The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1907-06-05

The following pleuuld duuiooS
bv Bishop Galloway, delivered
before the recent meeting OF
the Mississippi Press Assocla-
ton at Jackson, Miss, is we'll
worth a careful perusal. HIS
subject, The Ethics of Politics"
is presented forcibly and enter
tainingly and is an earnest plea
for the highest standards in our
political life. The address was
the feature of the Press Conven-
ton:
The announcement of this subject
necessitates the discussion OF prlncl-
pies fundamental to government n
vital to their wise administration.
Nv will he to show that, far
more important than governmental
theories or party policies or campaign
issues. is the moral quality of the
measures we advocate and the moral
character of the men we elevate.
There is a right and wrong in politics.
speak to YOU, editors OF Mississippi
because largely in your hands is the
political and moral welI-being OF our
people.
Thomas CARLYLE. who has been
called ''the seer of the century,
man. at once of broad vision and deep
philosophical insight-with hat fine
scorn for sham of which he was a
master, has made this profound OBJ
servation upon the shallow and un-
ethical politics of the times in which
he lived: ''LOve of country, in any
high or generous sense, in any other
than in an almost animal sense, or
mere habit. has little importance at
tached to it: men are to be guided
only by their self-interests. Good
government is a good balancing OF
these. and, except a keen eye and APP
petite for interest, requires no virtue
in any quarter. To both parties it is
alphabetically a machine: to the dis
contented, a taxing machine: to the
conted. a machine for securing prop
erty. Nowhere is the deep, almost
exclusive faith we have in mechanism
more visible than in the politics OF
this time"
But. as has been we'll observed, in
mechanism there is 10 room for eth
les. We cannot predicate right or
wrong of a machine. There can be
no such thing as civic righteousness
of men being dominated by the sane.
tons of moral purpose and inspired
by the vision of high ethical aims.
Napoleon, on one occasion, defantly
said: with the armies of France a,
my back, 1 shall be always in the
right" He only acknowledged the
supreme and final authority of mate
rial force, with never a thought O
public virtue or national crime. Tha
atheistic doctrine made Europe run
red With blood and wrote some of thu
most tragic chapters in the history o
political governments. In u Amer
lean Commonwealth we repudiate ant
condemn it.
Our politics must have a substan
tial and immovable ethical and re
ligious basis. Love of country is in
tensified and purified by the love o
the Lord we worship and the religion
we embrace. The ethics of the Mar
OF Galilee ought to be u standard
of political as we'll as personal char
acter.
We should abolish and forever ban
ish the false distinction between the
SACRED AND THE SECULAR.
The functions of citizenship are a
sacred as the songs of Zion. Tn
ballot is as holy as the book of com
mon prayer. The same law dut.
controls in the service of country a.
in the conventicles OF the sanctuary
in the halls of State and at the chance
of the house of God. What a mag
niflcent illustration of a Christian
conscience in the field of politics tn
world had in the late William E
Gladstone, the unrivaled Englisl
statesman of the nineteenth century
So imperative were the sanctions of
high morality in his life that it wa
said of him: "He moralizes financ
and commerce and institutionalize
ethics and faith" He espoused n,