The Kanzas news., 1857-08-01
FOf Ih NEN
Growth.


The earth has revolutionary history, even
as man has; grim old battle-felds where
the elements met in deadly conflict. leaving
them thickly covered with the ripening con-
stituents of human life, to the glorious end
that human life might be. The empire oi
water above, and the kingdom of fire be-
lows not the earth SCARED all over with
their confiicts-tbeir alternate victories and
defeats? There was "North' then, and
a ..South," and things which did not know
that nor any other point of the compass, ex-
cept the one which looked directly to them
selves, Just as with us to-day. There was
slavery then, and freedom fought it as now,
and conquered it too, as it will now. Fol-
all natural forces are "Abolitlonists y
working for liberty and :" free SOIL The
elements would seem to be all Black Repub-
licans; they never stopped to compromise
with constitutions, but broke them outright
and "dissolved the Union with a celebrity
that would astonish Garrison himself, if that
were possible. Our fire and our water force
the force of heat and of cold-what lev
elers are they. And their blows are all
dealt for freedom-they never move mus
Gle but the world is better, freer, happier
Nature wages am eternal and universal wal
with conservatism. Let him lock up the
rivers, she will set them free; pile up the
mountains, she will break them in pieces,
and scatter their treasures as if inspired with
the prophecy that they would be needed.
What wonder then that the instinct OF
change, of revolution, should be deathless
attribute of man, seeing he was born of it,
and imbibed it from the breast of his moth
er, and was by her consecrated and sworn,
like the Carthagenian of old, to eternal en-
nifty with inertia? The true man is ever
the changing man: for the power to grow
implies the capacity to change-to revolu-
tionize all within him and all without him
new man his new clothes only the dwarf
ed man can wear the cast off garments of a
former childhood with any degree of COM
fort So, the institutions which man made
for himself when a child, must, like the gar
ments and the amusements of that period,
be laid aside by the man. The individual
who can find room enough for his limbs in
the raiment that fitted him forty years ago,
has not grown any in all that time. But ma
ture, having it in her mind TO rear men, OBJ
viously cannot adopt childhood as final
conclusion; if the chicken will not break
the shell for itself, it must be broken for il
or we can have no poultry. This fact has
colored the whole stream of human history
with blood, and made revolution inevitable.
The system of Slavery, which man adop-
ted when a mere boy, tho dignifed by the
title of ''Patriarchal Institution" is norust
to corrode Its chains. Is that to be let alone
when the institution of patriarchs themselves
is abolished of God and man? No. Ma
ture having but one alternative for all her
forms of life-to grow or rot-we cannot
hope to keep vitality in carcass which she
has pronounced fit only for decomposition
nor can it be expected that living men viii
long carry it about on their shoulders with
honorable mention.
When, as we should, we look carefully at
this matter of childhood, we shall see it Gov
ers the whole field Of evil, and this fruitful
section of it in particular. Children are
cruel from ignorance they have no regzel
for the frogs, only for the pleasure of pelt-
ing them; they trample upon the life of a
defenceless kitten because they cannot real
ize that it has the power to feel. But the
child outgrows that as mashood advances
and its mind expands. Injustice and cru
city are not the natural attributes of grown
humanity; a whip is not the symbol of true
manhood
Nature permits not anything to live for
itself, except during the period of its infan-
cy; the full grown sheep gives man new
coat every year; the matured state of tree
is marked by the profusion of its ripened
fruit, which it shares alike with bird and
beast and man. She points with her every
finger to generosity as the true exponent OF
manhood, and thro' it to God who giYeth
all things.
No institution can traverse law of ma
ture and live. From small to great, from
infancy to manhood, not from great to small,
and from little to less, is her method, which
the sticklers for our ''institutions - are do
ing all they can to reverse; and in which,
because the decay of manhood is ever in the
ratio of the growth of the institution he ex-
ats above himself, we see sure presage OF
their downfall.
But nature has signed the death-warrani
of all such rule, and man must execute i