Page:A Historic Judicial Controversy and Some Reflections (Gregory, 1913).djvu/18

196 this restless age, grave as they seem, they are acute and temporary and not organic.

Let us not despair of the Republic. Let us look forward with hope and confidence to her glorious future and imperial destiny. Let us all strive to do our part to, secure its accomplishment. Let us cherish that simple, old-fashioned faith in ourselves and our country, through all our national struggles and trials, which our past history so amply justifies.

Let us never forget that great material prosperity, the glory of conquest and all the bright and glittering panoply of national power, can not take the place of those higher essentials which sustain and develop individual and national character. These qualities, honesty, steadfastness, frugality, temperance, courage, loyalty, industry and perseverance, homely virtues though they be, established our national character and made us what we are. They are still our birthright and our best possession.

Someway, as in thinking and writing of those days long ago, when, as a boy, I was deriving my first impressions, my mind recurs to those simple, almost rustic, ideas of government and national life which then obtained. We were not a great world power; we had no really great city and no great fortunes. We were largely a rural people, possibly, as Bernard Shaw describes us today, somewhat a nation of villagers. Class distinctions were not marked; gross abuses in government were rare; corruption in, public affairs almost unknown; and an optimism untried by the national tragedy so soon to follow was universal.

The mutterings of the storm were heard but their ominous portent was disregarded. "They jest at scars that never felt a wound." But still, though we have had our struggles, ours has been the victory; and we are stronger, wiser, yes, and I believe better, for them.

And so my mind turns to those lines, so familiar long ago, expressing the hopeful and patriotic sentiment of that older time as well they may that of our own:—

"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,