CONCLUSION.

Dismissing hope of making my small voice heard in mitigation of the woes of my State, in May, 1873, I went to Europe and remained many months.  Returned to New York, I found that the characters on the wall, so long invisible, had blazed forth, and the vast factitious wealth, like the gold of the dervish, withered and faded in a night.  The scenes depicted of Paris and London, after the collapse of Mississippi schemes and South Sea bubbles, were here repeated on a greater scale and in more aggravated form.  To most, the loss of wealth was loss of ancestry, repute, respectability, decency, recognition of their fellows all.  Small wonder that their withers were fearfully wrung, and their wails piteous.  Enterprise and prosperity were frozen as in a sea of everlasting ice, and guardians of trusts, like Ugolino, plunged their robber fangs into the scalps and entrails of the property confided to them.

A public journal has recently published a detailed list, showing that there has been plundered by fiduciaries since 1873 the amazing amount of thirty millions of money; and the work goes on.  Scarce a newspaper is printed in whose columns may not be found some fresh instance of breach of trust.  As poisoning in the time of Brinvilliers, stealing is epidemic, and the watch-dogs of the flocks are transformed into wolves.

Since the tocsin sounded we have gone from bad to worse.  During the past summer (1877) laborers, striking for increased wages or to resist diminution thereof, seized and held for many days the railway lines between East and West, stopping all traffic.  Aided by mobs, they took possession of great towns and destroyed vast property.  At Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, State troops attempting to restore order were attacked and driven off.  Police and State authorities in most cases proved impotent, and the arm of Federal power was invoked to stay the evil.

Thousands of the people are without employment, which they seek in vain; and from our cities issue heartrending appeals in behalf of the suffering poor.  From the Atlantic as far to the west as the young State of Nebraska, there has fallen upon the land a calamity like that afflicting Germany after the Thirty Years’ War.  Hordes of idle, vicious tramps penetrate rural districts in all directions, rendering property and even life unsafe; and no remedy for this new disease has been discovered.  Let us remember that these things are occurring in a country of millions upon millions of acres of vacant lands, to be had almost for the asking, and where, even in the parts first colonized, density of population bears but a small relation to that of western Europe.  Yet we daily assure ourselves and the world that we have the best government under the canopy of heaven, and the happiest land, hope and refuge of humanity.

Purified by fire and sword, the South has escaped many of these evils; but her enemies have sown the seeds of a pestilence more deadly than that rising from Pontine marshes.  Now that Federal bayonets have been turned from her bosom, this poison, the influence of three fourths of a million of negro voters, will speedily ascend and sap her vigor and intelligence.  Greed of office, curse of democracies, will impel demagogues to grovel deeper and deeper in the mire in pursuit of ignorant votes.  Her old breed of statesmen has largely passed away during and since the civil war, and the few survivors are naturally distrusted, as responsible for past errors.  Numbers of her gentry fell in battle, and the men now on the stage were youths at the outbreak of strife, which arrested their education.  This last is also measurably true of the North.  Throughout the land the experience of the active portion of the present generation only comprises conditions of discord and violence.  The story of the six centuries of sturdy effort by which our English forefathers wrought out their liberties is unknown, certainly unappreciated.  Even the struggles of our grandfathers are forgotten, and the names of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jay, Marshall, Madison, and Story awaken no fresher memories in our minds, no deeper emotions in our hearts, than do those of Solon, Leonidas, and Pericles.  But respect for the memories and deeds of our ancestors is security for the present, seed-corn for the future; and, in the language of Burke, “Those will not look forward to their posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”

Traditions are mighty influences in restraining peoples.  The light that reaches us from above takes countless ages to traverse the awful chasm separating us from its parent star; yet it comes straight and true to our eyes, because each tender wavelet is linked to the other, receiving and transmitting the luminous ray.  Once break the continuity of the stream, and men will deny its heavenly origin, and seek its source in the feeble glimmer of earthly corruption.