WHO ARE CITIZENS?
But who are citizens? Why, those who possess and enjoy, or who have the right to acquire and enjoy, an equality of political and civil privileges. Only certain classes of men possess these rights. These certain classes having possessed themselves of the machinery of the Government, tread upon the Constitution and spit upon the declarations of the Supreme Court. They have stolen the birthright of the “many,” and, putting their thumbs to their noses, say “Help yourselves if you can.” The despoiled people are not able to help themselves now, but let these usurpers be warned that the judgments of God are upon this nation, and that He will come to help those who cannot help themselves against such tyranny; come to deliver His people out of the hands of the “Egyptians,” who have imposed tasks upon them grievous to be borne; come to send them some “Moses,” who shall cause “Pharaoh” to let the people go, and who shall bring down from “Sinai’s Mount” a new and better code of laws.
But who are not citizens, who neither possess or enjoy, nor have the right to acquire or enjoy, an equality of privileges, civil and political? There are three classes of these people: Indians, Chinese, and women, and these constitute by a million more than one-half of all the people. The political lords have selected nice company for the women to keep politically, and yet they put on such monstrous airs if they are told that in this matter they show no respect for their mothers, wives and daughters. Here is a subject for some Raphael, who should have reduced it to canvas and exhibited it at the Centennial, in honour of the mothers and daughters of the land. Upon the one hand there should have been grouped the women of the country, flanked upon the right and left by Indians and Chinese, and the subject named—Political Slaves; while upon the other the citizens should have been grouped, and labelled Political Sovereigns.
THE PRINCIPLES OF OUR GOVERNMENT.
The principles under the inspiration of which this government had its birth, are set forth in the Declaration of Independence. They were when realized by the people, when incorporated into the organic law, to give them independence; and they were thought to be of so much importance that the people fought a long and bloody war to acquire a right to their possession and enjoyment. Who can think of Bunker Hill, of Brandy-wine, of Princeton, of Valley Forge, of Yorktown, think of those long eight years of alternate hope and despair, and not feel that the price paid for independence was too great to have it limited to a mere minority of the people, when it was purchased for the whole; was too great a price to pay for principles that were to be restricted to fewer than half of the descendants of those who paid it. Our fathers would have never fought for the liberty to have a King or an aristocratic ruler of their own. They endured the hardships and privations of that war for independence for themselves and their posterity. Nothing less than this was the inspiration of those years of suffering, nothing less than this could have given them inspiration to gain their independence.
But this was scarcely more than won, before those from whom this inspiration came were doomed to see their work robbed of half its value. At the convention that met to frame a government, there were men whose minds were too narrow to grasp the significance of the truths which had been the inspiration of the people; and which had sustained them through the war. They were men bred and born in English customs. They were not willing to make a complete departure from the established legal forms of the mother country, and make the Declaration, the inspiration of the Constitution, as it had been of the revolution. That inspiration came from these truths, and they were declared to be self-evident, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” No trace of any single one of these truths is to be found in the Constitution as then adopted; nor in any of the Amendments that have since been added, save in Sec. I., Art. XIV., which the self-constituted citizens have rendered nugatory.
OUR COPYING OF ENGLAND.
Our constitution and laws have nothing specifically American about them. They are copies from the English, modified in some particulars, which have been the inducement “to gather the spoils while we may.” The President is an English king under another name, selected by the “caucus,” the worst element in politics, and elected by the people, because, under the vicious methods that are in vogue they have no way to vote save for one of the two at whom ten thousand papers vie with each other in throwing mud during the campaign. Many who have come to know how Presidents are made have abandoned the polls in disgust. The Senate is a badly abridged edition of the House of Lords, while the House of Representatives is the same of the House of Commons. In the law of primogeniture only do our laws differ materially from those of England, this good feature having been borrowed from another source. Nor have we any political literature save the Declaration of Independence which has a distinct national character about it that is purely American, and it is this that we celebrate year after year; it is this and this only that calls out the patriotism of the people.
As far as the Constitution is concerned it is Dead Sea fruit. It is an old and musty English sermon to which we have prefixed a new and vital text, the text and sermon having no common ground or meaning. The condition of the people and the country could scarcely have been worse had we had Kings and Parliaments, instead of Presidents and Congresses. A tree, let it be called by whatever name, is known by the fruit it bears. If we are to judge the political tree in this country in this way, shall we not be forced to say that we have gathered thorns from grapes and thistles from figs? In purity in the administration of justice, our Government can stand no comparison with that of England. Money here is king, and judge and jury also. Then must there not be something radically wrong somewhere, and what can this be, except the engrafting of a new political idea into an old political system? This is what is the matter, and cringe as we may, there can never be a change greatly for the better until the institutions of the country are remodelled by the inspiration of that which led to their establishment.