OCR Text |
Show A d. 1 in the last four hundred years, all the gress. ccor 1ng y, t t f peaceful Caucasian development have grea new s eps o been first taken by the 'Teutonic people, who now bear. the l t . t the world's progress that the Greeks d1d a same re a wn o thousand years before Christ, the Romans eight hundred years later, and the Romanized Celts of France at a day yet more recent. Of the Teutons, the Anglo-Saxons, or that portion thereof settled in the Northern States of America, have got the furthest forward in certain important forms of welfare, and now advance the most rapidly in their general progress. With no class of capitalists or scholars equal to the men of great estates and great learning in Europe, the whole mass of the people have yet attained the greatest rnaterial comfort, enjoyment of natural rights, and development of the human faculties. They feel n1ost powerfully the general instinct of progress, aml advance swiftest to future welfare and development. Here the bulk of the population is. Anglo-Saxon; but this powerful blood has been enriched by additions from divers other sources,- Teutonic and Celtic. The great Forces which, in the last four hundred years, have most powerfully and obviously helped this welfare and progress, may be reduced to two marked tendencies, which I will sum up in the form of ideas, and name the one Christianity, and the other Democracy. By Christianity, I mean that form of religion which consists of Piety- the love of God, and lVIoralitythe keeping of his laws. That is not the Christianity of the Christian Church, nor of any sect; it is the Ideal Religion which the human race has been groping after, if haply we might find it. It is yet only an Ideal, actual in no society. By Democracy, I mean government over all the people, by all the people, and for the sake of all. Of course, it is 43 government according to the natural Law of God, by Justice, the point common to each man and all men, to each nation and all mankind, to the human race and to God. In a democracy, the people reign with sovereign power; their elected servants govern with delegated trust. There is National Unity of Action, represented by law; this makes the nation one, a whole; it is the Centripetal Force of society. But there is also Individual Variety of Action, represented by the personal freedom of the people who ultimately make the laws; this makes John John, and not James, the individual a free person, discrete from all other men ; this is the Centrifugal Force of society, which counteracts the excessive solidification that would else go on. Thus, by Justice, the one and the many are balanced together, as the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the solar system. . This is not the democracy of the parties, but it is that 1de~l g~vernment, the reign of righteousness, the kingdom of JUstice, which all noble hearts long for, and labor to produce, the Ideal whereunto mankind slowly draws near. No nation has yet come so close to it as the people of some of the Northern States, who are yet far beneath ideals of go~ ern~lent now known, that are yet themselves vastly I~fenor to others which mankind shall one day voyage after, discover, and annex to human possession. .In this Democracy, and the tendency towards it, two things come to all; namely, Labor and Government. . Labor for material comfort, the means of use and beauty, Is the duty of all, and not less the right, and practically the lot, of all; so there is no privilege for any, where each has his whole ~at~ral right. Accordingly, there is no permanent and VIcanously idle class, born merely to enjoy and not create, who live by the unpurchased toil of others· and accord .m g ly , there is no permanent and vicariously wo' rking-' |