The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1873-07-24
NUMBER 7

(which princes or statesmen could be-
queath to their country would be the res
olution Of all its perplexities, the estab-
lishment, once and forever, of a finished
s~stem which would neither require nor
tJ4eIate improvement" While the schol-
ars Of land do their duty no such sys-
TEN will be created. Wise unrest will
always be their chief trail. We may set
it down as within certain needful and
obvious limitations, the very foremost
function Of the scholar in politics, to op-
pose the established. And the next is
ike unto it. Always in free govern
ment, We may expect parties in their nor
mai state, to stand to each other some
what in the relation described by Mr..
Emerson as existing between the Demo-
cratic and Wing parties. The one, he
said, had the best canse, the other the
best men. Always We shall have, under
some new name, and with new watch
words, the old Conservative party, dread
ing change, gathering to itself the respec-
liability of experience and standing and
success, having IN its ranks most Of the
men whom the country has proved on the
questions of yesterday, and therefore By
shat halting conservative logic which IS
so natural, on one side, SO Just and yet
so often delusiYe, prefers to trust on the
wholly different questions of to-day and
tomorrow. As for the scholar, the laws
of his intellectual development nay be
trusted to fix his place. Free thought
IS necessarily aggressive and critical. The
scholar, ike the healthy, red-blooded
a necessary radical. 1t is his business to
reverse the epigram Of Emerson andput
the best men and the best cause together.
And so We may set down, as second
function of the American scholar in poll
tics, an intellectual leadership Of the
radicals. There IS another task IN our
politics for which the scholar Is peculiarly
fitted by the llberallty and independence
to which he has been trained: and we may
set 1t down as another of the functions
whose discharge we have the right TO ex-
pect at his hands. To resist the tyranny
Of party and the intolerance of political
opinion, and to maintain actual freedom
as well as theoretical liberty of thought.
a great difference between the man Of
culture and the. man without it, is that
the first knows the other side. & great
curse Of our present politics Is that your
| heated partisan never does. he cannot
understand how there should be any 9TH
er side. It seems to him disloyal TO have
/ any other side. He is always in doubt
takes the other side. We have good war
rant to expect from the scholar freedom
from prejudice, an open hospitality to new
ideas, and a habitual moderation of
thought and feeling-in a word, what Mr.
Wnipple has fehcitously called temper
neither stupidly conservative nor malig-
nantly radical, that shall make it among
the most valuable of his functions to
bring into ouf politics the element they
now SO sadly need. Candid consideration
Of every question on its individual mer-
its; fairness to antagonists, and willing
ness always to hear the other side.
1t is an old plaititude that the republic
cannot endure without the church and the
school house. In this too protracted talk
l have proposed to myself little else than
to emphasize and extend that platitude
Without christian scholarship actively
concerned with the affairs of the state,
this republic can never rise above nedi-
oerity nor even survive the gathering
evils that at times seem sufficient to en-
gulf it