Then arose Oliver Cromwell, a man of the “Common People,” who, with his Ironsides regiment at Marston Moor (1644), drove the cavaliers pell-mell from the field. Nasby (1645) was the decisive contest of the war. Cromwell swept the field, and the royal cause was irrevocably lost. Charles fled to the Scots, who gave him up to the Parliament; but the army of the “Common People,” led by Cromwell, soon got him into its possession, and he was condemned to death on the charge of treason, and was beheaded.
Thus, as has ever been the case when the “Common People” have been goaded by insult into a furious state of temper, some leader has aptly sprung, like Cromwell, from their ranks, and carried them triumphantly to victory. In the same way George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Grover Cleveland have each in turn led the hosts of the “Common People” to victory in their battles against “divine rights,” injustice, “caste,” and “sham aristocracy.”
England, by the execution of Charles I., was without a king. The authority was vested in the House of Commons (diminished by Pride’s Purge the expulsion of the Presbyterian minister) contemptuously styled “the Rump.” Cromwell, the man of the “Common People,” and his terrible army, composed of the “Common People,” were the actual rulers. In Ireland and Scotland the Prince of Wales was proclaimed as Charles II., whereupon the grim Ironsides—those representatives of the people, and their terrific earnestness when aroused—conquered Ireland as it never was conquered before. Crossing then to Scotland, the covenanters were routed at Dunbar, and again at Worcester.
Cromwell, while he had the power of a king, like Cæsar, dared not take the title. He recognized, what it would be well for the sham aristocrats to attentively regard, that the people MAKE and UNMAKE; hence, he did not dare offend the “Common People” by assuming the title of king, though exercising all the powers of a king. Under Cromwell, England’s glory became greater than under Elizabeth. The Barbarian pirates were punished; Jamaica was captured; Dunkirk was received from France in return for help against Spain; protecting the Protestants everywhere, Cromwell compelled the Duke of Savoy to cease persecuting the Baudois. The very name of England became terrible to the oppressor of the poor in every land. The people, in their might, were ruling England; because, even though Cromwell was styled “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,” he still understood that his greatest power rested upon the will of the “Common People” as a foundation.
Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell there was no hand strong enough to seize the helm of the ship of State. His son Richard, who did not inherit the genius of his father, and did not hold the confidence of the “Common People” of England, was quickly put aside. And the English people—the “Common People”—casting about for an executive to place at the head of the nation, selected Charles II., whom they called to England to rule them, but not “by divine right;” simply as their king.
The popularity of Charles II., the most profligate, the most licentious and immoral ruler that Great Britain has ever had, arose because he was the people’s king. They had called him from over the sea; he ruled by no divine right, but through the affections of the people. He was to them their king, and though he sinned, erred, and wasted the money of the nation, he was of the people, and they forgave him. When James II. attempted to revive (as the people feared he would, and hated him in consequence, even before his succeeding Charles II.) “the divine right of kings,” and the privilege of doing anything, the idea that nothing that he did could be wrong, the people resented it. It was not Catholicism. Dear as religion may be in the heart of man, there is one thought that is dearer: it is his right to be a man, and equal to any other. Had James II. been a people’s man, as was Charles, his brother, it is quite possible that the House of Stuart might now reign in Great Britain. William of Orange was beloved by the people, because he was so thoroughly a people’s man, that even the proud Anglo-Saxons preferred to submit themselves to his rule, joined with a daughter of the House of Stuart, rather than to the legitimate successor of Charles II. The mighty voice of the people was heard resounding in the selection of the Prince of Orange with the same notes that marked the music of the march of a triumphant Democracy, on November 8, 1892; like the grains of wheat taken from the tombs of the Pharaohs, though gathered in a harvest of fifty centuries ago, when planted will produce the same crop as to-day.
History repeats itself continually, and nowhere more obvious is the repetition than in the record of the Anglo-Saxon race. The same causes which occasioned the unpopularity of Charles I., the popularity of Cromwell, the popularity of Charles II., were working to create Cleveland’s tremendous popularity and the overthrow of the Republican party November 8, 1892.
CHAPTER XVI. THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1520-1525.
Germany does not present a fruitful field for examples of popular uprisings and the exhibition of the indignation of the people when crushed by the oppressors of the upper classes. Germany to-day, even in the last decade of the nineteenth century, presents a picture of the only government in Europe which pretends to have a representative form of government, where the chief executive, the Emperor, can speak of himself, or would dare to do so, as the “war lord,” to whom absolute obedience is due by the citizens of the Empire. The Anglo-Saxons, while a branch of the great Teutonic race, seem to have acquired, by their being transplanted to the British Isles, a greater spirit of independence than the other branches of the German race that have remained on the continent of Europe.
Otho I., son of Henry I., the mighty Saxon duke, was the founder of the German empire (936-973), and remorselessly crushed the rising opposition of the princely aristocracy. Mutterings of discontent, ominous of coming revolution, began to be heard throughout the whole of South and Central Germany, in the early years of the seventeenth century. The social position of the peasants was of the most degrading character. They were serfs; or, in other words, belonged to the soil on which they were born, and through that to the lord who owned the soil.
The miserable peasants had no right to move from these lands; there was no appeal from the authority of the lord. When he appropriated for his own use the common pasture grounds of the village; when he forbade them to fish in the streams, or to hunt in the woods; increased the ground rent; tithe socage service, according to his own need, they had to submit or revolt.
Thomas Münzer was an earnest, advanced preacher at Zwichfau, in Saxony, in 1520 and in 1523. He was expelled from Allstadt by the government, and went first to Nuremberg, and then to Schaffhausen, returning soon to Thüringia, and settled at Mülhausen. There he succeeded in overthrowing the city council and appointing another which was completely under his control.
Götz von Berlichingen was a famous German knight, surnamed “The Iron Hand.” He was born in 1480, at Berlichingen Castle, in Wurtemberg. He lost a hand at the siege of Land Shut, and replaced it with an iron one. He was a daring and turbulent subject, continually involved in feuds with neighboring barons.
Thomas Münzer and Götz von Berlichingen were the only leaders who took part in what is known as “The Peasants’ War,” in Germany. This was an uprising of the peasants, which first manifested itself January 1, 1525, by the capture and looting of the convent of Kempton. This served as a signal for general uprising of the peasantry from the Alps to Havz, and from the Rhine to the Bohemian frontier. Münzer quickly persuaded the whole population in and around Mühausen and Laugensalza to rise in revolt, and Götz von Berlichingen hastened to place his skill at the service of the infuriated peasants.
