The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-07-17


Mountain House, July 7th, 1886.
BY REV. JAMES W. REESE.
If the struggle made by the several Flu,
ropean governments for the possession Of
North America had ended differently, oul
language to-day might be Spanish or French
possibly Dutch; at all events it would not
be English. At one time, indeed, it looked
very much as though it might be French
England had foothold on the Atlantic
border only, while France owned Canada
and was vigorously prosecuting the mag,
nifcent project of the Bourbon for vast
colonial dominion, to extend from the st.
Lawrence to the Ohio and the Mississippi.
But the final supremacy of England, and
the consequent spread through the colonies
of her laws and institutions, decided, once
for all, that our national tongue should be
English; that our literature should be
written in the language of Shakespeare and
of Milton, not in that of Moliere and OF
Racine. And as by that supremacy it was
decided that the doctrine and the practice
of constitutional liberty, elaborated in the
slow progress of the centuries on English
soil, should prevail here too, so, as part
of our inheritance, there came to us that
language. which, starting as a rude dialect
in the forests Of Germany and on the shores
of the Northern Ocean, has developed into
the most perfect instrument for the express
sion OF human thought, Greek possibly OK
cepted. which the world has ever known.
This perfection of our mother tongue as a
medium for the transmission of ideas and
emotions, its infinite fexibility, its mex
haustible richness, It's indefatigable strength,
constitutes its primary claim on our loyalty
and devotion. But it makes, besides, two
appeals to our pride, one on the score OF its
aatiquty the other on the score OF its
acorld-wide diffusion.
As the language of conversation for the
people of England, the language OF the
hearthstone, the language in which men
transacted business and lovers exchanged
their VOWS, English can count back four
teen centuries from the time when Glad
stone is fighting the battle of Home Rule
for one branch of the Celts to the time
when the Teuton, in wave after wave of
immigration, was driving another branch
of the Celts westward into Wales. AS the
language of distinct and noble literature,
it is nearly as old If we reckon, as we
have perfect right to do, the Saxon poet
Caedmon as the first of the long line Of
authors who have used our tongue for lit
erary purposes, we can count back from
Longfellow and Tennyson to the second
half of the seventh century, and proudly
claim for English literature an existence
of twelve hundred years.
Then, again, no other language is so
widely diffused as ours. Whitney truly
observes "that the English is already, per-
haps, spoken and written as mother-tongue
by greater number of persons than any
other existing dialect of high cultivation,
and its sphere seems to be widening, at
home and abroad, more rapidly than that
of any other" And you all know that
when. from time to time, speculations are
INDUCED in as to the possibility of there
ever being a world-language, one tongue
for the whole human race, these spec
ulations uniformly point to English as
the only possible claimant, among existing
dialects, to so proud position. This Ian
guage, so solidly planted on its Saxon foun-
dation, so enriched by the Romantic addi-
ditions which it has assimilated, so veneer
able and yet so vigorous, pulsing with the
life; and energy of the great race which uses
it, widening its vocabulary to meet the
ever-new requirements of civilization daily
becoming more complex, and of knowl-
edge constantly expanding its borders;
equal to any demands which can ever be
made upon it, since even Shakespeare
could not exhaust its resources; percolating
through dense population trained in the
sacred law of the Sanscrit Vedas and pen
etrating regions of India traversed twenty
two hundred years ago by the hosts OF
Alexander the Great, patiently waiting for
the hour to strike when it shall voice the
aspirations of a aCorld made free by truth
and fraternal by love; this language is our
national tongue, and its possession makes
us joint owners with the mother-country of
the richest, the purest, the most varied, the
most robust literature the world has ever
seen.
1t is truly noble possession, but it Is
also trust, responsibility. We all I'M
hesitatingly acknowledge our civil and re-
ligious liberty as sacred trust, to be trans
mitted unimpaired to those who are to
follow u.s. Well, let us not forget that the
same providentially ordered historic pro-
cesses which gave us our priceless liberty,
gave us, also, our language, and that it is
no less our bounden duty to hand this down
to our posterity pure and undehled. We
all owe answering loyalty to our ma
tive tongue, as we owe it to our native
land, and this debt we can pay only by
precision, by care, by directness, by honesty
in our use of English, so that those who
receive it from us may receive no dlmln-
ished inheritance, but one, if possible, in
creased and made still worthier by our
faithful and judicious management. We
all owe loyalty to our country, but the
burden of responsibility rests more heavily
on those who are in positions Of public
trust, executive, judicial or Legislative. In
the same way we all owe loyalty to our
country's language, but the burden of re-
sponsibility here presses with a special
weight upon those who have been entrusted
with the training of our young citizens,
the teachers of our common-schools. "Bur-
den of responsibility" l said, but permit
me to recall the phrase and substitute the
word privilege" for, as member of the
pedagogic guild, l am too heartily in sym
pathy with my brothers and sisters of the
public school system to add, even by word
or phrase, to the many burdens they already
haveto bear On every side they encounter
criticism, condescension, even praise some
times every kind of treatment, in short,
except adequate pay for services, the loss
of which for single generation would
plunge us into barbarism. The position of
our teachers bears a sad resemblance to the
position of honesty in Rome when Juvenal
wrote-P-obitasl audatur ct dlget "Hon-
esty is praised and freezes" So | prefer
to remind the common-school teacher that
he enjoys the proud privilege of standing as
almost the sole guardian of pure English, so
far as the mass of the people are concerned,
- i l. II L.. 20 90, h. !, b,,k ~, txrc