The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1883-06-30

Have the Americans been fortunate only
in being the heirs of splendid Inheritance
Or is there an inherent character in the
people which is the real cause of it all
Does the phrase we involuntarily employed
as We entered this town (that this is al
American town. indicate there is thai
about it which the genius of people has
impressed upon it as national character
istic?
These questions embody the subject
to which now desire to invite your at
tention.
The first instruction of Mrs. Glass to
those who propose to cook rabbit is tc
catch it, and the philosophy which under
lies the instruction is capable of wider ap,
plication than to the gastronomic art
Learning wisdom, therefore, from so trust
worthy source, our primary inquiry must
be whether or not Americans as people
have as yet acquired national character
istics of any kind. Now here we are at
once confronted with two facts that seem
to bear forcibly to the negative of this
question. The first of these facts is the
comparatively brief period of our existence
as an independent people. Distinctive
character is not sporadic growth; it is
the child of "wise traditions widening eau
tious rings" The ultimate fruition of
tendencies, implanted by nature, but nur-
turtIlred and trained by circumstances
throughout long spaces of time. Now the
United States have existed as a separate
| w
than one hundred years. Rome had been
founded two hundred and sixty-seven years
when the plebeans seeded to the Mons
Sacer; angle of the Saxon and Norman
had been assimilating far more than a
single century, when Henry II. submitted
himself to the fagellations of the monks at
Becket's tomb, yet an inquiry into English
or Roman characteristics at these respec-
tive periods, would either lose us in vague
wanderings or compel us to admit they
existed, if at all, in embryotic forms only.
The other fact is the remarkably composite
character of our people. For more than
sixty years the country has absorbed vast
immigration from all parts of Europe, until
in 1870 one-ffth Of our population was of
foreign birth. Such an influx of foreign
and diverse customs and opinions would
tend strongly against the formation Of ma
tional characteristics, at least until these
representatives of so many differing peo-
pies had merged their own in a resultant
race.
But the force of these considerations is
more apparent than real Time, after all
is not always to be measured by the revo-
lutions of the sun. In better sense it is
the succession of events, and so regarding
it, the century since the revolution is equal
to thousand years of any preceding era.
Alison in the preface to his great history
uses these words: During the twenty-five
years of the French revolution the world
went through more than five hundred years
of ordinary existence; and the annals Of
modern Europe will be sought in vain for
a parallel to the brief period of anxious eff
fort and chequered achievement" But
these twenty-five years Of which the great
historian thus writes, did not witness even
the beginning of those greater things which
were so speedily to follow them. 1t was
after the close of this period that the great
inventions of the age began to be applied
to purposes of utility. In the employment
of steam as a motive power the century
has witnessed wonders. More startling
than those of the genii of the Arabian
Nights; it has seen multiplied the necessa-
ries and comforts of life so cheapened that
now peasant enjoys the daily use Of many
things once not within the reach of even
monarchs; and in its era has been so i'm
proved, perfected and expedited the means
of transit and travel, that America in point
of time and accessibility is now nearer to
Europe than in the days of Caesar, Rome
was to Cisalpine Gaul. Electricity, too,
has come forward as another wonder-work-
ing power, to push along events; it has
not only lighted our cities and placed every
nation side by side, so that they hold hourly
communion with each other, but from the
beginning it has constantly stimulated i'm
agination by the perpetual promises it
makes for still stranger things. 1t has
been grand century! Its impulses felt
everywhere, and in every department Of
human activity have vivified as never be-
fore all literature, art and science; and even
in abstract thought have launched a thun-
derboIt in the new doctrine of evolution
which at least bids fair to renew discussions
concerning matters which for ages have
been esteemed by the whole Christian world
as solid as the everlasting hills. For the
confusing influences of forei On immigra-
ton, tendencies inherited from our colonial
ancestry have been an ever-active antidote
Our land was settled by Colonists, who, for
the most part, were stern and rugged men,
Some of them had sought a refuge here, to
enjoy the privilege denied them at home
of worshipping God as they pleased. They
were deeply imbued with ideas of civil and
religious liberty far in advance of their age
These ideas became the principles which
moulded public events; and by the time
independence had ripened into necessity
had assumed breadth and intensity among
the masses, probably without a precedent
in the history of the globe. And ever since
they have been the dominating principles
of our political history. Every struggle
for the rights of the people, every patriotic
impulse of the masses to defend their lib
critics from the encroachments of power,
has been fostered and stimulated by these
sterling principles, which if not born were
at least nurtured amid the fastnesses of the
primeval forest and nourished by the very
conflicts by which it was necessary to main
tain them. Amid the discordant outcrles
of commingling peoples they have been the
notent Influence which has moulded Amer
lean progress and given to it whatever OF
distinctive character it may possess.
To fix upon the peculiar genius of peo-
pie is no light task. 1t exhibits itself
everywhere, it is true; in private as well as
in public life in the personal habits of the
people as well as in constitutions and codes
of laws But when these have been noted,
the verify itself may after all have eluded
our grasp. The people themselves some
times catch it, and give it concrete express
sion in the construction of some figure,