Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1869-04-29
NEW SERIES, NO. a2o7

increasing foreign immigration OF
later years has made mixture adj
vantageous ihdustrially, but politi-
cally homogeneous, and not without
lqualities of danger The leaven Of
ignorance has been thrown into the
mass faster than average education
has kept pace with it; and it is an
incontestible proof of the truth of
this saying that the people of the
United States, are in 1869, quietly
submitting to many of the worst
evils of despotism under the curious
hallueination that, because their
government is republic in name,
it must necessarily be one in spirit
and essence. 1t seems to be enough
for the masses that conspicuous
merit of any but the shopkeeping
sort should be invariably abused,
discouraged, or ignored. This
price regularly paid, a body like
the United States Senate or the
New York Legislature may do with
impunity what no living monarch
would dare to do in the way of
robbery and oppression, and the
crowd will throw up their caps and
call it liberty. This would scarcely
have happened in 1916. We have
grown richer, more numerous, and
in some particulars, we fear, more
ignorant. We have not grown in
independence of thought, and uni
versal suffrage has not added to our
moral elevation.
In plain sooth, the age of sensu-
ality, of unchecked corruption, of
dense, Grass ignorance is coming
down upon us like night A free
press should have given more notes
Of warning than it has but the
press dislikes, in a free country, to
print unpalatable truth, even when
it discerns such truth, and the
journals that profess fearless de-
votion to principle" are VIGOROUSLY
the ones whose articles betray the
most laborious solieitude to catch
the applause and fatter the preju-
dice of the greatest number Mean
while, at what are called "great
centers,' coarse brutes, who ought
to be digging railways or drawing
hand-carts, lay down the law for
the whole community, and by dint
of vast wealth, amassed under cir
cumstances impossible in any other
civilized country, degrade the so
cial tone, and spread in every di-
rection an unbridled rage for the
pleasures CT the senses. Intellec-
tual elevation or ambition is scoffed
at, and those who strive to incul-
cate a taste for better things are
either hated or despised. Nothing
is thought of but the delights of the
table, of fine clothes, of snowy
dwellings and equipages-in word,
of physical raptures of every de-
scription. If there is a pretence at
anything else-whether in the pull
pit, in the theatre, or in lilera-
ture-the pill must be gilded SO as
to appear sensational All this
is so widely admitted, so shame
fully notorious, that its recital is
trite enough we repeat it merely
in elucidation of the subject under
discussion. 1t Is impossible, when
people think all things of their
bodies and nothing of their minds,
that either a democratic or any
other pure form of government can
long be maintained. Unless a
great change comes over the Amer
lean people, it will not be MAIN
tanned by themselves. They are
rushing toward the preciPice at
railway speed, and the universal
corruption that good men deplore
is the prelude of decomposition
which is as certain as fate. To ar
rest so deplorable a process and
save the state, we naturally turn
to the "best intellects of the
country; but where are they?
New England has long been said
to be, and has long claimed to be,
the head of the body polite, but
she does little enough to arrest
mischiefs for which she is, however,
in great degree responsible. In
stead of encouraging and reward
ing independence of thought, New
England has abandoned herself TO
all manner of cunning forms of
conservatism and self-worship. In
the political arena her statesman
ship seems either utterly stagnant
OF diverted into the grooves of
profitable jobbery. Mental activity
in her scholastic circles seems Inns
tied to the efforts of insular mag
mates to slobber each other with
unmerited praise, to the peans of
college poetasters over the writers
of dull articles, and to the emascu-
lated ecstacy of the writer's of dull
articles over the dOggerel of their
collegiate eulogists. This, and stuff
begotten of the same impulses, and
woven of the same thread, makes
up the staple of what is called the
influential literature of New En-
! gland. Men without cerebellumst
and so without originality, and
women who fancy themselves ge-
muses. because no one either knows
enough or has courage enough to
tell them the truth, are in effect the
rulers Of the "head of the nation
| The result il, that when the natior
| is really in peril from an accumu
lation of dangers its head is abou
as able to protect it's body, on emer
| gency, as that of sickly lunatic
Money! worship, body worship, ant
cant-worship are what are destroy
ing the moral health of the coun
try and fanatics, Of whatever grad
of culture, are unlikely to find it
| cure. But does cure lie in imperi
! alism2 Not necessarily, certainly
1t is not yet apparent that the dis
ease is so desperate as to require 3
. desperate a remedy. Yet, that
/ remedy is indispensable is dali,
becoming more obvious, and it
not strange that some eyes shout
. have turned toward crown an
! sceptre as promising relief froI
9 what they deem the intolerabl
! burdens and abuses of the presen