New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-06-22
pOpULAR LEADERS.

POPULAR LEADERS,
Tn his excellent address ut Brown university
Ex-Governor Bullock reminded his young ilsteh-
ers of a fact which in these anniversary Gays
the country is in danger of forgetting IL mas
ALWAYS been the fashion to talk or the Amer
lean revolution as spOntaneous-we migh'
almost say an npremeditated--risingo OF the
people against an unjust and oppressive govern
ment. Because the colonies were sustained
through those trying times by such
general spirit of self-sacrifce and pa
triOtism, because some of their best
commanders were taken from the plow anu
the forge, and so few of their statesmen
were "persons of quality" we are apt 10
imagine that our fOrefathers had TO other IN
spration than their own Unborn love or liberty
and no leaders except those whom the people
picked out of their own multitude and thrust
into the foremost rank. This is tn" idea wlilch
tho Fourth of July Oratory OF the last nity
years has sedulOusly encouraged. but eX-UoV'
RuIIock WAS at mains to show that the origin
of the American revolution was not the
fortuitous concurrence of an excited people,
but the deliberate earnest work of leaders
not more eminent for patriotic spirit
and c;vio virtue than for high culture and ma
tive force of mind. "a better combined array
" of moral forces,' said he, than that when
"led the colonies in the last years OF their de-
"pendence and the first Of their union, we might
search the centuries to discover. There Is q
"theory that public revolutions proceed upward
from the body of the people, and control en-
force the orders of intelligence above. i DO
"not 80 read our own or any other history. me
mature of men has not changed since the Old
essayist declared that in the coalition OF
"bumon society nothing is more pleasing to God
ormore agreeable to reason than that the high
"cst mind should exercise the chieiest power
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, WIN
throp, Hutlcdge, Randolph, the Lees, Jefferson,
Gads,lcn, and others, in town meetings, clubs ana
private parlOrs, were in the trucst sense OF the
word leaders of this great movement, march
ing in advance, and sometimes far IN advance,
of the rest of the people.
Such were the men who took the lead IN
civic life a hundred years ago, and we may DO
hardened if we look around in dSmay upon
those who seem to have usurped 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 reputation was seen at the
front, and it was Gen. Il. f. Butler
who led the procession. The popular
leader, in the political theories OF the
present day, is any person who hap
pens to hold federal Office We manage
our great parties on the principle that the
people need constant direction from - the
highest minds" and our Government in
trusts this delicate function, not to the modern
Adamses Otses, and Warrens, but to the
village postmaster or the deputy marshal, who
have bought their Offices by services in the
primary meetings and conventions when are
better understood than described. We act az
if we fancicd that an infectious aroma OF
patriotism exhaled from the mal-bags, or
the true school of craftsmanship sur
vyed only among the l0ud-vOiccd poll
ticans who sit with their feet on the stove
and spit tobacco all day in sand box be-
longing to the United States More than half
the representatives in Congress are chosen
from this base class, and the Senate itself
seems to have been sinking by degrees to the
same vulgar level. If a member Of the Cab
met appears honest and vigorous, We point at
him as prodigy 1t is thought much to say
of any public official nowadays that he will
not steal.
When the history of this period, how
ever, comes to be written, and men
and things tako their proper relative po-
sitions in the perspective of years, 1t
is not the Occupiers of Government station
who will appear as the guides of American
political sentiment. There are men to-day in
Massachusetts, and in many another State,
even in New York, never seen on parade, and
never begging for Ost-oiices, who neverthe-
less WELD moral force hardly inferior to that
which Joseph Warren and Samuel Adams ex-
erciscd a century ago in Boston. and the Lees
in Virginia. Carl Schurz in private life is a
greater power in American politics than Mr..
COckerell in the Senate; and one might name O
score of cx- Confederate officers at the South who,
accepting the changed conditions of the repub-
lie in the spirit of their brethren at Bunker
Hill. promise even in retirement and poverty
to exert a much more powerful influence upon
the future of their country than all the Spen-
GERS, Claytons, and Kclloggs who have 80
long filed Washington with noise. There is
eork for private citizens to do now in the
regeneration of political life, just as there was
work for them in preparing the revolution I;
and We must not infer that they fail to do it
because they get no Offices and make no dis
turbancc