a .Bl4 [311 •: fmm AN ORATION BEFORE THE CITY AUTHORITIES OF BOSTON, FOURTH OF JULY, 1871. By HORACE BINNEY SARGENT. BOSTON . ROCKWELL & CHURCHILL, CITY PRINTERS, 122 Washington S T REE T 187 1. AN ORATION BEFORE THE CITY AUTHORITIES OF BOSTON, FOIJETH OF JULY, 1871. By HORACE BINNEY SARGENT. BOSTON: ROCKWELL & CHURCHILL, CITY PRINTERS; 122 Washington Street. 18 7 1. 1x71 CITY OF BOSTON". In Common Council, July 6, 1871. Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council are clue, and they are hereby tendered, to General Horace Binney Sargent, for the very able and eloquent address delivered by him before the City Government and citizens of Boston, on the occasion of the ninety-fifth anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence ; and that he be requested to furnish a copy of the address for publication by the City. Sent up for concurrence. MATTHIAS RICH, President. In Board of Aldermen, July 10, 1871. Concurred. CHARLES E. JENKINS, Chairman. Approved July 11, 1871. WILLIAM GASTON, Mayor ORATION. The earliest dawn to-day recalled those words of Milton's Agonistcs, — "The morning trumpets festival proclaimed In eacli high street." This is the chief national festival, yet commemo- rated, as John Adams thought it should be for ever- more, "by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty God," and with w pomp, parade, guns, bells, bonfires, nad illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other." Ninety-five years of anxious triumph — the agony of glory — have passed away! Why is it that this excitable people, not fettered by too much reverence for the old, and eminently fond of new sensations, still watch, with unabated, hereditary enthusiasm, the rising of this day's sun ? "Why is it not dimmed to them by the distance of near a hundred annual journeys through illimitable space ? Why do not the vast and near events, that the last decade has swept into our history, make us regard the Revo- lution as the day of small things ? 6 JULY 4, 1871. The men of this generation have been actors in successful war, on a scale of military grandeur that our fathers never knew. Within ten years one sheet of paper has enfranchised twice as many millions as were they who broke the British chain by seven years of war. Younger victors, lately robed in garments dyed with Freedom's imperial purple from their veins, who tendered their lives in battles to which Princeton and Monmouth were only skirmish fire, are here to-day. Some of the empty sleeves before me were won by the side of cannon that blazed in miles of battery, on ridges higher than the lowest clouds that touch the monument on Bunker Hill. Even the surrender of Cornwallis is a quiet landscape picture set in the dreamy mist of ninety years, compared with the lurid panorama of your embattled hosts that so lately and so grimly girt with walls of fire a far more wretched and more gallant chieftain. Yet, while the very actors in these recent scenes frequently forget their dates, most Americans re- member the Second, and all, the Fourth of July, 1776, — the immortal days when the decision and the Declaration were made. Why is this long and loyal memory of the nation's heart ? Why would treason, if committed to-day, shock us like the profaning of an altar? OEATION. 7 The answer is plain. Our victory in the war of the rebellion was one of the manifestations of estab- lished power. But the day which we celebrate marks the birth and enthronement of that power as a new force in our history. To-day is the birth- day of a sovereign, — a living, reigning, and immor- tal sovereign, — the people; the only monarch who need never subsidize an army, but who is sure — until we establish female suffrage — of a musket and a man behind each snow-flake of imperial will. And this sovereign is so allied, by the presence of the people all over the continent, by a general knowl- edge, which, being the knowledge of everybody, is greater than the knowledge of anybody, and by millions of consentient power, to the infinite attributes of the King of kings, — omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, — that the voice of the people has been wisely and reverently called the voice of God, who is a spirit, and in whose spiritual image men are made. To-day is the- birthday of this godlike power — The Peoj)le. ]STo wonder that The People does not forget it ! The field of history which we enter again to-day has been gleaned for a century. But because the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance, the harvest of history — its lesson — is forever new. What is this sovereign people? It is not near the 8 JULY 4, 1871. battered Tuileries, or in the draft riots of New York, that we may seek the infant king, around whose cradle, a century ago, our wise men, Wash- ington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, assembled. The cradle was both a camp and throne; for The People was born from the brain and heart of God, all diademed for empire, and helmeted for war. To establish this new sovereign power, Franklin brought all his