Unfortunately, however, the uproarious hordes were without other leadership, and lacked discipline and effective weapons. They gathered in throngs of from 5,000 to 10,000, and ran hither and thither, with clubs, stones, and perhaps a few firearms, burning castles, destroying monasteries, plundering villages, towns, and cities, and committing ferocious outrages. Before the regular armies, these multitudes were scattered like chaff in the hurricane. They fought with the fury and courage of tigers, but it availed them nothing; they were routed, dispersed, and massacred, and effectually crushed in a few months. Münzer was tortured and beheaded. Von Berlichingen was placed under the ban of the empire by Maximilian I., his exploits serving as the subject of Goethe’s drama of “Götz von Berlichingen.”
While unsuccessful, this uprising of the peasants demonstrates that the inherent love of liberty has a place in the hearts of the German race, and should furnish to Emperor William a warning note that there may be a point where, in spite of the Germans’ love for Fatherland, and pride in the glories achieved by the Empire, they may resent expression of autocratic authority on the part of their Emperor. When the German becomes an American citizen—and there are no better citizens of America than the Germans—the spirit of equality, which has lain dormant in the Teutonic blood for centuries, immediately asserts itself. Under the wise guidance of Bismarck, German unity was made possible, and the glory won by united Germany has influenced the Germans in Europe to submit to heavy taxation, and the continued assumption of social superiority; but the time is rapidly approaching, which it would be well for Emperor William to consider, when the German people of Europe will exhibit the same love of liberty and equality that the children of the German race exhibit as citizens of the American Republic. It is to be hoped that the German empire will not sustain the severe shock in the latter part of the nineteenth century by which the whole social system in the kingdom of France was rent asunder, in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER XVII. SWITZERLAND, 1424.
That little dot on the map of Europe, situated among the Alps, called Switzerland, has always formed an attractive and pleasing object to lovers of freedom and equality. Surrounded by powerful neighbors, the mountaineers of these little cantons seem to have imbibed, with the purer air of heaven in which they live on the mountains, that degree of stern courage, determination, and love of liberty which enables them to resist the pressure of the great nations by which they are surrounded. Switzerland, like the wedge of steel, tempered by the spirit of republicanism, has formed one point of pressure which the monarchies around her have been unable to resist. The love of liberty with which the Swiss are endowed, and their hatred of “caste,” are best typified by “The Gray Leaguers” and their story:
In the green valleys of Eastern Switzerland, on almost every hill that juts out from the gray mountain walls of the Alps and commands the fertile fields and villages of the upper Rhineland, there stands a ruined castle. And in that castle, in the early Middle Ages, there dwelt some little local princeling who lorded it with almost unquestioned power over the peasantry around him.
These feudal nobles had held sway, with no right save that founded on might, for generations, before the subject peasants, weak, scattered, and resourceless, were at last driven by the intolerable arrogance of this dominant “caste” to combine for mutual defence. Some of the leaders of the movement met in the little hillside chapel of St. Anna, still standing near the town of Truns, in March, 1424, and took solemn oaths to respect their own and all the people’s rights, and to wage war upon those who would not respect them.
Johann Caldar—a name revered in his district as is that of William Tell in the scenes of his legendary exploits—gave the signal for the first attack on the oppressors. Caldar dwelt in the upper Rhine valley, not far from the baronial castle of Fardun. The Lord of Fardun entered the peasant’s cottage one day at noontide, and in wanton token of contempt spat into the soup that was boiling for the midday. Caldar seized him, and crying, “Eat the soup thou hast seasoned!” thrust his head into the pot, and held it thus until he was choked. Then he went forth to bear over mountain and valley the banner of a revolt that forever annihilated the nobles’ tyranny and left their strongholds in ruins.
For three centuries and a half the Gray Leaguers, as the victorious peasants called themselves, met every tenth year in the chapel of St. Anna, where their first oaths had been taken, and renewed the pledge of popular liberty. At length their territory became the fifteenth canton of the Swiss Republic, still retaining, as it does to-day, its old name—the Grisons, as it is in French.
The American traveling in Europe may view with delight scenes upon the beautiful Rhine; his artistic eye may be delighted by the art treasures of Italy; memories made dear to him may be recalled as he visits England; but in Switzerland he seems to fill his lungs with kindred and familiar air. This little oasis in the desert of monarchies, surrounded by worshippers at the temple of “caste,” is to the American an Alabama, “Here we rest.”
Until the overthrow of the Third Napoleon and the establishment of a republic in France, nowhere else in Europe did the American feel himself so much at home as in Switzerland; and to those rugged mountaineers of the Alps is due the credit of keeping alive the spirit of liberty almost submerged beneath the flood of monarchical ideas which inundated Europe. Every republic on earth, and each republican, should feel indebted to little Switzerland that the fire of freedom was not entirely extinguished.
CHAPTER XVIII. RUSSIA.
At the very name of Russia a kind of horror fills the souls of those who love liberty, equality, and detest “caste” and oppression. Russia is a veritable blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century. She furnishes an example of all that was horrible under the old monarchical governments of Europe. Russia’s social life is honeycombed with anarchy, nihilism, and hatred. Beneath the surface, made smooth by military despotism, there burns the fierce fires of inextinguishable hatred. The people are deprived of those rights and liberties enjoyed by the citizens of even those monarchical governments by which Russia is surrounded, curtailed though those privileges may appear to the free American citizen. Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy are almost respectable in comparison with Russia. There can be, of course, but one end to such a condition—we can hardly call it civilization—in that tremendous empire. Revolution and anarchy in its worst form will sooner or later drench the soil of Russia with blood.
Unfortunately for the future welfare and happiness of the Russians, their autocratic master, the Czar, permits no existence of a vent-hole or crater of the volcano upon which the nation slumbers. An election like that of November 8th in America relieves the pressure. In Russia, the discontent of the Common People, and all expression of it, are suppressed by the iron hand that controls the vast horde of soldiers of which he is master. Russia’s history and record present not one shining spot to relieve the dark picture of crime, ignorance, oppression, intolerance, and the suffering of the Common People.
Briefly, Russia contains one-sixth of the land of the entire globe and one-quarter of the inhabitants. The government is an absolute and strongly centralized monarchy. It is one of the most arbitrary and merciless despotisms on the face of the earth.
As the positive and negative poles of an electric battery, or as like and unlike attract, there has long been a strong friendship between Russia and our country. The two represent the antipodes of government.
From the period of the appenages (small, petty States, 1054-1238) the enmity has been in a state of smothered or open revolt. It was overrun by the fierce Mongols and held under their iron yoke from 1238 to 1462. During that period Moscow and many other cities were burned and the country devastated.
