Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-07-05
FOURTH OF JULY.
[cosr1surp FROM THIRD PAGE. l

and inestimable
When v go further back, to the DAYS when
Brutus drove out the Tarqnin, and another
Bruus called aloud on TuIlys name and
shook alott his crimsoned steel :" when, again,
all was lost at Philippi and the imperial purple
was restored when. again, another Caesar
Iorded 1t over the Roman world and the Chr st
had not where to lay his head, we must prize
the heroic achievements of the men of 70
" nen we go further back, TO the days when
the Persians swarmed over Greece, and were
held at bay by the three hundred in the passes
OF Thelmopylg: when Athens was abandoned
and her academic groves deserted where the
attic bird trilled its thiekwarbled notes all the
summer long" and old and young took refuze
within the wooden walls at Salamis when
Miltidas led ut NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. blessed
Damei which still sheds around the world the
aroma of liberty, aud which twenty-five Gen.
turtles later led the English bard to sing when
thinking of freedom for modern Greece:
d" The mountains look on Marathon
And Marathon looks on the sea:
And musing there an hour alone
dream'd that Greece might still be Free
when we recall to mind all this, we cannot for
get to love, cherish and perPetuate cur free in
SttutiOus.
Here liberty is uncomplicated by questions of
the preservation of the balance of power, as in
European countries. Instead of the pent- up
Utica of the original thi4teen States, she has
land of her own, extending from Alaska to
the Gulf, from ocean to ocean. She has peo-
pie made up of the best of all the great nation
alities of the earth, and will rid herself OF
that effete civilization which is not adapted to
her progressive ideas. She has no trouble about
frontier lines, or the surveillance of jealous
neighbors. She has no fears of the hasty march,
the iron tread, the glitter of the unsheathed
sword. She j. enlivened with the hum of the
various industries, all of the benefits of applied
science to amellorate the condition of man, en-
riehed with a bountiful soil. with every climate
including the best-the soil and climate of Cal
ifornia.
Even here We have granaries enough to feed
iamis he'd millions; fruits enough and of every
variety to cater to the most fastidious taste; the
jnioe of the grape TO gently exhilarate, and a
combination OF every mental, moral and phys
zeal condition, which DIR. johnson had not fer
tility OF imagination enough even to conceive,
when he p ctured the happy valley of RasSelas
here the General Government moves in its
orplt; ana the states move IN theirs without any
collision or infringement; the one exercising its
express powers for national purposes, including
the preservation OF its autonomy the other re-
tanning and exercising the grand resduum OF
popular rights. to effeetuate local purposes and
local amelioration, which may be denominated
home rule. Such was the wise fGTethought OF
our fathers in distributing the powers of the Ma
tional and State Governments They builded
not for Il generation, but for all time and left
their inehaceable impression upon the ages.
With their success in establishing free institu-
tions afterward came the success OF other coun-
tries, notably that of France, who, after great
upheavals and many bloody triumphs tearing
down her Bastile, and unseating dynasty after
dynasty, tauntS nov the tri-color-emblem of
liberty. equality and fraternity.
Thus we have repaid the debt we owed to
France for giving Lafayette as a co-laborer to
Washington and for her assistance in the revo-
lutlonary wal, by placing before her a re-
publican example to initiate instead of the iron
rule of her Merovingian, Carlovingian and Ca
petian Kings, the house of Valois of Bourbon.
and the imperial monarchy: and thus to-day
we are founding an example to down-trodden
Ireland in her advocacy of home rule ard to
the woodchopper Of Hawarden, i'll dealing yigor-
Gus blows, not only against the oaks, but also
against the Balfours, the Churchills and Sails
burys of England.
