The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-07-04
The Fourth OF July-Whero DO We
Stands o.

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Our ninety-eighth anniversary finds in the
world many who are sceptical as to the sue
cess of our great experiment in the sover-
eighty of the law and government by the
people, and it cannot be denied that the
doubters are sustained in great part by many
scandalous facts in our recent history. But
until we have heard of system Of govern
ment that is not susceptible to abuses, and in
which corruption and fraud of almost every
species are not of natural growth, We shall not
because of the presence of these reEnquish
our faith in the Republic
Critics are very fond of comparing the worst
condition of our government with the best
condition of other governments. Even
jockeys would not put the worst time of one
horse against the best time of another and
pretend that this comparison was instructive
as to the quality of the animals; yet process
altogether analogous is employed in politics
to disparage our political system and give the
world by contrast an appalling view of its
results. People who do this are not, perhaps,
Intentionally dishonest. only they are not
strictly logical They assume that it is fair
to compare the United States as it is to-day
with England or Germany or France as they
are to-day; and this, it seems to u.s. is an
error. For instructive comparison between
countries and governments we must take, not
some day arbitrarily fixed for all by the caIen-
dar, but some period which may be widely
different for each when they were respectively
in conditions in some degree similar. We
youv< coYD,,ara revOlutioDary nariOdo with ravo
luionary periods, not with times of tram
quillity and order; and country in time of
some great social or political transition must
not be judged for its dissimilarity with the
condition Of another country that has per-
haps centuries since settled with bloody strug-
giles the very problems that now disturb its
neighbors.
England is certainly in her heyday now, but
the story Of her political and social existence
is not exceeded in any history whatever for
the savage fury of the passions displayed for
the cool ferocity Of rulers at one time and
their abject meanness at another, or for the
contrasted servility and bloodthirstiness of her
people; for fraud and wrong and corruption
OF every sort, in any class, or in all classes
strange patriot who would care to purchase
for his country the advantages of good admin
istration now enjoyed in England at the haz-
ard of dragging her through the succession
of horrors chronicled in English history. Our
worst scandals and our most fragrant abuses
are altogether surpassed on thousand pages
Of British story; yet England has triumph
antly come through her political sloughs Of
despond, and to-day enjoys tranquility less
effectively destroyed than that of any other
country in the world, and an administration
of the various departments Of government not
without great abuses, but on the whole very
pure and very even in its pressure. Her
sturdy people have overcome the greater or
ganized evils incident to the political and
social fabric, and it is not to be believed that's
people of the same race, equally sturdy and
even more enthusiastic and resolute in their
pursuit of grand IDEAL will fail in the same
effort because Of some small dissimilarities in
the political system under which they live;
and, above all, it is not to be believed that
these differences in political system can cause
such failure,
1t is substantially the same in the compari-
son with Germany and France. If to the rob-
berries practised in our municipalities, the
populations of our carpet-baggers in the
Southern States, the inextricable political
confusions of reconstruction, the danger to
the whole country and the freedom of the
people involved in these confusions-ifto all
these any enthusiastic admirer of monarchical
institutions would find ample parallels we
commend him to the history of the times
when Germany was made up of little States
that swarmed with official thieves of every
class, appointed 10 Offices merely that they
might plumber the small treasures they could
get their hands into.
Every country in the world has passed
through just such crises as that in which our
own country is now struggling; and though
il the system our fathers founded had been
equal to all their hopes it should have been
superior to such mischance, yet immunity
from human fallibility was too much to hope
for, and they perhaps hoped for too much but
we believe the excellence of the system they
established win be found in the fact that it
will carry us through our troubles with less
disaster than any other peoples have
always suffered from troubles of the same ma
tlre.
It is no small event for the social and indus
trial system Of fifteen such States as our slave
holding States were to be absolutely broken
up, SO that the old organization and order
are absolutely gone, and he who was slave
before is now legislator. How many gov
ernments are there in the world that would
stand up at all with half their subjected peo-
pie thus turned topsy-turvy? No dynasty
certainly could outlive such calamity, and
we believe that in any country Of Western
Europe such change would induce cata-