Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1855-10-13
SALEM coLUMB1ANA COUNTY OHIO


ces and petty employments of provincial life, they
produced statesmen and negociators, and admins
traitors and legislators whose names will boforevcr
illustrious in history. Now that they form great
empire, that they possess q large class of men
born in opulence to whom all the schools and uni
versities of each hemisphere are open, who have
leisure TO pursue the studies and to acquire the
habits OF political life few of their public men
would pass in Europe for tolernble second-r0tes" !"
What other conclusion could he draw, when the
chair of Washington and Jefferson has come to be
occnpied by Tyler and a Pierce, and the deplOma
cy of Franklin and Adams is represented by
that Of Soule and BorlandH Yet the decay Of
leaders would be nothing, were there no evidences
of similar degeneracy in the spirit of society
which unfortunately happens to be the case. Our
civil life exhibits almost universal demoraliza-
ton; there is scarcely party among us which
holds to any consistent theory Of government or
law, or which can enunciate two principles that
are not utterly incompatible and at war with each
ether, r,-while political presses, public documents
speeches in Congress, and even the dscoursos Of
the pulpit, are filled with arguments, appeals and
denunciations going to show an utter abandon
ment of the foundation principle of our nation,
which is the rights of man. A gross materialism,
the success of trade, the progress cf gain an ex-
tcrnal expedency is preferred to Lofty ideal aspi
ratons and spiritual truth. The grand and beau
tful theory which lies at the center Of institu-
tions their noble humantarianism, their just and
magnanimous recognition of the dignity and worth
of every human being, their utter and indignant
disdain of the spirit Of caste, of exclusion, of sell
fish aggrandizement,- no longer touch our hearts
and kindle them into fine and generous enthusi
asm. Great deeds not done among US. The
atmosphere around us is cold, and ungenal We
speculate how to get rich we build railroads and
ships, to Increase our stores: we spy out the
lneighboring lands which promise us luxurious
hnrvests hereafter; we return the painting fugitive
to his lifelong doom but the heroic virtues, the
chivalric sentiments, the sweet, and tender, and
selfforgetful impulses, which constitute the true
and only glories of manhood, we lay aside. forget
ting them even in our prayers. "Oh reverence"
says the poet, "the dreams of thy youth ' but the
fair dreams of our youth we despise. The dream
that this young iand fresh from the hands of its
Creator, unpo!lued by the stains of time, should
be the home of freedom and race of men so man.
ly TINT they would lift the earth by the whole
breadth of its orbit nearer heaven, that it should
be light to the struggling nations, holding on
high, forever, the standard of justice and human
ity -and supplanting the despotism under which
mankind had withcred, by rich, and noble, ard
free republican civilization has passed away from
the most of us,as nothing but dream. We yield
ourselves, instead to calculation, money-making
and moral indifference. The prophet OF the Lord
migh5 again cry in streets, GLOW is the gold
become dim, how is the most fine gold chang
IedW
1t is dark view of things we have taken; not
darker than circumstances warrant; and yet not
altogether hopeless. Behind the foul and stormy
clouds overspreading the lower skies, and which
are but earthborn miss, glimpses are 30 be had of
a fairer heaven. Behind the mean and sordd life
of politics, shutting out the sunshine for time
there is great, true life, which may yet redeem
this people. AT the South there are many noble,
Christian SOULS who have not been withered by
the blight of slavery, and to whose generous i'm
pulses the creed Of the vulgar propagandsts is as
repugnant as the creed of the pirate. They have
thought too long and earnestly of the evil they
suffer, to disguise its character and they are too
kin0 and just in sentiment to wish to impose it on
others. In their prayers and struggles against it,,
lies the hope of better issue to the awful question
than is contained in the violent solution of the
more active men by whom they are, for the pres
ent, silenced and oyerborne. tits to their wisdom
and piety that we look for brighter future. Again
at the North, we are not wholly given up to the
idolatry of "Timour-Mammon" Scattered over
the broad inland, are thousands upon thousands
of cheerful homes which nurture race to whom
the heavenly law and not the earthly greed is the
rule of duty. They retain the simple honesty tho
masculine vigor, the love of liberty and of God,
which came to them from the stern old republican
stock of England, from those who fought with
Cromwell, and read John Milton. Indeed, in no
nation Of the world do we believe that more in.
telligent, upright, selfsacrifcing and energetic
men aud women are to be found than in this
where the best culture of Europe is so widely diff.
fused where religion is so free and so active and
where the sweet influences Of woman are so hear
tly accepted. But the misery is, that these vir-
tuous and redeeming classes have been elbowed by
the politicians, and their rude herd into obscurity
Shrinking from the clamor, and meanness and
ribaldry of political exertion, they have retired
with disgust into their cottages and fields, into
their stores and workshops, into their parlors and
libraries, and they have thus left the arena free
for the gladators and the wild beasts, who,
having mAuled and torn each other turn at last to
rend the innocent citizen and to desolato the peace
full home.
We conceive that in pointing out the two evils
to which we have referred. namely the aggressons
of slavery and the corruption of parties, VIC have
struck upon the very mother sins of our career
They are the sources to which may be traced evory
error and .nquty that we have fallen into not
only external offences against honor and justice
such as Texan forays and Cuban freebooting, but
the deeper inward debasement--the decay and
meanness of spirit, which could submit to fugitive
slave laws, and other outrages the most insulting
ever inflicted upon free people: and it will be
impossible to retrieve the past until the mighty
stream of influences which they pour forth is stop
ped Unless there is integrity selfrespeet, and
decision enough in our society to arrest these
gangrenes. they will spread until they have corro
ded the whole body Unless there is moral vital
ity in hearts suf cent to assert itself against
the powerful poisons already in the blood. we may
be sure that the circulation will carry them soon
to every member till there shall be no health nor
life in us.
But these two evils are in reality one--or are, at
least, recprocally cause and affect Of each other,
inasmuch as they have both the same origin-the
departure Of tho nation, in feeling and practice,
hom the idea in which it was founded. Nations,
like man himself, have certain ends ideals Of
existence. which constitute the inmes. ground or
essence OF their being, and when they depart from
these. they either degrade themselves into some
lower form or grow into monsters. Men who
cease to be men, become either animals or fends
Nations, which lose their constituent principles,
fall into barSarism, or rush into some diabolc
fury. Their salvation lies alone in their adher-
ence to the great thought which gave them their
original organic unity. Now, the great thought,
the fundamental idea, the constituent principle
of our nationality, was the liberty of all men,
secured by equal laws, and defended from in.
yasion, either on the part Of the State or of in
dviduals, by the whole power of the State. The
popularity Of organization by which this liberty
was made sure was that distribution Of power
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