Thus twill be seen how influences radiate in
the course of lapsng centuries
First the struggling democraeies of Athens
and Rome; then the gradual acquisition of the
great common law rights; then a general Coy
erIment and local governments, each preserv-
ing its respective autonomy; then other free
states. or countries essaying freedom at great
odds. claiming at least tnat in their local and
domestic matters they have a right to govern
without dictation across the channels of the
sea as to home needs and home wants
Never can we sufficiently repay the debt of
gratitude which we owe TO the fathers of &c
and TO the trainers of the Constitution of the
United states which, after the lapse of more
than a century, has had added to it only fifteen
articles OF amendment; Such was the complete
ness of the work done by Washington Madison
Hamilton, Franklin, Rutledge. the two Pinck-
neys. and their associates. 1t will remain a
standing monument for all time, how these
without chart or compass, amid a newborn ma
ton convulsed with excitement and discussion
and full OF the graveSt apprehension, built uD
the sacred edifice of our liberties laid deep and
broad Its foundations, and made enduring its
superstructure, until its grand proportions stand
forth to-day unrivaed by modern art the hope
of the country and the despair of all enlulatois
1t could not have been done without tie aid of
Divine Providence, who makes the not lingness
OF man to praise Him, who before had made
distraught the advisers OF a senile King and
who, now that the faireSt flower of George the
Inird Colonial possessions had been plucked
from his grasp, would not permit old-world
ideas TO dominate the chosen seat of Il better
more humane and more enlightened ciyiliza-
ton: civilization which has its startiug-point
in the enforced embarkation of the Pil trims in
the May1ower, to seek elsewhere those civil
and religious liberties which the tyranny of the
Stuarts had denied TO them in the land Of their
birth.
The great central character of the Ii irs was
our George, the leader of the American ~ mics
the President of the Constitutional Cony ention;
at all times patient, thoughtful, hopeful, prayer
full whom Ihackeray, with all his British in
stincts, has charac erized as the greatest wisest
and best of the Anglo-SaXon race; and the very
antipodes of that other George, who claimed to
govern by divine right-until undeceiyed by di-
vine power-passionate, self-willed eg ,tistic
and foolish.
Had not the American Revolution succeeded.
civilization would have stood still on the dial
plate of time; history would have to be rewrit-
ten, and those grand heroic characters which
now leap forth into rudy life on its pictured
pages, would not be so much as a name or a
memory. We could only muse thinking of
what might have been.
" Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest.
Some Cromwell guiltless Of his country 5
blood
Had not the American Revolution succeeded.
the courses OF English thought would have CON
tinued to run along the narrow channes of old
England, instead OF the majestic rivers and
lakes of America. George Washington would
have lived and died quiet self-posseSScd we'll
to do country gentleman, given to hunting and
hospitality, on the banks of the Potomac; Jack
son would never have built his intrenehment
of sand bags at New Orleans, nor Lincoln have
issued his emancipation proclamation. This
country would still have been under Mexican
domination: its untold mineral wealth. its cere-
ais and IFS fruits would have existed nowhere
excep; in the imagination of some dreamer
But with American success came the bound
less American endeayor and American enter
prise. until now We are the most numerous the
most cultured, the most flourishing, and the
treest of the great English-speaking race. And
here VIII he written, by-and-by, the classics of
our mother tongue, as already here is spoken
the English language in greater purity, elegance
and force than anywhere on the face OF the
globe.
All OF this comes from the dogged obstinocv
of George Ill in insisting on our Puritan ances-
tors drinking his taxed tea. He might have
known better and recollected thst some OF those
men were descendants of the old Ironsides who
Naseby and Marston Moor. They were as de.
termined as he They vowed, for they did not
swear in those days, that they would not drink
the English tea. and such as was consumed was
devoured by the voraci0us jaws of the sea The
result was that George the Third lost his fairest
colonial flower, and finally lost his wits the
history of the world was changed and particu-
larry the history of this country, which you can
read at your leisure in the classic pages of our
own Bancroft and while you read, don't forget
the prominent salient facts, that all this up
heaval grew out of those prim old ladies and
gentlemen getting their backs up and refusing
10 drink the english tea, and the stubbornness
of the old dotard across the waters who was de-
termined that drink it they should. Small
causes apparently very often preeipitate mo-
caused the Trojan war as hasty plate
OF soup spoiled General SCOTS Presi-
Dental prospects; as the noise and confusion
which prevail ed once upon time, when GEN
eral CaSs was attempting to explain his views,
affecting bis political asperations;,so the refusal
| of our forefatners to drink the English tea has
given us free and independent country, and
added UNNECESSARILY to the worlds civilization
Now, we can get along in the happiest accord
with our English brethren. They appreciate us
| and We appreciate them, for we are all of the
same blood and linesge. We claim kinship
wi b their Shakespeare, their Milton and their
Gladstone, ana they are entitled to share in the
world-fame of our Washington, our Marshall
and our Webster.
In perpetuating these blessings derived from
Our revolutionary f8refathers, we need states
men at the helm of state, like the prototypes of
old; no impulsive sp enetic declamers We
need thoughtful men, men whose sympathies