Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/131

Rh they have failed in this, is it a fault of theirs? It shows not that they were less great and sincere, but that subsequent generations were hardly worthy of so noble an ancestry!

There is Mr. Douglas's version of your history. He despairs of converting you without slandering your fathers. His present doctrines cannot thrive unless planted in a calumny on the past. He vindicate the signers of the Declaration of Independence! Indeed, they need it sadly. I see the illustrious committee of five arise from their graves at their head Thomas Jefferson, his lips curled with the smile of contempt, and I hear him say to Mr. Douglas: “Sir, you may abuse us as much as you please, but have the goodness to spare us with your vindications of our character and motives.”

It is a common thing for men of a coarse cast of mind so to lose themselves in the mean pursuit of selfish ends as to become insensible to the grand and sublime. Measuring every character and every event in history by the low standard of their own individualities, applying to everything the narrow rule of their own motive, incapable of grasping broad and generous ideas, they will belittle everything they cannot deny, and drag down every struggle of principles to the sordid arena of aspiring selfishness or of small competing interests. Eighteen hundred years ago, there were men who saw nothing in incipient Christianity but a mere wrangle between Jewish theologians, got up by a carpenter's boy, and carried on by a few crazy fishermen. Three hundred years ago, there were men who saw in the great reformatory movement of the sixteenth century, not the emancipation of the individual conscience, but a mere fuss kicked up by a German monk who wanted to get married. Two hundred years ago, there were men who saw in Hampden's refusal to pay the ship-money, not a bold vindication of constitutional liberty, but the crazy antics of a man who was mean