St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-07-05
THE NATIONS BIRTHDAY,

The Fourth of July is a good institution.
It is good thing to have it come around
every year. The patriotic pulse gets at a
low ebb occasionally and needs Stimulat
ing. He was a very wise old statesman
who said that frequent recurrence to first
principles was essential to the preservation
of free government. Whenever the
noted day of American independence
rolls around iG is the proper thing
for us to pause in our national
career and to take retrospect
of our glorious past. Americans are proud
of their country and of their institutions,
and justly so. Our development has been
a wonderful one. AS we go back to the
beginning of our national history and trace
our progress up to the present grandeur of
the nation, we are impressed with the fact
that the foundation upon which such
magnificent structure has been erected
must have been a solid one. We
admire the wisdom of the archi-
tects who laid it. More than a
century's experience has demonstrated
to us that no other earthly govern
ment was ever so wisely founded. Our
national experience has satisfied the world
with the capability of man for self-goyern-
ment When all these truths are impressed
upon our minds, our hearts are filled with
national pride, and expand with eXultation
that we are American citizens. And yet,
are we conscious of the responsibility
which rests upon us as American citizens?
This is good time to reflect upon the mag
nitude of the trust which has been
confded to our care We should not
be so far lost in the contemplation
of our national grandeur as to be
unmindful of the fact that we are still in
the midst of dangers, and that now, as of
old, vigilance is the price we are to pay for
our liberties if we expect to perpetuate
them. If we expect to escape the reprOach
of being false to the great trust which our
fathers reposed in our hands for present and
for future ages, let US to-day, as we stand on
the isthmus of time which divides the liv
ing and the dead, with the graves of
our ancestors stretching back in the past
and the advancing footsteps of rising gener-
ations coming up in the future, draw
fresh inspiration from the plain. safe and
immutable precepts of the constitution.
This generation has seen the government
shaken to its foundation by civil strife, and
yet it came out of the fiery ordeal with the
bonds of union more firmly cemented than
ever before; it has seen monopoly present
an impious claim of power outside
of the provisions of the constitution
and seek to establish a deSpotism
and the utter and absolute overthrow
of every principle which has signalized
this government as republic, and yet it
has been baked in its effort and made to
humble itself in the presence of of a sterling
Democracy; this generation has more
recently been conscious of treading on the
thin crust of flowing volcano, it has felt
the tremor of the earthquake of anarchy,
and yet the government stands to- day in all
its integrity and power and grandeur. 1t
is to be transmitted by us to the succeeding
generation, and if the lessons of this day
will aid us in the discharge of that duty it
is good for us that the Fourth of July has
come again.