Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-05-03
NO. so.
IMPERIAL TENDENCIES

tne ways OF royalty brought pride, lux
ury and corruption to the higher classes,
while they brought poverty, suffering
and degradation to the great mass of
the unprivileged.
In every possible way our ancestors
sought to emphasize this idea. They
forever divorced church and state; they
forever prohibited titles of nobility;
they forever barred the way to hered-
ltary Office; they forever destroyed
the rights of primogeniture, and by
every conceivable device they opened
the doors Of prosperity. of influence and
of promotion to all American citizens
upon terms of absolute equality.
They sternly set aside the royal cere-
monial which, in the old world, sur
rounds the chief magistrate They
built for their president an elegant but
modest residence. They threw around
him every safeguard to prevent in
trusive disrespect, but allowed him
nothing which could make him forget
that he was merely a temporary trustee
/ of certain powers which belonged not
to him, but to the people, of whom he
was one.
In their foreign relations the same
idea was logically carried out No at
tempt was made to copy the ridiculous
pomp and parade of that monstrous
fraud called diplomatic service. We
did not start upon the assumption that
because France or England maintained
useless and expensive flunkeys called
ambassadors that we must burden our
tax payers in the same way.
On tho nonfror1- xua ,,,;Ia1
in sending representatives abroad who
would rank according to their worth
and not according to the money they
spent: men who would be judged by
their heads and not by their hats, by
their honest hearts and not by the
gaudy uniforms which covered them.
Under this system the American for
eign service reached an influence which
| was respected at home and abroad
Such men as Jefferson, Madison, Clay,
| Crawford and Franklin served us in
their simple manly way at the proudest
| courts of Europe and never felt that
they were slighted because they did not
have a costly retinue of servants, or
palatial residence in which they could
give series of wasteful banquets
Indeed, it is one of the traditions we
used to prize that Franklin, in his
plain country clothes, and with his un-
affected manners, commanded more at
| tention at Paris than the cheap no.
bodies who fused and flared around
the king in all the blazonry of court
| gildings and vulgar fummery.
And we find it stated that Napoleon
the Great was SO impressed with the
majestic bearing of plain William II.
| Crawford, of Oglethorpe county,
Georgia, that he said "Mr Crawford is
the only man ever met to whom felt
like taking off my hat"
In short, our fathers started out to
establish government which should
! differ from royalty. They hated all
the trappings of kings and courts and
| privileged classes. They had tried
them in the old world and knew how
loathsome and oppressive they were.
But now!
The traditions of the fathers are for
gotten. The fundamental principals
for which they risked life and property
and earthly honor, are being uprooted
| by their degenerate sons.
No longer do we seek to depart as far
as possible from European models. No
longer do we adhere to republican SIM
plicity, and to the high dignity of nat
ural manners, governed by common
sense.
No longer do we seek to eternally
keep open the doors of influence, pro-
motion and prosperity so that every
citizen may enter upon equal terms.
Having become an empire in territory,
and in wealth, and in power, we seek
to become an empire in outward appear
ances, In the display of armies and
navies, in the gewgaws of royal ceremo-
nial and observances, and in the main
tenance of splendid embassies at foreign
capitals.
Who shall gather round himself the
servile attentions, the abject batteries
and degrading prostrations of the court
circle?
Why, the president, of course; the
man whom our masters, the corpora
tions, set up over us.
Who shall constitute our cod fish aris-
tocracy? Why, the millionaires, of
course; the men whose purses pay the
bills for stuffing ballot boxes, the men
who dictate the class legislation on
which they fatten, the men who are
swiftly laying the foundation, in this
country, for a more brutal and goddess
and rapacious nobility than ever rode,
lance in rest, over the peasantry of
feudal Europe.
For the first time in one hundred
years it is boldly announced that we
have slyly gone forward until we have
a navy of battleships superior, in some
respects, to anything that floats
For the first time it is announced that
we can go twenty-one hundred miles
into the ocean and seize upon islands
which do not belong to us and are not
necessary to US.
For the first time it is announced that
we must have ambassadors abroad be-
cause the crowned heads of Europe
have them, and that our fiunkeys at
Berlin and Vienna and London and
Paris and Constinople must be allowed
to spend just so much money in doing
absolutely and literally nothing, as is
spent by the fiunkeys of Queen Victoria,
the Emperor William or the Car Alex
ander.
For the first time it is boldly declared
by judicial decision, that organized cap
ital can coerce labor, and that organ
lied labor is forbidden to make effective
protest The old baronial right to
bind a laborer to the soil'' finds its
twin brother in this modern corpora
tion right to bind the laborer to his
engine.
For the blindest can see that if an
engineer can be bound to his engine,
be likewise bound to the loom, the
clerk to the counter, the herdsman to
his herd, the carpenter to his bench and
the miner to his pick
Thus does the individual right sink,
while the corporate right mounts up.
The very essence of republic is the
right of the individual. The very es-
sence of monarchy is the subjugation