New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-07-05
THE NINETT-NINIH.

After ninety-nne years of the fizz and bang
of the fire-cracker and the sky-rOcket, the hot
rhetoric of the Fourth of July Grafton, and
the cOmplacency, self assertion, and bOastful-
ness natural to a period of vigorous growth
and lusty youth, we may comfort ourselves to-
day with the thought that after all we have
learned a great deal by which we may profit
if we are wise in the century over whose
threshold we shall step next year. Though
we have not yet as people settled down to
the conditions of absolute and assured success
in the experiment of Democracy, we may
safely congratulate ourselves upon the thou
sands Of pers passed and upon the large re-
suits of the century's experience. We are
growing to be more homogeneous, more
thoughtful of the responsibilities which weigh
upon us as a nation among nations, and
through all the difficulties and dangers that
have beset and are still surrounding us, are
qualifying ourselves for the greater and better
work we are to do.
T'o ninety ninth year of our independence
is actually the One-hundredth of our expert
ment in free government, for that really began
at IexingtOn and Concord i'll 1915. We have
had fill century already of Republic. 1t
is not the time perhaps i'll the midst of all the
smoke and fire and sputter OF to-day's bols-
ferrous demonstration to gather up the results
of these hundred years or to indulge in serious
reflections upon what they have brought to us.
1t may be enough to say that we have made
noise in the world. Emerging from the
seriousness and solemnity of the great struggle
in which the nation was born, we struck out
at once into an era of wonderful material pro-
gress and prosperity, and with all our
drawbacks of brief rcverses and htiul
disaster we can look back upon career OF
unexamped success. 1t is easy to see that the
period into which we are swinging now has
larger and more serious work for the states
man and the scholar than the one just closing
The utmost resources of craftsmanship, phi
losophy, political and social science, must be
drawn upon. Mere physical endurance and
brute force have done their work in the great
armed conflicts by which the country was first
made free, then elevated to position OF dig
nity among the nations and at last unified,
welded together, and annealed. The problems
of the future call for intelligent study and
calm, impartial consideration; for clear vision,
sincerity of purpose, charity, catholiclty, and
Jealous, unselfsh patriotism.
Inc signs OF tne Ccntennlal periou are Ill vi
the most favorable character. We do not need
to point out how we are coming into frmer
accord and closer sympathy as people, and
how the old sectional differences are dying out
and in process of obliteration even before the
generation which brought them to bloody
issue has passed away. That we are coming,
too, into reign of purer politics and the prev
alence of higher standards of political, social,
commercial, and personal morality is, we think,
equally evident. The legacies of the war, the
debt, tho currency, and all the issues which
seem so widely to divide us are but so
many instruments for our instruction and
enlightenment. They are melting us to
study and discussion, and though there may