keen insight into the weakness and strength of human nature; Hamilton, his proud, dauntless courage, and the philosophy of a more than human intellect; Adams, his force of resistance, his vast powers, and volcanic fire under pressure; Jefferson, that matchless felicity in seizing and expressing the grand ideas of the people, which makes some of his simplest sentences thrill us like the trumpet tones of the "Marseillaise" and the " Star Spangled Banner " shouted in chorus by ten thousand men; Washington, a divinity of judgment, a nobility of virtue, and a modesty of valor, which consecrate him as the soldierly incarnation of civic immortality. The devoted supporters of a sovereign give some indication of his qualities. At least we may gather, from the character of his most loyal adherents who place him on the throne, some idea of him, as he ORATION. 9 seemed to them. The solemn consecration, the dar- ing enthusiasm, the unwavering faith, the lofty bearing of the fathers had nothing of the mere iconoclast. They meant something more than the substitution of one ill-regulated monarch for another. Washington did not brave the halter of a traitor for any /dishonest, unhoused, unwashed usurper. In the most boisterous enthusiasm of John Adams there is nothing of the demagogue. The memorable conclave of July, when the decision to separate for- ever from all the dear traditions of the great mother- land was made, breathes a triumphant, sad solemnity, which reminds one of a Roman picture, — now probably destroyed by a French mob calling itself the people, — where jubilant archangels, not un- prescient of Calvary, and with the glory of the throne upon their robes and faces, gather their overshadowing, illuminating wings around a new- born God in Bethlehem. If our celebration of this birthday of the people is anything more than lip service, it is worth while to inquire what sort of a ruler these men of the educated, powerful class, and fresh from allegiance to a monarchy, intended to support; that they were so ready to fall on their faces and adore? From what sceptre of human government does the lustre come, which can excite John Adams, at forty-one 10 JULY i, 1871. years of age, the " Atlas of Independence," " The Colossus of Debate," to break forth in this ex- uberant strain: "You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not;" "through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory"? Few popular phrases have been more misapplied than this specious statement, that "government rests on the consent of the governed." If it mean that government owes its quiescence to the un- willingness of its subjects to attempt escape from present evils by flying to those which are unknown, it is as applicable to an empire as to a republic. But if it mean that the governed must be unanimous in supporting the most vigorous legislation before such legislation can be rightly enforced, and Vir- tually with the consent of the governed, unless they choose to commit themselves boldly to the sacred and inalienable right of revolution eo nomine, — government is not worth the devotion of the meanest rebel soldier, whose unburied skeleton is knocked about by the herds of half-wild swine now roaming over that Virginian "Wilderness, which the priceless blood of your most beloved sons, poured out in the name of government, has drenched. Government implies command, and the right and the power to crush out resistance. The strongest ORATION. 11 government on earth is one where the majority of armed citizens make and choose to enforce its laws. Unless mobs, and associations of violent strikers comprise the majority of the armed citizens, mob law ought to be more out of its proper element here than under an Eastern monarch, whose despotism can be tempered by a single assassina- tion. It is the vigor which wields the law more than the weight behind it that deters offenders. If the people were alive to the truth that indi- vidual freedom cannot exist with a feeble execution of the laws, mob law, exercised against the will of the voting, arm-bearing majority, would be im- possible. But two conditions are essential to this effective majority: one is that the voting, arm- bearing majority shall be vigilant and do the duty of citizens; the other is that such a republican virtue and equality of condition shall be maintained as to secure this majority on the side of conserva- tive interests against a destructive, ill-conditioned minority. Washington intended to enthrone irresistible jpower resting on the will of enlightened armed ma- jorities. The fathers worshipped no waxen statue with a tinsel sceptre. The will of the people was to be vigorously supreme on its vast quarter-deck. Freedom meant Law. 12 JULY 4, 1871. The theocracy, which the Pilgrims purposed to establish, — though, perhaps, a dream for centuries to come, — is a pure, popular government, combining the virtues of all forms of government, wisdom, purity, energy, and weight. As in the physical world, the highest organism passes, in its develop- ment, through the stages of