"No culprits they, though ire and pride
Had laid their better mood aside."
Now let us try to point a moral to this our experience:
Notwithstanding the fact that the tireless and ceaseless thinkers
and doers have by devices and combinations reduced the toil of brawn
and muscle by perhaps sixty per cent and increased food, shelter and
raiment many-fold, both in quantity and quality, so there is abundance
for all who are willing to pay the price in mild and easy effort:
unrest is again abroad in the land and the fanatical and political
agitators are teaching that the do-less, shiftless and thriftless
should share equally with the ceaseless and tireless doers in
everything that is produced under pain of the stoppage of all progress
unless granted, no rewards and no forfeits.
Let us implore our children and grandchildren to study well these
questions lest they in turn be led to the misconceived belief that
there is pending an irrepressible conflict, a feud that naught but
blood can atone; and in conclusion commend to them the admonition of
Doctor Lyman Beecher, of three generations past, who evidently had in
view our present condition, of which here is an extract:
"We must educate! We must educate! Or we must perish by our
own prosperity. If we do not, short will be our race from the
cradle to the grave. If in our haste to be rich and mighty,
we outrun our literary and religious institutions, they will
never overtake us: or only come up after the battle of liberty
is fought and lost, as spoils to grace the victory, and as
resources of inexorable despotism for the perpetuity of our
bondage.
"We did not, in the darkest hour, believe that God had
brought our fathers to this goodly land to lay the foundation
of religious liberty, and wrought such wonders in their
preservation, and raised their descendants to such heights of
civil and religious liberty, only to reverse the analogy of His
providence, and abandon His work.
"No punishments of Heaven are so severe as those for mercies
abused: and no instrumentality employed in their infliction is
so dreadful as the wrath of man. No spasms are like the spasms
of expiring liberty, and no wailing such as her convulsions
extort.
"It took Rome three hundred years to die; and our death, if we
perish, will be as much more terrific as our intelligence and
free institutions have given us more bone, sinew and vitality.
May God hide from me the day when the dying agonies of my
country shall begin! O thou beloved land, bound together by
the ties of brotherhood, and common interest, and perils, live
forever--one and undivided."
ADDRESS BEFORE THE ORDER OF INDIAN WARS, ON "THE BATTLE OF THE ROSEBUD"
MARCH 2, 1917