The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-08 00:00:00

THE FOURTH OF JULY.

On this day, ninety-two years ago, the Declara-
tion of Independence was adopted by Congress,
and the United States commenced its career as a
nation. To-day bonfires will blaze, and orators
will spout, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande ; but it is in
the great commercial metropolis of New York that
these demonstrations will bo most centred. Inspired
by the Anniversary of American Independence, the
delegates of a great national party assembled at
New York will to-day unfurl their banner for the
Presidential campaign, and the names of the candi-
dates selected and the platform adopted will give a
present interest, which the recollections of the
mighty birth of which the day is the anniversary
will tend to heighten. We earnestly hope that the
Democrats will choose wisely and decide well ; that
they will select men suitable to pit against the Re-
publican nominees, whom Americans can heartily
and unreservedly support, and that they will lay
down a programme worthy of the united effort of
the great Democratic organization. The event on
this day celebrated should, more than any other in
the history of the human race, be a warning and a
caution to rulers. By it the destinies of the
greatest family of that race were changed, and if
the Declaration of Independence truthfully records
the circumstances, this result was produced by the
obstinacy and wrong-headedness of one man. We
do not here discuss whether GEORGE 111. was
wholly responsible, or whether the severance then
effected was not sooner or later inevitable ; but
turning to the instrument itself, every word records
a lesson to monarchs. The manifesto says—" The
history of the present King of Great Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all
having a directobject, the establishment of a tyranny
over these States." After an indictment of eighteen
counts the rule of that monarch is repudiated in
these emphatic words--" A Prince whose character
is marked by every act which may define a tyrant
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." It was
Inot till the 30th November, 1782, that the provi-
sional articles were signed at Paris, acknowledging
in the fullest terms the independence of the United
States. In a few days afterwards Parliament met,
and the King used these words in communicating
the fact to both houses :—.66 In thus admitting the
separation of the North American colonies from the
Crown of these kingdoms, I have sacrificed every
consideration of my own to the wishes and opinions-
of my people. 1 make it ray humble and earnest prayer
to ALMIGHTY GOD that Great Britain may not feel
the evils that might result from so great a dismem-
berment of the Empire ; and that America may be
free from the calamities that have formerly proved
in the mother country how essential Monarchy is
to the enjoymentl of Constitdtional liberty. Reli-
gion, language, , interest, , affections, may, and' I
hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union
between the two countries : to this end neither at-
tention nor disposition on my part shall be want-
ing." What it cost GEORGE 111. to make this
statement may be gathered from his own words to
Lard NORTH. "I can never," he said, " suppose
this country so lost to all ideas of self-importance
as to be willing to grant American Independence.
If that word be ever universally adopted, 1 shall
despair of this country being preserved from a state
of inferiority. I hope never to see that day ; for
however I am treated, I must love this country."
The bitterness engendered by the years of warfare
which preceded the acknowledgment of Indepen -
1 deuce is now dying out by the lapse of time. A
War greater beyond all comparison in its propor-
tions has since desolated the fair face of these

States, and the Northern people can realize in
their own sensations, when struggling for the
preservation of the Union, tho feelings of the Bri-
tish King. We may cherish his last, forgetting his
first, words, and forgive the obstinacy with which
he persisted in that fatal struggle, knowing that
he thought the severance would be the death-blow
to the supremacy of his kingdom. What might
have been the case had the nations remained
united it is useless to conjecture ; but each may
turn with some pride and point to what the result
has been. England compensated herself in the
East for her loss in the West, and her Viceroy in
India rules over a hundred millions, who acknow-
ledge her sway frsm the Khyber Pass to Cape
Comorin. Great colonies have arisen in the Aus-
tralias ; a Province which still acknowledges the
English Crown borders the United States from the
Atlantic to the Pacific ; and at this day England
rules an Empire on which it is proudly said the
sun never sets. Though GEORGE 111. dreaded to
see the days following on the great severance of his
dominions, his descendant VICTORIA sits on a throne,
the security and grandeur of which his happiest dreams
could scarcely have pictured. But considerable as is
the growth of the British Empire,itsprogress has been
far outstripped by the Republic, whose birth is this
day celebrated. With a country in extent, in fer-
tility, and in climate equalling Europe, the Ameri-
cans have grasped and worked out with such energy
their material advantages, that nothing, save their
own degeneracy, can prevent them from becoming
beyond comparison the mightest nation on earth.
Whatever might have been their position under mo-
narchial institutions not even the most rabid Tory can
deny that, as Republicans, they have distanced in the
speed of their advance, any society hitherto erected
into a nation. It is vain to allege that this is due
to the country and to advantages never before con-
ferred on a people, for you have but to step either
across the Northern or the Southern border to have
such an assertion instantly refuted by hard, un-
deniable facts. Mexico, as rich, perhaps richer than
any part of the Union, is a disgrace to civilization
and to Christianity. The St. Lawrence marks the
line of a considerable portion of the Northern boun-
dary, and who that knows that river has not been
struck by the marked contrast between the acti-
vity on the Republican bank and the stagnation
on the other. After the lapse of close upon a cen-
tury the. States have not found monarchy to be es-
sential to the enjoyment of constitutional liberty.
Viewed in the abstract, Republicanism is the only
sound form of government. In practice it may not
be so, because " the heart of man is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked," but one fact is
true beyond question, that the benefits and per-
manence of a Republican government rest on the
virtue of the people. A Republic requires pat-
riotism, enlightenment, and honesty, not merely
among the few, but among the many ; and if they
be wanting the country degenerates first into
a Mexico, and then into the rule of one
man. That America has been so successful as a
Republic is due to the virtue of the mass of the
people. Whisky rings may be formed and corrupt
officials and bribe Legislatures, but they no more re-
present the masses than swell-usobsmen represent
society. They are, and always will be, found in a
community, and in seasons of sudden transition,
when rare opportunities offer, they will be active
and conspicuous till society can guard itself against
their machinations. But these are mere parasites
which hang on to the body politic, and die off
when their nourishment is withdrawn, to spring up
in other forms at other epochs. They are no more
the produce of Republican institutions than of
monarchical, and are rooted in human depravity.
Against them in all states and forms of government
the people must ever guard and fight. It is not by
exceptional cases that the success of Republican in-
stitutions in America can be judged, but by the
nation as a whole. Broadly viewing the Republic,
even its bitterest enemy must allow that it has
been an eminent success, and that it gives promise
of the brightest future that has yet dawned on the
world. But if the King was wrong in asserting
Monarchy to be essential to the enjoyment of con-
stitutional liberty, he will, we firmly believe, be
right in predicting that Religion, Language, Inte-
rest, and Affection would Novo a bond of permanent