Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1889-03-13
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

II WOulu seem as II Iue elQ OF
this century is to witness a general
outbreak of war very like the end of
the last century witnessed. Our
Revolutionary war was the prelim.
mary tocsrin that sounded the alarm.
The position of things then was
very different from what it is now.
/ Then the question was of the rights
of man. The motto of the French
Revolutionists expressed it in brief
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
That theory was astonishing to the
powers that then existed. To-day it
( is universally acquiesced in, theorct-
icaIly. Hereditary rulers do not eX-
ist, i'm Europe, outside Of Russia, in
reality. The people choose their
law makers. This is owing to the
French Revolution, and to the series
of tremendous wars that followed.
Moreover, public opinion, which has
grown to be such a mighty power
through cheap postage and rapid
communication, was then but a feeble
infant. To-day it cows even the
greatest power when fully concen-
trated. The wars that burst upon
the world at the end of the
eighteenth century were among the
leading nations of civilization, Great
Britain, France, Germany, Austria
and Russia, our united colonies
playing a preliminary but very inn
portant part. And to-day it seems
that any important war that may
arise must be among the same ma
tions And yet how wonderfully
different are all the conditions. This
nation of then three millions has |
now about seventy million souls.
Russia has trebled her population |
and most of the others have doubled |
theirs. And moreover they are now
all struggling for that commercial |
supremacy which was then the cause
of the incessant warfare kept up by
England against France. And the
commerce is a hundred times greater
and the colonization schemes, then
confined to a few islands and limited
districts, now embrace the whole
world Russia taking all Asia, Eng
land, France and Germany, dividing
all Africa between them. How long
the jealousy of other states can con-
fine that mighty power, Russia, to
the land and shake her off from her
natural outlet by Constantinople is
the question. A sudden revolution
among these myriads of people un
der the cZar, and change of govern
ment to something popular will
hurl them upon Turkey in unbroken
That mOnstrous empire
holds within herself to-day the
very same elements that one hun
dred years ago were seething in
France. Those who live twenty
years will see repeated on a far
grander scale i'm Russia the same
drama witnessed in
France in 17S9-lSOO. Then there
are, strange to say, other forces at
work among other nations. Just as
In 1850 secret societies were every
where formed to favor the rights of
man, freedom of speech, right to
vote, etc, SO now are millions of
men engaged together in secret
societies for the rights of labor. 1t
has been discovered that the mere
right to vote and talk has not anne
Iiorated the hard lot of poverty, and
that representative government has
been uuietly revolutionized till it
has become the agency of the few.
Hence, i'm the most free and equal
governments of the world, such as
France and England great disatfec-
ton exists. In short, this century's
ending gives all the signs of commo-
ton that were seen a hundred years
ago.