The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1869-05-27
golitits aud Aeus,
The Men that Rule Us.


present time, and which cannot have es-
capped the notice of most observers, even
those who only observe casually, and not
profoundly, is the class Of men which the
last few years have brought into public
life, and whose fortune it is, as it is our
misfortune, to rule over US. Our lot as q
people seems to have been cast Of late
among little men, standing like pigmies
beside great events, which they nre as
impotent to control as an infant is to
guide the leviathan of the deep. When
we look around us with wandering eye,
forgetting not the magnitude Of things
that characterize the latter halt ot the
nineteenth century, and especially re.
membering the mighty movements here
at home, and the vast and comprehensive
powers of understanding that are re.
quired to cope with them, and see how
close and mean the intellectual horizon of
our so-called statesmen is, we are deeply
and painfully impressed with the great
disparity that exists between them and
the stupendous events that they are sup
posed to grasp and mould. Nor can we,
too, fail to be impressed with the great
disparity that exists, also, between them
and the statesmen who have gone before,
in whose hands and under the power of
whose genius almost any events would
have. been as clay in the hands of the
potter. Our degeneracy is marked and
painful. Mediocrity has risen to the sur
face, and swaggers among great duties,
with pompous pretension, and suited
weakness, striving to play, as best it can,
MS mediocrity always does the impossible
part of the great. Really great and
comprehensive minds-minnds in which
lodge latent powers equal to any emer.
gency and which need only the opportu-
nifty TO be called out-minds capable of
Selling events at critical periods, and
holding and shaping to grand results the
destinies of an. empire, seem to have be-
come extinct, or are lost in this intellec-
tual Jungle, this mental and moral under
growth, which is the full stature to which
mediocrity or something beneath it can
attain, and which seems literally to have
choked, as thistles choke the grain, the
larger intelligence ef the land. That this
should be so at crisis like the present is
to us great calamity. We need real
atatesmen, not mimic statesmen We
need men and minds of the first order,
not of the last We need minds large
enough to be, like the ocean, calm at the
bottom We need statesmen who can
draw knowledge from the past. tear the
veil and penetrate into the future, and.
standing between. hold the eqapoisc with
a steady hand. We have now no such
men ip public lite, certainly none such
who are leaving their impress upon the
times, or influencing in any perceptible
degree the current of public affairs. Men
of the very opposite sort are at the
helm-they are captain, crew, steersman,
pilot, everything-and under their guild
ance and management we are being drlv-
en-. dismasted and with tattered sails,
whittier We know not, going, as we are,
with the light of the Constitution extin-
guished, through unknown paths and
trackiess wastes.
When we recall the long list of Illus
trious names that shine like line of
light through our history back to the ear
ly time when that history began the
Washingtons, Jeffersons, Hamitons, Ad-
amses, Madisons, Monroes, and others of
the same family and faith; and later still,
the Wcbsters, the Clays, the Cahouns,
the Choates, the Wrights, the Bentons,
and countless others of an intellectual
host-we cannot but deplore that they
are now in their graves and beyond our
roach in this the hour Of our extremites,
and that they have left nothing like them
selves behind them whom we can call to
our side. What are those who rule us
now. who make our laws, who instruct
the people, who put forth the edicts of
the land, who are the front figures i'll our
political arena, compared TO these
Atoms to the mi ghty. With the expo
riences which the past eight years have
given US, and the calamities they have
brought upon us because of the want OF
statesmen equal to the task of holding
lawless passion in check and pointing out
to the citizens their duty, with that con-
scious authority which wisdom and great
ness of character always give, we are
forced to look back upon the past to see
mighty race, and in looking d'wn upon
the present to behold with sorrow and
modification race of men that dwindle
into insigni6cance beside them, with the
destinies of great nation in their
hands. What would we not give at such
time to have Webster rise to the res
cue! What would we not give TO hear
him now, standing over the fragments OF
shattered Constitution, whose incompar-
able expounder he was, and whose prin-
ciples he spent life in efforts to instill
into the hearts of his countrymcn, de-
manding in tones of thunder why the
American people have been robbed of the
great charter of their liberties, and point.
ing out the way that those liberties could
be restored, even while he mourned over
the melancholy ruins that lay at his feet
Tn such a man there is more than NOR
tai power for the welfare and glory OF