lic opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations." Lieber said, in 1870, "Bismarck proclaims to-day in the Diet the very principles for which we were hunted and exiled fifty years ago." Submit to risk your daily bread, expect social ostracism, count on a mob now and then, "be in earnest, 5 don't equivocate, don't excuse, don't retreat a single inch," and you will finally be heard. No matter how long and weary the waiting, at last, "Ever the truth comes uppermost, And ever is justice done. "Far in front the cross stands ready, In silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes Into History's golden urn." In such a land he is doubly and trebly guilty, who, except in some most extreme case, disturbs the sober rule of law and order. ΙΟ 15 20 But such is not Russia. In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what government does, no remon- 25 strance allowed, no agitation of public issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described as "a despotism tempered by assassination.” Meanwhile, such despotism has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled power 30 doubtless made some of the twelve Cæsars insane: a madman, sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred million of men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into exile for his opinions. The next week she is 35 stripped naked, and flogged to death in the public square. 5 Where is there Where the ful No inquiry, no explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead uniform silence, the law of the tyrant. ground for any hope of peaceful change? crum upon which you can plant any possible lever ? Macchiavelli's sorry picture of poor human nature would be fulsome flattery if men could keep still under such oppression. No, no in such a land dynamite and the dagger are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall and "The Daily Advertiser." Anything that will make the madman 10 quake in his bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of our civilization. 66 Born within sight of Bunker Hill, in a commonwealth which 15 adopts the motto of Algernon Sidney, sub libertate quietem ("accept no peace without liberty "), son of Harvard, whose first pledge was Truth," ‚" citizen of a republic based on the claim that no government is rightful unless resting on the consent of the people, and which assumes to lead in as20 serting the rights of humanity, — I at least can say nothing else and nothing less, no, not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hooting my words! 25 I shall bow to any rebuke from those who hold Christianity to command entire non-resistance. But criticism from any other quarter is only that nauseous hypocrisy, which, stung by threepenny tea-tax, piles Bunker Hill with granite and statues, prating all the time of patriotism and broadswords, while, like another Pecksniff, it recommends a century of dumb submission and entire non-resistance to the Russians, 30 who, for a hundred years, have seen their sons by thousands dragged to death or exile, no one knows which, in this worse than Venetian mystery of police, and their maidens flogged to death in the market-place, and who share the same fate if they presume to ask the reason why. 35 "It is unfortunate," says Jefferson, "that the efforts of mankind to secure the freedom of which they have been de prived should be accompanied with violence and even with crime. But while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end." Pray fearlessly for such ends: there is no risk! "Men are all tories by nature," says Arnold, "when tolerably well off: only monstrous injustice and atrocious cruelty 5 can rouse them." Some talk of the rashness of the uneducated classes. Alas! ignorance is far oftener obstinate than rash. Against one French Revolution that scarecrow of the ages weigh Asia, "carved in stone," and a thousand years of Europe, with her half-dozen nations meted out and 10 trodden down to be the dull and contented footstools of priests and kings. The customs of a thousand years ago are the sheet-anchor of the passing generation, so deeply buried, so fixed, that the most violent efforts of the maddest fanatic can drag it but a hand's-breadth. Before the war Americans were like the crowd in that terrible hall of Eblis which Beckford painted for us, — each man with his hand pressed on the incurable sore in his bosom, and pledged not to speak of it: compared with other lands, we were intellectually and morally a nation of cowards. 15 20 When I first entered the Roman States, a custom-house official seized all my French books. In vain I held up to him a treatise by Fénelon, and explained that it was by a Catholic archbishop of Cambray. Gruffly he answered, "It makes no difference: it is French." As I surrendered the volume 25 to his remorseless grasp, I could not but honor the nation which had made its revolutionary purpose so definite that despotism feared its very language. I only wished that injustice and despotism everywhere might one day have as good cause to hate and to fear everything American. 30 At last that disgraceful seal of slave complicity is broken. Let us inaugurate a new departure, recognize that we are afloat on the current of Niagara, — eternal vigilance the condition of our safety, that we are irrevocably pledged to the world not to go back to bolts and bars, could not if 35 we would, and would not if we could. Never again be ours the fastidious scholarship that shrinks from rude contact with the masses. Very pleasant it is to sit high up in the world's theatre and criticise the ungraceful struggles of the gladiators, shrug one's shoulders at the actors' harsh cries, and know that but for let every one "this villainous salt5 petre you would yourself have been a soldier." But Bacon says, "In the theatre of man's life, God and his angels only should be lookers-on." 'Sin is not taken out of man as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." "Very beautiIo ful," says Richter, "is the eagle when he floats with outstretched wings aloft in the clear blue; but sublime when he plunges down through the tempest to his eyry on the cliff, where his unfledged young ones dwell and are starving." Accept proudly the analysis of Fisher Ames: "A monarchy 15 is a man-of-war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless when under full sail; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our republic is a raft, hard to steer, and your feet always wet; but nothing can sink her." If the Alps, piled in cold and silence, be the emblem of despotism, we joyfully take the 20 ever-restless ocean for ours, — only pure because never still. Journalism must have more self-respect. Now it praises good and bad men so indiscriminately that a good word from nine-tenths of our journals is worthless. In burying our Aaron Burrs, both political parties in order to get the 25 credit of magnanimity - exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy so thoroughly that there is nothing left with which to distinguish our John Jays. The love of a good name in life and a fair reputation to survive us that strong bond to well-doingis lost where every career, however stained, is covered with the 30 same fulsome flattery, and where what men say in the streets is the exact opposite of what they say to each other. De mortuis nil nisi bonum most men translate, "Speak only good of the dead." I prefer to construe it, “Of the dead say nothing And if the sin and - unless you can tell something good." the recreancy have been marked and far-reaching in their evil, even the charity of silence is not permissible. Let 5 To be as good as our fathers we must be better. They silenced their fears and subdued their prejudices, inaugurating free speech and equality with no precedent on the file. Europe shouted "Madmen!" and gave us forty years for the shipwreck. With serene faith they persevered. us rise to their level. Crush appetite and prohibit temptation if it rots great cities. Intrench labor in sufficient bulwarks against that wealth, which, without the tenfold strength of modern incorporation, wrecked the Grecian and Roman States; and, with a sterner effort still, summon women into 10 civil life as re-enforcement to our laboring ranks in the effort to make our civilization a success. Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward. "New occasions teach new duties; Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly Nor attempt the Future's portal 15 20 II. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. The Leadership of Educated Men.1 Delivered before the Alumni of Brown University, Providence, June 20, 1882. [This oration is, in a way, a reply to the Phi Beta Kappa address of 25 Wendell Phillips. "The subject with which it deals, the place of the educated man in public affairs, was a particularly congenial one to Mr. 1 Reprinted, by permission, from the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis: Copyright, 1893, by Messrs. Harper and Brothers. |