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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (July 3, 1903)
tayiniMi.ii.m'iiii'iiiwiii i t The ' Commoner. 2 n .- fL 1 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, w w w ADDRESS OF GKOKGE BANCROFT, niSTORIAX AND STATESMAN BOHN IN WOBOKBTKH, MASS., OCT. 3, 1800 ; DIKU Mf WASHINGTON,!). C, JAN. X7, 1801 &fc .M At- w -w w 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" Hi
