The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1876-01-27
The Centennial Year.

Hardly anybody of thoughtful turn has |
entered on it without asking himself how,
not this country simply, but the civilized
world, has Jared during the century which
has nearly elapsed since the Declaration of
American Independence. L. has probably !
been asked more earnestly during the past
week than 1t will be asked next July; for
we are just now in the midst of somewhat
unhappy winter, and we are at the period
of the year IN which most people over forty
are apt to be grave. Next summer we shall
all be so busy In rejoicing, that ali question
ing will be put aside as inappropriate, even
if the weather be cool enoughsto make it
possible. H4a .D1ss l,.I .1
The very first thing which strikes any
body who compares the Christendom of to-
day with the Christendom of one hundred
years ago IS that North America, as we may
call it, while gaining enormously in politI
cal force and importance-Jhat is, while
rising from the position of batch of feeble
colonies into the rank of a first-class power
has not maintained its moral and social
pre-eminence among the nations, if We rule
slavery out of the problem. The distance
which separated the social condition of the
whites of the thirteen Colonies, and especi-
ally of those of New England, from the
social condition of the population of any
ty and independence, moral culture and
capacity IN the transaction of business, was
in 1916 enormous. The first actual obser-
walton of the supremacy of law over all
classes and condition of men which the
French officers who took part in the struggle
ever obtained, they obtained here, and the
spectacle which SO much excited their sur
prise would have been equally surprising
to the officers of any other Continental
power In France, Germany, Russia and
Italy of that period, either large classes of
persons were raised by usage above the law,
or the field reserved by law to the discre-
ton of the executive, either directly in ex-
press terms, or indirectly by the non-provi
sion of any legal remedy for the abuse of
power, was so great that it might be said
that there was practically no restraint on
the strong but such as the strongest chose
to impose. 1t was, indeed, only in England
that men were equal before the law, and
that the law was irresistible. But then the
equality before the law IN England was
largely neutraized by the inequality of con-
| ditions. Influence, therefore, was more
powl rful than the law in determining the
rights of large bodies of persons. The poor
! laws had already demoralized the laboring
class by destroying their independence, and
all the large chartered towns were close cor
porations, and contained a real proletariat
or mob.
In the colonies, on the other hand, cir
cumstances had helped both to break down
social inequality and to foster individual in
dependence and self-respect in very high
degree, so that an Englishman would have
been surprised a hundred years ago by the
absence of Il peasantry and of powerful
men, and the general comfort and intelli-
gence. No European could have come here
during or before the Revolution without
] finding himself in a really new society, from
which all that was most Objectionable to
satirists and moralists in the condition of
| the Old World was absent. In the last hun
dred years the advance of Europe in the
matter of providing better protection for
the Individual man, and freer play for his
faculties, has been very great. There is no
country now in Christendom, except Rus
sia, in which the rights of the citizen are
not covered by the law, as administered by
independent judges, and in which the arbi-
trary discretion of the executive is not re-
strained within very narrow limits. :, In a.,s thii
World has really caught up with US. Amer
lea does not enjoy the pre-eminence in 1t
she did then, although it ought to be said
that much of the Improvement in Europe is
neutralized by the growth of large standing
armies and the attendant conscrption. In
the matter Of judicial procedure, also-so
important part of any legal machinery
intended for the protection of individual
rights-the colonies occupied the very fore
most position reached by the English re-
formers of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries touching the value of Judicial in
dependence The ideas of 1776 on this sub
ject have been slowly gaining ground IN
| Il hao naf firm "
established in. all its leading states. On
this point, however, our country has not
held its own. There has been in all the
States greater or less alteration for the
worse in the popular conception of the judi
| cial character zs-af -.is.b ssEis ie1H Hsr
What the European observer and critics
said, when the Revolution for the first time
revealed to them this new community which
had during the previous century and a half
been silently growing up beyond the sea,
was that no respectable, or enduring pollti7
cal organization could be based on social
conditions of such exceeding and primitive
simplicity and that when the protecting
and restraining hand of the mother-country
was withdrawn, either whatever was excep-
tional in the social organization of the colo
MES would disappear, or the attempt ito
weld them into an lndepend polltlcal
failure of this prophecy-the growth of a
state on the foundation laid in the colonial
period, and without any marked change in
the fundamental ideas and usages-which
we have ts celebrate this year. The rejoic-
ing next July will be not over our having
maintained the superiority to Europe which
was visible in 1875, but over our having
created q nation without any marked
changes in our moral ana social plans and
foundations. In that sense, the experiment
is universally admitted to be a success of
the most striking Kind. The government
has been carried on on the lines traced out
at the beginning, and, whatever else has
happened, has become a strong government,
whose will is obeyed in all places over
which it claims jurisdiction, and which in
trial of physical strength is one of the
most formidable in the world. r iea
In considering the things in which the
United States has retrograded, or appeared
to retrograde, within the century, such as
the matter of administration, in which this
retrogression is undoubtedly we'll marked,
the main plea of most Of the apologists,
VIZ, the influx of ignorant foreigners, il
both disingGnuous and insufficient The In
fiux of foreigners has been part of the growth
/. of the country, which has converted the
colonies into powerful and wealthy state,
and made the waste lands source oi
strength. Without it, 1t is safe to say, the
= purely political side of the experiment. the
creation Of a frst-class- power, would moi
have succeeded. To say that we had made
no preparation for this state of things, too
that the strain it has put on our system Of
government is greater than it can bear; anC
. that our political fabric is based on virtue
. or presupposes general virtue; and that
when the supply Of virtue falls short, thing
get out of order-is a very feeble and one
: sided statement of the case. The founda
! ten of this government is, and has alway
been, the capacity of the people to see thing
. as they are, and to adapt their Legislation
TO the actual facts of their condition. Thi
lies below all constitutions and laws, ant
= the success Of 9 government no matter o
/ what form, depends on the amount of il thI