Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1860-02-22
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY aa. 1890.
THE MEMORY OF wAsHINGToN-How IT IS
ABUSED

1t is not difficult to make a eulogy of a
really sincere, truthful, and honest man. In
clear and bright day, the natural expression is
"The sun Shines and language cannot say
more for that gorgeous luminary. The exam
pie. of man of upright and consistent purposes
suggests the applause which belongs to him,
and high art cannot render it more just or en-
phatic. For truth is superlative. We spoil
the characters we eulogize, quite as often as
we glorify them. Admiration of dead men is
quite as blind as the love of living women.
No more startling fictions were ever writ
heroes, "not dead, but gone before d"
Our Washington has not Jared any better than
other great men. His calm and even temper,
his eminently human and imitable qualities,
his sober and honest judgments, his modest,
and yet just pretensions, which made him seem
one with his fellow men, and an example for
all mankind, are seldom stated without kind
of exaltation which dscourages US, lesser men,
whose hayward feet are still striving to walk
in its light.
But he suffers less from excess than from mis-
directed eulogy. There never was man who
suffered so much before. We do not refer to
the dexter compliments of the beer-sellers and
coffee house men, who name their shops af.
ter him. That is the common fate. But to
the audacity of the oracles of a thousand her
estes in politics, morals, and religion, who in
variably assert that Washington was their Pc
culiar and foremost friend. If the devil quotes
him less often than he quotes Scripture, he
does it with as little judgment and mercy.
When the Know Nothing frenzy was at its
height, with what pcrtinacious perverson of
statement and of reason was that farewell ad-
dress used to justify the epidemic 1t was
read and construed against classes and races
as if that genial and loving man were malig
nant hater of his kind. 1t was read in high and
low places for partizan effect 1t was distrib-
uted in campaign documents, under the i'm
print of organizations which claimed TO be i'm
perishable, but have since died and left no
sign. There was nothing but Its simple, direct,
and appropriate advice to his countrymen-
appropriate then, and for the Republic as long
as it shall see the light-defyng misconstructon
and rebuking all false pretenses to patriotism
which saved it from becoming disreputabe,
and passing out of the political literature of
the times.
This, however, was not its greatest trial 1t
will not prove to have been its greatest tri-
umph. The new persecution approaches in a
more dignifed but more malignant form In
the midst of a conflict concerning which he
left on record, no doubtful testimony
committing himself and his fame TO the
righteous cause by the sublime act with
which he crowned great and a good
life-that same Farewell Address which was
dragged into the service of civil prescription
and religious warfare, is construed on the side
of injustice and oppression, and made the step
ping stones by which the enemies of equal
rights attempt to attain supremacy. If a sim
gle voice from that band of men which rallied
on the 10th of July, 1775 in the beautiful val
ley of the Shenandoah, and marched to the aid
of beleaguered, Boston
Who left the ploughshare in the mould,
Their focks and herds without fold,
The sickle in the unshorn grain,
Their corn half garnered in the plain,
And mustered in their simple dress
could be heard from the sphere in which their
spirits are rejoicing, it would be in rebuke of
the malice which steals the name of their cap
tain as a cover and shield for all that is worst
in the political counses of the generation.
1t is salutary on his birthday to consider
how far he was from any friendliness to slave
ry and how far from any sympathy with that
treacherous inactivity which is its devoted and
faithful ally. He was the friend of the revolu-
ton because it was the establishment of liber-
ty. For the same sake he loved the Union,
he rebuked sectionalism, he deplored faction
he feared entangling alliances, he advocated
harmony, and encouraged the practice of mo-
rality, virtue, and religion 1t was the end to
which he aspired. 1t was the goal which
he thought he had reached. 1t is not
superstitious to believe that that heaviness of
spirit, which is sometimes said to have at
tended him to his grave, may have been caus"
ed by the forecasting shadows of the profana-
ton which his best intended counsels were to
be tortured to support.
COLLECTIONS FOR WASHINGTON MoNU-
Notwithstanding last year, postmasters all