resemblance to the infe- rior organisms which have preceded it, so the various inadequate forms of society — aristocracy, oligarchy, and monarchy — seem to be but progressive steps to that exalted social state, in which the great mass of the people, imbued with the wisdom of the few, and •the virtue of the best, shall act with the absolute energy of one. On this birthday of the Republic, we may, per- haps, be permitted to exult a little. It was an inspiring belief of Socrates that the heroes and mar- tyrs and sages of all time, still, in the spirit, push on their earthly work and stimulate the minds of men. Who would be sorry to believe that the soldiers and statesmen of the new-born nation may rejoice to-day with a mighty people which stretches nearly from the Arctic Circle to the Caribbean Sea, and fronts two thousand leagues on oceans which join, through us, the centuries of Europe to the cycles of Cathay, that we have swept the " ephemeral blot " from " an im- mortal instrument " ? If Franklin can recall his ORATION. 13 earthly memories of "Wedderburae, may not the phi- losopher feel a little quiet satisfaction at the spectacle of a most exalted British Commission, sitting in the capital of aggrieved America, to review, and author- ized to express regret for a fatal British wrong ? Might not a soldier hope that the great Revolutionary Chief may stretch his broad hand in benediction over the living, and greet dear brethren dead with some- thing of the tone which thrilled the weeping Spartan mother on the evening of Thermopylae, — "Your son doth sup with Leonidas to-night"? By celebrating this day we seem to approve the act of our fathers, and to renew our allegiance to that majestic power which they expected their sons to defend against all usurpers from above and from below. The garnered glory and the triumphs ripe justify exultation. But we should be less wise than the Egyptians, who tried their monarchs dead, if, with the fresh memory of a terrific war, which seemed to be waged by the Almighty for the purpose of equalizing the conditions of men, we should not, at the end of this year of sovereignty, scrutinize the condition of the people. With the blackened walls of France before us, we ought not to shut our eyes to the fact that a 14 JULY 4, 1871. widening gulf of discontent and inequality is sepa- rating two armed classes in this republic which is founded on equality. Every one knows that the incomes of the very rich are becoming more enor- mous, while the number of those who have no surplus to save is ■ steadily increasing. While masses are becoming more ready to be purchased, individuals are becoming more able to purchase them. Thus, luxury and mercenary bands, for civil wars, grow up together. Under this inequality, labor and capital are becoming mutually defiant. The theory that the laborer is to be kept in his jplace is now meeting another, that capital has no right which labor is bound to respect. The fact is patent that capital is not less selfish than ever, and that labor is becoming generally dishonest in quantity and quality. The battle-field and the battle-cries are as old as civilization. Capital, forgetting that organizations now give a corporate power to labor- strikes, and still hoping to win its invariable victory, calls him who announces the disease and suggests a cure — incendiary. But never before in the history of nations were both parties to this social combat equally armed with vote and bayonet. The revolution, by intro- ducing the element of equality, complicated the problem. The war of the rebellion enlarged that ORATION. 15 element. We have given to labor suffrage and arms ! Henceforth, men, without property or character, may make and unmake kings. The protection of four things — life, liberty, property, and character — was formerly supposed to be the end of government and laws. American theories of suffrage give all the powers of legislation over four interests to men who may have only two of them, — liberty and life. "When discontent as to the distribution of property takes general possession of a class of armed men who have the power of voting upon interests which they covet and do not possess, mobs — the great peril of a republic — may be expected. To hide one's eyes from the peril does not avert it. Protection, not concealment, is now demanded. Protection must be sought and can be found in the conservative character and interests of the armed majority. The problem is how to make the armed majority conservative. Whenever the standard of value has been changed, such discontents as the present have arisen. At such epochs the luxury of the rich has kept pace with the poverty of the poor. The history of the change is simple. In a studio at Florence, twenty years ago, a sculptor was shaping a mass of clay. From his 16 JULY 4, 1871. artistic fingers grew the figure of a seductive woman, emptying at her feet a cornucopia of gold, while from the muscular grasp of her right hand, which was concealed behind her, depended a scourge of thorns. It was the statue of