Ivan III. (1263), during his reign of 43 years, did much to consolidate the empire, and introduced the knout as an agent of civilization.
Ivan IV., known as Ivan the Terrible, was a ferocious monster (1533-1584), who first assumed the title of Czar (a Slavonic form of the Latin Cæsar), committed numerous atrocities, and killed his eldest son by a blow in a fit of anger.
Peter the Great (1689-1725) was remorseless in his punishment of those who revolted, as in the case of the streltzi; the rebellion of the Cossacks of the Don; that of Mazeppa, the hetman of the Little-Russian Cossacks; he inaugurated serfdom, and tortured his own son, Alexis, to death.
The rule of Paul was intolerable; he was won over by the artful diplomacy of Napoleon, and assassinated in March, 1801. In the Polish insurrection of 1831 the people were ground to powder.
Alexander II. (1855-1881) emancipated the serfs in 1861. It was freedom only in name. Nihilism sprang up and flourished frightfully. Where his father daily walked unattended, Alexander was in hourly peril. April 16, 1866, he was shot at by a Pole; the following year another Pole shot at him while visiting Napoleon at Paris; April 14, 1879, another Pole attempted to kill him. The same year saw the first attempt to blow up the United Palace and to wreck the train upon which the Czar was riding from Moscow to St. Petersburg. A similar conspiracy was successful, March 13, 1881. Five of the conspirators, including a woman, were executed. Alexander ruled twenty-six years, and left Russia exhausted by wars and honeycombed by plots.
He was succeeded by the present Alexander, whose reign has been characterized by conspiracies and the constant depredations of suspected persons.
The mines of Siberia have been the living death of hundreds of thousands of patriots. More than 50,000 Poles were transported thither after the insurrection of 1863. Since the opening of the present century more than 600,000 men, women, and children have been sent to Siberia. All are in the depths of utter misery and despair. Out of 200,000, more than one-third have disappeared without being accounted for. From 20,000 to 40,000 are living the life of brodyaghi—that is, trying to make their way through the forests to their native provinces in Russia.
And yet nihilism, socialism, the spirit of revolt, are more powerful than ever, and ere long will come the upheaval, when all shall be overturned and “the old shall pass away and all things become new.”
The Russian nobility, with the Czar at their head, as the high priest of “caste,” are solely and entirely responsible for the spirit of anarchy and nihilism which is abroad in the domain of immense Russia. It is a fashion and the fancy of the sham aristocracy in this country to inveigh against anything like socialism, nihilism, and anarchism in America. Should the presence of this dread monster, called nihilism, ever be felt in America, the blame would rest entirely upon the shoulders of the sham aristocrats, just as the Czar and his nobles in Russia are responsible for its presence in that country. There must be a vent for the pent-up indignation of the people; this is, happily for us, found in the ballot-box. It is to this source of relief that we are indebted for the non-existence of socialism in America. It has not been the prudence, wisdom, or consideration of the sham aristocrats which prevents the growth of nihilism here.
CHAPTER XIX. PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS IN ROME.
There is a striking historical parallelism between the Anglo-Saxons in modern history and the Romans a thousand years before. The Romans conquered the world as the Anglo-Saxons are conquering the world. The Romans were the first race to found and maintain an empire as wide as the bounds of western civilization. Their characteristic qualities were, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, their supreme sense of duty, their respect for law, their great natural aptitude for government, their earnest practicality, their somewhat deficient sense of the beautiful, and their high military skill and discipline.
But before Rome could begin her march toward her later position as mistress of the world she had to rid herself of the domestic incubus of an internal oligarchy. The authentic history of Rome—for the earlier annals of her seven kings are little more than legends—opens with the struggle of the Plebeians—the mass of her people—to break down the hereditary domination of the privileged “caste,” the Patricians, who had a monopoly of political power, had appropriated the whole of the public land, and by unjust laws had burdened the Plebeians with taxes and debts, and reduced many of them to actual slavery.
In the year 495 B. C., there one day rushed into the crowded forum an old man, ragged and emaciated, his back covered with bloody stripes. He loudly proclaimed his history, which was that of hundreds of others. He had done service in several wars; his farm had been ravaged and burned, and his cattle driven away; to pay his taxes he had been forced into debt; his Patrician creditor had demanded a usurious interest, and had finally compelled him to work as a slave.
The occurrence created great excitement among the Plebeians, and would have provoked an outbreak had not messengers entered the city bearing the news that a Volucian army was marching to attack Rome. With their stern sense of patriotic duty, the disaffected citizens prepared to meet the foe, it being promised that their wrongs should be investigated after the war. They met and defeated the enemy, but the promise of the Patricians was not kept.
In despair of obtaining justice, the Plebeians decided to secede from the Commonwealth and to found a city on the Sacred Hill, three miles from Rome. This brought the Patricians to terms. Rather than lose the working force of the community, they agreed to release all those enslaved for debt, and to authorize the appointment of magistrates, called Tribunes, who should be chosen from the Plebeians, and should have the right of forbidding any act of oppression.
From that beginning the Plebeians advanced to full political and social enfranchisement, after a struggle that lasted for two centuries—a stern and bitter struggle, although it was waged “with a perseverance, forbearance, and moderation, of which there is scarcely a parallel in the history of the world.”[3] The next step was a law to compel the Patricians to pay rent for the public land they occupied. It was disregarded, and the Tribune Genucius, who attempted to enforce it, was murdered. Then by mutual agreement a body of commissioners (Decemvirs) was appointed to draw up a revised code of laws for all classes. Again the Plebeians had been deceived; the commissioners seized the executive power, and held it illegally and tyrannously until the Commons ended their usurpation by a second secession to the Sacred Hill.
The agrarian question remained a burning one until the Tribunes Licinius and Sextius forced a settlement of it by stopping the whole machinery of government until their propositions were accepted. The procedure was constitutional, but for ten years (376 to 366 B. C.) Rome was in a state of anarchy, and the fact that actual civil war was avoided testifies strongly to Roman self-restraint.
The legislative power was now the only one denied to the Plebeians. The Publican law was passed to give it to them, but the Patricians prevented its enforcement until by a third secession the Commons again carried their point, and at last secured final and complete equality between the classes. (286 B. C.)
Rome, once the mistress of the world, retained her grandeur only so long as the principles of true democracy pulsated through her body politic and nerved her every action. When prosperity, corruption, and abuse blinded the rulers to the claims of the Plebeians, then came revolution, civil war, decline, and finally the fall of the proudest empire known in the history of man.
