Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1875-04-29
George. William Cuytis at Con-
cord.
Extracts.
THE TOWN MEETING,

living IN Old England, enly 1901 600 were V,
tiers, willie in New England the great mass
free male adults We're electors. And the
had been 80 from the landing at Plymouth
Here in the wilderness the settlers were fo
ced to govern themselves. They could nc
constantly refer and appeal to another author
ty twenty miles away through the woods
Every day brought its duty that must be don
before sunset. Roads must be made, school
savages and the wildcat, taxes must be laid an,
collected for all common purposes, preaching
must be maintained, and who could know tn
time, means, and the necessity SO well as tn
community itself? Thus each town was lit
tie and perfect republic, as solitary and seclu
ded in the New England wilderness as til,
Swiss cantons among the Alps. No othe
practicable human institution has been devi
sed or conceived to secure the just ends of 10
cal government so felicitous as the town meet
ing. 1t brought together the rich and the
peor, the good and the bad, and gave charac
ter, eloquence, and natural leadership full and
free play. 1t enabled superior experience and
sagaeity to govern, and virtue and intelligence
alone are rulers by divine right. The Tories
called the resolution for committees of cores
pondence Che source of the rebellion; but il
was only a correspondence of town meetings.
From that correspondence came the confeder-
alton of the colonies. Out of that arose the
closer majestic union of the Constitution, the
nh bapfy hnry, tl,a of H., L,
er, and the national power and prosperity to-
day rest securely only on the foundation of
the primary meeting. This is where the duty
of the citizen begins. Neglect of that is dis
loyalty to liberty. No contrivance will sup
ply its place, no excuse absolves the neglect
and the American who is guilty of that ne
glect is as deadly an enemy of his country as
the British soldier century ago.
THE MINUTE-MAE
| This was the minute-man of the Revolution,
the rural citizen trained in the common school,
the church and the town meeting, who car
ried bayonet that thought, and whose gun,
loaded with principle, brought down not
man, but system. Him we gratefully re-
call to-day-him, in yon manly figure wrought
in the metal which but feebly typifes his in
exorable will, we commit in his immortal
youth to the reverence of our children. And
here among these peaceful fields; here in the
county whose children first gave their blood
for American union and independence, and
eighty-s six years later gave it first also for
truer union and larger liberty; here in the
heart of Middlesex, County of Lexington, and
Concord and Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of
I4ibeaty as the minute-man stood at the old
North Bridge. But should we or our descen-
dants, false to liberty, false to justice and hu-
manity-betray in any way their cause-spring
| into life as a hundred years ago, take one
more step, descend, and lead us, as God led
you, In saving America, to save the hopes of
man.
RETROSPECT OF A CENTURY.
At the end of century we can see the
work of this day as our fathers could not; we
can see that then the final movement began of
a process long and unconsciously preparing,
which was to entrust liberty to new forms
euiu iiiotitutiolio StclIlcu luu Ol ndDDy
promise for mankind And now for nearlya
century what was formerly called the expert
ment of representative republic of imperial
extent and power has been tried. Has it full
filled the hopes of its founders and the Just
expectations of mankind? l have already
glanced at its early and fortunate conditions,
and we know how vast and splendid were its
early growth and development. Our material
statistics soon dazzled the world Europe no
longer sneered but gazed in wonder, waiting
and watching. Our population doubled eve
ry fifteen years and our wealth every ten
years. Every little stream among the hills
turned mill; and the great inland seas, bound
by the genius of Clinton to the ocean, became
the highway of boundless commerce, the path
of unprecented empire. Our farms were the
granary of other lands. Our cotton fields
made England rich. Still we chased the
whale in the Pacific Ocean and took fish in the
tumbling seas of Labrador We hung our
friendly lights along thousands of miles of
coast to tempt ahe trade of every cline; and
wherever, on the dim rim of the globe there
was harbor, it was white with American
sails. Meanwhile at home the political fore
boding of federalism had died away, and its
very wall seemed tribute to the pacific glo-
ries of the land.
"The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heavens sweetest air"
The government was felt to be but hand
of protection and blessing; labor was fully en-
ployed; capital was secured; the army was a
jest; enterprise was pushing through the Al
leghenies, grasping and settling the Ell Dora
do of the prairies, and still Drawing the will
derness, reached out toward the Rocky
Mountains, and reversing the voyage of CO.
lumbus, rediscovered the Old World from the
New. America was the Benjamin of the ma
tions, the best beloved of heaven, and the
starry flag of the United States flashed Inns
of celestial light around the world, the har-
binger of freedom, peace and prosperity.
uSch WAS the vision and exulting faith of
fifty years ago. "Alautis hath risen from the
ocean =" cried Edward Everett to applauding
Harvard; and Daniel Websttr answered from
Bunker Hill, 'if we fail popular governments
are impossible" So far as they could see,
they stood among the unchanged conditions Of
the early republic. And those conditions are
familiar. The men who founded the republic
were few in number, planted chiefly along a
temperate coast, remote from the world.
They were a homogeneous people, increasing
by their own multiplication, speaking the
same language, of the same general religious
faith, cherfshlng the same historic and politi-
cal traditions, universally educated, hardy,
thrifty, with general equality OF fortune, and
long and intelligent practice of self-govern-
ment, while the slavery that existed among
them, inhuman in itself, was not seriously
defended, and was believed to be disappear
| ing.