The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
History
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
presidency, nothing that's black, yaller or tan gets an
office under my administration. I shall certain not follow
Mark Hanna's understudy and fill the departments at
Washington with big, fat, saucy blacks, to employ white
women as stenographers and white men as messenger boys.
There's lots of good in the Senegambian--lots of it; but
not in a thousand years will he be fit for American
sovereignty. Half the white people are not fit for it, else
instead of a wooden-headed hiccius doctius we'd have Billy
Bryan in the presidential chair today. Whenever I look
at McKinley, I think of Daniel Webster--not because Bill
resembles old Dan, but because he doesn't. I like the
negro in his place and his place is in the cotton patch,
instead of in politics, despite the opinion of those who have
studied him only through the rose-tinted lorgnette of
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." I also like the Anglomaniac in
his place, and that is the geographical center of old
England, with John Bull's trade-mark seared with a hot iron
on the western elevation of his architecture as he faces
the rising sun to lace his shoes. As between the nigger
and the Anglomaniac, I much prefer the former. The
full-blooded nigger is a fool positive, but the Anglomaniac
is an ass superlative. The first is faithful to those
who feed him; the latter is a sneaking enemy to the
country that has conferred upon him every benefit.
Despite the optimistic cackle anent the march of science,
industrial progress, and all that sort o' thing, it appears
to be the general consensus of opinion that there's something
radically wrong. There's no lack of remedies--
the political drug store is full of panaceas, each with the
trade-mark of some peculiar school of therapeutics blown
in the bottle. Strange that all these catholicons for
earthly ills propose to inaugurate the millennium by
improving the pecuniary condition of the people--as though
the want of money in this or the other pocket were the
only evil. Certainly a better distribution of wealth were
desirable, but a general dissemination of God's grace were
far preferable. Given that, all worthy reforms will
follow; without it we will continue to chase foolish
rainbows to our fall, Dives becoming more insolent, Lazarus
left more and more to the care of the dogs. I do not
mean that by acquiring a case of the camp-meeting jerks
we will solve the riddle which the Sphinx of Time is
propounding to this republic--that we will find the solution
of all life's problems in the amen-corner. Not exactly.
The average church is about the last place to which we
need look for relief. It's too often a lying rainbow painted
on the dark mist of ignorance by the devil's own artist.
It promises more and performs less than a Republican
candidate for Congress. I've noticed that shouting
hosannahs has little tendency to make one more truthful
--that when a man professes himself the chief of sinners,
he may feel obligated to substantiate his statement. I've
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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