So, the mightiest empire the world ever knew declined and fell before the power of the PEOPLE, who, outraged in their most sacred rights, revolted again and again, until, as may be said, the fabric, whose shadow reached to the uttermost ends of the earth, was torn asunder, and so went to fragments that not one stone was left upon another.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Dr. Schmidtz’s History of Rome.
CHAPTER XX. GREECE—VENICE—THE RULE OF “CASTE.”
Although ancient Greece was divided into many small countries, yet they were united by bonds of union, of community, of blood and language, of religious rites and festivals, manners and character. In these respects they were distinguished from all other people, whom they called barbarians.
A thousand years before the Christian era the Greeks were divided into the nobles, who were powerful and wealthy; the freemen, some of whom owned estates; and the slaves.
But the manners of the highest class were simple. The nobles were proud of their skill in the manual arts, and their wives and daughters ably discharged their household duties.
Two hundred years later (B.C. 800) most of the states and cities of Greece became democratic. One uniform method characterized the change from monarchy to democracy. An oligarchy of nobles would overthrow the monarchy, and then some one noble would overthrow the oligarchy and establish the cause of the people.
Sparta was the highest type of oligarchy; Athens of democracy.
Ever since Aristotle distinguished them, there have been three recognized types of government—monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—the rule of one man, the rule of a few men, and the rule of the people.
That the last is the just and the true form of polity, the enlightened opinion of the world has long ago irrevocably decided. Of the other two, experience shows that monarchy is more tolerable. A Nero may have stained the pages of history by the diabolic cruelty to which autocratic power gave free scope; a Napoleon may have poured out half the life-blood of his country to further his selfish personal ambition; yet, on the whole, the evils of one man’s rule have been more endurable than those of the domination of a class or “caste.” In latter days the sovereign has come to be looked upon less as a personal ruler than as an abstraction—an embodiment of theory expressed in the old maxim that “the king can do no wrong”—a conception far less offensive to the innate democracy of all manly peoples; or, he is regarded as a mere figure-head, as may be said to be the case is England, whose nominal monarch has far less practical influence upon the executive and legislative departments than has the President of the United States.
An oligarchy is the worst of all governmental systems. It has never made a people truly great. Wherever such a government has existed its record has almost always been dark and its end bloody.
Look, for example, at two of the most successful oligarchies of history—ancient Sparta and mediæval Venice. Sparta was, as Bulwer justly observes in his “Rise and Fall of Athens,” a “machine wound up by the tyranny of a fixed principle, which did not permit it even to dine as it pleased; its children were not its own—itself had no property in self. So it flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men only noted for hardy valor, fanatical patriotism, and profound but dishonorable craft—attracting, indeed, the wonder of the world, but advancing no claim to its gratitude and contributing no single addition to its intellectual stores.”
Such was the state that was ruled by the privileged “caste” of the Spartans and its administrative committee, the Ephoræ—a state remembered only for its brief military supremacy over her Grecian neighbors. Contrast her with one of those neighbors—Athens, the most typical and the most democratic of ancient democracies.[4] “The people of Athens,” says Bulwer, “were not, as in Sparta, the tools of the state—they were the state! In Athens the true blessing of freedom was rightly placed in the opinions and the soul. This unshackled liberty had its convulsions and its excesses, but it produced masterly philosophy, sublime poetry, and accomplished art with the energy and splendor of unexampled intelligence. Looking round us, more than four and twenty centuries after, in the establishment of the American Constitution, we yet behold the imperishable blessings which we derive from the liberties of Athens. Her life became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, throughout the world.”
Venice was another such oligarchy as Sparta—ruled by a small patrician “caste,” who chose an all-powerful Senate from their own number; and from the Senate was selected an Executive Council of Three—a name that has become proverbial for a body of secret and irresponsible tyrants. Venice’s strength was in commerce, in finance, as Sparta’s was in war. Her rich trade with the East and West made her seem
But her internal government was one long reign of terror. The Council of Three met at night, masked and robed in scarlet cloaks, to judge those against whom accusations had been thrust into the yawning “Lions’ Mouths”—two slots in the wall into which any might thrust an anonymous denunciation of his enemy. And from the Council’s sentence there was no hope of appeal; its victims were hurried across the Bridge of Sighs to vanish forever from human sight in the awful torture chambers to which that melancholy passage led.
The ending of most oligarchies has been a violent one, as was that of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens, or that of the Decemviri at Rome. At Venice the sway of a “caste” lasted for centuries, and was ended only by a foreign conqueror—so complete an ascendency had the privileged patricians gained over the fettered populace. The wonderful mercantile prosperity of the community stifled the sentiment of popular liberty—a notable warning to mercantile and materialistic America!
No oligarchy, and nothing of oligarchic tendencies can be endured in this country. We must not and will not have a dominant “caste.”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] In the best age of Athens, life was marked by a dignified and elegant simplicity. Every free citizen was one of the rulers of the state, through his vote in the assembly and the law courts; and, consequently, there was little exclusiveness in social life. An Athenian might be poor, but if he had general ability, wit, or artistic skill, he was welcome in the best houses of Athens.—Sanderson’s Epitome of History, p. 169.
[5] Childe Harold, Canto IV.
CHAPTER XXI. EGYPT, 4235 B. C.
Egypt, the cradle of civilization, had its Democrats, who struck resistless blows for equality, freedom, and fraternity for the race. So accustomed have we become, in thinking of Egypt, to be struck so forcibly by those evidences, the pyramids, of slave labor and the oppressed condition of the large portion of the ancient population of Egypt, that the existence of democrats in Egypt seems totally inconsistent with our preconceived idea of the ancient civilization of that country. Yet, we find, during the fourth dynasty—4235 B. C., the pyramids were builded, and the great Sphinx at Gizeh. The wealth and splendor of Egypt were unapproached elsewhere; civilization, the arts and sciences, reached a height which, in some respects, the world has never known since that time. The civilization of to-day is unequal to the task of rearing such structures as the pyramids, over which more than fifty centuries have rolled without displacing a stone or crumbling a corner of the prodigious masses of granite, hewn from the distant quarries of Asswan, Mokattam and Tarah, and transported by means beyond the skill and comprehension of the science of the nineteenth century.
But with all its splendor, wealth, magnificence and culture, the kings and rulers of the Fourth Dynasty became corrupt, oppressive and tyrannical. The Common People, as they were called, revolted, and a revolution of fire and blood extinguished the dynasty, 3951 B. C.
