Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/349

 The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. 343

to read you one short passage from that speech, in which he discus- ses some Democratic changes proposed among them, parish coun- cils. He says :

" I wish to know what they are to do. Parishes are a very strange, a very unequal division of the country. You will find parishes very small and parishes very large. They have no duties so far as I know to perform, and when I am told, ' You ought to give them parish councils in order to make rural life more interesting than it is,' I really cannot admit that the object of representative institutions is to amuse the electors who send representatives to them. If among the many duties the modern State undertakes the duty of amusing the rural population should be included, I should rather recommend a circus or something of that kind. But I am quite certain if you attempt to amuse them by giving them parish councils you will not satisfy the demand you have raised.

I looked for the reply to these gibes of Lord Salisbury by some of the politicians opposed to him, and I found it (and had it copied from the London Times of April 2ist) in a speech by Sir William Harcourt, who is thought likely to be one day Mr. Gladstone's suc- cessor. He said:

" We want to give life, occupation, interest to the villagers. We do not ridicule them and tell them to go to a circus. We want these men to have an interest in and an authority over their own affairs, to have something to fill their minds and hearts on the long, dull, dreary round of weekly labor something that will give them a sense of security for themselves and their families and not a sense of dependence upon the variable and eleemosynary favors of others, however generous and kind they may be."

I do not know which one of these British statesmen would be thought the more insolent by a Mecklenburg citizen addicted to self- government and capable of it Sir William Harcourt, with his super- cilius sympathy, or Lord Salisbury and his circus and his contempt.

But I ask all critics of the American citizen to compare that stereo- scopic figure of the British citizen, seen with one Liberal and one Tory eye.

The Mecklenburg patriots in their parish or county council struck for self-government, instantly resolved to risk poverty, defeat, out- lawry, danger, imprisonment and death. Well did they know their undertaking was no holiday affair. It meant privation, bankruptcy, separation from home and friends, protracted military service, sick-