tayiniMi.ii.m'iiii'iiiwiii
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The ' Commoner.
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of jjithor facts that havo developed day. by day, is
it ndt strange that any democrat who does not de
sire that hls-party shall become the mere tool of
powerful and selfish Intorests should be persuaded
to aid lit tho effort to restore Buch men to con
trol in the party?
JJJ
The Financial Scheme.
A Mexican reader of The Commoner asks
whether tho United States is on a gold standard.
Our monetary system can hardly bo called a
completo gold standard, because while silver is
not 'admitted to coinage on equal terms with
gold (as it would be under bimetallism) still, wo
havo some $600,000,000 of sllvor which is a full
legal tender except where contracted against, and
so long as this silver is standard money and
helps to support tho credit money of the country
tho rigors of the gold standard,, are less felt
England has the gold standard complete. Gold is
the only full legal tender, silver being subsidiary
coin. There is no doubt that the advocates oJC
tho gold standard contemplate, first, the making
of the silver dollar redeemable in gold; second,
the withdrawal of full legal tender privileges from
silver, and, third, tho retirement of standard sil
ver, but so far they have not dared to carry their
theories to their legitimate conclusion. "When
tho gold standard is fully rounded out gold will
be the only legal tender and bank notes the only
paper.' Then the financiers of the world will con
trol our paper money. And the people? Well,
.. VOLUME 3, NUMBER 24,
they will have nothing to do except work an
make money for the financiers.
JJJ
Democratic Clubs Organized.
Capital City Democratic club, Jefferson, Mo
150 members; Robert W. Morrow, president j'
Frank Morris, secretary. ' "
Jefferson-Jackson-Bryan club, Gothenburg
Neb.; ten members; William Sail f, president j
N. France, secretary., '
Jackson Democratic club of Chicago, 23d pre
cinct, 32nd ward; thifty-two members; Fells
Schleizer, Jr., secretary.
The Jeffersonian cljib, Center Point, la.; thirty-one
members; F. B. Outing, president; Georgo
H. Frey, secretary.
The People in Art, Government and Religion
SIV , 4t,
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ADDRESS OF GKOKGE BANCROFT, niSTORIAX AND STATESMAN
BOHN IN WOBOKBTKH, MASS., OCT. 3, 1800 ; DIKU Mf WASHINGTON,!). C, JAN. X7, 1801
&fc .M At-
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Delivered Before the Adelpei Society, of "WTiiiiiAMSCoiiiiEGEiN August, 1835
Gentlemen of tho Adelphi Society: The ma
terial world does not change in its masses or in
Its powers. Tho stars shine with no more lustre
than when they first sang together in the glory
of their birth; The flowers that gemmed the fields
and the forests before America was discovered,
now bloom around us in their season. Tho sun
that shone on Homer shines on us in unchanging
lustre; the bow that beamed on the patriarch stiil
glitters in the clouds. Nature is the same. For
her no new forces are generated; no new capaci
ties are discovered. The earth turns on its axis,
and perfects its revolutions, and renews its sea
sons without increase or advancement.
But a like passive destiny does not attach to
tho inhabitants of the earth. For them expecta
tions of social improvement aro no delusion; tho
hopes of philanthropy are more than a. dream.
Tho five, senses do not constitute the whole in
ventory of our source of knowledge. They are the
organs by which thought connects itself with tho
eternal universe; but the power of thought is not
merged in the exercise of its instruments. We
havo functions which connect us with heaven, as
well as organs which set us in relation with
earth. Wo have not merely the senses to open
to us the external world, but an internal sense,
which places us in connection with the world of
Intelligence and the decrees of God. There is
a- spirit in man not In tho privileged few, not in
those of us only who, by the favor of Providence,
have been nursed in public schools, it is in man:
it Is the attribute of the race. Tho spirit, which
is the guide to truth, is the gracious gift to each
member of the human family.
Reason exists within every breast, I mean
not that faculty which deduces inferences from
the experience of the senses, but that higher
faculty which, from the infinite treasures of its
own consciousness, originates truth and assents
to it by the force of intuitive evidence; that fac
ulty which raises-us beyond tho control of time
and space and gives us faith in things eternal and
invisible. There is not the difference between one
mind and another which tho pride of philosophers
might conceive. To them no faculty is conceded
which does not belong to tho meanest of their
countrymen. In them there cannot spring up a
truth which does not equally have its germ in
every mind. They havo not the power of crea
tion; they can but reveal what God has implanted
in every breast. The intellectual functions by
which relations are perceived are the common en
dowments of tho race. The differences tire ap
parent, not real. Tho eye in ono person may bo
dull, in another chicle; in ono distorted and in an
other tranquil and clear; yet the relation of the
eye to light is in all men tho same. Just so, judg
ment may be liable In Individual minds to bias
and passion, and yet Its relation to truth is Im
mutable and universal.
In questions of practical duty conscience la
God's umpire whoso light illumines every heart;
there is nothing In books which had not first, and
has not still Its life within us. Rellgon itself is
a' dead letter wherever its truths are not renewed
in tho soul. Tho individual conscience may be
4 corrupted by interest or debauched by pride, yet
the rule of morality is distinctly marked; its
harmonies are to the mind like music to tho
ear; and the moral judgment when carefully
analyzed and referred to its principles is always
founded in right. The eastern superstition which
bids its victims prostrate themselves before tho
advancing car of their idols springs from a no
blo root, and is but a meianchdly perversion of
that self-devotion which enables tho Christian to.
bear the cross and subject his personal
passions to the will of God. Immorality
of itself never won to its support the inward,
voice; conscience if questioned .never forgets, to .
curse the guilty with the memory of sin; to
cheer the upright with the moc. tranquility of ap
proval. And, this admirable power which is tho
instinct of Deity is the attribute of every man; it
knocks at tho palace gate, it dwells in the mean
est hovel. Duty, like death, enters every abode
and delivers its message. Conscience like, reason
and judgment, is universal.