Heedless of the immutable law that only in union is there strength, Egypt not only became corrupt and tyrannical, but divided into two kingdoms, who warred furiously against each other. Then it was that the nomadic hordes of Arabia and Syria saw their opportunity, and, swarming over the borders (2114 B. C.) and overflowing the valley of the Nile with a human flood a thousand-fold more destructive than the turbid inundation of that great river, they crushed the struggling legions like worms in the dust, and became the masters of the country.
They were the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who stamped their rugged individuality on that wonderful land. They ruled for four centuries, forming the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties. Their last king was Apepi, who reigned sixty-one years, and is believed by many to have been the Pharaoh (“Pharaoh” was the general name for kings) in whose reign Joseph came into Egypt and was made governor over all the land.
The Shepherd Kings gradually succumbed to the civilization, culture, and manners of the Egyptians, and vanished from history by absorption among those people.
CHAPTER XXII. CHRISTIANITY.
Aside from the fact of its divine origin and inspired teachers, the doctrine of Christianity, the advent of the Messiah, was so opportune that, even had he not been the true Saviour, but taught as he did and as his disciples did, Christianity, by reason of the condition of the civilized world, would have made rapid and permanent progress among the “Common People.” Rome was at that time mistress of the world. Her empire extended over the whole of Western, and a large portion of Eastern civilization. Her conquering legions had carried their eagles to the utmost confines of the then civilized portion of the Western world.
The cultured Greek and the barbarous Briton, the learned Egyptian and the warlike Teuton, alike felt the Roman yoke. Palestine was a province of the great Roman Empire. Roman officials, Roman representatives, and Roman soldiers ruled the people of Palestine with a rod of iron. It had once been said that “to be a Roman citizen was to be a king.” While the Roman Republic had ceased to exist, and the Cæsars ruled in place of the old republican form of government, creating, as a result of a monarchy, a nobility, class distinction, and “caste,” still the traditions and the feelings of the Roman citizen remained with him. He was a king in comparison with the conquered people of the provinces which had been added to the Roman Empire.
The Romans were essentially warriors; cruel and oppressive, merciless and masterful, at every period of the existence of the Roman government, whether monarchical or republican. But under the Cæsars there had sprung up a privileged class, the nobility, who had accumulated vast wealth, surrounded themselves with an army of retainers and servants, through whom they imposed upon the “Common People” every kind of oppression imaginable.
This was not so much the case where the nobility came in contact with only Roman citizens, but in every conquered province or country the arrogance and cruelty of the representatives of the nobility of Rome made absolutely wretched and hopeless the lives of the conquered people.
The Jewish people had become almost accustomed, as a race, to the yoke of a conqueror. So often had they been oppressed, and so long, they had learned that the ark of their hope and comfort lay, not in temporal power, but in that hope of everlasting happiness which the Word of God, delivered to Moses, insured them hereafter. This had resulted in the creation among the Jewish people of a priesthood and a religious order almost as powerful as the priesthood of ancient Egypt, which exerted, with regard to spiritual and social affairs, though not in conflict with the power of Rome, almost the same tyrannical power as Rome did by the might of her legions in temporal affairs.
Between the grindstones of military despotism and priestly despotism the poor Jew was ground until his very soul cried out in anguish. The true religion, given to his forefathers, through that great teacher, Moses, by God Almighty, had ceased to afford him comfort. “Caste” had crept into the temple, as well as into the Roman government, destroying, as it ever will, peace and happiness at home, security and prosperity abroad. Therefore, when a voice was heard “crying in the wilderness, Come, ye who are heavy-laden,” the ears of the Jew, the Gentile, the barbarian, all the world over, were ready to listen and follow the sweet music of hope created in the breasts of the oppressed, which Christ brought.
The persecution of our Saviour and his sufferings arose and were occasioned by the priestly “caste,” and executed, in that scene on the cross, by the military “caste”—the Roman soldiers. “Caste,” and the crime of it, is responsible for the crucifixion of our Saviour, the Son of God. The “Common People,” in multitudes, followed Jesus, and listened in rapt attention to the loving words of peace and hope he brought them. It was the high priests of the temple who accused him; it was the Roman governor who had him crucified, by reason of the accusations of the priestly “caste.”
No fair-minded man, examining into the beautiful story furnished by the existence of the Son of God on earth, can fail to recognize that the loving, peaceful, kindly mission of our Saviour was made wretched, resulting in his suffering and death, by reason of the crime of “caste.”
Aristocrats and aristocracy have occasioned, from the beginning of the world, nearly all of the sins, wretchedness, and misery of the children of God; and when He sent His Son to save us, they crucified Him. In the coming of Christ, the “Common People” of Palestine saw a gleam of hope, a star to guide them to that haven of rest where neither priesthood nor Romans ruled; that province where all should be bright, where all should enter into perfect bliss. This sensation among the “Common People,” starting like the ripples created by casting a stone into still waters, extended and widened until it permeated every province of Rome, making converts of the “Common People.”
The conquered provinces had felt the severity of the iron heel of Rome upon their necks. The Roman nobles had driven so deeply into the hearts of the conquered the idea that “to be a Roman was to be a king,” and that the subjugated people, though morally and mentally often the superiors of the Romans, were, by the power of the Roman legions, the inferiors of the followers of the eagles of the Cæsars. The utter uselessness and impotency of any outbreak upon the part of the subjugated people, where resort to arms would be sought, was so apparent, the futility of contending with the might of Rome was so great, that the civilized world at that time was hopelessly suffering. To contend with the trained and masterful soldiers of the Cæsars would be productive of but one result—destruction, suffering, and humiliation.
To the world, so bereft of all hope for relief from their sufferings, from the oppressive Roman “caste,” His words and His teachings came like the sweet, refreshing breath of heaven, bringing a salve to the wounded spirits of the hopelessly oppressed masses. Christ, the Son of God, was of the people. The earthly parents selected by the All-Wise Almighty for the Son that He should send to save His people, were of the lowly. Christ himself learned the trade of His father, and was a carpenter; His every utterance, His life, the selection of His disciples, was, like the Truth, democratic. In fact, Christ would to-day have been pronounced a socialist. In the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew, twenty-first verse, we read: “Jesus answered, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” In St. Mark, tenth chapter, twenty-first verse: “And Jesus, beholding him, loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor.” In St. Luke, twelfth chapter, thirty-third verse, we find Jesus saying: “Sell that ye have, and give alms.”
