THE EARLY FATHERS.
Washington, Adams, Franklin, Rush, Paine—every one of them immortal names—struggled with the task with which God had entrusted them. They felt the great responsibility, and their faces, as they looked into each other’s eyes, spoke their anxiety. Each knew that every other as well as self had something in his heart that he dared not utter. They looked inquiringly again and again for some yielding in some face. But they hesitated all. And well they might; for it was not the fate of three million people merely that was in their hands, but the future destinies of the world. One of these men had said but little; but the set features of his face showed a stern resolve; showed that he was waiting for the proper time in which to speak. He knew that it would fall to him to break the way; to say the words which each one felt but dared not speak; and speak at last he did; and they were the words of mighty import that came forth from him; words that were to deliver the people who had come to their full time—a birth that should herald a new race of people to the world; and they came forth from him as if all his powers were concentrated in the effort; as if that effort were the last struggle of the mother to bring forth her child; and the “four” caught up the child and became god-father to it, and they bore it to the people. The people recognised it as their own; took it to their hearts, and at once adopted it. Its name was—Revolution—Independence; and the words rang up and down the wave-washed shores, and fired the people with their inspiration—revolution as the means, independence as the end.
One hundred years have come and gone since that eventful day, great with the future’s destinies. Its hundredth anniversary has passed, and forty million people have commemorated the work of those five men, of those three million people:—commemorated it by reaffirming the truths that then were uttered for the first time in the new world; commemorated them by brilliant flights of oratory, by firing cannons and profuse displays of “stars and stripes” harmoniously blended with the flags of almost every other nation of the globe, whose sons and daughters were participating in the glory of the day; with feasting, fireworks; with general rejoicing everywhere. As if with a universal assent, these swarming millions re-echoed with a will the words that that stern man had uttered on that never-to-be-forgotten day a hundred years ago.
OUR COMMERCIAL GREATNESS.
But those three million people have expanded into forty-four million; and the thirteen States to thirty-eight, besides ten territories and one district. The country now, excepting the stretch from the west shore of Lake Superior, and from the south-west point of Texas westward to the ocean, has available for commercial purposes, a continuous water-front of not less than fifteen thousand miles, equal to that of the whole of Europe. It is five thousand miles from east to west, and four thousand from north to south. It contains vast ranges of mountains, the longest river in the world, and the most fertile plains. Its climate is so varied and extensive that it produces almost everything that is grown anywhere in the world—the fruits of the tropics as well as of the latitudes north and south; and it will be the granary from which the world must ultimately draw its bread. It has all the different forms of mineral wealth—gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, besides coal, oil and salt. No other country on the globe can begin to compare with it in the variety of its products; it combines the utility of them all. It is as if all others had contributed their choicest seeds, as they have their peoples, to fill up the variety with which this should be blessed. In whatever sense it may be regarded, it is the great country of the world. No other can for a moment enter into comparison with it save in some single sense—while this combines the greatnesses of them all. Blessed with such a country—with a land such as God promised to His chosen people—“a land flowing with milk and honey,” how ought the people to have returned their gratitude to Him Who gave it? Or rather, how have they done so?
Having already entered upon a second century, there can be no more appropriate a time in which to see what use there has been made of the “ten talents” with which the Great Husbandman has entrusted us; to see how we have shown our love for Him by that which we have given to our brethren; to see whether from His bounteous gifts to all, a part has stolen the inheritance from others, and when His servants have been sent whether they have been beaten away empty; whether some, having an abundance, have “shut up their bowels of compassion” though seeing their brothers had need; whether they have “fought the good fight,” whether they have “kept the faith” and whether they are entitled to the crown which St. Paul bespoke for them that love God.
WHAT ARE OUR CENTENNIAL FRUITS?
In other words, what is the condition politically, industrially, socially, religiously? Is it such as will make us rejoice in its review? Are our centennial fruits such as He would pronounce good, so that we may rest upon the seventh day from all our labours?
In the first place, what have we done politically? It is to government that people largely owe their prosperity or adversity—a good government meaning continuous prosperity; a bad one continuous adversity, or else alternate seasons of each, in which the latter consume the fruits of the former; in which the people see-saw, up and down each decade; in which, like the Israelites, the people journey in the wilderness “forty years” in search of the promised land, to which God would bring them suddenly, if they would keep all His commandments, and neither worship nor sacrifice to the “Golden Calf.”
The last estimates are, that there are forty-four million people now in the United States. It is by no means, however, to be inferred that these are all citizens who constitute the “sovereignty;” from whom the Government has its source, and upon whom it sheds its benignant rays. For, although the constitution declares that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens;” and although there are unreversed decisions of the Supreme Court, which declare that every person in the country “constitutes a part of the political sovereignty,” and that every such person is entitled to every right, civil and political, enjoyed by anyone in the State,—notwithstanding all this authority and law upon the subject, only a minority of the 44,000,000 are really citizens. For, in the Dred Scott decision, the law of citizenship was declared to be this: “To be a citizen is to have the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right to the acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.” Dred Scott did not possess or enjoy these rights; therefore the court held that he was not a citizen. As this is the law of citizenship now, we must conclude that only those are citizens who have “the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political,” the Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding. The Constitution in the hands of “the few” is a mere toy with the plain language of which they play, making it to mean anything or nothing as it suits them now and then. Later we shall see that this was what it was intended to be; that it was a fraud, a cheat, from the beginning, into which neither the letter nor spirit of the Declaration of Independence ever entered.