Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-03-16
PUBLIC SPIRIT.

All the hardships under which the early set
tiers suffered, many and terrible as they were,
have never been fully appreciated. We have
sort of vague impression of their landing at
Plymouth one dreary December morning,
their hard contests with epidemics and with
frosts their arduous, and, at length, victorious
battles with open foes and false friends. But
of the civil and domestic disquietudes and dis
couragements which darkened that first dis
NAL half century of trial and struggle, our his
torians have told US but half the story. 1t was
only in the thirteenth year of the settlement,
as we gather from Palfrey's recently published
History of New England, that penal provision
had to be adopted to protect the public veal,
among other things, against the prevailing alb
sence Of ambition for public office at was
enacted by public consent of the freemen of
this society of New Plymouth, that if now or
hereafter any were elected to the office of Gov
ernor. and would not stand to the election, nor
hold and execute his Office for one year, that
then he be amerced in twenty pounds sterling
fine; and in case he refused, to be paid upon
the lawful demand of the ensuing Governor,
then to be levied out of the goods and chattels
of the said person so refusing" A single ex-
ception was made in favor of those who might
have held the office once before, who, if they
could not be prevailed on to accept again,
might be released without fine. Members
elected to the Council were also subject to a
fine of ten pounds if they refused to accept.
We have greatly improved on the Pilgrims.
We may not have better Governors than Car
yer and Bradford and Winslow, but we have
more willing ones. In other respects we may
still be governed too much; but in this one
our laws have undergone a very perceptible
and pleasing Moderation. Governors accept
their positions with an alacrity which would
have delighted the Puritans. Councillors
march up to the performance of their duties
with spirit of selfsacriice worthy of their
example. The fasts and the Thanksgiving of
our fathers have come down to us. Many of
their early statutes, formed in the spirit of pi-
Gus ZEAL are our laws still. But the notion of
compelling men to take Office by penal obliga-
tions--we have outgrown that altogether.
ward III, providing that when member was
elected to Parliament, he should be compelled
to find manucaptors, or suretes, to answer for
his repairing to Parliamentand attending there
punctually during the continuance of its sit
tings The Plymouth law belongs to the
same family of statutes. There was a positive
necessity for them in the times when they
were made. Honest representative men, with
tastes for public duties, were SO rare, that Di-
ogenes himself could not have found them
without penal statute in his lantern. 1t was
not SO much an evidence of the want of public
spirit in the good church members of the good
old colony times, that they would not take
Office as a sign that public duties were less i'm
portant in those primitive days. Inprivate there
was larger field for tn. display of heroic quail
ties than in private life. The brave spirits who
laid the early foundations on which our SPLEEN
did civilization rests, were prepared for any
personal hardship,
"The lifted axe, the agonzing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, or Damen's bed of steel"
for the public good. But times change and
men change with them. The demand for an
intelligent and discriminating public spirit en-
largest with population and the attendant civil
and social necessities. In proportion as society
becomes prosperous and selfsustaining, the
occasion for personal sacrifice dies away
The only change for the better that could
now be made would be to infuse little more
of the incorruptible integrity of the early
times into the facile and changeable public
spirit of our generation. We could not hardly
expect to limit the franchise to pious men as
they used to do-that would be quite too wide
departure from the grand theory of universal
sufffage-but we could limit, by kind of
national instinct rather than by statute, eligi-
bility to Office to those who are good citizens,
and moral and trustworthy men. Public life
is not the field for police officers, or the pub
fishers of criminal statistics to pursue their in
yestigations, though they are often found there.