Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-04-30
THE DAY.

of this day. The lesson of the event is
palpable, and wherever there is spark OF
patriotism, its force will he realized. The
American nation, by this completion of
one hundred years of free government
under the system that appoints Presi-
dent as its chief servant and exalts him
as an Executive, whose selection by the
governed is determined every four years
at the ballot-box, testifes to the world
that the vitality of republican institutions
is unimpaired after century of trial, and
that Federal Union is proven to be wise
by hundred years of unexampled pros
perity. The world has witnessed no spec
tacie IN civil governmental at all comparable
with the meaning of the celebrations that
are taking place to-day throughout the
Union. Their testimony is to the capacity
of the Federal form of government, which
even some of its most earnest friends
feared might be put to too severe test by
the experiment that was made to unite
vast bodies of men widely distributed
over an immense territory, and maintain
ing independent States within fedora
tion, limited in its scope by the bounds of
expressly granted powers Such politi-
cal system, so weighty, broad, and SO de-
pendent for its permanency upon the
loyalty of the people to an idea, might
well have made the friends of self-govern-
ment tremble for fear of its failure. But
they were far-seeing men in those days
their faith in the justice of the system
and their righteousness of the cause that
gave it birth, has been approved by a
century of trial and the judgment of the
fair-minded and free-thinking throughout
the civilized world.
The observance of this as national hol-
iday is not less in honor of the men who
laid the foundations of the system of civil
government we enjoy, because it is especi-
ally commemorative of the Inauguration,
as the first President of the Republic, of
the illustrious citizen who led the armies
of the Colonies to victory We do special
honor to his memory to-day, but we in no
wise forget the band of statesmen and
patriots who surrounded him and sus-
tanned his hands in the infancy of the
Union. The Nation to-day bares its brow
and bends its head in patriotic reverence
to these fathers of the American Republic.
1t calls the attention of its sons and daugh-
tiers to the past of the Union to intensity
their devotion to the heritage left them
by the men who conceived the idea of a
free government in America, and gave
sone their blood and treasure and some
their lives to make it possible The holt
day will have served small purpose; the i'm
posing demonstrations in the great cities
and the towns of the Republic will be but
wasted energy if there is not made upon
the minds of American youth profounder
impressions of the priceless character of the
treasure that is soon to be committed to
their keeping than they have yet expert
enced.
While the nation honors itself by up
lifting its voice to-day in rejoicing that at
the close of the most marvellous, brilliant
and progressive of all centuries it is en-
abled to sound the praises of a hundred
years of successful Federal government, of
an indissoluble union of sovereign States,
1t does lofty service to the generation
now coming upon the stage of political
activity, and to which there is soon to be
intrusted the responsibility of preserving a
Union with which the hopes of liberty for
all peoples are inextricably entwined. We
will discharge our duty to-day in the
truest sense, if into the youthful minds we
anstill the truths Of the lesson of the hour
if we improve the occasion to deepen their
sense of the value OF the Americans politi-
cal heritage and impress them more
profoundly than ever heretofore with
the measureless and inexpressible value Of
the liberties Of the American people and
che grandeur and majesty of the indie
pendence and sovereignty of American
citizenship.
We will have used the day to wise pur.
pose if we devote some portion Of it tc
pointing out again to our sons and daugh-
tiers what, under patriotic devotion to the
republic is the manifest destiny of the ma
ton; that the one purpose of all the
struggles of the fathers Of the republic wa.
TO secure to US a system of local self-gov
eminent in Independent States, yet 81
bound together and dependent upon eacf
other, that there can be but one wise settle
ment of questions arising between thes'
sovereignties, that of Judicial arbitramen
upon the similar lines Of procedure tina
are followed in the settlement Of dispute
between individuals that their one chic
object was to establish system that shoul,
make Americans one people in aim, how
ever differing in the methods employee,
in the maintenance Of States; tina
should result as, in short those devote,
labors have, in the demonstration of tn
possibility of seif-government, in nation
powerful. free. progressive and cohesive
without kings or princes chosen or born t
rule.
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