The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-07-08
Written Expressly for this Paper.

| -, the International Fiefd--Indmstry Fl
| -4aerica--Army and Nary--Pedce.
Written Expressly for this Paper.
The boldest attempt to establish the
| rights of man by freedom, through per-
sonal liberty, was inaugurated on this
day one hundred years ago. The brave
and wise fathers of the revolution knew
the responsibility they assumed when
| they barred their breasts to the unequal
conflict, but confidence in just cause,
with faith in the god of battles, was the
stimulus that nerved the patriots of the
revolution to deeds of arms and resolute
councils, that caused the world to Won
der at the daring of Americans, their
powers of endurance, and the wisdom
displayed always in season, by the franz
ers of a system that to-day stands
without a parallel in the history of gov
ernments.
One hundred years have passed away,
and we are left with the memories of the
occasion that was so signal in its effects,
to pause in contemplation of the results
that stand before us to-day with all their
grandeur in reality of progress in the sub
lime work marked out by the originators
of the magnificent plan of man. redemp-
ton from the thraldom and CALLING chains
of the errors and superstitions of twenty
centuries.
Other republics, in DAYS that have
passed, have existed bv suffrance; to the
American people alone has the boon been
granted of sustaining a republican form
of government, with all its oneness and
integrity of character, independent of
the influences or arbitrary rulings, or pc
litical decisions, of any of the great pow
ers, whose dictation has been the guide
of the different peoples of the earth in
their struggle for the attainment of their
proper position in the family of earth S
communities. 1t has been different with
the United States. Founded upon prin-
ciples that are eternal, the right of man
to worship his God according to the die
tates of his own conscience, while it is
conceded to him the protective immun-
ity from oppressive legislation or judicial
tyranny-grants invaluable to human
nature-sO long as he conforms to law
and order. Those individual parts thus
protected, gives the union an integral
strength that, like the well-constructed
arch, the greater the pressure from with
out, the stronger the coalition within.
This power is based upon unity, result
ing from patriotic devotion to a whole,
and it is in this potent element that the
true American sees the perpetuity of his
country and her free institutions. One
hundred years of practical work
ing of free government, and
we find success assured. War, CONNER
cial prostration, decade after decade of
financial collapse, the crises Of 1887, 1847.
1857, and 1867, the varied political agi-
tations, distribution of the sale of public
lands, tariff, national banks, Kansas and
Nebraska, ard slavery-and yet passing
through this crucible of antagonisms-
the United States has furnished perfect
system of government, free from the
dross of any of the states of the Old
World. The genius of Free America
coming forth from the fire as a purified
monument to future generations of the
virtue of that potent truth in the history
of free government, "man's capacity
for selfgovernment being thus approved
by time and the spirit of republican
institutions" Great Britain boasts of
her triune constitutional forces; she
speaks other monarchy, with its strength,
her aristocracy with their wisdom, and
her democracy with its honesty; one to
create, the other to execute, and the
latter to check, and says: "Did we
permit the exclusive rulings of an aris-
tocracy, they would become licentious
did we allow the limitations of monarchy
to become despotic, the endings would
become tyrannical; or did we relax to
the excuses of democracy, our system
would become anarchical, as in your free
America" This, from a British stand
point, may be true; but let the diplomacy
of Great Britain remember that an
English democracy is not American
republicanism. American liberty has a
superstructure of honesty, wisdom and
strength, compatible with the necessities
of each individual who, under the segis
of American thought, forming national
whole whose coping with the system of
the British government (the most perfect
known to European civilization), will
rebound to the glory and renown of
American citizenship. Past ages, robed
in their political habiliments of the gold
en-, brazen, and iron eras, have shown the
inutility of force of fancy and of tyranny
in advancing the general good. 1t hav-
ing been left to the temperate present to
exhibit the fallacies of the systems en-
veloped in the crude ideas of periods
entombed In the dissolved past, and by
educating the mind in free thought, and
thus express intelligence and achieve the
fruition of that hope. The study of
mankind for centuries has been to con-
serve not the majority, but the human
whole.
1t is the American idea that is the
theme of American instruction. De
Tocqueville's conceptions of an American
democracy are not patent to the Ameri-
can of to-day. Blackstone, Young, and
others whose views of policy were broad
and comprehensive, were not equal to :he
occasions of to-day. Their vivid imagin-
atoms, their historic lore, added to their
astute and profound judgment, could
not weave a system equal to the pro-
gressive American theses. Principles
so grand, so simple, so instructive,
that the past was not able to conceive
the magnitude of the national in
terests and their effects upon the inter-
national field; and in this failure of
conception the American of to-day
finds herself free from cramping suggest
ions of WORKOUT ideas, which lessons were
not adaptable to the original free thought
of this New World of liberty and
virtue. The solons of times had a wis
dom of concert that their age was to an
eternity of one-ideaism. They drew their
inspiration from retrospective well of
thought, and drenched their followers
with ethecs for a generation. Their APP
prehension was confined to the actions OF
decades at the farthest of generations.
They did not legislate for centuries hid
den in the womb of futurity, as their ge-
ographical area was circumscribed 50
was their philosophy when applied to po-
litical economy. A Lycurgus, an Ars-
tides, Caesar, an Alfred, a Napoleon,
were wise in their corelations of lex
scripta or lex non scripta but these orig
inals Of law were codified in one sense, OF
created in another, for selfish purposes
that had in their genius the fact simply,