Imagine a minister of to-day, a teacher of the doctrines of this same Jesus, rising in some good Episcopal church with the would-be noble Astors seated in front of him, and proclaiming to them: “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor.” Think of a Baptist minister, before permitting John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller to partake of the Holy Sacrament, commanding: “Sell that ye have, and give alms.” Imagine the outrage, indignation, of these many-millioned moneyed lords, if the son of a poor carpenter should suggest to them, as Jesus did of old: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” That meek and lowly Jesus who came as a panacea for all sorrow, selecting fishermen to abide with Him and be His associates, sitting at the table and breaking bread with these fishermen, making of them “fishers of men,” teaching to the world the equality of man by His actions and His life; He who was in the beginning the God, the Saviour, could sit at the table and live in close communion and association with fishermen. Will you, Mr. Rockefeller, will you, Mr. Astor, good Christians that you are? Are you following the doctrines of Him in whose praise you raise your voices, Sunday after Sunday, in a hundred-thousand-dollar church, before an aristocratic, well-bred, genteel, ten-thousand-dollar-a-year clergyman?
Would you, fair dames of fashion, assist at the coming into the world of a child in a stable, whose cradle was a manger, whose curtain was the straw thereof? You ladies of America, whose crests adorn your carriages, affect to view with adoring eyes a hundred-thousand-dollar painting of the Madonna and her child, yet gaze with contempt, and avoid with averted glances, contact with the pure but poor wives and mothers of our land.
St. Paul, who, of all the early teachers of Christianity, was probably the “most respectable,” as soon as the angel of God appeared to him, became converted to the doctrines of Him who was Truth personified, and threw “caste” to the winds. In the seventeenth chapter of the Acts, St. Paul, upon Mars Hill, at Athens, proclaimed the equality of man; in the twenty-sixth verse, he says: “And hath made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” As God has made us all of one blood, how contrary to the teaching of Him whom you say you follow, to endeavor to establish a theory that birth makes a difference and inequality, that there is any peculiarity about one drop of human blood that makes it better than another. The teachings of the divine philanthropist, the Saviour of mankind, took deep and permanent root in the minds of men, because the very essence of it was that no matter whether the believer in those teachings be a poor, oppressed Jew, or an outcast Gentile, or a Roman Cæsar, he stood only before his God as an equal of any other of God’s children. It was the leveling, the equalizing of rank and power that gave the impetus, at first, to those truths which are the pillars of the faith of the Christian nations of earth. “Come, ye who are heavy-laden,” is the doctrine that appealed to the “Common People.” As lasting and as abiding as the faith that we have in the Christian religion, so long and enduring will be the sentiment of the human soul believing in the equality of man. It has been so from the beginning, and will be to the end, and surprise and astonishment at each fresh evidence of its outburst is unnecessary. The plebeians of Rome, before the coming of the Lord, asserted the same right, and would have sought the Sacred Hill to establish a city of their own had not the patricians made concessions. It is the same spirit that cost Charles I. his head, Louis XVI. his head, the British Government this vast empire, and the same spirit that, November 8, 1892, cost the Republican party its hold upon power; because, in the minds of the people, that party was thoroughly impregnated with the much-hated principle of the inequality of man.
The rich and powerful were the last to be converted to Christianity. They trembled and said, as the Roman Governor did, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian,” but not quite, because the very fundamental principles of the Christian religion are Love, Charity, and Equality. Their conversion would mean the surrendering of their cherished claim of “caste.” Many a conversion among the mighty, when at last effected, was the result of policy upon the part of the converted, who had commenced to feel the power of the “Common People” who had listened and become imbued with the divine teachings of the doctrine of Christianity.
Had it been necessary, as now, to pay salaries of from one to ten thousand dollars to those teachers who, in the early age of Christianity, promulgated the doctrines of their God, how few conversions would have been made at all. These wayfarers, obeying the divine injunction of our Saviour, to “go and teach all the people of earth,” took no heed of the morrow. They did not teach in temples which required thousands of dollars to build; they did not find it necessary to be surrounded with luxury; they needed no vacations and excursions to recuperate their exhausted natures. Had it been necessary for those “fishers of men” to have carriages, temples, and salaries, the Christian religion would have made exceedingly slow progress. There were no Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, in the congregations that surrounded the early teachers of the doctrine of the meek and lowly Jesus.
We hear on every side (when this idea is advanced), proclaimed by the gentlemen of the clerical profession, that “the conditions have changed.” If such be the case, then history is terribly misguiding. We are told of the luxuries that surrounded the rich of the Roman empire. We read, in the Scripture, of Dives, and the rich men of that day. We know—unless history is entirely in error—that Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, existed then. But the early teachers of Christianity loved their Lord and followed his footsteps, in that he came to give hope, comfort, and rest to those who were heavy-laden.
The meetings held by the early followers of Christ were not “club meetings,” at which expensive music entertained the audience. The audience was not addressed by high-priced elocutionists, nor entertained by the mental gymnastics of some word-painting acrobat.
Humbly and meekly, hopefully, trustingly, the people sought the presence of that Teacher whose earnestness and faith was evidenced in His life and manner of living. His words were blest, all untutored as he was, with the eloquence of that truth with which his soul was filled. He did not say to the people, “Give alms,” and at the same time live in a brown-stone front. He did not say, “Take no heed of the morrow,” and keep a bank account. He did not preach to his cold and hungry brother that the Christian religion would give him comfort, and keep the warm overcoat on his back while doing so.
In their very lives the early teachers of Christianity made the truth of their own convictions apparent. Is it any wonder that in this, the nineteenth century, doubt arises in the minds of the people? They doubt the doctrine because they doubt the sincerity of the teacher. It is so utterly inconsistent in a man to preach, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,” while his hearers know that within a few blocks of where this teacher lives in comfort and luxury, some poor family is starving.
Let us find men to teach us, who, when they find a poor, shivering wretch, but a brother, on the streets, will take off their warm coats and throw them round his shoulders. Let us find our leaders in the path made plain by the divine Master, taking off their shoes to clothe the benumbed feet of the outcast tramp. Then, and when that day arrives, there’ll be no such thing as “caste” and class distinction in the house of God. Then will the house of God be sought by the multitudes, as of old they sought the mount whereon the Lord did preach. When the privilege of entering the house of God and occupying a seat therein is not sold to the highest bidder, to furnish the ten-thousand-dollar salary for the teacher of the doctrine of that lowly Master, who had nowhere to lay His head, then will the multitudes gather to do the bidding of the teacher. When there are no high places in the temple to be sold to the representatives of “caste” and sham aristocracy, then will the house of God be a home and refuge for the people. When the charities of Christ’s church on earth are not controlled by snubbing, scornful, shoddy aristocrats, when the wife of the poor man shall feel welcome to give her mite, along with the contributions of the rich, without enduring their scornful glances, and subjecting herself to the insult of their assumed social superiority, then will the people become charitable. The church, the Sunday-school, the church society, the charitable committees, have all become impregnated with this crime of “caste,” which crucified the Saviour.
