The Waco daily examiner. [volume] (Waco, Tex.) 187?-1888, 1885-11-14

political issues fit like shades over
the face of the nation, and the men,
too, who illustrate, advocate or speak
the issues into being, come as do
the oceans waves, and the issues
and their pale ghosts of attendants
grow more and more into the shad-
ows until they are lost forever to the
busy, hurrying people of to-day.
We recall the days when republican
forms and principles struggled with
the idea of centralized government.
When Hamilton and jefferson, the
two giants of the then dominant
parties, lived and battled. Those is
sues are dead, and after a while the
memories of both Hamilton aud JEFF
ferson will be things of the past.
Then we had the national bank ques-
ton, the Indian policy. nullifiation
and a host of others equally grave,
aud these had advocates equally as
able, as brave aud as i,lustrious.
Where are they? There comes back
to us from the grave only the faintest
whispers, now and then, of the great
men and their great acts, who were
then the potent governing forces of
the nation. After these comes the
tariff question, protection and free
trade, when the great tribune, Clay,
lowered graudly before Calhoun,
and the free-traders of those
glorious but past days. Later
ON we had VIM. Lloyd Garri-
son, Wendell Phillips, the Beechers
and Mrs. Stowe, to say nothing of
Greeley aud the hosts of other aud
lesser lights of abolitionism. These,
too, are all dead, or they linger on,
forgotten and neglected, and they
have no voice in the great questions
which agitate the people these times.
Even the great principle they strug-
gled for has become dead issue. The
four million of blacks for whom they
labored are now freemen, and not one
in ten of them can recall the names
of the men whose devotion led to
their enfran chisement. A great war
was the logical corrollary of the strug-
gle on the rostrum, in congress, aud
at the ballot box. Many thousands
of illustrious lives which were given
up on both sides, are as completely
forgotten as though they never had
lived. Even now there remains but
a half-score of central figures who are
yet active in the affairs of the world
or of the nation. They and their
issues are both dying slowly.
Thus 1t is, men rush out after prin-
ciple, and pursue it, determinedly,
and with all manner of sacrifice.
Around it, for the nonce, is
conferred all that its advo-
Gates consider sound, safe or valuable
in government. 1t may be but the
ignis-fatus of patriotism. The
present is at best but sorry compro-
mise with the past. We are ad-
monished that the men and the prin-
ciples for which we contend to-day
are but the evanescent shadows OF
the present; but in score of years
their memories will be but the
elongated shadows of the past, point
ing graveyard. Little will the men OF
twenty years hence care for the men
or principles which we deify and ad-
vocate to-day. There is but one
thing TO do, and that is to do right
and leave the country better in some
respect because we have lived in 1t.
In the light of all this, how con-
temptible seems John Sherman's
bloody shirt campaign, the raid on
silver and the high tariff screeds
which have been dinned in our ears
to the exclusion of sn'b questions as
grow out of the ell, walton aud educa-
tion of the voting mas sos of the peo-
pie. Men strike anu riot to-day for
principles against which their own
children will both vote and fight ere
the next twenty years have rolled up
and laid away their history. Let us
be tolerant aud patient, and let Us do
right because it is right, and not
because 1t is but a part of u policy,
which may be either good or bad.