The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1906-05-25
MAcAuLAy's PROPHECY.

The Talisman, printed al Chicago.
III. calls attention to Macaulay's we'll
known prophecy made in 1857.
We had not then fought our civil
war and conditions then were nothing
like they are today
These facts make the prediction all
the more remarkable.
In this prophecy Macaulay said:
THE day will come when in the
state OF New York multitude Of peo-
pie, none of whom have had more than
half a breakfast, or expect TO have
more than half a dinner. will choose
q legislature. Is il possible TO doubt
what sort OF legislature will be cho-
sen? On one side is statesman,
preaching patience, respect for vested
rights. strict observance of public
faith On the other is q demagOgue,
ranting about the tyranny of capital
lists and Insurers, and asking why any
body should be permitted to drink
champagne, and to ride in carriage
when thousands of honest folks are
\ in want of necessaries. Which of the
two candidates is likely to be prefer
red by a worEingman who hears his
children cry for more bread?
| Either some Caesar or Napoleon
will seize the reins of government
with a strong hand. or your republic
will be as fearfully plundered and laid
waste by the barbarians in the TWEEN
/ tieth century, as the Roman empire
was in the fifth; with this difference,
that the Huns and Vandals. who raw
aged the Roman empire, came from
without, and that your HUBS and Van
ldals will have been engendered within
your own country and by our own in
Istitutions."
| To prevent the realization Of this
prophecy the Ta4isman says is the ru-
raj home.
| 1t is as certain. says the Talisman,
as that the sun win rise tomorrow
that the prophecy of Macaulay viii be
fulfilled TO the letter, and probably
sooner than he anticipated, unless the
great mass of the American people are
own on the land.
Ii repeats an article that it printed
ten years ago, which article follows:
1.-THE people OF this nation are al
the forks of the road, and we must
now choose the way by which we will
go. On the one hand, we may take a
course which will, as time goes by
continue to pile up in our cities and
/ towns, a population Of countless mil
lions of mere wage earners--tlay la
borers, mechanics, factory operatives
working each day for their daily wage
and barely subsisting upon it, having
no roots in the soil to nourish and
sustain their patriotism, no roof-tree
or home to serve as an anchorage OF
their allegiance to the laws which pro-
tect them in the enjoyment of life
liberty and property.
] con the other hand We may choose
a course which would, if ii were in
augurated and carried out as a great
national movement, spread our people
out over the land in rural homes Oh
small farms, yielding products so di-
versified that every family would bC
lself-sustaining. producing as the re.
suit OF their own labor all that they
require to sustain life in comfort. in
dependent OF all exterior conditions
Icreating thus nation OF rural home;
and OF rural people, who could 1--we
in the midst Of plenty throughout any
period Of financial or business depres'
sion, no matter how severe or pro
Ilonged il might be.
"Such rural population, once es.
tablished and rooted TO the soil, woul(
iendure as long as the earth would con
tinue 10 give forth 10 them it's fruits
as the reward of their labor and woult
stand as a wall of granite against an!
assaults which might ever be mad,
upon our free institutions by the ele
ments OF communism and anarchy
which. like foul weeds, are SO fas
lspringing up in the social and politica
miasma of our great cities"