The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1897-05-22
Some Rambling Thoughts.


10 VOTERS AND THOSE WHO LOVE
TnEM:-Just when there Is compare
tive political quiet, let us have little
talk together about traitors. That
sad failure, Major General Benedict
Arnold, with his passionate tempera-
ment, his extrayagant habits, his
fashionable wife, his delayed rank,
and finally his foolish attempt 20 hui
initiate his hated compeers, is known
to every child as the traitor --Inhap-
BY man, his name is buried beneath
mountains Of the most awful ebloquy,
and his career is made to give point
to many speech; as IL man were
able to prove his own patriotism by
pointing out some one else's lack of
it. Now patriotism is not negative
thing like that; it is Pharisaism which
prompts man TO cry out to witness
ing world and a recording heaven, ~
thank God that | am not as this poor
traitor. Before high heaven / swear
that / would never betray my coun-
try" There is the everlasting rebuke
to meet, that the first TO east stone
should be a sinless one.
Bear In mind that in Arnold's time
the principles of democracy were be-
ing tested, but also bear in mind that
they have also been tested in no less
degree at any moment since. Great
dangers are not always noisy and bat
tel like; they may be silent ( the
work of king-fishers, craw-hsh and
musk-rats along the leyees OF the Mis-
sissippi, and the more dangerous be-
cause of their silence. 1t seems clear
to me that nation that lives and
grows is never out OF the experimental
stage; it never can, until it dies, take
a definite, unchanging place in his
tory, and be spoken of as having sure
and certain glory or shame. A nation
sunk deep down in nnprogressivew ways,
| like Denmark quarter of century
ago, may pick up and show enterprise,
and nation like France lifted to the
very heavens by its privileges, may be
so untrue, In its individual life, TO the
things that are good and pure and
loyal to nature, that its future be-
comes dubious one.
~
Thus we Americans must never lose
sight of the fact that our vast area is
merely a great stage, on which an ex-
pertinent in government by the people
is being tried on the grandest scale in
the history of the world. So because
the outcome has just the element of
uncertainty about it that all other
experiments have, it is ours to work
and watch and wait to remove every
possible hindrance to progressive
proof that government of the people
by the people and for the people,, is
such a success that it need never
'sperish off the earth" as thing that
has been tested and thrown aside.
IN
But as in field the contest is with
weeds, so in our government the bat
tie is with traitors, and they exist,
not merely in the pages of school
history to be held up and exeerated as
things that have been-I say they ex-
list, not there and then only, but here
and now, as perennial as weeds, as
stubborn as disease, as dangerous as
powder. They do not prowl around
with guns and cannon, they sign and
seal no unholy agreements, they can
not be found lurking near explosives
with torches. eWhere are they then?
Let US away with them," say you. But
go gently, lest perhaps your mothers
son be found among them.
~
| Traitors are those who occupy posi-
tions OF trust and forget that they are
public servants; traitors are the voters
who condemn house servants for in
efficiency and discharge them, yet
cringe and crawl before public officials
as though they were of superior flesh,
forgetting the while that every such
official would be as naught save for
the people who placed him there; trait
ors are legislators who promise to obey
the will Of the people, and straight
way do the opposite, bringing shame
and public doubt upon the very home
of good laws, without which no ma
tion can live; traitors are the selfish
men who buy the bodies and souls OF
lawmakers and have their will with
them for price; traitors are they who,
forgetting the blood shed for their
welfare and their privileges, hold up
their votes to be bartered over and
purchased, so that great questions
asking for unbiased judgment are
looked upon through the alluring glass
of monetary gain; traitors are those
who, living under free and thrilling
i government whose strength Is its reli
lance on the hearty cooperation of the
people, take no more share in its ac-
tive support than a Bushman or a
Hottentot or a Russian serf. Every
indolent voter. unappreciative of a
condition of life and liberty and in
dividual influence that down-trodden
nations gaze at with longing eyes:
| every unjust judge bringing his high
and essential Office down to the dust
of personal considerations; every one
who never looks at question except
from point of gain or loss to himself
all these, / say, are making US trem-
BILE at the cup of wrath, which by the
immutable laws of outraged opportu-
nifty, gradually fills up to be held to
the lips of a nation found worshipring
an ideal of sloth or wealth or con-
scienceless selfshness.
~
Search them out and see how near
your own door step you will come!
Then ply yourself with the question
as to how to better conditions-not in
a distant state, but-right where you
live. 1t can be done in part and by
| very simple means, If you will but I'M
dertake it, Fasten on your own mind
beyond all chance of escape, the lack
of appreciation that is shown when a
man tacitly accepts, like hungry an
,, imal, all the blessings OF a quiet coun-
try, free from wars alarms, all the pro-
lection in his rights, and then feels
no call to make even the slightest re-
turn unless it be Of still further per-
! sonal gain to him. Then remember
r as clinching fact in the self-lectur-
J ing you have been enduring, that a
man ic rpsponSih Ia ao far 40 his infiI-