The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1877-07-26
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

HE AMERlCAN PEOPLE.
Grafton of Senator Booth on the Fourth al
Sacramento, Cal. f
Senator Newton Booth made the eagle
scream in the good old-fashioned way in
his Fourth of-July Grafton at Sacra.
mento, Cal. We quote:
81 am here to-day to proclaim my
faith in the American people, American
society, American institutions and forms
Of government, and my belief that, take
them for all in all they are the best we
know Of on the habitable globe, past OF
present. I am here to proclaim my con-
viction that atno time in our pasthave the
ties of our Union been so strong. so little
threatened with future danger, at no
time has the doctrine of equal rights
been SO broadly exemplifed as now, on
this Fourth day Of July, in the year
of grace 1877, and Of American indie
pendence the one hundred and second.
We have of late been passing through a
stage of intense introspection. There
has been tendency to take the clock to
pieces, because it did not keep time with
everybody's chronometer to pull up
the beans to see if they were growing.
We have been living with finger on the
pulse; we have studied symptoms, and
are the patient who consults quack and
fancles the pimple is a cancer-every
passing ache and trifing pain the begin
ming OF an incurable malady. We have
been too much like Addison's hypochon-
driac, who constantly sat in weighing
chair. Every fall in the barometer por-
tends hurricane of disaster, and three
hot days suggest an earthquake. I know
we are not perfect-outside Utah the
sinners outnumber the saints. The
Centennial Gid notusherin the millennium.
We do not sleep with ascension robes
under our pillow for fear Gabriel will
take us by surprise. There is perhaps
as much human nature to the square
mile here as elsewhere Even in poll
tics, an ounce of active selfshness will
effect more than ton of good inten-
lions. Ii one does not SOW he cannot
reap, and he must summer-fallow be-
sides, and sometimes when he has sown
the rains do not fall, or the enemy sows
tares in the night. There are stony
places, thorny places, and barren places
Neither merit nor industry is always re-
warded Ability often stands at the
gate while assurance stalks up the steps
and rings the front bell. Modesty is its
own reward, and apt to be all it gets
Honesty sometimes walks in rags, while
fraud rolls in coach and livery, in pur-
pie and fine linen. We have national
debt, State, county, city, and corpora
ton debts. The poor we have always
with us. We have suffering, want, vice,
crime, and ignorance. But in no other
country are there AZ, 100000 so we'll fed,
clothed, and housed, so we'll informed,
OF SO high sense Of justice, and so in
stinctive a regard for law as in the
United States of America In no other
country could social order be so we'll
preserved without the restraints of law,
could society SO well stand alone with
out the framework of government Let
us rid ourselves Of the idea that any
form OF government is an object of adora
tlon or has any value except as the ex-
preston Of the nations character It is
the protecting shell Of society, not So
ciety itself. The pomps and shows and
pageantry Of government are the relics
Of barbaric age, the survival OF bar
barrie taste. IF there were no vice OF
crime we should need no government
Not the Government but the American
people is the production of this age and
country. They have redeemed a con-
tinent from wilderness to civilization,
and dedicated it from sea to sea to free
thought, free speech, free schools, free
homes, and free men. Humanity could
not spare that history It is one OF the
epics OF progress. This is the Fourth
OF July. [ propose to crow like chanti-
cleer; to lift up my voice and prophe-
sy; to sound the loud timbrel; to sing
a song of triumph. I am tired of the
everlasting preach about modern degen-
eracy and the necessity for sackcloth
and ashes tired of the ceaseless twad-
die about American institutions being
an experiment. American life is not an
experiment the American people are
not an experiment, but fact, ire
mendous fact, great factor in civiliza-
ton which cannot be left out of any cal.
culation of destiny or reckoning with
fate. IF any one does not believe in the
American people, past, present, and
future, he ought to drop out of the pro-
cession. To-day 100000 American
people ought, with one accord, with one
voice, to shout, Glory for the past and
Hosanna' to the future"