CHAPTER XXIII. NOT A DEMOCRATIC PARTY VICTORY.—DEMOCRACY IS NOT THE NAME OF A PARTY, BUT OF A PRINCIPLE.
The endeavor has been made in the preceding chapters to furnish examples of the uprisings of the people from the time of ancient Egypt to the present day.
The endeavor has been made to place before the thinking men of the wealthier class parallels, in ancient history, of great political upheavals in the past history of our own country, as well as in the history of foreign countries and nations—exhibitions similar to the powerful protest made by the people on November 8, 1892.
The object to be attained by such an arrangement of facts as will impress the wealthier classes, is that a change in their methods and manners may be brought about. No one can pretend to contradict that the people with incomes less than $5,000 a year could, if they saw fit, cause such legislation as would relieve them from the burden of the expenses of the government. It is almost incredible that a journal as preëminent in the Democratic campaign as was the New York Sun, should publish an editorial, as late as the 10th day of December, as follows:—
NOT DEMOCRATIC.
“Various propositions for an income tax come from Democratic free-traders, who are ready for any scheme for raising revenue that doesn’t depend upon a protective tariff. Then there are the Populists, Nationalists, and divers miscellaneous cranks who object to wealth on general principles. Other men’s wealth, of course. To these powerful thinkers an income tax is a penalty to be inflicted upon the plutocrats, a discouragement to the acquisition of money. There is much flabby talk about plutocracy, and a good deal of the talk in favor of an income tax is of that nature.
“With the opinions of the Populists we are not concerned, except as students and observers of the political curiosities of the time. It is proper, on the other hand, to remind Democrats that an income tax is undemocratic. Undemocratic in principles, because it is an interference with individual business and a premium upon perjury. Undemocratic in precedent, because the imposition of such a tax was unanimously and strenuously opposed by the Democratic party, and because the extension of the life of that tax from 1870 to 1872 was likewise opposed, with substantial unanimity, by the Democratic party.
“The only excuse for the income tax was that it was a war measure. What excuse can be given for reimposing it? Is there a war against money or against common-sense?”
Democratic free-traders, so obnoxious to the New York Sun, by the suggestion of an income tax, are merely seeking for means whereby the expenses of the Government may be defrayed. They know that something is the matter with the Democratic masses, who have shown their dissatisfaction with the existing state of things. These Democratic free-traders (and they fairly represent the doctrine proclaimed as a principle of the Democratic party, and adopted as a platform in the Chicago Convention) know that if they are to be consistent they must abolish, to a great extent, the duties upon imported articles. They also know that if they abolish duties, there will not be sufficient money paid into the treasury of the United States to defray the current expenses of the Government. They have realized the powerful current of public opinion, which demands the equalization of taxes between those who enjoy the benefits of living under the government of the Federal Union. The tariff duties do not fall with the same proportionate weight upon the rich and the poor. The rich derive greater benefit from the security offered their property than the poor, as the amount of their property is greater than that of the poor; yet a Vanderbilt consumes no more sugar, and therefore pays no more duty, than the Homestead striker.
The Democratic free-trader, “with his flabby talk of an income tax,” is merely seeking for a means to furnish, upon something like an equitable basis, the money necessary to run the Government.
The “Populist, Nationalist, and divers miscellaneous cranks” (referred to in the editorial quoted) call to mind the Abolitionists of 1856, who were spoken of with so much contempt, and yet who, four years after, as the Republican party, with Abraham Lincoln as their candidate, swept the country. If “flabby talk” means a demand made by the people upon the wealthier class to render unto the Government in proportion to benefits conferred by the Government, then let “flabbyism” continue to characterize the talk of our legislators, because it would be, with all of its “flabbiness,” a welcome doctrine to the “Common People.”
The editorial under discussion goes on to recite the fact that the opinions of “the Populist are not worthy of concern, except to those students and observers of the political curiosities of the times.” Again is called to mind the studies and observations made concerning “curiosities” that existed in the political firmament in 1856, and resulted in the AURORA BOREALIS in 1860.
This editorial, which is worthy of great attention, emanating from the source that it does, reminds the Democrats (meaning the Democratic party) that an income tax is “undemocratic—undemocratic in principle,” because the Democratic party strenuously opposed the life of that tax from 1870 to 1872. There is not a shadow of doubt that an income tax is not in accordance with the principles of that party which bears the name of the Democratic party; but that it is in accordance with democracy and the feelings that fill the breasts of the masses who voted last November for Grover Cleveland, and no one better understands the fact that the victory of last November was not won by the Democratic party, as a party, than the one man most benefited and elevated thereby; that is, the President-elect, Grover Cleveland.
The howl that one thing or another is “not according to the principles of the Democratic party,” ought to have but little effect upon him; and, judging from the editorial of November 21st, which appeared in that other journalistic pillar of the Democratic party, the New York World, Grover Cleveland appreciates the exact position of affairs, and how and why he was elected.
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY.
“Mr. Cleveland’s speeches since the election are even better than those which he made in the campaign. There is an advantage in perfect freedom.
“No truer or more philosophical statement of the causes that underlay the recent political revolution has been made than was contained in Mr. Cleveland’s brief speech at the Manhattan Club. ‘The American people,’ he said, ‘have become politically more thoughtful and more watchful than they were ten years ago. They are considering now vastly more than they were then political principles and party policies, in distinction from party manipulation and the distribution of rewards for partisan services and activities.’
“During the campaign, it was a common remark that so quiet a Presidential canvass had not been seen in many years before. But the result showed that the people had been thinking, and that they knew what they wanted. What they want, and what they have demanded, they must be given, if the Democratic party is to remain in power. And what the people ask and expect, Mr. Cleveland clearly indicated in this earnest and elevated passage in his speech:—
“‘In the present mood of the people, neither the Democratic party nor any other party can gain and keep the support of the majority of our voters by merely promising or distributing personal spoils and favors from partisan supremacy. They are thinking of principles and policies, and they will be satisfied with nothing short of the utmost good faith in the redemption of the pledges to serve them in their collective capacity by the inauguration of wise policies and giving to them honest government.
“‘I would not have this otherwise, for I am willing that the Democratic party shall see that its only hope of successfully meeting the situation is by being absolutely and patriotically true to itself and its profession. This is a sure guarantee of success, and I know of no other.’
“Truer words were never spoken. The fruits of Democratic victory must be sought in lower and more just taxes, in lessened expenditures, in a better public service, in the reform of abuses and the remedy of evils from which the people are suffering, and, in general, in good and honest government. This is indeed the only vindication of the success that has been achieved, the only guarantee of other triumphs to come.”
