The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-21
FOREFATHERS DAY.

Today is the anniversary of the landing
of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, and
tonight enthusiastic orators will kiss this
'blarney stone OF New England" and
claim that the Pilgrim Fathers sowed all
the good seed that has lowered and
fruited in America; that the New Eng
land man, working out New England
ideas, IS the leayen OF the whole lump of
our great republic.
Yankee orators describe the founders of
New England as the sublima;iou Of all the
characteristic virtues of the Anglo-Saxon
race: men Of action, fortitude, pluck and
faith. They were not men of taste; were
not disposed to love of adventure; they
did not travel where they could not trade;
they were pious, and yet not TOO pious in
the sense that made the French Jesuit
voyagers travel from the mouth of the
st. Lawrence 10 the sources of the
Mississippi and to the picturesque shores
Of Lake Superior. not because they pri-
marily wanted 10 trade. but because they
wished 10 make converts to Christianity
The Jesuit became an explorer because he
wanted 20 save souls, while the Puritan
was solicitous about nobody's salvation
but his own; he would travel and explore
where there was a prospect Of trade, but
he woQld not have crossed the Hudson to
convert the Iroquois 10 the church OF
Christ; they were ready 10 so n any direc-
ton, near or far, where they could trade
and secure profit; the building up
of New England was wrought by
very much the same methods used
10 build Up British supremacy
in India. The English factories at Bonn
bay and Calcutta were gradually extended
on the lines of trade until the whole In
dian peninsula was absorbed. The Puri-
tan was primarily trader, not an Indian
rroselyter; he was primarily a man of
business. not missionary TO the heather.
and New England was wrung by conquest
and seduced by craft from the Indian very
much as the pagan Juliu. Cesar won
Gaul
The great gift of the Puritan TO his time
vas his laying broad and deep the founda-
ton OF the common school at time when
the royal governor of Virginia thanked
God that there were no schools or print
ing presses in his state" The Puritan
state policy was perfect in theory.
but deeply stained by bigotry in prac-
tice. The idea that pervaded the Puri-
tan state was the individual right; that
institutions were made Tor men. and the
full flower and fruit of this respect for in
dividual right 10 . free HON free church.
free speech and equal civil rights, as e1-
pressed in the New England town meet
ing, is presented today in republic
whose dag covers 8, 0oo, 900 OF people and
not a single slave. 1t took a deal OF time
and treasure, deal Of blood and tears
befoCe We rose 10 the full, serene altitude Of
ihls Puritan theory Of the sacredness Of
the individual right, bur the present
magnificent tree OF American liberty Is due
70 the seed planted by the Pilgrim Fathers
al Plymouth, when, breaking away from
the theory OF the tyrants of their time,
tina, the state is everything and the in
ijvidual nothing. they wrote on their ban
ner the words. Until the individual night
Of man is held sacred. whether of home,
CNGFCh or iree nuo4Ic speech ana the equal
rights Of the majority, liberty IS no: safe
The Puritan did not say with Elizabeth.
James, Charles Stuart and Louis the Four
teenth, Il am the state" but they said
No one man is the state; al men, exer-
cisins equal rights of speech and action.
are the state" Beginning with the indi-
vidual right in the home, they applied il TO
the church, the school and the town meet
ing, and the republic is the natural, logical
child Of the New England town meeting.
OF coarse. the Puritan did not reap the
Tipened fruit Of our MONDAY civilization at
once.
A brilliant Southern editor once wrote
that the men who landed AT Plymouth
Rock came here TO enjoy their rights and