The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1892-02-13
A Rare Compliment.

a Rare Compliment.
A writer in the Salt Lake Herald
denounced Sir William Gladstone
last week for having "become a
revolutionist." This was . compli-
ment that could truthfully be paid
to few men Of Sir Williams age. It
is, if a fact, positive proof of an ex-
traordinary mind-continuity and
force, and quite - rare as extraor-
dinary. Other men at the great age
of four score years and four, have
SO far undergone the process Of in
tellectua1 fossilization az to have
become entirely unable to change
from what they were years before.
They have become fitted into q mar.
row groove Of self-approving big
otry, from which they have neither
power nor disposition to extricate
themselves, and must run on in
that groove to the end. To this
established and practically univer-
sal rule Mr.. Gladstone's foe admits
and even charges that he is an ex-
ception. He has changed; he has
become q revolutionist. As he nears
the fartherest sunset of human life
he discovers that the customs and
Laws and the form of government
to which he has been accustomed,
and which he has supported and
extolled for nearly a century, are
not perfect, and would exchange
them for better things, a better sys-
tem-revolutionize them. His fac
ulties are, therefore, active and sus-
ceptible at a time of life when other
mems are hardened and unimpres-
sionable. He is still receiving new
ideas, his brain still taking on new
forms. Wonderful mani
But is it such a great offense to be q
revolutionist? Revolutions are the
renovators of the body polite and
social, the leaven of the mass /;
their absence is stagnation, death.
Without revolutions-which do not
necessarily mean q state of war
there could be no progress, no ad.
vance in any direction and would
have been none. Without revolu-
tions-the rejection Of the unsatis-
factory and the obsolete, and the
adoption of: the adaptable and the
new-the human race would never
have emerged from its original
state of savagery, but would still
subsist on the uncooked flesh Of the
lower animals and of weaker tribes.
It has been through the impelling
power of revolutions, which broke
down the barriers to mans progress
and opened to him the knowledge
of possible higher and better state,
that every step in the forward and
upward march of the race has been
and will be made.
Revolution is the forerunner Of
evolution. Successive revolutions,
by preventing that condition Of fix
edness to which all institutions
tend, and by the slow but infallible
process of evolution, which they en-
ergized, brought up, through many
step and stage of development
better and better habits, customs
and systems until our present civil
ization was reached, and the same
power, evoked. by. revolutionistt
still, will take US up higher and
higher until the ultimate of mans
powers of self-exaltation has been
attained. We need and should honor
revolutionists whose methods are
not linked with the barbarian Of
war, and it is a cheering proof o.
the virility of our race to know that
one of its sons so aged as Sir Viii
liam Gladstone, whose long life hal
been given to the inaneness Of dead
level conservatism, can yet become
a revOlutiOnist.