Grover Cleveland, better probably than any other man in the Union, appreciates the fact that his elevation to the Presidential chair was not secured because there are more members of what is known as the Democratic party in the Union than members of what is known as the Republican party. It must be apparent that many who formerly voted with the Republican party decided, for some good and sufficient reason, that they would vote for the nominee of the Democratic party, in the last Presidential election, and that they did so vote on the 8th day of November is evidenced by the fact of Grover Cleveland’s large majorities, and the increased vote for the ticket bearing his name, even in States whose electoral votes will be cast in the Electoral College for the nominee of the Republican party.
It is impossible to ascribe this change to increased emigration and the fact that recently naturalized citizens voted the Democratic ticket. In the first place, there is no such unanimity of love for the Democratic party, as a party, in the breasts of the emigrants who have been recently naturalized, as to account for their voting unanimously the Democratic ticket. Again, the number of foreigners who have been made, by naturalization, citizens of the United States within the last four years is not sufficient to account for this tremendous revolution; and, further, the greatest gains made by the Democratic nominee were not made in those sections wherein the greatest flood of emigration has poured. Therefore, it seems conclusive that the nominee of the Democratic party received the support of Americans who had formerly voted with the Republican party.
Now, upon what ground can this general conversion rest? It was not done by the flaring of trumpets, by oratory, or reasoning upon the issues as set forth in the platforms of the two parties. It is hard to imagine many voters being convinced of the advantages that would arise under a system of State banks. It would seem that that would convince few, if any, that the Democratic party was more desirable than the Republican party, to have in charge of the finances of the nation. That, as an abstract principle, “Free Trade,” or “tariff for revenue only,” converted this large number of former Republican voters, is a statement not justified by the vote cast in different States, nor is it possible to find one man, in each hundred who voted the Democratic ticket, who can intelligently discuss the subject of Protection and Free Trade and give satisfactory reasons for preferring Free Trade. The subject is a perplexing one, even to those who have devoted much time and study to political economy.
To show a lack of unanimity among the high priests of Democracy on the subject of Protection and Free Trade, one has only to refer to the record of the late and eminent Samuel J. Randall, who was a most pronounced Protectionist, yet a sterling member of the party known as the Democratic party. On the other hand, we have the Hon. John G. Carlisle, Senator from the State of Kentucky, who represents ultra Free Tradeism. Even the same difference exists between those two great journals, in which are supposed to be mirrored Democratic doctrines and principles: the New York Sun, whose editorial is here quoted, which is an absolute Protection organ, and the New York World, whose editorial is also quoted, the last-named paper being an absolute Free Trade organ.
It would seem perfectly apparent to even the most benighted mind that, with such divergence of opinion among the old-line Democrats, a doctrine not believed in unanimously by them, could make but few converts from the ranks of the party pledged to Protection.
Free Trade and State banks were the two leading cries in the campaign of the Democrats, joined to which was occasionally heard the cry of fear of a Force Bill.
The worthy New York Sun would, doubtless, attribute largely the victory to its efforts in calling the attention of the public to the Force Bill and the danger of its passage if the Republicans should gain the control of the Federal Government. As a matter of fact, however, the people of the Union had seen the Republicans in power, controlling both branches of the National legislature, and also the executive department of the Government; yet, the people have seen the Lodge Bill, known as the Force Bill, pass the Republican House of Representatives, and die a doleful death in the Republican Senate, killed by the votes of Republican Senators. Therefore, that part of the Democratic policy which indicated a strenuous objection to the passage of a Force Bill, if put in power, could not possibly have a great deal of effect in the missionary work done by the Democratic managers. Those Republicans who voted for the nominee of the Democratic party, at the last election, could not have been influenced to do so by the arguments advanced with regard to the Force Bill.
They had seen Senators of their own, the Republican party, kill a Force Bill in the Senate of the United States, and they had no reason to believe but that a recurrence of murder would take place should another Force Bill pass the House of Representatives and be sent to a Republican Senate. These three leading features of the Democratic party appear most prominently in the campaign. Can any fair man say that any one or all of them influenced those Republicans who voted for Grover Cleveland to change from the Republican party and become members of the Democratic party? Is there anything in any one of them or all of them jointly to make a man forsake old associates, old ideas and faiths, and to associate himself, by reason of conviction, with things that are new?
It could not be a matter of reason. It was a matter of sentiment. And (again repeating) no one seems to understand that to be the case better than the President-elect. It was the sentiment of detestation upon the part of the masses—the “Common People”—for that assumption of class distinction, the attempted introduction of “caste” in our country by those who are allied to, or who had forced themselves upon, the Republican party.
The cold and clammy arms of “caste,” in which the Republican party was encircled, doomed it to defeat. All of the great virility with which it was endowed when, as Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party, it represented the “Common People,” was crushed out of it by this venomous python, so that when it faced, in 1892, the arrayed resentment of the “Common People,” it was but a shapeless, disfigured form, in which all the beauty, purity, and strength with which it was endowed at the time of its creation had ceased to exist. Had the Republican party retained the vigor that marked its young manhood before it became suffocated by this mass of putrid matter, called aristocracy, there would have been another story to tell of the election November 8, 1892.
Had the argument been well defined, as it was in the last election, with parties of equal merit in the eyes of the people, possessing equally the virtues and spirit of the American people—had we arrayed upon one side the Democratic party, with its oriflamme of “Free Trade, State Banks, and No Force Bill,” and upon the other side marshaled the Republican hosts under a leader like Lincoln, a man of the people, upon whose standard should be written, “Protection for American Industries, Sound Money Guaranteed by the Faith of the Nation, and Fair Election,” can any one who is fair doubt as to what the issue would have been?
It was not, Novembers, 1892, a battle between the Republican party and the Democratic party, and when journals like the New York Sun would attempt to yoke the people’s will by party principles and party traditions, they are merely preparing a harness of cobwebs, which public opinion will tear asunder, and ring the death-knell of the Democratic party in so doing.
The New York World, November 10th, publishes a remarkable editorial, in which it recites, among other things, what this victory does not mean. The editorial is given, because, if it be correct—and the New York World is certainly good authority—then it surely does not mean a victory for the Democratic party, while it does mean a victory for the “Common People,” the democratic masses, and such cries in future as that of the New York Sun against an income tax, because it is contrary to the Democratic party, will be meaningless, inasmuch as the Democratic party has not won this victory, and Grover Cleveland was not elected President by the Democratic party.