very delicate problem to solve—no less than to determine, on the turn of a single disputed electoral vote, who was to be our President. The circumstances that created this difficulty were dealt within our last year’s review; they are in the recollection of our readers. On the casting of a single disputed vote lay the election to the Presidency of the United States. Such a contingency, accompanied as it was by peculiarly aggravating circumstances, had never before arisen in the history of this country. The wisest were in doubt what to do; the country was in a fever of expectation. The republic was on trial in itself and before the world. The written lines of the Constitution were found inadequate to meet so unlooked-for and peculiar a matter. It was not the mere fact of one disputed vote that was to turn the scale. There were many disputed votes, which rested with States whose administration was not above suspicion. Only in the event of all of these turning in favor of one of the candidates could the Presidency be awarded to him. Any one of them going to his opponent—who, as far as the votes of the people went, had a decided and unmistakable majority—would have settled the question at once. There was room and occasion for grave doubt on both sides. By mutual agreement of the representatives of the two parties that divide the country, a national court of arbitration, supposed to be, and doubtless with reason, above suspicion, was appointed to inquire into and decide upon the electoral returns. The court was chosen from both parties. It so turned out that a preponderating vote lay with one party. It might have rested with the other. It was a matter of accident; and it is to be hoped that, if not exactly a matter of accident, it was a matter of honesty that divided the court on each moot point into strict party lines, with, as final result, an award of the Presidency to Mr. Hayes, the Republican candidate. There the matter rested. The court had discharged itself of the very delicate task imposed upon it, and there was nothing left the country and the rival parties to do but accept a decision of its own creation, which might have gone the other way, but did not. It was the shortest way, perhaps, out of an immediate and pressing difficulty. It was none the less a strain on the Constitution and on the conscience of the people—a strain that could not well be stood again. The republic cannot afford to hand this settlement down to posterity as a lawful and satisfactory precedent. The right way in which to regard it is as one of those unforeseen accidents that occur in the history of all peoples, that adjust themselves somehow for the time being, and that stand as a warning rather than a guide to future conduct.
The country honestly and wisely accepted the decision. Of course there were sore feelings; there would have been sore feelings in any case; yet men breathed freely when what was a real, a painful, and a dangerous crisis was over. There are men—sensible and patriotic men, too, as well as a vast multitude neither patriotic nor sensible—who are ever ready to despair of the republic when events do not turn out exactly as they had predicted or desired. Let them take comfort. The republic is not yet dead; and it seems to us very far from dying. In other days, and perhaps in other peoples to-day who enjoy the privilege of a monarchical government, such a question would have resulted in a war of dynasties. The dynasty of Mr. Hayes or of Mr. Tilden troubles us but little. The disaffected may bide their time. They still hold their votes, and it is for them to see that they are not robbed of them. Mr. Hayes has taken to heart the lesson of the last elections, which pronounced not so much against a party as against the administration of his predecessor. The present administration has thus far, in the main, contrasted well with that which went before it. The President seems to be a man of right impulses and feeling and possessed of a good judgment. He has discarded many embarrassing associates and evil allies—political parasites who battened on the life-blood of the state. If his moral vision is only broad enough to see that he is the President not of a party, but of a great people, with varied wants and some sore troubles and internal difficulties that need very cautious and delicate adjusting; if he honestly and persistently aims at doing right, the people, regardless of party, will be with him and support him. Thus far he has manifestly striven to do well. His beginning has been good. Trials will doubtless come. He has already shown himself too good for many influential men in the party that voted for him. If he only continues to disregard and brave all pettiness, he can safely turn from partisans to the people, and the people know how to judge and value honesty—a quality that it was coming to be thought had almost died out of politics.
