Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1869-09-28
Abroad-Puritan History
Moral orce-Inspiration Eng
land and the West-Labor and Chi
nese Questions-Pacific Railroad
Cesar and Napoleon Education.

hours during my confinement in
Boston enable me to drop another
letter to the Herald readers My de,
light with New England life and
business has already been reported
The presest generation of people
have surely had different origin
from others | have known through
life. There is history recorded in
their actions, and in conversation
they reeur to ancestry, native home
and sacred memory. Family bury
ing places and relics of -Pilgrim ages
are mentioned, and even youthful
poverty inherited from ancestors is
priced as most fortunate legacy.
Two hundred years ago New Eng
land was as wild and savage as the
mountain parts now are, along the
Pacific railroad, whore gold and In
dams and buifaloes abound. And no
parts of Grant County are rougher
or less fertile than the best OF this
section. Most parts are so thichly
covered with rocks that the lands
laid out in small fields, are fenced
with walls Of stone. Between Bos
ton and New York, passing Hartford,
New Haven, Worcester Springfield
and other large towns, the fences are
generally rock and messy with age.
And great patriarchal bouders the
size OF house still occupy the fields.
The lands are barren, hilly and
rocky, yet the evidences of wealth
are everywhere visible. The towns
especiallyiare rich withmanufactores,
which employ all the labor, so
that idleness and poverty cannot ex-
list from necessity.
Reader, please indulge my recur-
renee TO brief history Of New Eng
land settlement, the kind of people the
first settlers were, their peculiarities,
and why these Yankees, whether in
habiting the old homosteads or
whether abroad in the West are q
great people.
In 1880 the May Flower brought
from England dozen men and wo-
men, for the most part old, weary,
mourntul, in threadbaro garments,
and armed with their bibles and
creeds. And their like subsequent>
ly followed in considerable numbers
for some years. They sought peaco-
full homes where they hoped to wor>
ship God in their own fashion. They
had to fight poverty aud star
walton and Indians wealth they had
not, but what was botter-moral
force, from which the riches and
glory Of New England have since
been created They were sincere,
had faith and courage.
These Puritans always believed in
fighting their religion begat such as
John Brown. They held that rights
must cost blood, and that whatever
else known as rights when won only
by reason or persuasion is a sham.
Human salvation, their bibles taught
them, was won with blood Mama
! 9harta cost blood an Independence
cost blood and, as supplement to
Puritan belief, the last volume of lib
erty in print cost US the blood of a
million. The adhering Puritan of
to-day, now and then one to be met,
speaks OF the late National Peace
Jubilee at Boston as O success Of
those who would defy God by VIM
ming what is just and right without
blood. And they seem pleased be-
cause the other day God sent His
storm to blast this tabernacle of
sham peace-the coliseum is no
more, and peace shall not come till
right and justice are won with
blood.
No other quality of people could
have begotten the New England of
to-day. Somewhere l have read of
another attempt at building up a ma
ton that was to endure without
faith or moral force. That charming
thinker and story teller, Bayle, was
banished from his country for his
infdelity. This was fifty years or
more later. He lodged himself and
followers, with their illumined lamp
near the statue of that eminent Pur,
itan, Erasmus, in Holland. These
disciples of Bayle had genius, poet
ry, literature, but no faith nor moral
courage. They built up nothing,
sank in depravity and poverty, aud
died. The Puritan builds up, The
other destroys-yes, destroys even
credulity and glory. The Puritsns
were not chivalrous nor intelligent,
| but had q faith and devotion that
proved fatal to all that opposed.
They were savagely austere, cruolly
virtuous and heroic without mercy.
Defoe, Ben Franklin, John Bunyan
and Jonathan Edwards were their
literary lights, and the bible and
Watts gave them spiritual fire.
Moral force is essential to the Gre
alton, maintenance and greatness of
society. 1t existed in the highest
degree in that Puritan colony Fee
bic, timid, with no pretention to
sublimity or culture, they yet in
spired as they won't along, and to
this day even in the West we live by
Inspirations inherited from them and
infused through every city and viii
lsge. The world moves in large
measured by the same inspiration.
The old Pilgrims announced the ad-
vent of q milder and more indulgent
civilization than Europe ever offered,
but which Europe is now trying to
initiate.
But New England is modifying,
and great have been the changes in
twenty years Modern manners
have altered and made impotent the
stern, too often bigoted, rules of the
fathers. Bat the best blood of the
old stock being always excommuni-
Gated, the whole has been liberalised
Those in advance of their timos be-
came heretics, and the heresy of the
present is sure to become the ortho-
doxy of the future. | suppose that,
in order to follow the spirit of the
age, New Englandels had to break
away from their severe faith. But
the leap was too far, and landed them
in faith without any inspiration.
fTip,a nj oaffla thar, hoolz h If vro-,