Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1871-07-25
The Lesson to be Learned.

There 1t dwells and dwells foreverl
Forever bright
The Lesson to be Learned.
The painful occurrences of Wednesday last
in New York city have lesson and moral
which the whole American people will do well
to lay deeply to heart In the first place,
they are lesson to everybody of the danger
OF suffering our religious sentiments or preju-
or action in political matters. It is the worst,
because most insidious, form of Union between
Church and State. A disgraceful feud between
two Irish factions would never have assumed
the formidable proportions it reached, or crea-
ted such degree of public interest and ex-
citement, if unthinking people had not some
how got it into their heads that the freedom of
religion and rights of conscience were mixed
up in the quarrel. We have endeavored to
show that the wholesale classification of the
belligerent Celts, who have given so much
trouble, as Protestants and Catholics, is IRA
tional and unjust. We repeat again that to at
tribute the intolerant tenets and spirit of Irish
Orangeism to Protestants at large is libel up
on American Professionalism, while to hold the
Catholic Church responsible for the disorders
created by the Ribbonmen and their allies
among the Ancient Hibernians is to ignore al
together the earnest counsels and warnings of
Archbishop McCloskey and the whole Catholic
clergy of New York city, whose influence was
actively eXerted on the side of law and order.
Y ct lnvidlous comparisons are drawn between
the celebration of the battle of the Boyne Wa
ter and that of st. Patrick's Day, forgetting
that the one anniversary is commemorative
mainly of political triumph, while the other
occasion is dear alike to all lrishmen of every
creed and without distinction of party. Hence
the sinister attempt to deduce from the occa-
sion an argument in favor Of the formation of
a distinctive American Protestant Political Or
ganization-the Protestant League of Amer
lea in other words, the revival of the Know
Nothing element and spirit of former years.
Against this we will only repeat the warning
Of the N ew York Erening Post, in its issue of
Wednesday: ITO give, it says, ito any Or
ganization sectarian turn would be, we be-
lieve, a grave bIunder"-it might have said
crime. ITO array Protestants against Roman
lists could do no good to the country" but in
finite harm, ''a and would prepare the way to
religious teuds which are the bitterest and least
reasonable, and make an opening besides for
endless demagoguery. This is lesson No. l.
But there is another lesson which can and
ought to be learned from this lamentabie af-
fair: The Orangemen had their procession
Two or three hundred foreigners for foreign
ers they persist in being, at least in spirit, so
long as they prefer the bitter teuds and enmi-
ties brought from the Old World to the lessons
of forbearance, of federation and union which
are taught 10 the New-''a paltry 200" says
the Journal of Commerce; 80 or co." accor-
ding to the Tribune and Herald, walked with
orange-colored scarfs, couple of banners and
band of music, through some of the princi-
pl streets and avenues of New York. 10 en-
able them to do this fifty or more persons were
killed, two or three times that number serious
ly MANNED and wounded. all public business
suspended for hours, the whole police and mil
itary power of the State invoked, and day of
excitement and anxiety occasioned throughout
the country. "Oh but, says somebody,
consider the principle involved. Ruf6anism
must be rebuked and put down." So say we
with all our hearts, but We confess we should
like to see the issue made and the powers of
the law vindicated on some more necessary and
appropriate occasion.
Many people blamed Superintendent Keso
for his order prohibiting the parade, who, if the
riot had proved more formidable in its charac-
ter, less easily quelled and more terrible in its
results, would have blamed Gov. Hoffman still
more loudly for permitting the parade to take
place. AS preventive measure similar po-
lice orders have been issued before in other
cities as we'll as New York, and some prohibi-
tions have been made in Baltimore in the inter-
est Of peace. Indeed, many of the parades
which take place are only by reason of formal
police permission, granted on proper appllca-
ton, and which may be refused when such
course is deemed necessary to the preservation
of public order-a consideration, we hesitate
not to say, paramount to every other. Upon
this point we cordially concur in the following
observations of the " y Press.
when an effort was made the night before
to remove the cause OF the riot by police inter
ference, we did not regard it as an act of COW.
ardice, because the motive and purpose was tc
save the city of all possibility of riot. 1t il
word, and very difficult thing to lay the mon
ster when he is raised. A spark of fire puts
city in conhagration. An evil word or passion
may do the same thing to whole communities
of people. Those who indulge most in COM
plants and denunclations are not always the
most ready to discharge the duties of citizen
ship, to protect life and property, to defend
even their homesteads. The riots of 1863 gave
abundant evidence of this.
This, we may take it, is lesson No. 2 Fol
our foreign-born citizens, of every religion and
nationality, we may add, in the language Of
the journal last quoted, that ''if the presen
occasion shall tend to make adopted citizens
more American than before in their new homes
and to feel that for them now there is but one
flag and one country, it will not be lost" A
all events, they will have no right to complain
| if, admonished by the bloody experience o
last week, the American people hereafter fee
more strongly than ever before what Phila
delphia contemporary calls 1.-The paramount
duty which we owe to ourselves as nation tC
see that this country is not made the arena fo
the fighting over again of dead feudal or DO
emical issues by champions to whom we hav
offered generous asylum" 1t is poor wa
to repay the hospitality which offers to all th
world home and extends over men of ever
race and creed the protecting agis of the law
to bring riot and disorder and bloodshed int
our midst for the qualification OF an ancien
spite and foreign feud. Let us be Americans
all.-Baho Sun.
Two card-playing friends were passing thrc
audacious coundrum: why cannot the pre-
prletOr of this forest fell his own timber? BE