Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1883 — Liberty and Law. [ARTICLE]

Liberty and Law.

For the last 300 years there lias been steadily growing in the civilized world a disposition to assert the individual will above the restraints of authority. The strongest Governments of Europe have a sense of weakness and insecurity which they have never felt before. The expenditure in our time of police and military force to preserve tlie existing institutions of authority from Overthrow by violence is unparalleled. In this country the signs of—the—prevailing tendency, in which Europe finds such dire forebodings, are only too apparent. We began our national career with the declaration that Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, and tile War of Secession threatened .us with anarchy; because 8,000,000 of people of the South, appealing to this utterance, refuged .their consent to the Government of the Union, It cost us an untold expenditure of blood and treasure to deny our original declaration, and to declare instead that Governments derive their just powers from justice, which determines that to which the people ought to consent quite as truly as that to which they have consented. We have not been wanting since the war in the disposition to cast oft" authority and to niake the individual self-will dominant in"’every issue. Two of our Presidents have been shot by assassins. Men of high position insist’upon their right, when the time comes, to take the law, as they term it, into their own hands. A member of the present Congress has just now been on trial for murder, because he sought by blood his own redress for a fancied wrong. The war upon property and family—the two institutions upon which the very existence of society depends—is as evident in America as in Europe, I am not apt to take a despondent view of the world’s condition or of the promise of our Aineiucan life, aF ybu well know I look upon our national prospect with large hope. Never before, ik seems to me, has so bright a future shone to the eyes of any people. But there is never a privilege without its peril, and we have dangers which, if wise, we shall not fail to see. Our chief peril—and there are signs enough '■ to show that it is grave—consists, I think, in the undue exaltation of our liberty. We have set the Goddess of Liberty upon the dome of our Capitol at Washington, as though liberty was the presiding genius of all our law. We are preparing to erect at the entrance to New York harbor a colossal statue of Liberty, whose uplifted torch shall proclaim to tlie incoming fleets of the nations that it is liberty which is to enlighten the world. We boast that we are a free people, but who speaks with pride of the supremacy of our law ? We make our law dependent on our liberty; in other words, we are determined to have such laws as we will, rather than to will such laws as we ought to have. But when liberty is put first, and only the law is permitted which we choose to permit,,the liberty soon sinks to a license, and the license descends into anarchy, and the anarchy only issues in a d-espotisjoi. —President Seely e.’ ........ AnecdoteOf Abrliara Lincoln. The origiu of Lincoln’s intimacy with Joshua F. Speed is thus related: “Mr. Speed,began his business life as a merchant in Springfield, 111., where he was settled when Mr. Lincoln came there to open a law office. One day, as he was sitting in his stove in an interval of leisure, Mr. Lincoln, whose ingrained awkwardness was then aggravated by youth, came up to the counter, and accosted him with visible embarrassment. ‘I want to know, Speed,’ he said, ‘the cost of a bedstead and bed,’ adding a rough description which indicated the cheapest kind of both. ‘What you want,’ answered Mr. Speed, ‘will cost you about sl7.’ At this Lincoln’s jaw dropped, and a painful expression of sadness and perplexity spread over his countenance. Mr. Speed, noticing the look, land rightly interpreting it to signify that the price exceeded Lincoln’s means, quickly added: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I have a proposition to make you. My partner has just got married, and his bed in my room up-stairs is vacant. If you are willing to occupy it, and share my room with me, you are more than welcome.’ The painful expression instantly vanished from Lincoln’s face as, with a few simple words of thanks, lie accepted the off er and disappeared. In a short time he reappeared with a pair of old-fashioned saddle-bags on his arm, and, directed l>y,his new friend, shambled up-stairs to the designated room. A minute had scarcely passed before he shambled down again, and as he reached the shop-room pried out, his face beaming with jocund content, ‘Well, Speed, I’ve moved.’ Henceforward unto death Lincoln and Speed were bosom friends.” * — " It is always a sign of poverty of the mind, where men are ever aiming to ap pe&r great, for they who are really great never seem to know it —Cecil. Bedford county, Va., has a chestnut tree twenty-five feet in circumference.