Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1891-07-15
POPULAR GOVERNMENT.


POPULAR GOVERNMENT.
ADDRESS OF HON. VIM. L. WILSON, OF WEST
VA, ON IT'S REV TRIAL.
Hon William L. Wilson, of W. Va, de-
livered the address before the Alnmni at
the recent Commencement at the University
of Virginia.
Mr.. Wilson began by paying tribute to
his college mates of 1861, who had been
rudely called away from their studies to the
war, and congratulated his bearers that
they looked out on country unvexed by
civil discord. But war, even civil war, be
said, is not the only thing TINT tries the
souls of men and the institutions of coun-
try. The fate of individuals and of nations
is oftener determined by forces which they
fail to observe, and which only those who
come after them fully comprehend and
measure. the historian who shall attempt
to survey the progress of the United States
during the nineteenth century will review
not the least important or the least confus
ing chapter in the history of the world. AL
though the majestic procession Of the civil
war may be first to absorb his gaze, be will
study with greater interest the effect of
that convulsion on our fabric of government
and our free institutions. He will under
stand that it is not possible so great con-
flict should only settle the controversies
submitted to it and leave no abiding i'm
press on people and on government.
History, in the larger and more instruc-
tive sense in which it is now written, con-
Germs itself less with individuals and wars
than with the less conspicuous forces that
mold or change the social and moral life of
q people, and confirm or impair their liber-
ties. The history thus written that correct
ly interprets the progress of the United
States in the nineteenth century will be
constrained to declare that the real trial of
free government, its severest and most per-
sistent strain, was not in the strong wind
threatened to rend the rock of the Union,
nor in the earthquake of civil war, nor yet
in the fire of reconstruction, but in the still
small voice that comes to this age out of the
lecture room and out of the college labora.
tory, out of the workshop of the mechanic
and the inventor. In other words it is not
the war, with its temporary subsection of
the civil to the military power, its perma.
nent addition TIC the forces of consolidation,
its gift of freedom and of the franchise to
the slave, and its sectional bitterness, that
has raised CUR gravest and most abiding
issues, but the industrial revolution, born
of the progress Of science, of the sudden aud
phenomenal increase Of physical knowl-
edge, with the forces it put at the service
of man, the inventions it has inside and the
stupendous changes it has wrought in the
structure of society. This is the Sphinx
that, seated by the roadside, is PROFOUND
ing to US our hardest enigmas and demand
ing peremptory answers to them.
The visible signs of this revolution are
the steam engine, the railroad, the steam.
ship, the telegraph. Its effects are in new
qualification of industrial society, a redis
tribution Of wealth and of the social aud
political power that belongs to wealth, a
change in the meaning of great words like
manufactures and navigation, a tremendous
destruction of accumulated property as we'll
as of accumulated ideas, a sudden and be.
wildering flood of new nance, new things,
new ideas everywhere in the civilized
world, and nowhere more than in the Uni
ted States.
To solve quickly its more pressing prob
lens and to make just partition of the
wealth it brings us, and not permit it to
become the booty of the strongest, these
are the great issues of the day. Of all hu.
man institutions free government has been
we speak of it as something made by our
fathers, but if human experience has written
any truth in tie blood of nations, it is that
there is no stable liberty except historic
liberty. Chisel and brush may reproduce
the human form ia ldeaI beauty, but when
chisel and brush have wrought their best
we have but dead stone or dead canvas,
and He who alone can give the spark of life
DEGREES that it must pass through the help.
lessness of infancy and the strong discipline
of childhood and youth before it can reach
the trusty vigor Of manhood.
The pen of the philosopher or statesman
may frame scheme of government, con-
sSis1tioI for free State that shall be per-
feet in theory, but when the pen has done
its best, there is but paper, as feeting as
the Sibyl leaves. Behind the constitution,
back of the government, must be free PEG
pie and free people is the rarest, most
precious and slowest evolution of history.
Mr.. Bancroft says that the materials for
building the American constitution were the
gifts of the ages. Still more true is it that
the capacity for building and for working
such constitution are the gift of the ages
the ''stored virtue' and NERVOUS driIl''
of many generations cropping, struggling,
fighting toward the goal of freedom, FUN
bling with and becoming skillful in the
management of the machinery through
which freedom works out its just and bene- |
fcent results.
A peoples freedom is in themselves, not |
in their form of government. 1t is not an |
accidental but a most instructive fact that |
liberty has been the stable heritage of but |
one race, and that race not always foremost |
in enlightenment and the graces of civiliza |
ton. That race, which had shown great |
in it's first attempt at manufactnr-
ing, and had to import its artisans from
abroad, had always hsd cunning hands and
stout hearts when it was necessary to draw
the cross-bow or WELD the battle.axe in de-
Tense of its freedom.
With them knowledge of what makes
men free and skill in handling free govern
ment grew side by side, SO that their liberty
was joined with order. They could follow
their Declaration of Independence with
war that spilled no drop of unnecessary
hood, and Immediately nodded the materi-
at hands into great and expanding |