Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1873-02-22
Making Honest Politicians.

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A great many people, both men and
women, profess to have "perfect hor-
ror of politics" They look upon the
modes by which government is carried
on as game in the hands of shrewd,
unscrupulous, daring men, who have
little regard for truth, honesty, or the
real prosperity af the country, but who
are impelled by love of lucre, of posi-
tion and power. 1t is common to hear
politics spoken of as Serbonian bog,
in which every man must be mired who
attempts to reach greatness through
that highway.
Now we hold and we think the JUS
tice of our position can be established,
that every man and every woman in the
republic is responsible to a greater or
less extent for corruption in politics.
And more, that it is the duty of every
individual to have a hand in this matter
of purifying politics. How is it to be
done? In the first place, "laying the
AK at the root of the tree;" by begin
ming at the cradle to inculcate lessons
of truth, of honesty, civil and social,
and of Christian charity, which is
Peace on earth and good will to men. +"
1t is a common saying, we have heard it
a thousand times in Fourth of July and
similar orations, that the Bible is the
cornerstone of this Republic. We all
believe this to be SO, but how do we act
in reference to this connection? How
many parents, taking this book as the
rule of moral action, diligently instruct
their children in its teachings in order
that they may become good citizens.
How many take pains to cultivate in their
offspring the love, for its own intrinsic
excellence, of that which is absolutely
pure and just and true =? How many
teach them when tempted to go astray
to reply, "Howcan 1 do this great wick
edness and sin against God ?" There is
in every mans house perfect antidote
to this corruption in politics which is so
much prated about Did Joseph in
Egypt attain and retain his eminence at
the Court of Pharaoh by bribery and
chicanery? His story is full of lessons
of political wisdom and sagacity, of
truth and honesty, of high capacity and
incorruptible integrity, of all the ele-
ments that make statesmen great. Was
it by trickery that Daniel became third
ruler in Belshazzar's kingdom, and first
of the three Presidents in the reign of
Darius ?
The ignorance Of men and women and
children, nominally Christian, of great
many characters and events portrayed
in the Sacred Scriptures, is simply de-
plorable. You cannot find carpenter
without his rule in his pocket, you will
never catch a stOne-masOn without his
line or plummet a railroad contractor
without maps and charts somewhere
about him, an editor without his news
paper, but how often do we meet men
and women, nominally honest, about
whom we can find no trace of this abso-
lutte line of moral action, this plummet
of Divine rectitude, this title-deed to
everlasting inheritance, but must take
it for granted that they have got it
slowed away in some secret pocket. AS
long as we have a Government there
must be men to administer it, and it is
for the interest of everybody that these
men be honest it is in the power of
every father and mother in the land to
contribute to this result.
Instead of keeping out of politics let
every man act his part in it well and
honestly, and do what he can to make
others conduct in the same manner, let
him train his sons to initiate the demi-
gods of this Washington, and
Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, and Chief
Justice Marshall, and John Jay-men
whose social and political lives were
equally stainless.
Men and women of high virtue are no
more the result of an accident than the
raising of eighty bushels of shelled corn
to the acre is an accident. Miracles do
not happen in this nineteenth century.
The seed that was sown in good ground
brought forth abundantly that ground
had been carefully prepared it was not
hard like the wayside, weedy or with
out depth of earth, but mellow, moist,
pulverized, and fertilized. Thus with
moral soil. Our greatest divines, our
noblest statesmen, our most eminent
philosophers and scientists, are the
blossoms of generations of culture and
intelligence, of morality and virtue.