swear that we will try public and private men by precisely the same moral standard; and that no man who directly or indirectly connives at corruption or coercion, to acquire office or to retain it, or who prostitutes any opportunity or position of public service to his own or another's advantage, shall have our countenance or our vote. The one thing that no man in this country is so poor that he cannot own is his vote; and he is bound to use it not only honestly, but intelligently. Good government does not come of itself; it is the result of the skillful coöperation of good and shrewd men. If they will not combine, bad men will; and if they sleep, the devil will sow tares. And, as we pledge ourselves to our fathers' fidelity, we may well believe that in this hushed hour of noon their gracious spirits bend over us in benediction. PECULIARITY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY 1 The inheritance which we enjoy today is not only an inheritance of liberty, but of our own peculiar American liberty. Liberty has existed in other times, in other countries, and in other forms. There has been a Grecian liberty, bold and powerful, full of spirit, eloquence, and fire; a liberty which produced multitudes of great men, and has transmitted one immortal name, the name of Demosthenes, to posterity. But still it was a liberty of disconnected states, sometimes united, indeed, by temporary leagues and confederacies, but often involved in wars between themselves. The sword of Sparta 1 From "An Address Delivered at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Addition to the Capitol, on July 4, 1851," in Works of Daniel Webster, Vol. II. Printed by Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1853. turned its sharpest edge against Athens, enslaved her and devastated Greece; and, in her turn, Sparta was compelled to bend before the power of Thebes. And let it ever be remembered, especially let the truth sink deep into all American minds, that it was the want of union among her several states which finally gave the mastery of all Greece to Philip of Macedon. And there has also been a Roman liberty, a proud, ambitious, domineering spirit, professing free and popular principles in Rome itself; but even in the best days of the republic ready to carry slavery and chains into her provinces, and through every country over which her eagles could be borne. What was the liberty of Spain, or Gaul, or Germany, or Britain, in the days of Rome? Did true constitutional liberty then exist? As the Roman Empire declined, her provinces, not instructed in the principles of free, popular government, one after another declined also; and, when Rome herself fell in the end, all fell together. I have said that our inheritance is an inheritance of American liberty. That liberty is characteristic, peculiar, and altogether our own. Nothing like it existed in former times, nor was known in the most enlightened states of antiquity; while with us its principles have become interwoven into the minds of individual men, connected with our daily opinions and our daily habits, until it is, if I may say so, an element of social as well as political life; and the consequence is, that to whatever region an American citizen carries himself, he takes with him, fully developed in his own understanding and experience, our American principles and opinions; and becomes ready at once, in coöperation with others, to apply them to the formation of new governments. 66 FREEDOM 1 RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) Freedom all winged expands, Nor perches in a narrow place; Her broad van seeks unplanted lands; She loves a poor and virtuous race. Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down, The snowflake is her banner's star, Her stripes the boreal streamers are. Where palms plume, siroccos blaze, He has avenues to God Hid from men of Northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain. 1 Emerson's fame rests chiefly upon his essays, and upon a few poems of a high order dealing with nature and with the movement against the tyrannies of the first half of the nineteenth century. Voluntaries," in which this selection is to be found, belongs to the latter group. While this poem was written with specific reference to African slavery, the spirit of it finds in our own times peculiar application to the twentieth-century problem of uplifting backward and oppressed peoples. From Emerson's Complete Works, Vol. IX. Copyright, 1883, by Edward W. Emerson. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Used by permission of the publishers. If once the generous chief arrive For freedom he will strike and strive In an age of fops and toys, To hazard all in Freedom's fight, And quit proud homes and youthful dames, Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can. WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE? 1 SIR WILLIAM JONES (1746-1794) What constitutes a State? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall, or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 1 From "An Ode in Imitation of Alcæus," in Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. IV. Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson and R. H. Evans, London, 1799. Not bays and broad-armed ports Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride; Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain : LIBERTY 1 JOHN HAY (1838-1905) What man is there so bold that he should say: To ends of use or stern activity; Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust 1 An American author and statesman, Mr. Hay was private secretary to President Lincoln and his chief biographer. In 1897 he was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain and later was Secretary of State under President McKinley. From Complete Poetical Works of John Hay. Copyright, 1916, by Clarence L. Hay. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Used by permission of the publishers. |