Drexel University - Spartan Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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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

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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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l 4 t Z it had l'o1'titied liberty against the power of the Crown, America appeared still more worthy off admiration for the sat'eg'nards which, in the deliberations of a single memorable year, it had set. up against the power ot' its own sovereign people. It 1'esembled no other known democracy, for it respected freedom, authority, and law. And the same great historian declares that in that Revolution 'tthe principle gained ground that a. nation' can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control -a very modern principle that, ladies and gentlemen, which Americans placed at the founda- tion ot' their new government. So t'ar Lord Acton. You t'ared forth then on a new era disciplined by a. great principle. Your life llowed on with some vieissitudes, but be- tween the years 1850 and 1865 it ran between deep and beetling gorges, and the ship otf state was often nearly wrecked on hidden rocks. Tlirougliont tllat period you were Si'1'll,9,'g'lill,fZ,' for a. great principle. The North believed that it had entrusted to it the keep- ing ot? the sacred law of liberty, and believed that liberty and law must be extended: but the Southerner, even otf to-day, the old Southerner, will not admit that he too was not tigllting' for liberty. He maintained that he also was defending, not the institution of slavery in itsell', but the principle of civil liberty, and so you went on with your strug- gle. And what wonderful men you had! 'How your people were educated, and how the world was educated! NVhat orators you possessed in NVebster and Lincoln! 'l'he mean- ing off that struggle was gathered up in one man of the people, who to-day stands out before you as your second great hero, and is admired by us, the other branch of the ling- Iish-spealcing people, as one of the most niagnitieenti products of our race, Abraham Lin- coln. ,ln that great war you fought for liberty, you fought for morality as you conceived morality, and your people were edueated and disciplined into a new character by reason ol? the struggle. it is obvious what that issue had to be, and l may state it in these words of President NVilson: The South was conservative and not creative. It was against the drift and destiny of the time. It protected an impossible institution and a. belated order of society. lt withstood a. creative and imperial idea, the idea of a united people and a single law of freedom. And so your present generation, the children of that past age, understand .t'reedom by reason of the sacrifice of those years. For a very few moments-because 1 shall not detain you mueh longer-let me turn now to the other branch. ln Great liritain, in he1' colonies and dominions also, in the nineteenth century, we see expanding freedom. Responsible government, sensitive to the voice of the people, had extended its influence not only in the home land, but in its overseas dominions, guaranteeing freedom founded on reverence for law, her spirit is also set forth in literature. I think I may take two representatives to illustrate what ' 26 , l