The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-03-08

ITiued themselves upon Delng, as the,
have believed, the superior people OF
the globe-the non-sueh of the nations
the pearl of great price" among tn
jewels of all countries. The student O
English history-of the best works
Stubs, Freeman, Green, Macaulay-
prior to the nineteenth century. know
how slow has been the growth of goo,
government, Of justice and right AM
morality. constitutional government ha
been Of comparatively recent date. an,
the sense of fair dealing with the masses
has come after many centuries of grin
struggles and blood she'd. Mr. Glad
stone has been conspicuous in his earn
estness in behalf of the people, and
hence his offense to the Queen and un-
popularity with the chief nobility-tht
Tories. / wish to call attention to one
phase of political life in England-thc
corruptions and abuses and violence in
elections in the past In later years they
have not been conducted with the cor
ruptions and foulness of the past No
one can imagine to what extent these
vile instruments were used in campaigns,
unless he has read the contemporary evil
denee, as given by capable writers who
but one writer now, as am not attempt
ing an essay, but to briefly refer to the
= bad methods and disgraceful ways of the
English people in other times. Daniel
Defoe. writing of Queen Annes time,
when Marlborough and Godolphin and
Bolingbroke and Swift and others -four
ished-a time of intense partisanship and
low standard of political honesty and
personal morality, said this of the cleo
tions that were so disgracefully riotous
and disorderly: cit is not Free Par
lament that you have chosen You have
met, mobbed robbed, and thrown dirt at
one another, but election by mob is no
more free election than divers election
by a standing army. Parliament and
rabbles are contrary things" Again he
writes that money and ale 'can do any
thing" and said. that by their free use
the nation could be debauched "into a
choice of thieves, knaves, DEVILS etc.
by the power of vinous intoxcations. -
In another place he writes of the scandal
GUS methods, and says that parties
stopped to infinite liberties, forgeries,
perjuries, and all manner Of debauchings"
of electors to supplant one another, and
says that the methods were ''horrid and
villainous. If one were writing a poll
teal paper he might we'll point to the
rule at the polls of Candy bayonets in
the Carolinas under Republican misrule
and Tyranny, to the DISTINGUISHING of
tens of thousands of the best citizens. TO
the direful and destructive reign of the
Negro in the South in Reconstruction
times-the calendar of death and devil
IN nil
bauching practices of Mark Hanna in his
two campaigns of corruption and buying
white voters in the North with the money
of few hundred millionaires. This
country may not be so polluted and de-
based now as England has BEEN but it
has passed under the rule and abuses of
the Money Kings, and the trust tyrants
and the tariff oppressors and robbers.
History teaches by example, and repeats
itself. VIII the time ever come in this
country. in any State or in the Nation. or
Empire, that is to be- when ability, in
tegrity. patriotism, sense of right. NOR
atty and usefulness shall control in
selecting public officials for all places
from lowest to highest? 1t would be a
political miracle-a Millennium indeed
Edmund Sponsor, who died in London.
where he was born, in extreme poverty
Ben Johnson says, che died for lack of
bread''-on January 16 1898, aged as
years. was very great genius indeed
one of the greatest in all modern litera-
lures. He had a fertility and splendor
of imagination that has never been
equaled by any poet who employed
English as his vehicle of expression,
save only Shakespeare, and perhaps Mil
ton. The critical readers of his large
body of production arc we'll acquainted
with his many defects-owing much to
his times, for he wrote two hundred years
after Chaucer, and was the first great
writer to succeed him-his faults of de-
sign and faults of execution and want
of reality: his indistinctness, his def
cheney in character painting, his incoher-
ency. his ghost-like pictures. his abuse of
language and peculiar spelling, and so
on But they know his immense rich
ness. his marvellous beauties, his magni-
ficenee his grandeur often, his abound
ing felicities. his touches of humor, his
Quaintness. his pathos, his high stand
ards his vigor, and other generous and
sterling qualities as poet He was
contemporary with Shakespeare in part
but wrote much of his great work before
the greatest of poets reached his culmin-
alton in genius, and his unrivalled crea-
tons Shakespeare admired Spenser and
praised him. 1t is said by that admirable
English writer. Rev. X. w. Church
that our greatest poets since his day
have loved him and delighted in him.
He cites that Cowley twas made poet
by reading him"-that Dryden, himself a
great poet, calls Milton 1.-THE poetical son
of Spenser," and says that Milton &C
knowledged to him "that Spenser was
dis original"-that "Dryden's own
homage to him is frequent and
genesoCs"; that Alexander Pope
always loved him, and that Words
worth found Spenser "full of nobleness.
tenderness and sweetness" In fact. you
VIII travel far and read much to find his
superior in stateliness. beauty richness,
melody Of numbers. exquisite grace.
splendor of imagination. and high aims
and ideals. Mr.. Church dwells upon "the
intrinsic nobleness OF his general aim.
his conception of human life. at once so
eXacting and so indulgent his high