California. Two or three years later, Chevalier predicted the form of inequality and discontent which now disturbs the relations of capital and labor in the United States. As a student of social science, he knew that the sudden and extraordinary augmentation of gold would most disastrously affect regular salaries, which are not easily increased, and those commodi- ties which cannot be kept over for a better market. Labor, especially, is a perishable commodity. The miner and the needle-woman cannot let the sun go down on an unsold day. To-day cannot be stored up till to-morrow. Starvation, unaided from with- out, can make no terms. It is more helpless before the employer than is the borrower before the money-lender. Labor-organizations grow out of this utter helplessness. Only by the combination of the employed and unemployed can half-paid labor wait for a better market. The influx of gold has lengthened the yard-stick by which we measure values. Paper currency has increased such inflation. But even if we were to resume specie payments to-morrow, we have perma- ORATION. 17 nently entered on an era of higher prices. If it were not for labor-saving machinery, and the open- ing of some new fields of commerce and production, we should find an increase in the price of every article of general consumption as measured by the standard, gold. Provisions, land in localities not still asleep, house-rents, boarding and lodging have trebled in price. Generally, except in house-service, which is both largely paid and free from the anxieties of self-support, wages have only doubled. The rise of wages has not kept pace with the rise of prices paid by the poor, or with the profits of capital. Our homilists, who decry luxury among the work- ing-classes, forget that their luxury, their comforta- ble homes, their pretty tea-service, their beautiful chromos on the wall, are the measure of the safety and conservative well-being of the republic. Such are the conditions of the conservative armed majority. We have a proverb, " Be virtuous, and you will be happy," to which some philosopher, with a grim sense of humor, has added the words, "but you will not have a very good time." The older civiliza- tion of the Chinese has more profoundly sounded the truth of miserable human nature. " Be happy, and you will be virtuous," say the disciples of Con- 18 JULY 4, 1871. fucius. Discontent and a republic, founded on equality, cannot dwell together. The sentiments of an incendiary swell his heart who dreads to look upon his children because the wolf is at the door. More money, rather than more unemployed time to agonize over the want of it, is the cure for the heart-burning of the poor. Men are so unwilling to be taxed directly, and take so kindly to indirect extortion, that the real demand, " more wages " for a certain measure of work, assumes the less offensive, more plausible form, w a smaller measure of work for the money." Labor, following the example of the trader, is trying to substitute the wine quart for the beer quart ; and, failing of this, everywhere offers an adulterated or diluted article. Eight hours are not the remedy for the labor-murrain that infects the country. For no rule of contentment is more per- fect than this, — "A little more money than one wants, and a little less time than one needs." Con- tentment, honesty, and chastity are suffering, not for want of time to be chaste, honest, and contented, but because labor has not yet felt its just proportion of the impetus that the change of the standard has given to values. A host of anxious women is taking the place of the happy mothers of the people. Enforced misery of miseries is vitiating the republic at its very source ORATION. 19 of life. A mob of dishonest, discontented men, armed with vote and musket, crowd the steps, and press upon the throne that our fathers established. These men must be converted or repelled. Precepts and exhortations will not avail. We may preach charity till we faint. Even the great charter of our liberties, the Federal Constitution, is only a bundle of inoperative, but excellent principles. We give them effect by legislation. Society is only held together by statutes. Life and virtue should be protected -against the slow approaches of neces- sity, as well as against the more sudden assault. The degradation of the future mothers of the people is a horror so monstrous, that, as the wages of a sailor cling to the last plank of a ship, the salvation of women ought to be made the first duty of the State. Either we should provide employment for women, at sufficient compensa-r tion, so that they can be fit, pure mothers of the people; or we should drown the female children, as they do in China which orginates the proverb, w Be happy, and you will be virtuous." God knows it would be less cruel. I hear the angry cry of those who think that virtue and vice, and happiness and misery should be left to the natural laws of demand and supply: "Manufacturers will be ruined, if wages are to be 20 JULY 4, 1871. increased." Perhaps they may be; and capital