The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1911-02-15


If, then, this be true-and who
can gainsay 1t, that representative
government is the only system suit
able to the temper, character and
state of our civilization?-would 1t
not be we'll for the restless citizen
who is yielding to the spirit of dis
content, to pause and inquire wheth-
err some share OF blame may not lie
at his own door, whether the trouble
may not lie in the people themselves
rather than in the system.
In republics, the private citizen,
not a king, is crowned with sover-
eighty. Are we, upon whom this
awful responsibility rests, measur-
| ing up to it's requirements, its hon
or. its dignity and its duty? If not,
if this be the damned spot" then,
mark you we'll. for the same reason,
any other system is foredoomed to
tragic failure.
1t is stark folly to imagine that a
government can reform and elevate
its people. In the nature of things,
this cannot be. We may reform our
government, because II is our crea-
ture, but the State should pay some
/ body TO keep the man who believes
! the creature can reform the creator
No crank or enthusiast, however ca
ger he may be to riot like a bull in
a china shop and stalk in where an
| gels dare not tread, can ever make a
silk purse out of a sow's ear. The
only possible reform begins within
the human heart. All others are
mere arrogance, intolerance and des-
picable shams. For centuries, l
repeat. our dauntless race have been
the pioneers of liberty, watching ex-
amples furnished by the ceaseless
struggle between the great master
wheel in the center and the little
wheels in the circumference, selling
upon whatever fostered freedom and
equality OF opportunity. That they
had rich fields to CLEAN from, his
tory amply proves.
Renan SAYS: you may search in
vain the Roman law before Con-
stantine for a single passage against
Freedom of Thought. The history
of imperial government furnishes no
instance of prosecution for enter
tanning an abstract doctrine, and
men who would have gone to the
stake in the middle ages, lived tran
GULLY under the law" Trojan, in
letter of instructions to Pliny the
Younger, whom he had appointed
governor of a province in Asia Mi
nor, charged that under no circum-
stances should the Christians be
prosecuted on anonymous informa-
ton, as it would be establishing a
precedent wholly opposed to the
spirit of the age. 1t was Roman toll
erance and magnanimity that cheer
fully set up beside their own the
strange divinities of conquered ma
| tions. It was Roman liberality that
saved, in the outset, Christianity it.
self from utter destruction at the
hand of Judaism. Five hundred
wears before our Christian era the
Romans restrained these despots
with 2 fixed constitution.
The skilled architects of our or
ganlc law knew the Jews had tried
the Judges; that Rome had tried a
Republic; that the Christians had
revised their law from the "Old" to
the New" that Greece had tried
everything. They knew We owed
/ our religion to the Semetic race, but
/ they also knew this race had sought
to make the Church the head of the
State. The Aryan race had combat
ted this tendency for centuries and,
from the lessons of this struggle, it
was determined to make separation
| organic. Five hundred years before
our Bill of Rights, the rude. rugged
old barons of England had eXtorted
from Eiug John the Charter of
English Liberty" And vet, with all
of her fruitful past to guide her. it
took n thousand years to build up
her splendid svetem.
But the spirit of liberty was not
born at Runnymede. It had only
been intensified and emboldened by
that glorious admixture of Roman.
Angel and Saxon blood. and the feu-
dial system of Europe was but
the manifestations of the lusty
growth of Individualism, which a
century before Christ, had given new
hope and courage in revealing to
the hungry heart of the lowly
that the soul of a Lazarus was just
as precious at the gates of heaven as
that of Dives; that the guardian an
gels poise and hover over cot as we'll
|