Litchfield enquirer., 1877-09-13
BIunderS.

A mau AlWayS cOnSlQeFS nlms0I pretty hardly used when his blunders are pun. ished just as severely as his crimes; es- pecially if he be of that unfortunate class who sin seldom but blunder always. Yet such is the unmistakable order of nature in this world; and many of us are looking forward with some impatieDce to better life in which we expect blessed rest rom the consequences of ofemistakes that have made our existence almost uuendur- able here below. What makes our case harder is the prosperity of many a shrewd, energetic.f fellow, who commits two sins to our one, but never biunders. s1.a..
 We must not forget that every crime is also mistake; sometimes but not always, fatal. Take the scripture instance of Da- yidi His career is confessedly plotted with crime, but he was not the person to make mere mistakes Apparently his worst blunder was his over-fondness for the spoilt child Absalom. That nearly ruined him, and might have done so aIto- gether, but for the judicious haste of Jo- ab with his three javelins. a good turn we always thought rather poorly requited by the Psalmist in, his dying directions to g son who never blundered. Modern histo- " repeats the lesson that it is the blum derer rather than the criminal that is pur- sued of Fate. Bloody Mary is vastly, more commendable person, from a moral point of view, than her sister. A single blunder was her ruin. She stood by, the church that had stood by her mother; she married its champion and died miserable failure. Elizabeth, who cared little for Catholicism or Protestant ism, who lied, and cheated always, and took the life of rival where it was abso- lulely necessary, was grand success. Her career abounded in crises when a blunder would have been fatal; but in matters of prime consequences she seldom made mistakes, and enjoyed long and glorious reign in marked contrast with that race of blunderers-the Stuarts- s-who succeeded her. srl E.= gsas sa a1- That the individual blunderer should suffer torture while in the flesh seems harsh enough, but their punishment is as nothing compared with that meted out to to classes, to nations, to races, that blun- der. More than quarter of a century since, France made the amiable mistake of entrusting her executive power to the heir apparent of a great soldier, out of senti- mental regard for his memory. From that time to this, she has been held in bond age by unworthy rulers; she has seen provinces torn away from her territory, her people overwhelmed with debt, and
 their right to choose their own form of government denied them. Nor have we to leave our own native land for instances. With singular unanimity. the people of near half the national territory took up arms to force dismsmberment of our Unlon. Four years of disastrous war left them almost penniless, when-ruin upon ruin-followed those oppressive local gov- ernments engineered by motley crew of ignorant freedmen and corrupt carpet
 baggers. from whose tyrannies they have but lately escaped. 4 5@7n H
 Nor are the French and our late slave holders the only national blunderers of our day. The Prostrate States of the South have their counterparts in the Pros trate States of New England, whose man ufactures no one will buy. whose land is depreciated to half it's former value; and whose capital is sunk in railroads that fail, and in the bonds of States that repu
 diate. No doubt our remote posterity will praise the enterprise" which can en- ure to their benefit alone, but this genera ton looks on half it's property. as wasted in various forms of foolish investment.
 The worst of these national blunders is that they ruin the prudent and the impru- dent alike. Nobody living in the South in '61 could reasonably expect to escape the contagion of Secession; nor could the most prudent Northerner of '72 escape the contagion of Speculation. But the indi- viduals who are ruined by the blunders of nation need not mourn as those who are born individual blunderers, lost to hope. No financial crisis ruins nation, and when it's prosperity returns, the individu- al who makes no more mistakes, still has his chance of being one of those who prosper. a a The fact that sins of pure negligence and sins of wicked intent are apparently
 punished with equal severity in the econ omy of nature indicates that much that passes for blunder is in reality crime. In the struggle for existence between the an- imal species, Professor Marsh assures us it is the big brains that win. The sharp
 ening of the human intellect, and the in- crease of human energies to their greatest reach, are therefore necessary to success
 in this life. To this end the subjection of evil passions is a necessity; but the per son who does nothing more in this world
 than to avoid gross sin, plays the monk
 rather than the man. It is from what he does and not from what he does not do,
 that the member of human society derives
 his chief value. so long as human society
 has to struggle for existence with nature as we find it'on the surface of this little planet. '.j.'3 ..5 5.o,. .a f 5 | h'" French Politics.
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