may have to seek more lucrative occupation, as labor is advised to do, under the natural laws of demand and supply. But something must be done to remedy a fatal disease of the republic. The exhor- tations of charity are unavailing. But the State, — God bless her! — has the power of enforcing charity by taxation. The citizens are taxed for public schools, to prevent ignorance. Why should they not be taxed for public factories, to prevent theft and prostitution? The State and the poor may well be partners in a grand co-operative system. Why should not the government, which has factories of ships and cannon, establish factories to create the cheap defence of nations? The expense of police, of penitentiaries, of civil wars, of a republic lost, is a more serious item than the whole cost of State normal factories. The protection of feeble girls, of broken-down women, the comfortable and virtuous rearing of the mothers of the people, is founded on the bare, selfish, common sense that makes the farmer house his ewes from winter storms, and save his heifers from the plough. The co-operative system should be initiated by legislative charity based on the power of inexhaustible taxation. The taxes of civil war are heavier. It is better for the State to weave cotton at a loss than to make the ORATION. \ 21 social warp and woof so rotten that luxury and misery, tugging at the republic, can rend it. It is better for the rich to eat into accumulated capital than for the poor, the armed majority, to become Catilines in the fever of accumulating debt. We must make the laborer conservative, or reduce him to a very low, servile, defenceless state, which Cal- houn thought essential to the condition of service in a republic of equals. A commission to prepare a tabular statement of the purchasing power of gold, as compared with a period twenty years ago, would confer signal service on the country. It would demonstrate the justice or injustice of the present discontent. The failure hitherto to adjust all compensations to the new value of gold seriously affects the power of the sovereign people to employ its ablest servants. In !New England the salaries of judges have so much declined in relative value, that only the highest sense of public duty retains in a vital service men who, by practice in their own courts, might secure thrice the sum of their judicial salaries. This is certainly burning the candle of economy at both ends, which was not Franklin's intention. The salutary competition that an increase of sala- ries would create is intimately connected with a most desirable reform, — abolition of all unpaid offices. A 22 JULY 4, 1871. housekeeper would be deemed insane who, unless he should load all his pistols and lock up his spoons, should pay those servants, who were interested in the disbursement of his money, no wages. Yet this grave folly our monarch, The People, is constantly committing. I need make no apology for alluding to this pernicious error, in the presence of a city government chosen, in a manner most honorable to itself and its respected chief, by a revolutionary uprising of all parties against abuses which time and quiescence had sanctioned as the perquisites of patriotism. "We know that every year crowds the trades and professions with honest, able and anxious men, who would become candidates for public office if it offered legitimate and adequate support. The public would be better served by servants whom it could reprimand for malfeasance, than it ought to be by volunteers who sacrifice their own interests to public spirit. Intimately connected also with the abolition Of unpaid public offices which cost the nation enormous sums of waste, is the duty of a citizen to accept adequately paid office and vote at elections. The People, like any other monarch, is entitled to the service of its subjects. That tenure of lands, which under monarchies depends on some trifling annual service to the king, is based on this principle of con- ORATION. 23 stant duty. But the lord would uot hold the ewer or buckle ou the spur, unless some forfeiture should attend his nonfeasance. Precepts, without laws and penalties, will not secure anxious allegiance. American as I am, in every fibre of my heart, I find the secret of national power in another land than my own. If I should ask the question, where purity of life, frugal simplicity of habits, intellectual cul- ture, patriotic fire, and all male virtues predominate; where the most affectionate domestic ties combine the larger, grander love for Fatherland ; where the interests of armed millions are welded into the mighty wedge of one iron will ; where we hear that majestic tread of humanity, with a great purpose before it and a great nation behind it, — the voice of even an American assembly would correctly reply. And why do we find this- simple virtue, this earnest republican energy, under the shadow of the Prussian throne ? Is it the form of government that makes Prussia the power that she is ? Let France — let Paris, — "Unhappy Paris, but to women brave," — whose daily