Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1900 — The Effect Upon Ourselves. [ARTICLE]

The Effect Upon Ourselves.

In a late number Air. Goff takes as a text for his excellent poem a quotation from Thos. H. Buckle, one of England’s profoundest thinkers and ablest historians, and who doubtless would have been one of the most eminent men but for his early death. The thought tiented by Mr. Goff is so important and so full of significance that it deserves to bo further treated, and with that end in view there is herewith submitted more matter on the same subject. Buckle wrote: "In order to defend the attempt to destroy the liberties of America, principles were laid down which, if carried into effect, would have subverted the liberties of England. Not only in the court but lu both houses of Parliiuent, from the Episcopal bench, and from the pulpits of the church party there were promulgated doctrines of the most dangerous kind, doctrines unsuited to a constitutional goverument, and, indeed, incompatible with it. The danger was so imminent as to make the ablest defenders of popular liberty believe that everything was at stake, and that if America were vanquished the next step would be to attack the liberties of England, and endeavor to extend to the mother country the same arbitrary government which by that time would have been established in the colonies. If the colonists had been defeated our liberties would have been in great jeopardy. From that risk we were saved by the Americans, who with heroic spirit resisted the royal arms, defeated them at every point, and seperated themselves from the mother oountry.” It is surely not unreasonable to assume that if Buckle were a living American today he would believe and declare that tho Philipiuos are fighting for their own. Regarding the same matter Dr. Jebb, an able writer and observer of the time, said that “tho American war must be decisive of the liberties of both countries. Lord Chatham wrote in 1777: “Poor England, if successful, will have fallen upon her own sword.” The groat Edmund Burke, perhaps the greatest of English statesmen, said: “Thnt the establishment of such a power in America will utterly ruin our finances is the

smallest part of our concern; it will become an apt power and certain engine for the destruction of our freedom here.” For the, same reason Fox wishes thp Americans to be victonpds. Many more quotations or the same character might be made. It is interesting to note that those men, while the ablest and most devoted friends and champions of the liberties of Englishmen, were denounced as “unpatriotic,” “disloyal,” “men who ought to leave the country if they don’t like it,” etc., etc. But the logic of events proved that they were right. The success of the American colonists immediately broadened the liberties of Englishmen. The principles of democracy have in fact grown more rapidly in England since the American Revolution than they have here. The result of that war secured to English colonies inhabited by Englishmen a form of government that the American colonies would never have revolted form. If the success of the colonies had such an effect can there be any doubt that their failure would have been followed by a realization of the predictions of the great Englishmen quoted? The same danger confronts this country now. If our government practices the art of governing without the consent of the governed, and the act is approved by the people, how can they be assured that the principle will not be made to apply in the north temperate zone as well as in the tropics, in the United States as well as in tho Philippines? If sucnLA/poison is allowed to find a place anywhere in our domain where is the assurance that the infection will not spread to all parts? “It is this that should give us pause.”— Farm, Stock And Home.