Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1880-11-12

or that the parties who avenged the wrongs
have been guilty of violation of the laws
of God, of nature or of man..
CAPITALIZATION THE ENEMY OF
FREEDOM!
1t was the plaintiff conclusion of the
Roman Annalst, that liberty is slow of
growth, difficult of maintenance, quick of
decay Its advent marks the efflorescence
of civilization, and is generally contempt
rary with the highest point of national for
tunes, its decline is followed by total decay
of social vegetation, and speedy termina-
ton of national existence.
The contention Of faction, the develop
ment and growth of splendid luxury, the
public poverty, the determined and reckless
selfishness of the few, the almost unlimited
profigacy of the many, which were promi-
nent as the premonitory symptoms of de-
cline in the States of antiquity, are equally
conspicuous and operative in modern times
1t has been said, and close observation has
which brings death to nations as well as in
dividuals 1t is the multiplication of selfish
desires, artificial enjoyments, indolent or
luxurious habits consequent upon the in
crease of wealth, which proves destructive
to the virtue, protection and self-denial
which are essential to national prosperity.
Wealth accumulates in immense masses
fatal TO lis possessors, on the one hand, and
indulgence and crime multiply with fearful
rapidity destructive to public security, on
the other. The State becomes poor, and its
members rich, selfish opulence and AFRO
gance cease to be patriotic, destitute misery
becomes ungovernable The restraining now
becomes the moving power; the check upon
evil the stimulant TO dishonesty and cor
ruption the fy-wheel instead of the regu
lator to the machine, the head-long force
which is to hurl it to destruction. Hence
it is that during the worst periods of
the French Revolution, the sanguinary mob
which mad been entranced in the evening by
the aobe and elevated sentiments of Racine
or Cornelle arose in the morning with fresh
vieor to pursue their career of selfishness
AID their work of blood; hence it is that
he enthusiastic masses, whose sentiments
ppeared so pure and their feelings so ex-
tied in the commencement of that con
lfulsion, when declaiming against the cor
fuptions of power, that their hearts might be
Thought to have opened within them the
springs of heaven, became so corrupt, cruel
and utterly selfish, when exposed themselves
to its temptations that they appeared to have
been stepped in hell.
In such wild, untamable and frightfully
chaotic condition of public affairs, bad men
clothed with power and fired with all the
baser passions of their nature control and
direct the populace. The selfish, debased,
corrupt and abandoned, hasten to throw
themselves into the arms and lavish upon
the one that which they formerly confided
to the many, in the hope that they may thus
secure to themselves the object of their am
bition, whilst the truly wise, good and pa
triotc retire altogether from public life, and
seek in the privacy of retirement, that otium
cum dignitdti, which can no longer be found
in the prominent stations of the world. The
reason is obvious. In the excuses of regal
or constitutional power, the friends of free
dom, either in the liberal or conservative
ranks, can discover nothing but matter of
unqualified hatred, dstrust and aversion.
They have reached that period in private
retirement, or State, when the indignant
lines of the poet give forth their literal in
depreciation and are fifty applicable.
"When vice prevails, and impious men bear
sway,
The post of honor is private station"
1t is not hard to discern that such gigan-
tic, startling and irregular popular move
ments stir the passions as striking natural
scenery excites the fancy. That amid such
commissions or revolutions, the popular party
become the most earnest advocates of that
species of wrong and corruption as in the
end inevitably iastens upon the people
systematic train of cruelty, wrong and OPP
preston; nay, that inhiction of wrong, that
innovation of guaranteed rights, which ter
inmates in military despotism-that despot.
ism which by reason of its individual yio-
lence and brutality, sustained BY the aid of
selfish support from the popular party, forms
the nucles of centralized form of govern
ment A form of government which the
history of the world has shown TO be the
enemy of freedom, and from the fact that il
addresses itself TO those principles which,
because of our very nature, possess the most
durable sway over the human heart. And
history has further shown that wherever
such centralized power has grown upon
an established State, springing from causes
such as we have enumerated that the cause
of freedom is utterly hopeless, and that the
seeds of death are planted in the commu-
nity-that Capitalization, more than mill.
tary force or anarchcal misrule, has in every
age been the grave of real liberty. NJ. de
Tocqueville, whose political ethics are of es.
tablished authority in Europe and in this
country in commenting upon this vital and
important question, says, "lf absolute pow
er should re-establish itself, in whatever
hands, In any OF the Democratic States of
Europe, have no doubt II would assume
a new form unknown 10 our fathers. To
I figure any thing analogous 10 the dcspot-
ism which would then be established among
us, we would be forced 10 recur 10 the fright
fnl periods of Roman tyranny, when man
ners being corrupted, old recollections ef.
faced, habits destroyed, opinions wagering,
liberty deprived Of ~ asylum under the