bulletins sound like a chapter from Ezekiel, reply. Compulsory legislation, based on a scheme of national greatness, devised long ago, has made the 24 JULY 4, 1871. Prussian a dutiful citizen. The want of such legis- lation has changed the beauty of France to ashes. The absence of such legislation here, under our false theories of the consent of the governed, of the sanc- tity of an enlightened American elector, and that liberty requires a weak executive expression of an armed nation's will, has degraded American politics and office so low, that, except in moments of peril, when God comes down among the people with pen- tecostal flame, inspiring them to think in thoughts and speak in tongues which they did not know, many able and honest men of iron, who would serve the people as loyally as they would serve the omniscient Lord of Hosts, will have nothing to do with public affairs. As the legislation of Prussia, with intent to create an invincible army of citizens, has compelled every man to be a trained soldier; as there, no learning, wealth, or refinement exempts gentle or noble from military service; as there, no sluggish- ness of the well-conditioned, no selfishness of private business, no sneers of caste, which are often the tremors of cowardice, are permitted to detain one vitalizing drop of blood from the national heart and arm; as there, in the transcendent Prussia of to- day, the worthy may never devolve their muskets on the base, — so we, who think the ballot supersedes ORATION. 25 the bayonet, and would not see it turned against society by the vicious, improvident, and dangerous classes who have no interest of property or char- acter to protect, should, under the severest pains and penalties, compel every citizen to vote. Election days should be the roll-call of the nation, as they were at the election of the Magyar Kings, when a hundred thousand sword-points flashed to heaven, and a hundred thousand bearded throats thundered " I will ! " The citizen has no more right to withhold his unit, from the sum of law and order, than has the soldier to desert a field where his musket may decide the combat. If we are a government, the governing power must not desert itself. To counteract the much-lauded, but undoubted and irrevocable evil of unqualified suffrage, the support of the republic by the most educated, refined, opulent and influential citizens is to be especially desired. The machinery to compel their attendance is simple. The absence of a checking mark against a name, after the polls were closed, would be prima facie evidence of delinquency, subject of course to rebutting testimony. A fine, based on some percentage of the delinquent's next tax-bill, to be added thereto and collected with the tax, would insure the anxious attendance of the 26 JULY i, 1871. largest holders in the great joint-stock concern, — society. Non-voting, contemptuous grumblers would become earnest debaters at primary meet- ings. Nominees, who are not party hacks, would come before the people. For between high-headed contempt for all parties, and compelled action in support of either, there is a wide difference. The rich candidates for office are not necessarily more corrupt than the poor, and the pockets able to tempt the rich by a sufficient bribe are comparatively few. The fancy that all nominees must be well known to the electors is dissipated by a single fact. The most and least intelligent blindly follow a ballot born of rank corruption. By making the exercise of suffrage compulsory, we should learn how many of our fair sisters de- sire to be forced to do an act, which, if not backed by armed force, is only a tender appeal to the courtesy of law-breakers. In a composite government like ours an illusory manifestation of popular will may involve a State in impotent hostility to other States, or to the Federal authority. Washington, the sol- dier, intended to found a strong government. Con- tempt for shams and blank cartridge lies at the base of power. However just it may be that women with property should be allowed a voice in making the laws; how- ORATION. v 27 ever true it may be that some male voters are an exception to the general rule of bearing arms ; how- ever difficult it may be for the sexes so to arrange their union that almost every child-bearing woman shall merge her life in the protection of her intended mate, some arm-bearing man, and make with him one political individual, — there would seem to be no safety to society in impotent suffrage, and no profit in amvying the women of one section against the women of another — except to the milliners. The loftiest sigh of aspiration, the purest ballot, would not have deterred Jefferson Davis from his mad career. That politician is unworthy who can be made, by a gentle, white-gloved pressure, or a smile, to surrender from the gauntleted hand of strength the iron sceptre of a universally-voting and arm- bearing nation, until those sweet millennial days when every woman is a shepherdess and every man — a sheep. What would Miles Standish have thought of it? If I could, by earnest prayer upon my knees, per- suade this nation to make one law, that law should compel every able-bodied American to devote the first 3^ear of his manhood to the exclusive, vigorous, military discipline of a formal Camp. The want of the mental and moral habit of implicit obedience to authority is the licentious American deficiency. 