Clearfield Republican. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1851-1937, 1875-07-21
NEW SERIES--VOL. l6, NO. %
POPULAR LEADRS.

POPULAR LEADRS.
In his excellent address at Brown
University, Ex-Governor Bullock re-
minded his young listeners of fact
which in these anniversary days the
country is in danger Of forgetting II
has always been the fashion TO talk OF
the American revolution as a spontane.
ous-we might almost say an unpre-
meditated-rising Of the people against
an unjust and oppressive government.
Because the colonies were sustained
through those trying times by
such a general spirit Of selfsacrifice
and patriotism, because some of their
best commanders were taken from the
plow and the forge, and so few Of their
statesmen were "persoBs Of quality"
VIC are apt to imagine that our fore
fathers had no other inspiration than
their own inborn love of liberty, and
no leaders except those whom the peo-
pie picked out Of their own multitude
and thrust into the foremost rank
This is the idea which the Fourth of
July oratory Of the last fifty years has
sedulously encouraged. But ex-Gov.
Bullock was at pains to show that the
origin OF the American revolution was
not the fortuitous concurrence Of an
excited people, but the deliberate, earn
est work of leaders not more eminent
Tor patriotic spirit and civic virtue than
for high culture and native force Of
mind. "a better combined array Of
moral forces" said he, 'than that which
led the colonies in the last years, of
their dependence and the first OF their
union, we might search the centuries
TO discover. There is theory that
public revolutions proceed upward from
the body of the people, and control, en-
force the orders Of intelligence above.
| do not so read our own or any other
history. The nature Of men has not
changed since the old essayist declared
that in the coalition OF human society
nothing is more pleasing TO God or
more agreeable TO reason than that the
highest mind should exercise the chief
estpower" Not only Washington and
Greene in the camp and the battle,
Prescott and Putnam in the hurried
gathering on Breeds Hill, but Warren,
the Adamses, Franklin, Otis, Quincy,
Winthrop, Rutledge, Randolph, the
Lees, Jefferson, Gadsden, and others,
in town meetings, clubs, and private
pailors, were, in the truest sense of
the word, leaders OF this great move
ment marching in advance, and some
times far in advance, Of the rest of the
people.
Such were the men who took the
lead in civic life 100 years ago, and we
may be pardoned il we look around
in dismay upon those who seem to
have usuryed their places. In the
celebration last week at Bunker Hill,
when the best blood of America ought
to have been stirred to activity, no
statesman or scholar of national repu-
tation was seen at the front, and it
was General b. +. Butler who led the
procession. The popular leader, in the
political theories of the present day, is
any person who happens to hold a
Federal Office. We manage our great
parties on the principle that the peo-
pie need constant direction from "the
highest minds" and our Government
intrusts this delicate function, not to
the modern Adamses, Otises, and War
rens, but to the village postmaster or
the deputy marshal, who have bought
their offices by services in the primary
meetings and conventions which are
better understood than described. We
act as If we fancled that an infectious
aroma OF patriotism exhaled IRON the
mail-baags, or the true school OF states
manship survived only among the loud
voiced politicians who SIT with their
ieet on the stove and spit tobacco all
day IN sand box belonging to the
united states. More than hail the
IN Congress are chosen
from this base class, and the Senate itself
seems TO have been sinking by degrees
70 inc same Vulgar level II mem,
Der oil the Cablnet appears honest ana
vigorous, we point at him as prodigy.
IL is thought much to say OF any pub
llc Official nowadays that he VIII not
steal,
when the history OF this period, how
ever, comes to be written, and men