The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-13

the law is always dependent for its efficiency
not simply on the support it receives from
public opinion, but on the personal character
of the men who administer it, needs any argu-
ment to convince him. Courts and laws and
constitutions, however correct theoretically,
are, as has been a hundred times shown in
the history of the world, worthless, unless
the people who stand behind them are,
on the whole, virtuous, and use their
influence, their power, their public
honors, their praise and blame,
for the support of virtue. There is great
deal of talk amongst stump orators of late
about the resemblance between the life of n
man and the life of a nation. They evidently
believe, though the fallacy has been repeat
edly exposed, that the life of nation is
physical life, and that, barring the occurrence
of accidents or acute disease, q nation may
count on youth, maturity, and old age as a
foreordained right. The life of a nation is,
however, wholly moral, and if its moral tone
sinks below certain point-that IS if the
moral standard of the individual men who
compose it be obscured and debased-it may
die at any age, and may die though its trea-
sury be full it's armies and fleets gigantic
and its territory immeasurable.
Now when leading merchants, leading law
yers, and leading editors come forward and
deliberately sign paper as was done in New
York last week. not only approving of the Sc
a.
representative of the nation ut foreign court,
but expressing-we quote their own language
their personal respect, esteem, and friend
ship" for n man whose career up to the de-
cline of life had been what is usually called
infamous; and when leading newspapers load
him with eulogy on account of services to
political party which were not half so valuable
as those of thousands of respectable men,
they do what they can, we have no hesitation
i,,C t, Of Io ctr
projections against political and social
degradation. No merchant who ''esteems"
or respects" Sickles has q right to
ask his son or clerk to be honest,
or pure, or faithful, or industrious. No pub
lie writer who lauds him can expect his ex-
preston of zeal for reform to be treated as
anything better than an outburst of snivel-
ling hypocrisy Some of the papers report
''clergymen" as having been present at the
reception" by which the written testimo-
nial was followed up. If this is true we
| ought to have been favored with their names,
and they owe it to themselves to make them
| public They must be, in more senses than
| one, remarkable men, who have been led by
| their study of the Evangelsts not only into
esteem and respect for Daniel E. Siclles,
| but into deeming it their duty to hold him up
| publicly as a model for youth. The affair
| will. we believe serve one useful purpose. 1t
more clearly than ever to the moral and politi-
| cal abyss which the ''men inside politics" are
preparing for them, and into which they will
| lead them if left alone and the blindipt5
| effect of party discipline and party fidelity on
| the moral sense of even good men,
We have no doubt many of those who
| signed this shameful testimonial did so out of
| sheer cowardce. The number of persons
| who have the courage or honesty to refuse
| their names when asked to help political ad
| venturer into Office is daily declining. Large
numbers now endeavor to reconcile their
weakness with their sense Of duty to the pub
| lie, by writing privately to the dispensers of
| patronage, asking them to disregard their
| signatures to testimonials. But this device,
| though it may in some cases prevent the
| direct mischief of the testimonial system,
does nothing to neutralize the effect on the
public mind of the daily endorsement Of
worthless persons by nell of character and in
fluence. Aweak and timid man who finds him
| self tempted to sign glowing testimonial for
a good-for-nothing might better steel himself
for a refusal by moderate potatiOn than to
| give way. Better go home with a foul breath
| than with foul hands; for hands which have
helped, in never so slight a degree, to diminish
the contempt and hatred of ones fellow-citi-
zens for knaves and prohigates, and to lower
their appreciation of honesty and purity, are
always foul. The salvation of this nation and
of all other nations must come not from either
labor or climate, capital, soil, or products, but
from individual character. 1t is the conf
dence in this-which history, reason, and
revelation all justify-which sustains and con-
soles those who are disposed to be appalled, by
the growing magnitude and Importance OF
material interests. Lasting national pros
terity is the reward and result of the genera
devotion to high ideas, of the general love OF
truth and justice, and the general faithfulnes'
to duty. All reforms which do not rest OF
this as basis are superficial and evanescent
and it is this tremendous fact which explains
the rise and fall of a hundred states which
makes the Importance attached by some o
our reformers to the help of any rascal o
hypocrite they can rope into their ranks 81
supremely childish and ridiculous. Our con
stitutional amendments and acts of Congress
are but as the flowers of the field, unless the,
are rooted in the general integrity. He VIII
does anything to efface the distinction in tn
popular mind between the honest man an,
the rogue, between the honest patriot and tn
self-seelling rowdy OF demagogue-he, AM
not the armed rebel, or malignant Copper
head, or foreign tyrant, is the real enemy o
the republic. No party triumph is worth any
thing if, in winning it, you have in never S
slight degree depraved the popular taste o
perverted the popular Judgment