Drexel University - Spartan Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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r L linest historical embodiment that the English-speaking people knew of chivalrous char- acter, Sir Philip Sidney, the hero of Elizabethan times, who set forth all that was lovely in holiness, in public service, in the artistry of life and in the performance of duty in every form and shape. Learned, gentle, winsome, brave, he was the embodiment of the best that has been contributed to us by that age of chivalry. People who expand in a generous way at the mention of the word chivalry, basking in the sunshine of it, begin to shrink as under a. darkening cloud, at the mention of Puri- tanismg and yet Puritanism has been more powerful in the life of the lCnglish-speaking peoples than chivalry ever was. Puritanism not only influenced Britain, these United States of America owe to Puritanism possibly the greatest impulse that they have 1'c- eeived from any quarter. Puritanism was often harsh and one-sided, but as embodied in Milton, we can recognize that such a gift came to us from a. kind Providence. Let 1110 quote from Macaulay these words as to Milton: He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conllict between liberty illld despotism, between reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The dcstinies of the human race we1'e staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Listen to these few words from that sublime treatise of Milton, the Aireopagitica, the treatise that lilacaulay says every statesman should wear as a. sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes : Lords and Commons of England, what nation is it whereof ye are the governors, a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and pie1'cing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits, this is that which hath rarilied and enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven, this is that which hath enl'ranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves!! When Puritanism in Milton utte1'ed words like these, the United States of America may well be proud that its past has d1'awn so much influence from such a source. Time went o11. I will not linger over events. There came the great breach. I will not consider the reasons, but the United States of America, in going their separate way, taught the other branch of the ldnglisli-speaking people a lesson that they had not known, by a discipline severe but salutary. But it was not only your fathers who did the teach- ing, who forced the lesson upon the other branch. You will 1'e1nember that the threaten- ing of your revolt became the fact which gave point to the teaching of Britons them- selves, and that there were men in lflngland who understood what was at stake. Let me , 24 '

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continue to do so in the ages that are to eome. lly the diseipline of the l'lnglish-speaking peoples I mean the way we have heen edueated into our present, views and eonditions of life. Possihly I may seem inexaet, in speaking here to-night ot the lilnglish-speaking peoples, for I am going to make an assumption. I am thoroughly well aware that while the American people a.re the largest body of lilnglish-speaking people in point' of num- hers, they are not homogeneous in deseent, and many ot' them might not he willing to aeeept some otf the diseipline and some ol' the tradition that I am referring to to-night. And yet I make my assumption heeause I know that the great' majority ol' the Anieriean people will eonsider that what I have to say does eoneern them hy reason ol' their in- heritauee and their past. litany rills have tlowefl in to make the stream ot' your life,- rills from Holland and mo1'e than rills from the 'l'eutonie eountries and from southern lflurope. llut the great hody and stream ol' your lite took its rise in the home ot' the English-speaking peoples, and theretore I eau speak to-night as l intend to. 'l'here is that other great volmne ol' ltlnglish-speaking peoples that, remained in its old home and that has sinee then sent out its hranehes l'ar and wide over the earth, hranehes whieh have not yet, and I helieve never will, lose their eonneetion with the parent l'ountain. These two great streams separated. liarriers and mountains have risen hetween them, hut in these later days, in a happier time, ehannels have heen made l'rom one stream to the other, and there is a growing eommeree and intereourse hetween the two. Therefore, in speaking otf our edueation, I ean assume a eommon edueation, a eom- mon diseipline, that hegan in a period het'ore the two were dissevered. 'llo some extent, you ean estimate a people's past hy the men who heeame its heroes. In the haekground otf the lil'e ot' the lflnglish-speaking peoples in their priniordial eonnnon stom k there stand two great names, one historieal, and the other more or less mythieal, Alfred and Arthur. And ot' hoth these it: may he said that they l'ound their glory in redressing lnunan wrongs and in bringing order out ol' ehaosg that they sought to estahlish a realm in whit-h or- dered liherty, to some extent at least, heeame more evident, and in whieh the rudiments of a divine law were imparted to the national mind. Time went ou, and the hroadening endeavor ol' liherty to tind seope t'or itselt' in government and in the midst ot' the people was manifested, and with it eame a growing respeet t'or law. In the ages that we sometimes eall the Dark Ages, hut' whieh are not properly so termed, an intluenee from l+'ranee atfeeted the lives wolf our aneestors and un- questionably moulded their eharaeter. t'hivalry was an ideal in those days. Chivalry, l am aware, is eritieised as heing narrow, as eontining its virtues to a limited numher, as taking small aeeount otf the eommon man or woman. And yet ehivalry, the 4-hivalry ot' France and of England, did instil virtues of honor and ot' purity and of loyalty into those generations. Before -passing to a new element, I may just refer in a word to the 23

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read you two short selections, one from Chatham and the other from Burke. Here speaks Cha.tha.m in 1775, the year before the Declaration of Independence, urging the Prussian rulers of those days--because they were simply Prussian rulers--to be generous and to understand those who were sons, he says, and not basta1'ds. His words are: This universal opposition to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen. It was obvious from the nature of things and from the nature of man, and, above all, from the eontirmed habits of thinking, from the spirit of Whiggism flourishing in America. The spirit which now pervades America. is the same which formerly op- posed loans, benevolenees and ship-money in this country, is the same spirit which roused all England to action in the Revolution, and which established at a. remote era. your liber- ties, on the basis of that grand t'undamental maxim of the Constitution that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. To maintain this principle is the common cause of the YVhigs on the other side of the Atlantic and on this. It is the alli- ance of God and nature, immutable, eternal, lixed as the lirmament of heaven. S0 far Chatham. And you know l3urke's incomparable speech on Conciliation with America, in which he warns the Commons that Americans who snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze cannot be deprived of their freedom by the Parliament without attacking some of those principles or deriding some of those feelings for which our ancestors have shed their blood. His closing appeal contains these words. He is addressing the Commons: As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that g1'ows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia: but until you become lost to all feelings of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. And yet they misused the monopoly, and your fathers at the Revolution came forth and founded the greatest democracy that the world had seen. Let me read from perhaps the most learned of English historians as to that-Lord Acton, Professor of History at Cambridge. This is what he said: American independence was the beginning of a. new era. It established a. pure democracy, but it was democracy in its highest perfection, armed and vigilant, less against aristocracy and monarchy than against its own weakness and success. Whilst England was admired for the safeguards with which in the course of many centuries 25