The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-11-29

weak SlQe OF Ill popular SOFeIuiueutoJ
has exhibited a more dangerous develop
ment in these American States than in
any other portion of the world. No
where are the sober checks Of conserva-
tism so much needed, so absolutely essen
tial to the preservation of the very ele-
ments of liberty.
Every circumstance of our condition
feeds and stimulates our progressive dan
gers; and the still small voice of home
" prudence is drowned in the roar of the
wheels which the national energies set in
motion. We glory in our untiring
strength, in our limitless power. When
we work in the fields of peace, it is our
pride that NE excel all others; when we
war; even among ourselves, it is battle
of giants, and even when We steal it is
with q colossal unity and on scale of
national magnifcence that shames alike
the petty larceny of the Christian and
the Turk.
Occupying the broadest and most fer
tile strip of this earth which spreads be-
meath the temperate belts of the sun, be-
tween two great oceans, an empire OF
more than 100000 square miles in ex-
tent, not yet more than half subdued to
civilization, the field of wealth and ply
sical power which the vista of the future
discloses is grander than any which ever
old Roman or Spaniard gazed upon. Its
contemplation has bred wondrous
energy and prophetic instinct which
evinces itself not only in great deeds and
greater boasting, but in q most reckless
disregard of moral means and most
dangerous contempt of consequences.
In the major part of the Union this
feeling characterizes the teaching i'm
parted to the young. A boy is taught,
indirectly if not directly, that it is more
important to acquire dollar than to un-
derstand and jealously guard the free
blood drought institutions which enable
him to earn that dollar and protect him
in its enjoyment. The everlasting re-
frain rung into his ears is to develop"
something by which money is to be made.
From the press, the school room, the
hustings, the rostrum, the store room, the
workshop and the fire-side, comes this
ceaseless lesson; whilst the exhortation
to develop the noble and generous quail
ties of the soul, the basis of personal and
national integrity, are left to the formal
dribblings Of the Sunday school or the
perfunctory routine of the pulpit, and
the inculcation of the great principles
which underlie and sustain our liberties
are heard only occasionally from some
droning professors chair, delivered with
the air and manner in which he would
discourse on the ancient fossils and silu-
rian what-you-call-ems. In other words,
our progress is not true progress; we
are expending our energies in physical
development to the neglect of the intel
lectual and moral; we are cultivating
the vine for the production of wood and
leaves to the neglect of the Fruit we are
building cities, railroads aud ship canals,
opening lands to cultivation and amass-
ing wealth, but we are building no new
bulwarks to protect free government
On the contrary we have cast some of the
ancient ones down and trampled them in
the mire, and others we are forgetting
and remanding to the musty cabinets of
the curious. Never sickle for the con-
stitution, they saw now; politics don't
pay the farmer; let us develop some
thing; let us get rich. Verify say so
too. Let us indeed get rich; not only
in houses and lands, IN focks and herds,
in cities and towns, in ships and steam
traversed highways and gold and silver,
but also in the unspeakable riches of the
freedom wherewith our ancestors made
US free; in the knowledge of our rights,
personal and State, and above all, rich in
the courage and integrity to yindicate
them; so rich in these virtues, in fact,
that an attempt to organize free legisla-
ture by the use of bayonets, and to con-
stitute sergeant of the guard Judge OF
the election and qualification of the
members thereof, shall blow all America
into volcanic flame, which, like the
fearful looking for of judgment, shall
consume the adversary-its author-in-
stead of feasting him in the high places
of Europe and America, and will give
him the confinement of dungeon, in
stead of the freedom of an ancient city.
MY word for it, my friends, these are
the true riches of an American citizen;
to struggle for these things is the lesson
which should be taught our children next
after they are able to lisp "Our Father
which art in Heaven" The absence of
these teachings will result in the utter
perishing, as it has already produced the
grievous wounding, of liberty.
And now to the destiny which have
announced that it was my opinion you
had to fulfill. The chief business of
these Southern Atlantic States is, and
will for generations continue to be, the
cultivation of the soil and cognate pur.
suits. The tendency of these employ
ments is decidedly conservative.
Looking at the history of the great
Germanic families, it may be said, that
whilst cities and municipalities have been
foremost in asserting free institutions,
rural and agricultural communities have
ever been most steadfast in maintaining
and conserving them. The enjoyment Of
corporate privileges early taught their
possessors in the towns the Importance of
establishing also the rights and liberties
of the nation at large. But the spirit of
gain and the love of change also well
coined the approach of tyranny, and
overcrowded populations gave birth to
riot, social disorders, aud the demagogue,
the personation of all dangers to law and
liberty. 1t is yet So From the crowded
alleys and dark by-ways of our great
cities, abodes of hunger and crime, comes
forth the direst enemy with which our
institutions must contend. The evils
prophesied by Lord Macauley have come
upon us long before our vast Western
plains have been filled up; and whilst
there are still homes to be had almost
for the trouble of squatting upon them
and bread for the sowing Of the seed, the
war against property has begun on q
scale requiring armies to resist it, and
communicable incarnation of despot-
ism and social chaos-is openly estab-
lished in the land. Now, the sword may
temporarily check but cannot utterly SUBJ
vert this spirit The sword is evil as an
instrument of government, rs commun-
ism is evil. and one evil cannot cure an