The Potter journal. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1857-1872, 1859-03-31
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fruits OF an enlarglng LIE. Ihe labor or
the Empire State will be truly free when
its great powers and growing opportuni-
ties are used as persistently for the spirit
ual regeneration of man and the elevation
of society, as they are now for private
sel6shness and public materialism. And
let no sensual economist or political par
tisans promise the people larger freedom
at any cheaper rate than thorough re-
form in intelligence, truth aud beauty,
and conservation of their wealth and all
its opportunities to the service of mau.
We shall, in the light of these princi-
Piles, be at no loss to account for the great
and deadly evils that still afiict our civ
ilization. Does anybody wonder why
New York, the most powerful Republi-
can State in the world, is still tried by
the standard of Christianity, half bar
barous commonwealth; that her cities
swarm with multitudes vibrating between
beggary and crime; that ignorance still
holds the balance of political power; and
superstition is SO deep and dense over
whole districts of her dominion and SEN
suality and intemperance eat out so much
of her best vitality why, in the great con-
test between the freedom of the whole
and the tyranny of the few, she hardly
seems yet to have stable mind, and holds
her great name as the watchword, now Of
a spasmodic liberty and of an insolent
despotism? The answer is too plain
She is not yet a free State because so
much of the same dark blood runs through
her own veins that clogs the heart Of com
munites lower yet in the scale of civiIiz-
alton. She has yet too many proud, SEN
sual, selfish men, who despise work, and
would gladly lash black or white slave
to do their toll /; too many frivolous and
idle women, who care not whose body is
bent or whose soul is cramped if they can
live in ease and comfort too many labor
ers who secretly despise their profession
and only work to gain the means of de-
grading themselves by senseless material
pleasures and low ambition too few who
have the courage to compliment the mass
es BY telling them they are not what the
citizens of such State should be; that
while they toll in their present spirit they
must be content to see other States lead
off in the sublime crusade for freedom
that here means Christian Democracy.
! When the young men of New York re-
solve that they will regenerate industry
from its present clogs of ignorance, un-
truth and vulgarity; when the young
women of the Empire State decide to take
the industrial field, and occupy and adorn
every post of toll for which nature has
given them the ability; when we cease to
boast so much Of our great canals, and
cities, and crops, and wealth, and concen-
tlate our highest ambition on the quality
of our humanity; then may we hope to
gain the renown of the freest common.
wealth. But let no delusion possess our
souls that liberty is extemporized in po-
lit;cal campaigns, or will come any sooner
for our high-fown rhetorical adulaton.--
Freedom comes only to people that is
resolved to work for it, protect it by all
sacrifices, preserve it by individual conse-
Grafton, and watch its enemies with an
"eternal vigilance" So does our indus
try culmlnate in the sacred toll after that
personal freedom which, inspiring every
soul with the highest spiritual activity,
shall mould free commonwealth great
and glorious beyond the empires Of the
earth.