That, the moral affections are planted every
where needs only to be asserted to be received.
The savage mother loves her offspring with all the
fondness that a mother can know. Beneath the
odorous shade of the boundless forests of Chili
tho native youth repeats the story of love as sin
cerely as it was ever chanted in tho valley of
Vaucluse. The affections of family are not the
growth of civilization. The charities of life aro
-scattered everywnere; enameling the valeV'of hu
man being as the flowers upon the meadows. They
are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of re
finement, but a natural 'Instinct.
Our age has been a revolution in works of
imagination. The poet has sought his theme Jn
common life. Never is tho genius of Scott mora
pathetic than when as in the "Antiquary" he de
lineates the sorrows of a poor fisherman, or as in
the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" hi takes his heroine
from a cottage. And even Wordsworth, the pur
est and most original poet of the day in spite of
the inveterate character of his political predilec
tions, has thrown the light tf genius on the walks
of commonest life; he finds a lesson in every
. grave of the village churchyard; he discloses the
boundless treasures of feeling in the peasant. The
laborer and the artisan, the strolhng peddler, be
comes through his genius a teacher of the sublim
est morality; and the solitary wagoner, the lonely
shepherd, even the feeble mother of an idiot boy,
furnishes lessons in the reverence for humanity.
If from things relating to truth, justice, and
affection, we turn to those relating to the beau
tiful, we may here still further -.ssert that tho
sentiment for the beautiful resides in every breast.
The lovely forms of the external world delight us'
from their adaptation to our powers.
"Yea, what were mighty Nature's self,
Her features, could they win us,
Unhelped Ly the poetic voico
That hourly speaks within us?"
The Indian mother on the borders of Hudson
Bay decorates her manufactures with ingenious
devices and lovely colors prompted by the' same
instinct which guided the pencil and mixed the
colors of Raphael. The inhabitants of Nqotka
Sound tattooes Lis body with the method of har
monious Arabesques. Every form to which the
hands of the artist havo ever given birth, sprung
first into betas ns a conception of his mind from
a natural faculty which bc?ongs not to the artist
oxcliigively, but to man. Beauty like truth and
justice lives within us; like virtue and like moral
law it is a companion of the soul. The power
which leads to the production of beautiful forms
or perception of them in the works which God
has made is an attribute of humanity.
But I am asked if I despise learning. Shall
one who has been much of his life in schools and
universities plead the equality of uneducated na
ture? Is there no difference between the man of
refinement and the uneducated savage?
"I am a man," said Black Hawk nobly to
the chief of the first republic of the world; "I am
a man," said the barbarous chieftain, "and you
are another."
I speak for the universal diffusion of human
powers, not of human attainments; for the eapaci
ity for progress, not for the perfection of un
disciplined instincts.' The fellowship which wo
should cherish with the race receives the Co
manche warrior and the Caffre within the pale of
equality. Their functions may not have been ex
ercised, but they exist. Immure a person in a
dungeon; as he comes to the light of day, his
vision seems Incapable of performing its office.
Does that destroy your conviction in the relation
between the eye and light? The rioter over his
cups resolves to eat and drink and be merry; he
forgets his spiritual nature in his obedience to
the sens&s; but does that destroy the relation be
tween conscience and eternity? "What ransom
shall we give," exclaimed the senators of Rome to
the savage Attilt. "Give," said the barbarian,
"all your gold end jewels, your costly furniture
and treasures and set free every slave." "Ah,"
replied the degenerate Romans, "what then will
be left to us?" "I leave you rour souls," replied
the unlettered invader from the steppes of Asia,
who had learned in tho wildernern to value tho
immortal mind and to despise the servile herd
that esteemed only their fortunes, and had no
true respect for themselves. You cannot dis
cover a tribe of men but you also find the chari
ties of life, and the proofs of spiritual existence.
Behold the iwnorant Algonquin deposit a bow and
quiver by the side of the departed warrior, and
recognize his faith in immortality. See the Co
manche chieftain, in the heart of our continent,
inflict on himself the severest penance; and rev
erence his confession of the lieeded atonement for
sin. The barbarian who roams o'er the western
prairies has liko passions id like endowments
with ourselves. He bears with hinfthe instinct of
Deity; the consciousness of a spiritual nature;,
the love of beauty; the rule of morality.
And shall we reyerence the darkrskinned Caf
fre? Shall we respect the brutal Hottentot? You
may read tho Tight answer written a every heart.
I bids me not despise tho sable hunter that gath
ers a livelihood in the forests of southern Africa.
All are men. When we know the Hottentot bet
ter we shall despise him less.
If it be true that the gifts or the mind and
heart are universally diffused, if tLj sentiment of
truth, justice, love, and beauty exists in every
one, then it follows as a necessary consequence
that the commonest judgment in taste, politics,
and religion is the highest authority on earth,
and the nearest possible ipr roach to an infallible
decision. From tho consideration of individual
powers I turn to the action of tho human mind ta
masses,
If reaspn is a universal faculty, universal de
cision is tho" nearest criterion of truth. The com"
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