The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-11

! 10 SOAstAHtif bciHk tuSSc0 uOM UW6sA br
the grossly utilitarian, selfish spirit of the
| time. Whether it be for the good of those
| thought about depends very much on the
| righteousness and sincerity of those who
| think. The same difficulty besets the tenn
| perance cause that afflicted the anti
slavery agitation. The moral doctors
could never agree, saving on the point
that they had 3 patient and that he
was very sick. Some believed that
| the constitution was ga covenant
| with hell" and would not vote. like GarrI-
| son, while others believed that under the
constitution slavery could be successfully
! limited in territory and finally extin-
| guished, like Sumner, Chase, Seward, An
| drew and Lincoln. And so for years. al
though the ablest. most eloquent, most
| upright men of the time were unit on the
point of hostility to slavery. they accom-
| pished little or nothing, because with
! their wide difference of opinion as to the
means to the end they were always disas-
| trousiy divided in action. They never
| made a simple platform of action on which
the greatest number for the greatest good
could stand and fight They were not
line Of battle; not even q strong column
piercing the ranks Of the opposition with
the weight and momentum Of its
wedge; they were only lot of widely
scattered sharpshooters, occasionally
bringing down man by the
individual accuracy of their fire. But
sharpshooters, skirmishing in open order,
never win a battle, and so until the Re-
publican party was formed upon plat
form that, while it was right as far as it
went, was short of the abstract right in
sisted upon by the unconditional aboli-
tionists, the system of slavery was essen
TALLY unhurt. 1t had suffered OCCASION
ally considerable annoyance from the
sharp, desultory, independent warfare Of
men, the fire of whose individual rifles was
unerring. but practically it had been as
little affected as though a crack rifle shot
had pointed his piece at Fortress Monroe
and expected that under his fire it would
meekly surrender. But when platform
was made wide enough and near enough
the ground to tempt the average Amer
lean who yearned to do something for
freedom, even if not ready to scale the
serene heights with the forlorn hope of
Garrison and Phillips, the people came to
the front, and with this line of battle Lin
coin was elected and the war precipitated
which struck off with its sword the chains
that knot of raging and sobbing philan-
thropists had in vain tried to cut with
curses or melt with tears for over seventy
years.
This bit of political history has its lesson
for those engaged in the moral warfare of
temperance. Make your platform broad
enough and near enough the ground so
that the honest friends of temperance,
whether believers in prohibition or regula-
ton of the liquor traffic, can all stand
upon it. While the voice of the pulpit
may perhaps properly be attuned
to no lower strain than the
praises. the peans of abstract right,
the motto of every successful pilot of pub
lie philanthropy, moral and social reform,
has not been the abstract right, which to
the mass is not attainable at q single leap,
but the largest practicable right. The
great war governor of Massachusetts,,
John A. Andrew, once wrote, Sumner
will have the abstract good or nothing,
while l will accept the highest attainable
good, because as read history, see that
the capacity to compromise is often the
highest craftsmanship" A whole loaf is
best, but half loaf is better than no
bread, and the great workers for the world,
like Luther, Wesley and Franklin. have
acted in this spirit from the earliest ages
down to Abraham Lincoln and Gladstone.
The impracticable, if not incapable en-
thusiast is apt to trust moro to sweeping
sensational speech and emotional appeal
than to careful organization and resolute
effort within the law. He forgets that
every step forward in progress is the stride
of the spirit of compromise, the result Of
taking gratefully the best you can get.
rather than spurning everything short of
the abstract good. The impracticable, if
not incapable enthusiast fails as reformer
because he has been trained as a maker of
sermons rather than as Trainer of statutes.
Burchard. who dashed the cup of victory
from Blaine's lips in trying to help him to
victory, was an example of the
proneness of the preacher In poll
tics always to lack that kind of
tact which consider time and place. and
is more anxious to do good than listen to
his own sermon. Burchard's habit of
pulpit speech betrayed him into his blum
der; he couldn't resist the temptation to
| shoot an arrow at what he considered "the
| Great Red Dragon of Rome" and as re-
suit he missed the dragon entirely. and
only nailed his candidate by the ears to
| the post. Just so in the discussion of
temperance in politics-the prohibition
enthusiast, impracticable if not incapable.
| charges right and left, forward and back,
| like wounded elephant, trampling some
times on the friends of temperance
| and sometimes on its foes, and the
result is that there is general
! desire on the part of both good
| men and bad to hamstring the crazy ele-
| plant. Suppose man had tine blooded
| Durham bull and was also the proprietor
| of large and valuable crockery and glass;
ware establishment. AS stock farmer he
would admire and highly prize that bull,
| but if some fine morning the bull broke
loose from his field and charged into the