Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1857-07-01
From, the Charleston Epening Ne,0s.
THE YOUTH AND THE DEMOCRACY,

II. The fact has been noted in several OF the
recent riots in our cities of the presence OF boys
in;auusual numbers, who have been the chief &C.
tors in the proceedings. Is this peculiarly OF
our free institute Is the circumstance one
ofthe socialistic phenomena of country in which
the democratic: element is all pervading Or, is
it q defect in our modes of education, viewing
education in its largest sense as embracing pa.
rental training as well as intellectual culture
Or rather is not this training and culture the
proximate and our institutions still the ultimate
source of the misehief2 This is an interesting
inquiry. If our political system is answerable for
premature development by presenting to the too
youthful the incentives to action, which become
socially organic and peculiar to the democratic
form of society, the question is answered.
lhe general fact is unquestionable that coun-
tries in which the political organization is less
democratic and the popular movement less deci-
ded there is less general activity, because there
is an absence of the stimuants to excite it.
There are fewer to occupy an active sphere pre-
seuting diminished incentives to rivalship. Not
only are there fewer motives to arouse the euer-
gies of both old and young in the paths Of am
bilious rivalry and opposition in countries where
all the faculties are not called into action, as with
US, but The force of contagious passion does not
operate so widely through the Influence of popu-
lar sympathies. We must take the evils of our
political institutions with their benefits. If we
possessed less active form of social organiza.
ton-if we had less political life and more of
that quiescent tranquility which is peculiar to
European society, we should be less vigilant for
the preservation of our liberties-our sense of
oppression would be less acute. We would be
easier enslaved The infectious influence of that
sympathy that diffuscs the perception of public
wrong with electrical rapidity through oil ranks
might be restrained, bnt It would create slug
glshness which would be the best preparation for
despotism.
1t is natural and inevitable where the popular
movement is so .universal-where activity is so
unceasing-that the limit should be so easily
passed that separates boyhood from manhood.
It would be singular if it were otherwise. The
country which has, from the rapidity of its
changes, little or no respect for tradition, would
present few examples of youthful submissions to
law The restraints of the parental voice and
COUNSEL equally with the rules of collegiate dis
cipline, meet with correspondent irreyeranpe, in
the eagerness to act out the part of independent
members of society. 1t becomes, in consequence,
more and more difficult to define that barrierlne
between puberty and youth which, being lost
threatens to blend these parts Of society into one
undistinguishing mass. 1t must be within the
recollection of many that the stages by which
this consummation is reached, have come OH US
with rapidity in proportion as we have widened
the sphere of general activity and held out
stronger incentives to enter tin one word as
we have become more democratic.
This appears to be the great controlling cause.
Modes Of education ars bpt the reflex of that
state of opinion by which society Itself is moulded
We find in its organic laws the habits that are
socially distinctive. If we call into premature
development and public display the capacities
and passions, which fostered and regulated, are
unfolded gradually, by wise, private culture, the
fruits must be correspondingly bitter. Human
nature is too week to resist the provocatives that
are held out to an emulation, both of the evil
and the good, in those who are presented as sue
cessfnl examples in the career of ambition and
the distinctions Of manhood.