There have been some indications of a revival of business; but such a revival, to be sure and general, must be slow. Our people have not yet recovered from the demoralizing effect of the rush of good-fortune which they so foolishly squandered. They look for miracles in finance and business, for a revival in a day. This cannot well come. The way for general prosperity, and that even of very moderate dimensions, must be paved by a return to general honesty in commercial dealings and in private life. Public honesty can alone restore public confidence, and public honesty is a matter of growth, education, and the apprehension and following of right principles. It can only come from faith in God and a sense of personal responsibility to God, as true faith in man can only come from true faith in God. The religion that constantly impresses this upon men’s minds is the religion that will preserve and save from all dangers not this republic only but every government. These feelings, penetrating the hearts of the people, will best solve the vexed questions between labor and capital, between black and white and red and yellow. For a right sense of personal responsibility to God necessarily involves a right sense of personal responsibility to one another, of the duties we owe to society, of the duties we owe to the state. This country of all others is open to the free workings of religion. Indeed, it is as open to the devil as to God; and if the devil, according to some, seems to get the best of the battle, it can only be because “the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light”; because Christians are not really and wholly true to Christ, and by their lives do not show forth the faith that is in them.
THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.
In Europe the event of the year that calls for most attention is the war between Russia and Turkey. On this subject we can say little or nothing probably that will not have already suggested itself to others. All have watched the progress of the painful struggle from day to day; have formed their own conclusions as to the manner in which it has been carried on on both sides; as to the necessity of such a war having taken place at all; as to its probable results to both parties and to Europe at large.
At the time of our last review war between Russia and Turkey was thought imminent. We then wrote—and we may be pardoned for quoting our own words, as some of them, at least, seem to us to apply equally well to the present situation—as follows:
“If we may hazard an opinion, we believe that there will be no war, at least this winter. As for the alarm at the anticipated occupation of Constantinople by Russia, while—if the Russian Empire be not dissolved before the close of the present century by one of the most terrific social and political convulsions that has ever yet come to pass—that occupation seems to lie very much within the order of possibilities, we doubt much whether it will occur so soon as people think.... It would seem to us difficult for Russia to occupy Constantinople without first mastering and garrisoning Turkey, and Turkey is an empire of many millions, whom fanaticism can still rouse to something like heroic, as well as to the most cruel and repulsive deeds.”
Those words seem to us to have forecast fairly enough the general aspects of the war. The war was declared because Russia burned to go to war—Russia, or the Russian administration. The invasion of Turkey by Russia was not a thing of the past year. It was foreordained. It was dreaded from the close of the war in the Crimea. The only question with the other powers was how long or by what means could it be staved off. That Russia would invade Turkey as soon as she thought she could do so without much danger of outward interference and with good prospects of success was probably a fixed thought in the minds of all men who chose to give a thought to the matter. For almost a quarter of a century has Russia been girding herself for a fight that had become an essential part of her national policy. Within that period, under the wise guidance of Prince Gortschakoff, she has more than repaired the terrible losses sustained in the Crimean war. She grew stealthily up to a power and a status unexampled in her history. She guarded her finances, lived within her means, prospered, refused steadily to enter into any embarrassing European complications. She saw the European alliance that had crushed her in 1854 hopelessly dissolve, and a new and friendly power rise up and take the lead in European affairs. As a military power she was looked upon as having only one superior, or rival perhaps, in the world, and that her friendly neighbor. So strong was she, and so singularly had every change in European politics told in her favor, that when her opportunity came, with a word, a beck, a stroke of her chancellor’s pen, she snapped asunder the iron gyves forged for her and laid on her by a united Europe, and no power dared whisper a protest. All the world saw whither she was drifting. She was drifting to the sea, stretching out her giant arms to clasp for ever those golden shores that she claimed as hers by destiny. The hour of destiny struck at last. The strifes of exhausted nations and the jealousies of others left her alone to deal with the power that held those shores and that to Russia was an hereditary foe. She proceeded cautiously to the last. She did all things with becoming decorum. She invited the nations to a conference, held in the Turkish capital, to determine once for all what was to be done with the Turk, while she mobilized her armies in order to give effect to her peaceful protest.