The leader., 1903-07-08

with which you have held fast to the prin-
ciples of justice and right and truth, I'm
mutable and eternal. because of the pos
session of which God has made the heart
of woman, in every age, the last repository
of the faith of every creed and the patri-
otism of every land.
Meet indeed it Is, soldiers of the Confed-
eracy, that your sons have determined to
erect, in honor of the transcendent women
of the South whose inspiring patriotism
made you, in war, the finest soldiery of
time, whose love and sympathy and forti-
tude enabled you, through wreck and ruin.
to preserve and perpetuate the liberties of
your country, and who for forty years have
annually covered the graves of your dead
with the flowers and tears of fadeless affec-
tion, monument the noblest in its proper
lions, the most exquisite in It's carvings,
the loftiest in its inscriptions, affection has
ever reared to make virtue immortal Let
1t rise in the purity of spotless white
against the dark background of our national
sorrows, high up into the serene heavens.
And through the ages to come, when garish
day has gone, and with 1t the harsh clan
gor Of eommercialism, let the vast silences
of the starry midnight steep in holy, heal
ing quiet.
And here. through all time, may those
who shall continue to place honor above
gold, principle above power, the reign of
justice, and truth, and right above the hol-
low magnifcence of pershing materialism
be permitted, in the twilight of soothed
feeling and softened remembrance to catch,
faint and far OF though 1t be, the trem-
bling refrain of the music of the Sunny
South of old.
Survivors of the $4,000 heroes Mississippi
marshaled under the meteor flag, your en-
dnrAnPp meta or Iu
servatism, your uniform fidelity to truth,
justice and honor, during the years sue
ceeding the war between the States, have
maintained inviolate Anglo-Saxon civiliza-
ton.
How glorious your present reward!
have not mentioned mere material growth,
though its triumphs crowd the scene. The
mighty Mississippi bears to the ocean the
hum of prosperous cities, where but yes.
terday were untrodden wilds; cities rich
in all forms of modern development. South
Mississippi has become an empire In ITSELF
with its vast lumber and shipping interests
The very pencilings of God are in the heart
of its curly pine, and the dream of Mr.
Davis is realized in the deep water harbor
of Gulfport, destined soon to become the
proudest commercial emporium of the en-
tire Gulf coast. North and East Missis
sippi are everywhere throbbing with thou
sand industries, instinct with the spirit
of progress. Our Agricultural and Me-
chanical College Is among the foremost of
the world, realizing its mission of filling ev-
cry avenue of Industrial life with skilled
labor, manufacturing here raw material in
to the finished product gold has heretofore
gone abroad to buy. And, better than ALL
the State holds aloft her pre-eminence as
the emancipation, legally, of woman, as the
Anst LA. 80
her equipment for LIES struggles. Here
In the Mississippi of today, Is indeed q
State over the vast range of whose indus
tries the fancy may expatiate at will, and
In the contemplation Of whose mighty pres
emit and far mightier future the heart of
her citizenship may swell with exulting
pride. And If we extend our view and in
clude the forty-four other States of this
great Union, and attempt to grasp their I'M
paralleled advance in material greatness
the Imagination sinks exhausted in the eff
| fort. No human tongue can picture the
vastness of their wealth, the myriad dis
coveries and inventions adding to material
comfort, the bewidering magnifcence of
| their advance in all the arts and sciences,
| the limitless expansion of national terri
| tory.
But, my countrymen, have the greatest
principles of virtue kept pace with this tri-
umphal march of materialism? / shall not
| on this occasion mar the harmony of uni
| Versal good feeling by filling in the dark
| background over against which blaze the
| phosphorescent splendors of mere material
| ism.
But Burke says: I'VE must soften with
a credulity below the milkiness of infancy
| to think all men virtuous; - and he Is less
| than patriot who does not realize the need
for solemn warning If the republic is to
| endure. Without stopping to particularize,
1t must be obvious to all that there have
been two totally diverse tendencies in oper-
alton in our beloved country since the civil
| war. Our brethren of the North, flushed
with triumph, have had with scarce an
interruption absolute control of the Federal
| government, and the tendency has been
the usual one with conquerors-more and
| more away from constitutional restraints,
and more and more toward centralized and
irresponsible power, the illegal accumula-
ton of vast wealth through class legisla-
tion the reckless annexation of unassmila-
BILE provinces, never to become States, until
we have come to hear it as familiar doctrine
that we have outgrown the constitution and
that congress must govern at will. 1 shall
not offend here by drawing aside the veil
from the desolations and infamies wrought
| by Imperialism, such and great that the
| public conscience stands in mute horror, ap-
palled. l shall not enumerate the long list
| of infractions of the constitution, for
speak not as a Mississippian, but an Ameri-
can. l invoke the conscience of the great
North as well as Of the powerless South,
| appeal to the patriots of the North, repre-
scented by Charles Francis Adams, Hoar,
Littlefeld and Schurz. Rapid, and more
rapid, has been the stride toward despotism
| tr
| when the patriot voices solemn protest he
is told that we are a superior order Of men,
that our government Is to endure forever
SO thought the nattering optimists of Bah
ylon and Thebes; but the hanging gardens
of one and the hundred gates Of the other
| live only in song. Such were the dreams
of every nation that has ever fouEished
and faded, and the sands of the desert en-.
tomb their buried glOries. Greece, the LAND
| of scholars and the nurse of arms" 50
dreamed. But Byron wrote:
Spirit of Freedom! When on Phyllis brow
Thou sat-st with Thrasybulus and his
l train,
Could'ts thou forbode the dismal hour which
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic
plain
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain
| But every earle can lord 1t DER the land
Nor raise thy sons but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge Of Turkish
hand,
From birth till death enslaved; In word
in deed, unnamed"
Rome, the Eternal City, SO dreamed, yei
"the time came when darkness settled OF
all her hills; when foreign and domestic
violence overthrow her affairs and temples
when ignorance and despotism filled tht
places where laws, and arts, and liberty
had fiourished, when the feet of barbarian'