Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/324

 class of "abstractionists," bent upon abstracting the property of others. At the instance of the "corrupt squadron" (the idiom borrowed from the lexicon of Jefferson) to despoil the force (the common weal) confided by the whole and for the whole; the trust fund of the commons, was, in their eyes, to lay unhallowed hands on the mark of the covenant. It was the fateful way to bring-to the front what Mr. Dooley calls, "those brave men elected by the taxpayer of America to defend the hearths of the tax dodger of America." LIBERTY AND MAMMON. By the searchlight which the present throws back upon the past, he who wills to look may see, that they were not narrow., but wide visioned and far-sighted who foresaw what is to-day the paradoxical combine of liberty and mammon; who saw in this the likeness of another paradoxical joinder, spoken of as that of God and Mammon; and, in the partisans of paradox, another kind of strict construction; the strict construction of God and latitudinous construction of Mammon. It was the part of statemanship to strike at the root of that which is to-day so resoundingly denounced as "predatory wealth;" to strike at the source of malefaction rather than while leaving that in full force and effect, to blast with spiritual thunder the lineal malefactors; to strike fearlessly the cause, rather to seek to condone it by Ernulphus rhapsodies of Billingsgate—vociferous and vain-hurled upon the inevitable consequence. Generosity with truthfulness is parent of a multitude of evils; among the evils—Havemeyer being judge-parent of the predatory trusts, it is just now courtly to condemn. True, by others the Mother State was taunted with retrogression. True, the State which gave to the Union not only the Northwest territory, but the pastures of Kentucky, was reduced thereby in territory and in wealth. The rewards of sacrifice and cupidity are not the same. When sacrifice grows lucrative it ceases to be sacrifice. Virginia stood with all her power to prevent that spoliation by government which is twice cursed—cursing the spoiler and spoilee. The contagion of free government was sought to be spread by example by intrinsic merit, not by corruption; not by subjugation. There she stood, as afterwards