Mohave County miner., 1901-05-25
An Article Worth Reading.

world has bee done by the Good feo' I
pleY IL is the historic fact.
Not the little, ephemeral, personalities
like sneakthieving, murder and the
benevolent assimilation of neighbor's
wife. Acts harm the action. These
poor fools harm society no more than a
mailman kills it when he cuts his own
throat. The criminal is absolutely |
powerless as factor in evolution. We
know him, if only late; and he KIN ows
himself. Whether we ever catch him
and hang, counts little. His punish !
ment and futility are in him and on
him, anyway.
But all the great, long, deep, generic
wrong: all the ignorance and bigotry
and oppression in human history-all
these have been committed by the
Good People.
Who blocked the new message of the
Nazarene? The rabble? No, the ortho.
dox. Whom does Christ curse-the
brute Roman soldiery? Nay, the Good
People. Rabbles do not adjudicate
systems of religion-such things are
approved or rejected by the religious.
Who stood in the path of Luther's
reformation-the slums! No, the
church. Who silenced Galileo-the
ounces? No, the scientists. Who
made the Spanish inquisition byword
for cruelty-the bad people! oh no!
The most pious, orthodox, God.fearing
people in Spain. Who hanged witches
and flogged Quakers in New England
the riffraff? Not at all; the most virtu-
Gus OF our Puritan torefathers. The
unregenerate do not care enough what
another man believes TO roast or rack
him into orthodoxy; TO be so cruel
needs men who would die for the faith
themselves. Even in our modern YER
sion OF the inquisition-church heresy
trials--it is not the backsliders who
play inquisitor.
Who kept negro slavery alive in this
country? Not the Legrees (who were
few but the minister of the Gospel
who preached aud prayed for the
divine institution" Of slavery, and
proved by the Bible the righteousness
Of slaveholding, and the orthodox con
gregations which kept that kind of
ministers to do their conscience. Who
maintained the war of the rebellion
four years and morey The camp fol-
lowers aud "hard cases?' Never!
| Scoundrels aud scrubs are as small a
drop in the bucket below Mason and
| DiXon's line as above it aud it is an
abolition Yankee who admits this.
That war lived because the sober,
bome-loving, law-abiding, God fearing
people Of the south believed in it.
They fought a. scrubs never will fight
and they made the scrubs fight, who
would have run away as soon as the
brute excitement wore off Only, all
these Good People we're mistaken.
1t is needless to continue the par
allel All history runs the same way.
1t means something. And the first
thing it means is that men can't whole.
sale their duty. 1t is retail business.
1t means that majority of the people
of the country "means WE'LL" that they
generally start wrong and wind up
about right. And their itinery is SO
inyaribly of one method that the stu,
dent Of history knows what to expect
When you see solid multitude OF
Good People; and here and ther,
among them a Good Man arising, witt
brains in the upper end of him, and
disagreeing with the crowd at biz
proper cost; and the word spreads, anC
, persecution spreads with it-why, ther
! you may reasonably figure that in |
. year or five years or a generation th,
crowd will agree with the man Wit
b wouldn't agree with the crowd.
works that way-whether it be one gold
enrule car penter against Mosaic Pal
estine; or one protesting monk agains
: Catholic Europe; or one Puritai
y against United States half slave
holding and half consenting to slavery
II doesn't mean that every man VIII
= protests il right, any more than tina
u every crowd is right by conforming
But when men with heads and heart
= begin to break out for conscience sake
when they brave their own party; thei
: own social peers-why, then the crow
that thinks by platoons might as wei
u make up its mind to right about fac,