The Russellville Democrat., 1880-04-01
European Revolution.

American readers are accustomed to note the progress of communism and ni- hilism in Eruope with shudder. The American people, as a nation whose greatness is due largely or wholly to the vast extent of ocean that separates the eastern and western continents and Il e providential escape of this continent from the grasp of established tyranny, should judge dispassionately those revo- lutlonary societies, giving due weight to the causes which have called them into existence, and the purposes which they seek to accomplish In this connection the idea of a common humanity, upon which all governments are supposed to be founded and without which no rule can be adapted to the wants of civiliza- ton, ought not to be lost sight of. The history of man is conflict of ideas, all of which partake of the intellectual and moral imperfections of human nature. In the conflict of ideas in the old world to-day the enemies of the established order of things clam that humanity in government needs anew departure and new system from bottom to top. How far is this true? Governments are SUD- posed to have been designed for the pro- lection of the weak against the strong, and of the peaceable and virtuous against the criminal and predatory. In the ad- vance of civilization, government, as protection for the weak, with reference to danger from without, has come to be almost an unnecessary institution. The inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine, of Schleswig Holstein, and of Savoy and Nice have suffered no civil or religious persecution by their change of masters. Then, In heabsence of that savage thirst for foreign blood and piunder which pre- vailed Tn ruder ages, how can we account for the immense standing armies of Eu- rope, the evil of which is fully exempli- fled by the hardship they entail, save on the theory Of pervading desire for do- mestic oppression? With cooperative humanity there would be no thirst for conquest, and, so far as rulers of differ ent countries manifest an ambition to override one another, just so far are they chargeable with like disposition toward their own subjects. The melancholy ti- dings daily received from beyond the Atlantic are sufficiently convincing that government has been perverted by ava rlce and ambition to the oppression of the weak. The oppression by which Austria has been enabled to sustain a ScioSoeli oeaAuihe aIlDy may De measured by the intelligence that in certain dis tricts in Hungary famine is driving peo- pie to suicide. In the heart of Russia similar horrors exist from like causes. So 1t Is Tn Italy, in Germany, and in Ire land where, however, the cause is not so much the resultof political despotism as of chronic and traditional evils; connected with vicious landed and landlord sys- tenn, What but systematic oppression of the weak will explain the persevering expenditure of public money in costly armaments, while refusing bread to pale faced little ones who may be wrestling with death over decayed cabbage or a struggling turniptop? What IS the nature of the rulers who can view that kind of suffering i'll such a passive frame as that which characterizes the action of Euro pean governments in the presence of famine at this moment? Is it unnatural that thousands and millions in Europe should desire and strive for infusing into government that which would make it something better than a ghastly mockerv of protection for the weak? How far their efforts to orealize this aspiration may madly overshoot the mark, only the event can determine It is too often the case, as Tn the great French revolution of the last century, that the horrors of the recoil in a great popular rising are equal, for the time at least, to the hor- TOTS Of the previous oppression.