The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-08-02
The LAST TEMPLE TO STAND.

In the war between vespasian and Vitel-
Illus for the Roman empire, Cremona, the last
refuge of the yitellian army, was taken by
the soldiers of Antonius, and for four days
was prey to the inflamed and unrestrained
passions of the captors. "When everything
else," says Tacitus, "sacred and profane,
was leveled in the ccnhagration, the temple
of Mephitis alone remained standing, outside
of the walls; saved either by its situation or
the influence of the deity" History fur
nishes few more suggestive allegories than
that contained in this passage The mephitic
goddess is still a power in the world, and
never is she so potent and so venerated as
when RIGHTEOUSNESS and sacrilege are most
prevalent When violence reigns, when law
and justice have no sanctuary, when nothing
decent and pure is safe or sacred, when the
fairest and grandest monuments of better
epoch are precipitated to the level of COM
mon ruin, the temple of corruption domi-
mates over the scene, its worshipers multiply,
and its priests become hierarchy in which
all authorities center and to which all inter-
ests must pay court. Mirabeau, in one of his
great speeches, descanting on the necessity of
honesty and economy to the preservation of
free government, warned France against the
creation of large standing army, the instru-
ment, he exclaimed, invariably used to rivet
the chains which corruption has forged.
Without disputing the force of this PROPOSE
ton, it is hardly too much to say that the
converse is equally true. Why is it that
=
war? Why is it that civil liberty, which
goes down in the heat and tumult of contend
ing arms, so seldom rises again when supe-
rior force has conquered peace? War alone
does not perpetuate civil degradation and
ruin. standing army is not necessarily
fatal to free government and an engine to
make oppression bitter. 1t is only the omni-
potent presence of corruption that can
account for such results as permanent facts.
Military violence does no more in these
cases than to open the way for
the triumphant entrance of corruption.
Military violence is a spasm which may for
a time lay free government low. 1t is cor
ruption that suffocates right, and justice and
with mephitic exhalations; that
deals the finishing stroke to PROSTATE civil
liberty, buries it amid the debris of the
ruined state, and sets Overt its dreary sepulchre
all the vile passions of human nature as a
guard to see that it shall not reascend, trans
figured, invincible, and immortal And this
is the power which is now busy in this country,
with satanic asslduity, in riveting the chains
which were forged in the furnace of the late
civil conflict. This is the deity whose fanes
glitter and tower in proud and gorgeous pre-
while all others are being despoiled |
and shattered. And shall the historian have |
to recozd, as finally true of this opprob1ious
scene, that 'when everything else, sacred |
and profane, was leveled in the general de-
'truction, the temple of corruption alone re-
NAMED standing, saved by the omnipotent
influence of its dsity?" Or shall the book of
he future be closed against so shameful
chronicle? If so, popular virtue must pre-
ponderate over popular vitiation, and popular
'eprobation must fall with deadly force upon
public immorality-and that very soon.