The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1900-07-06

speculative problems of life, men
thought rs we think, doubted where
we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired
and struggled after the same objects.
1t was an age of material progress and
material civilization; an age Of civil
liberty ard intellectual culture; an
age of pamphlets and epigrams, of sa-
Ions and of dinner parties. of senator
ial majoritics and electoral corruption.
The highest offices of state were open
in theory to the meanest citizen; they
were confined, in fact, to those who
had the longest purses, or the most
ready use of the tongue on popular
platforms Distinctions of birth had
been exchanged for distinctions Of
wealth. The struggles between pie
beians and partricians for equality of
privilege were over, and new division
had been formed between the party of
property and a party who desired a
change in the structure of society. The
free cultivators were disappearing from
the soil. Italy was being absorbed in
to vast estates, held by a few favored
families and cultivated 10y slaves, while
the old agricultural population was
driven Oft the land, and was crowded
into towns. The rich were eXtravagant,
for life had ceased to have practical
interest, except for its material pleas
ures; the occupation of the higher
classes was to obtain money without
labor, and to spend it in idle enjoy
mcnt. Patriotism survived on the lips,
but patriotism meant the ascendancy
of the party which would maintain the
existing order of things, or would over
throw it for more equal distribution
of the good things which alone We're
valued. Religion, once the foundation
of the laws and rule of personal con-
duct, had subsidized into opinion. The
educated, in their hearts, disbclieved it.
Temples were still built with increas-
ing splendor; the established forms
were scrupuously observed. Public
men spoke conventionally of Provi
dence, that they might throw on their
opponents the odium of impiety; but
of genuine belief that life had any Sc
rious meaning, there was none remain
ing beyond the circle of the silent, pa
tient, ignorant multitude. The whole
spiritual atmosphere was saturated
with cant moral cant political, cant re-
ligious; an affectation of high princi-
pie which had ceased to touch the con-
duct, and flowed on in an increasing
volume of insincere and unreal speech.
The truest thinkers were those who,
like Lucretius, spoke frankly out their
real convictions, declared that Provi-
dencc was dream, and that man and
the world he lived in were material
phenomena generated by natural forces
out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to
be again resolved.
Tendencies now in operation may
few generations hence land modern So
ciety in similar conclusions, unless
other convictions revive meanwhile
and get the mastery of them; of which
possibility no more need be said than
this, that unless there be such re,
vival in some shape or other, the
forces, whatever they be, which con-
troll the forms in which human things
adjust themselves, will make an end
again, as they made an end before, of
what are called free institutions. Pop
ular forms of government are possible
only when individual men can govern
their own lives on moral principles,
and when duty is of more Importance
than pleasure, and justice than mate
rial expediency. Rome at any rate
had grown ripe for judgement. The
shape which the judgment assumed
was due perhaps. in measure. to
condition which has no longer pa:al
lei among US. The men and women by
l,o ho, {
done were chiefly slaves, and those
who constitute the driving force of
revolutions in moder Europe, lay then
outside society, unable and perhaps
uncaring to affect its fate. No change
then possible would much influence
the prospects of unhappy bondsmen.
The triumph of the party of the con-
stitution would bring no liberty to
them. That their masters should fall
like themselves under the authority
of a higher master could not much
distress them. Their sympathies, if
they had any, would go with those
nearest their own rank, the emanci-
pated slaves and the sons of those who
were emancipatcd; and they and the
poor free citizens everywhere, were to
a man on the side which was consid-
cred and was called the side of ''lhe
people," AMI was, in !act, the side of
despotism.
Teacher-"Wh was the first man,
Tommy
Tommy-"George Washington. He
was first in war, first in peace, and