28 JULY 4, 1871. Irreverence is the vulgar American vice. And vulgar vice is so rapid in its generalizations, that contempt for one commandment soon dethrones the decalogue. The world expresses surprise that our returning soldiers are generally law-abiding, gently- mannered citizens. But service in a good regiment is a liberal education in all the brave, grand, loyal principles of duty. The soldier learns to obey, and to enforce authority, because he finds subordination to be the necessary part of every link in an endless chain of power. A year of such iron discipline, in a normal camp, as the Prussian citizen cheerfully and patriotically undergoes, would teach the American citizen some- thing of the majesty of the people, as the law-mak- ing power. Connivance at a breach of law is as insulting to the offended authority as is association with an officer under arrest. The degradation of the public mind in this regard curiously appears in the fact, that while we arrest the mere spectators at a gaming-table, as parties to an offence, we permit every citizen with impunity to tempt, by money and frenzied prayers, the illicit vendor of liquor to break the law. It is not surprising, with such loose notions about mutual responsibility for participation in a breach of statute law, that the temperance question ORATION. 29 should be unprofitably hustled about by two bodies of reformers ; one of which, permitting all men to patronize and tempt, would only punish the tempted vendor ; and the other of which would dam the ever-flowing cataract of human appe- tite, without leaving the smallest sluiceway for the waters. The People, as a law-making, law-enforcing power, is not yet sensible of its own sacred majesty. Nor will it be a sacred sovereign power in the sense that our fathers intended, until the voting armed majority shall be invested with the interests of property and character as well as with life and liberty; this contented and virtuous majority elect- ing and supporting fully paid officials; these officials enforcing the will of the people by the aid of a very highly paid police, who, being freed from political obligation to any unpaid servants of the public, see, hear, remember, and report. The first century of our national experiment is nearly closed. Society, so prosperous in many ways, is filled with the discontented. Some of these are war-worn men, whose very quietness of manner is formidable because it indicates the subor- dination of weak individual impulse to the irre- sistible movement in mass. These men, without alliances of family or home, because they are too poor to contract them, are bound to other men, 30 JULY 4, 1871. stern as themselves, by ties of years and battle blood, which is thicker than water. Their hearts throb with memories of personal valor which thrill the workshops and the fields. Constitutions are as weak as withes before the throes of Agonistes in his discontent. As a conservative power, these men have saved the life of the nation. As a destructive element, they can imperil it. Make them conservative by a just division of profits, or by the necessary legis- lation to start them in co-operative partnerships. Let the State in its own factories raise wages to the just point, where, if the capitalist can comfort- ably live, a poorer republican citizen can live in com- fort and hope also. Compel these men to be honest in their labor as an equivalent for justice and honesty in wages. These soldiers will obey the law. Use their equality against the discontent of the vicious and improvident when the evil day shall come. The national glory is a common bond of sympathy. The flag is not more loved and honored in the high street where trumpets sound, than in dark lanes where some anxious daughter of the people — too poor to leave her needle even for an hour — gives a glance of tearful triumph at her treasures to-day, — the flaxen lock of her patriot son, and the coat with its once crimson stain, — her beloved Keel, White, and Blue. OEATIOX. 31 A strong government founded on consent is pos- sible, if we are practically, unselfishly grateful for the Declaration of Independence. The life of the immortal words, uttered on the field of Gettysburg with the inspiration of Isaiah, is their glow of con- secration. Only in this spirit of consecration, by yielding some portion of our individual liberty and prosperity to the necessity of making the armed and voting mass conservative, can we approach the Ideal Republic, the ultimate government of the world, the strongest government out of Heaven, — that highest social organism of virtue, wisdom, and power, the type and image of God himself, — law-enacting, law-obeying, consentient mankind. m mm m mm