WHAT OF THE REPUBLIC?

*

Gentlemen OF THE LITERARY SOCIETIES :

What of the Republic? The trials and triumphs of our free institutions are hackneyed themes. They are the star attractions of every political conflict. They furnish a perpetual well-spring of every grade of rhetoric for the hustings, and partisan organs proclaim, with the regularity of the seasons, the annual perils of free government.

But a different occasion, with widely different opportunities and duties, has brought us together. The dissembling of the partisan would be unwelcome, but here truth may be manfully spoken of that which so profoundly concerns us all. I am called to address young men who are to rank among the scholars, the teachers, the statesmen, the scientists of their age. They will be of the class that must furnish a large proportion of the executives, legislators, ministers, and instructors of the generation now rapidly crowding us to the long halt that soon must come. Doubtless, here and there, some who have been favored with opportunities will surpass them in the race for distinction; but in our free government, where education is proffered to all, and the largest freedom and conviction invites the humblest to honorable preferment, the learned must bear a conspicuous part in directing the destiny of the nation. Every one who molds a thought or inspires a fresh resolve, even in the remotest regions of the Continent, shapes, in some measure, the sovereign power of the Republic.

* Delivered before the Literary Societies of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., June 24th, 1873.

The time and the occasion are alike propitious for a dispassionate review of our political system, and of the political duties which none can reject and be blameless. Second only to the claims of religion are the claims of country. Especially should the Christian, whether teacher or hearer, discharge political duties with fidelity. I do not mean that the harangue of the partisan should desecrate holy places, or that men should join in the brawls of pot-house politicians; but I do mean that a faithful discharge of our duty to free government is not only consistent with the most exemplary and religious life, but is a Christian as well as a civil obligation. The government that maintains liberty of conscience as one of its fundamental principles, and under which Christianty is recognized as the common law, has just claims upon the Christian citizen for the vigilant exercise of all political rights.

If it be true, as is so often confessed around us, that we have suffered a marked decline in political morality and in our political administration, let it not be assumed that the defect is in our system of government, or that the blame lies wholly with those who are faithless or incompetent. Here no citizen is voiceless, and none can claim exemption from just responsibility for evils in the body politic. Ours is, in fact as well as in theory, a government of the people; and its administration is neither better nor worse than the people themselves. It was devised by wise and patriotic men, who gave to it the highest measure of fidelity; and so perfectly and harmoniously is its framework fashioned, that the sovereign power can always exercise a salutary control over its own servants. An accidental mistake of popular judgment, or the perfidy of an executive, or the enactment of profligate or violent laws, are all held in such wholesome check by co-ordinate powers, as to enable the supreme authority of the nation to restrain or correct every conceivable evil.

Until the people as a whole are given over to debauchery the safety of our free institutions cannot be seriously endangered. True, such a result might be possible without the demoralization of a majority of the people, if good citizens surrender their rights, and their duties, and their government to those who desire to rule in profligacy and oppression. If reputable citizens refrain from active participation in our political conflicts they voluntarily surrender the safety of their persons and property, and the good order and well-being of society, to those who are least fitted for the exercise of authority. When such results are visible in any of the various branches of our political system, turn to the true source, and place the responsibility where it justly belongs. Do not blame the thief and the adventurer, for they are but plying their vocations, and they rob public rather than private treasure, because men guard the one and do not guard the other. Good men employ every proper precaution to protect their property from the lawless. When an injury is done to them individually they are swift to invoke the avenging arm of justice. They are faithful guardians of their own homes and treasures against the untitled spoiler, while they are criminally indifferent to the public wrongs done by those who, in the enactment and execution of the laws, directly affect their happiness and prosperity. Do not answer that politics has become disreputable. Such a declaration is a confession of guilt. He who utters it becomes his own accuser. If it be true that our politics, either generally or in any particular municipality or State, has become disreputable, who must answer for it? Who have made our politics disreputable? Surely not the disreputable citizens, for they are a small minority in every community and in every party. If they have attained control of political organizations, and thereby secured their election to responsible trusts, it must have been with the active or passive approval of the good

citizens who hold the actual power in their own hands. There is not a disgraceful official shaming the people of this country to-day who does not owe his place to the silent assent or positive support of those who justly claim to be respectable citizens, and who habitually plead their own wrongs to escape plain and imperative duties. If dishonest or incompetent appointments have been made, in obedience to the demands of mere partisans, a just expression of the honest sentiments of better citizens, made with the manliness that would point to retribution for such wrongs, would promptly give us a sound practical civil service, and profligacy and dishonesty would end.

Our presidents and governors are not wholly or even mainly responsible for the low standard of our officials. If good men concede primary political control to those who wield it for selfish ends, by refraining from an active discharge of their political duties, and make the appointing powers dependent for both counsel and support upon the worst political element, who is to blame when public sentiment is outraged by the selection of unworthy men to important public trusts?. The fruits are but the natural, logical results of good citizens refusing to accept their political duties. There is not a blot on our body politic to-day that the better elements of the people could not remove whenever they resolved to do so and they will so resolve in good time, as they have always done in in the past. There is not a defect or deformity in our political administration that they cannot and will not correct, by the peaceful expression of their sober convictions, in the legitimate way pointed out by our free institutions.

You, who are destined to be more or less conspicuous among the leaders of men, should study well this reserved power so immediately connected with the preservation of our government. The virtue and intelligence of the people is the sure bulwark of safety for the Republic. It

has been the source of safety in all times past, in peace and in war, and it is to-day, and will ever continue to be, the omnipotent power which forbids us to doubt the complete success of free government. It may, at times, be long suffering and slow to resent wrongs which grow gradually in strength and diffuse their poison throughout the land. It may invoke just censure for its forbearance in seasons of partisan strife. It may long seem lost as a ruling element of our political system, and may appear to be faithless to its high and sacred duties. It may be unfelt in its gentler influences, which should be ever active in maintaining the purity and dignity of society and government. But if for a season the better efforts of a free people are not evident to quicken and support public virtue, it must not be assumed that the source of good influences has been destroyed, or that public virtue cannot be restored to its just supremacy. When healthful influences do not come like the dew-drops which glitter in the morning as they revive the harvest of the earth, they will most surely come in their terrible majesty, as the tempest comes to purify the atmosphere about us. The miasmas which arise from material corruption poison the air we breathe and disease all physical life within their reach. The poison of political corruption is no less subtle and destructive in its influences upon communities and nations. But when either becomes general or apparently beyond the power of ordinary means of correction, the angry sweep of the hurricane must perform the work of regeneration. In our government the mild but effectual restraints of good men should be ceaseless in their beneficent offices, but when they fail to be felt in our public affairs, and evil control has widened and strengthened itself in departments of power, the storm and the thunderbolt have to be invoked for the public safety, and our convulsive but lawful revolutions attest the omnipotence of the reserved virtue of a faithful and intelligent people.