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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 1901)
i * wry ; TW7 i' " t > be Conservative * 5 Mont esqu i eu HUMANGOVERNsays : "Chance , MENT. or fortune , does not govern the world. The truth of this position might be referred to the Romans , who enjoyed a continued course of prosper ity while their government was con ducted on a certain plan , and an un interrupted series of reverses when they adopted a different one. There always exist certain general causes , either moral or physical , which act upon the affairs , of every government , , raise.itto grandeur , sup port it in prosperity , or precipitate it to its decadence or dissolution. ' ' Per haps this is a good time for Ameri cans , in view of the proposed policy of expansion , to read history and par ticularly to investigate the rise and fall of all the republics which have perished from the earth. Before we undertake to adjust our civilization and Christianity to the barbarians ; and heathens of all or even a part of the Philippine islands , perhaps we had better more perfectly adapt , it to all the people of the United States , including Indians , ne groes and Chinamen. When wo shall have more nearly approximated jus tice at home we may be better pre pared to secure it to those in foreign countries. In reading the A QUEER great novelists of SURVIVAL , the last .century , one is struck by the vast distance . that separated the classes of society ; the gentleman on the one hand ; on the other the non- gentleman , the roturier , the lout , the ' ' lowed man , ' ' as Chaucer called him , the plain homo vulgaris. The gentle man would as a matter of course order the lout about , beat him , chuck his wife under the chin , or do as he pleased with anything that was his ; and the institution runs straight back to the times of conquest , when he might hang him at will into the bar gain. Now it has recently come to light that the same two classes exist in the s = HJ-relative position in this coun- v try ; but a swift guesser could work at it from sunrise till sunset , and never guess who they are ; and we fear most of our readers may think il a joke ; when they learn that it is the officers of our army who are the gentlemen , and all the rest of us the louts. Any of our soldier-boys cai tell plenty of stories in point ; a very apt one is of some privates , who , having to undergo a court martial , re quested that two fellow-privates , who were lawyers of particularly higl standing at home , might act as theii counsel. And this was refused , on the/ground that the officers compos ing the court martial , being gentle men , could not meet those lawyer-pri vates , who were not gentlemen , on any such common footing. We will evidently have to take this into account in bringing up our sons lencoforth. If we have a son whom we wish to see a gentleman , wo will have to got him , by hook or by crook , a pair of shoulder straps to wear ; his [ ess fortunate brother , though he should become a college-professor , a railroad-president or a judge of the supreme court , is not and can not be a gentleman. Just as the rising WORDS IN tide of business in a HARD LUCK , growing town drives the residences be fore it , so that the fashionable houses of a few years ago are left forlorn amid the noise of traffic ; while on the other hand the open fields are taken posses sion of and made to bear the homes of the well-to-do ; so in the shifting of men's ideas gradual changes are brought about in the meaning of words. Once- respectable terms fall into evil ways , BO that they are no longer fit to appear in polite society , and , conversely , words of ill repute are brought up into the light and air and formally adopted by the wise and good. Sometimes there are signs of method in this process , but often it appears to be governed only by the freakish spirit of language. Who , for instance , can explain why the good and bad words for boy and girl have been reversed in position in the last 500 years ? When Wycliffe trans lated the Bible into English "knave" and "wench" were the proper words. He made St. Paul proclaim himself "the knave of Jesus Christ , " and told the story about the ruler of the synagogue thus : "And he holding the bond of the wenohe , seith to her , Wenche , to thee I seie , rise thou. And anon the wenche rees , and walkide. " Our word girl , on the other hand , had a rather unsavory flavor at that time ; and the old Teu tonic word for a lad , or young man , has been advanced to "knight" in English , while , oddly enough , it has been de graded in German to mean a stable-boy. It is remarkable how fate has perse cuted nearly all words applying to the plain people. A large proportion of our most unpleasant terms were at one time perfectly respectable words , and meant no more than that the bearer was en gaged in manual labor , or in agricul ture. They were no doubt started on the downward path by the idle upper class , who were displeased with such people because they wore old clothes and smelled sweaty. "Vulgar" and "lewd" are suoh words ; they come re spectively from the Latin and German words for the common people. "Vul gar" brought its supercilious sneer into English with it ; "lewd" has come down i7 ! ? : . " p-.vt * in comparatively recent times. In the Cook's Tale we read : 'Thor was no lewede man that in the halle stood , That wolde do Gamelyn eny thing but good. " Here it signifies merely the menservants vants , or farm-hands. In the King James' translation of the Bible , the apostle Paul is made to characterize a mob that broke up one of his meetings as "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort " Here it is used in a directly dis paraging way , but it is still far from its present meaning. "Common" itself , though it really applies only to suoh thihgs as we share with others , has come to be used in an uncomplimentary way. A "villain" is such a person as a Roman gentleman came in contact with when he visited his villa or country- house , A "scamp" would seem also to be one who has relations with the campier or fields. A "blackguard" is one of the company that appeared from a rich man's kitchen when he mustered his entire household. It was in much this same spirit that an Eastern agent , not long ago , being disappointed as to something he had hoped to obtain from the Nebraska City council , sought to wound that respect able body by calling its members ' 'a set of fanners. " "What does the man mean ? " asked one of the counoilmen. He can't hurt my feelings a bit by say ing that I own a farm in Otoe county. I'd just as-soon own three or four. " Sometimes the change in the force of a word tells a story of development of society. "Pecuniary" and "fee , " which both have reference today to money , began , as everybody knovvs.as the Latin and German words respectively for cattle. This goes back a long way. It was by reason of a mistranslation of this Latin word , no doubt , and not be cause cattle were still the chief form of portable property , that an old English Bible speaks of a "wommau which hadde spendid al hir oatel in to lechis ; " that is , for the doctors. We speak with equanimity of our children having the measles ; but that is the old name for no less a disease than leprosy. "Manye meselis weren in Israel" says Wyoliffe , and again "Crokide men gen , meselis ben maad clone. " We have a savor of this in the common phrase "measly pork , " for meat infected with trichina. T li e populists THE BEST MEN. proclaim all capi talists culprits. All who have much money are bad men. All who have only a little money are better men and those who have no money at all the best men. And yofc nearly all populist leaders who thus inveigh against accumul ated capital desire to become capital ists and be even called culprits rather than to have a little money and be classed as good men or no money and be praised as the better or best men.
