The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1900-12-28


any hereditary aristocracy in the
world. /" The Bill OF Rights, passed
in the seventeenth century, was a
foretaste and prophecy of the great
social and industrial reforms which
have come to pass in England during
the nineteenth. The setting free of
four million slaves in our own coun-
try. and the abolition of serfdom in
Russia were great eras in the onward
progress of mankind.
The progress of public education
has gone on apace, not only in our
own land but throughout the nations
of Europe and in some degree through
out the world. Our public school sys-
tenn, though justly chargeable with
some serious defects. has been to some
extent copied in England and wherever
our flag floats in this land and in our
new possessions among the West In
dies and the Philippine Islands, there
the children are being given without
cost the elements of an English educa-
tion.
Literary and intellectual Prog ess
may we'll be regarded as one of the
striking features of the Nineteeth
Century. During the first lalf of this
century there fourished in Great
Britain brilliant galaxy of writers,
both in prose and verse and their
names have given lustre to the
early part Of the Victorian era such
as cannot be paralleled in history till
we go back to the days of the Emper-
or Augustus. The works of Tennyson
and Browning, among the great poets
of all time as we'll as the brilliant prose
writers who contributed to the pages
of the Edinburgh Review reached a
standard of intellectual vigor and
literary finish, which will probably
never be surpassed by those who
speak the English tongue. Our own
country, likewise, furnished at about
the same period a brilliant assem-
blage of literary men. Holmes, Lo-
we'll, Washington Irving and George
Bancroft with the aid of many others,
laid the foundation of American prose
literature; ana Bryant, Longfellow
AMI Whittier whose verses compelled
attention throughout the English
speaking world, all belong to this
same period. Science, too, has had
it's teachers. Charles Darwin, Tyn-
dial, and Huxley have done much to
revolutionize modern thought, and al
though their conclusions have no
doubt been pushed in many instances
much too far, it is safe to say that
they have opened the eyes of the
world to great principle, a prin-
ciple which has been accepted by re-
weren't and devout teachers, who are
now looking upon evolution, not as
the result of blind forces, but as a
mode Of the creative energy and as
finding it's ultimate solution in the
will of that Infinite Power who is be-
hind the forces of Nature and who
controls and governs them all.
Coming now to the question of
Political Progress
we find that the map of the world
has been made over during the CEN
tury that has passed. 1t was in its
early years when the wars of Napoleon
were revolutionizing Europe. In 1915
came the Battle of Waterloo and the
defeat of what may be termed the first
great effort toward modern Imperial
ism. After this ensued about forty
years of general peace, broken by
lesser wars with remote and outlying
nations. And then, when England
was celebrating its first great triumph
of industrial progress, the great ex-
position of 1851, when men were re-
joicing in the thought that the age
of peace was being ushered in, the
civilized world entered upon the lat
ter half of this century, which was
destined to be olouded by some of the
iercest and bloodiest wars CT which
history can tell. And yet, through |
it all, we cannot but note some signs
Of onward PROCESS along lines which |
ought TO strengthen our faith in eter-
nal goodness and revive our hope for
the ultimate betterment of the world
Some of these wars have unquestion-
ably been selfish in their origin and
cruel in their conduct, notably the
Jrimean War and the Opium War
with China but others, especially our
own Civil War and our War with Spain
or the freedom of Cuba, have been
vaged with a motive in large de-
gree humanitarian and noble.
Two tendencies may be noted with
'egard to the political movements of
his century and especially i'll its later
years. The one is determined pur-
,ose OH the part of the Teutonic ma
ions to establish a world wide in
luence. With regard to Great Britain
md Germany, this takes the form of
Imperialism, though in the
ase of Great Britain, commercial ex-
,ansion and the good of the world are
loosely allied features. 1t is too soon
o predict the future of our own coun-
ny in this regard, but the great coun-
erpoise to the danger of Imperialism,
$ the increasing tendency among all
English sneaking peoples to submit